Born in Rome around the year 1225, Giovanni Gaetano Orsini was welcomed into a rather, um, powerful family. The House of Orsini had already produced Popes Stephen II, Paul I, and Celestine III -- all decent fellows, to be sure. His dad, however, was Matteo Rosso Orsini, the same Roman senator who imprisoned the cardinals in 1241 to extort a suitable pope from them. Solid guy. Giovanni ultimately served under eight popes, being first created a cardinal in 1244 by Pope Innocent IV. Even still, he remained a deacon until his 1277 election to the papacy.

After six months of deliberations, the eight cardinals of the Church chose Pope Nicholas III in late November 1277 and enthroned him the day after Christmas. Though only in office for about three years, Nicholas accomplished much. He was a shrewd politician, continuing John XXI’s important work of limiting Charles of Anjou’s power and strengthening the Church’s hold on her lands. He was forced to focus a lot on the Franciscan Order, dedicating 165 of his papal bulls and letters to fix the splintering and contention that had formed therein. He also restored the Lateran Palace, apparently sparing no expense, and also built a house in the country near Viterbo. He would die there suddenly on August 22, 1280 of an apparent heart attack, and was buried in St. Peter’s.

Pope Nicholas III was REAL bad when it came to nepotism. Despite his well-known strong character and intelligence, he had a weak spot for handing high church offices to relatives. He appointed his brother, Matteo, as senator of Rome, then made his nephew, Cardinal Malabranca, the Papal Vicar in Tuscany. Another brother, Giordano, was made a cardinal in 1278. After persuading Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg to abandon Romagna, Nicholas installed another nephew as rector there. Dante Alighieri didn’t take kindly to that trend when writing his Inferno (set in the year 1300) and depicted Nicholas in the Eighth Circle of Hell, headfirst in a hole and with his feet aflame. No need to tell the moral of that story.

Fun Fact: The Church was hurting for cardinals at Nicholas’ election in 1277, so the next year he handed out enough red hats to double the total. Of the nine new cardinals, three were the pope’s relatives, but five came from religious orders, including the Minister General of the Franciscans, Girolamo Masci.

Around the year 1280, the island of New Zealand was settled for the first time in recorded history, by the Maori nation from eastern Polynesia.