Son of Camillo Pamfili and Flaminia de Bubalis.
He studied law at the Collegio Romano, and graduated at age twenty.
Consistorial advocate and auditor of the Rota for PopeClement VIII.
Papal nuncio to Naples for PopeGregory XV.
Assistant to the cardinallegate to France and Spain under PopeUrban VIII.
Latin Patriarch of Antioch.
Papal nuncio at Madrid, Spain.
Cardinal-priest of Sant' Eusebio on 30 August1626.
Member of the congregations of the Council of Trent, the Inquisition, and Jurisdiction and Immunity.
Chosen pope as a comprimise candidate among the warring French and Spanish factions in the College of Cardinals.
He was immediately wrapped up in the politics of the day, a time when the politics were literally cut-throat.
He was often irresolute, suspicious of everyone, and dependent for advice on his brother's widow, Donna Olimpia Maidalchini.
Because some of the corrupt officials were known to slip outside the papal states with public money, he issued a bull ordering that cardinals who left without permission could not return for six months, and were put on a course to lose their cardinalate and all its perks.
The French objected so strongly that troops were sent to the Papal States.
On 26 November1648 he issued a bull which nullified the articles in the Peace of Westphalia that were against Catholicism.
On 31 May1653 he condemned five propositions from the "Augustinus" of Jansenius, which helped start the great Jansenist controversy in France.
![[Pope Innocent X]](pope0236.jpg "??kb jpg detail of 'Portrait of Innocent X' by Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez, c. 1650, oil on canvas, 141 x 119 cm, Galleria Doria-Pamphili, Rome; please do not write to ask about the image")
