Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 6 and 7 (of 7)
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Title: Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 6 and 7 (of 7)
Author: John Addington Symonds
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RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
_THE CATHOLIC REACTION_
In Two Parts
BY
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
'Deh! per Dio, donna,
Se romper si potria quelle grandi ale?
* * * * *
Tu piangi e taci; e questo meglio parmi'
SAVONAROLA: _De Ruina Ecclesia_
PART I
NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1887 _AUTHOR'S EDITION_
PREFACE.
At the end of the second volume of my 'Renaissance in Italy' I indulged
the hope that I might live to describe the phase of culture which closed
that brilliant epoch. It was in truth demanded that a work pretending to
display the manifold activity of the Italian genius during the 15th
century and the first quarter of the 16th, should also deal with the
causes which interrupted its further development upon the same lines.
This study, forming a logically-necessitated supplement to the five
former volumes of 'Renaissance in Italy,' I have been permitted to
complete. The results are now offered to the public in these two parts.
So far as it was possible, I have conducted my treatment of the Catholic
Revival on a method analogous to that adopted for the Renaissance. I
found it, however, needful to enter more minutely into details regarding
facts and institutions connected with the main theme of national
culture.
The Catholic Revival was by its nature reactionary. In order to explain
its influences, I have been compelled to analyze the position of Spain
in the Italian peninsula, the conduct of the Tridentine Council, the
specific organization of the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus, and
the state of society upon which those forces were brought to bear.
In the list of books which follows these prefatory remarks, I have
indicated the most important of the sources used by me. Special
references will be made in their proper places to works of a subordinate
value for the purposes of my inquiry.
DAVOS PLATZ: _July_ 1886.
_WORKS COMMONLY REFERRED TO IN THE TWO SUCCEEDING VOLUMES OF THIS
BOOK_.
SISMONDI.--Histoire des Republiques Italiennes du Moyen Age.
RANKE.--History of the Popes. 3 vols. English edition: Bohn.
CREIGHTON.--History of the Papacy during the Reformation. 2
vols. Macmillan.
BOTTA.--Storia d'Italia. Continuata da quella del Guicciardini
sino al 1789.
FERRARI.--Rivoluzioni d'Italia. 3 vols.
QUINET.--Les Revolutions d'Italie.
GALLUZZI.--Storia del Granducato di Toscana.
PALLAVICINI.--Storia del Concilio Tridentino.
SARPI.--Storia del Concilio. Vols. 1 and 2 of Sarpi's Opere.
DENNISTOUN'S Dukes of Urbino. 3 vols.
ALBERI.--Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti.
MUTINELLI.--Storia Arcana ed Aneddotica d'Italia. Raccontata
dai Veneti Ambasciatori. 4 vols. Venice. 1858.
MUTINELLI.--Annali Urbani di Venezia.
LITTA.--Famiglie Celebri Italiane.
PHIUPPSON.--La Contre-Revolution Religieuse au XVIme Siecle
Bruxelles. 1884.
DEJOB.--De l'Influence du Concile de Trente. Paris. 1884.
GIORDANI.--Delia Venuta e Dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pontefice
Clemente VII. per la Coronazione di Carlo V., Imperatore. Bologna. 1832.
BALBI.--Sommario della Storia d'Italia.
CANTU.--Gli Eretici d'Italia. 3 vols. Torino. 1866.
LLORENTE.--Histoire Critique de I'Inquisition d'Espagne. 4 vols.
Paris. 1818.
LAVALLEE.--Histoire des Inquisitions Religieuses. 2 vols. Paris.
1808.
MCCRIE.--History of the Reformation in Italy. Edinburgh. 1827.
TIRABOSCHI.--Storia della Letteratura Italiana.
DE SANCTIS.--Storia della Letteratura Italiana. 2 vols.
SETTEMBRINI.--Storia della Letteratura Italiana. 3 vols.
CANTU.--Storia della Letteratura Italiana. Decreta, etc.,
Societatis Jesu. Avignon. 1827.
CANTU.--Storia della Diocesi di Como. 2 vols.
DANDOLO.--La Signora di Monza e le Streghe del Tirolo. Milano.
1855.
BONGHI.--Storia di Lucrezia Buonvisi. Lucca. 1864.
Archivio Storico Italiano.
BANDI LUCCHESI.--Bologna: Romagnoli. 1863.
BERTOLOTTI.--Francesco Cenci e la sua Famiglia. Firenze. 1877.
GNOLI.--Vittoria Accoramboni. Firenze: Le Monnier. 1870.
DAELLI.--Lorenzino de'Medici. Milano. 1862.
DE STENDHAL.--Chroniques et Nouvelles. Paris. 1855.
GIORDANO BRUNO.--Opere Italiane (Wagner). 2 vols. Leipzig. 1830.
JORDANUS BRUNUS.--Opera Latina. 2 vols. Neapoli. 1879.
BRUNO.--Scripta Latina (Gfoerer). Stuttgart. 1836.
BERTI.--Vita di Giordano Bruno. Firenze, Torino, Milano. 1868.
BRUNNHOFER.--Giordano Bruno's Weltanschauung und Verhangniss.
Leipzig. 1882.
PAOLO SARPI.--Opere. 6 vols. Helmstat. 1765.
FRA FULGENZIO MICANZI--Vita del Sarpi.
BIANCHI GIOVINI.--Biografia di Fra Paolo Sarpi. 2 vols. Bruxelles. 1836.
Lettere di Fra Paolo Sarpi. 2 vols. Firenze. 1863.
CAMPBELL.--Life of Fra Paolo Sarpi. London: Molini and Green. 1869
DEJOB.--Marc-Antoine Muret. Paris: Thorin. 1881.
CHRISTIE.--Etienne Dolet. London: Macmillan. 1880.
RENOUARD.--Imprimerie des Aides.
TORQUATO TASSO.--Opere. Ed. Rosini. 33 vols. Pisa. 1822
and on.
_WORKS REFERRED TO IN THIS BOOK_.
TASSO.--Le Lettere. Ed. Guasti. 5 vols. Firenze. 1855.
CECCHI.--T. Tasso e la Vita Italiana. Firenze. 1877.
CECCHI.--T. Tasso. Il Pensiero e le Belle Lettere, etc. Firenze. 1877.
D'OVIDIO.--Saggi Critici. Napoli. 1878.
MANSO.--Vita di T. Tasso, in Rosini's edition, vol. 33.
ROSINI.--Saggio sugli Amori di T. Tasso, in edition cited
above, vol. 33.
GUARINI.--Il Pastor Fido. Ed. Casella. Firenze: Barbera. 1866.
MARINO.--Adone, etc. Napoli. 1861.
CHIABRERA.--Ed. Polidori. Firenze: Barbera. 1865.
TASSONI.--La Secchia Rapita. Ed. Carducci. Firenze: Barbera 1861.
Il Parnaso Italiano.
BAINI.--Vita di G. P. L. Palestrina.
FELSINA PITTRICE.--2 vols. Bologna. 1841.
LANZI.--History of Painting in Italy. English Edition.
London. Bohn. Vol. 3.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
CHAPTER I.
THE SPANISH HEGEMONY.
Italy in the Renaissance--The Five Great Powers--The Kingdom of
Naples--The Papacy--The Duchy of Milan--Venice--The Florentine
Republic--Wars of Invasion closed by the Sack of Rome in
1527--Concordat between Clement VII. and Charles V.--Treaty of
Barcelona and Paix des Dames--Charles lands at Genoa--His Journey
to Bologna--Entrance into Bologna and Reception by
Clement--Mustering of Italian Princes--Franceso Sforza replaced in
the Duchy of Milan--Venetian Embassy--Italian League signed on
Christmas Eve 1529--Florence alone excluded--The Siege of Florence
pressed by the Prince of Orange--Charles's Coronation as King of
Italy and Holy Roman Emperor--The Significance of this Ceremony at
Bologna--Ceremony in S. Petronio--Settlement of the Duchy of
Ferrara--Men of Letters and Arts at Bologna--The Emperor's Use of
the Spanish Habit--Charles and Clement leave Bologna in March
1530--Review of the Settlement of Italy affected by Emperor and
Pope--Extinction of Republics--Subsequent Absorption of Ferrara and
Urbino into the Papal States--Savoy becomes an Italian
Power--Period between Charles's Coronation and the Peace of Cateau
Cambresis in 1559--Economical and Social Condition of the Italians
under Spanish Hegemony--The Nation still exists in Separate
Communities--Intellectual Conditions--Predominance of Spain and
Rome--Both Cosmopolitan Powers--Leveling down of the Component
Portions of the Nation in a Common Servitude--The Evils of Spanish
Rule
CHAPTER II.
THE PAPACY AND THE TRIDENTINE COUNCIL.
The Counter-Reformation--Its Intellectual and Moral
Character--Causes of the Gradual Extinction of Renaissance
Energy--Transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic
Revival--New Religious Spirit in Italy--Attitude of Italians toward
German Reformation--Oratory of Divine Love--Gasparo Contarini and
the Moderate Reformers--New Religious Orders--Paul III.--His early
History and Education--Political Attitude between France and
Spain--Creation of the Duchy of Parma--Imminence of a General
Council--Review of previous Councils--Paul's Uneasiness--Opens a
Council at Trent in 1542--Protestants virtually excluded, and
Catholic Dogmas confirmed in the first Sessions--Death of Paul in
1549--Julius III.--Paul IV.--Character and Ruling Passions of G. P.
Caraffa--His Futile Opposition to Spain--Tyranny of His
Nephews--Their Downfall--Paul devotes himself to Church Reform and
the Inquisition--Pius IV.--His Minister Morone--Diplomatic Temper
of this Pope--His Management of the Council--Assistance rendered by
his Nephew Carlo Borromeo--Alarming State of Northern Europe--The
Council reopened at Trent in 1562--Subsequent History of the
Council--It closes with a complete Papal Triumph in 1563--Place of
Pius IV. in History--Pius V.--The Inquisitor Pope--Population of
Rome--Social Corruption--Sale of Offices and Justice--Tridentine
Reforms depress Wealth--Ascetic Purity of Manners becomes
fashionable--Catholic Reaction generates the
Counter-Reformation--Battle of Lepanto--Gregory XIII.--His
Relatives--Policy of enriching the Church at Expense of the
Barons--Brigandage in States of the Church--Sixtus V.--His Stern
Justice--Rigid Economy--Great Public Works--Taxation--The City of
Rome assumes its present form--Nepotism in the Counter-Reformation
Period--Various Estimates of the Wealth accumulated by Papal
Nephews--Rise of Princely Roman Families
CHAPTER III.
THE INQUISITION AND THE INDEX.
Different Spirit in the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus--Both
needed by the Counter-Reformation--Heresy in the Early
Church--First Origins of the Inquisition in 1203--S. Dominic--The
Holy Office becomes a Dominican Institution--Recognized by the
Empire--Its early Organization--The Spanish Inquisition--Founded in
1484--How it differed from the earlier Apostolical
Inquisition--Jews, Moors, New Christians--Organization and History
of the Holy Office in Spain--Torquemada and his Successors--The
Spanish Inquisition never introduced into Italy--How the Roman
Inquisition organized by Caraffa differed from it--_Autos da fe_ in
Rome--Proscription of suspected Lutherans--The Calabrian
Waldenses--Protestants at Locarno and Venice--Digression on the
Venetian Holy Office--Persecution of Free Thought in
Literature--Growth of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum--Sanction
given to it by the Council of Trent--The Roman Congregation of the
Index--Final Form of the Censorship of Books under Clement
VIII.--Analysis of its Regulations--Proscription of Heretical
Books--Correction of Texts--Purgation and Castration--Inquisitorial
and Episcopal Licenses--Working of the System of this Censorship in
Italy--Its long Delays--Hostility to Sound Learning--Ignorance of
the Censors--Interference with Scholars in their Work--Terrorism of
Booksellers--Vatican Scheme for the Restoration of Christian
Erudition--Frustrated by the Tyranny of the Index--Dishonesty of
the Vatican Scholars--Biblical Studies rendered nugatory by the
Tridentine Decree on the Vulgate--Decline of Learning in
Universities--Miserable Servitude of Professors--Greek dies
out--Muretus and Manutius in Rome--The Index and its Treatment of
Political Works--Machiavelli--_Ratio Status_--Encouragement of
Literature on Papal Absolutism--Sarpi's Attitude--Comparative
Indifference of Rome to Books of Obscene or Immoral
Tendency--Bandello and Boccaccio--Papal Attempts to control
Intercourse of Italians with Heretics
CHAPTER IV.
THE COMPANY OF JESUS.
Vast Importance of the Jesuits in the Counter-Reformation--Ignatius
Loyola--His Youth--Retreat at Manresa--Journey to
Jerusalem--Studies in Spain and Paris--First Formation of his Order
at Sainte Barbe--Sojourn at Venice--Settlement at Rome--Papal
Recognition of the Order--Its Military Character--Absolutism of the
General--Devotion to the Roman Church--Choice of Members--Practical
and Positive Aims of the Founder--Exclusion of the Ascetic,
Acceptance of the Worldly Spirit--Review of the Order's Rapid
Extension over Europe--Loyola's Dealings with his Chief
Lieutenants--Propaganda--The Virtue of Obedience--The _Exercitia
Spiritualia_--Materialistic Imagination--Intensity and
Superficiality of Religious Training--The Status of the
Novice--Temporal Coadjutors--Scholastics--Professed of the Three
Vows--Professed of the Four Vows--The General--Control exercised
over him by his Assistants--His Relation to the General
Congregation--Espionage a Part of the Jesuit System--Advantageous
Position of a Contented Jesuit--The Vow of Poverty--Houses of the
Professed and Colleges--The Constitutions and Declarations--Problem
of the _Monita Secreta_--Reciprocal Relations of Rome and the
Company--Characteristics of Jesuit Education--Direction of
Consciences--Moral Laxity--Sarpi's
Critique--Casuistry--Interference in Affairs of State--Instigation
to Regicide and Political Conspiracy--Theories of Church
Supremacy--Insurgence of the European Nations against the Company
CHAPTER V.
SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC MORALS I PART I.
How did the Catholic Revival affect Italian Society?--Difficulty of
Answering this Question--Frequency of Private Crimes of
Violence--Homicides and Bandits--Savage Criminal Justice--Paid
Assassins--Toleration of Outlaws--Honorable Murder--Example of the
Lucchese Army--State of the Convents--The History of Virginia de
Leyva--Lucrezia Buonvisi--The True Tale of the Cenci--The Brothers
of the House of Massimo--Vittoria Accoramboni--The Duchess of
Palliano--Wife-Murders--The Family of Medici
CHAPTER VI.
SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC MORALS: PART II.
Tales illustrative of Bravi and Banditti--Cecco Bibboni--Ambrogio
Tremazzi--Lodovico dall'Armi--Brigandage--Piracy--Plagues--The
Plagues of Milan, Venice, Piedmont--Persecution of the
Untori--Moral State of the Proletariate--Witchcraft--Its Italian
Features--History of Giacomo Centini
RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.
CHAPTER I.
THE SPANISH HEGEMONY.
Italy in the Renaissance--The Five Great Powers--The Kingdom of
Naples--The Papacy--The Duchy of Milan--Venice--The Florentine
Republic--Wars of Invasion closed by the Sack of Rome in
1527--Concordat between Clement VII. and Charles V.--Treaty of
Barcelona and Paix des Dames--Charles lands at Genoa--His Journey
to Bologna--Entrance into Bologna and Reception by
Clement--Mustering of Italian Princes--Francesco Sforza replaced in
the Duchy of Milan--Venetian Embassy--Italian League signed on
Christmas Eve, 1529--Florence alone excluded--The Siege of Florence
pressed by the Prince of Orange--Charles's Coronation as King of
Italy and Holy Roman Emperor--The Significance of this Ceremony at
Bologna--Ceremony in S. Petronio--Settlement of the Duchy of
Ferrara--Men of Letters and Arts at Bologna--The Emperor's Use of
the Spanish Habit--Charles and Clement leave Bologna in March,
1530--Review of the Settlement of Italy effected by Emperor and
Pope--Extinction of Republics--Subsequent Absorption of Ferrara and
Urbino into the Papal States--Savoy becomes an Italian
Power--Period between Charles's Coronation and the Peace of Cateau
Cambresis in 1559--Economical and Social Condition of the Italians
under Spanish Hegemony--The Nation still Exists in Separate
Communities--Intellectual Conditions--Predominance of Spain and
Rome--Both Cosmopolitan Powers--Leveling down of the Component
Portions of the Nation in a Common Servitude--The Evils of Spanish
Rule.
In the first volume of my book on _Renaissance in Italy_ I attempted to
set forth the political and social phases through which the Italians
passed before their principal States fell into the hands of despots, and
to explain the conditions of mutual jealousy and military feebleness
which exposed those States to the assaults of foreign armies at the
close of the fifteenth century.
In the year 1494, when Charles VIII. of France, at Lodovico Sforza's
invitation, crossed the Alps to make good his claim on Naples, the
peninsula was Independent. Internal peace had prevailed for a period of
nearly fifty years. An equilibrium had been established between the five
great native Powers, which secured the advantages of confederation and
diplomatic interaction.
While using the word confederation, I do not, of course, imply that
anything similar to the federal union of Switzerland or of North America
existed in Italy. The contrary is proved by patent facts. On a miniature
scale, Italy then displayed political conditions analogous to those
which now prevail in Europe. The parcels of the nation adopted different
forms of self-government, sought divers foreign alliances, and owed no
allegiance to any central legislative or administrative body. I
therefore speak of the Italian confederation only in the same sense as
Europe may now be called a confederation of kindred races.
In the year 1630, when Charles V. (of Austria and Spain) was crowned
Emperor at Bologna, this national independence had been irretrievably
lost by the Italians. This confederation of evenly-balanced Powers was
now exchanged for servitude beneath a foreign monarchy, and for
subjection to a cosmopolitan elective priesthood.
The history of social, intellectual, and moral conditions in Italy
during the seventy years of the sixteenth century which followed
Charles's coronation at Bologna, forms the subject of this work; but
before entering upon these topics it will be well to devote one chapter
to considering with due brevity the partition of Italy into five States
in 1494, the dislocation of this order by the wars between Spain and
France for supremacy, the position in which the same States found
themselves respectively at the termination of those wars in 1527, and
the new settlement of the peninsula effected by Charles V. in 1529-30.
The five members of the Italian federation in 1494 were the kingdom of
Naples, the Papacy, the Duchy of Milan, and the Republics of Venice and
Florence. Round them, in various relations of amity or hostility, were
grouped these minor Powers: the Republics of Genoa, Lucca, Siena; the
Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio; the Marquisates of Mantua
and Montferrat; and the Duchy of Urbino. For our immediate purpose it is
not worth taking separate account of the Republic of Pisa, which was
practically though not thoroughly enslaved by Florence; or of the
despots in the cities of Romagna, the March. Umbria, and the Patrimony
of S. Peter, who were being gradually absorbed into the Papal
sovereignty. Nor need we at present notice Savoy, Piemonte, and Saluzzo.
Although these north-western provinces were all-important through the
period of Franco-Spanish wars, inasmuch as they opened the gate of Italy
to French armies, and supplied those armies with a base for military
operations, the Duchy of Savoy had not yet become an exclusively Italian
Power.
The kingdom of Naples, on the death of Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1458,
had been separated from Sicily, and passed by testamentary appointment
to his natural son Ferdinand. The bastard Aragonese dynasty was Italian
in its tastes and interests, though unpopular both with the barons of
the realm and with the people, who in their restlessness were ready to
welcome any foreign deliverer from its oppressive yoke. This state of
general discontent rendered the revival of the old Angevine party, and
their resort to French aid, a source of peril to the monarchy. It also
served as a convenient fulcrum for the ambitious schemes of conquest
which the princes of the House of Aragon in Spain began to entertain. In
territorial extent the kingdom of Naples was the most considerable
parcel of the Italian community. It embraced the whole of Calabria,
Apulia, the Abruzzi, and the Terra di Lavoro; marching on its northern
boundary with the Papal States, and having no other neighbors. But
though so large and so compact a State, the semifeudal system of
government which had obtained in Naples since the first conquest of the
country by the Normans, the nature of its population, and the savage
dynastic wars to which it had been constantly exposed, rendered it more
backward in civilization than the northern and central provinces.
The Papacy, after the ending of the schism and the settlement of
Nicholas V. at Rome in 1447, gradually tended to become an Italian
sovereignty. During the residence of the Popes at Avignon, and the
weakness of the Papal See which followed in the period of the Councils
(Pisa, Constance, and Basel), it had lost its hold not only on the
immediate neighborhood of Rome, but also on its outlying possessions in
Umbria, the Marches of Ancona, and the Exarchate of Ravenna. The great
Houses of Colonna and Orsini asserted independence in their
principalities. Bologna and Perugia pretended to republican government
under the shadow of noble families; Bentivogli, Bracci, Baglioni. Imola,
Faenza, Forli, Rimini, Pesaro, Urbino, Camerino, Citta di Castello,
obeyed the rule of tyrants, who were practically lords of these cities
though they bore the titles of Papal vicars, and who maintained
themselves in wealth and power by exercising the profession of
_condottieri_. It was the chief object of the Popes, after they were
freed from the pressing perils of General Councils, and were once more
settled in their capital and recognized as sovereigns by the European
Powers, to subdue their vassals and consolidate their provinces into a
homogeneous kingdom. This plan was conceived and carried out by a
succession of vigorous and unscrupulous Pontiffs--Sixtus IV., Alexander
VI., Julius II., and Leo X.--throughout the period of distracting
foreign wars which agitated Italy. They followed for the most part one
line of policy, which was to place the wealth and authority of the Holy
See at the disposal of their relatives, Riarios, Delia Roveres, Borgias,
and Medici. Their military delegates, among whom the most efficient
captain was the terrible Cesare Borgia, had full power to crush the
liberties of cities, exterminate the dynasties of despots, and reduce
refractory districts to the Papal sway. For these services they were
rewarded with ducal and princely titles, with the administration of
their conquests, and with the investiture of fiefs as vassals of the
Church. The system had its obvious disadvantages. It tended to indecent
nepotism; and as Pope succeeded Pope at intervals of a few years, each
bent on aggrandizing his own family at the expense of those of his
predecessors and the Church, the ecclesiastical States were kept in a
continual ferment of expropriation and internal revolution. Yet it is
difficult to conceive how a spiritual Power like the Papacy could have
solved the problem set before it of becoming a substantial secular
sovereignty, without recourse to this ruinous method. The Pope, a
lonely man upon an ill-established throne, surrounded by rivals whom
his elevation had disappointed, was compelled to rely on the strong arm
of adventurers with whose interests his own were indissolubly connected.
The profits of all these schemes of egotistical rapacity eventually
accrued, not to the relatives of the Pontiffs; none of whom, except the
Delia Roveres in Urbino, founded a permanent dynasty at this period; but
to the Holy See. Julius II., for example, on his election in 1503,
entered into possession of all that Cesare Borgia had attempted to grasp
for his own use. He found the Orsini and Colonna humbled, Romagna
reduced to submission; and he carried on the policy of conquest by
trampling out the liberties of Bologna and Perugia, recovering the
cities held by Venice on the coast of Ravenna, and extending his sway
over Emilia. The martial energy of Julius added Parma and Piacenza to
the States of the Church, and detached Modena and Reggio from the Duchy
of Ferrara. These new cities were gained by force; but Julius pretended
that they formed part of the Exarchate of Ravenna, which had been
granted to his predecessors by Pepin and Charles the Great. He pursued
the Papal line of conquest in a nobler spirit than his predecessors, not
seeking to advance his relatives so much as to reinstate the Church in
her dominions. But he was reckless in the means employed to secure this
object. Italy was devastated by wars stirred up, and by foreign armies
introduced, in order that the Pope might win a point in the great game
of ecclesiastical aggrandizement. That his successor, Leo X., reverted
to the former plan of carving principalities for his relatives out of
the possessions of their neighbors and the Church, may be counted among
the most important causes of the final ruin of Italian independence.
Of the Duchy of Milan it is not necessary to speak at any great length,
although the wars between France and Spain were chiefly carried on for
its possession. It had been formed into a compact domain, of
comparatively small extent, but of vast commercial and agricultural
resources, by the two dynasties of Visconti and Sforza. In 1494 Lodovico
Sforza, surnamed Il Moro, ruled Milan for his nephew, the titular Duke,
whom he kept in gilded captivity, and whom he eventually murdered. In
order to secure his usurped authority, this would-be Machiavelli thought
it prudent to invite Charles VIII. into Italy. Charles was to assert his
right to the throne of Naples. Lodovico was to be established in the
Duchy of Milan. All his subsequent troubles arose from this transaction.
Charles came, conquered, and returned to France, disturbing the
political equilibrium of the Italian States, and founding a disastrous
precedent for future foreign interference. His successor in the French
kingdom, Louis XII., believed he had a title to the Duchy of Milan
through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.
The claim was not a legal one; for in the investiture of the Duchy
females were excluded. It sufficed, however, to inflame the cupidity of
Louis; and while he was still but Duke of Orleans, with no sure prospect
of inheriting the crown of France, he seems to have indulged the fancy
of annexing Milan. No sooner had he ascended the French throne than he
began to act upon this ambition. He descended into Lombardy, overran the
Milanese, sent Lodovico Sforza to die in a French prison, and initiated
the duel between Spain and France for mastery, which ended with the
capture of Francis I. at Pavia, and his final cession of all rights over
Italy to Charles V. by the Treaty of Cambray.
Of all the republics which had conferred luster upon Italy in its
mediaeval period of prosperity Venice alone remained independent. She
never submitted to a tyrant; and her government, though growing yearly
more closely oligarchical, was acknowledged to be just and liberal.
During the centuries of her greatest power Venice hardly ranked among
Italian States. It had been her policy to confine herself to the lagoons
and to the extension of her dominion over the Levant. In the fifteenth
century, however, this policy was abandoned. Venice first possessed
herself of Padua, by exterminating the despotic House of Carrara; next
of Verona, by destroying the Scala dynasty. Subsequently, during the
long dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-1457), she devoted herself in
good earnest to the acquisition of territory upon the mainland. Then
she entered as a Power of the first magnitude into the system of purely
Italian politics. The Republic of S. Mark owned the sea coast of the
Adriatic from Aquileia to the mouths of the Po; and her Lombard
dependencies stretched as far as Bergamo westward. Her Italian neighbors
were, therefore, the Duchy of Milan, the little Marquisate of Mantua,
and the Duchy of Ferrara. When Constantinople fell in 1453, Venice was
still more tempted to pursue this new policy of Italian aggrandizement.
Meanwhile her growing empire seemed to menace the independence of less
wealthy neighbors. The jealousy thus created and the cupidity which
brought her into collision with Julius II. in 1508, exposed Venice to
the crushing blow inflicted on her power by the combined forces of
Europe in the war of the League of Cambray. From this blow, as well as
from the simultaneous decline of their Oriental and Levantine commerce,
the Venetians never recovered.
When we turn to the Florentines, we find that at the same epoch, 1494,
their ancient republican constitution had been fatally undermined by the
advances of the family of Medici towards despotism. Lorenzo de'Medici,
who enjoyed the credit of maintaining the equilibrium of Italy by wise
diplomacy, had lately died. He left his son Piero, a hot-headed and rash
young man, to control the affairs of the commonwealth, as he had
previously controlled them, with a show of burgherlike equality, but
with the reality of princely power. Another of his sons, Giovanni,
received the honor of the Cardinalship. The one was destined to
compromise the ascendency of his family in Florence for a period of
eighteen years, the other was destined to re-establish that ascendency
on a new and more despotic basis. Piero had not his father's prudence,
and could not maintain himself in the delicate position of a commercial
and civil tyrant. During the disturbances caused by the invasion of
Charles VIII. he was driven with all his relatives into exile. The
Medici were restored in 1512, after the battle of Ravenna, by Spanish
troops, at the petition of the Cardinal Giovanni. The elevation of this
man to the Papacy in 1513 enabled him to plant two of his nephews, as
rulers, in Florence, and to pave the way whereby a third eventually rose
to the dignity of the tiara. Clement VII. finally succeeded in rendering
Florence subject to the Medici, by extinguishing the last sparks of
republican opposition, and by so modifying the dynastic protectorate of
his family that it was easily converted into a titular Grand Duchy.
The federation of these five Powers had been artificially maintained
during the half century of Italy's highest intellectual activity. That
was the epoch when the Italians nearly attained to coherence as a
nation, through common interests in art and humanism, and by the
complicated machinery of diplomatic relations. The federation perished
when foreign Powers chose Lombardy and Naples for their fields of
battle. The disasters of the next thirty-three years (1494-1527) began
in earnest on the day when Louis XII. claimed Milan and the Regno. He
committed his first mistake by inviting Ferdinand the Catholic to share
in the partition of Naples. That province was easily conquered; but
Ferdinand retained the whole spoils for himself, securing a large
Italian dependency and a magnificent basis of operations for the Spanish
Crown. Then Louis made a second mistake by proposing to the visionary
Emperor Maximilian that he should aid France in subjugating Venice. We
have few instances on record of short-sighted diplomacy to match the
Treaties of Granada and Blois (1501 and 1504), through which this
monarch, acting rather as a Duke of Milan than a King of France,
complicated his Italian schemes by the introduction of two such
dangerous allies as the Austrian Emperor and the Spanish sovereign,
while the heir of both was in his cradle--that fatal child of fortune
Charles.
The stage of Italy was now prepared for a conflict which in no wise
interested her prosperous cities and industrious population. Spain,
France, Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon
various pretexts to partake of the rich prey she offered. Patriots like
Machiavelli perceived too late the suicidal self-indulgence which, by
substituting mercenary troops for national militia, and by accustoming
selfish tyrants to rely on foreign aid, had exposed the Italians
defenceless to the inroads of their warlike neighbors. Whatever parts
the Powers of Italy might play, the game was really in the hands of
French, Spanish, and German invaders. Meanwhile the mutual jealousies
and hatreds of those Powers, kept in check by no tie stronger than
diplomacy, prevented them from forming any scheme of common action. One
great province (Naples) had fallen into Spanish hands; another (Milan)
lay open through the passes of the Alps to France. The Papacy, in the
center, manipulated these two hostile foreign forces with some advantage
to itself, but with ever-deepening disaster for the race. As in the days
of Guelf and Ghibelline, so now again the nation was bisected. The
contest between French and Spanish factions became cruel. Personal
interests were substituted for principles; cross-combinations perplexed
the real issues of dispute; while one sole fact emerged into
distinctness--that, whatever happened, Italy must be the spoil of the
victorious duelist.
The practical termination of this state of things arrived in the battle
of Pavia, when Francis was removed as a prisoner to Madrid, and in the
sack of Rome, when the Pope was imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo.
It was then found that the laurels and the profit of the bloody contest
remained with the King of Spain. What the people suffered from the
marching and countermarching of armies, from the military occupations of
towns, from the desolation of rural districts, from ruinous campaigns
and sanguinary battles, from the pillage of cities and the massacres of
their inhabitants, can best be read in Burigozzo's _Chronicle of Milan_,
in the details of the siege of Brescia and the destruction of Pavia, in
the _Chronicle of Prato_, and in the several annals of the sack of Rome.
The exhaustion of the country seemed complete; the spirit of the people
was broken. But what soon afterwards became apparent, and what in 1527
might have been thought incredible, was that the single member of the
Italian union which profited by these apocalyptic sufferings of the
nation, was the Papacy. Clement VII., imprisoned in the Castle of S.
Angelo, forced day and night to gaze upon his capital in flames and hear
the groans of tortured Romans, emerged the only vigorous survivor of the
five great Powers on whose concert Italian independence had been
founded. Instead of being impaired, the position of the Papacy had been
immeasurably improved. Owing to the prostration of Italy, there was now
no resistance to the Pope's secular supremacy within the limits of his
authorized dominion. The defeat of France and the accession of a Spanish
monarch to the Empire guaranteed peace. No foreign force could levy
armies or foment uprisings in the name of independence. Venice had been
stunned and mutilated by the League of Cambray. Florence had been
enslaved after the battle of Ravenna. Milan had been relinquished,
out-worn, and depopulated, to the nominal ascendency of an impotent
Sforza. Naples was a province of the Spanish monarchy. The feudal
vassals and the subject cities of the Holy See had been ground and
churned together by a series of revolutions unexampled even in the
mediaeval history of the Italian communes. If, therefore, the Pope could
come to terms with the King of Spain for the partition of supreme
authority in the peninsula, they might henceforward share the mangled
remains of the Italian prey at peace together. This is precisely what
they resolved on doing. The basis of their agreement was laid in the
Treaty of Barcelona in 1529. It was ratified and secured by the Treaty
of Cambray in the same year. By the former of these compacts Charles and
Clement swore friendship. Clement promised the Imperial crown and the
investiture of Naples to the King of Spain. Charles agreed to reinstate
the Pope in Emilia, which had been seized from Ferrara by Julius II.; to
procure the restoration of Ravenna and Cervia by the Venetians; to
subdue Florence to the House of Medici; and to bestow the hand of his
natural daughter Margaret of Austria on Clement's bastard nephew
Alessandro, who was already designated ruler of the city. By the Treaty
of Cambray Francis I. relinquished his claims on Italy and abandoned his
Italian supporters without conditions, receiving in exchange the
possession of Burgundy. The French allies who were sacrificed on this
occasion by the Most Christian to the Most Catholic Monarch consisted
of the Republics of Venice and Florence, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara,
the princely Houses of Orsini and Fregosi in Rome and Genoa, together
with the Angevine nobles in the realm of Naples. The Paix des Dames, as
this act of capitulation was called (since it had been drawn up in
private conclave by Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, the mother
and the aunt of the two signatories), was a virtual acknowledgment of
the fact that French influence in Italy was at an end.[1]
The surrender of Italy by Francis made it necessary that Charles V.
should put in order the vast estates to which he now succeeded as sole
master. He was, moreover, Emperor Elect; and he judged this occasion
good for assuming the two crowns according to antique custom.
Accordingly in July, 1529, he caused Andrea Doria to meet him at
Barcelona, crossed the Mediterranean in a rough passage of fourteen
days, landed at Genoa on August 12, and proceeded by Piacenza, Parma and
Modena to Bologna, where Clement VII. was already awaiting him. The
meeting of Charles and Clement at Bologna was so solemn an event in
Italian history, and its results were so important for the several
provinces of the peninsula, that I may be excused for enlarging at some
length upon this episode.
[Footnote 1: It is significant for the future of Italy that both the
ladies who drew up this agreement were connected with Savoy. Louise,
Duchess of Angouleme, was a daughter of the house. Margaret, daughter of
Maximilian, was Duchess Dowager of Savoy.]
With pomp and pageantry it closed an age of unrivaled intellectual
splendor and of unexampled sufferings through war. By diplomacy and
debate it prescribed laws for a new age of unexpected ecclesiastical
energy and of national peace procured at the price of slavery.
Illustrious survivors from the period of the pagan Renaissance met here
with young men destined to inaugurate the Catholic Revival. The compact
struck between Emperor and Pope in private conferences, laid a basis for
that firm alliance between Spain and Rome which seriously influenced the
destinies of Europe. Finally, this was the last occasion upon which a
modern Caesar received the iron and golden crowns in Italy from the
hands of a Roman Pontiff. The fortunate inheritor of Spain, the Two
Sicilies, Austria and the Low Countries, who then assumed them both at
the age of twenty-nine, was not only the last who wielded the Imperial
insignia with imperial authority, but was also a far more formidable
potentate in Italy than any of his predecessors since Charles the Great
had been.[2]
[Footnote 2: In what follows regarding Charles V. at Bologna I am
greatly indebted to Giordani's laboriously compiled volume: _Della
Venuta e Dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pont. Clemente VII. etc._ (Bologna,
1832).]
That Charles should have employed the galleys of Doria for the
transhipment of his person, suite, and military escort from Barcelona,
deserves a word of comment. Andrea Doria had been bred in the service of
the French crown, upon which Genoa was in his youth dependent. He
formed a navy of decisive preponderance in the western Mediterranean,
and in return for services rendered to Francis in the Neapolitan
campaign of 1528, he demanded the liberation of his native city. When
this was refused, Doria transferred his allegiance to the Spaniard,
surprised Genoa and reinstated the republic, magnanimously refusing to
secure its tyranny for himself or even to set the ducal cap upon his
head. Charles invested him with the principality of Melfi and made him a
Grandee of Spain. By this series of events Genoa was prepared to accept
the yoke of Spanish influence and customs, which pressed so heavily in
the succeeding century on Italy.
Charles had a body of 2000 Spaniards already quartered at Genoa, as well
as strong garrisons in the Milanese, and a force of about 7000 troops
collected by the Prince of Orange from the _debris_ of the army which
had plundered Rome. While he was on his road from Genoa to Bologna, this
force was already moving upon Florence. He brought with him as escort
some 10,000 men, counting horse and infantry. The total of the troops
which obeyed his word in Italy might be computed at about 27,000,
including Spanish cavalry and foot-soldiers, German lansknechts and
Italian mercenaries. This large army, partly stationed in important
posts of defence, partly in movement, was sufficient to make every word
of his a law. The French were in no position to interfere with his
arrangements. His brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was
engaged in a doubtful contest with Soliman before the gates of Vienna.
He was himself the most considerable potentate in Germany, then
distracted by the struggles of the Reformation. Italy lay crushed and
prostrate, trampled down by armies, exhausted by impost and exactions,
terrorized by brutal violence. That Charles had come to speak his will
and be obeyed was obvious.
To greet the king on his arrival at Genoa, Clement deputed two
ambassadors, the Cardinals Ercole Gonzaga and Monsignor Gianmatteo
Giberti, Bishop of Verona. Gonzaga was destined to play a part of
critical importance in the Tridentine Council. Giberti had made himself
illustrious in the Church by the administration of his diocese on a
system which anticipated the coming ecclesiastical reforms, and was
already famous in the world of letters by his generous familiarity with
students.[3] Three other men of high distinction and of fateful future
waited on their imperial master. Of these the first was Cardinal
Alessandro Farnese, who succeeded Clement in the Papacy, opened the
Tridentine Council, and added a new reigning family to the Italian
princes. The others were the Pope's nephews, Alessandro de'Medici, Duke
of Florence designate, and his cousin the Cardinal Ippolito de'Media.
Six years later, Ippolito died at Itri, poisoned by his cousin
Alessandro, who was himself murdered at Florence in 1537 by another
cousin, Lorenzino de'Medici.
[Footnote 3: See _Ren. in It._, vol. v. p. 357.]
It had been intended that Charles should travel to Bologna from Parma
through Mantua, where the Marquis Federigo Gonzaga had made great
preparations for his reception. But the route by Reggio and Modena was
more direct; and, yielding to the solicitations of Alfonso, Duke of
Ferrara, he selected this instead. One of the stipulations of the Treaty
of Barcelona, it will be remembered, had been that the Emperor should
restore Emilia--that is to say, the cities and territories of Modena,
Reggio, and Rubbiera--to the Papacy. Clement regarded Alfonso as a
contumacious vassal, although his own right to that province only rested
on the force of arms by which Julius II. had detached it from the Duchy
of Ferrara. It was therefore somewhat difficult for Charles to accept
the duke's hospitality. But when he had once done so, Alfonso knew how
to ingratiate himself so well with the arbiter of Italy, that on taking
leave of his guest upon the confines of Bologna, he had already secured
the success of his own cause.
Great preparations, meanwhile, were being made in Bologna. The misery
and destitution of the country rendered money scarce, and cast a gloom
over the people. It was noticed that when Clement entered the city on
October 24, none of the common folk responded to the shouts of his
attendants, _Viva Papa Clemente_! The Pope and his Court, too, were in
mourning. They had but recently escaped from the horrors of the Sack of
Rome, and were under a vow to wear their beards unshorn in memory of
their past sufferings. Yet the municipality and nobles of Bologna
exerted their utmost in these bad times to render the reception of the
Emperor worthy of the luster which his residence and coronation would
confer upon them. Gallant guests began to flock into the city. Among
these may be mentioned the brilliant Isabella d'Este, sister of Duke
Alfonso, and mother of the reigning Marquis of Mantua. She arrived on
November 1 with a glittering train of beautiful women, and took up her
residence in the Palazzo Manzoli. Her quarters obtained no good fame in
the following months; for the ladies of her suite were liberal of
favors. Jousts, masquerades, street-brawls, and duels were of frequent
occurrence beneath her windows--Spaniards and Italians disputing the
honor of those light amours. On November 3 came Andrea Doria with his
relative, the Cardinal Girolamo of that name. About the same time,
Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggi, Bishop of Bologna, returned from his legation
to England, where (as students of our history are well aware) he had
been engaged upon the question of Henry VIII.'s divorce from Katharine
of Aragon. Next day Charles arrived outside the gate, and took up his
quarters in the rich convent of Certosa, which now forms the Campo
Santo.
He was surrounded by a multitude of ambassadors and delegates from the
Bolognese magistracy, by Cardinals and ecclesiastics of all ranks, some
of whom had attended him from the frontier, while others were drawn up
to receive him. November 5 was a Friday, and this day was reckoned lucky
by Charles. He therefore passed the night of the 4th at the Certosa, and
on the following morning made his solemn entry into the city. A
bodyguard of Germans, Burgundians, Spaniards, halberdiers, lansknechts,
men at arms, and cannoneers, preceded him. High above these was borne
the captain-general of the imperial force in Italy, the fierce and cruel
Antonio de Leyva, under whose oppression Milan had been groaning. This
ruthless tyrant was a martyr to gout and rheumatism. He could not ride
or walk; and though he retained the whole vigor of his intellect and
will, it was with difficulty that he moved his hands or head. He
advanced in a litter of purple velvet, supported on the shoulders of his
slaves. Among the splendid crowd of Spanish grandees who followed the
troops, it is enough to mention the Grand Marshal, Don Alvaro Osorio,
Marquis of Astorga, who carried a naked sword aloft. He was armed, on
horseback; and his mantle of cloth of gold blazed with dolphins worked
in pearls and precious stones. Next came Charles, mounted on a bay
jennet, armed at all points, and holding in his hand the scepter.
Twenty-four pages, chosen from the nobles of Bologna, waited on his
bridle and stirrups. The train was brought up by a multitude of secular
and ecclesiastical princes too numerous to record in detail. Conspicuous
among them for the historian were the Count of Nassau, Albert of
Brandenburg, and the Marquis Bonifazio of Montferrat, the scion of the
Eastern Paleologi. As this procession defiled through the streets of
Bologna, it was remarked that Charles, with true Spanish haughtiness,
made no response to the acclamations of the people, except once when,
passing beneath a balcony of noble ladies, he acknowledged their salute
by lifting the cap from his head.
Clement, surrounded by a troop of prelates, was seated to receive him on
a platform raised before the church of San Petronio in the great piazza.
The king dismounted opposite the Papal throne, ascended the steps
beneath his canopy of gold and crimson, and knelt to kiss the Pontiff's
feet. When their eyes first met, it was observed that both turned pale;
for the memory of outraged Rome was in the minds of both; and Caesar,
while he paid this homage to Christ's Vicar, had the load of those long
months of suffering and insult on his conscience. Clement bent down, and
with streaming eyes saluted him upon the cheek. Then, when Charles was
still upon his knees, they exchanged a few set words referring to the
purpose of their meeting and their common desire for the pacification of
Christendom. After this the Emperor elect rose, seated himself for a
while beside the Pope, and next, at his invitation, escorted him to the
great portal of the church. On the way, he inquired after Clement's
health; to which the Pope replied somewhat significantly that, after
leaving Rome, it had steadily improved. He tempered this allusion to his
captivity, however, by adding that his eagerness to greet his Majesty
had inspired him with more than wonted strength and courage. At the
doorway they parted; and the Emperor, having paid his devotions to the
Sacrament and kissed the altar, was conducted to the apartments prepared
for him in the Palazzo Pubblico. These were adjacent to the Pope's
lodgings in the same palace, and were so arranged that the two
potentates could confer in private at all times. It is worthy of remark
that the negotiations for the settlement of Italy which took place
during the next six months in those rooms, were conducted personally by
the high contracting parties, and that none of their deliberations
transpired until the result of each was made public.
The whole of November 5 had been occupied in these ceremonies. It was
late evening when the Emperor gained his lodgings. The few next days
were ostensibly occupied in receiving visitors. Among the first of these
was the unfortunate ex-queen of Naples, Isabella, widow of Frederick of
Aragon, the last king of the bastard dynasty founded by Alfonso. She was
living in poverty at Ferrara, under the protection of her relatives, the
Este family, On the 13th came the Prince of Orange and Don Ferrante
Gonzaga, from the camp before Florence. The siege had begun, but had not
yet been prosecuted with the strictest vigor. During the whole time of
Charles's residence at Bologna, it must be borne in mind that the siege
of Florence was being pressed. Superfluous troops detached from garrison
duty in the Lombard towns were drafted across the hills to Tuscany.
Whatever else the Emperor might decide for his Italian subjects, this at
least was certain: Florence should be restored to the Medicean tyrants,
as compensation to the Pope for Roman sufferings. The Prince of Orange
came to explain the state of things at Florence, where government and
people seemed prepared to resist to the death. Gonzaga had private
business of his own to conduct, touching his engagement to the Pope's
ward, Isabella, daughter and heiress of the wealthy Vespasiano Colonna.
Meanwhile, ambassadors from all the States and lordships of Italy
flocked to Bologna. Great nobles from the South--Ascanio Colonna, Grand
Constable of Naples; Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto; Giovanni Luigi
Caraffa, Prince of Stigliano--took up their quarters in adjacent houses,
or in the upper story of the Public Palace. The Marquis of Vasto arrests
our graze for a moment. He was nephew to the Marquis of Pescara (husband
of Vittoria Colonna), who had the glory of taking Francis prisoner at
Pavia, and afterwards the infamy of betraying the unfortunate Girolamo
Morone and his master the Duke of Milan to the resentment of the Spanish
monarch. What part Pescara actually played in that dark passage of plot
and counterplot remains obscure. But there is no doubt that he employed
treachery, single if not double, for his own advantage. His arrogance
and avowed hostility to the Italians caused his very name to be
execrated; nor did his nephew, the Marquis of Vasto, differ in these
respects from the more famous chief of his house. This man was also
destined to obtain an evil reputation when he succeeded in 1532 to the
government of Milan. Here too may be noticed the presence at Bologna of
Girolamo Morone's son, who had been created Bishop of Modena in 1529.
For him a remarkable fate was waiting. Condemned to the dungeons of the
Inquisition as a heretic by Paul IV., rescued by Pius IV., and taken
into highest favor at that Pontiff's Court, he successfully manipulated
the closing of the Tridentine Council to the profit of the Papal See.
Negotiations for the settlement of Italian affairs were proceeding
without noise, but with continual progress, through this month. The
lodgings of ambassadors and lords were so arranged in the Palazzo
Pubblico that they, like their Imperial and Papal masters, could confer
at all times and seasons. Every day brought some new illustrious
visitor. On the 22nd arrived Federigo Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who
took up his quarters in immediate proximity to Charles and Clement. His
business required but little management. The house of Gonzaga was
already well affected to the Spanish cause, and counted several captains
in the imperial army. Charles showed his favor by raising Mantua to the
rank of a Duchy. It was different with the Republic of Venice and the
Duke of Milan. The Emperor elect had reasons to be strongly prejudiced
against them both--against Venice as the most formidable of the French
allies in the last war; against Francesco Maria Sforza, as having been
implicated, though obscurely, in Morone's conspiracy to drive the
Spaniards from Italy and place the crown of Naples on Pescara's head.
Clement took both under his protection. He had sufficient reasons to
believe that the Venetians would purchase peace by the cession of their
recent acquisitions on the Adriatic coast, and he knew that the
pacification of Italy could not be accomplished without their aid. In
effect, the Republic agreed to relinquish Cervia and Ravenna to the
Pope, and their Apulian ports to Charles, engaging at the same time to
pay a sum of 300,000 ducats and stipulating for an amnesty to all their
agents and dependents. It is not so clear why Clement warmly espoused
the cause of Sforza. That he did so is certain. He obtained a
safe-conduct for the duke, and made it a point of personal favor that he
should be received into the Emperor's grace. This stipulation appears to
have been taken into account when the affairs of Ferrara were decided
at a later date against the Papal interests.
Francesco Maria Sforza appeared in Bologna on the 22nd. This unfortunate
bearer of one of the most coveted titles in Europe had lately lived a
prisoner in his own Castello, while the city at his doors and the
fertile country round it were being subjected to cruelest outrage and
oppression from Spanish, French, Swiss, and German mercenaries. He was a
man ruined in health as well as fortune. Six years before this date, one
of his chamberlains, Bonifazio Visconti, had given him a slight wound in
the shoulder with a poisoned dagger. From this wound he never recovered;
and it was pitiable to behold the broken man, unable to move or stand
without support, dragging himself upon his knees to Caesar's footstool.
Charles appears to have discerned that he had nothing to fear and much
to gain, if he showed clemency to so powerless a suitor. Franceso was
the last of his line. His health rendered it impossible that he should
expect heirs; and although he subsequently married a princess of the
House of Denmark, he died childless in the autumn of 1535. It was
therefore determined, in compliance with the Pope's request, that Sforza
should be confirmed in the Duchy of Milan. Pavia, however, was detached
and given to the terrible Antonio de Leyva for his lifetime. The
garrisons of Milan and Como were left in Spanish hands; and the duke
promised to wring 400,000 ducats as the price of his investiture, with
an additional sum of 500,000 ducats to be paid in ten yearly
instalments, from his already blood-sucked people. It will be observed
that money figured largely in all these high political transactions.
Charles, though lord of many lands, was, even at this early stage of his
career, distressed for want of cash. He rarely paid his troops, but
commissioned the captains in his service to levy contributions on the
provinces they occupied. The funds thus raised did not always reach the
pockets of the soldiers, who subsisted as best they could by marauding.
Having made these terms, Francesco Maria Sforza was received into the
Imperial favor. He returned to Milan, in no sense less a prisoner than
he had previously been, and with the heart-rending necessity of
extorting money from his subjects at the point of Spanish swords. In
exchange for the ducal title, he thus had made himself a tax-collector
for his natural enemies. Secluded in the dreary chambers of his castle,
assailed by the execrations of the Milanese, he may well have groaned,
like Marlowe's Edward--
But what are Kings, when regiment is gone,
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?
My foemen rule; I bear the name of King;
I wear the crown; but am controlled by them.
When he died he bequeathed his duchy to the crown of Spain. It was
detached from the Empire, and became the private property of Charles and
of his son, Philip II.
During the month of December negotiations for the terms of peace in
Italy went briskly forward. On the part of Venice, two men of the
highest distinction arrived as orators. These were Pietro Bembo and
Gasparo Contarini, both of whom received the honors of the Cardinalate
from Paul III. on his accession. Of Bembo's place in Italian society, as
the dictator of literature at this epoch, I have already sufficiently
spoken in another part of my work on the Renaissance. Contarini will
more than once arrest our notice in the course of this volume. Of all
the Italians of the time, he was perhaps the greatest, wisest, and most
sympathetic. Had it been possible to avert the breach between
Catholicism and Protestantism, to curb the intolerance of Inquisitors
and the ambition of Jesuits, and to guide the reform of the Church by
principles of moderation and liberal piety, Contarini was the man who
might have restored unity to the Church in Europe. Once, indeed, at
Regensburg in 1541, he seemed upon the very point of effecting a
reconciliation between the parties that were tearing Christendom
asunder. But his failure was even more conspicuous than his momentary
semblance of success. It was not in the temper of the times to accept a
Concordat founded on however philosophical, however politic,
considerations. Contarini will be remembered as a 'beautiful soul,' born
out of the due moment, and by no means adequate to cope with the fierce
passions that raged round him. Among Protestants he was a Catholic, and
they regarded his half measures with contempt. Among Catholics he passed
for a suspected Lutheran, and his writings were only tolerated after
they had been subjected to rigorous castration at the hands of Papal
Inquisitors.[4]
On Christmas eve the ambassadors and representatives of the Italian
powers met together in the chambers of Cardinal Gattinara, Grand
Chancellor of the Empire, to subscribe the terms of a confederation and
perpetual league for the maintenance of peace. From this important
document the Florentines were excluded, as open rebels to the will of
Charles and Clement. There was no justice in the rigor with which
Florence was now treated. Her republican independence had hitherto been
recognized, although her own internal discords exposed her to a virtual
despotism. But Clement stipulated and Charles conceded, as a _sine qua
non_ in the project of pacification, that Florence should be converted
into a Medicean duchy. For the Duke of Ferrara, whom the Pope regarded
as a contumacious vassal, and whose affairs were still the subject of
debate, a place was specially reserved in the treaty. He, as I have
already observed, had been taken under the Imperial protection; and a
satisfactory settlement of his claims was now a mere question of time.
On the evening of the same day, the Pope bestowed on Charles the Sword
of the Spirit, which it was the wont of Rome to confer on the
best-beloved of her secular sons at this festival. The peace was
publicly proclaimed, amid universal plaudits, on the last day of the
year 1529.
[Footnote 4: See Ranke, vol. i. p. 153, note.]
The chief affairs to be decided in the new year were the reduction of
Florence to submission and the coronation of the Emperor. The month of
January was passed in jousts and pastimes; ceremonial privileges were
conferred on the University of Bologna; magnificent embassies from the
Republic of S. Mark, glowing in senatorial robes of crimson silk, were
entertained; and a singular deputation from the African court of Prester
John obtained audience of the Roman Pontiff. Amid these festivities
there arrived, on January 16, three delegates from Florence, who spent
some weeks in fruitless efforts to obtain a hearing from the arbiters of
Italy. Clement refused to deal with them, because their commonwealth was
still refractory. Charles repelled them, because he wished to gratify
the Pope, and knew that Florence remained staunch in her devotion to the
French crown. The old proverb, 'Lilies with lilies,' the white lily of
Florence united with the golden fleur-de-lys of France, had still
political significance in this day of Italian degradation. Meanwhile
Francis I. treated his faithful allies with lukewarm tolerance. The
smaller fry of Italian potentates, worshipers of the rising sun of
Spain, curried favor with their masters by insulting the republic's
representatives. On their return to Florence, the ambassadors had to
report a total diplomatic failure. But this, far from breaking the
untamable spirit of the Signory and people, prompted them in February to
new efforts of resistance and to edicts of outlawry against citizens
whom they regarded as traitors to the State. Among the proscribed were
Francesco Guicciardini, Roberto Acciaiuoli, Francesco Vettori, and
Baccio Valori. Of these men Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori,
and Baccio Valori were attendant at Bologna upon the Pope. They all
adhered with fidelity to the Medicean party at this crisis of their
country's fate, and all paid dearly for their loyalty. When Cosimo I.,
by their efforts, was established in the duchy, he made it one of his
first cares to rid himself of these too faithful servants. Baccio Valori
was beheaded after the battle of Montemurlo in 1537 for practice with
the exiles of Filippo Strozzi's party. Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco
Vettori, and Roberto Acciaiuoli died in disgrace before the year
1543--their only crime being that they had made themselves the ladder
whereby a Medici had climbed into his throne, and which it was his
business to upset when firmly seated. For the heroism of Florence at
this moment it would be difficult to find fit words of panegyric. The
republic stood alone, abandoned by France to the hot rage of Clement and
the cold contempt of Charles, deserted by the powers of Italy, betrayed
by lying captains, deluged on all sides with the scum of armies pouring
into Tuscany from the Lombard pandemonium of war. The situation was one
of impracticable difficulty. Florence could not but fall. Yet every
generous heart will throb with sympathy while reading the story of that
final stand for independence, in which a handful of burghers persisted,
though congregated princes licked the dust from feet of Emperor and
Pontiff.
Charles had come to assume the iron and the golden crowns in Italy. He
ought to have journeyed to Monza or to S. Ambrogio at Milan for the
first, and to the Lateran in Rome for the second of these investitures.
An Emperor of the Swabian House would have been compelled by precedent
and superstition to observe this form. It is true that the coronation of
a German prince as the successor of Lombard kings and Roman Augusti, had
always been a symbolic ceremony rather than a rite which ratified
genuine Imperial authority. Still the ceremony connoted many mediaeval
aspirations. It was the outward sign of theories that had once exerted
an ideal influence. To dissociate the two-fold sacrament from Milan and
from Rome was the same as robbing it of its main virtue, the virtue of a
mystical conception. It was tantamount to a demonstration that the
belief in Universal Monarchy had passed away. By breaking the old rules
of his investiture, Charles notified the disappearance of the mediaeval
order, and proclaimed new political ideals to the world. When asked
whether he would not follow custom and seek the Lombard crown in Monza,
he brutally replied that he was not wont to run after crowns, but to
have crowns running after him. He trampled no less on that still more
venerable _religio loci_ which attached imperial rights to Rome.
Together with this ancient piety, he swept the Holy Roman Empire into
the dust-heap of archaic curiosities. By declaring his will to be
crowned where he chose, he emphasized the modern state motto of _L'etat,
c'est moi_, and prepared the way for a Pope's closing of a General
Council by the word _L'Eglise, c'est moi_. Charles had sufficient
reasons for acting as he did. The Holy Roman Empire ever since the first
event of Charles the Great's coronation, when it justified itself as a
diplomatical expedient for unifying Western Christendom, had existed
more or less as a shadow. Charles violated the duties which alone gave
the semblance of a substance to that shadow. As King of Italy, he had
desolated the Lombard realm of which he sought the title. As Emperor
elect, he had ravished his bride, the Eternal City. As suitor to the
Pope for both of his expected crowns, he stood responsible for the
multiplied insults to which Clement had been so recently exposed. No
Emperor had been more powerful since Charles the Great than this Charles
V., the last who took his crowns in Italy. It was significant that he
man in whose name Rome had suffered outrage, and who was about to detach
Lombardy from the Empire, was by his own will invested at Bologna. The
citizens of Monza were accordingly bidden to send the iron crown to
Bologna. It arrived on February 20, and on the 22nd Charles received it
from the hands of Clement in the chapel of the palace. The Cardinal who
performed the ceremony of unction was a Fleming, William Hencheneor, who
in the Sack of Rome had bought his freedom for the large sum of 40,000
crowns. On this auspicious occasion he cut off half the beard which he
still wore in sign of mourning!
The Duke and Duchess of Urbino made their entrance into Bologna on the
same day. Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, Prefect of Rome,
and Captain General of the armies of the Church, was one of the most
noted warriors of that time. Yet victory had rarely crowned his brows
with laurels. Imitating the cautious tactics of Braccio, and emulating
the fame of Fabius Cunctator, he reduced the art of war to a system of
manoeuvres, and rarely risked his fortune in the field. It was chiefly
due to his dilatory movements that the disaster of the Sack of Rome was
not averted. He had been expelled by Leo X. from his duchy to make room
for Lorenzo de'Medici, and report ran that a secret desire to witness
the humiliation of a Medicean Pontiff caused him to withhold his forces
from attacking the tumultuary troops of Bourbon. Francesco Maria was a
man of violent temper; nineteen years before, he had murdered the Pope's
Legate, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi, with his dagger, in the open
streets of Bologna. His wife, Eleanora Ippolita Gonzaga, presided with
grace over that brilliant and cultivated Court which Castiglione made
famous by his _Cortegiano_. The Duke and Duchess survive to posterity in
two masterpieces of portraiture by the hand of Titian which now adorn
the Gallery of the Uffizzi.
February 24, which was the anniversary of Charles's birthday, had been
fixed for his coronation as Emperor in San Petronio. This church is one
of the largest Gothic buildings in Italy. Its facade occupies the
southern side of the piazza. The western side, on the left of the
church, is taken up by the Palazzo Pubblico. In order to facilitate the
passage of the Pope and Emperor with their Courts and train of princes
from the palace to the cathedral, a wooden bridge wide enough to take
six men abreast was constructed from an opening in the Hall of the
Ancients. The bridge descended by a gradual line to the piazza,
broadened out into a platform before the front of San Petronio, and then
again ascended through the nave to the high altar. It was covered with
blue draperies, and so arranged that the vast multitudes assembled in
the square and church to see the ceremony had free access to it on all
sides. On the morning of the 24th, the solemn procession issued from the
palace, and defiled in order down the gangway. Clement was borne aloft
by Pontifical grooms in their red liveries. He wore the tiara and a cope
of state fastened by Cellini's famous stud, in which blazed the
Burgundian diamond of Charles the Bold. Charles walked in royal robes
attended by the Count of Nassau and Don Pietro di Toledo, the Viceroy of
Naples, who afterwards gave his name to the chief street in that city.
Before him went the Marquis of Montferrat, bearing the scepter; Philip,
Duke of Bavaria, carrying the golden orb; the Duke of Urbino, with the
sword; and the Duke of Savoy, holding the imperial diadem. This Duke of
Savoy was uncle to Francis I. and brother-in-law to Charles--- his wife,
Beatrice, being a sister of the Empress, and his sister, Louise, mother
of the French king. This double relationship made his position during
the late wars a difficult one. Yet his territory had been regarded as
neutral, and in the pacification of Italy he judged it wise to adhere
without reserve to the victorious King of Spain. It was noticed that
Ferrante di Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, though known to be in
Bologna, occupied no post of distinction in the imperial train. He was
closely related to the Emperor by his mother, Maria of Aragon, and had
done good service in the recent campaigns against Lautrec. The reason
for this neglect does not appear. But it may be mentioned that some
years later he espoused the French cause, and was deprived of his vast
hereditary fiefs. In his ruin the poet Bernardo, father of Torquato
Tasso, was involved.
To enumerate all the nobles of Spain, Italy and Germany, with the
ambassadors from England, France, Scotland, Hungary, Bohemia and
Portugal; who swelled the Imperial _cortege_; to describe the series of
ceremonies by which Charles was first consecrated as a deacon, anointed,
dressed and undressed, and finally conducted to the Pope for coronation;
to narrate the breaking of the bridge at one point, and the squabbles
between the Genoese and Sienese delegates for precedence, would be
superfluously tedious. The day was well-nigh over when at length Charles
received the Imperial insignia from the Pope's hands. _Accipe gladium
sanctum, Accipe virgam, Accipe pomum, Accipe signum gloriae_! As Clement
pronounced these sentences, he gave the sword, the scepter, the globe,
and the diadem in succession to the Emperor, who knelt before him.
Charles bent and kissed the Papal feet. He then rose and took his throne
beside the Pope. It was placed two steps lower than that of Clement. The
ceremony of coronation and enthronization being now complete, Charles
was proclaimed: _Romanorum Imperator semper augustus, mundi totius
Dominus, universis Dominis, universis Principibus et Populis semper
venerandus_. When Mass was over, Pope and Emperor shook hands. At the
church-door, Charles held Clement's stirrup, and when the Pope had
mounted, he led his palfrey for some paces, in sign of filial
submission.
The month of March was distinguished by the arrival of illustrious
visitors. The Duchess of Savoy, with an escort of eighteen lovely maids
of honor, made her pompous entry on the 4th, and took up her quarters in
the Palazzo Pepoli. On the 6th came the Duke of Ferrara, for whom
Charles had procured a safe-conduct from the Pope. During the Emperor's
stay at Bologna, Alfonso d'Este had been assiduous in paying him and his
Court small attentions, sending excellent provisions for the household
and furnishing the royal table with game and every kind of delicacy. The
settlement of his dispute with the Holy See was the only important
business that remained to be transacted. Charles prevailed upon both
Clement and Alfonso to state their cases in writing and to place them in
the hands of jurisconsults, to report upon. There is little doubt that
his own mind was already made up in favor of the duke; but he did not
pass sentence until the following December, nor was the decision
published before April in the year 1531. The substance of the final
agreement was as follows. Modena, Reggio and Rubbiera were declared
fiefs of the Empire, seeing that they had not been included in Pepin's
gift of the Exarchate. Charles confirmed their investiture to Alfonso,
in return for a considerable payment to the Imperial Chancery. He had
previously conferred the town of Carpi, forfeited by Alberto Pio as a
French adherent, on the Duke. Ferrara remained a fief of the Church, and
Clement consented to acknowledge Alfonso's tenure, upon his disbursement
of 100,000 ducats. This decision saved Modena to the bastard line of
Este, when Pope Clement VIII. seized Ferrara as a lapsed fief in 1598.
In the sixty-seven years which passed between the date of Charles's
coronation and the extinction of the duchy, Ferrara enjoyed the fame of
the most brilliant Court in Italy, and shone with the luster conferred
on it by men like Tasso and Guarini.
The few weeks which now remained before Charles left Bologna were spent
for the most part in jousts and tournaments, visits to churches, and
social entertainments. Veronica Gambara threw her apartments open to the
numerous men of letters who crowded from all parts of Italy to witness
the ceremony, of Charles's coronation. This lady was widow to the late
lord of Correggio, and one of the two most illustrious women of her
time.[5] She dwelt with princely state in a palace of the Marsili; and
here might be seen the poets Bembo, Mauro, and Molza in conversation
with witty Berni, learned Vida, stately Trissino, and noble-hearted
Marcantonio Flaminio. Paolo Giovio and Francesco Guicciardini, the chief
historians of their time, were also to be found there, together with a
host of literary and diplomatic worthies attached to the Courts of
Urbino and Ferrara or attendant on the train of cardinals, who, like
Ippolito de'Medici, made a display of culture. Meanwhile the
Dowager-Marchioness of Mantua and the Duchess of Savoy entertained
Italian and Spanish nobles with masqued balls and carnival processions
in the Manzoli and Pepoli palaces. Frequent quarrels between hot-blooded
youths of the rival nations added a spice of chivalrous romance to
love-adventures in which the ladies of these Courts played a too
conspicuous part. What still remained to Italy of Renaissance splendor,
wit, and fashion, after the Sack of Rome and the prostration of her
wealthiest cities, was concentrated in this sunset blaze of sumptuous
festivity at Bologna. Nor were the arts without illustrious
representatives. Francesco Mazzola, surnamed Il Parmigianino, before
whose altar-piece in his Roman studio the rough soldiers of Bourbon's
army were said to have lately knelt in adoration, commemorated the hero
of the day by painting Charles attended by Fame who crowned his
forehead, and an infant Hercules who handed him the globe. Titian, too,
was there, and received the honor of several sittings from the Emperor.
His life-sized portrait of Charles in full armor, seated on a white
war-horse, has perished. But it gave such satisfaction at the moment
that the fortunate master was created knight and count palatine, and
appointed painter to the Emperor with a fixed pension. Titian also
painted portraits of Antonio de Leyva and Alfonso d'Avalos, but whether
upon this occasion or in 1532, when he was again summoned to the
Imperial Court at Bologna, is not certain. From this assemblage of
eminent personages we notice the absence of Pietro Aretino. He was at
the moment out of favor with Clement VII. But independently of this
obstacle, he may well have thought it imprudent to quit his Venetian
retreat and expose himself to the resentment of so many princes whom he
had alternately loaded with false praises and bemired with loathsome
libels.
[Footnote 5: See _Ren. in It._ vol. v. p. 289.]
People observed that the Emperor in his excursions through the streets
of Bologna usually wore the Spanish habit. He was dressed in black
velvet, with black silk stockings, black shoes, and a black velvet cap
adorned with black feathers. This somber costume received some relief
from jewels used for buttons; and the collar of the Golden Fleece shone
upon the monarch's breast. So slight a circumstance would scarcely
deserve attention, were it not that in a short space of time it became
the fashion throughout Italy to adopt the subdued tone of Spanish
clothing. The upper classes consented to exchange the varied and
brilliant dresses which gave gayety to the earlier Renaissance for the
dismal severity conspicuous in Morone's masterpieces, in the magnificent
gloom of the Genoese Brignoli, and in the portraits of Roman
inquisitors. It is as though the whole race had put on mourning for its
loss of liberty, its servitude to foreign tyrants and ecclesiastical
hypocrites. Nor is it fanciful to detect a note of moral sadness and
mental depression corresponding to these black garments in the faces of
that later generation. How different is Tasso's melancholy grace from
Ariosto's gentle joyousness; the dried-up precision of Baroccio's
Francesco Maria della Rovere from the sanguine joviality of Titian's
first duke of that name! One of the most acutely critical of
contemporary poets felt the change which I have indicated, and ascribed
it to the same cause. Campanella wrote as follows:
Black robes befit our age. Once they were white;
Next many-hued; now dark as Afric's Moor,
Night-black, infernal, traitorous, obscure,
Horrid with ignorance and sick with fright.
For very shame we shun all colors bright,
Who mourn our end--the tyrants we endure,
The chains, the noose, the lead, the snares, the lure--
Our dismal heroes, our souls sunk in night.
In the midst of this mirth-making there arrived on March 20 an embassy
from England, announcing Henry VIII.'s resolve to divorce himself at any
cost from Katharine of Aragon. This may well have recalled both Pope and
Emperor to a sense of the gravity of European affairs. The schism of
England was now imminent. Germany was distracted by Protestant
revolution. The armies of Caesar were largely composed of mutinous
Lutherans. Some of these soldiers had even dared to overthrow a colossal
statue of Clement VII. and grind it into powder at Bologna; and this
outrage, as it appears, went unpunished. The very troops employed in
reducing rebellious Florence were commanded by a Lutheran general; and
Clement began to fear that, after Charles's departure, the Prince of
Orange might cross the Apennines and expose the Papal person to the
insults of another captivity in Bologna. Nor were the gathering forces
of revolutionary Protestants alone ominous. Though Soliman had been
repulsed before Vienna, the Turks were still advancing on the eastern
borders of the Empire. Their fleets swept the Levantine waters, while
the pirate dynasties of Tunis and Algiers threatened the whole
Mediterranean coast with ruin. Charles, still uncertain what part he
should take in the disputes of Germany, left Bologna for the Tyrol on
March 23. Clement, on the last day of the month, took his journey by
Loreto to Rome.
It will be useful, at this point, to recapitulate the net results of
Charles's administration of Italian affairs in 1530. The kingdom of the
Two Sicilies, with the Island of Sardinia and the Duchy of Milan, became
Spanish provinces, and were ruled henceforth by viceroys. The House of
Este was confirmed in the Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio.
The Duchies of Savoy and Mantua and the Marquisate of Montferrat, which
had espoused the Spanish cause, were undisturbed. Genoa and Siena, both
of them avowed allies of Spain, the former under Spanish protection, the
latter subject to Spanish coercion, remained with the name and empty
privileges of republics. Venice had made her peace with Spain, and
though she was still strong enough to pursue an independent policy, she
showed as yet no inclination, and had, indeed, no power, to stir up
enemies against the Spanish autocrat. The Duchy of Urbino, recognized
by Rome and subservient to Spanish influence, was permitted to exist.
The Papacy once more assumed a haughty tone, relying on the firm
alliance struck with Spain. This league, as years went by, was destined
to grow still closer, still more fruitful of results.
Florence alone had been excepted from the articles of peace. It was
still enduring the horrors of the memorable siege when Clement left
Bologna at the end of May. The last hero of the republic, Francesco
Ferrucci, fell fighting at Gavignana on August 2. Their general,
Malatesta Baglioni, broke his faith with the citizens. Finally, on
August 12, the town capitulated. Alessandro de'Medici, who had received
the title of Duke of Florence from Charles at Bologna, took up his
residence there in July, 1531, and held the State by help of Spanish
mercenaries under the command of Alessandro Vitelli. When he was
murdered by his cousin in 1537, Cosimo de'Medici, the scion of another
branch of the ruling family, was appointed Duke. Charles V. recognized
his title, and Cosimo soon showed that he was determined to be master in
his own duchy. He crushed the exiled party of Filippo Strozzi, who
attempted a revolution of the State, exterminated its leaders, and
contrived to rid himself of the powerful adherents who had placed him on
the throne. But he remained a subservient though not very willing ally
of Spain; and when he expelled Alessandro Vitelli from the fortress that
commanded Florence, he admitted a Spaniard, Don Juan de Luna, in his
stead. During the petty wars of 1552-56 which Henri II. carried on with
Charles V. in Italy, Siena attempted to shake off the yoke of a Spanish
garrison established there in 1547 under the command of Don Hurtado de
Mendoza. The citizens appealed to France, who sent them the great
Marshal, Piero Strozzi, brother of Cosimo's vanquished enemy Filippo.
Cosimo through these years supported the Spanish cause with troops and
money, hoping to guide events in his own interest. At length, by the aid
of Gian Giacomo Medici, sprung from an obscure Milanese family, who had
been trained in the Spanish methods of warfare, he succeeded in subduing
Siena. He now reaped the fruits of his Spanish policy. In 1557 Philip
II. conceded the Sienese territory, reserving only its forts, to the
Duke of Florence, who in 1569 obtained the title of Grand Duke of
Tuscany from Pope Pius V. This title was confirmed by the Empire in 1575
to his son Francesco.
Thus the republics of Florence and Siena were extinguished. The Grand
Duchy of Tuscany was created. It became an Italian power of the first
magnitude, devoted to the absolutist principles of Spanish and Papal
sovereignty. The further changes which took place in Italy after the
year 1530, turned equally to the profit of Spain and Rome. These were
principally the creation of the Duchy of Parma for the Farnesi
(1545-1559), of which I shall have to speak in the next chapter; the
resumption of Ferrara by the Papacy in 1597, which reduced the House of
Este to the smaller fiefs of Modena and Reggio; the acquisition of
Montferrat by Mantua in 1536; the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy in 1598,
and the absorption of Urbino into the Papal domains in 1631.
It was hoped when Charles and Clement proclaimed the pacification of
Italy at Bologna on the last day of 1529, that the peninsula would no
longer be the theater of wars for supremacy between the French and
Spaniards. This expectation proved delusive; for the struggle soon broke
out again. The people, however, suffered less extensively than in former
years; because the Spanish party, supported by Papal authority, was
decidedly predominant. The Italian princes, whether they liked it or
not, were compelled to follow in the main a Spanish policy. At length,
in 1559, by the Peace of Cateau Cambresis signed between Henri II. and
Philip II., the French claims were finally abandoned, and the Spanish
hegemony was formally acknowledged. The later treaty of Vervins, in
1598, ceded Saluzzo to the Duchy of Savoy, and shut the gates of Italy
to French interference.
Though the people endured far less misery from foreign armies in the
period between 1630 and 1600 than they had done in the period from 1494
to 1527, yet the state of the country grew ever more and more
deplorable. This was due in the first instance to the insane methods of
taxation adopted by the Spanish viceroys, who held monopolies of corn
and other necessary commodities in their hands and who invented imposts
for the meanest articles of consumption. Their example was followed by
the Pope and petty princes. Alfonso II. of Ferrara, for instance, levied
a tenth on all produce which passed his city gates, and on the capital
engaged in every contract. He monopolized the sale of salt, flour,
bread; and imposed a heavy tax on oil. Sixtus V. by exactions of a like
description and by the sale of numberless offices, accumulated a vast
sum of money, much of which bore heavy interest. He was so ignorant of
the first principle of political economy as to lock up the accruing
treasure in the Castle of S. Angelo. The rising of Masaniello in Naples
was simply due to the exasperation of the common folk at having even
fruit and vegetables taxed. In addition to such financial blunders, we
must take into account the policy pursued by all princes at this epoch,
of discouraging commerce and manufactures. Thus Cosimo I. of Tuscany
induced the old Florentine families to withdraw their capital from
trade, sink it in land, create entails in perpetuity on eldest sons, and
array themselves with gimcrack titles which he liberally supplied. Even
Venice showed at this epoch a contempt for the commerce which had
brought her into a position of unrivaled splendor. This wilful
depression of industry was partly the result of Spanish aristocratic
habits, which now invaded Italian society. But it was also deliberately
chosen as a means of extinguishing freedom. Finally, if war proved now
less burdensome, the exhaustion of Italy and the decay of military
spirit rendered the people liable to the scourge of piracy. The whole
sea-coast was systematically plundered by the navies of Barbarossa and
Dragut. The inhabitants of the ports and inland villages were carried
off into slavery, and many of the Italians themselves drove a brisk
trade in the sale of their compatriots. Brigandage, following in the
wake of agricultural depression and excessive taxation, depopulated the
central provinces. All these miseries were exacerbated by frequent
recurrences of plagues and famines.
It is characteristic of the whole tenor of Italian history that, in
spite of the virtual hegemony which the Spaniards now exercised in the
peninsula, the nation continued to exist in separate parcels, each of
which retained a certain individuality. That Italy could not have been
treated as a single province by the Spanish autocrat will be manifest,
when we consider the European jealousy to which so summary an exhibition
of force would have given rise. It is also certain that the Papacy,
which had to be respected, would have resisted an openly declared
Spanish despotism. But more powerful, I think, than all these
considerations together, was the past prestige of the Italian States.
Europe was not prepared to regard that brilliant and hitherto respected
constellation of commonwealths, from which all intellectual culture,
arts of life, methods of commerce, and theories of political existence
had been diffused, as a single province of the Spanish monarchy. The
Spaniards themselves were scarcely in a position to entertain the
thought of reducing the peninsula to bondage _vi et armis_. And if they
had attempted any measure tending to this result, they would undoubtedly
have been resisted by an alliance of the European powers. What they
sought, and what they gained, was preponderating influence in each of
the parcels which they recognized as nominally independent.
The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though much reduced in
vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in cities marked
by distinct local qualities, and boastful of their ancient glories. The
Courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and
artistic coteries. Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint
and moral license, where thinkers uttered their thoughts with tolerable
freedom, and libertines indulged their tastes unhindered. Rome early
assumed novel airs of piety, and external conformity to austere patterns
became the fashion here. Yet the Papal capital did not wholly cease to
be the resort of students and of artists. The universities maintained
themselves in a respectable position--- far different, indeed, from that
which they had held in the last century, yet not ignoble. Much was
being learned on many lines of study divergent from those prescribed by
earlier humanists. Padua, in particular, distinguished itself for
medical researches. This was the flourishing time, moreover, of
Academies, in which, notwithstanding nonsense talked and foolish tastes
indulged, some solid work was done for literature and science. The names
of the Cimento, Delia Crusca, and Palazzo Vernio at Florence, remind us
of not unimportant labors in physics, in the analysis of language, and
in the formation of a new dramatic style of music. At the same time the
resurgence of popular literature and the creation of popular theatrical
types deserve to be particularly noticed. It is as though the Italian
nation at this epoch, suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by
Jesuitical hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of
open air, indulging in dialectical niceties and immortalizing
street-jokes by the genius of masqued comedy.
This most ancient and intensely vital race had given Europe the Roman
Republic, the Roman Empire, the system of Roman law, the Romance
languages, Latin Christianity, the Papacy, and, lastly, all that is
included in the art and culture of the Renaissance. It was time,
perhaps, that it should go to rest a century or so, and watch uprising
nations--the Spanish, English, French, and so forth--stir their stalwart
limbs in common strife and novel paths of pioneering industry.
After such fashion let us, then, if we can contrive to do so, regard
the Italians during their subjection to the Church and Austria. Were it
not for these consolatory reflections, and for the present reappearance
of the nation in a new and previously unapprehended form of unity, the
history of the Counter-Reformation period would be almost too painful
for investigation. What the Italians actually accomplished during this
period in art, learning, science, and literature, was indeed more than
enough to have conferred undying luster on such races as the Dutch or
Germans at the same epoch. But it would be ridiculous to compare
Italians with either Dutchmen or Germans at a time when Italy was still
so incalculably superior. Compared with their own standard, compared
with what they might have achieved under more favorable conditions of
national independence, the products of this age are saddening. The
tragic elements of my present theme are summed up in the fact that Italy
during the Counter-Reformation was inferior to Italy during the
Renaissance, and that this inferiority was due to the interruption of
vital and organic processes by reactionary forces.
It would not be just to condemn Spain and the Papacy because, being
reactionary powers, they quenched for three centuries the genial light
of Italy. We must rather bear in mind that both Spain and the Papacy
were at that time cosmopolitan factors of the first magnitude, with
perplexing world-problems confronting them. Charles bore upon his
shoulders the concerns of the Empire, the burden of the German
revolution, and the distracting anxiety of a duel with Islam. When his
son bowed to the yoke of government, he had to meet the same
perplexities, complicated with Netherlands in revolt, England in
antagonism, and France in dubious ferment. A succession of Popes were
hampered by painful European questions, which the instinct of
self-preservation taught them to regard as paramount. They were fighting
for existence; for the Catholic creed; for their own theocratic
sovereignty. They held strong cards. But against them were drawn up the
battalions of heresy, free thought, political insurgence in the modern
world. The _Zeitgeist_ that has made us what we are, had begun to
organize stern opposition to the Church. It was natural enough that both
the Spanish autocrat and the successor of S. Peter should at this crisis
have regarded Italian affairs as subordinate in importance to wider
matters which demanded their attention. Yet if we shift our point of
view from this high vantage-ground of Imperial and Papal anxieties, and
place ourselves in the center of Italy as our post of observation, it
will be apparent that nothing more ruinous for the prosperity of the
Italian people could have been devised than the joint autocracy accorded
at Bologna to two cosmopolitan but non-national forces in their midst.
An alien monarchy greedy for gold, a panic-stricken hierarchy in terror
for its life, warped the tendencies and throttled the energies of the
most artistically sensitive, the most heroically innovating of the
existing races. However we may judge the merits of the Spaniards, they
were assuredly not those which had brought Italy into the first rank of
European nations. The events of a single century proved that, far from
being able to govern other peoples, Spain was incapable of
self-government on any rational principle. Whatever may have been the
policy thrust upon the chief of Latin Christianity in the desperate
struggle with militant rationalism, the repressive measures which it
felt bound to adopt were eminently pernicious to a race like the
Italians, who showed no disposition for religious regeneration, and who
were yet submitted to the tyranny of ecclesiastical discipline and
intellectual intolerance at every point.
The settlement made by Charles V. in 1530, and the various changes which
took place in the duchies between that date and the end of the century,
had then the effect of rendering the Papacy and Spain omnipotent in
Italy. These kindred autocrats were joined in firm alliance, except
during the brief period of Paul IV.'s French policy, which ended in the
Pope's complete discomfiture by Alva in 1557. They used their aggregated
forces for the riveting of spiritual, political, and social chains upon
the modern world. What they only partially effected in Europe at large,
by means of S. Bartholomew massacres, exterminations of Jews in Toledo
and of Mussulmans in Granada, holocausts of victims in the Low
Countries, wars against French Huguenots and German Lutherans, naval
expeditions and plots against the state of England, assassinations of
heretic princes, and occasional burning of free thinkers, they achieved
with plenary success in Italy. The center of the peninsula, from Ferrara
to Terracina, lay at the discretion of the Pope. The Two Sicilies,
Sardinia and the Duchy of Milan, were absolute dependencies of the
Spanish crown. Tuscany was linked by ties of interest, and by the
stronger bonds of terrorism, to Spain. The insignificant principalities
of Mantua, Modena, Parma could not do otherwise than submit to the same
predominant authority. It is not worth while to take into account the
tiny republics of Genoa and Lucca. Their history through this period,
though not so uneventful, is scarcely less insignificant than that of
San Marino. Venice alone stood independent, still powerful enough to
extinguish Bedmar's Spanish conspiracy in silence, still proud enough to
resist the encroachments of Paul V. with spirit, yet sensible of her
decline and spending her last energies on warfare with the Turk.
At the close of the century, by the Peace of Vervins in 1598 and two
subsequent treaties, Spain and France settled their long dispute. France
was finally excluded from Italy by the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy,
while Savoy at the same moment, through the loss of its Burgundian
provinces, became an Italian power. The old antagonism which, dating
from the Guelf and Ghibelline contentions of the thirteenth century,
had taken a new form after the Papal investiture of Charles of Anjou
with the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, now ceased. That antique
antagonism of parties, alien to the home interests of Italy, had been
exasperated by the rivalry of Angevine and Aragonese princes; had
assumed formidable intensity after the invasion of Charles VIII. in
1494; and had expanded under the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I.
into an open struggle between France and Spain for the supremacy of
Italy. It now was finally terminated by the exclusion of the French and
the acknowledged overlordship of the Spaniard. But though peace seemed
to be secured to a nation tortured by so many desolating wars of foreign
armies, the Italians regarded the cession of Saluzzo with despondency.
The partisans of national independence and political freedom had become,
however illogically, accustomed to consider France as their ally.[6]
They now beheld the gates of Italy closed against the French; they saw
the extinction of their ancient Guelf policy of calling French arms into
Italy. They felt that rest from strife was dearly bought at the price of
prostrate servitude beneath Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs, Spanish
Bourbons, and mongrel princelings bred by crossing these stocks with
decaying scions of Italian nobility. As a matter of fact, this was the
destiny which lay before them for nearly two centuries after the
signing of the Peace of Vervins.
[Footnote 6: See, for instance, temp. Henri IV., _Sarpi's Letters_, vol.
i. p. 233.]
Yet the cession of Saluzzo was really the first dawn of hope for Italy.
It determined the House of Savoy as an Italian dynasty, and brought for
the first time into the sphere of purely Italian interests that province
from which the future salvation of the nation was to come. From 1598
until 1870 the destinies of Italy were bound up with the advance of
Savoy from a duchy to a kingdom, with its growth in wealth, military
resources and political self-consciousness, and with its ultimate
acceptance of the task, accomplished in our days, of freeing Italy from
foreign tyranny and forming a single nation out of many component
elements. Those component elements by their diversity had conferred
luster on the race in the Middle Ages, by their jealousies had wrecked
its independence in the Renaissance, and by their weakness had left it
at the period of the Counter-Reformation a helpless prey to Papal and
Spanish despotism.
The leveling down of the component elements of the Italian race beneath
a common despotism, which began in the period I have chosen for this
work, was necessary perhaps before Italy could take her place as a
united nation gifted with constitutional self-government and
independence. Except, therefore, for the sufferings and the humiliations
inflicted on her people; except for their servitude beneath the most
degrading forms of ecclesiastical and temporal tyranny; except for the
annihilation of their beautiful Renaissance culture; except for the
depression of arts, learning, science, and literature, together with the
enfeeblement of political energy and domestic morality; except for the
loathsome domination of hypocrites and persecutors and informers; except
for the Jesuitical encouragement of every secret vice and every servile
superstition which might emasculate the race and render it subservient
to authority;--except for these appalling evils, we have no right
perhaps to deplore the settlement of Italy by Charles V. in 1530, or the
course of subsequent events. For it is tolerably certain that some such
leveling down as then commenced was needed to bring the constituent
States of Italy into accord; and it is indubitable, as I have had
occasion to point out, that the political force which eventually
introduced Italy into the European system of federated nations, was
determined in its character, if not created, then. None the less, the
history of this period (1530-1600) in Italy is a prolonged, a solemn, an
inexpressibly heart-rending tragedy.
It is the tragic history of the eldest and most beautiful, the noblest
and most venerable, the freest and most gifted of Europe's daughters,
delivered over to the devilry that issued from the most incompetent and
arrogantly stupid of the European sisterhood, and to the cruelty,
inspired by panic, of an impious theocracy. When we use these terms to
designate the Papacy of the Counter-Reformation, it is not that we
forget how many of those Popes were men of blameless private life and
serious views for Catholic Christendom. When we use these terms to
designate the Spanish race in the sixteenth century, it is not that we
are ignorant of Spanish chivalry and colonizing enterprise, of Spanish
romance, or of the fact that Spain produced great painters, great
dramatists, and one great novelist in the brief period of her glory. We
use them deliberately, however, in both cases; because the Papacy at
this period committed itself to a policy of immoral, retrograde, and
cowardly repression of the most generous of human impulses under the
pressure of selfish terror; because the Spaniards abandoned themselves
to a dark fiend of religious fanaticism; because they were merciless in
their conquests and unintelligent in their administration of subjugated
provinces; because they glutted their lusts of avarice and hatred on
industrious folk of other creeds within their borders; because they
cultivated barren pride and self-conceit in social life; because at the
great epoch of Europe's reawakening they chose the wrong side and
adhered to it with fatal obstinacy. This obstinacy was disastrous to
their neighbors and ruinous to themselves. During the short period of
three reigns (between 1598 and 1700) they sank from the first to the
third grade in Europe, and saw the scepter passing in the New World from
their hands to those of more normally constituted races. That the
self-abandonment to sterilizing passions and ignoble persecutions which
marked Spain out for decay in the second half of the sixteenth century,
and rendered her the curse of her dependencies, can in part be ascribed
to the enthusiasm aroused in previous generations by the heroic conflict
with advancing Islam, is a thesis capable of demonstration. Yet none the
less is it true that her action at that period was calamitous to herself
and little short of destructive to Italy.
After the year 1530 seven Spanish devils entered Italy. These were the
devil of the Inquisition, with stake and torture-room, and war declared
against the will and soul and heart and intellect of man; the devil of
Jesuitry, with its sham learning, shameless lying, and casuistical
economy of sins; the devil of vice-royal rule, with its life-draining
monopolies and gross incapacity for government; the devil of an insolent
soldiery, quartered on the people, clamorous for pay, outrageous in
their lusts and violences; the devil of fantastical taxation, levying
tolls upon the bare necessities of life, and drying up the founts of
national well-being at their sources; the devil of petty-princedom,
wallowing in sloth and cruelty upon a pinchbeck throne; the devil of
effeminate hidalgoism, ruinous in expenditure, mean and grasping,
corrupt in private life, in public ostentatious, vain of titles,
cringing to its masters, arrogant to its inferiors. In their train these
brought with them seven other devils, their pernicious offspring:
idleness, disease, brigandage, destitution, ignorance, superstition,
hypocritically sanctioned vice. These fourteen devils were welcomed,
entertained, and voluptuously lodged in all the fairest provinces of
Italy. The Popes opened wide for them the gates of outraged and
depopulated Rome. Dukes and marquises fell down and worshiped the golden
image of the Spanish Belial-Moloch--that hideous idol whose face was
blackened with soot from burning human flesh, and whose skirts were
dabbled with the blood of thousands slain in wars of persecution. After
a tranquil sojourn of some years in Italy, these devils had everywhere
spread desolation and corruption. Broad regions, like the Patrimony of
S. Peter and Calabria, were given over to marauding bandits; wide tracks
of fertile country, like the Sienese Maremma, were abandoned to malaria;
wolves prowled through empty villages round Milan; in every city the
pestilence swept off its hundreds daily; manufactures, commerce,
agriculture, the industries of town and rural district, ceased; the
Courts swarmed with petty nobles, who vaunted paltry titles; and
resigned their wives to cicisbei and their sons to sloth: art and
learning languished; there was not a man who ventured to speak out his
thought or write the truth; and over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction
floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy.
CHAPTER II.
THE PAPACY AND THE TRIDENTINE COUNCIL.
The Counter-Reformation--Its Intellectual and Moral
Character--Causes of the Gradual Extinction of Renaissance
Energy--Transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic
Revival--New Religious Spirit in Italy--Attitude of Italians toward
German Reformation--Oratory of Divine Love--Gasparo Contarini and
the Moderate Reformers--New Religious Orders--Paul III.--His early
History and Education--Political Attitude between France and
Spain--Creation of the Duchy of Parma--Imminence of a General
Council--Review of previous Councils--Paul's Uneasiness--Opens a
Council at Trent in 1542--Protestants virtually excluded, and
Catholic Dogmas confirmed in the first Sessions--Death of Paul in
1549--Julius III.--Paul IV.--Character and Ruling Passions of G.P.
Caraffa--His Futile Opposition to Spain--Tyranny of his
Nephews--Their Downfall--Paul Devotes himself to Church Reform and
the Inquisition--Pius IV.--His Minister Morone--Diplomatic Temper
of this Pope--His Management of the Council--Assistance rendered by
his nephew Carlo Borromeo--Alarming State of Northern Europe--The
Council reopened at Trent in 1562--Subsequent History of the
Council--It closes with a complete Papal Triumph in 1563--Place of
Pius IV. in History--Pius V.--The Inquisitor Pope--Population of
Rome--Social Corruption--Sale of Offices and Justice--Tridentine
Reforms depress Wealth--Ascetic Purity of Manners becomes
fashionable--- Piety--The Catholic Reaction generates the
Counter-Reformation--Battle of Lepanto--Gregory XIII.--His
Relatives--Policy of Enriching the Church at Expense of the
Barons--Brigandage in States of the Church--Sixtus V.--His Stern
Justice--Rigid Economy--Great Public Works--Taxation--The City of
Rome assumes its present form--Nepotism in the Counter-Reformation
Period--Various Estimates of the Wealth accumulated by Papal
Nephews--Rise of Princely Roman Families.
It is not easy to define the intellectual and moral changes which passed
over Italy in the period of the Counter-Reformation[7]; it is still
less easy to refer those changes to distinct causes. Yet some analysis
tending toward such definition is demanded from a writer who has
undertaken to treat of Italian culture and manners between the years
1530 and 1600.
In the last chapter I attempted to describe the depth of servitude to
which the States of Italy were severally reduced at the end of the wars
between France and Spain. The desolation of the country, the loss of
national independence, and the dominance of an alien race, can be
counted among the most important of those influences which produced the
changes in question. Whatever opinions we may hold regarding the
connection between political autonomy and mental vigor in a people, it
can hardly be disputed that a sudden and universal extinction of liberty
must be injurious to arts and studies that have grown up under free
institutions.
But there were other causes at work. Among these a prominent place
should be given to an alteration in the intellectual interests of the
Italians themselves. The original impulses of the Renaissance, in
scholarship, painting, sculpture, architecture, and vernacular poetry,
had been exhausted.
[Footnote 7: I may here state that I intend to use this term
Counter-Reformation to denote the reform of the Catholic Church, which
was stimulated by the German Reformation, and which, when the Council of
Trent had fixed the dogmas and discipline of Latin Christianity, enabled
the Papacy to assume a militant policy in Europe, whereby it regained a
large portion of the provinces, that had previously lapsed to Lutheran
and Calvinistic dissent.]
Humanism, after recovering the classics and forming a new ideal of
culture, was sinking into pedantry and academic erudition. Painting and
sculpture, having culminated in the great work of Michelangelo, tended
toward a kind of empty mannerism. Architecture settled down into the
types fixed by Palladio and Barozzi. Poetry seemed to have reached its
highest point of development in Ariosto. The main motives supplied to
art by mediaeval traditions and humanistic enthusiasm were worked out.
Nor was this all. The Renaissance had created a critical spirit which
penetrated every branch of art and letters. It was not possible to
advance further on the old lines; yet painters, sculptors, architects,
and poets of the rising generation had before their eyes the
masterpieces of their predecessors, in their minds the precepts of the
learned. All alike were rendered awkward and self-conscious by the sense
of laboring at a disadvantage, and by the dread of academical
censorship.
In truth, this critical spirit, which was the final product of the
Renaissance in Italy, favored the development of new powers in the
nation: it hampered workers in the elder spheres of art, literature, and
scholarship; but it set thinkers upon the track of those investigations
which we call scientific. I shall endeavor, in a future chapter, to show
how the Italians were now upon the point of carrying the ardor of the
Renaissance into fresh fields of physical discovery and speculation,
when their evolution was suspended by the Catholic Reaction. But here
it must suffice to observe that formalism had succeeded by the operation
of natural influences to the vigor and inventiveness of the national
genius in the main departments of literature and fine art.
If we study the development of other European races, we shall find that
each of them in turn, at its due season, passed through similar phases.
The mediaeval period ends in the efflorescence of a new delightful
energy, which gives a Rabelais, a Shakspere, a Cervantes to the world.
The Renaissance riots itself away in Marinism, Gongorism, Euphuism, and
the affectations of the Hotel Rambouillet. This age is succeeded by a
colder, more critical, more formal age of obedience to fixed canons,
during which scholarly efforts are made to purify style and impose laws
on taste. The ensuing period of sense is also marked by profounder
inquiries into nature and more exact analysis of mental operations. The
correct school of poets, culminating in Dryden and Pope, holds sway in
England; while Newton, Locke, and Bentley extend the sphere of science.
In France the age of Rabelais and Montaigne yields place to the age of
Racine and Descartes. Germany was so distracted by religious wars, Spain
was so down-trodden by the Inquisition, that they do not offer equally
luminous examples.[8] It may be added that in all these nations the end
of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries are
marked by a similar revolt against formality and common sense, to which
we give the name of the Romantic movement.
[Footnote 8: With regard to Germany, see Mr. T. S. Perry's acute and
philosophical study, entitled _From Opitz to Lessing_ (Boston).]
Quitting this sphere of speculation, we may next point out that the
European system had undergone an incalculable process of transformation.
Powerful nationalities were in existence, who, having received their
education from Italy, were now beginning to think and express thought
with marked originality. The Italians stood no longer in a relation of
uncontested intellectual superiority to these peoples, while they met
them under decided disadvantages at all points of political efficiency.
The Mediterranean had ceased to be the high road of commercial
enterprise and naval energy. Charles V.'s famous device of the two
columns, with its motto _Plus Ultra_, indicated that illimitable
horizons had been opened, that an age had begun in which Spain, England
and Holland should dispute the sovereignty of the Atlantic and Pacific
oceans. Italy was left, with diminished forces of resistance, to bear
the brunt of Turk and Arab depredations. The point of gravity in the
civilized world had shifted. The Occidental nations looked no longer
toward the South of Europe.
While these various causes were in operation, Catholic Christianity
showed signs of re-wakening. The Reformation called forth a new and
sincere spirit in the Latin Church; new antagonisms were evoked, and
new efforts after self-preservation had to be made by the Papal
hierarchy. The center of the world-wide movement which is termed the
Counter-Reformation was naturally Rome. Events had brought the Holy See
once more into a position of prominence. It was more powerful as an
Italian State now, through the support of Spain and the extinction of
national independence, than at any previous period of history. In
Catholic Christendom its prestige was immensely augmented by the Council
of Trent. At the same epoch, the foreigners who dominated Italy, threw
themselves with the enthusiasm of fanaticism into this Revival. Spain
furnished Rome with the militia of the Jesuits and with the engines of
the Inquisition. The Papacy was thus able to secure successes in Italy
which were elsewhere only partially achieved. It followed that the
moral, social, political and intellectual activities of the Italians at
this period were controlled and colored by influences hostile to the
earlier Renaissance. Italy underwent a metamorphosis, prescribed by the
Papacy and enforced by Spanish rule. In the process of this
transformation the people submitted to rigid ecclesiastical discipline,
and adopted, without assimilating, the customs of a foreign troop of
despots.
At first sight we may wonder that the race which had shone with such
incomparable luster from Dante to Ariosto, and which had done so much to
create modern culture for Europe, should so quietly have accepted a
retrogressive revolution. Yet, when we look closer, this is not
surprising. The Italians were fatigued with creation, bewildered by the
complexity of their discoveries, uncertain as to the immediate course
before them. The Renaissance had been mainly the work of a select few.
It had transformed society without permeating the masses of the people.
Was it strange that the majority should reflect that, after all, the old
ways are the best? This led them to approve the Catholic Revival. Was it
strange that, after long distracting aimless wars, they should hail
peace at any price? This lent popular sanction to the Spanish hegemony,
in spite of its obvious drawbacks.
These may be reckoned the main conditions which gave a peculiar but not
easily definable complexion of languor, melancholy, and dwindling
vitality to nearly every manifestation of Italian genius in the second
half of the sixteenth century, and which well nigh sterilized that
genius during the two succeeding centuries. In common with the rest of
Europe, and in consequence of an inevitable alteration of their mental
bias, they had lost the blithe spontaneity of the Renaissance. But they
were at the same time suffering from grievous exhaustion, humiliated by
the tyranny of foreign despotism, and terrorized by ecclesiastical
intolerance. In their case, therefore, a sort of moral and intellectual
atrophy becomes gradually more and more perceptible. The clear artistic
sense of rightness and of beauty yields to doubtful taste. The frank
audacity of the Renaissance is superseded by cringing timidity,
lumbering dulness, somnolent and stagnant acquiescence in accepted
formulae. At first the best minds of the nation fret and rebel, and meet
with the dungeon or the stake as the reward of contumacy. In the end
everybody seems to be indifferent, satisfied with vacuity, enamored of
insipidity. The brightest episode in this dreary period is the emergence
of modern music with incomparable sweetness and lucidity.
It must not be supposed that the change which I have adumbrated, passed
rapidly over the Italian spirit. When Paul III. succeeded Clement on the
Papal throne in 1534, some of the giants of the Renaissance still
survived, and much of their great work was yet to be accomplished.
Michelangelo had neither painted the Last Judgment nor planned the
cupola which crowns S. Peter's. Cellini had not cast his Perseus for the
Loggia de'Lanzi, nor had Palladio raised San Giorgio from the sea at
Venice. Pietro Aretino still swaggered in lordly insolence; and though
Machiavelli was dead, the 'silver histories' of Guicciardini remained to
be written. Bandello, Giraldi and Il Lasca had not published their
Novelle, nor had Cecchi given the last touch to Florentine comedy. It
was chiefly at Venice, which preserved the ancient forms of her
oligarchical independence, that the grand style of the Renaissance
continued to flourish. Titian was in his prime; the stars of Tintoretto
and Veronese had scarcely risen above the horizon. Sansovino was still
producing masterpieces of picturesque beauty in architecture.
In order to understand the transition of Italy from the Renaissance to
the Counter-Reformation manner, it will be well to concentrate attention
on the history of the Papacy during the eight reigns of Paul III.,
Julius III., Paul IV., Pius IV., Pius V., Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., and
Clement VIII.[9] In the first of these reigns we hardly notice that the
Renaissance has passed away. In the last we are aware of a completely
altered Italy. And we perceive that this alteration has been chiefly due
to the ecclesiastical policy which brought the Council of Trent to a
successful issue in the reign of Pius IV.
[Footnote 9: These eight reigns cover a space of time from 1534 to
1605.]
Before engaging in this review of Papal history, I must give some brief
account of the more serious religious spirit which had been developed
within the Italian Church; since the determination of this spirit toward
rigid Catholicism in the second half of the sixteenth century decided
the character of Italian manners and culture. Protestantism in the
strict sense of the term took but little hold upon Italian society. It
is true that the minds of some philosophical students were deeply
stirred by the audacious discussion of theological principles in
Germany. Such men had been rendered receptive of new impressions by the
Platonizing speculations of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, as well as
by the criticism of the Bible in its original languages which formed a
subordinate branch of humanistic education. They had, furthermore, been
powerfully affected by the tribulations of Rome at the time of Bourbon's
occupation, and had grown to regard these as a divine chastisement
inflicted on the Church for its corruption and ungodliness. Lutheranism
so far influenced their opinions that they became convinced of the
necessity of a return to the simpler elements of Christianity in creed
and conduct. They considered a thorough-going reform of the hierarchy
and of all Catholic institutions to be indispensable. They leant,
moreover, with partiality to some of the essential tenets of the
Reformation, notably to the doctrines of justification by faith and
salvation by the merits of Christ, and also to the principle that
Scripture is the sole authority in matters of belief and discipline.
Thus both the Cardinals Morone and Contarini, the poet Flaminio, and the
nobles of the Colonna family in Naples who imbibed the teaching of
Valdes, fell under the suspicion of heterodoxy on these points. But it
was characteristic of the members of this school that they had no will
to withhold allegiance from the Pope as chief of Christendom. They
shrank with horror from the thought of encouraging a schism or of
severing themselves from the communion of Catholics. The essential
difference between Italian and Teutonic thinkers on such subjects at
this epoch seems to have been this: Italians could not cease to be
Catholics without at the same time ceasing to be Christians. They could
not accommodate their faith to any of the compromises suggested by the
Reformation. Even when they left their country in a spirit of rebellion,
they felt ill at ease both with Lutherans and Calvinists. Like
Bernardino Ochino and the Anti-Trinitarians of the Socinian sect, they
wandered restlessly through Europe, incapable of settling down in
communion with any one of the established forms of Protestantism. Calvin
at Geneva instituted a real crusade against Italian thinkers, who
differed from his views. He drove Valentino Gentile to death on the
scaffold; and expelled Gribaldi, Simone, Biandrata, Alciati, Negro. Most
of these men found refuge in Poland, Transylvania, even Turkey.[10]
There were bold speculators in Italy enough, who had practically
abandoned the Catholic faith. But the majority of these did not think it
worth their while to make an open rupture with the Church. Theological
hair-splitting reminded them only of the mediaeval scholasticism from
which they had been emancipated by classical culture. They were less
interested in questions touching the salvation of the individual or the
exact nature of the sacraments, than in metaphysical problems suggested
by the study of antique philosophers, or new theories of the material
universe.
[Footnote 10: See Berti's _Vita di G. Bruno_, pp. 105-108.]
The indifference of these men in religion rendered it easy for them to
conform in all external points to custom. Their fundamental axiom was
that a scientific thinker could hold one set of opinions as a
philosopher, and another set as a Christian. Their motto was the
celebrated _Foris ut moris, intus ut libet_.[11] Nor were ecclesiastical
authorities dissatisfied with this attitude during the ascendancy of
humanistic culture. It was, indeed, the attitude of Popes like Leo,
Cardinals like Bembo. And it only revealed its essential weakness when
the tide of general opinion, under the blast of Teutonic revolutionary
ideas, turned violently in favor of formal orthodoxy. Then indeed it
became dangerous to adopt the position of a Pomponazzo.
[Footnote 11: This maxim is ascribed to the materialistic philosopher
Cremonini.]
The mental attitude of such men is so well illustrated by a letter
written by Celio Calcagnini to Peregrino Morato, that I shall not
hesitate to transcribe it here. It seems that Morato had sent his
correspondent some treatise on the theological questions then in
dispute; and Calcagnini replies:
'I have read the book relating to the controversies so much agitated at
present. I have thought on its contents, and weighed them in the balance
of reason. I find in it nothing which may not be approved and defended,
but some things which, as mysteries, it is safer to suppress and conceal
than to bring before the common people, inasmuch as they pertained to
the primitive and infant state of the Church. Now, when the decrees of
the fathers and long usage have introduced other modes, what necessity
is there for reviving antiquated practices which have long fallen into
desuetude, especially as neither piety nor the salvation of the soul is
concerned with them? Let us, then, I pray you, allow these things to
rest. Not that I disapprove of their being embraced by scholars and
lovers of antiquity; but I would not have them communicated to the
common people and those who are fond of innovations, lest they give
occasion to strife and sedition. There are unlearned and unqualified
persons who having, after long ignorance, read or heard certain new
opinions respecting baptism, the marriage of the clergy, ordination, the
distinction of days and food, and public penitence, instantly conceive
that these things are to be stiffly maintained and observed. Wherefore,
in my opinion, the discussion of these points ought to be confined to
the initiated, that so the seamless coat of our Lord may not be rent and
torn.... Seeing it is dangerous to treat such things before the
multitude and in public discourses, I must deem it safest to "speak with
the many and think with the few," and to keep in mind the advice of
Paul, "Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God."'[12]
[Footnote 12: _C. Calcagnini Opera_, p. 195. I am indebted for the above
version to McCrie's _Reformation in Italy_, p. 183.]
The new religious spirit which I have attempted to characterize as
tinctured by Protestant opinions but disinclined for severance from
Rome, manifested itself about the same time in several groups. One of
them was at Rome, where a society named the Oratory of Divine Love,
including from fifty to sixty members, began to meet as early as the
reign of Leo X. in the Trastevere. This pious association included men
of very various kinds. Sadoleto, Giberto, and Contarini were here in
close intimacy with Gaetano di Thiene, the sainted founder of the
Theatines, and with his friend Caraffa, the founder of the Roman
Inquisition. Venice was the center of another group, among whom may be
mentioned Reginald Pole, Gasparo Contarini, Luigi Priuli, and Antonio
Bruccioli, the translator of the Bible from the original tongues into
Italian. The poet Marcantonio Flaminio became a member of both
societies; and was furthermore the personal friend of the Genoese
Cardinals Sauli and Fregoso, whom we have a right to count among
thinkers of the same class. Flaminio, though he died in the Catholic
communion, was so far suspected of heresy that his works were placed
upon the Index of 1559. In Naples Juan Valdes made himself the leader of
a similar set of men. His views, embodied in the work of a disciple, and
revised by Marcantonio Flaminio, _On the Benefits of Christ's Death_,
revealed strong Lutheran tendencies, which at a later period would
certainly have condemned him to perpetual imprisonment or exile. This
book had a wide circulation in Italy, and was influential in directing
the minds of thoughtful Christians to the problems of Justification. It
was ascribed to Aonio Paleario, who suffered martyrdom at Rome for
maintaining doctrines similar to those of Valdes.[13] Round him gathered
several members of the great Colonna family, notably Vespasiano, Duke of
Palliano, and his wife, the star of Italian beauty, Giulia Gonzaga.
Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, imbibed the new doctrines in
the same circle; and so did Bernardino Ochino. Modena could boast
another association, which met in the house of Grillenzone; while
Ferrara became the headquarters of a still more pronounced reforming
party under the patronage of the Duchess, Renee of France, daughter of
Louis XII. These various societies and coteries were bound together by
ties of friendship and literary correspondence, and were indirectly
connected with less fortunate reforming theologians; with Aonio
Paleario, Bernardino Ochino, Antonio dei Pagliaricci, Carnesecchi, and
others, whose tragic history will form a part of my chapter on the
Inquisition.
[Footnote 13: Though as many as 40,000 copies were published, this book
was so successfully stamped out that it seemed to be irrecoverably lost.
The library of St. John's College at Cambridge, however, contains two
Italian copies and one French copy. That of Laibach possesses an Italian
and a Croat version. Cantu, _Gli Eretici_, vol. i. p. 360.]
It does not fall within the province of this chapter to write an account
of what has, not very appropriately, been called the Reformation in
Italy. My purpose in the present book is, not to follow the fortunes of
Protestantism, but to trace the sequel of the Renaissance, the merging
of its impulse in new phases of European development. I shall therefore
content myself with pointing out that at the opening of Paul III.'s
reign, there was widely diffused throughout the chief Italian cities a
novel spirit of religious earnestness and enthusiasm, which as yet had
taken no determinate direction. This spirit burned most highly in
Gasparo Contarini, who in 1541 was commissioned by the Pope to attend a
conference at Rechensburg for the discussion of terms of reconciliation
with the Lutherans. He succeeded in drawing up satisfactory articles on
the main theological points regarding human nature, original sin,
redemption and justification. These were accepted by the Protestant
theologians at Rechensburg and might possibly have been ratified in
Rome, had not the Congress been broken up by Contarini's total failure
to accommodate differences touching the Pope's supremacy and the
conciliar principle.[14] He made concessions to the Reformers, which
roused the fury of the Roman Curia. At the same time political intrigues
were set on foot in France and Germany to avert a reconciliation which
would have immeasurably strengthened the Emperor's position. The
moderate sections of both parties, Lutheran and Catholic, failed at
Rechensburg. Indeed, it was inevitable that they should fail; for the
breach between the Roman Church and the Reformation was not of a nature
to be healed over at this date. Principles were involved which could not
now be harmonized, and both parties in the dispute were on the point of
developing their own forces with fresh internal vigor.
[Footnote 14: It should be observed, however, that Luther rejected the
article on justification, and that Caraffa in Rome used his influence to
prevent its acceptance by Paul III.]
The Italians who desired reform of the Church were now thrown back upon
the attempt to secure this object within the bosom of Catholicism. At
the request of Paul III. they presented a memorial on ecclesiastical
abuses, which was signed by Contarini, Caraffa, Sadoleto, Pole, Fregoso,
Giberto, Cortese and Aleander. These Cardinals did not spare plain
speech upon the burning problem of Papal misgovernment.
Meanwhile, the new spirit began to manifest itself in the foundation of
orders and institutions tending to purification of Church discipline.
The most notable of these was the order of Theatines established by
Thiene and Caraffa. Its object was to improve the secular priesthood,
with a view to which end seminaries were opened for the education of
priests, who took monastic vows and devoted themselves to special
observance of their clerical duties, as preachers, administrators of the
sacraments, visitors of the poor and sick.
A Venetian, Girolamo Miani, at the same period founded a congregation,
called the Somascan, for the education of the destitute and orphaned,
and for the reception of the sick and infirm into hospitals. The
terrible state in which Lombardy had been left by war rendered this
institution highly valuable. Of a similar type was the order of the
Barnabites, who were first incorporated at Milan, charged with the
performance of acts of mercy, education, preaching, and other forms of
Christian ministration. It may be finally added that the Camaldolese and
Franciscan orders had been in part reformed by a spontaneous movement
within their bodies.
If we compare the spirit indicated by these efforts in the first half of
the sixteenth century with that of the earlier Renaissance, it will be
evident that the Italians were ready for religious change. They sink,
however, into insignificance beside two Spanish institutions which about
the same period added their weight and influence to the Catholic
revival. I mean, of course, the Inquisition and the Jesuit order. Paul
III. empowered Caraffa in 1542 to re-establish the Inquisition in Rome
upon a new basis resembling that of the Spanish Holy Office. The same
Pope sanctioned and confirmed the Company of Jesus between the years
1540 and 1543. The establishment of the Inquisition gave vast
disciplinary powers to the Church at the moment when the Council of
Trent fixed her dogmas and proclaimed the absolute authority of the
Popes. At the same time the Jesuits, devoted by their founder in blind
obedience--_perinde ac cadaver_--to the service of the Papacy,
penetrated Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the transatlantic
colonies.
The Pope who succeeded Clement VII. in 1534 was in all ways fitted to
represent the transition which I have indicated. Alessandro Farnese
sprang from an ancient but decayed family in the neighborhood of
Bolsena, several of whose members had played a foremost part in the
mediaeval revolutions of Orvieto. While still a young man of
twenty-five, he was raised to the Cardinalate by Alexander VI. This
advancement he owed to the influence of his sister Giulia, surnamed La
Bella, who was then the Borgia's mistress. It is characteristic of an
epoch during which the bold traditions of the fifteenth century still
lingered, that the undraped statue of this Giulia (representing Vanity)
was carved for the basement of Paul III.'s monument in the choir of S.
Peter's. The old stock of the Farnesi, once planted in the soil of Papal
corruption at its most licentious period, struck firm roots and
flourished. Alessandro was born in 1468, and received a humanistic
education according to the methods of the earlier Renaissance. He
studied literature with Pomponius Laetus in the Roman Academy, and
frequented the gardens of Lorenzo de'Medici at Florence. His character
and intellect were thus formed under the influences of the classical
revival and of the Pontifical Curia, at a time when pagan morality and
secular policy had obliterated the ideal of Catholic Christianity. His
sister was the Du Barry of the Borgian Court. He was himself the father
of several illegitimate children, whom he acknowledged, and on whose
advancement by the old system of Papal nepotism he spent the best years
of his reign. Both as a patron of the arts and as an elegant scholar in
the Latin and Italian languages, Alessandro showed throughout his life
the effects of this early training. He piqued himself on choice
expression, whenever he was called upon to use the pen in studied
documents, or to answer ambassadors in public audiences. To his taste
and love of splendor Rome owes the Farnese palace. He employed Cellini,
and forced Michelangelo to paint the Last Judgment. On ascending the
Papal throne he complained that this mighty genius had been too long
occupied for Delia Roveres and Medici. When the fresco was finished, he
set the old artist upon his last great task of completing S. Peter's.
So far there was nothing to distinguish Alessandro Farnese from other
ecclesiastics of the Renaissance. As Cardinal he seemed destined, should
he ever attain the Papal dignity, to combine the qualities of the
Borgian and Medicean Pontiffs. But before his elevation to that supreme
height, he lived through the reigns of Julius II., Leo X., Adrian VI.,
and Clement VII. Herein lies the peculiarity of his position as Paul
III. The pupil of Pomponius Laetus, the creature of Roderigo Borgia, the
representative of Italian manners and culture before the age of foreign
invasion had changed the face of Italy, Paul III. was called at the age
of sixty-six to steer the ship of the Church through troubled waters and
in very altered circumstances. He had witnessed the rise and progress of
Protestant revolt in Germany. He had observed the stirrings of a new and
sincere spirit of religious gravity, an earnest desire for
ecclesiastical reform in his own country. He had watched the duel
between France and Spain, during the course of which his predecessors
Alexander V. and Julius II. restored the secular authority of Rome. He
had seen that authority humbled to the dust in 1527, and miraculously
rehabilitated at Bologna in 1530. He had learned by the example of the
Borgias how difficult it was for any Papal family to found a substantial
principality; and the vicissitudes of Florence and Urbino had confirmed
this lesson. Finally, he had assisted at the coronation of Charles V.;
and when he took the reins of power into his hands, he was well aware
with what a formidable force he had to cope in the great Emperor.
Paul III. knew that the old Papal game of pitting France against Spain
in the peninsula could not be played on the same grand scale as
formerly. This policy had been pursued with results ruinous to Italy but
favorable to the Church, by Julius. It had enabled Leo and Clement to
advance their families at the hazard of more important interests. But in
the reign of the latter Pope it had all but involved the Papacy itself
in the general confusion and desolation of the country. Moreover, France
was no longer an effective match for Spain; and though their struggle
was renewed, the issue was hardly doubtful. Spain had got too firm a
grip upon the land to be cast off.
Yet Paul was a man of the elder generation. It could not be expected
that a Pope of the Renaissance should suddenly abandon the mediaeval
policy of Papal hostility to the Empire, especially when the Empire was
in the hands of so omnipotent a master as Charles. It could not be
expected that he should recognize the wisdom of confining Papal ambition
to ecclesiastical interests, and of forming a defensive and offensive
alliance with Catholic sovereigns for the maintenance of absolutism. It
could not be expected that he should forego the pleasures and apparent
profits of creating duchies for his bastards, whereby to dignify his
family and strengthen his personal authority as a temporal sovereign. It
is true that the experience of the last half century had pointed in the
direction of all these changes; and it is certain that the series of
events connected with the Council of Trent, which began in Paul III.'s
reign, rendered them both natural and necessary. Yet Paul, as a man of
the elder generation filling the Papal throne for fifteen years during a
period of transition, adhered in the main to the policy of his
predecessors. It was fortunate for him and for the Holy See that the
basis of his character was caution combined with tough tenacity of
purpose, capacity for dilatory action, diplomatic shiftiness and a
political versatility that can best be described by the word trimming.
These qualities enabled him to pass with safety through perils that
might have ruined a bolder, a hastier, or a franker Pope, and to achieve
the object of his heart's desire, where stronger men had failed, in the
foundation of a solid duchy for his heirs.
Paul's jealousy of the Spanish ascendancy in Italian affairs caused him
to waver between the Papal and Imperial, Guelf and Ghibelline, parties.
These names had lost much of their significance; but the habit of
distinction into two camps was so rooted in Italian manners, that each
city counted its antagonistic factions, maintained by various forms of
local organization and headed by the leading families.[15] Burigozzo,
under the year 1517, tells how the whole population of Milan was divided
between Guelfs and Ghibellines, wearing different costumes; and it is
not uncommon to read of petty nobles in the country at this period, who
were styled Captains of one or the other party.
[Footnote 15: See Bruno's _Cena delle Ceneri_, ed. Wagner, vol. i. p.
133, for a humorous story illustrative of the state of things ensuing
among the lower Italian classes.]
The wars between France and Spain revived the almost obsolete dispute,
which the despots of the fifteenth century and the diplomatic
confederation of the five great powers had tended in large measure to
erase. The Guelfs and Ghibellines were now partisans of France and
Spain respectively. Thus a true political importance was regained for
the time-honored factions; and in the distracted state of Italy they
were further intensified by the antagonism between exiles and the ruling
families in cities. If Cosimo de'Medici, for example, was a Ghibelline
or Spanish partisan, it followed as a matter of course that Filippo
Strozzi was a Guelf and stood for France. Paul III. managed to maintain
himself by manipulating these factions and holding the balance between
them for the advantage of his family and of the Church.
He thus succeeded in creating the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza for his
son, Pier Luigi Farnese, that outrageous representative of the worst
vices and worst violences of the Renaissance. It will be remembered that
Julius had detached these two cities from the Duchy of Milan, and
annexed them to the Papal States, on the plea that they formed part of
the old Exarchate of Ravenna. When Charles decided against this plea in
the matter of Modena and Reggio, he left the Church in occupation of
Parma and Piacenza. Paul created his son Duke of Nepi and Castro in
1537, and afterwards conferred the Duchy of Camerino on his grandson,
Ottavio, who was then married to Margaret of Austria, daughter of
Charles V., and widow of the murdered Alessandro de'Medici. The usual
system of massacre, exile, and confiscation had reduced the signorial
family of the Varani at Camerino to extremities. The fief reverted to
the Church, and Paul induced the Cardinals to sanction his investiture
of Ottavio Farnese with its rights and honors. He subsequently explained
to them that it would be more profitable for the Holy See to retain
Camerino and to relinquish Parma and Piacenza to the Farnesi in
exchange. There was sense in this arrangement; for Camerino formed an
integral part of the Papal States, while Parma and Piacenza were held
under a more than doubtful title. Pier Luigi did not long survive his
elevation to the dukedom of Parma. He was murdered by his exasperated
subjects in 1547. His son, Ottavio, with some difficulty, maintained his
hold upon this principality, until in 1559 he established himself and
his heirs, with the approval of Philip II., in its perpetual enjoyment.
The Farnesi repaid Spanish patronage by constant service, Alessandro,
Prince of Parma, and son of Ottavio, being illustrious in the annals of
the Netherlands. It would not have been worth while to enlarge on this
foundation of the Duchy of Parma, had it not furnished an excellent
example of my theme. By this act Paul III. proved himself a true and
able inheritor of those political traditions by which all Pontiffs from
Sixtus IV. to Clement VII. had sought to establish their relatives in
secular princedoms. It was the last eminent exhibition of that policy,
the last and the most brilliant display of nepotistical ambition in a
Pope. A new age had opened, in which such schemes became
impossible--when Popes could no longer dare to acknowledge and
legitimize their bastards, and when they had to administer their
dominions exclusively for the temporal and ecclesiastical aggrandizement
of the tiara.
Nevertheless, Paul was living under the conditions which brought this
modern attitude of the Papacy into potent actuality. He was surrounded
by intellectual and moral forces of recent growth but of incalculable
potency. One of the first acts of his reign was to advance six members
of the moderate reforming party--Sadoleto, Pole, Giberto, Federigo,
Fregoso, Gasparo Contarini, and G.M. Caraffa--to the Cardinalate. By
this exercise of power he showed his willingness to recognize new
elements of very various qualities in the Catholic hierarchy. Five of
these men represented opinions which at the moment of their elevation to
the purple had a fair prospect of ultimate success. Imbued with a
profound sense of the need for ecclesiastical reform, and tinctured more
or less deeply with so-called Protestant opinions, they desired nothing
more intensely than a reconstitution of the Catholic Church upon a basis
which might render reconciliation with the Lutherans practicable. They
had their opportunity during the pontificate of Paul III. It was a
splendid one; and, as I have already shown, the Conference of
Rechensburg only just failed in securing the end they so profoundly
desired. But the Papacy was not prepared to concede so much as they were
anxious to grant: the German Reformers proved intractable; they were
themselves impeded by their loyalty to antique Catholic traditions, and
by their dread of a schism; finally, the militant expansive force of
Spanish orthodoxy, expressing itself already in the concentrated energy
of the Jesuit order, rendered attempts at fusion impossible. The victory
in Rome remained with the faction of _intransigeant_ Catholics; and
this was represented, in Paul III.'s first creation of Cardinals, by
Caraffa. Caraffa was destined to play a singular part in the transition
period of Papal history which I am reviewing. He belonged as essentially
to the future as Alessandro Farnese belonged to the past. He embodied
the spirit of the Inquisition, and upheld the principles of
ecclesiastical reform upon the narrow basis of Papal absolutism. He
openly signalized his disapproval of Paul's nepotism; and when his time
for ruling came, he displayed a remorseless spirit of justice without
mercy in dealing with his own family. Yet he hated the Spanish
ascendancy with a hatred far more fierce and bitter than that of Paul
III. His ineffectual efforts to shake off the yoke of Philip II. was the
last spasm of the older Papal policy of resistance to temporal
sovereigns, the last appeal made in pursuance of that policy to France
by an Italian Pontiff.[16]
[Footnote 16: Paul IV. as Pope was feeble compared with his
predecessors, Julius II. and Leo X.; the Guises, on whom he relied for
resuscitating the old French party in the South, were but
half-successful adventurers, mere shadows of the Angevine invaders whom
they professed to represent.]
The object of this excursion into the coming period is to show in how
deep a sense Paul III. may be regarded as the beginner of a new era,
while he was at the same time the last continuator of the old. The
Cardinals whom he promoted on his accession included the chief of those
men who strove in vain for a concordat between Rome and Reformation; it
also included the man who stamped Rome with the impress of the
Counter-Reformation. Yet Caraffa would not have had the fulcrum needed
for this decisive exertion of power, had it not been for another act of
Paul's reign. This was the convening of a Council at Trent. Paul's
attitude toward the Council, which he summoned with reluctance, which he
frustrated as far as in him lay, and the final outcome of which he was
far from anticipating, illustrates in a most decisive manner his destiny
as Pope of the transition.
The very name of a Council was an abomination to the Papacy. This will
be apparent if we consider the previous history of the Church during the
first half of the fifteenth century, when the conciliar authority was
again invoked to regulate the Papal See and to check Papal encroachments
on the realms and Churches of the Western nations. The removal of the
Papal Court to Avignon, the great schism which resulted from this
measure, and the dissent which spread from England to Bohemia at the
close of the fourteenth century, rendered it necessary that the
representative powers of Christendom should combine for the purpose of
restoring order in the Church. Four main points lay before the powers of
Europe, thus brought for the first time into deliberative and
confederated congress to settle questions that vitally concerned them.
The most immediately urgent was the termination of the schism, and the
appointment of one Pope, who should represent the mediaeval idea of
ecclesiastical face to face with imperial unity. The second was the
definition of the indeterminate and ever-widening authority which the
Popes asserted over the kingdoms and the Churches of the West. The third
was the eradication of heresies which were rending Christendom asunder
and threatening to destroy that ideal of unity in creed to which the
Middle Ages clung with not unreasonable passion. The fourth was a reform
of the Church, considered as a vital element of Western Christendom, in
its head and in its members.
The programme, very indistinctly formulated by the most advanced
thinkers of the age, and only gradually developed by practice into
actuality, was a vast one. It involved the embitterment of national
jealousies, the accentuation of national characteristics, and the
complication of antagonistic principles regarding secular and
ecclesiastical government, which rendered a complete and satisfactory
solution well-nigh impracticable. The effort to solve these problems
had, however, important influence in creating conditions under which the
politico-religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
were conducted.[17]
The first Council, opened at Pisa in 1409, was a congress of prelates
summoned by Cardinals for the conclusion of the schism. It deposed two
Popes, who still continued to assert their titles; it elected a third,
Alexander V., who had no real authority. For the rest, it effected no
reform, and cannot be said to have done much more than to give effect to
those aspirations after Church-government by means of Councils which had
been slowly forming during the continuance of the schism.
The second Council, opened at Constance in 1414, was a Council not
convened by Cardinals, but by the universal demand of Europe that the
advances of the Papacy toward tyranny should be checked, and that the
innumerable abuses of the Church and Papal Curia should be reformed. It
received a different complexion from that of Pisa, through the
presidency of the Emperor and the attendance of representatives from the
chief nations. At Constance the Papacy and the Roman Curia stood
together, exposed to the hostile criticism of Europe. The authority of a
General Council was, after a sharp conflict, decreed superior to that of
the Bishop of Rome. Three Popes were forced to abdicate; and a fourth,
Martin V., was elected.
[Footnote 17: The best account of the Councils will be found in
Professor Creighton's admirable _History of the Papacy during the
Reformation_, 2 vols. Longmans.]
The Council further undertook to deal with heresy and with the reform of
the Church. It discharged the first of these offices by condemning Hus
and Jerome of Prague to the stake. It left the second practically
untouched. Yet the question of reform had been gravely raised, largely
discussed, and fundamentally examined. Two methods were posed at
Constance for the future consideration of earnest thinkers throughout
Europe. One was the way suggested by John Hus; that the Church should be
reconstituted, after a searching analysis of the real bases of Christian
conduct, an appeal to Scripture as the final authority, and a loyal
endeavor to satisfy the spiritual requirements of individual souls and
consciences. The second plan was that of inquiry into the existing order
of the Church and detailed amendment of its flagrant faults, with
preservation of the main system. The Council adopted satisfactory
measures of reform on neither of these methods. It contented itself with
stipulations and concordats, guaranteeing special privileges to the
Churches of the several nations. But in the following century it became
manifest that the Teutonic races had declared for the method suggested
by Hus; while the Latin races, in the Council of Trent, undertook a
purgation of the Church upon the second of the two plans. The
Reformation was the visible outcome of the one, the Counter-Reformation
of the other method.
The Council of Constance was thus important in causing the recognition
of a single Pope, and in ventilating the divergent theories upon which
the question of reform was afterwards to be disputed. But perhaps the
most significant fact it brought into relief was the new phase of
political existence into which the European races had entered.
Nationality, as the main principle of modern history, was now
established; and the diplomatic relations of sovereigns as the
representatives of peoples were shown to be of overwhelming weight. The
visionary mediaeval polity of Emperor and Pope faded away before the
vivid actuality of full-formed individual nations, federally connected,
controlled by common but reciprocally hostile interests.[18]
The Council of Basel, opened in 1431, was in appearance a continuation
of the Council of Constance. But its method of procedure ran counter to
the new direction which had been communicated to European federacy by
the action of the Constance congress. There the votes had been taken by
nations. At Basel they were taken by men, after the questions to be
decided had been previously discussed by special congregations and
committees deputed for preliminary deliberations. It soon appeared that
the fathers of the Basel Council aimed at opposing a lawfully-elected
Pope, and sought to assume the, administration of the Church into their
own hands.
[Footnote 18: See above, p. 2, for the special sense in which I apply
the word federation to Italy before 1530, and to Europe at large in the
modern period.]
Their struggle with Eugenius IV., their election of an antipope, Felix
V., and their manifest tendency to substitute oligarchical for Papal
tyranny in the Church, had the effect of bringing the conciliar
principle itself into disfavor with the European powers. The first
symptom of this repudiation of the Council by Europe was shown in the
neutrality proclaimed by Germany. The attitude of other Courts and
nations proved that the Western races were for the moment prepared to
leave the Papal question open on the basis supplied by the Council of
Constance.
The result of this failure of the conciliar principle at Basel was that
Nicholas V. inaugurated a new age for the Papacy in Rome. I have already
described the chief features of the Papal government from his election
to the death of Clement VII. It was a period of unexampled splendor for
the Holy See, and of substantial temporal conquests. The second Council
of Pisa, which began its sittings, in 1511 under French sanction and
support, exercised no disastrous influence over the restored powers and
prestige of the Papacy. On the contrary, it gave occasion for a
counter-council, held at the Lateran under the auspices of Julius II.
and Leo X., in which the Popes established several points of
ecclesiastical discipline that were not without value to their
successors. But the leaven which had been scattered by Wyclif and Hus,
of which the Council of Constance had taken cognizance, but which had
not been extirpated, was spreading in Germany throughout this period.
The Popes themselves were doing all in their power to propagate dissent
and discontent. Well aware of the fierce light cast by the new learning
they had helped to disseminate, upon the dark places of their own
ecclesiastical administration, they still continued to raise money by
the sale of pardons and indulgences, to bleed their Christian flocks by
monstrous engines of taxation, and to offend the conscience of an
intelligent generation by their example of ungodly living. The
Reformation ran like wild-fire through the North. It grew daily more
obvious that a new Council must be summoned for carrying out measures of
internal reform, and for coping with the forces of belligerent
Protestantism. When things had reached this point, Charles V. declared
his earnest desire that the Pope should summon a General Council. Paul
III. now showed in how true a sense he was the man of a transitional
epoch. So long as possible he resisted, remembering to what straits his
predecessors had been reduced by previous Councils, and being deeply
conscious of scandals in his own domestic affairs which might expose him
to the fate of a John XXIII. Reviewing the whole series of events which
have next to be recorded, we are aware that Paul had no great cause for
agitation. The Council he so much dreaded was destined to exalt his
office, and to recombine the forces of Catholic Christendom under the
absolute supremacy of his successors. The Inquisition and the Company
of Jesus, both of which he sanctioned at this juncture, were to guard,
extend, and corroborate that supreme authority. But this was by no means
apparent in 1540. It is a character of all transitional periods that in
them the cautious men regard past precedents of peril rather than
sanguine expectations based on present chances. A hero, in such passes,
goes to meet the danger armed with his own cause and courage. A genius
divines the future, and interprets it, and through interpretation tries
to govern it. Paul was neither a hero nor a man of genius. Yet he did as
much as either could have done; and he did it in a temper which perhaps
the hero and the genius could not have commanded. He sent Legates to
publish the opening of a Council at Trent in the spring of 1545; and he
resolved to work this Council on the principles of diplomatical
conservatism, reserving for himself the power of watching events and of
enlarging or restricting its efficiency as might seem best to him.[19]
[Footnote 19: The first official opening of the Council at Trent was in
November 1542, by Cardinals Pole and Morone as Legates. It was adjourned
in July, 1543, on account of insufficient attendance. When it again
opened in 1545, Pole reappeared as Legate. With him were associated two
future Popes, Giov. Maria del Monte (Julius III.), and Marcello Cervini
(Marcellus II.) The first session of the Council took place in December,
1545, four Cardinals, four Archbishops, twenty-one Bishops, and five
Generals of Orders attending. Among these were only five Spanish and two
French prelates; no German, unless we count Cristoforo Madrazzo, the
Cardinal Bishop of Trent, as one. No Protestants appeared; for Paul III.
had successfully opposed their ultimatum, which demanded that final
appeal on all debated points should be made to the sole authority of
Holy Scripture.]
It is singular that the Council thus reluctantly conceded by Paul III.
should, during its first sessions and while he yet reigned, have
confirmed the dogmatic foundations of modern Catholicism, made
reconciliation with the Teutonic Reformers impossible, and committed the
secular powers which held with Rome to a policy that rendered the Papal
supremacy incontestable.[20] Face to face with the burning question of
the Protestant rebellion, the Tridentine fathers hastened to confirm the
following articles. First, they declared that divine revelation was
continuous in the Church of which the Pope was head; and that the chief
written depository of this revelation--namely, the Scriptures--had no
authority except in the version of the Vulgate.
[Footnote 20: Throughout the sessions of the Council, Spanish, French,
and German representatives, whether fathers or ambassadors, maintained
the theory of Papal subjection to conciliar authority. The Spanish and
French were unanimous in zeal for episcopal independence. The French and
German were united in a wish to favor Protestants by reasonable
concessions. Thus the Papal supremacy had to face serious antagonism,
which it eventually conquered by the numerical preponderance of the
Italian prelates, by the energy of the Jesuits, by diplomatic intrigues,
and by manipulation of discords in the opposition. Though the Spanish
fathers held with the French and German on the points of episcopal
independence and conciliar authority, they disagreed whenever it became
a question of compromise with Protestants upon details of dogma or
ritual. The Papal Court persuaded the Catholic sovereigns of Spain and
France, and the Emperor, that episcopal independence would be dangerous
to their own prerogatives; and at every inconvenient turn in affairs, it
was made clear that Catholic sovereigns, threatened by the Protestant
revolution, could not afford to separate their cause from that of the
Pope.]
Secondly, they condemned the doctrine of Justification by Faith, adding
such theological qualifications and reservations as need not, at this
distance of time, and on a point devoid of present actuality, be
scrupulously entertained. Thirdly, they confirmed the efficacy and the
binding authority of the Seven Sacraments. It is thus clear that, on
points of dogma, the Council convened by Pope and Emperor committed
Latin Christianity to a definite repudiation of the main articles for
which Luther had contended. Each of these points they successively
traversed, foreclosing every loophole for escape into accommodation. It
was in large measure due to Caraffa's energy and ability that these
results were attained.
The method of procedure adopted by the Council, and the temper in which
its business was conducted, were no less favorable to the Papacy than
the authoritative sanction which it gave to dogmas. From the first, the
presidency and right of initiative in its sessions were conceded to the
Papal Legates; and it soon became customary to refer decrees, before
they were promulgated, to his Holiness in Rome for approval. The decrees
themselves were elaborated in three congregations, one appointed for
theological questions, the second for reforms, the third for supervision
and ratification. They were then proposed for discussion and acceptance
in general sessions of the Council. Here each vote told; and as there
was a standing majority of Italian prelates, it required but little
dexterity to secure the passing of any measure upon which the Court of
Rome insisted. The most formidable opposition to the Papal prerogatives
during these manoeuvres proceeded from the Spanish bishops, who urged
the introduction of reforms securing the independence of the episcopacy.
We find a remarkable demonstration of Paul III.'s difficulties as Pope
of the transition, in the fact that while the Council of Trent was
waging this uncompromising war against Reformers, his dread of Charles
V. compelled him to suspend its sessions, transfer it to Bologna, and
declare himself the political ally of German Protestants. This
transference took place in 1547. His Legates received orders to invent
some decent excuse for a step which would certainly be resisted, since
Bologna was a city altogether subject to the Holy See. The Legates, by
the connivance of the physicians in Trent, managed to create a panic of
contagious epidemic.[21] Charles had won victories which seemed to place
Germany at his discretion. His preponderance in Italy was thereby
dangerously augmented. Paul, following the precedents of policy in which
he had been bred, thought it at this crisis necessary to subordinate
ecclesiastical to temporal interests. He interrupted the proceedings of
the Council in order to hamper the Emperor in Germany. He encouraged the
Northern Protestants in order that he might maintain an open issue in
the loins of his Spanish rival. Nothing could more delicately illustrate
the complications of European politics than the inverted attitude
assumed by the Roman Pontiff in his dealings with a Catholic Emperor at
this moment of time.[22]
[Footnote 21: See Sarpi, p. 249.]
[Footnote 22: Charles, at this juncture, was checkmated by Paul through
his own inability to dispense with the Pope's co-operation as chief of
the Catholic Church. So long as he opposed the Reformation, it was
impossible for him to assume an attitude of violent hostility to Rome.]
The opposition of the Farnesi to Paul's scheme for restoring Parma to
the Holy See in 1549, broke Paul III.'s health and spirits. He died on
November 10, and was succeeded by the Cardinal Giovanni Maria del Monte,
of whose reign little need be said. Julius III. removed the Council from
Bologna to Trent in 1551, where it made some progress in questions
touching the Eucharist and the administration of episcopal sees; but in
the next year its sessions were suspended, owing to the disturbed state
of Southern Germany and the presence of a Protestant army under Maurice
of Saxony in the Tyrol.[23] This Pope passed his time agreeably and
innocently enough in the villa which he built near the Porta del Popolo.
His relatives were invested with several petty fiefs--that of their
birthplace, Monte Sansovino, by Cosimo de'Medici; that of Novara by the
Emperor, and that of Camerino by the Church. The old methods of Papal
nepotism were not as yet abandoned. His successor, Marcello II.,
survived his elevation only three weeks; and in May 1555, Giovanni
Pietro Caraffa was elected, with the title of Paul IV. We have already
made the acquaintance of this Pope as a member of the Oratory of Divine
Love, as a co-founder of the Theatines, as the organizer of the Roman
Inquisition, and as a leader in the first sessions of the Tridentine
Council. Paul IV. sprang from a high and puissant family of Naples. He
was a man of fierce, impulsive and uncompromising temper, animated by
two ruling passions--burning hatred for the Spaniards who were trampling
on his native land, and ecclesiastical ambition intensified by rigid
Catholic orthodoxy. The first act of his reign was a vain effort to
expel the Spaniards from Italy by resorting to the old device of French
assistance. The abdication of Charles V. had placed Philip II. on the
throne of Spain, and the settlement whereby the Imperial crown passed to
his brother Ferdinand had substituted a feeble for a powerful Emperor.
But Philip's disengagement from the cares of Germany left him more at
liberty to maintain his preponderance in Southern Europe. It was
fortunate for Paul IV. that Philip was a bigoted Catholic and a
superstitiously obedient son of the Church. These two potentates,
who began to reign in the same year, were destined, after the
settlement of their early quarrel, to lead and organize the Catholic
Counter-Reformation. The Duke of Guise at the Pope's request marched a
French army into Italy. Paul raised a body of mercenaries, who were
chiefly German Protestants[24]; and opened negotiations with Soliman,
entreating the Turk to make a descent on Sicily by sea. Into such a
fantastically false position was the Chief of the Church, the most
Catholic of all her Pontiffs, driven by his jealous patriotism. We seem
to be transported back into the times of a Sixtus IV. or an Alexander
VI. And in truth, Paul's reversion to the antiquated Guelf policy of his
predecessors was an anachronism. That policy ceased to be efficient when
Francis I. signed the Treaty of Cambray; the Church, too, had gradually
assumed such a position that armed interference in the affairs of
secular sovereigns was suicidal. This became so manifest that Paul's
futile attack on Philip in 1556 may be reckoned the last war raised by a
Pope. From it we date the commencement of a new system of Papal
co-operation with Catholic powers.
[Footnote 23: During the brief and unimportant sessions at Bologna,
Jesuit influences began to make themselves decidedly felt in the
Council, where Lainez and Salmeron attended as Theologians of the Papal
See. Up to this time the Dominicans had shaped decrees. Dogmatic
orthodoxy was secured by their means. Now the Jesuits were to fight and
win the battle of Papal Supremacy.]
[Footnote 24: Sarpi, quoted in his Life by Fra Fulgenzio, p. 83, says
Paul called his Grisons mercenaries 'Angels sent from Heaven.']
The Duke of Alva put the forces at his disposal in the Two Sicilies into
motion, and advanced to meet the Duke of Guise. But while the campaign
dragged on, Philip won the decisive battle of S. Quentin. The Guise
hurried back to France, and Alva marched unresisted upon Rome. There was
no reason why the Eternal City should not have been subjected to another
siege and sack. The will was certainly not wanting in Alva to humiliate
the Pope, who never spoke of Spaniards but as renegade Jews, Marrani,
heretics, and personifications of pride. Philip, however, wrote
reminding his general that the date of his birth (1527) was that of
Rome's calamity, and vowing that he would not signalize the first year
of his reign by inflicting fresh miseries upon the capital of
Christendom. Alva was ordered to make peace on terms both honorable and
advantageous to his Holiness; since the King of Spain preferred to lose
the rights of his own crown rather than to impair those of the Holy See
in the least particular. Consequently, when Alva entered Rome in
peaceful pomp, he did homage for his master to the Pope, who was
generously willing to absolve him for his past offences. Paul IV.
publicly exulted in the abasement of his conquerors, declaring that it
would teach kings in future the obedience they owed to the Chief of the
Church. But Alva did not conceal his discontent. It would have been
better, he said, to have sent the Pope to sue for peace and pardon at
Brussels, than to allow him to obtain the one and grant the other on
these terms.
Paul's ambition to expel the Spaniards from Italy exposed him to the
worst abuses of that Papal nepotism which he had denounced in others. He
judged it necessary to surround himself with trusty and powerful agents
of his own kindred.[25]
[Footnote 25: New men--and Popes were always _novi homines_--are
compelled to take this course, and suffer when they take it. We might
compare their difficulties with those which hampered Napoleon when he
aspired to the Imperial tyranny over French conquests in Europe.]
With that view he raised one of his nephews, Carlo, to the Cardinalate,
and bestowed on two others the principal fiefs of the Colonna family.
The Colonnas were by tradition Ghibelline. This sufficed for depriving
them of Palliano and Montebello. Carlo Caraffa, who obtained the
scarlet, had lived a disreputable life which notoriously unfitted him
for any ecclesiastical dignity. In the days of Sixtus and Alexander this
would have been no bar to his promotion. But the Church was rapidly
undergoing a change; and Carlo, complying with the hypocritical spirit
of his age, found it convenient to affect a thorough reformation, and to
make open show of penitence. Rome now presented the singular spectacle
of an inquisitorial Pope, unimpeachable in moral conduct and zealous for
Church reform, surrounded by nephews who were little better than
Borgias. The Caraffas began to dream of principalities and scepters. It
was their ambition to lay hold on Florence, where Cosimo de'Medici, as
a pronounced ally of Spain, had gained the bitter hatred of their uncle.
But their various misdoings, acts of violence and oppression, avarice
and sensuality, gradually reached the ears of the Pope. In an assembly
of the Inquisition, held in January 1559, he cried aloud, 'Reform!
reform! reform!' Cardinal Pacheco, a determined foe of the Caraffeschi,
raised his voice, and said, 'Holy Father! reform must first begin with
us.' Pallavicini adds the remark that Paul understood well who was meant
by _us_. He immediately retired to his apartments, instituted a
searching inquiry into the conduct of his nephews, and, before the month
was out, deprived them of all their offices and honors, and banished
them from Rome. He would not hear a word in their defence; and when
Cardinal Farnese endeavored to procure a mitigation of their sentence,
he brutally replied, 'If Paul III. had shown the same justice, your
father would not have been murdered and mutilated in the streets of
Piacenza.' In open consistory, before the Cardinals and high officials
of his realm, with tears streaming from his eyes, he exposed the evil
life of his relatives, declared his abhorrence of them, and protested
that he had dwelt in perfect ignorance of their crimes until that time.
This scene recalls a similar occasion, when Alexander VI. bewailed
himself aloud before his Cardinals after the murder of the Duke of
Gandia by Cesare. But Alexander's repentance was momentary; his grief
was that of a father for Absalom; his indignation gave way to paternal
weakness for the fratricide. Paul, though his love for his relatives
seems to have been fervent, never relaxed his first severity against
them. They were buried in oblivion; no one uttered their names in the
Pope's presence. The whole secular administration of the Papal States
was changed; not an official kept his place. For the first time Rome was
governed by ministers in no way related to the Holy Father.
Paul now turned his attention, with the fiery passion that
distinguished him, to the reformation of ecclesiastical abuses. On his
accession he had published a Bull declaring that this would be a
principal object of his reign. Nor had he in the midst of other
occupations forgotten his engagement. A Congregation specially appointed
for examining, classifying, and remedying such abuses had been
established. It was divided into three committees, consisting of eight
Cardinals, fifteen prelates, and fifty men of learning. At the same time
the Inquisition was rigorously maintained. Paul extended its
jurisdiction, empowered it to use torture, and was constant in his
attendance on its meetings and _autos da fe_.[26] But now that his plans
for the expulsion of the Spaniards had failed, and his nephews had been
hurled from their high station into the dust, there remained no other
interest to distract his mind. Every day witnessed the promulgation of
some new edict touching monastic discipline, simony, sale of offices,
collation to benefices, church ritual, performance of clerical duties,
and appointment to ecclesiastical dignities. It was his favorite boast
that there would be no need of a Council to restore the Church to
purity, since he was doing it.[27]
[Footnote 26: Pallavicini, in his history of the Council of Trent (Lib.
xiv. ix. 5), specially commends Paul's zeal for the Holy Office:--'Fra
esse d'eterna lode lo fa degno il tribunal dell'inquisizione, che dal
zelo di lui e prima in autorita di consigliero e poscia in podesta di
principe riconosce il presente suo vigor nell'Italia, e dal quale
riconosce l'Italia la sua conservata integrita della fede: e per quest'
opera salutare egli rimane ora tanto piu benemerito ed onorabile quantao
piu allora ne fu mal rimerilato e disonorato.']
[Footnote 27: See Luigi Mocenigo in _Rel. degli Amb. Veneti_, vol. x. p.
25.] And indeed his measures formed the nucleus of the Tridentine
decrees upon this topic in the final sessions of the Council. Under this
government Rome assumed an air of exemplary behavior which struck
foreigners with mute astonishment. Cardinals were compelled to preach in
their basilicas. The Pope himself, who was vain of his eloquence,
preached. Gravity of manners, external signs of piety, a composed and
contrite face, ostentation of orthodoxy by frequent confession and
attendance at the Mass, became fashionable; and the Court adopted for
its motto the _Si non caste tamen caute_ of the Counter-Reformation.[28]
Aretino, with his usual blackguardly pointedness of expression, has
given a hint of what the new _regime_ implied in the following satiric
lines:--
Carafla, ipocrita infingardo,
Che tien per coscienza spirituale
Quando si mette del pepe in sul cardo.
Paul IV. brought the first period of the transition to an end. There
were no attempts at dislodging the Spaniard, no Papal wars, no tyranny
of Papal nephews converted into feudal princes, after his days. He
stamped Roman society with his own austere and bigoted religion. That he
was in any sense a hypocrite is wholly out of the question. But he made
Rome hypocritical, and by establishing the Inquisition on a firm basis,
he introduced a reign of spiritual terror into Italy.
[Footnote 28: 'Roma a paragone delli tempi degli altri pontefici si
poteva riputar come un onesto monasterio di religiosi' (_op. cit._ p.
41).]
At his death the people rose in revolt, broke into the dungeons of the
Inquisition, released the prisoners, and destroyed the archives. The
Holy Office was restored, however; and its higher posts of trust soon
came to be regarded as stepping-stones to the Pontifical dignity.
The successor of Paul IV. was a man of very different quality and
antecedents. Giovanni Angelo Medici sprang, not from the Florentine
house of Medici, but from an obscure Lombard stem. His father acquired
some wealth by farming the customs in Milan; and his eldest brother,
Gian Giacomo, pushed his way to fame, fortune, and a title by piracy
upon the lake of Como.[29] Gian Giacomo established himself so securely
in his robber fortress of Musso that he soon became a power to reckon
with. He then entered the imperial service, was created Marquis of
Marignano by the Duke of Milan, and married a lady of the Orsini house,
the sister of the Duchess of Parma. At a subsequent period he succeeded
in subduing Siena to the rule of Cosimo de'Medici, who then
acknowledged a pretended consanguinity between the two families.[30] The
younger brother, Giovanni Angelo, had meanwhile been studying law,
practising as a jurist, and following the Court at Rome in the place of
prothonotary which, as the custom then was, he purchased in 1527. Paul
III. observed him, took him early into favor, and on the marriage of
Gian Giacomo, advanced him to the Cardinalate. This was the man who
assumed the title of Pius IV. on his election to the Papacy in 1559.
[Footnote 29: In my _Sketches and Studies in Italy_ I have narrated the
romantic history of this filibuster.]
[Footnote 30: Soranzo: Alberi, vol. x. p. 67. Pius IV. adopted the arms
of the Florentine Medici, and spent 30,000 scudi on carving them about
through Rome. See P. Tiepolo, _Ib._ p. 174.]
Paul IV. hated Cardinal Medici, and drove him away from Rome. It is
probable that this antipathy contributed something to Giovanni Angelo's
elevation. Of humble Lombard blood, a jurist and a worldling, pacific in
his policy, devoted to Spanish interests, cautious and conciliatory in
the conduct of affairs, ignorant of theology and indifferent to niceties
of discipline, Pius IV. was at all points the exact opposite of the
fiery Neapolitan noble, the Inquisitor and fanatic, the haughty trampler
upon kings, the armed antagonist of Alva, the brusque, impulsive
autocrat, the purist of orthodoxy, who preceded him upon the Papal
throne.[31] His trusted counselor was Cardinal Morone, whom Paul had
thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition on a charge of favoring
Lutheran opinions, and who was liberated by the rabble in their
fury.[32]
[Footnote 31: 'Veramente quasi in ogni parte si puo chiamare il rovescio
dell' altro' (_op. cit._ p. 50).]
[Footnote 32: Luigi Mocenigo says of him that Pius 'averlo per un angelo
di paradiso, e adoperandolo per consiglio in tutte le sue cose
importanti.' Alberi, vol. x. p. 40. The case made out against Morone
during the pontificate of Paul IV. may be studied in Cantu, _op. cit._
vol. ii. pp. 171-192, together with his defence in full. It turned
mainly on these articles:--unsound opinions regarding justification by
faith, salvation by Christ's blood, good works, invocation of saints,
reliques; dissemination of the famous book on the _Benefits of Christ's
Death_; practice with heretics. He was imprisoned in the Castle of S.
Angelo from June, 1557 till August, 1559. Suspicions no doubt fell on
him through his friendship with several of the moderate reformers, and
from the fact that his diocese of Modena was a nest of liberal
thinkers--the Grillenzoni, Castelvetro, Filippo Valentini, Faloppio,
Camillo Molza, Francesco da Porto, Egidio Foscarari, and others, all of
whom are described by Cantu, _op. cit._ Disc, xxviii. The charges
brought against these persons prove at once the mainly speculative and
innocuous character of Italian heresy, and the implacable enmity which a
Pope of Caraffa's stamp exercised against the slightest shadow of
heterodoxy.]
This in itself was significant of the new _regime_ which now began in
Rome. Morone, like his master, understood that the Church could best be
guided by diplomacy and arts of peace. The two together brought the
Council of Trent to that conclusion which left an undisputed sovereignty
in theological and ecclesiastical affairs to the Papacy. It would have
been impossible for a man of Caraffa's stamp to achieve what these
sagacious temporizers and adroit managers effected.
Without advancing the same arrogant claims to spiritual supremacy as
Paul had made, Pius was by no means a feeble Pontiff. He knew that the
temper of the times demanded wise concessions; but he also knew how to
win through these concessions the reality of power. It was he who
initiated and firmly followed the policy of alliance between the Papacy
and the Catholic sovereigns.[33] Instead of asserting the interests of
the Church in antagonism to secular potentates, he undertook to prove
that their interests were identical. Militant Protestantism threatened
the civil no less than the ecclesiastical order. The episcopacy
attempted to liberate itself from monarchical and pontifical authority
alike. Pius proposed to the autocrats of Europe a compact for mutual
defence, divesting the Holy See of some of its privileges, but requiring
in return the recognition of its ecclesiastical absolutism. In all
difficult negotiations he was wont to depend upon himself; treating his
counselors as agents rather than as peers, and holding the threads of
diplomacy in his own hands. Thus he was able to transact business as a
sovereign with sovereigns, and came to terms with them by means of
personal correspondence. The reconstruction of Catholic Christendom,
which took visible shape in the decrees of the Tridentine Council, was
actually settled in the Courts of Spain, Austria, France and Rome. The
Fathers of the Council were the mouthpieces of royal and Papal cabinets.
The Holy Ghost, to quote a profane satire of the time, reached Trent in
the despatch-bags of couriers, in the sealed instructions issued to
ambassadors and legates.
[Footnote 33: Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 75, says: 'Con li principi tiene
modo affatto contrario al suo predecessore; perche mentre quello usava
dire, il grado dei pontefici esser per mettersi sotto i piedi
gl'imperatori e i re, questo dice che senza l'autorita dei principi non
si puo conservare quella dei pontefici.']
We observe throughout the negotiations which crowned the policy of this
Pope with success, the operation not only of a pacific and far-seeing
character, but also of the temper of a lawyer. Pius drew up the
Tridentine decrees as an able conveyancer draws up a complicated deed,
involving many trusts, recognizing conflicting rights, providing for
distant contingencies. It was in fact the marriage contract of
ecclesiastical and secular absolutism, by which the estates of Catholic
Christendom were put in trust and settlement for posterity. In
formulating its terms the Pope granted points to which an obstinate or
warlike predecessor, a Julius II. or a Paul IV., would never have
subscribed his signature. In purely theological matters, such as the
concession of the chalice to the laity and the marriage of the clergy,
he was even willing to yield more for the sake of peace than his Court
and clergy would agree to. But for each point he gave, he demanded a
substantial equivalent, and showed such address in bargaining, that Rome
gained far more than it relinquished. When the contract had been
drafted, he ratified it by a full and ready recognition, and lawyer-like
was punctual in executing all the terms to which he pledged himself.
We must credit Pius IV. with keen insight into the new conditions of
Catholic Europe, and recognize him as the real founder of the modern as
distinguished from the mediaeval Papacy. That transition which I have
been describing in the present chapter remained uncertain in its issue
up to his pontificate. Before his death the salvation of Catholicism,
the integrity of the Catholic Church, the solidity of the Roman
hierarchy, and the possibility of a vigorous Counter-Reformation were
placed beyond all doubt.
It is noticeable that these substantial successes were achieved, not by
a religious fanatic, but by a jurist; not by a saint, but by a genial
man of the world; not by force of intellect and will, but by adroitness;
not by masterful authority, but by pliant diplomacy; not by forcing but
by following the current of events. Since Gregory VII., no Pope had done
so much as Pius IV. for bracing the ancient fabric of the Church and
confirming the Papal prerogative. But what a difference there is between
a Hildebrand and a Giovanni Angelo Medici! How Europe had changed, when
a man of the latter's stamp was the right instrument of destiny for
starting the weather-beaten ship of the Church upon a new and prosperous
voyage.
Pius IV. was greatly assisted in his work by circumstances, of which he
knew how to avail himself. Had it not been for the renewed spiritual
activity of Catholicism to which I have alluded in this chapter, he
might not have been able to carry that work through. He took no interest
in theology, and felt no sympathy for the Inquisition.[34] But he
prudently left that institution alone to pursue its function of policing
the ecclesiastical realm. The Jesuits rendered him important assistance
by propagating their doctrine of passive obedience to Rome. Spain
supported him with the massive strength of a nation Catholic to the
core; and when the Spanish prelates gave him trouble, he could rely for
aid upon the Spanish crown. His own independence, as a prudent man of
business, uninfluenced by bigoted prejudices or partialities for any
sect, enabled him to manipulate all resources at his disposal for the
main object of uniting Catholicism and securing Papal supremacy. He was
also fortunate in his family relations, having no occasion to complicate
his policy by nepotism. One of the first acts of his reign had been to
condemn four of the Caraffeschi--Cardinal Caraffa, the Duke of Palliano,
Count Aliffe and Leonardo di Cardine--to death; and this act of justice
ended forever the old forms of domestic ambition which had hampered the
Popes of the Renaissance in their ecclesiastical designs. His brother,
the Marquis of Marignano, died in 1555; and this event opened for him
the path to the Papacy, which he would never have attained in the
lifetime of so grasping and ambitious a man.[35] With his next brother,
Augusto, who succeeded to the marquisate, he felt no sympathy.[36] His
nephew Federigo Borromeo died in youth. His other nephew, Carlo
Borromeo, the sainted Archbishop of Milan, remained close to his person
in Rome.[37] But Carlo Borromeo was a man who personified the new spirit
of Catholicism. Sincerely pious, zealous for the faith, immaculate in
conduct, unwearied in the discharge of diocesan duties, charitable to
the poor, devoted to the sick, he summed up all the virtues of the
Counter-Reformation. Nor had he any of the virtues of the Renaissance. A
Venetian Ambassador described him as cold of political temperament,
little versed in worldly affairs, and perplexed when he attempted to
handle matters of grave moment.[38] His presence at the Papal Court, so
far from being perilous, as that of an ambitious Cardinal Nipote would
have been, or scandalous as that of former Riarios, Borgias, and
Caraffas had undoubtedly been, was a source of strength to Pius. It
imported into his immediate surroundings just what he himself lacked,
and saved him from imputations of worldliness which in the altered
temper of the Church might have proved inconvenient.[39] Truly, among
all Pontiffs who have occupied St. Peter's Chair, Pius IV. deserved in
the close of his life to be called fortunate. He had risen from
obscurity, had entered Rome in humble office at the moment of Rome's
deepest degradation. He had lived through troubled times, and for some
years had felt the whole weight of Catholic concerns upon his shoulders.
At the last, he was conscious of having opened a new era for the Church,
and of being able to transmit a scepter of undisputed authority to his
successors. His death-bed was troubled with no remorse, with no
ingratitude of relatives, with no political complications produced by
family ambition or by the sacrifice of his official duties to personal
aggrandizement.
[Footnote 34: Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 74.]
[Footnote 35: Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 71, says: 'II marchese suo fratello
con la moglie gli diede il cappello, e con la morte il papato.']
[Footnote 36: Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 52. Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 93.]
[Footnote 37: Margherita Medici, sister of the Pope, had married
Gilberto Borromeo.]
[Footnote 38: See Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 53. Soranzo, _op. cit._ p.
91.]
[Footnote 39: Gia. Soranzo (_op. cit._ p. 133) says of Carlo Borromeo,
'ch'egli solo faccia piu profitto nella Corte di Roma che tutti i
decreti del Concilio insieme.']
Soon after the election of Pope Pius IV. the state of Europe made the
calling of a General Council indispensable. Paul's impolitic pretensions
had finally alienated England from the Roman Church. Scotland was upon
the point of declaring herself Protestant. The Huguenots were growing
stronger every year in France, the Queen Mother, Catherine de'Medici,
being at that time inclined to favor them. The Confession of Augsburg
had long been recognized in Germany. The whole of Scandinavia, with
Denmark, was lost to Catholicism. The Low Countries, in spite of Philip,
Alva, and the Inquisition, remained intractable. Bohemia, Hungary, and
Poland were alienated, ripe for open schism. The tenets of Zwingli had
taken root in German Switzerland. Calvin was gaining ground in the
French cantons. Geneva had become a stationary fortress, the stronghold
of belligerent reformers, whence heresy sent forth its missionaries and
promulgated subversive doctrines through the medium of an ever-active
press. Transformed by Calvin from its earlier condition of a
pleasure-loving and commercial city, it was now what Deceleia under
Spartan discipline had been to Athens in the Peloponnesian war--a
permanent _epiteichismos_, perpetually garrisoned and on guard to harry
the flanks of Catholics. Faithful to the Roman See in a strict sense of
the term, there remained only Spain, Portugal, and Italy. As the events
of the next century proved, the disaffected nations still offered
rallying-points for the Catholic cause, from which the tide of conquest
was rolled back upon the Reformation. But in 1559 the outlook for the
Church was very gloomy; no one could predict whether a General Council
might not increase her difficulties by weakening the Papal power and
sowing further seeds of discord among her few faithful adherents. Yet
Pius, after an attempt to combine the Catholic nations in a crusade
against Geneva, which was frustrated by the jealousy of Spain, the
internal weakness of France and the respect inspired by Switzerland,[40]
determined to cast his fortunes on the Council. He had several strong
points in his favor. The reigning Emperor, Ferdinand, wielded a power
insignificant when compared with that of Charles V. The Protestants,
though formally invited, were certain not to attend a Council which had
already condemned the articles of their Confession. The cardinal dogmas
of Catholicism had been confirmed in the sessions of 1545-1552. It was
to be hoped that, with skillful management, existing differences of
opinion with regard to doctrine, church-management, and reformation of
abuses, might be settled to the satisfaction of the Catholic powers.
[Footnote 40: See Sarpi, vol. ii. pp. 43, 44.]
The Pope accordingly sent four Legates, the Cardinals Gonzaga,
Seripando, Simoneta, Hosius, and Puteo, to Trent, who opened the
Council on January 15, 1562.[41] As had been anticipated, the
Protestants showed strong disinclination to attend. The French prelates
were unable to appear, pending negotiations with the Huguenots at Poissy
and Pontoise. The German prelates intimated their reluctance to take
part in the proceedings. The Court of France demanded that the chalice
for the laity and the use of the vulgar tongue in religious services
should be conceded. The Emperor also insisted on these points, making a
further demand for the marriage of the clergy. Circumstances both in
France and Germany seemed to render these conditions imperative, if the
rapid spread of Protestant dissent were to be checked and the remnant of
the Catholic population to be kept in obedience. Of ecclesiastics, only
Spaniards and Italians, the latter in a large majority, appeared at
Trent. The Courts of other nations were represented by ambassadors, who
took no part in the deliberations of the Council.[42]
[Footnote 41: Cardinal Puteo was soon replaced by a Papal nephew, the
Cardinal d'Altemps (Mark of Hohen Embs).]
[Footnote 42: At the first session there were five Cardinals, one
hundred and four prelates, including Patriarchs, Archbishops and
Bishops, four Abbots, and four Generals of Orders. These were all
Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese. And yet this Conciliabulum called
itself a General Council, inspired by the Holy Ghost to legislate for
the whole of Latin and Teutonic Christianity.]
In spite of this inauspicious commencement, Pius declared the Council a
General Council, and further decreed that it should be recognized as a
continuation of that Council which had begun at Trent in 1545. This
rendered co-operation of the Protestants impossible, since they would
have been compelled to accept the earlier dogmatic resolutions of the
Fathers. It was decided that no proxies should be allowed to absentees;
that the questions of doctrine and reform should be prepared for
discussion in two separate congregations, and should be taken into
consideration in full sessions simultaneously; finally that the Papal
Legates should alone have the privilege of proposing resolutions to the
fathers. This last point, by which the Court of Rome reserved to itself
the control of all proceedings in the Council, was carried by a clever
ruse. Until too late the Spanish prelates do not seem to have been aware
of the immense power they had conferred on Rome by passing the words
_Legatis proponentibus_.[43] The principle involved in this phrase
continued to be hotly disputed all through the sessions of the Council.
But Pius knew that so long as he stuck fast to it he always held the ace
of trumps, and nothing would induce him to relinquish it.
[Footnote 43: See Sarpi, vol. ii. p. 87.]
Fortified in this position of superiority, Pius now proceeded to
organize his forces and display his tactics. All through the sessions of
the Council they remained the same; and as the method resulted in his
final victory, it deserves to be briefly described. At any cost he
determined to secure a numerical majority in the Synod. This was
effected by drafting Italian prelates, as occasion required, to Trent.
Many of the poorer sort were subsidized, and placed under the
supervision of Cardinal Simoneta, who gave them orders how to vote. A
small squadron of witty bishops was told off to throw ridicule on
inconvenient speakers by satirical interpolations, or to hamper them by
sophistical arguments. Spies were introduced into the opposite camps,
who kept the Legates informed of what the French or Spaniards
deliberated in their private meetings. The Legates meanwhile established
a daily post of couriers, who carried the minutest details of the
Council to the Vatican. When the resolutions of the congregations on
which decrees were to be framed had been drawn up, they referred them to
his Holiness. Without his sanction they did not propose them in a
general session. In this fashion, by means of his standing majority, the
exclusive right of his Legates to propose resolutions, and the previous
reference of these resolutions to himself, Pius was enabled to direct
the affairs of the Council. It soon became manifest that while the
fathers were talking at Trent their final decisions were arranged in
Rome. This not unnaturally caused much discontent. It began to be
murmured that the Holy Ghost was sent from Rome to Trent in carpet-bags.
A man of more imperious nature than Pius might, by straining his
prerogatives, have produced an irreconcilable rupture. But he was aware
that the very existence of the Papacy depended on circumspection. He
therefore used all his advantages with caution, and resolved to win the
day by diplomacy. With this object in view he introduced the further
system of negotiating with the Catholic Courts through special agents.
Instead of framing the decrees upon the information furnished by his
Legates, he in his turn submitted them to Philip, Catherine de'Medici,
and Ferdinand, agreed on terms of mutual concession, persuaded the
princes that their interests were identical with his own, and then
returned such measures to the Council as could be safely passed. In
course of time the Holy Ghost was not packed up at Rome for Trent in
carpet-bags before he had gone round of Europe and made his bow in all
cabinets.
It must not, however, be thought that matters went smoothly for the Pope
at first, or that so novel a method as that which I have described,
whereby the faith and discipline of Christendom were settled by
negotiations between sovereigns, came suddenly into existence. In its
first sessions the Council, to quote the Pope's own words, resembled the
Tower of Babel rather than a Synod of Fathers. The Spanish prelates
contended fiercely for two principles touching the episcopacy: one was
that the residence of bishops in their dioceses had been divinely
commanded; the other, that their authority is derived from Christ
immediately. The first struck at the Pope's power to dispense from the
duty of residence; and if it had been established, it would have ruined
his capital. The second would have rendered the episcopacy independent
of Rome, and have made the Holy Father one of a numerous oligarchy
instead of the absolute chief of a hierarchy. Pius was able to show
Philip that the independence of the b
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