Biography

Pierre-Bénigne Dufouleur is a historian specializing in Rome, the Papacy and the Curia during the Renaissance. His doctoral thesis (Sorbonne Université) examined kinship relations among 15th-century cardinals and was published in 2024 under the title Léguer sans fils, hériter sans père. Transmission et légitimation du pouvoir chez les cardinaux du Quattrocento. After defending his thesis in 2021, he became a member of the École française de Rome, where he conducted research on the social mobility of the Della Rovere family. His research has been published in several French and Italian scholarly journals and he is currently writing a synthesis on the Renaissance papacy.

Project Summary

This project scrutinizes the role played by Cardinal Innocenzo Cybo (1491-1550) as a figure who can shed light on the mechanisms supporting the complex political equilibrium of the elite circles of the Italian Peninsula in the wider framework of European politics. A grandson of both Pope Innocent VIII and Lorenzo the Magnificent, he held various key-positions, including pontifical legate in Bologna and cardinal-protector of the Holy Roman Empire. He enacted diplomatic schemes benefiting the Medici family thanks to his extensive network of contacts in various milieux. As such, he epitomizes the quintessential figure of the aristocratic cardinal of the Renaissance. Innocenzo Cybo is also a unique example because he is the only Renaissance cardinal whose personal archives have been preserved in a dedicated archival collection, the “Archivio del cardinale Innocenzo Cybo” conserved at the Archivio di Stato in Massa. This research project will focus on the vast correspondences of the cardinal and will entail a classical, text-based approach coupled with a network analysis making use of Gephi software. This method will be combined with a geographic information system to map the spatial extent of the cardinal’s web of contacts.