Sixtus, the name of five popes, of whom two call for particular notice, Sixtus IV. and Sixtus V. The former (originally named Francesco della Rovere), born July 22, 1414, was the son of a fisherman in Celle, a small village near Savona. He was a pupil and friend of the celebrated Cardinal Bessarion, and, having entered the Franciscan order, gained the highest reputation throughout Italy as a preacher. On the death of Paul II. in 1471, Rovere, who had risen to be general of his order, was elected to the Roman see. His inordinate partiality for his relatives exhausted the papal treasury, and led to many questionable exactions, and to gross abuses in the dispensation of church patronage. But the worst imputation upon his memory is his connivance in the Pazzi conspiracy against the Medici (q.v.) at Florence. In many respects, however, his administration was liberal and public spirited. He did much to foster learning and to encourage art, and contributed notably to the improvement and decoration of the city. He built the Sistine chapel and the Sistine bridge across the Tiber, took a zealous interest in augmenting the Vatican library, and was a munificent patron of the great painters of the day. In 1482 he entered into an alliance with the Venetians against the Duke of Ferrara, which led to a general Italian war, and ended in a dissolution of the Venetian alliance, an event so mortifying to the pope that his death is said to have been caused by chagrin, about 13, 1484. His successor was Innocent VIII.—SIXTUS V., one of the most able and vigorous occupants of the Roman see, originally named Felice Peretti, was born (December 13, 1521) near Montalto, of poor parents. He early entered the Franciscan order, was made professor of Theology at Rimini and Siena, won a great name as an eloquent preacher, and gradually rose, through the offices of inquisitor-general in Venice and vicar-general of the Franciscan order, to be cardinal (Cardinal Moutalto) in 1570. Shortly after the accession of Gregory XIII. (1572) he began to lead a retired and mortified life, and was believed to have fallen almost into the decrepitude of age and infirmity. This circumstance seems to have recommended him to the cardinals assembled to elect a successor to Gregory in 1585. But Sixtus totally deceived those who had thought to lead him; for his rule was most active and energetic, and was marked by vigorous measures of improvement in every department of administration, ecclesiastical as well as civil. His first care was to repress the prevailing license and disorder of the city of Rome, and of the papal states generally, by breaking up the bands of outlaws by which both were infested. He reformed the administration of the law and the disposal of public patronage; and he entered upon numerous projects for the moral and material improvement of Rome. Amongst others he erected the library buildings of the Vatican. He found an empty pontifical treasury; yet by judicious retrenchment, and heavy taxation, he secured within the first years of his short pontificate a surplus of above 5 millions of crowns. To the Jews (q.v., Vol. VI. p. 328) he extended full liberty to trade and celebrate their own worship throughout his dominions. The great aim of his foreign policy was to advance the cause of the Roman Catholic Church in every quarter of Christendom, against the Huguenots in France, against the Lutherans in Germany, and against Queen Elizabeth in England. At the same time he entertained a deep jealousy and apprehension of the designs of Spain. Amongst other reforms in church matters he fixed the number of the College of Cardinals at seventy, and reorganised the separate congregations of cardinals. Under his authority were published a new edition of the Septuagint and an edition of the Vulgate, the latter famous from the multiplicity of its errors, subsequently corrected in the edition of Clement VIII. Sixtus died on 27th August 1590, and was followed in the papal chair by Urban VII.
Many of the popular stories regarding him are derived from Gregorio Leti's Vita di Sisto V. (2 vols. Lausanne, 1669), a work of no authority. The best account is that of Ranke; and see also Tempesti, Storia della Vita e Gesti de Sisto V. (2 vols. Rome, 1754); Lorentz, Sixtus V. und seine Zeit (Mainz, 1852); and Baron Hübner, Sixtus V. (Paris, 1870; Eng. trans. 1872).