Innocent XII, original name Antonio Pignatelli 1615-1700
Italian pope

He was educated by Jesuits and was papal ambassador to Tuscany, Poland and Austria before becoming a cardinal in 1681. He became pope in 1691. He brought an end to the poor relations between Louis XIV of France and the papacy by persuading the latter to withdraw the Gallican Articles of 1682 and to relinquish the occupied papal enclave of Avignon. In return, Innocent championed the candidacy of Philippe of Anjou (Louis XIV's grandson, later Philip V of Spain) as the heir to the Spanish throne and acknowledged the French monarch's right to administer vacant sees. In theological matters, he condemned both Jansenism (1696) and Quietism (1699), while in ecclesiastical and domestic affairs he carried on the struggle against nepotism which he condemned in the Bull Romanum decet pontificem (1692).