by Girolamo Rospigliosi, and that founded by Giambattista Bati, which resided in the Palazzo Rospigliosi at Ripa del Sale. During the whole 15th and 16th centuries, the Rospigliosi continued trading and owned a flourishing bank in Pistoia, with branches and correspondents all over Europe. However, until the first half of the 17th century the family still gained most of its income from wool production and trade, and agriculture. 17th century and later This family of merchants rose gradually to great fame after that Giulio, son of Gerolamo, was elevated to the dignity of the sacred purple in 1657 and became pope in 1667 under the name of Clement IX. In summer 1667, right after the pope's election, the branch of the family which originated from Milanese di Taddeo and which resided in the Palazzo in via del Duca, with the pope's brother Camillo and his sons, moved to Rome, a step that would soon open to them the gates of the Roman, Venetian, Genoese and Ferrarese high nobility. Two nephews of Clement IX were made Cardinals: Giacomo (d. 1684), was appointed Cardinal-nephew by his uncle in 1667, and became internuncio at Brussels, Legato at Avignon and Ferrara, and prefect of the Signatura di Grazia (a papal tribunal); Felice (d. 1688), was appointed Cardinal in 1673 by Pope Clement X. His brother Camillo was appointed general of the pope's army, while another of Camillo's sons, Tommaso, became castellan of Castel Sant'Angelo, and Vincenzo, another nephew of the pope, was appointed commander of the papal galleys. In 1668 he was sent by his uncle in aid of the Venetians in a desperate attempt to rescue the Venetian fortress of Candia during the war against the Ottoman Turks. One year later he was appointed commander in chief of all the allied forces (Venetian, French and papal) collected against the Turks, but at the end the fortress was lost to the Ottomans together with the whole island of Crete.Another nephew Teodoro Giulio Rospigliosi, Royal Ensign was sent in 1647 to Peru by Phillip IV, King of Spain, with offspring. The move that made of the Rospigliosi one of the first families of the Roman nobility, was the marriage of another pope's nephew, Giambattista (1646–1722), with Maria Camilla Pallavicini, the heir of a rich and noble Genoese family. Giambattista, nominated general of the Pope and created Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1658, bought