He had already shipped his worldly goods on board a trading vessel for a foreign trip, when news reached him that his uncle had been made Pope under the name of Eugenius IV.

His call to the ministry consisted of the calculation that he could make his fortune in the Church with a Pope for uncle sooner than on the high seas by his wits.
So he unloaded his bales, took to his book, became a priest, and at the age of forty-eight rose to the Papacy.

Being a handsome man, he was fain to take the ecclesiastical title of Formosus; but the Cardinals dissuaded him from this parade of vanity, and he assumed the tiara as Paul in 1464.

A vulgar love of show was his ruling characteristic.

He spent enormous sums in the collection of jewels, and his tiara alone was valued at 200,000 golden florins.