Between the years of 1447 (Nicholas V) and 1572 (Pius V), the Vatican became the official home of the Church, and a succession of Renaissance Popes who were statesmen, warriors, and patrons of the arts as well as churchmen turned Rome into an unparalleled center for culture, and turned the Church into the world's largest bureaucracy. These mercurial popes, such as Alexander VI, the infamous Borgia patriarch, and Julius 'Il Terrible' II, contributed to cultural achievements the Basilica of St. Peters and Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel through the sale of indulgences, and targeted heretics with...