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Chapter 1MEDICEAN ROME.
ON the 18th of August, 1503, after a sudden
and mysterious illness Alexander VI had departed this life to the unspeakable
joy of all Rome, as Guicciardini assures us. Crowds thronged to see
the dead body of the man whose boundless ambition, whose perfidy, cruelty, and
licentiousness coupled with shameless greed had infected and poisoned all the
world. On this side the Alps the verdict of Luther’s time and of the centuries
which followed has confirmed the judgment of the Florentine historian without
extenuation, and so far as Borgia himself was concerned doubtless this verdict
is just. But today if we consider Alexander’s pontificate objectively we can
recognize its better sides. Let it pass as personal ambition that he should
have been the first of all the Popes who definitely attempted to create a
modern State from the conglomerate of the old Stati Pontificii, and that he should have endeavoured, as he
undeniably did, step by step to secularize that State and to distribute among
his friends the remaining possessions of the Church. But in two ways his
government shows undeniable progress, in the midst of constant tumult, during
which without interruption tyranny succeeded to tyranny in the petty States,
when for centuries neither life nor property had been
secure, Cesare Borgia had established in the Romagna an ordered
government, just and equal administration of the laws; provided suitable
outlets for social forces, and brought back peace and security; and by laying
out new streets, canals, and by other public works indicated the way to improve
agriculture and increase manufacture. Guicciardini himself recognizes
all this and adds the important comment, that now the people saw how much
better it was for the Italians to obey as a united people one powerful master,
than to have a petty despot in every town, who must needs be a burden on the
townsfolk without being able to protect and help them. And
here Guicciardini touches the second point which marks the
pontificate of Alexander VI, the appearance, still vague and confused, of the
idea of a future union of the Italian States, and their independence of foreign
rule and interference. Alexander played with this great political principle,
though he did not remain faithful to it; to what could he have been faithful?
Was not his very nature immoral and perfidious to its core? But now and then at
least he made as if he would blazon on his banner the motto Italia farà da se; this brought him a popularity which
nowadays it is hard to understand, and made it possible for him, the most
unrighteous man in Italy, to gain the victory over the most righteous man of
his time and to stifle Savonarola’s reforming zeal among the ashes at the
stake.
The idea of a great reformation of the
Church in both head and members had arisen since the beginning of the
thirteenth century, and was the less likely to fade from the mind of nations
since complaints of the evils of Church government were growing daily more
serious and well-grounded and one hope of improvement after another had been
wrecked. No means of bringing about this reform was neglected; all had failed.
Francis of Assisi had opposed to the growing materialism and worldliness of the
Church the idea of renunciation and poverty. But Gregory IX had contrived to
win over the Order founded by the Saint to the cause of the Papacy, and to set
in the background the Founder's original purpose. Thrust into obscurity in the
inner sanctuary of the Order, this purpose, tinged by a certain
schismatic colouring, developed in the hands of the Spirituales into the Ecclesia Spiritualis as opposed to the Ecclesia Carnalis, which stood for the official Church. Traces
of this thought are to be found in Dante; we may even call it the
starting-point, whence he proceeds to contrast his Monarchia with
the political Papacy of the fourteenth century, and as a pioneer to develop
with keen penetration and energy the modern idea of the State. The opponents of
the Popes of Avignon in reality only fought against their politics without
paying any attention to the moral regeneration of Christendom. Theological
science in the fifteenth century raised the standard of reform against the
dependence of the Papacy, the triple Schism, and the disruption of the Church.
But she too succumbed, her projects foiled, at the great ecclesiastical
conferences of Constance and Basel. Asceticism, politics, theology had striven
in vain; the close of the Middle Ages on both sides of the Alps was marked by
outbursts of popular discontent and voices which from the heart of the nations
cried for reform, prophesying the catastrophe of the sixteenth century. None of
these voices was mightier than Savonarola’s, or left a deeper echo. He was the
contemporary and opponent of the men who were to give their name to this epoch
in Rome’s history.
The House of the Medici passes for the
true and most characteristic exponent of the Renaissance movement. We cannot
understand the nature and historical position of the Medicean Papacy
without an attempt to explain the character and development of this movement.
The discovery of man since Dante and Giotto, the discovery of Nature by the
naturalism of Florence, the revival of classical studies, and the reawakening
of the antique in Art and Literature are its component parts; but its essence
can only be grasped if we regard the Renaissance as the blossoming and
unfolding of the mind of the Italian people. The early Renaissance was indeed
the Vita Nuova of the nation. It is an error to believe
that it was in opposition to the Church. Art and the artists of the thirteenth
century recognized no such opposition. It is the Church who gives the artists
employment and sets them their tasks. The circle of ideas in which they move is
still entirely religious: the breach with the religious allegory and symbolism
of the Middle Ages did not take place until the sixteenth century. In the
fourteenth century the spread of naturalistic thought brought about a new
conception of the beauty of the human body; this phase was in opposition to the
monastic ideal, yet it had in it no essential antagonism to Christianity. It was
a necessary stage of the development which was to lead from realism dominant
for a time to a union of the idealist and realist standpoints. Many of the
Popes were entirely in sympathy with this Renaissance; several of them opposed
the pagan and materialistic degeneration of Humanism, but none of them accused
the art of the Renaissance of being inimical to Christianity.
Its pagan and materialistic side, not content with restoring antique knowledge and culture to modern humanity, eagerly laid hold of the whole intellectual life of a heathen time, together with its ethical perceptions, its principles based on sensual pleasure and the joy of living; these it sought to bring to life again. This impulse was felt at the very beginning of the fifteenth century; since the middle of the century it had ventured forth even more boldly in Florence, Naples, Rome in the days of Reggio, Valla, Beccadelli, and despite many a repulse had even gained access to the steps of the Papal throne. A literature in substance and essence very much characterized by the Facetiae, by Lorenzo Valla’s Voluptas and Beccadelli’s Hermaphrodituscould not but shock respectable feeling. Florence was the headquarters of this school, and Lorenzo il Magnifico its chief supporter. Scenes that took place there in his day in the streets and squares, the extravagances of the youth of the city lost in sensuality, the writings and pictures offered to the public, would and must seem to earnest-minded Christians a sign of approaching dissolution. A reaction was both natural and justifiable. Giovanni Dominici had introduced it at the beginning of the century, and Fra Antonino of San Marco had supported it, while Archbishop of Florence, with the authority of his blameless life devoted to the service of his fellow-men. And so Cosimo’s foundation became the center and starting-point of a movement destined to attack his own House.
At the head of that movement stood
Fra Girolamo Savonarola. Grief over the degradation of the Church had
driven him into a monastery and now it led him forth to the pulpits of San
Marco and Santa Maria del Fiore. As a youth he had sung his dirge De Ruina Ecclesiae in a canzone since grown
famous; as a man he headed the battle against the immorality and worldliness of
the Curia. He was by no means illiterate, but in the pagan and sensual tendency
of humanist literature and in the voluptuous freedom of art he saw the source
of evil, and in Lorenzo and his sons pernicious patrons of corruption. Zeal
against the immorality of the time, the worldliness of prelates and preachers,
made him overlook the lasting gains that the Renaissance and humanism brought
to humanity. He had no sympathy with this development of culture from the fresh
young life of his own people. He did not understand the Young Italy of his day;
behind this luxuriant growth he could not see the good and fruitful germ, and
here, as in the province of politics, he lost touch with the pulse of national
life. His plan of a theocratic State governed only by Christ, its invisible
Head, was based on momentary enthusiasm and therefore untenable. He was too
deficient in aesthetic sense to be able to rise in inward freedom superior to
discords. Like a dead man amongst the living, he left Italy to bear the clash
of those contradictions which the great mind of Julius II sought, unhappily in
vain, to fuse in one conciliatory scheme.
Such a scheme of conciliation meantime
made its appearance in Florence, not without the co-operation and probably the
encouragement of the Medici. It was connected with the introduction of
Platonism, which since the time of the Council of Florence in 1438 was
represented in that city by enthusiastic and learned men like Bessarion,
and was zealously furthered by Cosimo, the Pater Patriae,
in the Academy which he had founded. From the learned societies started for
these purposes come the first attempts to bring not only Plato’s philosophy but
the whole of classical culture into a close and essential connection with
Christianity. Platonism seemed to them the link which joined Christianity with
antiquity. Bessarion himself had taught the internal relationship of
both principles, and Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola made the
explanation of this theory the work of their lives. If both of them went too
far in their youthful enthusiasm and mysticism, and conceived Christianity
almost as a continuation of Attic philosophy, this was an extravagance which
left untouched the sincerity of their own belief, and from which Marsilio,
when he grew older, attempted to free himself. Giovanni
and Giulio de' Medici, son and nephew of Lorenzo, were both Marsilio’s pupils. Both were destined to wear the
tiara and took a decided part in the scheme for conciliating these contrasts,
which Julius II set forth by means of Raffaelle’s brush.
The victory of the Borgia over the monk of
San Marco was not likely to discourage the skepticand materialistic tendency, whose worst features were incarnate in Alexander VI
and Cesare Borgia. Pietro Pomponazzi furthered
it by his notorious phrase, that a thing might be true in philosophy and yet
false in theology; a formula that spread its poison far and wide. Even then in
Florence a genius was developing, that was to prove the true incarnation of the
pagan Renaissance and modern realism. The flames which closed over Savonarola
had early convinced Niccolò Machiavelli that no reform was to be
looked for from Rome.
Savonarola’s distrust of humanism and his
harsh verdict on the extreme realism of contemporary art were not extinguished
with his life. A few years later we find his thoughts worked out, or rather
extended and distorted in literature. Castellesi (Adriano
di Corneto), formerly secretary to Alexander VI
and created Cardinal May 81, 1503, wrote De ver philosophia ex quattuor doctoribus Ecclesiae,
in direct opposition to the Renaissance and humanism. The author represents
every scientific pursuit, indeed all human intellectual life, as useless for
salvation, and even dangerous. Dialectics, astronomy, geometry, music, and
poetry are but vainglorious folly. Aristotle has nothing to do with Paul, nor
Plato with Peter; all philosophers are damned, their wisdom vain, since it
recognized but a fragment of the truth and marred even this by misuse. They are
the patriarchs of heresy; what are physics, ethics, logic compared with the
Holy Scriptures, whose authority is greater than that of all human
intellect?
The man who wrote these things, and at
whose table Alexander VI contracted his last illness, was no ascetic and no
monkish obscurantist. He was the Pope’s confidant and quite at home in all
those political intrigues which later under Leo X brought ruin upon him. His
book can only be regarded as a blow aimed at Julius II, Alexander’s old enemy,
who now wore the tiara and was preparing to glorify his pontificate by the
highest effort of which Christian art was capable. Providence had granted him
for the execution of his plans three of the greatest minds the world of art has
ever known: never had a monarch three such men as Bramante, Michelangelo,
and Raffaelle at once under his sway. With their help Julius II
resolved to carry out his ideas for the glory of his pontificate and the
exaltation of the Church. What Cardinal Castellesiwanted
was a downright rebellion against the Pope; if he, with his following of
obscurantists, were acknowledged to be in the right, all the plans of the
brilliant and energetic ruler would end in failure, or else be banned as
worldly, and Julius II would lose the glory of having united the greatest and
noblest achievement of art with the memory of his pontificate and the interests
of Catholicism.
The Pope gave Cardinal Castellesi his answer by making the Vatican what it
is. The alteration and enlargement of the palace however passes almost
unnoticed in comparison with the rebuilding of the Basilica of St Peter’s, on
which the Pope was resolved since 1505. With the palace (1504) Bramante seemed
to have set the crown on his many works; but the plans for the new cathedral,
with all the sketches and alternatives which still survive and have been analysed
for us with true critical appreciation, show us Bramante not only in the height
of his creative power, but as perhaps the most universal and gifted mind that
ever used its mastery over architecture. The form of the Greek cross joined
with the vast central cupola might be taken as a fitting symbol for
Catholicism. The arms of the cross, stretched out to the four winds, tell us of
the doctrine of universality; the classical forms preferred by the Latin race,
the elevation with its horizontal lines accentuated throughout, bespeak that
principle of rest and persistence, which is the true heritage of the Catholic
south in contradistinction to the restless striving in search of a visionary
ideal shown in the vertical principle of the north. St Peter’s thus, in the
development planned by Julius, presented the most perfect picture of the
majestic extension of the Church; but the paintings and decorations of the
palace typified the conception of Christianity, humanity led to Christ, the
evolution and great destiny of His Church, and lastly the spiritual empire in
which the Pope, along with the greatest thinkers of his time, beheld the goal
of the Renaissance and the scheme of a new and glorious future, showing
Christianity in its fullest realization.
His own mausoleum gives proof how deeply
Julius II was convinced that the chief part in this development fell to the
Papacy in general, and to himself, Giulian della Rovere, in particular. The instruction which he gave to
Michelangelo to represent him as Moses can bear but one interpretation: that
Julius set himself the mission of leading forth Israel (the Church) from its
state of degradation and showing it, though he could not grant possession, the
Promised Land at least from afar, that blessed land which consists in the
enjoyment of the highest intellectual benefits, and the training and
consecration of all faculties of man’s mind to union with God. He bade
Michelangelo depict on the roof of the Sistine Chapel (1508-9), how after the
fall of our first parents mankind was led from afar towards this high goal;
symbolizing that shepherding of the soul to Christ, which Clement the
Alexandrine had already seen and described. When we see the Sibyls placed among
the Patriarchs and Prophets, we know what this meant in the language of the
theologians and religious philosophers of that time. Not only Judaism, but
also Graeco-Roman paganism, is an antechamber to Christianity; and this
antique culture gave not merely a negative, but also a positive preparation for
Christ. For this reason it could not be considered as a contradiction of the
Christian conception : there was a positive relationship between classical
antiquity and Christianity.
But we see this thought more clearly and
far more wonderfully expressed in the Camera della Segnatura (1509). If we consider what place it was
that Raffaelle was painting, and the character and individuality of
the Pope, we cannot doubt that in these compositions also we are concerned, not
with the subjective inspiration of the artist who executed, but with the Pope’s
own well-considered and clearly formulated scheme. In the last few years it has
been recognized that this scheme is entirely based on the ideas of the universe
represented by the Florentine School. Especially it has been proved that the School
of Athens is drawn after the model
which Marsilio Ficino left of the Accademia, the ancient
assembly of philosophers, while Parnassus has an echo of that bella scuola
the great poets of old times, whom Dante met in the Limbo of the Inferno. The
four pictures of the Camera della Segnatura represent the aspirations of the soul of
man in each of its faculties; the striving of all humanity towards God by means
of aesthetic perception (Parnassus), the exercise of reason in
philosophical enquiry and all scientific research (the School of Athens),
order in Church and State (Gift of Ecclesiastical and Secular Laws), and
finally theology. The whole may be summed up as a pictorial representation of Pico della Mirandola’s celebrated
phrase;
“philosophia veritatem quaerit, theologia invenit, religio possidet”;
and it corresponds with
what Marsilio says in his Academy of Noble Minds when he
characterizes our life’s work as an ascent to the angels and to God.
These compositions are the highest to
which Christian art has attained, and the thoughts which they express are one
of the greatest achievements of the Papacy. The principle elsewhere laid down
is here reaffirmed: that the reception of the true Renaissance into the circle
of ecclesiastical thought points to a widening of the limited medieval
conception into universality, and indicates a transition to entire and actual
Catholicity, like the great step taken by Paul, when he turned to the Gentiles
and released the community from the limits of Judaistic teaching.
This expansion and elevation of the
intellectual sphere is the most glorious achievement of Julius II and of the
Papacy at the beginning of modern times. It must not only be remembered, but
placed in the most prominent position, when history sums up this chapter in
human development. Since Luther’s time it has been the custom to consider the
Papacy of the Renaissance almost exclusively as viewed by theologians who
emphasized only moral defects in the representatives of this institution and
the neglect of ecclesiastical reform. Certainly these are important
considerations, and our further deductions will prove that we do not neglect
them nor underestimate their immense significance for the life of the Church
and Catholic unity. But from this standpoint we can never succeed in grasping
the situation. Ranke in his Weltgeschichte could
write the history of the first hundred years of the Roman Empire, without
giving one word to all the scandalous tales that Suetonius records. The course
of universal history and the importance of the Empire for the wide provinces of
the Roman world were little influenced by them. Similarly, private faults of
the Renaissance Popes were fateful for the moral life of the Church, but the
question of what the Papacy was and meant for these times, is not summed up or
determined by them. It is the right of these Popes to be judged by the better
and happier sides of their government; the historian who portrays them should
not be less skilful than the great masters of the Renaissance, who in their
portraits of the celebrities of their time contrived to bring out the sitters'
best and most characteristic qualities. Luther was not touched in the least
degree by the artistic development of his time; brought up amid the peasant
life of Saxony and Thuringia he had no conception of the whole world that lay
between Dante and Michelangelo, and could not see that the eminence of the
Papacy consisted at that time in its leadership of Europe in the province of
art. But to deny this now would be injustice to the past.
The Medici had not stood aloof from this
evolution, which reached its highest point under Julius II. Search has been
made for the bridge by means of which the ideas of Marsilio and his
fellow thinkers were brought from Florence to Rome. But there is no real need
to guess at definite personages. Hundreds of correspondents had long since made
all Italy familiar with this school of thought. Among those who frequented the
Court of Rome, Castiglione, Bibbiena, Sadoleto, Inghirami,
and Beroaldus had been educated in the
spirit of Marsilio. His old friend and correspondent Raffaelle Riario was now, as Cardinal of San Giorgio and the
Pope’s cousin, one of the most influential personages in the Vatican. But
before all we must remember Giovanni de' Medici and his cousin Giulio, the
future Popes. They were Marsilio’s pupils,
and after the banishment of their family he remained their friend and
corresponded with them, regarding them as the true heirs of Lorenzo’s
spirit; Raffaelle has represented the older cousin Giovanni standing
near Julius II in the Bestowed of Spiritual Laws.
It was a kingdom of intellectual unity,
which the brush of the greatest of painters was commissioned to paint on the
walls of the Camera della Segnatura; the same idea which Julius caused to be
proclaimed in 1512, in the opening speech
of Aegidius of Viterbo at the Lateran Council, referring to
the classical proverb: “simplex sermo veritatis”. The world of the beautiful, of reason and
science, of political and social order, had its place appointed in the kingdom
of God upon earth. A limit was set to the neglect of secular efforts to explore
nature and history, to the disregard of poetry and art, and its rights were
granted to healthy human reason organized in the State; Gratiae et Musae a
Deo sunt atque ad Deum referendae, as Marsilio had said.
The programme laid down by
Julius II, had it been carried out, might have saved Italy and preserved the
Catholic principle, when imperilled in the North. The task was to bring modern
culture into harmony with Christianity, to unite the work of the Renaissance,
so far as it was really sound and progressive, with ecclesiastical practice and
tradition into one harmonious whole. The recognition of the rights of
intellectual activity, of the ideal creations of human fancy, and of the
conception of the State, were the basis for this union. It remains to be shown
why the attempt proved fruitless.
The reign of Julius II was one long
struggle. The sword never left his grasp, which was more used to the handling
of weapons than of Holy Writ. On the whole, the Pope might at the close of his
pontificate be contented with the success of his politics. He had driven the
French from Italy, and the retreat of Louis XII from Lombardy opened the Gates
of Florence once more to the Medici. The Council of Pisa, for which France had
used her influence, had come to naught, and its remnant was scattered before
the anger of the victorious Pontiff. And as he had freed Italy from the
ascendancy of France so he now hoped to throw off that of Spain. It may be a
legend that as he was dying he murmured “Fuori i barbari”, but these
words certainly were the expression of his political thought. But this second
task was not within his power. On the 3rd of May, 1512, he had opened the
Lateran Council to counteract that of Pisa. At first none of the great Powers
was represented there; 15 Cardinals, 14 Patriarchs, 10 Archbishops, and 57
Bishops, all of them Italians, with a few heads of monastic Orders, formed this
assembly, which was called the Fifth General Lateran Council. Neither Julius
nor Leo was ever able to convince the world that this was an ecumenical
assembly of Christendom. Julius died in the night of February 20-1,
1513. Guicciardini calls him a ruler unsurpassed in power and
endurance, but violent and without moderation. Elsewhere he says that he had
nothing of a priest but vesture and title. The dialogue, Julius Exclusus, attributed sometimes to Hütten, sometimes to Erasmus, and perhaps written
by Fausto Andrelini, is the harshest
condemnation of the Pope and his reign. But at bottom the pamphlet is
exceedingly one-sided and the outcome of French party-spirit. Although in many
cases the author speaks the truth, and for instance even at that time (1513)
unfortunately was able to put such words into the Pope’s mouth as
“Nos Ecclesiam vocamus sacras aedes, sacerdotes, et praecipue Curiam Romanam,
me imprimis, qui caput sum Ecclesiae”,
yet this is more a common trait of the
office than a characteristic of Julius II. It almost raises a smile to read
in Pallavicino, that on his death-bed the
magnanimity of Julius was only equalled by his piety, and that, although he had
not possessed every priestly perfection, perhaps because of his natural
inclinations, or because of the age, which had not yet been disciplined by the
Council of Trent, yet his greatest mistake had been made with the best
intention and proved disastrous by a mere chance, when, as Head of the Church,
and at the same time as a mighty Prince, he undertook a work that for these
very reasons exceeded the means of his treasury, the building of St Peter’s. We
see that neither his enemies nor his apologists had the least idea wherein
Julius’ true greatness consisted. With such divided opinions it cannot surprise
us that contemporaries and coming generations alike found it difficult to form
a reasoned and final judgment of the pontificate which immediately
followed.
Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici came
forth from the conclave summoned on March 4, 1513, as Pope Leo X.
Since Piero had been drowned on the 9th of December, 1503, Giovanni
had become the head of the House of Medici. He was only 38 years of age at the
election, to which he had had himself conveyed in a litter from Florence to
Rome, suffering from fistula. The jest on his short-sightedness,
“multi coeci Cardinales creavere caecum decimum Leonem”,
by no means expressed public opinion,
which rejoiced at his accession. The Possesso,
which took place on April 11th, with the great procession to the Lateran, was
the most brilliant spectacle of its kind that Christian Rome had ever
witnessed. What was expected of Leo was proclaimed in the inscription
which Agostino Chigi had attached to
his house for the occasion:
“Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora, tempora Mavors
Olim habuit,ma nunc tempora Pallas habet”.
But other expectations were not wanting
and a certain goldsmith gave voice to them in the line :
“Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero”.
To Leo X the century owed its name.
The Saecula Leonis have been called the Saecula Aurea,
and his reign has been compared with that of Augustus. Erasmus, who saw him in
Rome in 1507 and 1509, praises his kindness and humanity, his magnanimity and
his learning, the indescribable charm of his speech, his love of peace and of
the fine arts, which cause no sighs, no tears; he places him as high above all
his predecessors as Peter’s Chair is above all thrones in the world. Pallavicino says of Leo that he was well-known for his
kindness of heart, learned in all sciences, and had passed his youth in the
greatest innocence. That as Pope he let himself be blinded by appearances,
which often confuse the good with the great, and chose rather the applause of
the crowd than the prosperity of the nation, and thus was tempted to exercise
too magnificent a generosity. Such expressions from one who is the
unconditional apologist of all the Popes cannot make much impression, but it is
noticeable that even Sarpi says: “Leo,
noble by birth and education, brought many aptitudes to the Papacy, especially
a remarkable knowledge of classical literature, humanity, kindness, the
greatest liberality, an avowed intention of supporting artists and learned men,
who for many years had enjoyed no such favour in the Holy See. He would have
made an ideal Pope had he added to these qualities some knowledge of the things
of religion, and a little more inclination to piety, both of them things for
which he cared little”.
The favourable opinion entertained of Leo
X by his contemporaries long held the field in history. His reign has been
regarded as at once the zenith and cause of the greatest period of the
Renaissance. His wide liberality, his unfeigned enthusiasm for the creations of
genius, his unprejudiced taste for all that beautifies humanity, and his
sympathy for all the culture of his time have been the theme of a traditional
chorus of laudation. More recent criticism has recognized in the reign of Leo a
period of incipient decline, and has traced that decline to the follies and
frailties of the Pontiff.
With regard to the political methods of
Leo some difference of opinion may still be entertained. Some have seen in him
the single-minded and unscrupulous friend of Medicean Florence,
prepared to sacrifice alike the interests of the Church and of the Papacy to
the advancement of his family. To others he is the clear-sighted statesman who,
perceiving the future changes and difficulties of the Church, sought for the
Papacy the firm support of a hereditary alliance.
Truth may lie midway between these two
opinions. If we view Leo as a man, similar doubts encounter us. Paramount in
his character were his gentleness and cheerfulness, his good-nature, his
indulgence both for himself and others, his love of peace and hatred of war.
But these amiable qualities were coupled with an insincerity and a love of
tortuous ways which grew to be a second nature. Nor must we overlook the fact
that Leo’s policy of peace was a mere illusion; his hopes and intentions were
quite frustrated by the actual course of affairs. On his personal character the
great blot must rest that he passed his life in intellectual self-indulgence
and took his pleasure in hunting and gaming, while the Teutonic North was
bursting the bonds of reverence and authority which bound Europe to Rome. Even
for the restoration of the rule of the Medici in Florence the Medicean Popes made only futile
attempts. Cosimo I was the first to accomplish it. Leo had absorbed
the culture of his time, but he did not possess the ability to look beyond that
time. A diplomatist rather than a statesman, his creations were only the feats
of a political virtuoso, who sacrificed the future in order to control the
present.
Even the greatness of the Maecenas
crumbles before recent criticism. The zenith of Renaissance culture falls in
the age of Julius II.
Ariosto’s light verses, Bibbiena’s prurient, La Calandria,
the paintings in the bath-room of the Vatican, the rejection of the Dante
monument planned by Michelangelo, the misapplication of funds collected for the
Crusade to purposes of mere dynastic interest, Leo’s political double-dealing,
which disordered all the affairs of Italy, and indeed of Christendom; all this
must shake our faith in him as protector of the good and beautiful in art. His
portrait by Raffaelle, with its intelligent but cold and sinister face,
may assist to destroy any illusions which we may have had about his
personality.
The harshness and violence of Leo’s
greater predecessor, Julius, brought down on him the hatred of his
contemporaries and won for his successor an immense popularity without further
effort. The spiritual heir of Lorenzo il Magnifico, Rome and all
Italy acclaimed
Leo pacis restauratorem, felicissimum litteratorum amatorem;
and Erasmus proclaimed to the world that
“an age, worse than that of iron, was suddenly transformed into one of gold”.
And there can be no doubt that when Leo X was greeted on his accession, like
Titus, as the deliciae generis humani he made every disposition to respond to
these expectations and prove himself the most liberal of patrons. The Pope,
however, did not long keep this resolution; his weakness of purpose, his
inclination to luxury, enjoyment, and pleasures, soon quenched his sense of the
gravity of life and all his higher perceptions; so that a swift and sad decline
followed on the first promise.
On Leo’s accession he found a number of
great public buildings in progress which had been begun under his great
predecessor but were still unfinished. Among them were the colossal palace
planned by Bramante in the Via Giulia, St Peter’s also began by him, and his
work of joining the Vatican with the Belvedere, besides
the loggie and buildings in Loreto. Leo, who was not in the least
affected by the passion of building -il mal di pietra-
did not carry on these undertakings. He even hindered Michelangelo from
finishing the tomb of Julius II, so little reverence had he for the memory of
the Pope to whom he owed his own position. Only the loggie were
finished, since they could not remain as Bramante had left them. Even after
Bramante’s death there was no lack of architects who could have finished St
Peter’s. Besides Raffaelle, who succeeded to his post as architect,
Sangallo and Sansovino, Peruzzi and Giuliano Leno waited in vain for
commissions. While Raffaelle in a letter relates that the Pope had
set aside 60,000 ducats a year for the continuation of the building, and talked
to Fra Giocondo about it every day, he
might soon after have told how Leo went no further, but stopped at the good
intention. As a matter of fact work almost entirely ceased because the money
was not forthcoming. There is therefore no reason to
reproach Raffaelle with the delay in building. On the contrary, by
not pressing Leo to an energetic prosecution of the work, Raffaelle probably
did the building the greatest service; since the Pope’s mind was full of plans,
for which Bramante’s great ideas would have been entirely forsaken. No one
could see more clearly than Raffaelle the harm which would have thus
resulted.
Leo X not only neglected the undertakings
of his predecessor; he created nothing new in the way of monumental buildings
beyond the portico of the Navicella, and a few
pieces of restoration in San Cosimate and
St John Lateran. The work he had done beyond the walls in his villas and hunting
lodges (in Magliana, at Palo, Montalto,
and Montefiascone) served only the purposes of
his pleasure. Of the more important palaces built in the city two fall to the
account of his relatives Lorenzo and Giulio, that of the Lanti (Piazza de’ Caprettari)
and the beautiful Villa Madama on the Monte Mario, begun
by Raffaelle, Giulio Romano, and Giovanni da Udine, but never
finished. Cardinal Giulio de' Medici it was who carried on the
building of the Sacristy in San Lorenzo at Florence, in which Michelangelo was
to place the tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo; but the façade which the Pope had
planned for the church was never executed. Nor were any of the palaces built by
dignitaries of the Church under Leo X of importance, with the exceptions of a
part of the Palazzo Farnese and the Palazzo di Venezia. Even the palaces
and dwelling-houses built by Andrea Sansovino, Sangallo,
and Raffaelle will not bear comparison with the creations of the
previous pontificate, nor with the later parts of the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola.
Sculpture had flourished under Pius II in
the days when Mino of Fiesole and Paolo Romano were in Rome; it could point to
very honourable achievements under Alexander VI and Julius II
(Andrea Sansovino’s monuments of the Cardinals Basso and Sforza in
Santa Maria del Popolo); but this art also
declined under Leo X; for the work done by Andrea Sansovino in Loreto
under his orders falls in the time of Clement VII, after whose death in 1534
the greater part of the plastic ornament of the Santa Casa was executed. The
cardinals and prelates who died in Rome between 1513 and 1521 received only
poor and insignificant monuments, and Leo’s colossal statue in Ara Coeli, the work of Domenico d’Arnio,
can only be called a soulless monstrosity.
Painting flourished more under this Pope,
who certainly was a faithful patron and friend to Raffaelle. The
protection he showed to this great master is and always will be Leo’s best and
noblest title to fame. But he allowed Leonardo to go to France, when after
Bramante’s death he might easily have won him, had he bestowed on him the post
of piombatore apostolico ,
instead of giving it to his maître de plaisirs, the shallow-minded
Fra Mariano (sannio cucullatus). He allowed Michelangelo to return to
Florence, and, though he loaded Raffaelle with honours, it is a fact
that he was five years behindhand with the payment of his salary as architect
of St Peter’s. A letter of Messer Baldassare Tunni da Pescia turns on the ridiculous investiture of the
jester Mariano with the tonaca of
Bramante, performed by the Pope himself when Bramante was scarce cold in his
grave. This leaves a most painful impression, and makes it very doubtful
whether Leo ever took his patronage of the arts very seriously. In the same way
his love of peace is shown in a very strange light during the latter half of
his reign by the high-handed campaign against the Duke
of Urbino (1516); the menace to Ferrara (1519); the crafty enticing
of Giampaolo Baglione, Lord of Perugia, to
Rome and his murder despite the safe-conduct promised him; the war
against Ludovico Freducci, Lord
of Fermo; the annexation of the towns and fortresses in the province of
Ancona; the attempt on the life of the Duke of Ferrara; the betrayal of Francis
I and the league with Charles V in 1521. The senseless extravagance of the
Court, the constant succession of very mundane festivals, hunting-parties, and
other amusements, left Leo in continual embarrassment for money and led him
into debt not only to all the bankers but to his own officials. They even drove
him to unworthy extortion, such as followed on the conspiracy of
Cardinal Petrucci and the pardon granted to his accomplices, or that
which was his motive for the creation of thirty-one cardinals in a single day.
All this taken together brings us to the
conclusion that Leo’s one real merit was his patronage of Raffaelle.
Despite the noble and generous way in which his reign began the Pope soon fell
into an effeminate life of self-indulgence spent among players and buffoons, a
life rich in undignified farce and offensive jests, but poor in every kind of
positive achievement. The Pope laughed, hunted, and gambled; he enjoyed the
papacy. Had he not said to his brother Giuliano on his accession:
“Godiamoci il papato poichè Dio ci l’ ha dato?”.
Though he himself has not been accused of
sensual excesses the moral sense of the Pope could not be delicate when he
found fit to amuse himself with indecent comedies like La Calandria,
and on April 30, 1518, attended the wedding of Agostino Chigi with his concubine of many years’ standing,
himself placing the ring on the hand of the bride, already mother of a large
family.
Nor can Leo’s reign, apart from his own
share in it, be regarded as the best period of the Renaissance. The great
masters had done their best work before 1513. Bramante died at the beginning of
Leo’s pontificate, Michelangelo had painted the Sistine Chapel from 1508 to
1512, Leonardo the Cena in 1496, Raffaelle the Stanza della Segnatura, 1508-11.
The later Stanze are far inferior to
that masterpiece; the work of his pupils comes more to the fore in the
execution of the paintings. And in his own work, as also in that of
Michelangelo, the germ of decadence is already visible, and a slight tendency
to barocco style is to be seen in
both. The autumn wind is blowing, and the first leaves begin to fall.
The truth results that the zenith of
Renaissance art falls in the time between 1496 and 1512, during which the Last
Supper, the roof of the Sistine Chapel, and the Stanza della Segnatura were
painted, and Bramante’s plans for St Peter’s were drawn up. We can even mark a
narrower limit, and say that the four wall-paintings of the Stanza della Segnatura mark
the point at which medieval and modern thought touch one another; the narrow
medieval world ceases, the modern world stands before us developed in all its
fullness and freedom. One may indeed doubt whether all the meaning of this
contrast was quite clear to the mind of Julius II; but after all that is a
matter of secondary importance. For it is not the individual who decides in
such matters; without being aware of it he is borne on by his time and must
execute the task that history has laid upon him. Great men of all times are
those who have understood the cry from the inmost heart of a whole nation or
generation and, consciously or unconsciously, have accomplished what the hour
demanded.
It has been in like manner represented
that literature passed through a golden age under Leo X; but considerable deductions
must be made from the undiscriminating eulogies of earlier writers.
Erasmus has reflected in his letters the
great impression made by Rome, the true seat and home of all Latin culture.
Well might Cardinal Raffaelle Riariowrite
to him: “Everyone who has a name in science throngs hither. Each has a
fatherland of his own, but Rome is a common fatherland, a foster-mother, and a
comforter to all men of learning”. It is long since these words were
written-far too long for the honour of Catholicism and of the Papacy. But at
that time, under Julius II, they were really true. A circle of highly cultured
cardinals and nobles, Riario, Grimani, Adriano di Corneto,
Farnese, Giovanni de’ Medici himself in his beautiful Palazzo Madama, his
brother Giuliano il Magnifico, and his cousin Giulio,
afterwards Clement VII, gathered poets and learned men about them, that dottacompagnia of
which Ariosto spoke; to them they opened their libraries and collections. Clubs
were formed which met at the houses of Angelo Colocci,
Alberto Rio di Carpi, Goritz, or Savoja. The poets and pamphleteers, to whom Arsilli dedicated his poem De Poetis Urbanis, gave
vent to their wit on Pasquino or
on Sansovino’s statue in Sant’ Agostino. They met in the
salons of the beautiful Imperia, in the banks described by Bandello, among
them Beroaldo the younger, who sang the
praises of that most celebrated of modern courtesans; Fedro Inghirami, the friend of Erasmus and Raffaelle; Colocci, and even the serious Sadoleto.
It is characteristic of this time, which placed wit and beauty above morals,
that when Imperia died at the age of twenty-six she received an honourable
burial in the chapel of San Gregorio, and her epitaph praised the
“Cortisana Romana quae, digna tanto nomine, rarae inter homines formae specimen dedit”. And although women no longer played so
prominent a part at the papal Court as they had done under Innocent VIII and
Alexander VI, yet, as Bibbiena wrote to
Giuliano de’ Medici, the arrival of noble ladies was extremely welcome as
bringing with it something of a corte de’ donne.
The activity of the greater number of literary men and wits, whose names have most contributed to the glory of Leo’s pontificate, dates back to Giulio’s time; so for instance Molza, Vida, Giovio, Valeriano, whose dialogue De Infelicitate Litteratorum tells of the fate of many of his friends, Porzio, Cappella, Bembo, who as Latinist was the chief representative of the cult of Cicero, and as a writer in the vulgar tongue gave Italy her prose, and Sadoleto, who chronicled the discovery of the Laocoon group. Pontano too and Sannazaro, Fracastan and Navagero had already done their best work. Nothing could be more unjust than to deny
that Giovanni de’ Medici himself had a highly cultured mind and an excellent
knowledge of literature. It may be that Lorenzo had destined him for the Papacy
from his birth; certainly he gave him the most liberal education. He gave
him Poliziano, Marsilio, Pico della Mirandola,
Johannes Argyropoulos, Gentile d’ Arezzo for his
teachers and constant companions, and, to teach him Greek, Demetrius Chalcondylas and Petrus Aegineta.
Afterwards Bernardo di Dovizi (Bibbiena) was his best known tutor. In belles lettres Giovanni had made an attempt with Greek
verses, none of which have survived. Of his Latin poems the only examples
handed down to us are the hendecasyllables on the statue
of Lucrezia and an elegant epigram, written during his pontificate,
on the death of Celso Mellini, well known
for his lawsuit in 1519 and his tragic death by drowning.
Nor can it be denied that the opening
years of this pontificate were of great promise, and seemed to announce a fresh
impetus, or, to speak more exactly, the successful continuation of what had
long since begun. Amongst the men whom the young Pope gathered round him were
many of excellent understanding and character, such as the
Milanese Agostino Trivulzio, who later on
was to do Clement signal service, Alessandro Cesarini,
Andrea della Valle, Paolo Emilio Cesi, Baldassare Turini,Tommaso de Vio, Lorenzo Campeggi, the
noble Ludovico di Canossa, from Verona, most of whom wore the
cardinal’s hat. Bembo and Sadoleto were
the chief ornaments of his literary circle; to them was added the celebrated
Greek John Lascaris, once under the protection
of Bessarion, then of Lorenzo il Magnifico and Louis XII,
in France the teacher of Budaeus, in Venice of
Erasmus. Leo X on his accession at once summoned him to Rome, and on his
account founded a school of Greek in the palace of the Cardinal
of Sion on Monte Cavallo. Lascaris’
pupil, Marcus Musurus, was also summoned from
Venice in 1516 to assist in this school. At the same time the Pope
commissioned Beroaldus to publish the
newly-discovered writings of Tacitus. A measure, which might have proved of the
utmost importance, was the foundation of the university of Rome by the
Bull Dum Suavissimos of
November 4, 1513. This was a revival and confirmation of an already existing
Academy, in which under Alexander VI and Julius II able men such as Beroaldo the younger, Fedr, Casali, and Pio had taught, and to which now
others were summoned, among them Agostino Nifo, Botticella, Cristoforo Aretino, Chalcondylas, Parrasio,
and others, Vigerio and Tommaso de Vio(Cardinal of Gaeta) also on theology, and
Giovanni Gozzadini on
law. Petrus Sabinus, Antonio Fabro of Amiterno, and Raffaelle Brandolini are
mentioned among the lecturers, and even a Professor of Hebrew, Agacius Guidocerius, was
appointed. Cardinal Raffaelle Riario acted
as Chancellor. The list of the professors given by Renazzi numbers
88: 11 in canon law, 20 in law, 15 in medicine, and 5 in philosophy. It was
another merit of Leo’s that he established a Greek printing-press, which
printed several books in 1517 and 1518. Chigi had
some years before set up a Greek press in his palace, from which came the first
Greek book printed in Rome, a Pindar, in 1515. The Pope himself kept up his
interest in Greek studies, and retained as custodian of his private library one
of the best judges of the Greek idiom, Guarino di Favera, who published the first Thesaurus
linguae Graecae< in 1496, and whom he
nominated Bishop of Novara.
Unfortunately these excellent beginnings
were for the most part not carried on. It was not Leo’s fault, but his
misfortune, that many of the most gifted men he had summoned were soon removed
by death. But we cannot acquit him of having ceded Lascaris like
Leonardo to France in 1518, and allowed Bembo to return discontented
to Padua; he did not secure Marcantonio Flaminio,
and held Sadoleto at a distance for a very
long time. The continual dearth of money in the papal treasury was no doubt the
chief cause of this change of policy. Even before 1517 the salaries of the
professors could not be paid, and their number had to be diminished. And this
was the necessary consequence of Leo’s ridiculous prodigality on his pleasures
and his Court. Well might a Fra Mariano exclaim “beviamo
al babbo santo, che ogni altra cosa è burla”. Serious and respectable men left him and a
pack of “pazzi, buffonie simil sorta di piacevoli” remained in the Pope’s audience chambers,
with whom he, the Pope himself, gamed and jested day after day “cum risu et hilaritate”.
Such were the people that he now raised to honour and position; what
money he had he spent for their carousals. No wonder that this vermin flattered
his vanity and sounded his praises as “Leo Deus noster”.
But beside this we must remember, that, as is universally admitted, Leo was
extremely generous to the poor. The anonymous author of the Vita Leonis X, reprinted
in Roscoe’s Life, gives express evidence as to this, “egentes pietate ac liberalitate est prosecutes”,
and adds that, according to accounts which are, however, not very well
attested, he supported needy and deserving ecclesiastics of other nationalities.
But he too remarks, that Leo’s chief, if not his only, anxiety was to lead a
pleasant and untroubled life; in consequence of which he spent his days at
music and play, and left the business of government entirely in the hands of
his cousin Giulio, who was better fitted for the task and an industrious
worker. Unfortunately he admitted not only buffoons to his games of cards, but
also corrupt men like Pietro Aretino, who lived on the Pope’s
generosity as early as 1520, and in return extolled him as the pattern of all
pontiffs. The appointment of the German Jew Giammaria as
Castellan and Count of Verrucchio was even
in Rome an unusual reward for skilled performance on the lute, and even for the
third successor of Alexander VI it was venturesome to let the poet Querno, attired as Venus and supported by two Cupids,
declaim verses to him at the Cosmalia in
1519. We have already mentioned the scandalous carnival of that year, and the
theatre for which Raffaelle was forced to paint the scenery. A year
later an unknown savant, under the mask of Pasquino,
complained of the sad state of the sciences in Rome, of the exile of the Muses,
and the starvation of professors and literary men.
From all this data the conclusion has been
drawn that Leo X was by no means a Maecenas of the fine arts and sciences; that
the high enthusiasm for them shown in his letters, as edited
by Bembo and Sadoleto, betrays more of
the thoughts of his clever secretary than his own ideas; and that his literary
dilettantism, was lacking in all artistic perception, and all delicate
cultivation of taste. Leo has been thought to owe his undeserved fame to the
circumstance that he was the son of Lorenzo, and that his accession seemed at
the time destined to put an end to the sad confusions and wars of the last
decades. Moreover, throughout the long pontificate of Clement VII, and equally
under the pressure of the ecclesiastical reaction in the time of Paul IV, no
allusion was allowed to the wrongdoing of this Leonine period; till at last the
real circumstances were so far forgotten, that the fine flower of art and
literature in the first twenty years of the sixteenth century was attributed to
the Medicean Pope.
But there are points to be noted on the
other side. Even if we discount much of the praise which Poliziano lavishes on his pupil in deference to his
father, we cannot question the conspicuous talent of Giovanni de’ Medici, the
exceptionally careful literary education which he had enjoyed, and his liberal
and wise conduct during his cardinalship. We must also esteem it to his credit
that as Pope he continued to be the friend of Raffaelle, and that in Rome
and Italy at least he did not oppress freedom of conscience, nor sacrifice the
free and noble character of the best of the Renaissance. Nor can it be
overlooked that his pontificate made an excellent beginning, though certainly
the decline soon set in; the Pontiff's good qualities became less apparent, his
faults more conspicuous, and events proved that, as in so many other instances,
the man's intrinsic merit was not great enough to bear his exaltation to the
highest dignity of Christendom without injury to his personality.
Such a change in outward position,
promotion to an absolute sway not inherited, intercourse with a host of
flatterers and servants who idolized him (there were 2000 dependents at Leo’s
Court), all this is almost certain to be fatal to the character of the man to
whose lot it falls. Seldom does the possessor of the highest dignity find this
enormous burden a source and means of spiritual illumination and moral
advancement. Mediocre natures soon develop an immovable obstinacy, the despair
of any reasonable adviser, and which is none the more tolerable for having
received the varnish of a piety that worships itself. Talented natures too
easily fall victims to megalomania, and by extravagant and ill-considered
projects and undertakings drag their age with them into an abyss of ruin. Weak
and sensual natures give themselves up to enjoyment, and consider the highest
power merely as a license to make merry. Leo was not a coarse voluptuary like
Alexander VI, but he certainly was an intellectual Epicurean such as has seldom
been known. Extremes should be avoided in forming a judgment of the pontificate
and character of this prince. Not the objective historian, but the flattering
politician, spoke in Erasmus when he lauded the three great benefits which Leo
had conferred on humanity: the restoration of peace, of the sciences, and of
the fear of God. It was a groundless suspicion that overshot the mark, when
Martin Luther accused Leo of disbelief in the immortality of the soul; and John
Bale (1574) spread abroad the supposed remark of the Pope to Bembo: “All
ages can testify enough, how profitable that fable of Christ has been to us and
our compagnie”. Hundreds of writers have copied this from Bale without
verification. Much of Leo’s character can be explained by the fact that he was
a true son of the South, the personification of the soft Florentine
temperament. This accounts for his childish joy in the highest honour of
Christendom, “Questo mi
da piacere, che la mia tiara!” The words of the office which he was
reading, when five days before his death news was brought to him of the taking
of Milan by his troops, may well serve as motto for this reign, lacking not
sunshine and glory, but all serious success and all power:
“Ut sine timore de manu inimicorum nostrorum liberati serviamus illi”. This pontificate truly was, as Gregorovius has described it, a revelry of culture, which Ariosto accompanied with a poetic obbligato in his many-colored Orlando. This poem was in truth “the image of Italy revelling in sensual and intellectual luxury, the ravishing, seductive, musical, and picturesque creation of decadence, just as Dante’s poem had been the mirror of the manly power of the nation”.
On December 27, 1521, a Conclave
assembled, which closed on January 9, 1522, by the election of the Bishop
of Tortosa as Adrian VI. He was born at
Utrecht in 1459 and when a professor in Louvain was chosen by the Emperor
Maximilian to be tutor to his grandson Charles. Afterwards he was sent as
ambassador to Ferdinand the Catholic, who bestowed on him the Bishopric
of Tortosa; Leo X made him Cardinal in 1517.
This Conclave, attended by thirty-nine cardinals, offered a spectacle of the
most disgraceful party struggles, but mustered enough unanimity to propose to
the possible candidates a capitulation, by the terms of which the towns of the
Papal States were divided amongst the members of the Conclave, and hardly
anything of the temporal power was left to the Pope. The Cardinals de’ Medici
and Cajetan (de Vio) rescued the
assembly from this confusion of opinions and unruly passions by proposing an
absent candidate. None of the factions had thought of Adrian Dedel; the astonished populace heaped scorn and epigrams on
the Cardinals and their choice. Adrian, who was acting as Charles’ vicegerent
in Spain at the time of his election, could not take up his residence at Rome
till August 29; it then looked, as Castiglione says, like a plundered abbey;
the Curia was ruined and poverty-stricken, half their number had fled before
the prevailing pestilence. The simple-minded old man had brought his aged
housekeeper with him from the Netherlands; he was contented with few servants
and spent but a ducat a day for maintenance. He would have preferred to live in
some simple villa with a garden; in the Vatican among the remains of heathen
antiquity he seemed to himself to be rather a successor of Constantine than of
St Peter. His plan of action included the restoration of peace to Italy and
Europe, a protective war against the invading Turks, the reform of the Curia
and the Church, and the establishment of peace in the German Church. Not one of
these tasks was he able to fulfil; he was destined only to show his good
intentions.
We shall deal presently with his attempts
at reformation, which have for all time made him worthy of admiration and his
short pontificate memorable. He was not lacking in good intentions to make Rome
once more the center of intellectual life; but
Reuchlin had lately died; Erasmus, to whom the Pope had written on December 1,
1522, preferred to remain in Germany; Sadoleto went
to Carpentras; and Bembo, who thought
Adrian’s pontificate even more unfortunate than Leo’s death, stayed quietly in
northern Italy. Evidently no one had confidence in the permanency of a state of
things which could not but appear abnormal to everybody. And indeed, the
silent, pedantic Dutchman, with his cold nature, his ignorance of Italian, his
handful of servants, “Flemings stupid as a stone”, was the greatest possible
contrast to everything that the refinement of Italian culture and the
well-justified element of Latin grace and charm demanded of a prince. The
Italians would have put up for a year or two at least with an austere and pious
Pope, if his piety had been blended with something of poetry and grace; but
this Dutch saint was utterly incomprehensible to them. And in truth this was
not entirely their fault. As Girolamo Negri wrote, one really
could apply to him Cicero’s remark about Cato : “he behaves as if he had to do
with Plato’s Republic instead of the scum of the earth that Romulus collected”.
And it must have been unbearable for the Romans that the new Pope should have
as little comprehension for all the great art of the Renaissance as for
classical antiquity. He wanted to throw Pasquino into
the Tiber because the jests pasted on the statue irritated him; at the sight of
the Laocoon he turned away with the words, “These are heathen idols”.
He closed the Belvedere, and even a man like Negri was seriously
afraid that someday the Pope would follow the supposed example of Gregory, and
have all the heathen statues broken and used as building stones for St Peter’s.
In a word, despite the best intentions,
despite clear insight, Adrian was not adequate to his task. The moment demanded
a Pope who could reconcile and unite all the great and valuable elements of the
Italian Renaissance, the ripened fruit of the modern thought sprung from Dante
and Petrarch, with the conceptions and conscience of the Germanic world. Both
the German professors who now posed as leaders of Christendom, Adrian Dedel and Martin Luther, were lacking in the historic
and aesthetic culture which would have enabled them to understand the value of
Roman civilization. Erasmus saw further than either of them, but the
discriminating critic lacked the unselfish nobility of soul and the impulse
which can only be given by a powerful religious excitement, an unswerving
conviction, the firm faith in a personal mission confided by Providence. He
too, despite his immense erudition, his deep insight, left the world to its own
devices when it required a mediator; for a gentle and negative criticism of
human folly is, taken by itself, of little value.
Adrian could neither gain the mastery over
Luther’s Reformation, nor succeed in reforming even the Roman Curia, to say
nothing of the whole Church. The luxurious Cardinals went on with their
pleasant life; when he came to die they demanded his money and treated him, as
the Duke of Sessa expressed it, like a criminal on the rack. The
threat of war between France and the German Empire lay all the while like an
incubus on his pontificate. With heavy heart the most peace-loving of all the
Popes, reminded by Francis I of the days of Philip the Fair, was at last
obliged to enter into a treaty with England and Germany. Adrian survived to see
war break out in Lombardy; he died on the day when the French crossed the
Ticino, September 14, 1523. Giovio and Guicciardini relate
that some wag wrote on the door of his physician, “To the deliverer of the
Fatherland, from the senate and people of Rome”. Little as the people were
delighted with the pontificate of this last German Pope, he was no better
pleased with it himself. He spoke of his throne as the chair of misery, and
said in his first epitaph, that it was his greatest misfortune to have attained
to power. The epitaph written for his tomb in Santa Maria dell’ Anima by his
faithful servant, the Datary and Cardinal Enckenvoert,
was certainly the best motto for this man and his pontificate
“Pro dolor! quantum refert in quae tempora vel optimi cuiusque virtus incidat”. A Conclave of thirty-three electors
assembled on the 1st of October, 1523. Some sided with the Emperor, some with
the French, but the imperial party was also divided. Pompeo Colonna
made an enemy of the future Pope by opposing his candidature, and Cardinal
Alessandro Farnese in vain offered the ambassadors of both sides 200,000
ducats. Cardinal Wolsey once again made all kinds of offers, but there was now
a feeling against all foreigners. During the night of the 18th-19th of
November Giulio de’ Medici was elected. He was the son of Giuliano,
who fell in the Pazzi conspiracy. A
certain Fioretta, daughter of Antonia, is
mentioned as his mother; little or nothing was known in Florence about her and
her child. Lorenzo took the orphan into his house and had him brought up with
his sons. In 1494 Giulio, then sixteen years of age, followed them into
exile. Living for some time in Lombardy, but mostly with Giovanni, on his
cousin’s rise in power he too was quickly promoted. Leo nominated him
Archbishop of Florence, having specially dispensed him from the canonical
hindrance of his illegitimate birth. At his very first creation of Cardinals on
September 23, 1513, the Pope bestowed on him the title of Cardinal of Santa
Maria in Dominica and made him Legate of Bologna, witnesses having first sworn
to the virtual marriage of his father Giuliano with Fioretta.
During Leo’s reign, as we have already
seen, Cardinal Giulio had almost all the business of government in
his own hands. He secured the election of Adrian, but left Rome and the Pope on
October 13, 1522, in the company of Manuel, the imperial envoy, in order to
retire to Florence. A difference with Francesco Soderini brought
him back in the following April to the Eternal City. He entered it with two
thousand horse, and already greeted as the future Pope kept great state in his
palace. A few days later Francesco Soderini,
accused of high treason, disappeared into the Castle of St Angelo; he was
released during the next Council. With the new reign a return of happier times
was expected “una Corte florida e un buon Pontefice”; the restoration of literature, fled before
the barbarians; “est enim Mediceae familiae decus favereMusis”. And
indeed many things seemed to point to a fortunate pontificate. The new Pope was
respected and rich, and now of a staid and sober life. He had ruled Rome well
in Leo’s day, and as Archbishop of Florence had used his power successfully. He
was cautious, economical, but not avaricious; though not an author himself, an
admirer of art and science; a lover of beautiful buildings, as his
Villa Madama gave proof, and free from his cousin’s unfortunate
liking for the company of worthless buffoons. He did not hunt, but he was fond
of good instrumental music, and liked to amuse himself at table with the
conversation of learned men.
Very soon it became clear that Clement VII
was one of those men, who, though excellent in a subordinate position, prove
unsatisfactory when placed at the head. The characters of both Medici Popes are
wonderfully conceived in Raffaelle’s portraits:
in Leo’s otherwise intellectual face there is a vulgarity that almost
degenerates into coarseness and sensuality, and with Clement the cold soul,
lacking all strong feeling, distrustful, never unfolding itself. “In spite of
all his talents”, said Francesco Vettori, “he
brought the greatest misery on Rome and on himself; he lost courage at once and
let go the rudder”. Guicciardini too complains
of Giulio’s faintheartedness, vacillation and indecision as the chief
source of his misfortune. This indecision kept him wavering between the
counsels of the two men, in whom from the beginning of his reign he placed his
confidence; one belonging to the French faction, the other to that of the
Emperor. One was like himself a bastard, Giammatteo Giberti, rightly valued by all his contemporaries for his
piety, honesty, and insight. He took an active part in the foundation of the
Order of the Theatines (1524) by the pious Gaetano da Thiene, afterwards canonized, in company with Caraffa. He was appointed Datary by Clement, and afterwards
Bishop of Verona. Gasparo Contarini, writing in 1530, says that he was on more
intimate terms with the Pope than were any of his other counsellors, and that
in politics he worked in the French interest. He left the Court in 1527 to
retire to his bishopric, which he made a model of good government. In Verona he
founded a learned society and a Greek printing-press, which published good
editions of the Fathers of the Church. Paul III summoned him to Rome several
times; it was on his way back that he died in 1543.
The Emperor’s interests were represented
by Clement’s other counsellor, Nikolaus von Schomberg, of Meissen, in Saxony. On the occasion of a
journey to Italy in 1497, carried away by the preaching of Savonarola in Pisa,
he had joined the same monastery. Later, scorned by the populace as a Judas, he
had gone over to the party of the Medici, was summoned to Rome as Professor of
Theology by Leo X, created Archbishop of Capua in 1520, and often entrusted
with diplomatic missions, in which capacity Giulio came to know and
value him. Contarini speaks well of him,
but evidently only half trusted him. Schomberg received
the Cardinal’s hat from Paul III in 1534, and died in 1537.
Clement’s accession had at once brought about
a political change in favour of France. The Pope’s policy wavered long between
the King and the Emperor; weak towards both of them, undecided, and on occasion
faithless enough. On January 5,1525, he himself announced to the Emperor the
conclusion of his treaty with Francis I. The Battle of Pavia, the greatest
military event of the sixteenth century (February 24, 1525), made Charles V
master of Italy and Francis I his prisoner. By April 1 Clement had made his
peace with the Emperor, but soon began to intrigue and tried to form a league
against him with Venice, Savoy, Ferrara, Scotland, Hungary, Portugal, and other
States; this was mainly the work of Giberti. At
this time the bold plan of a League of Freedom, which was to claim the
independence of Italy from foreign Powers, was formed by Girolamo Morone; Pescara, the husband of Vittoria Colonna,
the real victor at Pavia, was to stand at its head. The conspiracy in which
Clement on his own confession (see his letter to Charles V of June 23, 1526)
had taken part, was betrayed by Pescara himself; at his instigation Morone named the Pope as the originator of the offers
made to Pescara. The veil of secrecy still covers both Pescara’s
action, Guicciardini characterized it as eterna infamia, and his early death, which occurred on March
30, 1525. The Emperor freely expressed his opinion of the Pope’s faithlessness
(September 17, 1526). On May 22, 1526, Clement concluded the Holy League of
Cognac with Francis, who had returned to France at the beginning of March, his
captivity over. This brought on open war with the Emperor, the attack on Rome
by the Colonna (September 20), the plundering of the Borgo, the march of
the Imperial troops against Rome under the command of Bourbon, the storming of
the part of the city named after Leo in which Bourbon fell (May 6, 1527), the
flight of the Pope to the Castle of St Angelo, and finally the storming of Rome
and the sack which followed it; cruel and revolting to all Christian feeling,
it remains to this day a memory of terror for all Italians. No Guiscard
appeared this time, as in the days of Gregory VII, to save the beleaguered
Pope. On June 5,1527, he was forced to capitulate, yield the fortress and give
himself up to the mercy of the Emperor. When a prisoner and deprived of all his
means, Clement bade Cellini melt down his tiara, a symbol of his own position;
for the whole temporal power of the Papacy lay at the feet of the Emperor, who
could abolish it if he chose. We know that this policy was suggested to him: we
know also that Charles had serious thoughts of utilizing the position of the
Pope for an ecclesiastical reformation, and forcing him to summon the General
Council, which all sides demanded. But France and England declared they would
recognize no Council until the Pope was set free again, and the Spanish clergy
also petitioned for the release of the Head of the Church. Once more the
Imperial troops returned to Rome from their summer quarters, and in September,
1527, the city was once more sacked. Veyre arrived
as the Emperor’s agent to offer Clement freedom on condition of neutrality, a
general peace, and the promotion of reform by means of a Council. The agreement
was signed on November 26; but on December 8 the Pope escaped to Orvieto,
whence on June 1,1528, he removed to Viterbo. The war proved disastrous
for France; Lautrec’s defeats, his death by plague (August 15), the terrible
state of Italy, which was now but one vast battlefield strewn with corpses,
induced Clement at last to side with the Emperor. On October 8, 1528, he
returned horror-stricken to half-burnt, starving Rome. Harried by the plague,
her population diminished by one-half; her importance for the literary and
artistic life of humanity had been for ever marred by the awful events of the
year 1527. Those of her artists and learned men who had not fled were
maltreated and robbed during the Sack: those that were left were beggars and
had to seek their bread elsewhere. Erasmus wrote to Sadoleto (October
1, 1528) that not the city, but the world had perished, and that the present
sufferings of Rome were more cruel than those brought on her by the Goths and
the Gauls. From Carpentras in
1529 Sadoleto wrote a mournful letter
to Colocci, in which he speaks of past glories,
a letter aptly called by Gregorovius the swan’s song,
the farewell to the cheerful world of humanist times.
Clement’s participation in the league against
Charles and the Empire had favoured the spread of the Lutheran Reformation in
Germany. Unwittingly the Pope had become Luther’s best ally at the very moment
when for Catholicism everything depended on strengthening the Emperor’s
opposition to the Reformation, which had the hour in its favour. Even after the
Sack the Pope was not chiefly concerned for the preservation and improvement of
the Church, or for the reparation of the evil done to Rome. What absorbed his
attention were the dynastic interests of his own House, which had once more
been expelled from Florence, and the restoration of the Papal State. The
Emperor could have ended the Temporal Power with a stroke of the pen had he not
feared the immense influence of the clergy and the threatening voice of the
Inquisition, which did not hesitate to cross the threshold even of the most
mighty. Charles needed the Pope, since a lasting enmity with him would have cut
the ground from under his feet both in Spain and Germany. He needed him in
order to keep his hold on Italy, and by his influence to divide the League. And
so the Treaty of Barcelona was brought about (June 29, 1529), whereby the
Emperor acknowledged the power of Sforza in Milan, gave the Papal State back to
the Pope, undertook to restore Florence to the Medici by force of arms, and as
a pledge of friendship to give his illegitimate daughter Margaret to Alessandro
de’ Medici. The Imperial coronation was moreover to take place in Italy. The
“Ladies’ Peace” of Cambray (August 5, 1529) confirmed
Spanish rule in Italy. Clement crowned Charles Emperor on February 24, 1530, in
Bologna, having come thither with sixteen Cardinals. The Emperor left for the
diet at Augsburg on June 15. The Pope returned to Rome on April 9; and on
August 12 Florence fell after a heroic death-struggle, burying the honours of
the Pope in its fall, since he had not hesitated to hand over the freedom of
his native town to his family. The republican constitution of the town was
formally annulled on April 27, 1532, and Alessandro de' Medici was proclaimed
Duke of Florence.
Clement VII is said to have sighed during
the siege: “Oh that Florence had never existed!”. The Papacy itself, as well as
its representative in that time, had good reason to utter this cry; for the
fall of the Republic brought about by the Pope and accomplished by the Emperor
and his bands of foreign mercenaries, joined the Papacy henceforth to all
movements inimical to the freedom and unity of Italy. It delivered over Italy
and the Church to the idea of an ecclesiastico-political
despotism native to Spain; it severed the bond which in the Middle Ages had
kept Rome in touch with the national aims of the Italian people. In December,
1532, Emperor and Pope met once more in Bologna in order to conclude an Italian
league. At the same moment Clement was negotiating with France, who did her
utmost to draw the Papacy from the embrace of Spain. Francis I proposed the marriage
of his second son Henry with Catharine, daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici the
younger, and did his very best to help Clement to prevent an assemblage of the
Council, as we now know from the disclosures of Antonio Soriano. The marriage
of Catharine de’ Medici, through whom her House attained to royal honour, was
celebrated with great solemnity at Marseilles in October, 1533. Clement himself
had come to witness the triumph of his family in the person of his great-niece.
The young girl, scarcely more than a child, whom he handed over to the royal
House of France, proved a terrible gift to the land; for some thirty-eight
years later she contrived the Massacre of St Bartholomew. The jewels
which Filippo Strozzi counted over to
the French as forming part of the dowry of the little princess, Genoa, Milan,
Naples, never came into the possession of France, and Henry was forced in the
Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis to yield all the gains of the French
policy of annexation in Italy.
Clement was back in Rome by December 10,
1533, and in the following March annulled Thomas Cranmer’s declaration that the
marriage of Henry VIII with his cousin Catharine of Aragon was void. The Pope
threatened the King with excommunication if he did not re-establish the
marriage. The King’s answer was the separation of England from the obedience of
Rome. Shortly before this the articles of the League of Smakald had recorded the desertion of a considerable
part of South Germany to the Reformation. The Council which was to have
restored unity to the Church had not come into being. Clement certainly raised
hopes of it in the near future at Bologna (January 10, 1533), but only for the
sake of appearances. In reality he had every reason to prevent all discussion
by a Council of his personal and dynastic policy, and he attained his end by
excuses and means which led the Emperor’s confessor, Cardinal Garcia de Loaysa (May, 1530), to write to Charles V that this
Pope was the most mysterious of beings, that he knew more ciphers than anyone
else on earth, and that he would not hear of a Council at any price.
Even the last act of the dying Pope leaves
a painful impression. On September 23, 1534, he wrote a long letter to the
Emperor, to recommend to his care, not the welfare of the Church or of Italy,
but the preservation of the rule of the Medici in Florence, and the protection
of his two beloved nephews, the Cardinal Ippolito and Alessandro,
whom Clement had appointed to be his heirs.
After a painful illness Clement VII died
on September 25, 1534. His friend Francesco Vettori gives
testimony that for a century no better man had occupied Peter’s Chair than
Clement, who was neither cruel nor proud, neither venal, nor avaricious, nor
luxurious. And despite of this, he continues, the catastrophe came in his time,
while others stained with crime lived and died happily. And indeed many an
excellent quality seemed to promise this Medici a happier reign; but he had to
atone for his dynastic egotism and for the sins of his predecessors. A fatal
confusion of politics and religion bore its bitterest fruits in his
pontificate. Rome was ruined, Italy from Milan to Naples was turned into a
field of slaughter bathed in blood and tears; the unity of the Church was
destroyed, and half Europe fell away from the center of Christianity. All this was a painful commentary on the theories of political
Catholicism and the esteem of that temporal sway over the world which some
still affirm to be useful or even necessary to the cause of Christ.
Decadence of Italy in the Sixteenth
Century
The harmonious union of medieval with
modern thought, the organic arrangement of the ideas brought by the Renaissance
in the system of Christian Ethics, the inner development of Catholicism on the
basis of this harmony as planned in the scheme of the Camera della Segnatura; all
this miscarried, and was bound to do so, since the acting powers, on whom
devolved the accomplishment of this great scheme, conceived in the true spirit
of the Apostle Paul, lacked the ability and enthusiasm necessary for the
execution of so enormous a task. The preceding paragraphs have shown to what
extent these acting powers were incapable of fulfilling the mission set before
them.
The powers at work were two in chief, the
Papacy and the Italian nation. We have seen the Papacy of Medicean Rome swayed by political, by worldly
considerations, guided in all its actions and decisions by the dynastic
interests of its rulers. The religious and moral point of view was ignored in
this domain of worldly aims and ideas. The pontificate of Adrian VI, that came
as an interlude between those of Leo X and Clement VII, certainly was
representative of religious Catholicism : honourable, wise, sincere. But
on the one hand it was of too short a duration to ripen any of its fruits, and
on the other it failed, not only because of Italian corruption and the general
dislike to foreigners, but also because the last Teutonic Pope could not
comprehend the development of Italian culture, the right of the Latin world to
its own characteristics, and the aesthetic interests swaying all minds south of
the Alps. The predominance of the worldly and sensuous elements in life, in
science, and even in art came into play; they did their part in preventing the
victory of idealistic views.
Although the Curia was not equal to its
task, had Italy been still in a healthy state the nation and public opinion
could have forced the Papacy into right courses. But here also corruption had
long since set in. Strong moral force, such as proclaims itself in Dante, in Caterina of
Siena, was gone from the people; they had but lately given its last prophet to
the flames in the Piazza della Signoria at
Florence. No nation can sin thus against its best men without punishment. The
people of Italy could not put new blood and fresh life into the Curia, because
in them the law of the body had triumphed over the law of the spirit. The same
observation has to be made in the province of literature. We have spoken of
Ariosto; the other productions of the Medicean period
in the domain of literature are for the most part trifling and frivolous in
their contents. As Gregorovius says, their poets sang
the praises of Maecenas and Phryne, they wrote pastorals and epics of
chivalry, while the freedom of Italy perished. The theatre, still more early
and markedly than pictorial art, cut itself adrift from ecclesiastical subjects
and from the whole world of religious ideas. It became not merely worldly, but
distinctly pagan, and at the same time incapable of any great creation of
lasting value which could touch the heart of the nation. Serious theological
literature was almost entirely lacking at Leo’s Court and during his
pontificate, with the exception of two or three names, such as Sadoleto , Egidio of Viterbo,
and Tommaso de Vio. After the death
of Raffaelle and Leonardo painting and sculpture at once took a
downward path. Michelangelo upheld for himself the great traditions of the best
time of the Renaissance for almost another quarter of a century; but he was
soon a very lonely man. Decadence showed itself directly after Raffaelle’s death, when Marcantonio engraved Giulio Romano’s
indecent pictures, and Pietro Aretino wrote a commentary on them of
still more indecent sonnets. Clement VII, who had at one time received this
most worthless of all men of letters as a guest in his Villa Careggi, repulsed him after this. But Aretino was
characteristic of his time; what other would have borne with him?
After Raffaelle’s death
ideas were no longer made the subject of paintings; the world of enjoyment,
sweet, earthly, sensual enjoyment, was now depicted before art declined into a
chilly mannerism and the composite falseness of eclecticism. A time which is no
longer able to give an artistic rendering of ideas is incapable of resolution
and of great actions. Not only the Muses and the Graces wept by Raffaelle’s grave, the whole Julian epoch was buried
with him. During Leo’s reign he had undertaken with feverish activity to
conjure up not only ancient Rome but the antique ideals. In vain. His unaided
force was not enough for the task, and he saw himself deserted by those whom he
most needed and on whom he relied. And then came the Sack of Rome; it was the
tomb of all this ideal world of the Renaissance period. From the smoking ruins
of the Eternal City rose a dense, grey fog, a gloomy, spiritless despotism,
utterly out of touch with the joyous spring of the mind of the Italian people
whose harbinger was Dante. Under its oppression the intellectual life of the
nation soon sank asphyxiated.
The Guelf movement of the Middle Ages,
which had its home in the free States of Tuscany and North Italy, was dead and
gone; it could no longer give life or withhold it. And the old Ghibelline
principle was dead too. No German Emperor arose in whom the dreams of Henry VII
could live again. What Charles V sought and attained in the two conferences at
Bologna and during his subsequent visit to Rome (April 5, 1536) had nothing
whatever to do with the plans of the Emperors before him. The restoration of
the Medici in Florence and the Emperor’s dealings with the doomed Republic
inaugurated that unhappy policy which down to 1866 continued to make the
Germans enemies of the Italians. This it was that, after the tribulations of
Metternich’s government, brought on the catastrophe of Solferino and Sadowa. The
Council of Pisa.
The Fifth Lateran Council [1513-7
The programme of 1510 demanded
in the first place a reformation of the Church, both in its head and its
members. Let us consider the attitude of Rome under the Medici with regard to
this question.
The reformations attempted by the Councils
of Constance and Basel had utterly failed. Since Martin V had returned to Rome
the Papacy could consider nothing beyond the governing of the Papal State, and
since Calixtus III it was involved in dynastic intrigue. Aeneas Silvius had
stated with the utmost clearness thirteen years before he became Pope that no
one in the Curia any longer thought of reformation. Then Savonarola appeared;
France and Germany cried out for reform. At the synods of Orleans and Tours
(1510) the French decided on the assembling of an Ecumenical Council. In view
of the decree Frequens of the Council of
Constance, the dilatoriness of the Pope, and the breaking of the oath he had
sworn in conclave, the Second Synod of Pisa was convoked (May 16, 1511). It was
first and foremost a check offered to Julius II by French politicians, but was
also intended to obtain a general recognition by the Church of the principles
of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438 drawn from the articles of the Basel and
Constance conventions. This pseudo-synod was attended only by a few French
prelates and savants. Meantime the Emperor Maximilian had conferred with the
leading theologians of his Empire, such as Geiler von Kaisersberg, Wimpheling Trithemius, Johann Eck, Matthäus Lang,
and Conrad Peutinger, about the state of the
Church. In 1510 he commissioned the Schlettstadt professor, Jakob Wimpheling, to draw up a plan of reform, which the latter
published in his Gravamina Germanicae Nationis cum remediis etavisamentis ad Caesaream Maiestatem.
It is composed of an extract from the Pragmatic Sanction, an essay on the
machinations of courtiers, another on the ten grievances, with their remedies,
notifications for the Emperor, and an excursus concerning legates. The
ten gravamina ;are the same which Martin Mayr had
mentioned as early as 1457 in his epistle to Aeneas Silvius.
The Emperor, who since 1507 cherished the
wild plan of procuring his own election to the Papacy on the death of Julius,
at first gave his protection to the Council of Pisa. Afterwards he withdrew it,
and the German Bishops also refused to have anything to do with the schismatic
tendencies of the French. On July 18, 1511, Julius II summoned an Ecumenical
Council to Rome; it assembled there on April 19, 1512, with a very small
attendance composed entirely of Italian prelates. The Spaniards also showed an
interest in the work of reformation, as is proved by the noteworthy
anonymous Brevis Memoria, published by Döllinger; but they took no part in the Council. Before the
opening of the Lateranense V a
controversy had arisen on the powers within the scope of Councils. The Milanese
jurist Decius had upheld the side of the Pisan Council, so had the
anonymous author of the Status Romani Imperii,
published in Nardouin, and Zaccaria Ferreni of
Vicenza; the chief disputant on the side of the Curia
was Tommaso de Vio (Cajetan).
It was a good omen for the Council that
the best and most pious man of intellect then in Rome made the opening
speech. Aegidius of Viterbo as Principal of the Augustinian
Order had worked energetically at the reform of his own Order ever since
1508. Bembo and Sadoleto praised
his intellect and his learning, and the latter wrote to the former that, though
humanity and the artes humanitatis had been lost to mankind,
yet Aegidius alone and unaided could have restored them to us. In his
opening speech Aegidius uttered some earnest truths and deep
thoughts. He touched on the real source of decadence in the Church.
Unfortunately the Council did not fulfil
the expectations which might have been based on this inaugural address. When
Leo X opened the sixth sitting (April 27, 1513) the assembly numbered, besides
22 cardinals and 91 abbots, only 62 bishops. Bishop Simon, of Modena, appealed to
the prelates to begin by reforming themselves. At the seventh sitting the
preacher, Rio, revived the theory of the two swords. On December 19, 1513,
France was officially represented, and at the eighth sitting the Council
condemned the heresies taken from the Arabs concerning the human soul, which
was explained as humani corporis forma.
These had already been denounced at Vienne. Then the theologians were called on
to prune “the infected roots of philosophy and poetry”. Philosophers were to
uphold the truth of Christianity. Bishop Nicholas of Bergamo and
Cardinal Cajetan opposed this measure; the first did not wish
restrictions to be imposed on philosophers and theologians, the second did not
agree that philosophers should be called upon to uphold the truth of the Faith,
since in this way a confusion might arise between theology and philosophy,
which would damage the freedom of philosophy. At the ninth sitting the curialist, Antonio Pucci, spoke on reform, and said
that the clergy had fallen away from love; that the tyranny of inordinate
desire had taken its place; that their lives were in opposition to the teaching
and canons of the Church. The bull of reformation published after this, Supernae dispositionis arbitrio, was concerned with the higher appointments
in the Church, elections, postulations, provisions, the deposing and
translation of prelates, commendams, unions,
dispensations, reservations; with Cardinals and the Curia; reform in the life
of priests and laity; the incomes and immunities of clerics; the wide spread of
superstition and false Christianity. The reform of the Calendar was also
debated, but at the tenth sitting (May, 1515) proved still unripe for
discussion; the sitting was then devoted to the contentions of the bishops and
the regular clergy; resolutions were passed concerning money-lenders; and Leo’s
bull pointed out the duty of furthering beneficial modern institutions. Of
great interest is the bull concerning the printing and publishing of books: it
attributes the invention of printing to the favour of Heaven, but adds that
what was made for the glory of God ought not to be used against Him, for which
reason all new books were to be subjected to the censorship of the Bishops and
Inquisitors.
The eleventh sitting was occupied with the
complaints of the Bishops against the Regulars,
whom Aegidius of Viterbo defended (December 19, 1516). It
was declared unlawful to foretell coming misfortunes from the pulpit with any
reference to a definite date; this was probably a retarded censure on Savonarola.
The bull Pastor Aeternus was
issued, which proclaimed the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction. Leo declared
it null and void, and confirmed the decision of the bull Unam Sanctam issued by Boniface VIII, that all
Christians are subject to the Pope. At this point the ordinances for the clergy
and their privileges were read. At the twelfth sitting Giovanni Francesco
Pico della Mirandola presented his Oratio de Reformandis Moribus to
the Pope. In it he announces to Leo that should the Pope delay healing the
wounds of society, He whose representative the Pope was would cut off the
corrupted members with fire and sword, and scatter them abroad, sending a
terrible judgment on the Church. Christ, he said, had cast out the doves and
pigeons that were sold in the Temple; why should not Leo exile the worshippers
of the many Golden Calves, who had not only a place, but a place of command in
Rome? This again was a reminiscence of Savonarola’s sermons. Pico had
constituted himself his biographer and apologist. It was strange that the
flaming words of the prophet should rise once more from the grave at the moment
when their terrible prophecy was to be fulfilled in Germany.
On March 16, 1517, the Council closed with
its twelfth sitting. It had made many useful orders, and shown good intentions
to abolish various abuses. But the carrying out of the contemplated reforms of
the Curia was entirely neglected. The Council was from first to last a dead
letter, and, even had it gained effect for its resolutions, the catastrophe in
the north would not have been averted. For there an inward alienation from Rome
had long been going on, ever since the days of Ludwig the Bavarian; little was
needed to make it externally also an accomplished fact. Neither Leo nor his
Lateran Council had the slightest conception of this state of affairs north of
the Alps.
The government of the Church was entirely
in the hands of Italians; the Curia could count scarcely more than one or two
Germans or English in their number. Terrible retribution was at hand. Leo X had
seen no trace of the coming religious crisis, although its forerunners Reuchlin
and Erasmus, Wimpheling and Hütten,
and the appearance of Obscurorum Virorum Epistolae might
well have opened his eyes. His announcement in the midst of all this ferment of
the great Absolution for the benefit of St Peter’s was a stupendous
miscalculation, due to the thoughtless and contemptuous treatment vouchsafed to
German affairs in Rome. Instead of directing his most serious attention to them
Leo had meantime made his covenant with Francis I at Bologna (December, 1515),
on which followed directly the French treaty of 1516. At Bologna the King had
renounced the Pragmatic Sanction, in return for which the Pope granted him the
right of nomination to bishoprics, abbeys, and conventual priories.
It was the most immoral covenant that Church history had hitherto recorded, for
the parties presented each other with things that did not belong to them. The
French Church fell a victim to an agreement which delivered over her freedom to
royal despotism; in return Francis I undertook that the Pope’s family should
rule in Florence, and as a pledge of the treaty gave a French Princess to the
Pope’s nephew Lorenzo in marriage.
The hour in which this compact was made
was the darkest in Leo’s pontificate. North of the Alps this act undermined all
confidence in him or in his cousin Clement VII. No further reform of the Church
was expected of two Popes who cared more for their dynasty than for the welfare
of Christendom. The short interregnum of Adrian VI was, as we have seen, not
equal to the task of carrying out the reformation. But it must be remembered
that in his reign the worthiest representative of the Church's conscience
during the Medicean era came forward once
more with a plea for reform. The great document, laid before the Pope at his
command, by Aegidius of Viterbo, revealed the disease, when it
pointed to the misuse of papal power as the cause of all the harm, and demanded
a limitation to the absolutism of the Head of the Church. This tallied with the
Pope’s ideas, and the celebrated instruction issued to the Nuncio Chieregato (1522), which announced that the disease
had come from the head to the members, from the Pope to the prelates, and
confessed, “We have all sinned, and there is not one that doeth good”.
1534-72. The Counter-Reformation in Italy.
Alessandro Farnese came forth from the
Conclave of 1534 on October 12 as Paul III. A pupil of Pomponio Leto,
and at the age of twenty-five, in 1493, invested with the purple by Alexander
VI, he had taken part in all phases of the humanistic movement, and shared its
glories and its sins. Now the sky had become overcast, but a clear sunny gleam
from the best time of the Renaissance still lay over him, though his
pontificate was to witness the inroad of Lutheranism on Italy, the appearance
of the doctrine of justification by faith, and on the other hand the foundation
of the Society of Jesus (September 3, 1539), the convocation of the long
wished-for Ecumenical Council of Trent (1542), and also the reorganization of
the Inquisition (1541).
The last Pope of the Renaissance, as we
must call Farnese, left as the brightest memory of his reign the record of an
effort, which proved fruitless, to unite the last and noblest supporters of the
Renaissance who still survived in the service of the Church, for an attempt at
reformation. This is celebrated as the Consultum delectorum Cardinalium et aliorum prelatorum de emendanda Ecclesia, and bears the signatures of Contarini, Caraffa,Sadoleto, Reginald
Pole, Federigo Fregoso, Giberti, and Cortese. Contarini must
be acknowledged to have been the real soul of the movement, which aimed at an
inward reconciliation with the German party of reform. All these ideas had root
in the conception represented by the scheme of Julius II. The greater number of
those who worked at the Consultum of 1538 must be regarded as
the last direct heirs of this great inheritance. The Religious Conference of
Ratisbon in 1541 forms the crisis in the history of this movement: it was
wrecked, not, as Reumont states, by the
incompatibility of the principle of subjective opinion with that of authority,
but quite as much, if not more so, by the private aims of Bavaria and France.
So ended the movement towards reconciliation, and another came into force and
obtained sole dominion. This regarded the most marked opposition to
Protestantism as the salvation of the Church, and to combat it summoned not
only the counter-reformation of the Tridentinum,
but every means in its power, even the extremest measures
of material force, to its assistance. The representatives of the conciliatory
reform movement, Contarini, Sadoleto, Pole, Morone,
became suspect and, despite their dignity of Cardinal, were subject to
persecution. Even noble ladies like Vittoria Colonna and Giulia
Gonzaga were not secure from this suspicion and persecution.
Paul IV (1555-9) and Pius V (1566-72)
carried out the Counter-Reformation in Italy. While the pagan elements of
humanism merged in the Antitrinitarian and Socinian sects,
the Inquisition was stamping out the sola fides belief, but its terrorism at
the same time crushed culture and intellectual life out of Italy. The city of
Rome recovered from the Sack of 1527; but from the ruin wrought by Caraffa, the nation, or at any rate Papal Rome, never
recovered. Whatever intellectual life still remained was forced in the days of
Paul III to shrink more and more from publicity. The sonnets which VittoriaColonna
and Michelangelo exchanged, the converse these two great minds held in the
garden of the Villa Colonna, of which Francesco d’Ollanda has
left us an account, were the last flickerings of
a spirit which had once controlled and enriched the Renaissance.
What comparisons must have forced
themselves on Michelangelo as all the events since the days of Lorenzo il Magnifico,
his first patron, whom he never forgot, passed in review before his great and
lonely spirit, now sunk in gloom. We know from Condivi that
the impressions Buonarotte had received in
his youth exercised a renewed power over his old age. Dante and Savonarola were
once his leaders, they had never entirely forsaken him. Now the favole del mondo,
as his last poems bear witness, fell entirely into the background before the
earnest thoughts that had once filled his mind at the foot of the pulpit in San
Marco. His Giudizio Universale sums up the account for his whole
existence, and is at the same time the most terrible reckoning, made in the spirit
of Dante, with his own nation and its rulers. All that Italy might have become,
had she followed the dictates of Dante and Savonarola, floated before his eyes
as his brush created that Judge of all the world whose curse falls on those
that have exiled and murdered His prophets, neglected the Church, and bartered
away the freedom of the nation. His Last Judgment was painted at the
bidding of the Pope. Paul III can scarcely have guessed how the artist was
searching into the consciences of that whole generation, which was called to
execute what Julius had bidden Raffaelle and Michelangelo depict for
all Christendom, and which had ignored and neglected its high office.
Since 1541 the Schism was an accomplished
fact, a misfortune alike for North and South. The defection of the Germanic
world deprived the Catholic Church of an element to which the future belonged
after the exhaustion of the Latin races. Perhaps the greatest misfortune lay
and still lies, as Newman has said, in the fact that the Latin races never
realized, and do not even yet realize, what they have lost in the Germanic
races. From the time of Paul III, and still more from that of Paul IV onwards,
the old Catholicism changes into an Italianism which adopts more and more the
forms of the Roman Curialism. The idea of
Catholicity, once so comprehensive, was sinking more and more into a one-sided,
often despotic insistence on unity, rendered almost inevitable by the continual
struggle with opponents. And this was due, not to the doctrines of the Church,
but to her practice. Romanism alone could no longer carry out a scheme such as
that of which Julius II had dreamed. It is now clear to all minds what
intellectual, moral, and social forces the schism had drawn away; this is
manifest even in the fate of Italy. The last remnant of Italian idealism took
refuge in the idea of national unity and freedom which had been shadowed forth
in the policy of Alexander VI and Julius II, and which Machiavelli had written
on the last wonderful page of his Principe as the guiding principle for the
future. This vision it was which rose dimly in Dante’s mind; for its sake the
Italian people had forgiven the sins of the Borgia and of della Rovere; it had
appeared to Machiavelli as the highest of aims; after another three hundred
years of spiritual and temporal despotism it burst forth once more in the minds
of Rosmini, Cesare Balbo, Gioberti, and Cavour, and roused the dishonoured soul of
the nation.
chapter 2HABSBURG AND VALOIS
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The life and times of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI |
Pope Alexander VI and his court: extracts from the Latin diary of Johannes Burchardus |
The Life and Pontificate of Leo X |
Life and times of Girolamo Savonarola |
