PALUZZO CARDINAL PALUZZI ALTIERI DEGLI ALBERTONI (1623-1698). Paluzzo Paluzzi was a member of one of Rome's distinguished families. He obtained a doctorate in law at the University of Perugia. He joined the Apostolic Chamber under Urban VIII Barberini, and became Auditor General under Alexander VII Chigi. His family was joined with the Altieri when his nephew, Gaspare Albertoni, married the niece and sole heiress of the family of Emilio Cardinal Altieri. In 1664 he was named Cardinal Priest and received the titulus of SS. Apostoli (which he exchanged for S. Crisogono and then S. Maria in Trastevere). He was elected Bishop of Montefiascone and Corneto in 1666.

In 1670, his relative Emilio Cardinal Altieri, was elected Pope Clement X, and on the day of the election the new pope adopted Paluzzo Paluzzi and named him Cardinal Nephew. He received a number of important benefices as a result: Archbishop of Ravenna (1670-1674?), Legate in Avignon (1670), Legate in Urbino (1673-1677), Governor of Tivoli. He became Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church on August 4, 1671, a post which he held until his death on June 29, 1698. In 1691 he was promoted to Cardinal Bishop of Sabina, then Palestrina, and then to Porto and Santa Rufina in 1698. He was Archpriest of the Lateran from 1693-1698.

He participated in the Conclaves of 1667 and 1669-70 and presided at the Conclaves of 1676, 1689, and 1691.

The Conclave of 1689 was a notably difficult one. The dead pope, Innocent XI Odescalchi, had pursued a series of policies which conflicted with the ambitions of King Louis XIV of France in both international politics (where the Pope favored a rapprochement with the Emperor Leopold I and an alliance with King John Sobieski of Poland in the interest of a crusade against the Turks, who were at the gates of Vienna) and in internal affairs (where the king's hostility toward the Jansenists and absolutist royalist pretensions to regalian rights had led to the Four Gallican Articles of 1682). King Louis and his ministers were excommunicated in January, 1688. At the Pope's death, there were thirty-five vacant bishoprics in France.

Both the Empire and France sent Ambassadors Extraordinary to the Conclave, and, although the minds of the cardinal electors were already fixed on Pietro Ottoboni of Venice (subsequently Alexander VIII), it was not until both the candidate and his nephew gave undertakings that they would seek reconciliation with the French government that an election could proceed.