PAUL V. (Camillo Borghese), successor of Leo XI., was horn in Rome on Sept. 17, 1552, of a noble family. He studied in Perugia and Padua, became a canon lawyer and was vice-legate in Bologna. As a reward of a successful mission to Spain Clement VIII. made him cardinal (1596) and later vicar in Rome and inquisitor. Elevated to the papacy on May 16, 1605, his extreme conception of papal prerogative, his arrogance and obstinacy, his perverse insistence upon the theoretical and disregard of the actual, made strife inevitable. He provoked disputes with the Italian states over ecclesiastical rights. Savoy, Genoa, and Naples, wishing to avoid a rupture, yielded ; but Venice re sisted. (See SARPI, Now.) The pope talked of coercion by arms; but Spain, to whom he looked for support, refused to be drawn into war, and the quarrel was finally settled by the mediation of France (March 22, 1607). Paul became involved in a quarrel with England over the new oath of allegiance required after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot; and by his condemnation of Gallicanism (1613) he provoked the defiant declaration of the states general of 1614 that the king held his crown from God alone.
Paul encouraged missions, confirmed many new congregations and brotherhoods, authorized a new version of the Ritual and canonized Carlo Borromeo. His devotion to the interests of his family exceeded all bounds, and they became enormously wealthy. Paul began the famous Villa Borghese; enlarged the Quirinal and Vatican; completed the nave, façade and portico of St. Peter's; erected the Borghese Chapel in Sta. Maria Maggiore; and restored the aqueduct of Augustus and Trajan ("Acqua Paolina"). He also added to the Vatican library, and began a collection of antiquities. Paul died on Jan. 28, 1621, and was succeeded by Gregory XV.
See Bzovius (Bzowski), De vita Pauli V. (Rome, 5625; contained in Platina, De vitis pontiff. rom., ed. 1626), who depicts Paul as a paragon of all public and private virtues; Vitorelli, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum pontiff. rom. (a contemporary of the pope) ; Goujet, Hist. du pontifical de Paul V., (1765) ; and the biography in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopiidie.