Antonio Pignatelli, born in Spinazzola (current Puglia)…

Antonio Pignatelli, born in Spinazzola (current Puglia) to one of the most aristocratic families of the Kingdom of Naples, which included many Viceroys, and ministers to the crown, was educated at the Jesuit college in Rome.

Becoming in his twentieth year an official of the court of Pope Urban VIII (1623–1644); under successive Popes he had served as nuncio at Florence and Vienna and in Poland and as inquisitor in Malta.

Pope Innocent XI (1676–1689), had created Pignatelli Cardinal-Priest of San Pancrazio in 1681 and archbishop of Naples.

Cardinal Pignatelli had emerged as a compromise candidate between the cardinals of France and the Holy Roman Empire after the conclave held in the wake of the death of Alexander VIII had gone on for five months.

As Innocent XII, immediately after his election on July 12, 1691,the new pope had declared against the nepotism which had too much and too long been one of the greatest scandals of the Papacy; the bull Romanum decet Pontificem, issued in 1692, had banned the curial office of the Cardinal Nephew and prohibited Popes at all times from bestowing estates, offices, or revenues on any relative; furthermore, only one relative, "if otherwise suitable", was to be raised to the cardinalate.

He has sought at the same time to check the simoniacal tendencies in the practices of the apostolic chamber, and in connection with this to introduce a simpler and more economical manner of life into his court.

Innocent XII has said that "the poor were his nephews", comparing his public beneficence to the nepotism of many predecessors.

He has introduced various reforms into the States of the Church, and for the better administration of justice had erected the Forum Innocentianum.

Innocent XII had in 1693 compelled the French bishops to retract the four propositions relating to the Gallican Liberties which had been formulated by the assembly of 1682.

He had in 1699 decided in favor of Jacques-Benigne Bossuet in that prelate's controversy with Fénelon about the Explication des Maximes des Saints sur la Vie Intérieure of the latter.

Innocent XII's pontificate contrasts with that of a series of predecessors in having marked leanings towards France instead of Germany.

A benevolent, self-abnegating and pious pontiff, Innocent XII is the last pope to have a beard in the modern period.

He dies on September 27, 1700 and is succeeded by Giovanni Francesco Albani as Pope Clement XI.

His tomb at St. Peter's Basilica is sculpted by Filippo della Valle.

Albani was born in Urbino, into a noble family that had established itself there from northern Albania in the fifteenth century and were originally soldiers of Skanderbeg against the Ottoman Empire.

Governor of Rieti and Urbino, he had been created Cardinal-Deacon of S. Maria in Aquiro by Pope Alexander VIII.