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Urban VIII, originally Maffeo Barberini 1568-1644
Italian pope

Born in Florence, he was Papal Legate in France (1601), and became a cardinal (1606). Becoming pope in 1623, he supported Cardinal Richelieu's policy against the Habsburgs in the Thirty Years War, and carried out much ecclesiastical reform. A great scholar and supporter of the arts, he issued several condemnations of heresy, which included the writings of Galileo and Cornelius Otto Jansen.