Cardinal Mazarin

Giulio Mazzarino was born on 14 July 1602 in Pescina in the Abruzzo region of Italy, about 120 km from Rome. His parents were residents of Rome, spending the summer in Pescina to escape the summer heat. His father, Pietro Mazzarino (1576–1654), had moved to Rome from Sicily in 1590 to become a chamberlain in the family of Filippo I Colonna, the Grand Constable of Naples. His father became a citizen of Rome in 1608. His mother Ortensia Bufalini (1574–1646) was a native of Rome, from the Bufalini family of nobility whose origins were in Città di Castello in Umbria. The family had moved to Rome in the Middle Ages. She was the goddaughter of Filippo I Colonna, her husband's employer. Giulio was the eldest of six children, two boys and four girls.

According to unverifiable anecdotes, Giulio was admitted at the age of seven to the Jesuit Collegio Romano, which had acquired an international reputation for excellence. Professors included the German mathematician Christopher Clavius and the Italian theologian Robert Bellarmine. Mazarin excelled in his studies. In 1618, at the age of sixteen, he publicly defended his final thesis, about a comet that had appeared that year and which was prepared under the supervision of the astronomer Orazio Grassi, whose theories about comets contradicted those of Galileo. It is not clear what Mazarin thought of this dispute. He also excelled in theatrics; he was chosen to play the part of the newly sainted Ignatius of Loyola in a religious pageant. He also acquired the habit of gambling at cards, and was frequently in debt. A particular favourite game of his was a variant of Hoc named after him: Hoc Mazarin.

When he was twenty his father decided to send him away from the bad influences of Rome. Giulio accompanied Girolamo Colonna, one of the sons of Filippo I Colonna, who was eighteen, to the Complutense University of Madrid (then located in Alcalá de Henares) in Spain. He studied law with Girolamo during the daytime and in the evenings continued to gamble and again was in debt. A notary who had advanced some cash to cover gaming debts urged the charming and personable young Mazarino to take his daughter as bride, with a substantial dowry, and Giulio accepted. Girolamo Colonna wrote urgently to his father in Rome, and Giulio was ordered to return immediately to Rome, without his fiancée.

In 1645, Marie Louise Gonzaga, the aunt of Charles Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, had been granted in marriage to Władysław IV of Poland. She and her family did not have enough money to pay the agreed upon dowry of 2,100,000 livres. As a result, they went deeply in debt to Louis XIV, and their duchies of Mayenne, Nevers, and Rethel were mortgaged for this purpose. The negotiations, begun by Chancellor Séguier, were taken over by Mazarin, probably because Séguier was unable to put together enough money. Through various machinations, Mazarin and Colbert were eventually able to force Charles to pay off these debts by selling to Mazarin in 1654, the duchy of Mayenne (for 756,000 livres), and in 1659, that of Nevers (valued at 1,800,000 livres, at a discount of 1,534,675 livres), as well as the duchies of Donzy and Rethel. Thus, on 18 October 1660, less than five months before his death, Mazarin was confirmed by letters patent, issued by the young Louis XIV, as duke and peer of France.

The personal fortune of Mazarin at the time of his death was immense, amounting to 35 million livres, not counting the sums he left to his nieces. It exceeded the second-greatest personal fortune of the century, that of Richelieu, worth some 20 million livres. About one third of the personal fortune of Mazarin came from some twenty-one abbeys around France, each of which paid him an annual share of their revenue. Unlike members of the nobility, he did not have any large estates; his only real estate was the palace in Paris which he purchased in 1649, and added several surrounding houses. It was valued at 1.2 million livres. Thirty-seven percent of his fortune was in easily transportable jewels and cash. Within the ebony cabinets of his rooms at the Louvre his heirs found 450 pearls of high quality, plus quantities of gold chains and crosses, and rings with precious stones, altogether adding another 400,000 livres. He left to his family jewels worth an estimated 2.5 million livres, and gave a collection of diamonds worth 50,000 livres to the new Queen, and a 14-carat diamond called The Rose of England, valued at 73,000 livres, to the Queen Mother. The most valuable legacies of all, including a set of eighteen diamonds known as the "Mazarins", worth two million livres, were given to the young Louis XIV.