Chapter 11

FOOTNOTES:[287]Burchard,Diarium, iii., 293.[288]Guicciardini'sStoria d'Italiaand Burchard'sDiariumare the chief authorities, supplemented by the dispatches of the Italian ambassadors. There is a slight and somewhat antiquated biography by M.A.J. Dumesnil (Histoire de Jules II., 1873) and an abler study by M. Brosch (Papst Julius II., 1878). J.F. Loughlin has a candid account, chiefly based on Brosch, of his early career inThe American Catholic Quarterly Review. Special treatises will be noticed in the course of the chapter, but there is little dispute about the facts I give. Full references will be found in the very ample, if somewhat lenient, study of Dr. Pastor (vi.), and in the works of Creighton, Gregorovius, and von Reumont.[289]Pastor (vi., 244) quotes from the Vatican archives a letter in which Julius urges the Spanish commander at Naples to arrest Cæsar.[290]The date was fixed by the astrologers, but Burchard says that, in order to show his contempt for their science, Julius unceremoniously entered the town on the previous day. He acted more probably from sheer impatience. More than one event during his Pontificate, including his coronation on November 26, 1503, was arranged by the astrologers.[291]See A. Schulte,Kaiser Maximilian I. als Kandidat für den Papstlichen Stuhl(1906). The point is disputed.[292]Quoted by Brosch, p. 333.[293]Priuli (Diario, ii., 102) says that Romans spoke of his "Ganymedes."

FOOTNOTES:

[287]Burchard,Diarium, iii., 293.

[288]Guicciardini'sStoria d'Italiaand Burchard'sDiariumare the chief authorities, supplemented by the dispatches of the Italian ambassadors. There is a slight and somewhat antiquated biography by M.A.J. Dumesnil (Histoire de Jules II., 1873) and an abler study by M. Brosch (Papst Julius II., 1878). J.F. Loughlin has a candid account, chiefly based on Brosch, of his early career inThe American Catholic Quarterly Review. Special treatises will be noticed in the course of the chapter, but there is little dispute about the facts I give. Full references will be found in the very ample, if somewhat lenient, study of Dr. Pastor (vi.), and in the works of Creighton, Gregorovius, and von Reumont.

[289]Pastor (vi., 244) quotes from the Vatican archives a letter in which Julius urges the Spanish commander at Naples to arrest Cæsar.

[290]The date was fixed by the astrologers, but Burchard says that, in order to show his contempt for their science, Julius unceremoniously entered the town on the previous day. He acted more probably from sheer impatience. More than one event during his Pontificate, including his coronation on November 26, 1503, was arranged by the astrologers.

[291]See A. Schulte,Kaiser Maximilian I. als Kandidat für den Papstlichen Stuhl(1906). The point is disputed.

[292]Quoted by Brosch, p. 333.

[293]Priuli (Diario, ii., 102) says that Romans spoke of his "Ganymedes."

CHAPTER XIV

LEO X. AND THE DANCE OF DEATH

WhenJulius II. made his last survey of the world in which he had played so vigorous a part, he must have concluded that he had placed the Papacy on a foundation more solid than any that had yet supported it. The Conciliar movement, its most threatening enemy in the mind of the Popes, had been discredited by the failure of its latest effort and by the naked ambitions of those who supported it. The princes of the world had proved less stubborn than in the days of the early Emperors, and the Papacy had now a broad and strong base of secular power. The new culture had been, to a great extent, wooed and won by the Pope's princely patronage of art and embellishment of Rome; and the Inquisition, in one form or other, could silence the intractable. There was still, among the dour and distant northerners, much cavilling at the avarice and luxury of Rome, but, if the succeeding Popes used the Lateran Council to ensure some measure of reform, it would diminish; it had, in any case, not yet proved dangerous. Neither Julius nor any other had the least suspicion that the Papacy was within five years of the beginning of an appalling catastrophe.

We have, however, seen that the opinions which were to bring about that catastrophe had long been diffusedin Europe, and a particular conjunction of circumstances might at any time convert them into rebellious action. For more than a century, there had been a critical scrutiny of the bases of Papal power, and to a large extent the Papacy had escaped the consequences by a greater liberality toward rulers and by sharing with them the wealth it extracted from the people. France maintained the Pragmatic Sanction, which Rome detested, and other countries gave rather the impression of federation than of abject submission to a spiritual autocracy. Moreover, while the pressure of the central power was eased, doctrinal rebellion seemed to make little progress. Lollardism was extinct, Hussitism confined to a sect, Savonarolism murdered. Yet the Reformation was coming, and we see now that Luther was but the instrument of its deliverance.

It is impossible here to discuss all the causes of the Reformation, and a few considerations will suffice for my purpose. Printing had been invented and printed sheets were being circulated. Men were now reading—which provokes independent reflection—rather than sitting at the feet of oracular schoolmen. Among the books which poured out from the press, moreover, the Bible—in spite of a popular fallacy on that subject—occupied an important place, even in the vernacular. Further—and this was most important of all—the last great extension of the Papal fiscal system, the granting of indulgences for money, was in one important respect based on a novel speculation of the schoolmen and was not supported by Biblical Christianity. The realization of this stimulated men to get behind the fences of Decretals and scholastic speculations, and to claim a reform which should be something more than the substitution of a good Pope for a bad Pope. Finallythe renewed corruption of the Papal Court under Leo X. set this psychological machinery in conscious motion.

Twenty-five cardinals were enclosed in the Sistine Chapel on March 4th for the election of the new Pope. Wealth was now of no direct avail, for all accepted the Bull of Julius condemning bribery. Some of the poorer cardinals, knowing that their votes were not marketable, had tried to secure the treasure (about 300,000 ducats) left by Julius, but the keeper of Sant' Angelo had been incorruptible. Yet we must not emphasize the absence of bribery: there is such a thing as gratitude for favours to come. For nearly a week the enclosed cardinals discussed and negotiated. It is confidently stated that, while the older cardinals were, as usual, divided in allegiance to several of their body, the younger cardinals stood aloof and were secretly resolved to elect Giovanni de' Medici. Cardinal Giovanni lay abed in his little cell—imagine the Sistine Chapel containing thirty-one bedrooms—suffering from fistula. A surgeon was with him in the Conclave, and his condition was unpleasantly felt in the sealed room. A close friend of his, Bernardo Dovizo, or Bibbiena as he was commonly called, canvassed for him, and assured the cardinals of his liberal and grateful disposition, his high origin, and his peaceful intentions. He was only thirty-seven years of age, but the older cardinals may have concluded that his malady compensated for his youth. At the first scrutiny, on March 10th, he was elected, and he took the name of Leo X.

The earlier life of Leo X. has been told in the previous chapters. The second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, born on December 11, 1475, he was thrust into the ranks of the clergy at the age of seven, he received thetitle of cardinal at the age of fourteen, and he was openly admitted to the Sacred College two years later. He had received a stimulating education from the Humanist scholars of Florence, and amidst the dissipations of Rome he remained a sober and diligent scholar. He retired to Florence under Alexander VI., and, when his family were driven from power and repeatedly failed to recover it, he travelled in Germany, the Netherlands, and France. Under Julius II., he found some favour and became Legate for Bologna and Romagna. He was captured by the French at the fatal battle of Ravenna, but he made his escape on their retreat from Italy, and soon afterwards became the chief representative of his house on their restoration to Florence. His public record was, therefore, slight, and his time had been mainly devoted to the cultivation of letters and the enjoyment of art, especially music. His interests were so well known that on one of the triumphal arches erected for his coronation it was boldly announced that Venus (Alexander) and Mars (Julius) had now made way for Minerva; which a more discerning neighbour had modified by erecting an assurance that Venus lived for ever. It was, and is, believed that his life before he became Pope was free from irregularity. In spite of three fasts a week and a strenuous devotion to the chase, he was an abnormally fat man, and his pale, puffy face was not improved by his large myopic eyes, which saw little without the aid of a glass. But his unfailing smile, his charming manners, his ready wit, his prodigal generosity, and his unalterable love of peace and sunshine promised a genial contrast to the reign of his predecessor, and Rome gave him a princely welcome.

There are three chief aspects of the Pontificate of Leo X. which it is material to consider, and, althoughit is difficult entirely to separate them, it is convenient to attempt this. There is his political—or more correctly his diplomatic—action, which, though, in that Machiavellian age, it seemed only a degree worse than was customary, impresses the modern mind as almost revolting in its studied duplicity. There is his personal life, which inspired the reformers with volumes of vituperation, while modern writers seem able to regard it without much sentiment. And there is the Pontifical activity which culminates in the struggle with Luther. His relation to mediæval art is less important than is commonly supposed.

Mediæval Italy was no place for a prince of peace, and Leo soon found that, if he were to avoid the sword, he must follow a crooked course. He sincerely loathed the clash of swords. He loved jewels and music and comedies and books; he wanted to spend the Papal treasury in surrounding himself with pretty things and flashes of wit—and he thus spent the whole of Julius's 300,000 ducats in two years. But France and Venice thirsted for revenge and sought his support; while the envoys of Milan, Spain, England, and the Empire claimed his blessing, and his ducats, for the opposite side. While, however, in the actual condition of Italy, the Papal States were safe, a victory of France and Venice would bring perils. Leo secretly joined the Holy League against France, and secretly paid for the service of 45,000 Swiss mercenaries. The policy turned out well. France was driven back, and the leaders of the schismatical cardinals, Carvajal and Sanseverino, came to Rome, and humbly accepted Leo's obedience. France repudiated the schism, and Venice, after a desultory struggle, was pacified.

Leo found some time for domestic matters, of whichtwo may be noted here. On September 23d (1513) he created four cardinals, of whom three were relatives and one a literary friend. Bernardo Bibbiena (or Dovizo) had, as I said, promoted his interest in the Conclave, and at earlier times, and was an accomplished literary man; he was also entirely devoid of moral sentiment, composed the most indecent comedy that was enacted at the Vatican, and was a genius at organizing festivities. Innocenzo Cibò, son of Innocent VIII.'s natural son Franceschetto and Leo's sister Maddalena, was a youth who seemed eager to emulate the scandalous repute of his father. Giulio de' Medici, cousin of the Pope, had already received a Papal dispensation from illegitimacy, and the quiet and delicate youth was advanced a little nearer to the Papacy. Lorenzo Pucci, lastly, was quite a distinguished canonist, and a relative of Leo; he was also expert in pushing the sale of indulgences and very solicitous about his own commission.

Leo then regarded the fortunes of the chief lay members of his family. His brother Giuliano, a highly cultivated man of thirty-four, was too much softened by vice and indulgence to carry out the Medici policy at Florence. This policy, embodied in a paper of instructions which there is good reason to ascribe to Leo himself, was entrusted to the Pope's nephew Lorenzo, a vigorous young sportsman. Giuliano was made a Baron of Rome and commander of the Papal army—Leo remarking that he trusted there would be no demand upon his military talent—and it was so confidently rumoured that the Pope proposed to make him King of Naples that Ferdinand was alarmed and had to be reassured. It is still disputed whether Leo really had this intention, or whether he merely proposed to make a small principality in central Italy for his worthlessbrother; nor, in view of the secrecy and duplicity of the Pope's methods, is the point ever likely to be settled on a documentary basis. It seems consistent both with the course of events and with Leo's character to suppose that he kept both alternatives in mind, but that nepotism was not thefirstprinciple of his policy: his fundamental idea was the maintenance of his own luxurious security.[294]

In this pleasant promotion of his friends and relatives and their innumerable followers, in the prodigal encouragement of the artists, musicians, poets, and jewellers who flocked to Rome from all parts, Leo spent two years which were only slightly clouded by the rapid exhaustion of the Papal treasury. Meantime, however, the political situation had once more claimed his impatient attention, and we may for the moment confine ourselves to that interesting aspect of his work. Louis, disgusted with the Papacy, approached Ferdinand of Spain and was prepared to abandon to him his claims on Milan, Genoa, and Naples. This prospect of the enclosure of Papal territory in a Spanish vice threw thePope into a fit of diplomatic activity. He secretly negotiated with Venice and Florence and Ferrara, and sent a legate to England to help to reconcile Henry VIII with Louis. He trusted to induce these Powers to form a league with him for the purpose of driving the Spaniards out of Italy, and aimed at securing Naples for his brother.[295]In October the French King married Mary Tudor, and the Spanish spectre was laid. But, with the unvarying logic of Papal politics, the fear of Spain was succeeded by a fear of France, and the Pope had recourse to the kind of diplomacy which is characteristic of him, and in which, we are assured, he took great pleasure. He made a secret treaty with Spain for the defence of Italy, and a secret treaty of alliance with Louis against Spain.[296]He encouraged Louis, who held out to him the prospect of Naples, to attack Italy, and secretly promised to assist Milan and the Emperor against the French if Louis did attack Italy, which he thought improbable. He thus, he thought, secured a principality for Giuliano, whichever side won. "When you have made a league with one man," he used to say, "there is no reason why you should cease to negotiate with his opponent."

This policy, it is recorded, cost Leo sleepless nights, though not on account of moral scruples. Louis pressed him for a definite alliance against Milan, and he tried to evade it by pleading that it was not meet for Christian princes to engage in warfare while the Turk threatened Europe. The death of Louis in January (1515) made matters worse, as his successor, Francis I., determined with all the vigour and ambition of youth to press theFrench claims. Leo kept a legate negotiating with Francis, and we learn from the Legate's letters that he offered an alliance on condition that Naples should be surrendered to Giuliano. In the meantime (February 1st), he secretly approved of the league of Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Milan, and Genoa against France, and stipulated that he should have Parma, Piacenza, Modena, and Reggio; he would pay 60,000 ducats a month to the league, and would induce Henry VIII.—partly by making Wolsey a cardinal—to join it. In July he secretly signed the league, yet continued his deceptive correspondence with France. We have still the document in which Leo, after joining the league, offered an alliance to Francis on condition that he renounced his claim to Parma and Piacenza, made peace with Spain with a view to meeting the Turks, and surrendered his claim to Naples "in favour of the Holy See or of a third person approved by the Holy See."[297]

During the campaign which followed, Leo wavered according to the news he received. When the French took Milan, he made peace with them; they were to respect the position of the Medici at Florence, and Leo was to renounce the Papal claim to Parma and Piacenza. He had, however, a more creditable object in view than the interest of his family. He met Francis at Bologna, and there can be no doubt that they then agreed to substitute a Concordat for thePragmatic Sanction of 1438. For the promise of a tithe on his clergy, Francis surrendered their Gallican privileges, and became, as he thought, the real ally of the Pope. Leo ordered the Swiss to refrain from attacking the French in Milan, and listened approvingly to the King's designs on Naples. Within three months, however, the Emperor Maximilian led a body of Swiss troops, in the pay of Henry VIII., to an attack on Milan, and Leo was summoned by Francis to dispatch troops in accordance with their agreement. Carefully retarding the levy of his troops so that they should not arrive in time, and keeping a legate by the side of Maximilian, Leo awaited the result. The expedition failed, and he sought favour with the exasperated Francis by revealing to him that Henry VIII. had secretly paid the Swiss, and by sending once more an insincere command that the Swiss must not dare to attack an ally of the Papacy. He sought to retain the favour of Maximilian by reminding him that he had sent him two hundred Papal horse under Mark Antonio Colonna; and to Francis he protested that Colonna had acted without permission. He then assured Francis that he had sent a legate to induce Maximilian to make peace with France, and he gave secret instructions to the legate that such a peace would not be to the interest of the Papacy.

This is the admitted framework of that diplomacy which Roscoe contrives to dress in such opulent phrases, and it was a policy that Leo never altered. His next step was to seize the duchy of Urbino for his nephew Lorenzo: a step which, after all his apologies, Dr. Pastor admits to have "something repulsive about it." The Duke of Urbino (nephew of Julius II.) had, in spite of his feudal obligations, refused to attack the French at the command of the Pope, and seems to have discussed with Francis the duplicity of the Pope's procedure. Yet his liberality to the Medici in the days of misfortune had been such that Giuliano earnestly joined with Francis I. in imploring Leo to overlook his conduct. Leo harshly refused, and, to the disgust of many, the duchy was subdued and given to Lorenzo. I may conclude this matter by recounting that in 1517 the exiled Duke recovered his territory, and the long struggle for his ejection cost the Papal treasury, according to Guicciardini, 800,000 ducats.

A fresh anxiety clouded the Pope's pleasures when he heard that France, Spain, Germany, and Switzerland had formed an alliance, and that Francis I. and Charles V. (who succeeded Ferdinand on January 23d) were virtually to divide northern and central Italy between them. This project was abandoned, but in the following year an even more serious event alarmed the Pope. The younger cardinals who had pressed his election were generally aggrieved. Fast and luxurious as most of them were, they had expected a larger pecuniary gratitude on Leo's part, and they observed with annoyance that his relatives and his literary admirers secured the greater part of his lavish gifts. In 1517, one of these worldly young cardinals, Petrucci, conceived a particular animosity against Leo, on account of some injustice done to his brother, and there is little room for doubt that he spoke and thought of having the Pope assassinated. Whether or no we trust the romantic story told by Guicciardini and Giovio, that the surgeon who attended the Pope was to poison his wound, we can hardly accept the opposite rumour, that the whole conspiracy was invented by the Pope or his brother in order to secure money. Petrucci was not offered the option of a fine; and Cardinals Riario and Sauli confessed thatthey knew of the plot. After a dramatic period of inquiry and incrimination Petrucci was, in spite of the protests of cardinals and ambassadors, strangled in his prison, and the flesh of his guilty servants was torn from their bones with red-hot pincers. Cardinal Riario paid 150,000 ducats for his release, and the less wealthy Cardinal Sauli 25,000. Cardinals Soderini and Castellesi fled, when they were impeached, and their property and that of Cardinal Petrucci was seized.

These events caused the gravest scandal throughout Christendom. Cardinal Riario was the Dean of the Sacred College, and many preferred to think that the plot was an invention for the purpose of securing funds rather than that the cardinals had sunk so low. The dilemma was painful, but we can have little doubt that Leo, at least, was convinced of the reality of the plot. Instead of proceeding with greater caution, however, he went on to give a fresh ground of criticism. In a Consistory which he held on June 26th, he told the cardinals that he was going to add no less than twenty-seven members to their college. Their stormy protests increased his determination, and on July 1st he promoted thirty-one cardinals. The rumour at once spread through Christendom, and is in substance undoubted, that most of the new cardinals paid large sums of money for the dignity; Sanuto makes individual payments rise as high as 30,000 ducats. Some of them were men of low character, and others were either related to, or had lent money to, the Pope.

We may, however, conclude the political consideration before we discuss these domestic matters. Maximilian induced the Diet of Augsburg to elect his grandson Charles as his successor to the imperial title,and, as a Bull of Julius II. enacted that the investiture of the kingdom of Naples reverted to the Papacy if its holder became King of Rome, the Pope was pressed to give a dispensation from this Bull. Leo pleaded that his "honour" was at stake; but he secretly negotiated with Francis (who bitterly opposed the dispensation) and with Charles, and bargained shamelessly for his refusal or consent. In the end Francis (out of funds raised in the name of a crusade) gave Lorenzo de' Medici 100,000 ducats "for services rendered," and promised a further sum of 100,000 to the Pope. It is an equally undisputed fact that on January 20, 1519, Leo, Lorenzo, and Francis entered into an alliance; the Pope and his nephew were to promote the interests of Francis, and the French King was to protect the Papal States and the estates of the Medici family, and to admit the claims of the Church at Milan. It is, perhaps, the choicest example of Leo's diplomacy—"unparalleled double-dealing," Dr. Pastor calls it—that he secretly drew up a similar treaty with Spain and signed it a fortnight after he had signed the preceding (February 6th).

In the meantime Leo heard that Maximilian had died on January 12th, and he confronted, or evaded, the situation in his distinctive way. He informed his German legate that Charles was already too powerful, and that either Frederic of Saxony (whom he wished to induce to surrender Luther) or Joachim of Brandenburg (a docile noble) ought to have the imperial title. Hearing, however, that these candidates had no prospect, he adopted Francis I. and urged him to defeat Charles. His policy at this stage is not wholly clear, and it is possible that at first he pitted Francis against Charles in the hope of making profit from one or the other. In time he seems seriously to have adoptedFrancis. He, on March 12th, offered the red hat to the Electors of Trèves and Cologne, and proposed (on the 14th) to make the Archbishop of Mayence (a disreputable prelate) permanent legate for Germany; and he then, on May 4th, issued a Brief to the effect that if three Electors agreed in their choice the election should be valid. His schemes were shaken for a moment by the premature death of Lorenzo, which moved him, in a nervous hour, to exclaim that henceforward he belonged, "not to the house of Medici, but to the house of God." But his associates were not kept long in suspense. He attempted to incorporate Urbino in the Papal States, and, when Francis objected that Urbino belonged to Lorenzo's surviving child (and her French mother), the Pope began to abandon France. He was just in time to approve Charles and promise a dispensation in regard to Naples before that prince was elected to be Emperor.

But the consciousness of his long opposition to Charles weighed upon him, and in September he again made a secret treaty with Francis I.; he would refuse the crown of Naples to Charles and would promote French interests by secular and spiritual weapons in return for the French King's aid against Charles and against "insubordinate vassals." Vassals of Leo X. cannot easily have kept pace with the remarkable policy of their feudal lord, but we are hardly reconciled to the Pope's mingled greed and nepotism. He secured Perugia and some of the smaller places in Ancona and Umbria, and made an unsuccessful attempt to get Ferrara. During all this time, he listened amiably to German proposals for an alliance, and in the first months of 1521 he again duped the two monarchs. In January—and it was repeated in March and April—he gave therepresentatives of Charles a written assurance that he had no engagements to the disadvantage of that monarch and would not incur any within three months; in the same month (January) he agreed to secure for Francis, for the purpose of an attack on Naples, a free passage through the Swiss lines, and to receive in return Ferrara and a strip of Neapolitan territory.

By this time, however, the shadow of Luther had fallen on the Papal Court. The magnitude of the danger in Germany was by no means appreciated, but Leo was eager to get Luther to Rome and must conciliate the Emperor. In May, hearing that the French were approaching the Swiss and the Duke of Ferrara, he formed an alliance with Charles and prepared to use all his forces to drive his former ally out of Italy. The campaign opened successfully, but Leo did not live to see the issue and profit by it. He caught a chill as he sat at an open window in November watching the popular rejoicing, and died on December 1st, at the age of forty-two. Both the leading authorities, Giovio and Guicciardini, accept the current belief that either the Duke of Ferrara or the late Duke of Urbino had had him poisoned, but it is now generally recognized that the recorded symptoms of his seven days' illness point rather to malaria.

This admitted career of duplicity will not dispose us to expect a domestic atmosphere of virtue and piety at the Vatican, and it is singular that any historian has affected to find such. That Leo heard or said mass daily, and was attentive to his ceremonious obligations, is not, in that age, inconsistent with impropriety of conduct. His lavish charity was a becoming part of his habitual liberality, and his weekly fasts were rather intended to reduce the flesh than to subdue it. On theother hand, some of the frivolous remarks attributed to him have not the least authority. When the Venetian ambassador ascribes to him the saying, "Let us enjoy the Papacy now that God has given it to us," we may or may not have a mere popular rumour, though the phrase is at least a correct expression of Leo's ideal; but that the Pope ever mockingly attributed his good fortune to "the fable about Jesus Christ" is not stated until long after his death, and then only by an English controversialist, the ex-Carmelite Bale. Whether Leo was or was not addicted to sins of the flesh is not a grave matter of historical inquiry, but the evidence seems to me conclusive that, at least in his Pontifical days, he was irregular.[298]

The character of life at the Vatican and in Rome under Leo X. was, indeed, such as to prevent us from imputing any moral scruples to the Pope. Leo spent, on the lowest estimate, five million ducats in eight years, and left debts which are variously estimated at from half a million to a million ducats. He must have spent nearly £300,000 per year, and in order to make his official income of about 400,000 ducats meet this strainhe created and sold superfluous offices—they were estimated at 2150 at this death,—pressed the sale of indulgences and the exaction of fees and first-fruits, and borrowed large sums at exorbitant rates of usury; several of his bankers and friends were ruined at his death. A very large proportion of this money went in gifts to literary men and scholars. Leo was a royal spendthrift of the most benevolent and thoughtless nature. All the scribblers of Italy flocked to Rome, and money was poured out without discrimination as long as it lasted. Yet letters and scholarship actually decayed owing to the recklessness of the payments. "The splendour of the Leonine age, so often and so much belauded, is in many respects more apparent than real," says Dr. Pastor, who has several valuable chapters on Leo's relation to letters and art. The Roman University, which the Pope at first supported with great liberality, was suffered to decay, and great artists were not always encouraged. Ariosto was treated harshly, and, while Rafael and his pupils were richly employed, Michael Angelo was little used. Leo did not adequately appreciate sculpture or architecture, and even the building of St. Peter's made very little progress during his Pontificate. It is true that the state of the Papal finances was the chief reason for the neglect of the great architectural and educational plans of his predecessors. The check to the sale of indulgences—brought about by Cardinal Ximenes in Spain as well as by Luther in Germany—was felt severely at Rome.[299]But we read that to the end Leo spent prodigious sums on musicians, decorators, goldsmiths, and jewellers. An inventoryin the Vatican archives values at 204,655 ducats the jewels he left behind.

It was, in fact, not so much the discriminating promotion of art and culture as a princely luxuriousness that absorbed Leo's funds. He was temperate at table. The cardinals and wealthier Romans continued to enjoy the senselessly rich banquets which they seem to have copied from the most decadent pages of Roman history. Cardinal Cornaro is noted as giving a dinner of sixty-five courses on silver dishes. Banker Chigi, a useful friend of Leo, had his valuable plate thrown into the river after one choice banquet; and on the occasion of his marriage with his mistress (whose finger was held by Leo to receive the ring) he brought luxuries, even live fish, from the ends of Europe. Banker Strozzi gave rival banquets, at which cardinals fraternized with courtesans. Leo approved, and sometimes attended, these banquets (at Chigi's palace), but was personally temperate. He had only one meal each day, and fasting fare on three days in each week, but he spent immense sums on musicians and trinket-makers, and many of his pleasures were in the grossest taste of the time. Men of prodigious appetite—one of them a Dominican friar—were brought to his table to amuse him and his guests by their incredible gluttony. The Pope bandied verses with half-drunken poetasters and patronized the coarsest buffoons as well as the keenest wits. When he went to his country house at Magliana for a few weeks' hunting—in which he displayed extraordinary vigour—he took a troop of his poets, buffoons, musicians, and other parasites. At Carnival time he entered into the wild gaiety of Rome; and comedies of the most licentious character were staged before him. Ariosto'sSuppositi(in which Cardinal Cibò took a part), Machiavelli'sMandragola, and Bibbiena'sCalandriaalternated with Terence and Plautus. TheCalandria, written by Cardinal Bibbiena, Leo's chief favourite, the frescoes of whose bathroom seem to have been like those on certain rooms in Pompeii today, is a comedy of thin wit and unrestrained license; the Pope had it presented in the Vatican for the entertainment of Isabella d'Este.

Such was the Pope who presided over the Lateran Council for the reform of the Church, and the historian will hardly be expected to enlarge at any length on its labours. Julius had initiated the council in order to checkmate France and the schismatical cardinals, and it continued its thinly attended sittings, at wide intervals, for four years. Some seventy or eighty Italian bishops attended, and they issued some admirable counsels to the clergy to improve their lives, condemned heretical writings, and voiced the sincere wish that some Christian prince would arrest the advance of the Turks. A committee of the council drew up a stringent and comprehensive scheme for the reform of Church-abuses, but this was lost amid the vehement wrangles of monks, bishops, and cardinals. In the end (1514) a very slender reform-bill was issued; nor were the clergy disposed to comply with this when they noticed that, in the following year, Leo himself bestowed a bishopric, and soon afterwards the cardinalate, upon the boy-son of Emmanuel of Portugal, and granted to the father a large share of the proceeds of the issue of indulgences. The council also forbade the printing of books without approbation, and encouraged the spread of banks or pawn-shops (Monti di Pietà) for the poor. On March 16, 1517, Leo, in spite of the murmurs of the reformers and the revolt in Germany, brought to a close hisalmost futile council. He had no desire whatever for reform, and even the measures which were passed were not enforced. The reforming prelates were deeply saddened by his levity, and, before the close of the council, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola drew up in their name an appalling indictment of the state of the Church and predicted that the refusal to remedy it would bring on them a heavy judgment.

The one work of the Council in which the Pope took a lively interest was the granting of a Concordat to France. The Gallican sentiments of the French prelates and doctors had been embodied in the Pragmatic Sanction (1438), and Rome had not ceased to protest against this cession to local councils of the powers it claimed. By the Concordat of 1516 the King and the Pope virtually divided these powers between them; the King had the right of nomination to bishoprics and abbeys, the Pope received the "first-fruits" (Annates). The Concordat was signed by Leo on September 16, 1516, but was not published until 1518, when it caused fierce indignation at the universities and among the clergy.

Leo had dismissed the reformers of the Lateran Council, and in the spring of 1517, the very year in which Martin Luther nailed his challenge on the door of the castle-church at Wittenberg, turned with relief to his corrupt court. There had, as we saw, long been an outcry in Germany against the corruption of a very large proportion of the clergy and against the Papal fiscal system, yet Leo had light-heartedly maintained the disorders. In 1514 he had, in order to secure the votes of two Electors, conferred the Archbishopric of Mayence upon a young and worldly noble, Albert of Brandenburg, and had (for a payment of 24,000 ducats) permitted him still to retain the sees of Magdeburg and Halberstadt. In order to recover the 24,000 ducats, which he had borrowed on the security of a share in the sale of indulgences, the unscrupulous prelate pressed the traffic eagerly, and some of the more enlightened German clergy protested. There were already princes, such as the Elector of Saxony, who refused to allow the Papal envoys in their dominions, and there were writers, like Ulrich von Hutten, who violently assailed their procedure. Leo, however, failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation and proposed to raise large sums, ostensibly for the building of St. Peter's, by granting indulgences.

I have already explained that, though John XXIII. undoubtedly sold absolution "from guilt and from penalty," as the Council of Constance established, the indulgence was, properly speaking, a remission of the punishment due to sins which had been duly confessed. In earlier Papal practice, the indulgence was the commutation into a money-payment of the penance for sin imposed by the Church, but, as the doctrine of Purgatory developed, the indulgence came to be regarded as a remission of the punishment due in Purgatory. Two questions had then arisen on which the schoolmen had exercised their ingenuity: on what ground could the Church claim to remit this punishment, and whether the indulgence could be extended to the dead who were actually suffering in Purgatory? The schoolmen found a satisfactory answer to both questions. Then Boniface IX. decreed that an indulgence might be earned by a payment of money to the Church (the price of a voyage to Rome), and the way was opened for the later abuse. In their commercial zeal the Papal envoys and preachers undoubtedly represented that souls were delivered from the fire of Purgatory when the coin rang in their collecting boxes.

The Dominican monk Tetzel, who in 1517 was sent to preach the indulgence as Albert of Brandenburg's sub-commissary, was more zealous than scrupulous in his representations, and people of Wittenberg, who had crossed the frontier in order to profit by the indulgence, came home with unedifying reports of his sermons. Martin Luther, then a professor at the Wittenberg University, heard these reports with disdain. There was no defined doctrine of the Church on the subject, and more than one divine had felt, like Luther, that this apparent traffic was as enervating to real piety as it was in itself distasteful. A man of intense and stormy spiritual experience, he sternly combated all that seemed to encourage "sloth" in religious life; his was the more arduous religion of St. Paul and St. Augustine. Conscious, therefore, that the whole practice was based on comparatively recent speculations of the schoolmen, which he had a right to dispute, he challenged Tetzel to justify his "lying fables and empty promises." A war of pamphlets ensued, and, as his opponents naturally appealed to the language in which the Popes had announced indulgences, Luther was compelled to slight the words of the Popes and appeal to the declarations of Councils and the teaching of Scripture. He was still orthodox; the language he used had been heard in the Church for two centuries, and in that age one would as soon have thought of claiming impeccability as infallibility for the Popes.

At the beginning of 1518 it was reported to Rome that the agitation raised by the robust professor was seriously interfering with the indulgences, and Leo, encouraged by the angry Dominicans, directed his superiors to restrain him. When they failed, he summoned Luther to Rome. The monk, knowing how such trials ended at Rome, appealed to the Elector of Saxony and to Maximilian. The appeal to the Emperor, however, fell at a time when the Papal favour was sought for Charles, and Maximilian encouraged the Pope to take action. Leo ordered Luther to present himself at once before the Papal Legate and prepare for trial at Rome. On the other hand Frederic of Saxony insisted that Luther should be examined in Germany, and the Pope dreaded to irritate an Elector on the eve of an imperial election. Legate Cajetan was therefore empowered to see the rebel at Augsburg, and a series of futile conferences took place on October 12th-14th. Luther wished to argue and justify his thesis: Cajetan was instructed merely to demand his submission. Luther insisted that he should be tried by the learned doctors of Basle, Freiburg, Louvain, and Paris: the legate was charged to assert the Papal authority. On October 18th Luther departed in disgust for Wittenberg; and his temper was not improved by the discovery that Leo had, on August 23d, directed the legate, in case of obstinacy, to declare him heretical. He appealed to a General Council.

Luther was still within the limits of orthodox sentiment and practice, and the protection of the Elector embarrassed the Pope. A more diplomatic envoy, Karl von Militz, a Papal chamberlain, was sent to Germany, and some months were spent in amiable correspondence. Luther promised to be silent if his opponents would keep silence, and wrote a respectful letter to the Pope; to which Leo made a gracious reply. But the truce was little more than a diplomatic regard for Papal interests during the period of the imperial election, and the policyof silence soon proved impossible for both sides. Ulrich von Hutten and other critics encouraged Luther to assail the Papal authority, and the exaggerations of his opponents reacted on the growth of his mind. By the end of 1519 he seems to have concluded, with some firmness, that the Papal system was an unwarranted addition to primitive Christianity, and a formidable movement supported his ideas.

In January (1520) Luther's case was submitted to a commission of theologians at Rome, and the Elector was summoned to compel him to retract. Frederic refused, and in June Leo signed the BullExsurge Domine; Luther was to be excommunicated if he did not submit within sixty days, and the secular authorities would incur an interdict if they did not surrender him. It is not of material interest to quarrel with the Pope's procedure: to point out that the disappointed Cajetan was one of the heads of the commission of inquiry, and that Luther's vehement opponent Eck was one of the two legates entrusted with the publication of the Bull. Rome demanded submission; and, if Luther had submitted, some other German would before long have instituted the Reformation. Europe was ripe for schism, and it may be doubted whether even a reform of the Church would have long prevented the growth of a body of men holding the Reformers' view of the bases of Papal authority. On December 10th (1520) Luther publicly burned the Bull. Even this act was not without orthodox precedent, but Luther was constantly advancing. He was summoned before the Diet of Worms in April (1521), and he then stated that the word of neither Popes nor Councils would condemn him; he must be judged by reason and Scripture. But the political situation, which casts its shadow throughouton the development, was now modified. Charles obtained his wish of an alliance with the Papacy against France. This alliance was signed on May 8th: on the 12th the Diet issued the Edict of Worms. Luther was, in accordance with the Pope's second Bull,[300]declared a heretic. He retreated to the Wartburg under the protection of Frederic, and the gravest phase of the struggle opened.[301]

Leo died in December, as I have stated, leaving to his successor the terrible legacy of his frivolity in face of a grave calamity. In his last two years he apprehended, to some extent, the magnitude of the German trouble, but he plainly proposed to answer the just demand of reform only by the burning of a few heretics. His entirely dishonourable diplomacy and his costly indulgence of tastes which ill befitted a successor of Leo I. imposed the last unendurable burden on the patience of Europe. For him the Papacy was a principality, and the religious nature of its financial sources makes more contemptible the use to which he put his wealth. Even that artistic splendour which casts a glow over the Papacy before the breaking of the great storm owed to him comparatively little. The middle or secular phase of the development of the Papacy came to an end in the tawdry luxuries and unscrupulous measures of a Pope who has been treated with singular favour at the bar of Catholic history.

FOOTNOTES:[294]F. Nitti,Leo X. e la sua politica(1892), seeks to defend Leo against the charge of excessive nepotism. He strains the evidence at times, and quite admits that duplicity was the essential feature of the Pope's policy. See also hisDocumenti ed osservazioni riguardanti la politica di Leone X.(1893). A biography of Leo was written by the contemporary Bishop of Nocera, Paolo Giovio, but thisVita Leonis X.is the work of a courtier. Guicciardini (Storia d'Italia), Sanuto (Diarii), and Bembo (Opere) are more critical, and the letters of the Roman ambassadors are valuable. P. de Grassis, Master of Ceremonies at the Papal Court under Julius and Leo, wrote aDiary of Leo X., but there seems to be some reluctance to publish it. The work published by Armellini (Il diario di Leone X., 1884) is merely a discreet compendium of it. Fabroni'sLeonis X. Vitais too ancient (1797), andThe Medici Popes(1908) by H.M. Vaughan, is an excellent popular work. Roscoe's statelyLife and Pontificate of Leo X.(1805) is too flattering to its hero and is discredited in places by more recent research.[295]Sanuto,Diarii, xviii.[296]Guicciardini, xii. There is a copy of his Spanish treaty in the State archives at Florence.[297]The instruction is reproduced by Nitti, p. 61. As the document adds that Leo will not allow any prince, "even were it his own brother," to hold "both the head and the tail of Italy" (Milan and Naples), Nitti and Pastor claim that it shows that nepotism was not the key-note of Leo's policy. It seems strange that, in view of all his admitted duplicity, they can take seriously this phrase of the Pope's. We may admit, however, that the security of the Papal States was the Pope's first consideration.[298]Dr. Pastor (viii., 81) is here less candid than usual. He says that "Giovio passes over the whole truth of the accusations brought against the moral conduct of Leo X.," whereas the Bishop of Nocera devotes several very curious pages to the subject (lib. iv., pp. 96-99 in the 1551 edition of theVita Leonis X.) and ends with a reminder that we can never be quite sure about the secrets of the chamber and an assurance that Leo was at all events less guilty than other Italian princes. The courtly writer seems to me convinced that Leo was addicted to unnatural vice. Vaughan, on the other hand, is wrong in saying that Giovio alone mentioned these vices. Guicciardini (lib. xvi., c.v., p. 254, in the 1832 edition of theStoria d'Italia), in the course of a sober characterization of Leo, says that he was generally believed to be chaste before his election, but he was "afterwards found to be excessively devoted to pleasures which cannot be called decent."[299]It is sometimes pointed out, rather in the way of merit, that Leo received less than some of his predecessors by the issue of indulgences. It was not from want of will on his part.[300]In Cœna Domini, March 28th.[301]The situation in England does not call for consideration in this chapter. Henry VIII. wrote against Luther and, in presenting his book to the Pope, requested a title analogous to that of "the most Catholic King." By a Bull of October 26, 1521, Henry received the title of "Defender of the Faith," which his successors retain.

FOOTNOTES:

[294]F. Nitti,Leo X. e la sua politica(1892), seeks to defend Leo against the charge of excessive nepotism. He strains the evidence at times, and quite admits that duplicity was the essential feature of the Pope's policy. See also hisDocumenti ed osservazioni riguardanti la politica di Leone X.(1893). A biography of Leo was written by the contemporary Bishop of Nocera, Paolo Giovio, but thisVita Leonis X.is the work of a courtier. Guicciardini (Storia d'Italia), Sanuto (Diarii), and Bembo (Opere) are more critical, and the letters of the Roman ambassadors are valuable. P. de Grassis, Master of Ceremonies at the Papal Court under Julius and Leo, wrote aDiary of Leo X., but there seems to be some reluctance to publish it. The work published by Armellini (Il diario di Leone X., 1884) is merely a discreet compendium of it. Fabroni'sLeonis X. Vitais too ancient (1797), andThe Medici Popes(1908) by H.M. Vaughan, is an excellent popular work. Roscoe's statelyLife and Pontificate of Leo X.(1805) is too flattering to its hero and is discredited in places by more recent research.

[295]Sanuto,Diarii, xviii.

[296]Guicciardini, xii. There is a copy of his Spanish treaty in the State archives at Florence.

[297]The instruction is reproduced by Nitti, p. 61. As the document adds that Leo will not allow any prince, "even were it his own brother," to hold "both the head and the tail of Italy" (Milan and Naples), Nitti and Pastor claim that it shows that nepotism was not the key-note of Leo's policy. It seems strange that, in view of all his admitted duplicity, they can take seriously this phrase of the Pope's. We may admit, however, that the security of the Papal States was the Pope's first consideration.

[298]Dr. Pastor (viii., 81) is here less candid than usual. He says that "Giovio passes over the whole truth of the accusations brought against the moral conduct of Leo X.," whereas the Bishop of Nocera devotes several very curious pages to the subject (lib. iv., pp. 96-99 in the 1551 edition of theVita Leonis X.) and ends with a reminder that we can never be quite sure about the secrets of the chamber and an assurance that Leo was at all events less guilty than other Italian princes. The courtly writer seems to me convinced that Leo was addicted to unnatural vice. Vaughan, on the other hand, is wrong in saying that Giovio alone mentioned these vices. Guicciardini (lib. xvi., c.v., p. 254, in the 1832 edition of theStoria d'Italia), in the course of a sober characterization of Leo, says that he was generally believed to be chaste before his election, but he was "afterwards found to be excessively devoted to pleasures which cannot be called decent."

[299]It is sometimes pointed out, rather in the way of merit, that Leo received less than some of his predecessors by the issue of indulgences. It was not from want of will on his part.

[300]In Cœna Domini, March 28th.

[301]The situation in England does not call for consideration in this chapter. Henry VIII. wrote against Luther and, in presenting his book to the Pope, requested a title analogous to that of "the most Catholic King." By a Bull of October 26, 1521, Henry received the title of "Defender of the Faith," which his successors retain.

CHAPTER XV

PAUL III. AND THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

Theperiod immediately following the death of Leo X. is known as that of the Counter-Reformation. The name which has clung to the great religious schism of the sixteenth century still indicates how essentially it was, in its origin, a protest against the corruption of the mediæval Church. The reform of dogma was an afterthought; and the Reformation would probably have proved one more futile and academic criticism of the mediæval growth of doctrine if it had not primarily appealed to the very general resentment against the practices of the Curia and contempt for the unworthy lives of so large a proportion of the clergy and regulars. The situation, indeed, offers a romantic aspect to the historian. If a strong and entirely religious man, like Cardinal Carafa, had succeeded Leo X., it might have been possible, by a notable improvement in practice, to disarm a very effective proportion of the followers of the Reformers and thus to put back for a century or two the doctrinal revision. Unhappily for the Papacy, Leo X. had filled the Sacred College with men of his own disposition, and thirty years were wasted in fruitless efforts at compromise. In those thirty years, the hesitating criticisms of Luther crystallized into a settled creed which no persuasion could dissolve and no persecution could obliterate.

Hadrian VI., who followed Leo, spent two unhappy years (1521-3) in a pitiable and wholly vain attempt to save the authority of the Popes in northern Europe. Sprung from a pious working-class family of the Low-lands, and retaining his simple tastes and stern religious idealism in the evil atmosphere of the higher clergy, he sincerely resented the vices and frivolity of the cardinals. Rome itself now ridiculed so fiercely the contrast between their pretensions and their lives that the worldly cardinals were unable to put into power a man like Leo X., and the learned, venerable, and more or less disdained Hadrian VI. shuddered to find himself at the helm on so stormy a sea. He was not the type of man to save the Church. With simple fidelity, he at once made it clear that the debased policy of his predecessor was abandoned; but he had not the strength to control the crowd of discontented cardinals and prelates, or to frame and carry through a consistent scheme of reform. He was concerned, too, about the financial loss which would be caused by a thorough reform, and the traffic in benefices and indulgences was merely moderated instead of being abolished. The curtailment was in itself a confession that the system was corrupt, and the Reformers scoffed at Hadrian's invitation to return on such a basis, while orthodox Catholics deplored the candour of the admission. Between these antagonistic and weighty forces the slender energy of the well meaning Pontiff was exhausted in two years.

The Pontificate of Clement VII. (1523-34) was a compromise; he was a Medicean Pope (Giulio de' Medici), a patron of art and letters, but a man of sober taste and regular life. It was a compromise, too, between a keen intelligence and a flabby will—a sagacious perception of the danger and a complete lack of the virility needed to avert it—and eleven further years of impotence permitted the Reformation to take deep and indestructible root in Germany. Clement VII. was, in fact, largely absorbed in the unending political struggle. After some vacillation he allied himself with France against Charles V., and Charles won. Rome had to endure one of the most cruel and most prolonged pillages in its history, and the Pope was for seven months imprisoned in Sant' Angelo. He made peace with Charles, but he had little satisfaction in contemplating the imperial shadow which lay over fallen Italy, while the Turks came ever nearer and no Christian monarch would advance against them. In these circumstances, Protestantism became a creed and spread over the north. Henry VIII. married Anne Boleyn and became the "defender" of a new faith; and the revolt spread to Switzerland and Scandinavia. The scanty measures of reform passed by Clement were regarded with disdain by the dissenters, and the artistic Renaissance itself never recovered from the sack of Rome and the overrunning of Italy. It was left to the founders of new religious congregations, especially the Oratorians, Theatines, and Barnabites, and to the reformers of the older orders, to lay the foundations of the Counter-Reformation.

Clement died on September 25, 1534, and the College of Cardinals, which had almost become the curse of the Church, met to elect a successor. Few of these cardinals, even now, grasped with any intelligence the grave situation of their Church. It was, indeed, feared that, while the reform was spreading rapidly in the north, the Conclave would be wrecked by the conflict of the French and Imperialist partisans. The struggle wasso menacing that a politically neutral cardinal was forced upon the College, and the graver need of the Church—the need of a Pontiff of the most sincere and spontaneous religion, as well as of large mind and inflexible will—was almost unnoticed.

Alessandro Farnese, who now became Paul III.,[302]was a man of high intelligence, fine culture, and great will-power; but he had neither the immaculate record and deep piety which were needed to impress the Reformers nor the political decision which might have compensated for these defects. However much the historian may appreciate the difficulties of the Papacy, he cannot but recognize that the idea of compromising with the Reformers had at least since 1520 been futile. Paul III. had, it is true, no idea of compromise: the dissenters were to surrender every doctrinal and disciplinary claim, or to be extinguished. The great European schism could now have been remedied by no man. But a reform of the Church on other than doctrinal matters might have done much to arrest the spread of Protestantism, and on this Paul compromised. His policy was a reflection of his personality; he was a son of the Renaissance Church, and feebly—in spite of his admitted strength of will—he endeavoured to retain certain pleasant features of the viciousancien régimewith which to soften the asperity of the new ideal which was forced upon him. He was in a sense a Papal Louis XVIII.

We remember Paul as the brother of Alexander VI's doll-like mistress, Giulia Farnese. Born on February29, 1468, he had received early instruction in the new culture from Pomponio Leto at Rome, and had spent his youth in that seminary of the Humanists, the splendid palace of Lorenzo de' Medici at Florence, and then at Pisa University. His wealth was far inferior to the nobility of his descent, and it was not until his young sister had attracted the eye of the voluptuous Pope that he was promoted to the cardinalate (September 20, 1493). In 1502, he was appointed legate for the March of Ancona, and the more comfortable establishment he could now afford to maintain included a mistress. Four children—Pier Luigi, Paolo, Costanza, and Ranuccio—were born in his palace between 1502 and 1509; and the eldest son and Costanza were familiar figures in Roman society during his later Pontificate.

The more minute inquirer will find the documents transcribed from the Vatican archives, relating to these children, in Pastor.[303]His mistress died at an early age in 1513, and Alessandro (now forty-five years old) is described as moderating his irregularities and as devoting some attention to his bishopric of Parma. Papal historians observe with pride that his irregularities entirely ceased in 1519, when he was ordained priest. The friend of his youth, Leo X., cordially included him in his generous patronage, and he was able to build the Farnese palace and to cultivate ambition. In 1523, he made an effort to secure the tiara, but at the Conclave the cardinals had not the courage to present to the Reformers as Pontiff the father of four children. He stifled his lament that Clement VII. had "robbed him of ten years of the Papacy," and became as amiable a friend of that Pope as he had beenof his five predecessors; and amidst the fierce clash of political passion he retained a diplomatic neutrality. He shared Clement's bitter days in Sant' Angelo, yet did not quarrel with the Imperialists.

These characteristics marked Alessandro for the throne; and they at the same time ensured that his struggle with Protestantism would be entirely futile. He was now sixty-seven years old, and we easily picture him from Titian's wonderful portrait; frail and worn in flesh and stooping with age; yet his penetrating eyes and large bald dome of a forehead indicated a great energy of will and force of intellect. He was essentially a diplomat, and the cardinals, absorbed for the most part in the political troubles, did not reflect that the rapier of diplomacy was the last weapon with which to meet the stout staves of the northerners. He was an excellent listener, a sparing and deliberate talker, a most skilful postponer of crucial decisions; a "vas dilationis," the Roman wits said, parodying the description of a greater Paul.

Dr. Pastor thinks that the reforming cardinals—of whom there were now many—had much confidence in his disposition to reform. If they had, their trust is in the main another tribute to his diplomatic skill. He had no idea of reforming the Curia and the Church further than might be exacted of him by unpleasant circumstances.

Shrewd observers must quickly have observed that Paul III. remained at heart a Farnese. His son, Pier Luigi, visited him in Rome soon after his election. Pier Luigi had become a military adventurer, a feeble emulator of Cæsar Borgia, and by taking arms in the Imperialist service, had incurred excommunication under Clement. Paul is said to have received his sonin secret and directed him to keep away from Rome. There was to be no open nepotism. But in a few weeks Pier Luigi was back in Rome and was observed to have plenty of money. Paul was crowned on November 3d (1534) and announced his intention to reform the Church. On, December 18th he bestowed the cardinalate on two of his nephews, Guido Sforza and Alessandro Farnese. Sforza was a youth of seventeen; Alessandro was a fourteen-year old pupil at Bologna, yet he received, besides the red hat, the governorship of Spoleto and such a number of profitable benefices that he was soon able to outshine some of the more ostentatious cardinals; and in the next year he was made Vice-Chancellor. Both he and Sforza were notoriously immoral. Pier Luigi was made Gonfaloniere, Commander of the Papal troops, and Duke of Castro; and proportionate benefits were showered on all friends and connexions of the Farnese family.

It would not be history to dwell on the "obstinacy" of the Reformers and to fail to emphasize these very pertinent and entirely undisputed facts; but I will dismiss in few words this aspect of Paul's character. Nepotism was one of his most persistent traits, and we shall repeatedly find his direction of Papal policy perverted by a care for the worldly advancement of his family. He was equally unable and unwilling to break with the gayer tradition of the Borgia-Medici court. He loved pageantry and comedy, encouraged the merry riot of the carnival, favoured astrologers, buffoons, and pseudo-classical poets, and liked to dine with fair women. It is, perhaps, not much to say that his private life—at the age of seventy—was irreproachable; but it is not immaterial to observe that he gave an indulgent eye to the conduct of the looser cardinals. Instead of sternlyattempting to crush that large body of loose and luxurious cardinals to whom, in the first place, we may trace the catastrophe of the Church, he added, at each promotion, a few to their number. Of the seventy-one cardinals he promoted during his Pontificate the great majority were good men; but a few were of such a character that their election was, in the actual situation of the Church, unpardonable.

These little personal details must be considered first if we are to understand aright the attitude of Paul III. toward reform and the reforming council. From the first he assured his visitors that he intended to reform the Church. Before the end of 1534, he appointed two reform commissions—one on morals and the other on Church offices; though he chilled the zeal of the more ardent cardinals by enjoining them to take into account the circumstances. In the spring of 1535, he prosecuted Cardinal Accolti for grave abuse of his position of legate, but compromised for a fine of 59,000 scudi. The Reformers of Germany had from the first appealed to a council, and Paul declared himself in favour of a council; but he insisted that it must be summoned by him, presided over by his legates, and held in Italy; and this not only the princes of the Schmalkaldic League but the three monarchs concerned emphatically refused. Charles V. saw that such a council would be—as Paul III. well knew—utterly useless as an instrument of reconciliation; Francis I. did not want reconciliation at all, since it would give to Charles command of a united Germany; and Henry VIII., who accepted the title of Head of the English Church in 1534, and in the following year initiated his policy of bloody persecution, had done with Rome. In fact, instead of giving all the negotiations about acouncil, I would point out that there never was the slightest hope by such a means of ending the schism. Each side was absolutely convinced of the truth of its formulas, and very few, least of all the Pope, thought that compromise was possible or desirable. Luther was quite willing to attend a council, even in Italy; but merely in order to convince the Church of its errors and abominations. The Pope wanted a council merely in order to formulate Catholic doctrine in clear official terms and thus to provide a standard for the condemnation and extermination of the heretics. No Pope could think otherwise.

Paul at length ventured to announce "to the city and the world" that a general council would be held at Mantua on the 23d of May, 1537; but when the Duke of Mantua directed the Pope to send an army to protect his council, the design was abandoned. A Bull next announced that the council would meet at Vicenza on May 1, 1538; but as only five prelates had arrived there when, on May 12th, the three Papal Legates made their imposing entry—after waiting in nervous hope some distance away—that project, also, was abandoned. I would not agree that Paul did not sincerely want a council, but during the first ten years the council he wanted was an impossibility.

Meantime, the idea of reform by commissions was sustaining the half-desperate hopes of the better cardinals at Rome. In February, 1537, the commission drew up so sound and true and large a scheme of reform that the anti-reformers successfully pleaded that it would injure the Church to publish it, and it remains "a scrap of paper" in the Vatican Archives. After much discussion, Paul decided to begin with the reform of the Dataria (an office of the Court which yieldedmore than 50,000 ducats a year, nearly half the entire income, to the Papal exchequer in connexion with the issue of graces, privileges, dispensations, etc.), and a further long discussion ensued. The discussion lasted some three years, without practical issue, and it was not until the end of 1540 that a few obvious reforms could be carried in some of the departments of the Curia. Characteristic is the story of one of these reforms. Pressed by the sterner cardinals, who wrote grave letters to each other on the Pope's conduct, to put an end to the scandal of non-resident prelates (absentee landlords), Paul summoned eighty of them, who were living in comfort at Rome, to return to their dioceses. There was terrible alarm. But they successfully pleaded that they could not live on the mere incomes of their sees, and they remained in Rome. Paul had to be content with discharging a few officials, directing the clergy to reform their lives and their sermons, and encouraging the new religious congregations: among which was a certain very small community, calling itself the "Company of Jesus," which seemed to him, when it first appeared in Rome, eccentric and of very doubtful value to the Church.

In the meantime, Paul had successfully maintained the political neutrality which he had from the first contemplated. Francis and Charles both sought alliance with him, and he tried instead to reconcile them and avert war. It is to his credit that when Charles, perceiving his weakness, offered, as the price of alliance, the marquisate of Novara to Pier Luigi and a principality in Naples to Pier's son Ottavio, Paul still refused. But the fact that in 1536 he received Charles with great pomp at Rome irritated Francis, and war brokeout.[304]In view of the advances of the Turks, Paul went in person to Nice, in the spring of 1538, and reconciled the two monarchs, but his nepotism again mars the merit of this work. He arranged that his grandson Ottavio, a boy of thirteen, should marry the Emperor's natural daughter, Margaret of Austria, a girl-widow of sixteen, who hated the boy; and their connubial arrangements added, for many years, to the scandal or the gaiety of Rome. Paul was also severely blamed for the unscrupulous way in which he wrested the duchy of Camerino from the Varani and gave it to Ottavio. When Francis violently objected to this virtual alliance, Paul married his granddaughter Vittoria to a French prince. Nor were the Reformers pleased when they learned that, in return for the Emperor's natural daughter, the Pope had granted to Charles the right to publish indulgences in Spain, and had given him other privileges which would yield him a million ducats a year of Church money; and that neither Francis nor Charles would help Italy to face the Turks.

The unchecked advance of the Turk had, indirectly, another grave disadvantage for the Papacy. Charles needed the united forces of his dominions to meet the Turks, and the Protestants profited by his need. Whatever may be said about the amiable intentions of Paul III., at an earlier date, he now plainly designed to crush the followers of the Reformers in the field.He sent his grandson, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, to the courts of Francis and of Charles, and the instructions which he gave him, as well as the letters of the Cardinal himself, show that he sought, not only their support of his Italian council, but the co-operation of the monarchs against the Turks and the Protestants.[305]Both refused, and Charles, in spite of the Pope's vehement objections, consented to the holding of another conference or discussion with the representatives of the Protestants. The conference took place at Hagenau on June 12th, and had, of course, no result, but a fresh attempt was made at Worms in January 1541, and Paul sent Bishop Campeggio and four theologians to meet the Protestant divines. It is needless to discuss the Colloquy in detail, since such experiments never had the least prospect of success, but the next conference is of some interest.

Some of the German princes, like the Duke of Bavaria, had no wish to see a religious reconciliation, since their ambition had a larger chance of success in a disunited Empire; and Francis I. was only too eager to support these princes.[306]Other vassals of the Emperor were irreconcilable Protestants. But there were on both sides a few men of a moderate disposition, who believed that a round-table conference might still secure religious peace, if not the old unity. Charles V. was of this opinion, and he made it a test of the Pope's sincerity that he should co-operate in a last attempt.Cardinal Contarini, a man of impressive character and considerable ability, was sent as legate, and for some time before the opening of the Diet of Ratisbon, he zealously endeavoured to find the dogmatic formulæ which had some prospect of common acceptance. Charles had begged the Pope to confer large powers of concession on his legate, but we now know that Paul gave him but slender authority, couched in the vaguest of language.[307]If any attempt were made to settle important points of doctrine, he was to protest and leave the Diet. In a later instruction, he warned Contarini not to allow the Emperor to suspect that Rome favoured the use of force rather than persuasion, and to say, in regard to the proposal that the Papacy should send 50,000 scudi for the purpose of bribing influential Protestants, that such a design seemed neither decent nor safe, but that the 50,000 scudi would be sent "for distribution," if, and when, a reconciliation was effected.[308]It is plain that Paul foresaw the complete failure of the Colloquy—we must remember that success depended entirely onconcessionand no Pope could make a concession on doctrine—and intended to make the failure a ground for an appeal to arms.

The Diet opened on April 27, 1541, and in a few weeks Contarini and his friends announced with sincere joy that they had reached a common formula on so delicate a topic as justification. This agreement had been reached by the Papal Legate accepting a semi-heretical formula, which Rome afterwards rejected. But thefutility of the proceedings soon became apparent. When they went on to discuss transubstantiation and penance, priestly celibacy and monastic vows, the antagonism became acute, and the Colloquy ended in disorder. The Pope rejected all the formulas approved by his Legate, and wrote him, on June 10th, that he was sending the 50,000 scudi, and would send a larger sum if the Catholics found it necessary to draw the sword against the heretics. Some of the stricter cardinals at Rome, such as Carafa and Toledo, were now convinced that force was necessary.

In September (1541) the Pope met the Emperor at Lucca. Charles insisted that the council, whatever form it took, must be held in Germany, but Paul pleaded that he wished to preside in person and that his age forbade so lengthy a journey. We shall hardly be unjust if we regard these pleas as pretexts. The forthcoming council was, in the Pope's view,—an inevitable view,—to be a canonical gathering for the stricter definition of the doctrines already rejected by the Reformers; when that council had formulated the faith, the secular powers must deal with any who dissented from it. Paul still fought for the holding of the council in Italy, where he could overwhelm the Protestant envoys, but as it became entirely certain that not a single Protestant would come to Italy, he spoke of Cambrai, Metz, and other alternatives, and at length consented to Trent. Still there was much friction, and many were not yet convinced that the Pope sincerely desired a reform-council. Francis I. angrily exclaimed that this council seemed to be an imperial concern, and he refused to publish the Bull of Convocation. Charles, on the other side, was annoyed to find that in the Bull he was put on a level with that perfidious ally of the infidel,Francis I., and he threatened to keep his German prelates from going to Trent. But the Pope energetically overbore all opposition, and the historic Council of Trent was announced for November 1st. In the meantime (July, 1542), the Pope reconstituted the Inquisition in Italy and put it under the control of the more fanatical cardinals like Carafa. It was empowered to imprison heretics, confiscate their goods, and (with the use of the secular arm) to put them to death. Dr. Pastor deplores that the Vatican authorities still refuse to allow access to the records of the Roman Inquisition, so that we are very imperfectly acquainted with its work.

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