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Considering the French cardinals as a community requires a brief discussion of their status. As members of the Sacred College, they were sworn to obedience to the pope and, on account of the wording of the consistorial pronouncement at their proclamation - estote fratres mei et principes mundi - like the pope, they exerted both spiritual and temporal power.1 At the same time, as subjects of the king of France and members of the high nobility, cardinals were bound by oath of loyalty to the king, who made them members of the royal council and often appointed them to the country's highest political offices, such as chancellor, Surintendent des finances or Lieutenant general. As a result, French cardinals were at the intersection between two different groups, headed by the pope and by the king of France respectively. This double identity has important consequences when considering the position of French cardinals in Rome.2 As members of the Sacred College, they were part of the religious, cultural and political elite, and were active participants in the affairs of the papal court, while as emissaries of the French crown in Rome, they had to take care of their country's political interests and convey the image of magnificence and power of the king of France. Furthermore, although the cultivation of relations with the stable community of French residents in Rome was not a primary objective of their Roman diplomatic sojourns, the cardinals also had to consider this as they fashioned their image within the Eternal City.
In this article French cardinals will be shown as members of multiple communities within which they continually had to negotiate their identity. Such a strategy was pursued by a variety of means, including artistic patronage, the choice of the location of their residences and the promotion of ephemeral events. It will be shown that the presence of French cardinals in Rome from the last decades of the fifteenth century appears to have changed its forms and visible expression during the following century. A process can be detected that moved away from initial investments in large-scale French public projects, such as the 'national' churches of San Luigi and Trinità dei Monti, to more individualized commissions...