Alessandro Ottaviano de’ Medici had been denied a life in the priesthood by his mother, Francesca Salviati. She didn’t want him to follow a life in the Church; instead, she hoped that he would marry and produce children, continuing their branch of the Medici line. He enjoyed the rewards of living a life in civil society, including the many titles and positions of honor granted him by his mother’s influence, but he never gave up on his hope to enter the priesthood.
Upon his mother’s death in 1566, he returned to his religious studies and was ordained not long afterward.
In the early 1600s, having risen through the hierarchy of the Church over the years, through assignments as Archbishop of Florence and Prefect of the Congregation of Bishops, later as Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici, he fou
