Sixtus's violent, if productive, five-year papacy exemplified a recurrent theme in Rome's history: the entwining of brutality with lavish creativity.
But when a German was named to succeed him, it seemed even to many Italians that their grip on the papacy had been broken.
The city did not gain lasting prominence, however, until it became an alternate site for the Roman Catholic papacy (the church government, headed by the Pope) in the fourteenth century.
