Ippolito d’Este

Born in Ferrara in 1479, the fourth son of Ercole I, he had an absolutely extraordinary ecclesiastical career. He was assigned an abbey at the age of only three, he was nominated to the Hungarian archbishopric of Esztergom at the age of eight, he was created cardinal at fourteen, and he became Archbishop of Milan at eighteen. As of 1490 he spent his life between Hungary and Italy, but as of 1496 he returned to Italy on a permanent basis, having been able to swap his bishopric for the one of Agria, which did not require him to be resident. In December 1497 he paid his first visit to Rome where he made show of the House of Este’s financial and political weight. The marriage of his brother Alfonso I to Lucrezia Borgia in 1501 allowed him to obtain the nomination of archpriest of Saint Peter’s. As of the summer of 1502 his relationship with Alexander VI deteriorated due Ercole d’Este’s pro-French policy. The new pope, Pius III Todeschini-Piccolomini, during his very brief papacy, made him Bishop of Ferrara, but with the arrival of another new pontiff, Julius II, relations once more became strained. In the period preceding the League of Cambrai, Ippolito gave considerable military support for the war against Venice: in 1509 he took back at the Polesella the Polesine of Rovigo that Ercole I had ceded to the Venetians in 1484, and in August he took part in the siege of Padua with the troops of Maximilian I. He was back in Hungary in 1513 but returned to Ferrara shortly after and tried to get back the lost territories from Pope Leo X. In 1517 Ippolito went back to Hungary one last time, probably for fear of loosing the Bishopric of Agria. He returned to Ferrara in 1520, where he died on 3 September. His mistress gave him two illegitimate children: Ludovico d’Este and Elisabetta d’Este. Ariosto intercepted Cardinal Ippolito’s biography from 1503, when he entered his service at court, till 1517, the year in which he refused to follow his master on his last trip to Hungary. Ippolito is the dedicatory of the Orlando furioso.