Giuliano della Rovere, who was Bishop of Carpentras, was twenty-eight years old, a libertine and man of the world. Pietro Riario was somewhat younger and Sixtus made him Bishop of Treviso and bestowed numerous other honours upon him. Pietro soon entirely dominated the Pope and from a poor friar became a man of vast wealth. He entered upon an unchecked career of vice, and in two years had squandered a fortune of two hundred thousand gold florins and become a physical wreck. He died in 1472, leaving vast debts which were never paid. Other kinsmen of Sixtus remained laymen but nevertheless were advanced to positions of honour through the influence of the Pope. On the death of Pietro Riario, Sixtus transferred his affections to his nephew Girolamo, probably also the pontiff’s son, who was called to Rome and given the title to Imola, which had been purchased from Taddeo Manfredi. The government of the States of the Church was entrusted to him, and Galeazzo Sforza conferred upon him the hand of his illegitimate daughter, Caterina, the heroic virago who defended Forli against her husband’s murderers and later against Caesar Borgia, and whom her countrymen styled _la prima donna d’Italia_. In return for the honour Sixtus made Galeazzo’s son, Ascanio, a cardinal. Soon after this the Pope succeeded in establishing a matrimonial alliance between his family and the princes of Urbino; for, in return for creating Federico di Montefeltre Duke of Urbino, the latter consented to the marriage of his daughter, Giovanna, to Giovanni della Rovere, another brother of Giuliano. Sixtus also conferred the purple on Cristoforo and Domenico della Rovere; upon his sister’s son, Geronimo Basso, and also on Raffaele Riario, a nephew of Pietro Riario. It was stated that the Pope in his eagerness to advance his innumerable kinsmen and connections frequently bestowed an office on one, forgetting he had already given it to another. It was even said that Cardinal Pietro Riario entered into an agreement with Galeazzo Maria Sforza, of Milan, by which the duke was to furnish him with money and troops to enable him to seize the papal throne, which Sixtus appears to have been ready to yield to him; the plan, however, which would have resulted in the secularisation of the Papal States, failed through the death of Pietro. The secularisation of the Papacy, nevertheless, was proceeding rapidly. The Curia was becoming more and more addicted to the vices of the age. German travellers who visited Rome in 1475, the year of the Jubilee--Paul II. having reduced the period intervening between jubilees to twenty-five years for the sake of the money they yielded--relate that they saw nothing but nepotism, simony, extortion, and crime. On every hand was extravagance, pomp, and vulgar love of display. The populace, as in the days of the Roman Empire, clamoured for spectacular exhibitions, and these the Popes lavishly furnished.