Giovanni Battista Rinuccini (1592–1653) was an Italian Roman Catholic archbishop in the mid-seventeenth century. He was a noted legal scholar and became chamberlain to Pope Gregory XV. In 1625 Pope Urban VIII made him the Archbishop of Fermo in Italy. In 1645 Pope Innocent X sent him to Ireland as Papal Nuncio. He brought money and weapons to help the Confederate Irish in its conflict against the English Parliamentarians. Rinuccini became the dominant figure of the hard-line Clerical Faction of the Confederates refusing the alliance with the Irish Royalists. Early life Rinuccini was born in Rome on 15 September 1592. He was the son of a Florentine patrician, his mother, Virginia di Pier Antonio Bandini was a sister of Cardinal Ottavio Bandini, who was bishop of Ostia and Velletri and dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals. Rinuccini was educated by the Jesuits in Rome and studied law at the Universities of Bologna and Perugia, in due course, he was ordained a priest, having at the age of twenty-two obtained his doctor's degree from the University of Pisa. He was accepted into the Accademia della Crusca, and Galileo Galilei proposed him for membership of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1616. Returning to serve his uncle at Rome, although a fever, perhaps malaria, permanently damaged his health, he won distinction as an advocate in the ecclesiastical courts, was named a camariere (chamberlain) by Pope Gregory XV and in 1625 became Archbishop of Fermo. In 1631 he carefully refused an offer to be made archbishop of Florence. Irish mission On 15 September 1644 a new pope Pope Innocent X was elected. He decided to step up the help for the Irish Catholic Confederates. He sent Rinuccini as nuncio to Ireland to replace the envoy Friar Pierfrancesco Scarampi who had been sent to Ireland by his predecessor, the pope Urban VIII, in 1643. Arrival Rinuccini departed France from Saint-Martin-de-Ré near La Rochelle on 18 October 1645 on the frigate San Pietro and arrived in Kenmare, County Kerry, on 21 or 22 October 1645 with a retinue of twenty-six Italians, several Irish officers, and the Confederation's secretary, Richard Bellings. He proceeded to Kilkenny, the Confederate capital, where Mountgarret, the president of the Confederation, received him at the castle. Rinuccini spoke Latin to him, whereas all the official business of the Confederates was done in English. He asserted in his discourse that the object of