Fabio Chigi, a member of the illustrious…

Fabio Chigi, a member of the illustrious Sienese banking family of Chigi and a great-nephew of Pope Paul V (1605–1621), had been privately tutored and eventually received doctorates of philosophy, law, and theology from the University of Siena.

He began his apprenticeship in 1627 as vice-papal legate at Ferrara, and on recommendations from two cardinals he had been appointed successively Inquisitor of Malta and nuncio in Cologne (1639–1651).

There, he supported Urban VIII's condemnation of Jansenius' Augustinus by the papal bull In eminenti of 1642.

Though expected to take part in the negotiations which led in 1648 to the Peace of Westphalia, he had declined to deliberate with persons whom the Catholic Church considered heretics, and had protested, when it was finally completed, against the Treaty of Westphalia that ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) and established the balance of European power that is to last until the wars of the French Revolution (1789).

Pope Innocent X had recalled Chigi to Rome and subsequently made him Cardinal Secretary of State and Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria del Popolo.

After Innocent dies in January, 1655, Chigi, the candidate favored by Spain, is elected pope after eighty days in the conclave, on April 7, 1655, taking the name of Alexander VII.