Ippolito (I) d'Este (Hungarian: Estei Hippolit; 20 March 1479 – 3 September 1520) was an Italian cardinal, and Archbishop of Esztergom. He was a member of the ducal House of Este of Ferrara, and was usually referred to as the Cardinal of Ferrara. Though a bishop of five separate dioceses, he was never consecrated a bishop. He spent much of his time supporting the ducal house of Ferrara and negotiating on their behalf with the Pope.
Born in Ferrara, Ippolito was the son of Duke Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and Eleanor of Naples, daughter of Ferdinand I of Naples. His eldest brother, Alfonso became duke in 1505, and married Lucrezia Borgia. He had another brother, Ferdinando, a brother Sigismondo, and two sisters, Beatrice (who married Ludovico Sforza) and Isabella (who married Duke Francesco of Mantua). He also had a half-brother, Giulio, and a half-sister, Lucrezia.
From infancy Ippolito was destined for a career in the Church, and at the age of three he was named Abbot Commendatory of Casalnovo. In December 1485, at the age of six, he received his first tonsure, and was named Abbot Commendatory of S. Maria di Pomposa (Ferrara). Two years later, on 27 May 1487, thanks to his aunt Beatrice of Aragon, who had married King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, he was named archbishop of Esztergom in Hungary. The appointment by Pope Innocent VIII did not take effect, however, until he was eighteen. Ippolito nonetheless departed Ferrara for Hungary on 18 June 1487, accompanied by his cousin, Bishop Nicolò Maria d'Este of Adria; the departure was noted by Marino Sanuto in his Diarii, who traces his journey through Rovigo and Padua. Ippolito joined King Matthias and Queen Beatrice, his mother's sister, in Hungary.
For the next seven years, as Administrator of Esztergom, Ippolito studied at the Hungarian court, and at his own princely court in Esztergom, which was made up of some 245 persons. He had brought with him volumes of Virgil's Aeneid and Plautus' comedies, and an Italian preceptor, Sebastiano da Lugo. He enjoyed the Episcopal Palace in Esztergom, but also had houses in Buda, Pressburg, and Vienna; he had houses built for himself at Érsekújvár and Aranyosmarót. He brought a French tailor with him from Ferrara.
After Matthias' death (6 April 1490), the atmosphere surrounding the Prince-Archbishop changed. He was no longer the nephew of the King, but was more and more looked on as a foreigner who enjoyed the fruits of his Hungarian archbishopric. His aunt married her late husband's competitor and successor, Vladislaus Jagiellon, King of Bohemia, who brought different policies and different personnel into the kingdom. Three years later Ippolito returned to Italy to escape the plague that was striking Hungary; he arrived in Rome with a following of 250 people.
D'Este was created cardinal by Pope Alexander VI on 20 September 1493, and named Cardinal-Deacon of S. Lucia in Silice three days later, after which he resided in Rome. He was only fourteen years old.
He was appointed archbishop of Milan on 8 November 1497, though he could only serve as Administrator, since he had not been consecrated a bishop. He governed the archdiocese of Milan through a vicar. According to the tax reports of the Curia for the year 1500, he was the fifth richest member of the College of Cardinals, in terms of annual income. His influence grew further when his brother Alfonso married Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Alexander VI, who granted him the title of archipresbyter of St. Peter's on 11 August 1501. The bride and bridegroom were escorted from Ferrara to Rome by a large company, headed by Cardinal Ippolito, which left the city on 9 December, and arrived in Rome on 23 December. Cardinal Ippolito was granted a palazzo for his use next to the Vatican Basilica. On 20 July 1502 Pope Alexander appointed Cardinal Ippolito Archbishop of Capua, though, since he still had not been consecrated a bishop, he could only be Administrator, enjoying the income from the diocese and the patronage that went with being the Archbishop, but unable to carry out any episcopal functions. But since Capua had been besieged and sacked by a French army under Cesare Borgia in 1501, there cannot have been much of an immediate gain in income.
It was not a safe time to be a cardinal. In April 1502, King Louis XII sent a French army, under the command of Louis d'Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, to invade Apulia. In his service was Cesare Borgia, Duke of the Romagna and Lord of Piombino, the Pope's son, who had commanded French troops in 1501 at the siege of Naples and the siege of Capua. Many rulers in Italy preferred to deal with the French rather than the Spanish, who had been favored for a decade. On 21 June 1502 Pope Alexander took the extraordinary step of sending a cardinal and one of his secretaries to Savona to attempt to kidnap and bring to Rome Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, a consistent supporter of the French cause. The trick failed. On 12 July Cardinal Orsini sought an audience with Pope Alexander to get permission to go to Milan to negotiate with King Louis XII. When he was refused the audience, he left Rome anyway and headed for Milan. When he came back to Rome, Orsini was arrested and sent to the Castel S. Angelo, where he died on 22 February 1503. Cardinal d'Este remained in Rome, though his relations with Pope Alexander were said in the first week of November 1502 to have deteriorated due to Duke Ercole's failure to send aid to the Pope. It was reported to Venice on 24 November that the Cardinal's maestro di casa and three other persons had come from Rome in disguise; one was said to have been the Cardinal, because he was in disaccord with the Pope. On 15 February 1503, after he had participated in the day's papal Consistory, Ippolito was compelled to flee from the wrath of Cesare Borgia, with whose sister-in-law both Este and Borgia were engaged in illicit affairs. Fortunately, Alexander VI died on 18 August. Cardinal Ippolito was not able to return to Rome until 28 October, and then with a broken leg from a fall from his horse, because of which he had been absent from the Conclave of 16–22 September 1503.
While Cardinal Ippolito was recuperating, one of his old friends was engaged in an operation against his interests. Cardinal Tamás Bakócz, Archbishop of Esztergom and Chancellor of Hungary (on account of which he did not attend the conclaves), wrote a letter to the Signoria of Venice, which Marino Sanuto saw on 23 November 1503. In his letter, which was purely concerned with benefices, he wanted the Signoria to get Cardinal d'Este to resign the Bishopric of Eger. The Doge replied that they had already tried to do so, and that he did not want to acquiesce. Bakócz certainly had a point in canon law, in that Cardinal Ippolito had been bishop for nearly sixteen years and was not yet consecrated, and yet there seems to be a case of ingratitude, since Bakócz, who had been educated at Bologna and Ferrara, had once been Cardinal d'Este's private secretary.
After Alexander's death, on 8 October 1503 Pius III appointed Cardinal Ippolito bishop of Ferrara. When Pius III died on 18 October, d'Este was able to participate in the second Conclave of 1503, at which Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was elected Pope Julius II on 1 November. One of Cardinal Ippolito's conclavists was his half-brother Giulio d'Este. Julius' pro-French policies ought to have made life easier for Ferrara, but his determination to humble the power of Milan and Venice placed Ferrara in the exact center of what would become a major war. The Cardinal of Ferrara, therefore, endured a rough and dangerous relationship with Pope Julius.
After the Conclave and the Coronation (26 November), Cardinal Ippolito was reported to be ill and did not attend the papal ceremonies of taking possession of his cathedral church of Saint John Lateran on 5 December 1503. He returned to Ferrara on 10 December 1503, and he was still in Ferrara when he was present at his father's deathbed on 15 June 1505. In 1506 a plot was discovered in Ferrara against the new duke, Alfonso, and his brother Cardinal Ippolito. The leaders, their brother Ferrante and their half-brother Giulio, were tried in September and sentenced to death. The sentence, however, was commuted to life imprisonment. Ferrante died in prison thirty-four years later, and Giulio was finally released after fifty-three years.