“Truth is needed only by a handful of thinkers; the crowd must simply ‘believe’, and what it believes no longer much matters. The main thing is that people obey. What is served up to them in the process is secondary.

Truth is dangerous. The world has always been held together by lies… The main thing is that the lie be interesting enough to lead ‘unthinking’ minds along with it… And if you then start proving to the crowd the true nature of its ‘faith’ in goodness knows what, that same crowd will tear you to pieces.”

(Pope Paul IV (1555–1559)

Gian Pietro Carafa was born in 1476 in Naples, Italy, into a noble Neapolitan family, and owed his rise to the influence of his uncle, Cardinal Oliviero Carafa. After completing his theological education, Carafa entered the service of the papal court.

In 1536 Gian Pietro Carafa was appointed cardinal and Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Office. Carafa helped Pope Paul III establish the central inquisitorial tribunal of the Order of the Most Sweet Jesus. In 1542 he became the first true founder of the Roman Inquisition, uniting the medieval Dominican Inquisition with the Spanish state Inquisition and considerably expanding its remit.

Under Carafa, Jesuit schools flourished and later grew into universities. The papal Inquisition could try anyone, regardless of social origin or status, and could pass death sentences, which only the pope could pardon.

In 1555 Gian Pietro Carafa was elected Pope, taking the name Paul IV. His advisers were the Theatines (a religious order founded in 1524 by Saint Cajetan and, among others, Carafa himself; Carafa wrote the order’s constitutions and was chosen as its first superior general) and the Jesuits.

In Rome, Paul IV pursued strict reform, using terror and police surveillance. One hundred and thirteen bishops who had unlawfully abandoned their dioceses were driven out of the Eternal City, and hundreds of monks found wandering outside their monasteries were rounded up from the houses and alleys of Rome. Prostitutes and their pimps, comedians and jesters were also expelled. The Jewish population was confined to a ghetto. Paul IV did not spare even cardinals accused of immorality or of plotting.

In 1558 Paul IV instituted the feast of the Chair of Saint Peter, meant to recall the role and place of the papacy in the Catholic Church. In 1559, on his initiative, the first Index of Forbidden Books was published, listing works by theologians, scholars and novelists that the Church found objectionable. In the last months of his life he sentenced even his own nephews to exile (nepotism, from the Latin ‘nepotis’, meaning ‘grandson; nephew’ and also ‘favouritism’, is a form of favouritism that grants privileges to relatives or friends regardless of their professional qualities, as when hiring them).

Pope Paul IV died on 18 August 1559, aged eighty-three, as he was addressing those around him with a call to fight heresy. He is buried in the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.)