Chapter 12

The Papal Legates arrived at Trent with great pomp, on November 22d, three weeks after the appointed date, yet not a single bishop had appeared. Six weeks later the arrival of two bishops gave them a slender satisfaction, but by the end of March not more than a dozen bishops—and these mostly Italians—had reached the seat of the council. Neither Germans nor French would come, and the Italians thought it prudent not to arrive in a body so as to give to the council a national complexion. In the summer, Paul went to confer with Charles at Parma, but the issue of their conference was a bitter disappointment for the Catholic reformers. Paul proposed to suspend the opening of the council and to transfer it from Trent, and begged the Emperor to bring about a compromise with France, by yielding Milan to the Pope's nephew, Ottavio. Charles refused to assent, and Paul, on his own account, suspended the council and began to look to Francis I. for the aggrandizement of his family.

The events which followed make the historian wonder that any have attempted to clear the character ofPaul III. of disgraceful nepotism and insincerity. Charles V. sought alliance with Henry VIII., and Paul sent his nephew, Cardinal Farnese, to the Court of Francis I. In that grave crisis of the Church's fortunes, we have the Catholic Emperor in alliance with Henry VIII., the most Catholic King in alliance with the Turks, and the Pope seeking, with a notoriety which gave great scandal, the enrichment of his illegitimate children and other relatives. Vittoria Farnese, the Pope's granddaughter, was betrothed to the Duke of Orleans, and the Pope promised her, from the patrimony of St. Peter, the duchies of Parma and Piacenza as her dowry. Charles angrily threatened to invade Rome, and the Spanish and German envoys at the Vatican used language which had rarely been heard in the Papal chambers. It is put to the credit of the Pope only that he refused still to disown or condemn Charles, as Francis demanded, and that he earnestly sought to reconcile the monarchs. In September, his efforts bore fruit in the Peace of Crespy. Yet we must recall that, as all acknowledge, Paul was in part concerned for the security of his family in refusing to incur the hostility of Charles; and we know that a secret clause of the Treaty of Crespy compelled Francis and Charles to unite for the purpose of destroying the Protestants as well as the Turks.

It was also stipulated at Crespy that the council should at last begin its labours, and Paul announced that it would open at Trent on March 25, 1545. But the attempt was again abortive, and only two bishops greeted the Papal Legates on the appointed date. The Catholic monarchs did not believe that the Pope was sincere, and the Protestants were violently opposed to a council on the orthodox Catholic lines. CardinalFarnese was sent to induce the Emperor to send his German bishops, and we now find Charles leaning more decidedly to the plan of coercion and war. Cardinal Farnese writes in high spirits to his uncle that Charles is, in alliance with the Papacy, about to make war on the Protestants; and it is unhappily characteristic that he adds that this alliance may turn to the great profit of the Farnese family.[309]In fact, the Cardinal returned to Rome with all speed, in disguise, and Paul promised 100,000 ducats and 12,000 men for the war, besides granting Charles a half-year's income of the Spanish Church and permission to raise 500,000 ducats by the sale of monastic property. The eagerness of the Pope at this adoption of a design he had so long cherished may be judged from the fact that his courier to Charles left Rome on June 16th and reached Worms by the 23d. Charles, however, had begun to waver in his brave resolution, and the war was postponed; but the advancement of the Farnesi was not forgotten. The duchies of Parma and Piacenza were now given to Pier Luigi, and the Pope met the violent protests of the cardinals with a statistical "proof" that the duchies were of less value than a few small places which his son surrendered to the Holy See. The annoyance of the reforming prelates was complete when the Pope issued a medal representing a naked Ganymede leaning on an eagle and watering the lily which was the emblem of the Farnese family.[310]

Charles would not consent to the removal of the council to Bologna, and it was at length opened at Trent on December 13, 1545, with an attendance offour archbishops and twenty-one bishops. The first session was purely formal, and the second session (January 7th) was occupied by a violent discussion on procedure. The Emperor feared that a formulation of Catholic doctrines would close the door of the Church definitively against the Germans, and he insisted that the reform of morals and discipline must come first. Paul feared that, if the question of reform came first, the council would almost resolve itself into a trial of the Papacy; and there is good ground to think that, on the other hand, he wanted the doctrines in dispute formulated as a preliminary step to the more drastic condemnation of the Reformers. The conflict ended in compromise: each sitting of the council was to consider both doctrine and reform. The correspondence of the legates with the Pope[311]shows how vehemently Paul fought for his plan, and it was only at their very grave and emphatic assurance that reform must proceed—that deeds, not Bulls, were wanted, as they put it—that he agreed to the compromise.

The fathers of the council, who, at the end of June, had risen in number to about sixty, had held two further sessions, and had discussed only a few dogmas and measures of reform when their labours were again suspended by the outbreak of the religious war. The Protestants had naturally refused to attend the Papal council, and had continued to spread their faith in the north. Paul, therefore, urged Charles to carry out his design of repressing them by arms, and in June (1546) a secret treaty was signed by Charles V., the Duke of Bavaria, Ferdinand I., and the Pope uniting their forces for an attack upon the Schmalkaldic dissenters. In order to prevent Charles from again losinghis resolution, the Pope dishonourably communicated this treaty to the Protestants, nor was Charles less angry with Paul for representing to France, Poland, and Venice that the impending struggle was a religious crusade in which any Catholic people might assist. It was the policy of Charles to place his enterprise on purely secular grounds. There was again grave friction between Charles and the Pope, and the Farnesi mingled with the graver issues a petulant complaint that Charles had done so little for them.

The Protestants, however, were badly organized and were soon defeated. Paul bitterly complained that Charles would not follow up his victory by initiating a policy of persecution in south Germany, and would not, when Henry VIII. died (1547), join forces with Francis I. for the invasion of England; and another fiery quarrel ensued. The prelates at Trent conceived that they were menaced by the distant and subdued Protestants, and Paul quickly availed himself of the apprehension to demand a removal to Italy. Charles went so far as to threaten to confiscate the whole of the property of the Church in Germany, but a convenient epidemic broke out at Trent and Paul removed the council to Bologna. Another year was spent in discussion as to the validity of the transfer, and the rumour that the Pope secretly desired to frustrate the work of reform once more gained ground. This is, as I explained, a half-truth. But so little reform was actually achieved during the life of Paul that I need not deal further here with the Council of Trent.

The year 1648 was filled with the acrid conflict of Pope and Emperor. Paul drew nearer to France, and Rome, believing that at length the Pope was about to abandon his policy of neutrality, prepared once morefor invasion. Charles made no descent on Italy, but he now took a step which seemed to the Pope almost as scandalous an outrage. He issued his famous Interrim: a document which enacted that, until the points in dispute were settled by a council, priests might marry, the laity might communicate from the chalice, and vague and conciliatory interpretations might be put on the doctrines of the Church. In spite of the intrigues of France, Paul wearily maintained his negotiations with Charles, and, to the last, pressed the ambitions of his family. In October (1549), however, his favourite grandson rebelled against his decision in regard to Parma, and the aged Pope abandoned the unhappy struggle. He died on November 10th of that year.

In spite of the efforts of some recent historians, the character of Paul does not stand out with distinction in the Papal chronicle. His lamentable nepotism mars his whole career, and his real reluctance to press the work of reform did grave injury to his Church. He belonged essentially to the earlier phase of the Papacy, and it is apparent that, if he could have extirpated Protestantism by the sword, the Papacy would have returned to the more decent levities of the days of Leo X. As it was, he did comparatively little for either culture or religion. He very cordially employed Michael Angelo and Sangallo, and showed a concern for the antiquities and the monuments of Rome. He had ability, power, and taste; but he had not that fiery will for reform and that deep religious faith which were needed in that hour of danger.

FOOTNOTES:[302]For the valuable letters of the Italian ambassadors at the time of the Conclave seeL'Elezione del Papa Paolo III.(1907) by P. Accame. An almost contemporary biography of Paul is given in theVitæ et Res Gestæ Romanorum Pontificumof Ciaconius.[303]XI., 19-20.[304]See, for this aspect of Paul's Pontificate, an article by L. Cardauns, "Paul III., Karl V., und Franz I.," inQuellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven, Bd. XI., Heft I., pp. 147-244. The writer holds that an alliance with Charles was advisable with a view to crush Protestantism. There is certainly much evidence that Paul wished to discover which of the rival monarchs would do most for his children, yet he assuredly had a sincere desire for neutrality.[305]SeeNuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland, edited by W. Friedensberg, V. 140 and 59. Many useful documents will also be found in H. Loemmer'sMonumenta Vaticana historiam ecclesiasticam sæculi XVI. illustrantia, 1861.[306]See the report of the Venetian ambassador inLe Relazioni degli ambasciatori Veneti, edited by C. Alberi, 1st series.[307]E. Dietrich,Kardinal Contarini(1885), p. 565.[308]This curious side-light on the history of the Reformation is given, in a document reproduced from the secret archives of the Vatican, by Dr. Pastor (xi., 431).[309]Farnese's letter to the Pope is reproduced by A. von Druffel,Karl V. und die Römische Kurie, ii., 57.[310]It is described in A. Armand,Les Médailleurs Italiens, i., 172.[311]See Pallavicini'sIstoria del Consilio di Trento, bks. vi. and vii.

FOOTNOTES:

[302]For the valuable letters of the Italian ambassadors at the time of the Conclave seeL'Elezione del Papa Paolo III.(1907) by P. Accame. An almost contemporary biography of Paul is given in theVitæ et Res Gestæ Romanorum Pontificumof Ciaconius.

[303]XI., 19-20.

[304]See, for this aspect of Paul's Pontificate, an article by L. Cardauns, "Paul III., Karl V., und Franz I.," inQuellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven, Bd. XI., Heft I., pp. 147-244. The writer holds that an alliance with Charles was advisable with a view to crush Protestantism. There is certainly much evidence that Paul wished to discover which of the rival monarchs would do most for his children, yet he assuredly had a sincere desire for neutrality.

[305]SeeNuntiaturberichte aus Deutschland, edited by W. Friedensberg, V. 140 and 59. Many useful documents will also be found in H. Loemmer'sMonumenta Vaticana historiam ecclesiasticam sæculi XVI. illustrantia, 1861.

[306]See the report of the Venetian ambassador inLe Relazioni degli ambasciatori Veneti, edited by C. Alberi, 1st series.

[307]E. Dietrich,Kardinal Contarini(1885), p. 565.

[308]This curious side-light on the history of the Reformation is given, in a document reproduced from the secret archives of the Vatican, by Dr. Pastor (xi., 431).

[309]Farnese's letter to the Pope is reproduced by A. von Druffel,Karl V. und die Römische Kurie, ii., 57.

[310]It is described in A. Armand,Les Médailleurs Italiens, i., 172.

[311]See Pallavicini'sIstoria del Consilio di Trento, bks. vi. and vii.

CHAPTER XVI

SIXTUS V. AND THE NEW CHURCH

TheCouncil of Trent, which had been convoked with the formal aim of healing the great schism of Christendom, hardened that schism and made it irremediable. I have already observed how natural it was that the Papacy should refuse to make open confession of its decay, and in some degree surrender its authority, by permitting the Church to reform, not only its members, but its head. The inevitable conception of the Popes was to retain the work of reform in their own hands and to use the council, if council there must be,—we have seen that Popes had reason to look with suspicion on councils,—to secure an agreement on doctrinal standards by which the Inquisitors might judge, and secular princes might exterminate, heretics. They miscalculated the power of the northern rebels and the chances of an unselfish cohesion of the Catholic princes against them. Nearly half of Europe adopted a new version of the Christian faith, and, when the Thirty Years' War finally proved the indestructibility of that creed, the task of the Papacy was narrowed to the ruling and reforming of southern Europe and the spiritual conquest of the new worlds which had appeared beyond the seas. For this fourth phase of Papal development—the period from the consolidation of the Reformation to the first outbreak of Modernism in the French Revolution—the Pontificates of Sixtus V. and Benedict XIV. are the most illuminating and significant.

Even the failure of Paul III. did not entirely banish from the Vatican the levity which had been the immediate cause of its disaster. Julius III. (1550-1555) at first resumed, somewhat reluctantly, the sittings of the Council of Trent, but he again suspended its work in 1552 and entered upon a period of luxurious ease and frivolous enjoyment which deeply shocked the graver cardinals. At his death the fiery Neapolitan reformer, Cardinal Carafa, who had dictated the more severe decisions of Paul III., received the tiara, and he spent four energetic years (1555-1559) in a relentless attack upon heresy in Catholic lands. He made vigorous use of the Inquisition, which Paul III. had (largely at the instigation of St. Ignatius) set up in Rome, and he published a complete Index of Prohibited Books.[312]But his reforms, his heresy-hunts, and his hostility to Spain were enforced with such harshness that the Romans almost cursed his memory when his short Pontificate came to an end. It is a singular illustration of the tenacity of abuses at Rome that even the austere Carafa was a nepotist, and the nephews he favoured were of so unworthy a character that they were executed—though one of them was a cardinal—by his successor.

Pius IV. (1559-65) was a more persuasive reformer: a Milanese of lowly origin but of some distinction in canonical scholarship. He guided to their close thelabours of the Council of Trent,[313]and on January 26, 1564, put the Papal seal on the precise formulation of the Roman creed. Pius V. (1565-72) brought to the Papal throne the austere ideals of a sincere Dominican monk. He was not content with persecuting the Italians who criticized the Papacy; he did much to reform the Papal Court and the city. Gregory XIII. (1572-85), a scholarly Pope, mingled in strange proportion the virtues and vices of his predecessors. His name survives honourably in the Gregorian Calendar, and he did more than any other Pope to encourage the spread of that network of Jesuit colleges throughout southern Europe which proved so effective a hindrance to the advance of Protestantism; but theTe Deumhe sang over the foul "St. Bartholomew Massacre" (1572) and the condition of infuriated rebellion in which he left the Papal States at his death betray his defects. The Papal income had fallen considerably since the loss of England and north Germany and Scandinavia, yet Gregory wished to pay heavy subsidies to the militant Catholic princes. He imposed such taxes, and aroused such fierce anger by seizing estates after disputing the title-deeds of the owners, that Italy almost slew him with its hatred.

In these circumstances the famous Sixtus V. mounted the Papal throne. Felice Peretti had been born at Grottamare, in the March of Ancona, on December 13, 1521. The unwonted vigour of his character is traced by some to the Dalmatian blood of his ancestors, who, in the preceding century, had fled before the Turks to Italy. They had preserved their robust health, and attained no fortune, by work on the soil, and there isnot the least improbability in the tradition—which some recent writers resent—that Felice at one time tended his father's swine.[314]But at the age of nine he was sent to the friary at Montalto, where he had an uncle, and he proved a good student. He became so excellent a preacher that he was summoned to give the Lenten Sermons at Rome in 1552, and he attracted the notice of St. Ignatius and St. Philip Neri, and of some of the graver cardinals. After presiding over one or two convents of his Order, he was put in charge of the friary at Venice in 1556, and was in the next year made Counsellor to the Inquisition. His ardent nature and strict ideals caused him to use his powers with such harshness that both his brethren and the Venetian government attacked him. He was forced several times to retire, and in 1560 Rome was definitively compelled to withdraw him.

The fact that he had been thwarted by lax brethren and by an (from the Roman point of view) irreligious government commended the fiery monk still further to his reformer-friends. He received a chair at the Sapienza (Roman University) and was made Counsellor to the Holy Office. In 1565 Cardinal Buoncompagni was sent on a mission to Spain, and, apparently to the Cardinal's disgust, the learned friar was included in his train. The sincerely religious temper of Sixtus V.makes it difficult for some of his biographers to understand his very original character. In spite of his virtue he was quite clearly ambitious,—one must live in the ecclesiastical world to realize how the ambition of power and the ambition to do good fuse with each other in the clerical mind,—he had an atrocious temper, and he retained what higher-born prelates would call the rudeness of a peasant. He quarrelled with Buoncompagni, and, as the mission was never really discharged, he had no opportunity to distinguish himself. However, the new Pope (for whose election Buoncompagni returned prematurely to Rome) was the friendly Dominican colleague, Pius V. Padre Montalto was made Vicar Apostolic over the Franciscan Order—the General having died—and he made a drastic effort to reform the reluctant friars and nuns (1566-1568). For this he received the red hat (1570) and was entrusted with the task of editing the works of St. Ambrose.

Unhappily for the ambitious cardinal-monk, Pius V. died in 1572, and Cardinal Buoncompagni ascended the throne and took the name of Gregory XIII. He withdrew the pension which Pius had assigned to Felice, and for the next thirteen years the Cardinal had to live in retirement and comparative poverty. In this again the very original character of Peretti reveals itself. One might expect that so stern a monastic reformer would retire to a friary when the Papal Court no longer required his presence, but he retired, instead, to his very comfortable palace and garden on the Esquiline. He had brought his sister Camilla and her son Francesco to live in this palace, and even romance and tragedy entered the friar's home. Francesco had married a beautiful and light-minded Roman girl, and her brother, Paolo Orsini, murdered Francesco in order to set herfree for a nobler lover. The uncle could get no redress under Gregory XIII. He curbed his anger, quietly bent over his books, and watched the rising storm in Italy which was to close Gregory's reign.

Gregory died on April 10, 1585, and Cardinal Montalto was enclosed with his colleagues in the Sistine Chapel on April 21st for the making of a new Pope. He was in his sixty-fourth year, and his more malicious biographer would have us believe that he disguised his robustness under a pretence of decrepit age in order to deceive the cardinals. The fact seems to be that he waited quietly, and without taking sides, in his cell until the factions had worn themselves out and the hour had come for choosing a man who had not been regarded aspapabile. Most assuredly he deceived the cardinals, though not by any dishonest artifice. For three days the Medici and Colonna and Farnese, and the French and Spanish factions, fought their traditional battle, and not one of the aspirants could get a majority. Then one or two cardinals bethought themselves of this quiet Cardinal Montalto, who had lived away on the Esquiline with his rustic sister for so many years, and who would surely be grateful to any for elevating him to the throne. They visited Montalto and found him humbly and gratefully disposed: they intrigued nervously and rapidly in the little colony: and presently cardinals rushed to do homage to the former swineherd and applaud the Pontificate of Sixtus V. He was duly grateful, for a few days. Lucrative appointments were at once divided amongst his friends and supporters; though some fear seized men when one of the cardinals ventured to bring before the new Pope the murderer of his nephew, and Sixtus, in sombre and terrible accents, bade the Orsini go and rid himself ofhis cut-throats. He was crowned on May 1st, and he lost little time in applying himself to the drastic schemes of reform which he had, apparently, matured in his peaceful garden on the Esquiline.

Yet the first act of the reformer betrays a defect and compels us to deal at once with the chief irregularity of his conduct. After the unhappy nepotism of Paul IV., that ancient and disreputable practice had been severely condemned, yet we find it flagrantly and immediately revived by Sixtus himself. It was, as we shall see, an essential part of his scheme to reform the College of Cardinals, and he would presently enact that no one should be raised to the cardinalate under the age of twenty-one, and no man with a son or grandson should attain the dignity. Yet within a fortnight of his coronation he announced that his grand-nephew, Alexander Peretti, a boy of thirteen, would be raised to the Sacred College, and another young grand-nephew was appointed Governor of the Borgo of St. Peter's and Captain of the Papal Guard. Their sisters were similarly enriched by noble alliances in later years. This grave impropriety is not excused by references to the ambition and determination of the Pope's sister Camilla; indeed, the wealth which that lady now obtained, and the notoriety with which she invested it in Rome, rather increased the Pope's guilt. He was assuredly not less strong of will than she. The defect shows how deeply rooted the evil was at Rome, when so resolute a reformer yields to it within a few years of the Protestant convulsion of Europe.

With this single concession to the older traditions, however, Sixtus turned energetically to the work of reform. The condition of the Papal States under Gregory XIII. had become scandalous. The leadingofficials sold the lesser offices to corrupt men, and these in turn recovered their money by receiving bribes to overlook crime. Brigandage of the most licentious character spread over Italy, and even Roman nobles supported bands of swordsmen who would with impunity rid them of an inconvenient husband, force the doors of a virtuous woman's house, or relieve the pilgrim of his money. A law prohibiting the use of firearms had been passed, but it had become the fashion to ignore law and police. The picture which Sixtus himself gives us in his early Bulls is amazing when we recall that, only a few years before, the future of the Church had depended in no small measure on the morals of Rome and Italy.

Sixtus had no cause to spare the memory of his predecessor, and he turned with truculence to the remedy of this disorder. Before the end of April he had four young men belonging to high Roman families hanged on gibbets, like common murderers, for carrying firearms in spite of the decree. At the Carnival he erected two gibbets, one at each end of the Corso, to intimidate roysterers from the use of the knife. On April 30th he, in his BullHoc Nostri, enacted the most drastic punishment for brigands and all who should support or tolerate them; and on June 1st he caused the Roman government to put a price on their heads. The nobles of Rome, who had included these picturesque criminals in their suites, were ordered, under the direst penalties, to yield or dismiss them, and even cardinals were threatened with imprisonment if they retained servants of that character. Such was the amazement of Rome that the wits are said to have dressed the statue of St. Peter for a journey and put into its mouth the reply, when St. Paul was supposed to ask the meaningof his travelling costume, that he feared that Sixtus was about to prosecute him for cutting off the ear of the high-priest's servant. From Rome the terror spread throughout the Papal States. Thousands—including renegade monks and mothers who prostituted their daughters—were executed or slain, and the bands fled to neutral territory. Thither the merciless hand of the Pope pursued them, and a few liberal concessions to the other Italian Powers induced them to fling back the banditti upon the arms of the Papal troops or the knives of those who sought blood-money.

That Sixtus pursued this very necessary campaign with absolute truculence and a disdain of delicacy in the use of means cannot be questioned, but, though the fact does not adorn his character, we know too well the licentious condition of Italy to waste our sympathy on his victims. The most stubborn and audacious outlaws fell in a few years before his attack. At Bologna, for instance, the Pepoli and the Malvezzi had for years sustained one of those terrible feuds which had so long disgraced the central State of Christendom. They laughed at Papal injunctions. Sixtus had Count Pepoli treacherously seized, tried (in his absence) at Rome, and decapitated. His followers, and those of the Malvezzi, scattered in alarm, and Bologna was not merely relieved of oppressive criminals, but was adorned with new buildings and enriched with educational institutions by the triumphant Pope. Later, in order to extinguish the embers of animosity, he promoted one of the Pepoli to the cardinalate. The feuds of the Gaetani, the Colonna, and other old families were similarly trodden out, or healed by marriages with grand-nieces of the Pope, and Italy became more sober andmore prosperous than it had been for ages. Unhappily, the reform died with Sixtus and anarchy returned.

This campaign occupied a few years, but it had no sooner been launched than Sixtus produced other of the plans he had prepared in his secluded palace. I have shown how deeply the corruption of the College of Cardinals affected the religious history of Europe, and Sixtus began very quickly to reform it. It was, perhaps, not his misunderstood promise of gratitude to the cardinals who had elected him, but some feeling of incongruity with his own conduct in promoting his boy-nephews, which restrained him for a time. However that may be, he turned to the problem in the second year of his Pontificate, and his BullPostquam Verus[315]laid down severe rules for the sustained improvement of the College. The number of cardinals was restricted to seventy (as is still the rule); illegitimates, and men who had sons and grandsons to favour, were excluded; and a cleric must have attained an age of at least twenty-two years before he could be promoted. In order to distribute and expedite the work of administration, he further divided the cardinals into fifteen "congregations" (some of which already existed), such as those of the Inquisition, of Public Works, of the Vatican Press, and so on.

We can hardly doubt that in this division he had an ulterior aim. The earlier procedure had been for the Pope to lay a question before the whole body of the cardinals and discuss it with them. Sixtus continued to do this, but the cardinals soon found that, although he desired discussion, he turned fiery eyes, and even showered rough and offensive epithets, on any who opposed his plans. He was essentially an autocrat,and the impetuosity which was inseparable from so robust a character made him an unpleasant autocrat. The advantage to him of splitting the cardinals into small groups was that, on any grave question, he had merely to take account of the consultative opinion of a few cardinals. His more admiring biographers record that he rarely dissented from the conclusions of his congregations; in point of fact, he decided grave issues before consulting them, or made his will unmistakably clear to them. His own promotions were generally sound, though he at times strained his regulations in favour of a friend. But he greatly improved the College of Cardinals, and made an admirable effort to exclude from it nationalist influences.

We must not, on the other hand, suppose that these congregations of cardinals count in any degree—except as the mere executive of his will—in the great work of his Pontificate. His own teeming brain and iron will are the sole sources of the mighty achievements of those five years. He had studied the Papal problem on all sides and was prepared at once to remedy a disorder or design a new structure. Agriculture and industry were feeble and unprosperous throughout the Papal States. Ruinous taxation, lawless oppression, and the ease with which one obtained one's bread at the innumerable monasteries, had demoralized the country and ruined the Papal treasury. Sixtus had some of the qualities of an economist—we still possess the careful account book he kept in his days of monastic authority—and he was especially concerned to nurse the Papal income in view of certain grandiose plans which he seems to have held in reserve, so that he applied himself zealously to this problem. It is generally agreed that his work here is a singular compound ofshrewdness and blundering. By his restoration of public security he lifted a burden from agriculture, and he made special efforts to encourage the woollen industry and the silk industry.[316]He, at great cost, brought a good supply of water, from an estate twenty miles away, to Rome, and by this means and by the cutting of new roads re-established some population on the hills, which had long been almost deserted. We find Camilla speculating profitably in this extension of the city, but the more important point is that the population of Rome rose in five years from 70,000 to 100,000; still, however, only one tenth of the population of Imperial Rome. The Pope also gave a water-supply to Civita Vecchia and drained its marshes; and he spent—with very little result in this case—200,000 ducats in draining the marshes at Terracina, which he personally inspected in 1588.

Yet the admiration which his biographers bestow on his finance is misplaced. It seems to have been chiefly in his native March of Ancona that he granted relief from the heavy taxes and imposts of his predecessor; the Papal States generally were still ruinously taxed, even in the necessaries of life. His hoarding of specie, partly for excellent but partly for visionary purposes, injured commerce; and such measures as his prohibition of the sale of landed property to foreigners were short-sighted. The rise of the Papal income, which enabled him to store 4,500,000 scudi (about 8,000,000 dollars) in five years, besides spending large sums on public works, was chiefly due to deplorable methods. The income from the issue of indulgences had now fallen very low—it had not wholly ceased, assome say, since they are still issued in Spain—and little money came from Spain or France. The fixed Papal income had fallen to 200,000 scudi a year, and in the expenditure of this the friar-pope made an economy of 140,000 scudi a year by reducing table-charges, dismissing superfluous servants, and (as is often forgotten) giving to other servants church-benefices so that they needed no salary. The result was still far too small for the creation of a fund, and Sixtus sold honours and offices as flagrantly as any Pope had done since Boniface IX. He sold positions which had never been sold before, and he created new marketable titles. He debased the coinage and imposed a tax on money-lenders. He carried to a remarkable extent the new Papal system ofMonti.[317]He withdrew offices which Gregory XIII. had sold, and transferred them to higher bidders; and he must have known how the officials would recoup themselves.

By these means he raised his hoard, which seems to have been gathered for some visionary grand campaign against the Protestants and the Turks. We at once recall Julius II., but it is a comparison which the work of Sixtus V. cannot sustain; he was not so great a ruler as Julius, and he fell on less prosperous times. I must add, however, that part of his reserve fund was destined for practical uses. In 1586 famine and Turks and pirates caused grave distress in Italy. Sixtus did not even then abolish his heavy taxes on the necessariesof life and the means of distributing them, but he bought 100,000 crowns' worth of corn in Sicily, fixed the price of flour and punished unjust dealers, and set about collecting a fund of a million scudi to meet such emergencies. He was not economist enough to see the roots of the evil, and fair, fertile Italy continued to suffer under the unhappy Papal system.

The Pope's tenderness to the Jews was part of his crude financial policy. A Portuguese Jew, who had fled from the Inquisition, was his chief fiscal adviser, and Sixtus interpreted in the most genial manner the current teaching of theologians, that, since the Jews were irreparably damned on a greater count, they might lend money at interest, and the Papacy might tax their wealth. Baron Huebner, in a moment of unusual candour, corrects some of the less discriminating biographers: Sixtus, he says, "protected the Jews in order to exploit them."[318]Pius V. had expelled the Jews from all parts of the Papal States except Rome and the March of Ancona, and Sixtus, by his constitutionHebræorum Gens, cancelled the restriction and ordered Christians to treat the Jews and their synagogues with respect. We feel that interest led Sixtus on to a more human feeling. He dispensed the unhappy Jews from wearing the odious yellow dress which Christian princes and prelates imposed on them, and for a few years, in that one corner of Europe, they enjoyed the life of human beings.

Sixtus was less lenient to the Jesuits than to the Jews. The primitive fervour of the Society was already dimmed by prosperity or perverted by casuistry, and complaints came to Rome from all parts. Having been a Franciscan monk, Sixtus was not well disposed towardthe new congregation, which had aroused the hostility of the older religious bodies. He used to observe, in his grim, meditative way: "Who are these men who make us bow our heads at the mention of their name?" He referred to the Catholic practice of inclining the head at the mention of the name of Jesus, but he disliked the whole constitution of the Society and resented the privileges it had won from his predecessors. A prolonged quarrel of the worldly and degenerate Jesuits of Spain with General Acquaviva gave him an opportunity to intervene, and he ordered an inquiry into their rules. In 1590 he announced that he would alter the name and the constitutions of the Society. Acquaviva stirred such Catholic monarchs as were docile to his brethren to petition the Pope in their favour, but Sixtus was not prepared to listen to the suggestions, in ecclesiastical affairs, of worldly princes. Acquaviva then persuaded Cardinal Carafa, to whom the inquiry had been entrusted, to prolong his inquiry, and it became a race between the failing energy of the Pope and the intrigues of the Jesuits. Rome witnessed the contest with the interest it had once bestowed on the chariot-races of the Blues and the Greens. The inquiry was transferred to other prelates, and, when these also were suborned, Sixtus peremptorily ordered Acquaviva to request that the name of the Society should be changed. The petition was reluctantly made, the Bull authorizing the change of name was drafted and—Sixtus V. died before he put his name to it. In the circumstances it was inevitably whispered that Jesuit poison had ended the Pope's life, but the legend was as superfluous as it was familiar.[319]

The rest of the Pope's administrative work must bebriefly recorded before we pass to the consideration of his political activity. He attempted to restrict the prodigality of the Romans in dress, food, funeral and wedding expenses, etc., but this sumptuary legislation[320]was not enforced. He found general and disgraceful laxity in the convents of nuns, and enacted a death-penalty against offenders: the same penalty he, with his habitual truculence, imposed for cheating at cards or dice. He directed the police to cleanse Rome of prostitutes and astrologers, reformed the prisons,[321]made provision for widows and orphans, pressed the redemption of captives,[322]and constructed ten galleys for the defence of the Italian coast against the Turks and pirates. He cleared of debt the Roman University (Sapienza) and restored it to its full activity. He engaged Fontana to crown St. Peter's with its long-deferred cupola, and threw such energy into the work that he almost completed in twenty-two months a task which the builders expected to occupy ten years. He, with equal vigour, set up the obelisks in front of St. Peter's, reconstructed the Lateran Palace in part, and restored the columns of Trajan and Antoninus; though, in a naïve desire to express the triumph of Christianity over Paganism, he put statues of Peter and Paul on the ancient Roman pedestals.[323]He also set up a press in the Vatican Library, which he restored and decorated,and from this he issued the Latin version of the Bible which the Council of Trent had ordered, as well as the works of St. Ambrose and St. Bonaventure.

The magnitude of this domestic program and the vigour of the sexagenarian Pope are enhanced when we further learn that his brief Pontificate was, as usual, occupied with grave political problems. With German affairs the Papacy had now little concern, but we must record that Sixtus permitted some of the Catholic bishops to allow the laity to communicate in both kinds. To England he devoted more attention, though his violent and undiplomatic methods only made worse the position of the Catholics in that country. Mary Stuart contrived to write to him, after she had been condemned, and he spoke of Elizabeth to the cardinals as "the English Jezabel." He urged Henry III. to intercede for Mary and himself wrote a defence of her. When she was executed, he spurred Philip I. in his designs against England and promised him 500,000 florins when his fleet reached England and a further half million when the Spaniards occupied London. When an English spy was detected at Rome, Sixtus ordered his tongue to be cut out and his hand struck off before he was beheaded. In defiance of his own decree he bestowed the cardinalate on William Allen, and he directed Allen to translate (for distribution in England) the Bull in which he enumerated the dark crimes of Elizabeth, renewed the sentence of excommunication against her, and declared her subjects released from their allegiance. These measures, which only increased the sufferings of the Catholics, betray again the limitation of the Pope's vigorous intelligence, and, when the Armada sank, he turned from Spain to France and realized the futility of his policy.

The chief political problem was, however, the attitude of Rome toward the rival Catholic Powers, Spain and France, and the less important action of Sixtus in Venice (which, as a bulwark against the Protestant north, he sought, in spite of his old grievances, to conciliate), Savoy (where he compelled the Duke to refrain from appointing bishops), Besançon (where he forced upon the reluctant chapter a friar-friend whom he had made Archbishop), Belgium (where he demanded a truce between the University and the Jesuits), and Switzerland (where he attempted in vain to restrain the secular authorities), need not be considered at length. The French problem, complicated by the ambition of Spain, might have given anxious hours to a more astute statesman than Sixtus, and we shall hardly expect a man with so little subtlety to reach a distinguished solution of it.

The ineptness of Catherine de' Medici and the folly and profligacy of her diseased son, Henry III., had brought France to a dangerous pass. Henry of Guise coveted the throne, under a pretence of zeal for the Church: Henry of Navarre grimly awaited his natural succession to it: and Philip of Spain dreamed of annexing France, as well as England, to his swollen dominion. The Spanish representative at Rome, Count Olivarez, who nourished a secret disdain of the peasant-Pope, urged Sixtus to eliminate Henry of Navarre from the competition by excommunication, for having relapsed to the Protestant creed, and, on September 5, 1585, Sixtus issued against him and the Prince of Condé the BullAb Immenso. Henry of Navarre retorted cheerfully that the Pope was himself a heretic, and Henry III. angrily drove the Pope's new Nuncio from France; to which Sixtus retorted by expelling fromRome Henry's representative, the Marquis Pisani. To the great delight of Philip and the Catholic League, Henry III., feeble and distracted, humbly submitted, and was compelled to put pressure on the remaining Protestants. Sixtus, in fact, promised Henry a Spanish army from the Netherlands to assist in coercing the Huguenots, and urged him to co-operate with Philip and with the League (under Guise). In his exclusive, and entirely natural, concern for the orthodoxy of the country, Sixtus failed to understand in any degree its peculiar political condition or the utterly selfish designs of Guise and of Philip. He was impelling the country toward civil war.

In 1587 the Germans invaded France, and Henry of Navarre in turn confronted the troops of the League. Some small initial victories of the League led the Pope to congratulate the Duke of Guise in the most extravagant language, and it was only the fear of exasperating Philip that restrained him from bestowing on the Duke's son the hand of one of his grand-nieces. One cannot suppose that Sixtus failed to see that Guise had ambition, but he showed little penetration of character in admonishing the Duke to recover Paris for Henry III. and to assist that monarch to set up the Inquisition in France and exterminate heresy. The Nuncio's letters show that he was, under the Pope's instructions, absorbed in a futile effort to reconcile the Duke and the King, and it is said that Sixtus angrily advised the effeminate monarch either to make a friend of Guise or to destroy him. Even Henry III. showed more appreciation of the political situation.

Sixtus turned impatiently toward Spain and encouraged the designs of Philip. On July 15, 1588, he signed a treaty with the League and Spain, and the newalliance promised the complete eradication of heresy from France. The failure of the Armada and the Pope's habitual distrust of Philip clouded the alliance for a time, but Henry III. was not willing to accept the Pope's terms for a transfer of his affections. Sixtus was especially eager to have the decrees of the Council of Trent published in France. To this the Gallican clergy objected, and Henry himself declared that he would publish them only "salvis juribus regis et regni": a phrase which Sixtus, to use his own words, "cursed." Even when, to the Pope's extreme anger, Henry had the Duke and the Cardinal of Guise assassinated, Sixtus remained too irresolute to derive advantage from the King's remorse or apprehension, though the Spaniards and the League gained ground at Rome. Henry III., indeed, entered into alliance with the Protestant Henry against the League, and Sixtus was content to issue a fresh threat of excommunication against the Huguenot.

But the assassination of the King in August (1589) simplified the situation, and Sixtus definitely allied himself with Spain and the League against Henry IV.: a very natural, but equally impolitic, decision. Venice recognized Henry, and the Pope at first recalled his Nuncio from Venice and then, hearing the success of the new King, ordered him to return. Sixtus was beginning to appreciate the situation, and, when the Duke of Luxemburg came to Rome to tell of Henry's willingness to reconsider his religious position, he was amiably received. The Spaniards made a last violent struggle, and even threatened to arraign the Pope for heresy before a General Council, but Sixtus now saw his way clearly. Throughout the year 1590 he braved the threats of the Spaniards and watched the progressof Henry IV., but the struggle against Spaniards and Jesuits was too exacting for a man of his years and he succumbed to fever on August 24th.

Sixtus must unhesitatingly be included among the great Popes, but it is perplexing to read, as one often does, that he was "one of the greatest of the Popes." The work he accomplished in five years is far greater than most of the Popes achieved, or would have achieved, in twenty years, and at least the greater part of his reform-work in Rome and Italy was of considerable value. Yet even here we must not overlook his defects: he transgressed his own regulations when he would gratify his affections, he enforced reforms with harshness and violence, and he greatly lessened the value of his economic work by hoarding a vast sum for the purpose (apparently) of conducting a visionary grand campaign against Turks and heretics. His political attitude was, as I have shown, injudicious and irresolute. Both in character and statesmanship he falls far short of the greater Popes, and it is, perhaps, some indication of the evil plight of the Church that Sixtus V. should be the ablest man it could produce in a century of grave and persistent danger.

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