HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

CLEMENT VII. A.D. 1523-1534

CHAPTER I.

Clement VII. —His Election, Character, and the Beginning of his Reign. —His Ineffectual Efforts for Peace and his Alliance with Francis I of France.

In consequence of Adrian’s delicate state of health, Imperial diplomacy was already busying itself, in the summer of 1523, with the prospects of a Papal election. Charles V knew how much would depend, in his struggle with France, on the policy of the new Pope. On the 13th of July he sent to his Ambassador at Rome, the Duke of Sessa, special instructions concerning the Conclave; their gist was that everything was to be done to secure the election of the Vice-Chancellor, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici. To the candidature of this Prince of the Church, who during two pontificates had been his staunch adherent, Charles continuously remained steadfast.

This attitude of the Emperor was sure to lessen considerably the prospects of Cardinal Wolsey, whose position and reputation were almost on a level with those of Medici. All the lofty expectations of the English Cardinal who, in conjunction with Henry VIII, was eagerly canvassing for his own election, were nullified by the circumstance that the great majority in the Sacred College were more than ever unwilling to hear of a foreigner and absentee as the Pope’s successor. But, in spite of the most zealous exertions, even Cardinal de' Medici was far from certain of his own success, as the entire French party was in decided opposition to this loyal champion of Imperial interests. Further, the group of older Cardinals were all unfriendly to him as leader of the juniors nominated by Leo X.

The parties in the College of Cardinals were formed on the same lines as those in the Conclave of Adrian VI. The Mantuan envoy, in a despatch of the 29th of September 1523, reports that Medi can count certainly on about seventeen votes, although he cannot affirm the same of any other Cardinal. The chances of Cardinal Gonzaga are very seriously considered. This opinion corresponded more closely with the actual position of things than the more sanguine surmises of the Florentine representative who, on the same day, writes of the rising prospects of Cardinal de' Medici. It was particularly prejudicial to the latter that, as in the last Conclave, Cardinal Colonna, otherwise strongly affected towards the Emperor, and in spite of his promise given to Sessa, was coming forward as Medici’s strongest opponent. He sided with the older Cardinals and even with the party of France. It was not less embarrassing that Medici’s mortal enemy, Soderini, had been freed from his imprisonment and admitted to the Conclave through the efforts of the older Cardinals, who were threatening to cause a schism. In addition to this, Farnese, since the 27th of September, had come to the front as a dangerous rival of Medici. The latter, while making every exertion to secure the support of the foreign powers, was resolutely determined either to become Pope himself at any cost, or, if this was impossible, to assist in the election of one of his own party.

Such being the state of things, a long and stormy conclave was looked for when, on the 1st of October 1523, the five-and-thirty electors assembled in the Sixtine Chapel, while without a heavy thunderstorm was raging. This, as well as the circumstance that Medici’s cell had been erected under the fresco, by Perugino, of “St Peter’s elevation to the Primacy”, was looked upon as an augury of the future. Nor were prognostications in favour of Medici wanting in other ways, for the Duke of Sessa worked for him at fever heat. His opponents were no less indefatigable; they first of all tried to put off any decision until the arrival of the French Cardinals; consequently, in the meantime only the Bull of Julius II against simony was read. The first scrutiny should have taken place on the morning of the 6th of October. But this intention was abandoned when suddenly, on that very day, to the no small annoyance of the Imperialists, the French Cardinals, Louis de Bourbon, François de Clermont, and Jean de Lorraine appeared in conclave in order to travel with greater speed they had put on short laymen’s clothes, and entered, booted and spurred, into the midst of their colleagues; all business now came to a standstill. The wooden cells set apart for the electors were separated from each other by small spaces and distinguished by letters of the alphabet. The cells prepared for the Cardinals appointed by Leo X were decorated in red, those of the others in green. The Swiss guards were appointed to watch over the Vatican. Fifteen Cardinals stood firm for Medici, the Emperor’s candidate; four others, also Imperialists, at whose head was the powerful Colonna, it had been impossible to win over. Twelve Cardinals formed the French party; six were neutral. Each of these three parties had no thought of giving in. On the first day of the Conclave were named as Medici’s competitors: Fieschi, the French candidate; Jacobazzi, who was supported by Colonna; last, and most important of all, Farnese; in Rome it was repeatedly said that he was already elected.

Farnese was, in fact, the only one among the electors who could measure himself with Medici. He was his senior, and a Roman by birth, and he was unquestionably superior to his rival in political penetration, in the largeness of his conceptions, and in his understanding of ecclesiastical affairs. It was also to his advantage that he was neutral, although his leanings were more towards the Emperor than otherwise.

In the first scrutiny, on the 8th of October, the different parties measured their strength : the French candidate, Cardinal Fieschi, had eleven votes, and the same number were given to Carvajal, an Imperialist. The next scrutinies were also without result. All hoped for a speedy end of the war in Lombardy, and, on that account, tried to prolong the election. Under these circumstances it was great good fortune that no serious disturbances took place in Rome, which remained as quiet as before the beginning of the Conclave. The populace could not be blamed when, on the 10th of October, they began to complain of the long delay. In consequence of these demonstrations, an attempt was made on the 12th, by Colonna and the French, to obtain the tiara for Cardinal Antonio del Monte, but without success. “Our Cardinal”, the Florentine envoy reports on the 13th, “is in close alliance with his friends and stands firm.” Colonna also, in spite of Sessa’s representations, relaxed nothing of his opposition to the hated Medici. The situation was unchanged. Once more, but in vain, the Romans begged that the election might be settled quickly. Armellini sent them answer : “Since you can put up with a foreign Pope, we are almost on the point of giving you one; he lives in England.” This gave rise to a great tumult. The Romans shouted, “Choose us one of those present, even if he be a log of wood.”

Even in the days that followed, Medici, with his sixteen to eighteen followers, stood out obstinately against the opposition, now increased from twenty to two-and-twenty Cardinals. The closure had become a dead letter. Uninterrupted communication was kept up with the outer world. On the 19th of October a Venetian reports: “Things are just where they were on the first day”. “The Cardinals,” exclaims a Mantuan envoy in despair,  seem determined to spend the winter in conclave”. Each party watched with anxiety for some turn of events in Lombardy. The Romans grew more and more restless, and Farnese tried to calm them. Several new candidates besides Farnese appeared at this time, such as the Franciscan Cristoforo Numai, Achille de Grassis, and, above all, Sigismondo Gonzaga. On the 28th of October the Romans again made remonstrances, but the Conclave went on as before, Medici and Farnese holding the scales between them. November came, and, notwithstanding fresh popular impatience, the end of the proceedings was not yet in sight. The Court was in despair; fear of a schism was already occupying men’s minds. Once more a pause in the transactions of the Conclave was caused by the arrival, on the 12th of November, of Cardinal Bonifacio Ferreri, whose sympathies were French. He brought up the number of Medici’s opponents to three-and-twenty, and that of the electors to thirty-nine. If the Venetian Ambassador is to be believed, Cardinal Farnese now succeeded, by large promises, in detaching the Duke of Sessa from the party of Medici and bringing him over to his own.

Medici, nevertheless, had not the slightest intention of giving in; in fact, he had good grounds for raising his hopes even higher than before, since his party stood by him firm as a rock. The position of his adversaries was very different; they had only one point of union, the determination to prevent Medici from becoming Pope in other respects they were divided from the first, for most of them had pretensions to the tiara themselves. “But,” as Guicciardini remarks, “it is difficult to keep up a partnership when its chief supports are discord and ambition.” Medici, for some time past, had built his hopes on this state of things, and used all the means in his power to produce dissension among his adversaries. It is especially remarkable that help came to him from, of all people, the French Ambassador.

On the death of Adrian VI, Francis I wished immediately to enter Italy in person, but the difficulties arising from the desertion of the Constable de Bourbon to the Emperor had forced him to give up the idea. He was thus obliged to limit his activities to using the influence of the French Cardinals, to whom he had named Fieschi, Soderini, and Scaramuccia Trivulzio as his candidates, and that of the envoys he had delegated. Lodovico di Canossa, who was such an active agent on behalf of French interests, received the royal commands to go to Italy too late, so that only Count Carpi reached the Conclave in time. “Our enemies”, wrote Sessa on the 28th of October, “had a triumph at first, since Carpi is openly on the side of France, and came, moreover, as the representative of King Francis; but his old friendship with Medici is stronger than his party spirit. He has succeeded in splitting up our opponents”. It was not, however, old friendship only which induced Carpi to take up this surprising position, but in all probability a promise of neutrality from Medici, the hitherto stout Imperialist.

The final decision was reached by Cardinal Colonna at last renouncing his opposition to Medici. This change of mind was the result of a quarrel between Colonna and his French friends, because the latter refused to vote for Jacobazzi, the Imperialist. One of the French Cardinals, Francois de Clermont, seeing that confinement in the vitiated atmosphere of the Conclave was becoming daily more trying to the older Cardinals, now went the length of proposing Cardinal Orsini, who was hostile to Colonna as well as to the Emperor, Medici pretended to be in favour of this old friend of his family. Then Colonna, in great alarm, saw that he must give in, a course which he was advised to take by his brother, then in the service of the Emperor. He joined sides with Medici, who promised him the pardon of Soderini, and personal advantages as well. This reconciliation of the two enemies, who had so long been at strife, took place on the evening of the 17th of November.

Colonna immediately drew with him a number of Cardinals, first his friend Jacobazzi, followed by Cornaro and Pisani, then Grassis, Ferreri, and others. Medici could now count on twenty-seven votes, and his election was certain. On the same day, the 18th of November, two years before, he had entered Milan. The proclamation of the new Pope was deferred until the pardon of Soderini should be settled and the capitulations signed; the latter guaranteed that the benefices held by the Pope as Cardinal should be divided among his electors. The twelve Cardinals forming the French party now gave up further resistance as useless, and on the morning of the 19th of November, the votes having been once more taken for the sake of security, Giulio de Medici was proclaimed as unanimously chosen Pope. The victor, on emerging from this hard contest of fifty days, assumed the name of Clement VII. His first act of government was to confirm the capitulations, but with the additional clause that they might, if necessary, be altered in Consistory.

The respect which Clement VII had won for himself as Cardinal under Leo X by his statesmanlike efficiency and admirable administration in Florence, as well as by his seriousness, moderation, and avoidance of all frivolous pleasures, threw a lustre over the beginning of his pontificate. Seldom had a new Pope been welcomed with such general rejoicing and such high-pitched expectation. In place of an Adrian VI, simple-minded and exclusively devoted to ecclesiastical interests, a Pope had arisen who satisfied the wishes of the majority in the Curia. He was a great noble and an expert politician. The Romans were delighted; a Medici Pope encouraged their hopes of a renewal of the happy days of Leo X, and of a long and brilliant reign fruitful of results in art and science. Their expectations were strengthened when Clement at once drew into his service classical scholars like Giberti and Sadoleto, showed his care for the maintenance of justice, gave audiences with the utmost freedom of access, was marked in his courtesy to persons of all classes, and bestowed graces with great generosity. “He granted more favours”, wrote the Bolognese envoy, “on the first day of his reign than Adrian did in his whole lifetime”. The satisfaction of the electors was not less, among whom the Pope distributed the whole of his benefices, representing a yearly income of upwards of 60,000 ducats. Cardinal Colonna got, in addition, the Riario palace, the Cancelleria, and office of Vice-Chancellor, and Cornaro the palace of San Marco; the amnesty granted to Soderini was full and complete. The coronation took place on the 26th of November with great pomp, and in presence of an incredible concourse of people. On the tribune could be read the inscription, “To Clement VII, the restorer of peace to the world and perpetual defender of the Christian name”. “It seems”, wrote Baldassare Castiglione, “that here everyone expects the very best of the new Pope”.

In upper Italy also, especially in the States of the Church, the election made a very favourable impression. Alfonso of Ferrara had taken advantage of the vacancy in the Holy See to seize on Reggio and Rubbiera; he was even preparing to advance on Modena, when he heard of Clement’s election. He at once gave up this design and sent a messenger to the Pope, and somewhat later his eldest son, to tender his homage and prepare the way for an understanding ; this was not arrived at, but a truce for one year was agreed to. The disturbances in the Romagna, promoted by Giovanni da Sassatello in the name of the Guelph party, but at the secret instigation of France, came to an end at once with the appearance of the name of Medici from the electoral urn. In Florence the advantages of another Medicean pontificate were calculated with true commercial shrewdness, and there were many who started for Rome in quest of fortune. In Venice the expressions of congratulation were exuberant; the Doge wrote that he would send the most illustrious citizens of the Republic to honour Clement as a deity on earth. “Praised be the Lord for ever”, exclaimed Vittoria Colonna when she received the news of Clement’s election; “may He further this beginning to such ends, that men may see that there was never wrought a greater blessing, nor one which was so grounded on reason”. The thoughts and hopes of this noble woman were then shared by many. A canon of Piacenza declared that Medici by his skill and sagacity would bring the endangered barque of Peter safely into harbour. The Marquis of Pescara considered that by the result of the election the wishes of the general majority had been met in a measure which was, perhaps, unprecedented. “Clement VII”, said Bembo, “will be the greatest and wisest, as well as the most respected Pope whom the Church has seen for centuries”. Almost everyone overlooked the great weaknesses which were combined with undeniable good qualities in the character of the new Pontiff.

Unlike most members of his house, Clement VII was a good-looking man. He was tall and had a graceful figure ; his features were regular and refined, and only a close observer would have remarked that he had a slight squint in his right eye. At this time his face was beardless, as Raphael had depicted it in his portrait of Leo X. Clement’s health left nothing to be desired; being extremely temperate and of strictly moral life, there was reason to expect that his reign, on which he entered in his forty-sixth year, would be a long one. Although, as a genuine Medici, he was a patron of literature, art, and music, Clement was yet by nature essentially prosaic. Without approaching Leo X in versatility and intellectual resources, he had, on the other hand, none of the frivolity and pleasure-seeking, the extravagance and ostentation of the latter. It was noticed with satisfaction by sober-minded observers that his coronation banquet was arranged without the superfluous luxury and the presence of professional jesters which had marked that of Leo X. With such empty recreations Clement, who for years had been a man of great industry, did not concern himself. Nor had he any taste for noisy hunting parties and expensive excursions, in which he saw only a waste of time. He very rarely visited Magliana, and only saw at intervals his beautiful villa on Monte Mario. As a Medici and as a statesman of the Renaissance, Clement VII was far superior to Leo X in caution and acumen. “This Pope”, Loaysa reported to the Emperor, “ is the most secretive man in the world, and I have never spoken with one whose sayings were so hard to decipher”.

In the discharge of his duties the new Pope was indefatigable; he devoted himself to affairs with the greatest punctuality, earnest attention, and an assiduity that never flagged. Only at meal-times did he allow himself some recreation; a good musician himself,  he then took pleasure in listening to motets, and engaged in serious conversation with artists and men of learning. At his table, which was very frugal, two physicians were always present; save at the chief meal of the day, the Pope ate very little, and kept fast days rigorously; but he only said Mass on great festivals. His bearing during all religious ceremonies was full of reverence and dignity. “There is no one”, wrote Soriano, “who celebrates Mass with so much beauty and piety of demeanour”. If Clement VII had none of his predecessor’s strength as an ecclesiastical ruler, and showed generally more knowledge and experience in political than in spiritual affairs, yet, contrasted with the levity of Leo X, he marked a beneficial change in the pontifical character.

The Venetian Ambassador, Marco Foscari, who, during his three years’ embassy, was able to observe Clement VII closely, considered that “he was full of uprightness and piety. In the Segnatura he would do nothing to the prejudice of others, and when he confirmed a petition, he would not, as Leo did, withdraw his word. He neither sold benefices nor bestowed them simoniacally. In contrast to Leo and other Popes, when he conferred graces he asked no services in return, but wished that everything should proceed in equity”.

Clement VII’s great parsimony gave rise to many unmeasured accusations. The extremes to which he went in this respect explain, but do not in every instance justify, the charge of miserliness brought against him. This is clearly shown from the fact that in his almsgiving he was as open-handed as Leo X. He deserves praise rather than blame in avoiding the extravagance of his cousin, whose debts he was obliged to pay. The shadows on Clement’s character lay in other spheres they were closely connected with idiosyncrasies which the Venetian envoy, Antonio Soriano, has minutely described. Soriano disputes the current opinion that the Pope was of a melancholy disposition; his physicians, he observes, thought him rather of a sanguine temperament, which would also account for his fluency of speech. Contarini also insists on the good reputation enjoyed by Clement VII; great ideas he certainly had not, but he spoke very well on any subject brought before him. Contarini accounts for Clement’s slowness of decision and lack of courage by the coldness of his nature, wonderfully characterized by Raphael in his likeness of the Cardinal in the portrait of Leo X. Soriano also speaks strongly of the Pope as very cold-hearted.

Always a procrastinator, Clement belonged to that unfortunate class of characters in whom the powers of reflection, instead of giving clearness to the thoughts and strength to the will, perpetually call forth fresh doubts and suspicions. Consequently, he had no sooner come to a decision than he as quickly regretted it; he wavered almost constantly hither and thither between contending resolves, and generally let the fitting opportunity for action escape his grasp. The Pope’s indecision and instability were bound to do him all the more harm since they were accompanied by great timidity. From this excessive want of courage, as well as from his innate irresolution and a parsimony often most mis­chievously employed, Guicciardini explains Clement’s incapacity to act when the time came to put into execution decisions reached after long reflection.

These fatal characteristics had almost escaped notice while Giulio de' Medici was Leo’s adviser, and had not then reached their later stage of development. All men then knew that the Cardinal served the reigning Pope with untiring industry and the greatest fidelity. Of restless energy and the highest reputation, his political influence was appraised in those days at a higher value than it in reality deserved, and most, indeed, of the political successes of Leo X were ascribed not to himself, but to his minister. When at last the latter rose to the head of affairs, he showed that he could neither come to a decision at the right moment nor, having done so, put it resolutely into execution; for, in consequence of his over-subtle statecraft, he could never shake himself free from suspicion, and a constant dread of real and, still oftener, imaginary dangers impeded all his transactions and put a stop to any decided and consecutive course of action. A letter, a word was enough to upset a resolution formed after long balancing and calculation, and to throw the Pope back on the previous state of resourceless indecision. At first Clement’s contemporaries almost entirely overlooked these ominous characteristics. All the more painful was their surprise when they saw the great Cardinal, once held so high in men's esteem, sink into a Pope of petty and cheap reputation.

The Imperialists were more disappointed than any, for they had indulged in the most sanguine and extravagant hopes. At the close of the Conclave, Sessa had written to Charles : “The Pope is entirely your Majesty’s creature. So great is your Majesty’s power, that you can change stones into obedient children”. Sessa, in saying this, had failed to see that the election had not been altogether his work, and that even during the Conclave, Medici had taken up a more neutral attitude than before. Further, he overlooked the difference that must arise between the policy of Clement as Pope and his policy as Cardinal. The ideal evidently present to Clement’s mind at the beginning of his reign was one of impartiality and independence towards the Emperor and Francis alike, in order that he might be of service in restoring peace, thereby securing the freedom of Italy and the Papacy, for which there was a double necessity owing to the Turkish danger and the spread of heresy in Germany. Unfortunately, although he was fully aware of the grave condition of affairs throughout the world, he was entirely wanting in the determination, firmness, and fearlessness of a Julius II. From the first suspicious signs of weakness were discernible. How could it be otherwise when—a significant circumstance the two leading advisers of the Pope were each respectively champions of the two great opposing parties? The one, Gian Matteo Giberti, an excellent and blameless man, who became Datary, drew closer to France the more he realized the danger to the freedom of Italy and the Papacy arising from the worldwide power of Spain; the other, Nicolas von Schonberg, was, on the contrary, a thorough Imperialist. To the conflicting influence of these two counsellors Guicciardini principally ascribes the instability of character which Clement, to the general astonishment, began so soon to display.

Immediately after his election the Pope entered into secret negotiations with the Venetian Ambassador Foscari. He opened to him his scheme of joining himself with Venice and the Duke of Milan, so as to separate Switzerland from France and bring the former at the same time into alliance with himself. By these manoeuvres he expected to cut off from France all hopes of predominance in Italy, and also, in the same way, to thwart the plans of the Emperor, showing himself to be a Pope in reality, and not, like Adrian, merely Charles’s servant. Yet he did not wish to push his undertakings against the Emperor further, but rather to keep at peace with him. He was not thinking of war, but how to arrange an armistice, the Curia at that moment being not only without money, but also burdened with Leo’s debts. As he was beset on the one hand by the Emperor’s party, and, on the other, by that of France, through Count Carpi, he was anxious to know the intentions of Venice before he committed himself to any declaration. Sessa, who saw in Clement VII only the former adherent of Imperial policy, was bitterly disappointed. The Pope flatly refused to turn the alliance made with Adrian from the defensive into the offensive. He would continue to pay the stipulated subsidy to the Emperor’s forces, but as Father of Christendom his first duty was the restoration of peace. “Everything I have urged to the contrary”, wrote another Imperialist diplomatist, the protonotary Caracciolo, on the 30th of November, “has failed”. The Pope remarked that he could not declare himself in favour of an open league against France, he would much rather do all he could to bring about a general armistice among all Christian States;  to this object all his endeavours were now at first directed. This policy of peace, with special reference to the Turkish danger, he had already emphasized in the letters despatched to Francis before his coronation, announcing his election.

Clement hoped to satisfy the Imperialists without taking any steps openly hostile to France, since each of those implacable enemies, Charles and Francis, wished him to become his partisan. Not only were the Ambassadors and Cardinals on both sides busy in support of this object, but also special envoys from the French King and the Emperor. The representative of the former, Saint-Marceau, arrived in Rome on the 1st of February 1524. Great as his offers were, Clement refused to acknowledge the claims of Francis to Milan, and was at the greatest pains to avoid even the appearance of showing favour to France. But he was just as little disposed to add to the concessions already contained in the treaty made by his predecessor with Charles V, which would not expire until September 1524. In spite of his financial distress, he paid the monies agreed upon, but secretly, on account of France. Sessa was beside himself at the indecision of the Pope, who was the Emperor’s ally, but was constantly coquetting with France. The more Sessa insisted, the more Clement drew back.

Another emissary of Charles, Adrian de Croy, had no better fortune. The Pope explained that he could work best for peace by being completely neutral, and in this he was confirmed, as early as the spring of 1524, by the threatening reports of the progress of Lutheranism in Germany and the growing danger from the Turk. That the Christian powers should be tearing each other to pieces in presence of such perils seemed to him intolerable; he hoped that his envoys might succeed in securing at least an armistice. Clement had already, on the 8th of December 1523, sent his chamberlain, Bernardino della Barba, to the Emperor in Spain with offers of mediation in the cause of peace. A discussion on the means of achieving the much-needed pacification of Europe, held in Consistory on the 9th of March 1524, resulted in the decision that Nicolas von Schonberg should visit the Courts of France, Spain, and England. By the 11th of March he had started, not overglad of his mission, the difficulties of which he fully understood, and knowing well that Giberti would now have a monopoly of influence. Schonberg's instructions left no doubt as to Clement’s sincere wish to prepare a way for peace; he travelled very quickly, and at the end of March was in Blois, where he stayed until the nth of April; after conferring with Charles at Burgos, he returned again to Blois, and thence, on the 11th of May, set out for London.

In Rome, where, soon after the arrival of the Florentine embassy of homage, the plague broke out with fury, Sessa, Lope Hurtado de Mendoza, and the English envoys were actively working on behalf of the Emperor, while Saint-Marceau and Carpi, supported by the powerful Giberti, worked for Francis. The timid Pope, meanwhile, still continued to shirk the decided avowal of partisanship desired by the Imperialists; under the influence of reports from Lombardy, where Bonnivet, the general of Francis, had had reverses, he leant, on the whole, more to Charles, but without having any intention of openly taking his side. On the 10th of April Clement wrote strongly to the French King saying that, in spite of his great obligations to the Emperor, he had honestly tried to carry out his duties towards them both impartially. Four days later he laid before Charles, in detail, his reasons for being neutral, and consequently for declining to renew the league entered into by Adrian. The Pope, so ran the strongly worded letter, was as much as ever attached to the Emperor, but his position as the Father of all Christians demanded from him the utmost possible neutrality, so that in mediating for the much-needed peace, he should not appear to any to be led by party spirit. He would thus find all the readier obedience when he should summon his sons to take arms against the Turk.

In May the situation of the French in Lombardy had gone from bad to worse. The Imperialists in Rome celebrated their successes with festive demonstrations. On the 17th of May the anti-imperialist Cardinal Soderini died, and at the same time Carpi fell into disgrace with the Pope. Clement was still more angry with the Duke of Ferrara, who was trying to make discord between him and Charles V, and was threatening Modena. But the Pope was also in the highest degree dissatisfied with Sessa, who was still intriguing against him in Siena. In the beginning of June Clement addressed an exhortation to peace to Francis, pointing out to him how necessary it was to yield under the changed condition of things. By the 16th of June Schonberg was back in Rome. In Sessa’s opinion, what he brought back with him from France was not worth the cost of the journey.

In the meantime Charles V had determined to enforce peace and to pursue the French, now beaten in Italy, into their own country, and in July his forces entered Provence. At this very critical moment Francis did not lose heart; in the same month Bernardino della Barba brought the news to Rome that the King intended, at the head of his army, to invade upper Italy in person. Even then the Pope kept neutral and persevered in his efforts for peace.

On the 12th of August the Emperor’s new Ambassador, de la Roche, arrived in Rome; supported by Sessa, he tried to induce the Pope to enter into an alliance, and to grant supplies of money. Clement would not give in, although he gave his assurances that he would not desert the Emperor. He thus gave satisfaction to neither party and put himself in an equivocal position. De la Roche, who was exceedingly dispirited by the failure of his attempts, fell ill on the 25th of August, so that the negotiations with him had to be put off. Clement did not, on that account, give up his pacific efforts; he hoped that at least an armistice for six months might be arranged, and that another mission under Schonberg might carry this through. The Imperialists, however, would not then hear anything of an armistice. De la Roche died on the 31st of August Bartolomeo Gattinara, a nephew of the Chancellor, who was attached to the Embassy, and several of Sessa’s servants, also fell ill; Sessa himself had to hasten from Rome to attend on his dying wife. The Spanish Embassy being thus deserted, it was impossible to proceed with the negotiations. Clement therefore decided to send a Nuncio to promote the peace, now especially desirable on account of the Ottoman aggression. On the 7th of September Nicolas von Schonberg crossed the Alps a second time to visit the Kings of France, England, and Spain. In itself the Pope’s diplomacy gave small ground for hope;  on this occasion failure was complete; amid the wild turmoil of war, his voice was lifted in vain.

The invasion of Provence had miscarried owing to insufficient forces, and before the walls of Marseilles the Imperialist fortune changed. In France the feeling for King and country was running high; all that Francis had asked for had been given him. Soon the alarming tidings overtook the Imperialists that the French King with a great army was at Avignon. Thus the besiegers of Marseilles and the invaders of upper Italy were equally threatened. In order to save Milan for the Emperor, Pescara, on the 29th of September, raised the siege of Marseilles. He crossed the maritime Alps by forced marches into upper Italy. At the same time Francis, with a splendid army, pressed forward through the Cottine chain. It was a race for the most blood-stained spot on earth, the plain of the river Po. Milan could no longer be held, for the plague was raging there. Pescara, by the end of October, had to fall back on Lodi before the superior strength of the French army, with his men dispirited and in the worst condition the star of Charles V. seemed to be on the wane. It was a jest of Pasquino in Rome that an Imperial army had been lost on the Alps; any honest person finding it was asked to restore it for a handsome reward. Indeed, such was the state of things that if Francis had pursued his operations with equal swiftness and precaution, upper Italy would have been lost to Charles. But instead of taking advantage of the sorry plight of the Imperialists and falling upon them, the ill-advised King turned aside to besiege Pavia, strongly fortified and defended by Antonio de Leyva. The historian Giovio relates that when Pescara heard of this momentous resolve he cried out : “We were vanquished; in a short time we shall be victors”. The fate of Italy hung on the fight around Pavia. Francis I did not understand this sufficiently, otherwise he would hardly have determined to detach 10,000 men from his army to be sent under the command of John Stuart, Duke of Albany, against Naples.

While the Imperialists and the French were entering the lists in upper Italy, the diplomatists on each side were competing at Rome for the favour of the Pope. Clement had seen Francis enter Italy with the greatest displeasure, for together with his disapproval of the King’s conduct was associated the fear of the victorious arms of France. The Pope seems still to have clung to the possibility of a reconciliation between the two deadly enemies. Since the issue of the conflict was totally unknown, he proceeded with extreme caution. On the 7th of October 1524 Baldassare Castiglione, whose appointment as Nuncio dated a month before, left Rome. He was a true adherent of Charles, and a very experienced diplomatist. In order to meet the French King also in a friendly spirit, Aleander, recently raised to the Archbishopric of Brindisi, was appointed as Nuncio to Francis. Another extraordinary mission to that King was further given on the 13th of October to Count Roberto Boschetti, with instructions to seek out Lannoy, the commander­in-chief of the Imperial troops in Italy, on his return. He was also to do what he could on behalf of peace but owing to illness he was unable to start on his journey.

The suspense with which all eyes in Rome were turned, in those days, on Lombardy, is clearly seen from the diplomatic reports of the time. In Bologna, where calm had hitherto prevailed, signs of ferment began to appear there was bitter jealousy of Ferrara. The news of the entry of the French into Milan, which reached Rome on the 28th of October, made the deepest impression. To the Pope this turn of affairs seemed but small compared with what was yet to come; his dread of France now reached its highest pitch. Under these circumstances the mission of Giberti to Francis I was decided on; by the 30th of October he had left Rome. On the same day Cardinal Salviati took his departure, as it was stated, for his new legation, Modena and Reggio; it was at once surmised that he also was charged with a special communication for Francis I. The Venetian Ambassador had long interviews every day with Clement, and it was already rumoured in Rome that the Pope and Venice had entered into alliance with France; this report was premature, but things were tending in that direction.

Giberti, who appeared, on account of his French sympathies, to be the most suitable man for the business, received instructions drawn up under the impression that Francis, by the capture of Milan, having become absolute master of the situation, the duty of self-preservation called for an agreement with the conqueror. When later information announced a pause in the French successes, directions were sent after Giberti, telling him to find out Lannoy and Pescara first, and, then, on learning their conditions, to lay them before the King. On the 5th of November Giberti proposed an armistice to Lannoy at Soncino. The answer was an unqualified refusal; Pescara replied in the same sense. When Giberti met Francis before Pavia on the 9th of November, he found him in an even less yielding disposition. That Giberti had already, at that time, disclosed the terms of a secret treaty between Francis and Clement, is not supported by any convincing evidence. It was not until the peace-mission of Paolo Vettori to Lannoy had failed that the Pope held the moment to have come when he ought to take this step in order to secure his interests. On the 12th of December, but still in total secrecy, peace and alliance were concluded between Francis I, the Pope, and Venice; this was followed on the 5th of January 1525 by an official agreement between the French King and Clement. In the preamble the necessity of a decided step on the part of the Pope was grounded on the French successes in Milan and the great dangers to which the States of the Church were exposed by the expedition to Naples. The Pope bound himself, in his own name and that of the Florentines, neither secretly nor openly to support the King’s enemies; he assured to the Duke of Albany free right of passage and provision in the territories of the Church, and indirectly gave his consent to the acquisition of Milan. Francis promised the Pope the possession of Parma and Piacenza, the Papal salt monopoly in the Duchy of Milan, the maintenance of the Medicean rule in Florence, and protection against insubordinate vassals (Ferrara). Lastly, he made concessions of a political and ecclesiastical nature within French and Milanese territory and promised aid against the Turks. Fully half a year before, Girolamo Campeggio had foretold to the representative of Ferrara that all this would come to pass. “Campeggio”, wrote that diplomatist on the 21st of June 1524, “declares it to be a certainty that, if the Pope and Venice can come to terms, we shall soon see a league between Rome and France”. Nevertheless, it is certain that Clement took this most important step “more from compulsion than from his own free will”. It was the influence of Giberti and Carpi, who made adroit use of the position of affairs, that gave the impetus to the anxious Pope. The promises and expectations opened out by Carpi were extremely enticing, but they certainly affected Clement less as a Pope than as a secular prince. Mendoza had once given as his judgment: “Carpi is a devil; he knows everything and is mixed up in everything; the Emperor must either win him over or destroy him.” How much to the point this remark was, was now seen. There was no intrigue, there were no means which the Ambassador of France was ashamed to use in order to draw and force into the net of French diplomacy the Pope, trembling for the safety of his States. Carpi intrigued with the Orsini and, as the Mantuan envoy relates in a cipher letter of the 28th of November 1524, offered the Pope the free disposal of Ferrara, although Alfonso was supporting the French with all his might. Knowing Clement’s tendency to nepotism, Carpi also about this time proposed a marriage between Catherine de’ Medici, the Pope’s niece, and the second son of the French King. In support of Carpi, Francis twice sent special couriers to Rome bearing the most comprehensive concessions.

Sessa was all the less likely to prove a match for his opponents, as he could do nothing before the arrival of fresh instructions from the Emperor, and, it is to be noted, believed that the English envoys were cajoling Clement, who was almost entirely surrounded by French influences, when they told him that Henry VIII had no intention of helping Charles in any way against the French. At that time the belief was almost general in Rome that the victory of the French was assured. Above all, there was the serious danger into which the States of the Church were thrown by the expedition against Naples under John Stuart, Duke of Albany. It now seemed that the speedy safeguarding of the Papal interests was demanded for the sake of self-preservation, and thus, that which had for so long been feared came to pass at last. On the 5th of January 1525 Clement informed the Emperor of what had taken place in the most conciliatory and the least definite way possible ; his affection for Charles was not lessened, but the movement against Naples, undertaken by Albany contrary to his (Clement’s) will, had forced him into an agreement with Francis for the security of his own interests. Clement VII evidently still hoped to keep up a tolerable understanding with Charles; in this he was completely deceived.

This step of the Pope’s threw the usually cautious and moderate Emperor into a bitterness of resentment unknown before. He could hardly conceive that this same Medici who as Cardinal had always been on his side, should as Pope have turned over to the French. “I shall go”, so he expressed himself, “into Italy, and revenge myself on those who have injured me, especially on that poltroon, the Pope. Someday, perhaps, Martin Luther will become a man of weight”. In the Imperial Court the election of Clement was attacked on the grounds of his illegitimate birth. In the council of the Archduke Ferdinand a proposal was made that all diplomatic relations with the Holy See should be broken off. On the 7th of February 1525 Charles answered the Papal letter; nothing in his reply betrayed his inward agitation. The Emperor, such was its tenor, reverenced the Pope as a father, and was well aware that he had been deceived by the French party. But two days later he wrote a letter to Sessa, in which his wrath against Clement, for whose election he had “poured out streams of gold”, broke out afresh. The Ambassador was distinctly told to inform Clement that the Emperor would carry his plans through, even if it cost him crown and life. The letter closed with the threat, “The present situation is not the best in which to discuss the affairs of Martin Luther”. Thus to the internal confusion and warfare of Christendom was added a dangerous strain in the relations between Pope and Emperor, and this exactly at the opening of the year in which the social revolution broke out in Germany.

CHAPTER II.

Results of the Battle of Pavia. —Quarrels between the Pope and the Emperor. —Formation of a Coalition against Charles V (League of Cognac, May 22, 1526).

On the 24th of January 1525 the Imperialists broke out of Lodi; in the first days of February they appeared before the French army, still besieging the stronghold of Pavia, with the intention of forcing a battle. Peals of bells and beacon-fires from the towers of the old Lombard city welcomed the relief in this hour of need. For three weeks the hostile forces faced one another. The French camp was admirably protected by nature and art; on the right it was covered by the Ticino, on the left by a large park surrounded by a high wall, within which lay the famous Certosa.

On the 24th of February, the Emperor’s birthday, his army, composed of Spaniards, Italians, and the dreaded German landsknechts, opened the attack. At daybreak the battle, which was to decide the “Italian imperium”, began. In a few hours the murderous fight was over; the gallant troops of Francis were laid low before the onset of the German landsknechts and Spanish veterans; the King himself was a prisoner.

The victory of Pavia made the Empire of Charles the ruling power in Europe. It is impossible to describe the impression everywhere produced by this historical catastrophe. The bloodshed and strife in which France and the houses of Spain and Hapsburg had engaged for the mastery in Europe, seemed to be brought to an end by this unexpected blow. France lay at the Emperor’s feet, while Italy, and with her the Papacy, were surrendered defenceless to his power. In Rome men were dumbfounded by the news of the great event. Clement, whose diplomatists were seeking up to the last hour for accommodations that might lead to peace, looked to Lombardy with indescribable anxiety. His position was in the highest degree precarious. The loss of the independence of Italy meant also that of the Holy See. With Milan and Naples in the Emperor’s hands, the Papacy was threatened with enclosure in a circle of iron. But Clement, in his anxiety and his statecraft, was as incapable of a great resolution, such as a Julius II would have taken, as he was of any definite action.

Persuaded by Giberti and Carpi, Clement had departed from his strict neutrality and linked his fortunes, for the worse rather than the better, with those of the French King, whose superiority at the moment had seemed to promise him a lasting triumph. But the fortune of war is fickle; what would happen if Francis were defeated? At the last moment Giberti and Clement seem to have perceived their mistake. Hence the exhortations to Francis I not to put his fortune to the proof, to refuse the wager of battle, and to have recourse to negotiations instead. As late as the 19th of February Giberti asked Aleander, the Nuncio, to represent matters in this way to the French King. He added, “As no sailor ever risks the storm of the open sea with one anchor only, so the Pope, confident though he be in the strength of Francis I, will not stake all upon the single throw of his success before Pavia”. In saying this, Giberti condemned his own policy, and a week later the news reached Rome that the cast of war had been thrown—not in favour of Francis I and his ally the Pope.

On the evening of the 26th of February Clement received, in a letter from Cardinal Salviati, the first intelligence of the Emperor’s victory. To him, as well as to all around him, the news seemed incredible; but later accounts, including one by an eyewitness, put all doubt at an end. The Pope was as one dead; his terror was increased by the reaction produced in his household by this event. All the Imperialists, the Spaniards, as well as the Colonna, gave way to the wildest rejoicing. Such a change of fortune surpassed their boldest hopes. Cardinal Pompeo Colonna held a brilliant festival in his palace throughout the city rang the echos of salvoes of congratulation, and the cries of rejoicing of “Empire, Spain, Colonna”. The Orsini, who were of the French party, had the very worst to fear their leaders were absent; they and their levies were with the Duke of Albany, who had returned from his march to Naples, to the immediate neighbourhood of Rome, and there had pitched his camp about the loth of February.

All thought of pursuing his expedition was given up, and Albany decided to return. On the 2nd of March two thousand five hundred men, consisting of Frenchmen and the Orsini, began their homeward march. Acting on a swift resolution, Colonna, supported by some of Sessa’s retainers, fell upon them suddenly at the monastery of Tre Fontane, and drove them in hasty flight within the city. Wherever the Orsini sought refuge, the Colonna were at their heels; fighting took place in the Ghetto and on Monte Giordano. The whole city was in an uproar; the streets rang with the war-cries “Orsini—Colonna”. The terrified inhabitants bolted their doors; artillery was placed to protect the Vatican, and the Swiss stood under arms all night. The terror-stricken Pope did all he could to restore quiet, and was successful in inducing Albany to disband his forces. The Italians were left behind; the foreigners, under the Duke, fell back on Civita Vecchia, and at the end of March they were conveyed in French galleys to Marseilles. In the meanwhile Schonberg, who had returned to Rome on the 5th of March, succeeded in pacifying the Colonna.

All these occurrences had made the deepest impression on the Pope. The fights, especially between the Orsini and the Colonna, engaged in under his very eyes, raised his alarm to the highest pitch. While in Rome the ground was trembling under his feet, his fears for Florence were also aroused, where the ideas of Savonarola were again springing into life. Still more precarious was the Papal rule in the Romagna, where the Ghibellines were rejoicing over the victory of Pavia. The Imperialists lost no time in taking advantage of Clement’s necessity. They held the trembling Pope, who in vain urged moderation, in a vice of iron. Their troops carried fire and sword ruthlessly through the territory of Piacenza; Lannoy even uttered the threat that he would lead his soldiers on Rome. By such means Clement was forced first to pay 25,000 ducats, and then to make a treaty of alliance.

The most zealous opponent of an alliance between the Pope and the Emperor was Giberti, who, supported by Lodovico di Canossa, who was in the service of France, and by the Venetian Ambassador, was doing all he could at this time to unite the whole of Italy, under Papal leadership, in a league against the Spanish domination, and was also trying to bring England, the jealous rival of Charles V, into the combination. There were moments when the Pope, in torments of indecision, lent such a ready ear to his proposals that Giberti believed the desired end to have been reached; but at the last moment the Imperialist Schonberg upset his plans. The most immediate danger undoubtedly came from Charles V, who had it in his power to wrest Florence from the Medici. At the same time Piacenza was sending pressing appeals for help against the unbridled licence of the soldiery. Lastly, the news concerning the social revolution in Germany and the advances of the Turk was of an exceptionally disturbing kind. Clement VII saw that, cost what it might, he must come to terms with the Emperor.

On the 1st of April 1525 a treaty, defensive and offensive, was concluded between the Pope and Lannoy as Imperial Viceroy in Italy. The terms of the agreement were that both should recognize Francesco Sforza as Duke of Milan, and that the Emperor should take the States of the Church, Florence, and the house of Medici under his protection, Florence paying in return 100,000 ducats. Lannoy, moreover, undertook to withdraw his forces from the Papal States and to place no garrisons therein in future without the Pope’s permission. In the event of Charles not having ratified these conditions within four months, the 100,000 ducats were to be refunded by Lannoy. There were besides three other separate articles, to the following effect:—

1. The Pope was to hold, in the kingdom of Naples, the rights connected with benefices as settled in the Bull of investiture.

2. Milan was in the future to have the salt from the Papal salt-pits in Cervia.

3. Lannoy was to insist on the restoration of Reggio and Rubbiera to the Church by the Duke of Ferrara on this restoration being made the Pope was to pay 100,000 ducats to the Emperor and absolve the Duke from all censures.

Without waiting for the Imperial ratification, Lannoy had already, in April, published the treaty in Milan. The Pope, who on receipt of favourable letters from the Emperor’s court and from Lannoy had the best hopes of Charles’s conduct, did the same in Rome in May. He combined with this solemnity his official Possesso of the Lateran. From the Spanish Nuncio Castiglione came very reassuring accounts of the moderation of the victorious Emperor, so that on the 5th of May Clement resolved to send Cardinal Salviati to Spain as Legate in order to work for the restoration of peace, the execution of the treaty, the prosecution of the Turkish war, and the suppression of Lutheranism. Salviati at this moment was still in Parma; in order to accelerate his journey, it was determined on the 12th of June that he should proceed by sea instead of going through France, as at first intended; he was also instructed to discuss the Emperor’s coronation and the question of a council. Accordingly, the Legate left Parma on the 2nd of July and embarked at Genoa; on the 23rd of August the Pope was able to give very favourable accounts of him in Consistory. But in reality the Cardinal’s task was beyond his powers; he fell under the fascination of Charles and saw everything in the rosiest light. The official correspondence also between the Pope and Emperor was carried on in the friendliest terms for some time longer the points of controversy were slurred over as much as possible, and those of common interest emphasized.

It was impossible, however, that each party should go on deceiving the other for ever. In spite of all assurances of friendship, a breach was bound to come soon, since the Pope was becoming more and more convinced that the arrogant commanders of Charles’s army had no intention of carrying out the terms of the treaty of April, and were, indeed, often acting in direct contradiction to them. Instead of the withdrawal of their troops from the Papal States, fresh occupations took place in the territory of Piacenza, whereby the country was exhausted and laid waste. Lannoy certainly made daily promises to Clement that, as soon as the 100,000 ducats were paid in full, the restoration of Reggio and Rubbiera would take place; but in secret he had already secured the possession of these places to Duke Alfonso of Ferrara. He also urgently advised the Emperor not to confirm the additional clauses of the treaty. Charles took his advice; the restoration of Reggio and Rubbiera, in which towns Clement saw the keys of Parma and Piacenza, the Papal salt monopoly in Milan, and the arrangements for Church patronage in the kingdom of Naples, were consequently discarded and remained a dead letter. Nevertheless, the Imperialists refused to repay to the Pope the sums disbursed by him for the promised surrender of the towns. The more Clement saw that this behaviour had the Emperor’s approbation, the greater became his mistrust and indignation. When the Imperial ratification of the principal treaty arrived, he declined to accept it, since it had not been executed within the stipulated four months, and proceeded to demand back the 100,000 ducats paid by Florence. This the Imperialists declined, under empty pretexts, to refund. Clement, who was suffering from gout, was fully justified in saying that he had been cheated, injured, and insulted. In addition to these grievances came Charles’s heavy claims on the church patronage of Aragon. “If the affairs of the Church are treated in this way”, said Clement to Sessa,  “it were best that I should betake myself back to Soracte”.

The rumours concerning the intentions of Charles’s advisers and of his commander-in-chief in Italy were of the kind most likely to throw the Pope into fear and despair. The proposal which came from this quarter, with a view to trampling underfoot the independence of the whole Apennine Peninsula, aimed at nothing less than the total confiscation of the Papal States. Not merely were Florence, Siena, and Lucca to come under the Emperor’s rule, but Modena also was to fall to the Duke of Ferrara, and the Bentivogli were to be re­established in Bologna. Lannoy, the soul of the anti-Papal intrigues, demanded also that Parma and Piacenza, Ravenna and Cervia, should be separated from the States of the Church; the first two were destined for the Duke of Milan, the two last for the Republic of Venice. The Pope was aware of these intrigues, but, being powerless, had to play a losing game with a cheerful countenance; for if the Emperor was able to come to terms with Francis at the expense of Italy, then Clement was lost. This eventuality seemed to be very close at hand when the captive King of France was removed to Spain (10th of June 1525).

In Rome, in Venice, indeed throughout the whole of Italy, the impression prevailed that the Emperor intended to become reconciled to his prisoner at the cost of Italian independence, and the freedom of Italy would be destroyed for ever. The decisive moment seemed to have come to run the last risk and throw off the yoke of those whom they called “barbarians.” In the sphere of literature and art the Italian of those days was unquestionably entitled to consider himself superior to the Spaniard, and indeed to all the other nations in Europe. This self-consciousness gave powerful nourishment to the revival of the national idea. “All Italy,” declared Antonio de Leyva, the loyal general of the Emperor, “is at one in combining to defend the common interests and to resist any further increase of the power of Spain. There is not a single Prince among them who thinks any longer of the favours received from Charles.”

In other respects also affairs were tending more and more to the Emperor’s disadvantage. After the defeat at Pavia, it had at first seemed as if the French kingdom must fall in pieces. But afterwards a complete change came over affairs. It was the Regent, Louisa of Savoy, the King’s mother, who held the nation together and became its leader. She soothed the disaffected among the nobles and generals, reconciled factions, organized the defences of the country, and disclosed in all directions a capacity for rule which was as determined as it was prudent. She it was, also, who succeeded in detaching Henry VIII, envious of the good fortune of Charles, from the Emperor, and in concluding at the end of August a treaty of peace and alliance between France and England.

Some considerable time before this, the Regent had also entered into communications with the States of Italy. Her primary object was to win over the two most powerful—the Pope and Venice. For this purpose Louisa of Savoy employed the services of a man who, although by birth an Italian, was yet one of the most fervent adherents of her son. This was Lodovico di Canossa, Bishop of Bayeux. He was an intimate friend of Giberti, and was also held in great esteem at Venice. At the end of 1524 and in the spring of the following year he was in Rome, making himself personally active, and at that time he believed that he had already fully secured the anxious-minded Pope. At the beginning of June 1525 Canossa gave out that he had to visit his family in Verona; he really went in haste to Venice, which he reached on the 15th of June. Thither on the 23rd came the French envoy, Lorenzo Toscano, with instructions from the Regent. On the following day Canossa laid his proposals before the Signoria, but the cautious Venetians declined to give a definite answer before the Pope had declared himself. Canossa now worked with might and main, and his letters were despatched in all directions; while urging the French Government to come as quickly as possible to an understanding, he stirred up in Italy, wherever he could, the fires of national hatred against the Spaniard. But his principal object was to move the Pope, who still clung to his old policy of “I will and I won't”, to declare himself openly.

The confidant of Canossa’s plans and his best ally was Giberti, who, with Carpi’s support, and with even greater perseverance than his friend, was working against the Emperor behind Schonberg's back, in France, Switzerland, and England, and, above all, trying to induce the Pope to come over finally to the side of Francis. On the 25th of June 1525 Canossa wrote encouragingly: “All points to a swift and satisfactory conclusion”. But it was precisely at this juncture that the two friends met with the greatest difficulties. “Although the Pope”, wrote Giberti to Canossa on the 1st of July, “is a good friend to the emancipation of Italy, yet he will not fling himself headlong into an affair of such weighty responsibility, and is, in the first place, determined to await the arrival of Lorenzo Toscano”. At the same time, Giberti urged the closest secrecy with regard to all their transactions, as success would be easy if they succeeded in taking the Spaniards by surprise. In a letter addressed on the same day to the Swiss Nuncio, Ennio Filonardi, Giberti confirms his account of Clement’s indecision. In consequence of the misconduct of the Imperialists, Giberti here insists, especially with regard to their infringements of the April treaty, war might easily arise; therefore the Nuncio ought to take secret measures to have from eight to ten thousand Swiss in readiness, in case of necessity, to fight, not only in Lombardy, but also in Naples. Giberti was not less active in other ways as well. He told the Pope, in the most emphatic language, that, if he let this opportunity go by, he would bitterly repent it, and sink into a mere tool of the Emperor’s. Still Clement was not to be moved to take any open steps, and Giberti, in desperation, threatened that he would quit Rome.

Canossa did not commit himself as long as the Pope and Venice refused to declare themselves openly against Charles. On the 25th of June he explained to the Regent that both the Pope and Venice were afraid lest France, thinking exclusively of her own interests, should sacrifice Italy; even Giberti had his misgivings of France in this respect. It was certainly strange that the agents of France had never yet received full powers to conclude an alliance.

Consequently, at Rome as well as at Venice, matters were taken in hand with the greatest caution and reticence. Under cover of the closest secrecy, Giberti employed Sigismondo Sanzio, one of Carpi’s secretaries, to treat with the Regent, and Gregorio Casale to treat with Henry VIII. One object was to ascertain the truth of a report emanating from Spain, that the Emperor would probably visit Italy in person at the same time, clear information was to be procured as to the help which “poor Italy” might expect to receive. Sanzio and Casale left Rome almost simultaneously (9th and 10th of July). In spite of all precautions, Sessa was informed of these movements. But Clement VII managed, by the ambiguity of his language, entirely to deceive the Spanish diplomatist.

The shrewd Venetians proceeded with similar secrecy. They also put no trust in France. Already, on the loth of July, Canossa had described to his friend Giberti the hesitation of the Signoria, who awaited the decision of the Pope. On the 18th he was able to report that Venice was prepared to enter into a league with France on the conditions put forward by the Pope through Sigismondo Sanzio. For the present, however, this determination was to be kept absolutely secret. The conditions were: Francesco Sforza to keep Milan and marry a French Princess; the Pope to receive Naples and Sicily, and France to pay monthly 50,000 ducats and supply 6600 land forces and 10 galleys; the Italians in return to make an alliance, offensive and defensive, with France, and to raise an army of 13,000 men for the liberation of the King.

By the month of August the negotiations were at a stand­still. Giberti’s and the Pope’s distrust of France had revived with increased strength. The attitude of the Regent was, in fact, so suspicious that the fear that she might treacherously surrender Italy to the Emperor was forced on men’s minds. She prolonged the negotiations in such a way that it became more and more clear that she was only making use of Italy in order to obtain the release of Francis on more favourable terms. Not merely in Rome but also in Venice, where Canossa was long kept waiting without any tidings from France being received, the worst suspicions were aroused. Moreover, there came the news that Sigismondo Sanzio had been murdered in the neighbourhood of Brescia, and all his correspondence stolen. Among the papers of this Ambassador were some highly compromising documents relating to a plot to deprive the Emperor of his ablest general.

The iron hand of the haughty Spaniard lay with all its might on young Francesco Sforza. The Duchy of Milan had been reconquered in his name, but he now saw himself given over to the arbitrary rule of the Imperial governor and treated with the most offensive insolence by the very men to whom, in their extreme danger, he had been a firm support. Milan was under greater oppression than had ever been known under French domination. The complete subjection of Sforza and the incorporation of the Duchy into the Spanish Monarchy seemed now only a question of time. To free his native land from the foreigner, the Duke’s Chancellor, Girolamo Morone, devised a plan as clever as it was daring. Pescara, the Emperor’s ablest general, felt himself ill-used and pushed into the background by his master. Morone thus hoped to secure him. In deep secrecy, after the most cautious overtures, he disclosed to Pescara his plan for delivering Italy from the Imperial sway, and, in the event of success, promised him nothing less than the kingdom of Naples, which the Pope would confer upon him. Although Pescara did not commit himself to any definite assent, Morone was under the impression that the Emperor’s general would yield to these brilliant promises. The impetuous Italian believed that the game was in his hands, and put himself into communication with Venice, Rome, and France. Soon all who were initiated into the adventure were filled with the most overweening hopes. “I see the world transformed”, wrote Giberti, “and Italy arising from the depths of misery to the summit of prosperity.” Clement VII, who, at this time, saw everything through the eyes of his present adviser, was of the same mind. But Pescara was at heart a thorough Spaniard; he despised the Italians, and only wished to become privy to their plots and to delay the crisis of the conspiracy. In secret he betrayed all to the Emperor and promised to send him money and troops so as to enable him with all possible speed to make peace with France. For never had the danger been greater. Not only the Pope, Venice, and Milan, but also Genoa and Ferrara were united in one common hatred of the Spaniard and fear of the Imperial supremacy.

Pescara, being in possession of conclusive evidence, threw off the mask. On the 14th of October 1525 Morone, who had been lulled into security, was suddenly seized, and all important places in the Duchy put under military occupation. Against Francesco Sforza, who had taken refuge in the citadel of Milan, a charge of felony was laid; the Milanese authorities were bidden henceforward to execute their functions in the Emperor’s name.

The news of these proceedings reached Rome on the 18th of October. They caused as much perplexity, terror, and despondency as the victory of Pavia had done, especially among those who were implicated in the intrigues. The Spaniards and their partisans at once took up an aggressive attitude. To Cardinal Colonna, who had left Rome a few days earlier, the remark was attributed that “with 100,000 ducats he would pledge himself to drive the Pope from his capital.” By the 20th of October Mendoza had come upon the scene commissioned by Pescara to explain the reasons for Morone’s arrest and the necessity, arising therefrom, of occupying the Duchy. Clement was unable, at first, to conceal his embarrassment; but afterwards he controlled himself, and tried to justify his recent conduct: the restitution of Reggio and Rubbiera had not taken place, but had been indefinitely deferred; in like manner the article concerning the salt monopoly had not been complied with; further, the Imperial forces continued to occupy the Papal States, to the ruin of the population. To crown all came the removal of the French King into Spain and the suspicious visit of the Duke of Ferrara to the Emperor. In view of the generally received opinion that Charles intended to come to terms with his prisoner to the detriment of the Papacy and of the whole of Italy, Clement had been filled with the greatest distrust, and had taken a share in the movements against the Emperor, so as not to be left in total isolation. Since the occupation of Milan by the Emperor’s troops he was fully under the impression that Charles was aiming at the complete conquest and subjugation of Italy. Mendoza and Sessa laboured in vain, during the following days, to convince the Pope that such apprehensions were groundless. Clement was emphatic in declaring that everything hung on the possession of Milan, and that he should never reconcile himself to Lombardy being ruled by Charles or Ferdinand. This possession of Milan clashed with the conditions of the investiture of the kingdom of Naples it gave the Emperor unlimited power in Italy, and rather than yield on this point, he would prefer to share the downfall of all the princes of Italy. The Pope made no concealment of his determination to act on the defensive with Venice, France, and England.

The extent of Clement’s alarm at this moment is shown from the fact that he at once gave orders to provide Parma and Piacenza with troops, and that he saw to the fortification of Rome and to the enlistment of additional troops.

There were real grounds for the fears of Clement and the Italians. “The only remedy”, wrote Mendoza to Charles on the 5th of November, “lies in this : to make peace with France, to take possession of Milan, and —to wrest both Parma and Piacenza from our Holy Mother the Church”. Thus wrote the man who had just been imparting to the Pope the most pacifying assurances. Can Clement and the other Italian powers be blamed if they sought to make their own position secure? “Intrigues are more rife than ever”, Caracciolo reported to the Emperor on the 10th of November from Venice. “All depends on separating Venice and the Pope : it would be a very easy thing to win the latter”. Charles V seems also to have taken this view hence the distinguished reception given, at the beginning of October, to Cardinal Salviati at Toledo. The Emperor spoke so convincingly of his peaceful intentions, of his plans against Turks and heretics, of his filial reverence for the Holy Father, that not the least doubt of his sincerity occurred to Salviati. The Emperor also gave tranquillizing assurances with respect to Milan, Reggio, and Rubbiera in reality he meant very differently. But for the moment his one object was, while keeping his hold on Clement and winning him over by fair words and promises, to crush the dangerous movement towards freedom in Italy. For this purpose he sent a special envoy to Rome in the person of Miguel de Herrera.

In the meantime the opposite party pressed their suit on Clement not less zealously. The Spanish envoys saw with special anxiety the strenuous efforts of the Venetians to bring the Pope to a final decision. Their fears increased as the couriers came and went incessantly between Rome and Venice. Clement was as far as ever from any fixed determination. The alarm caused by the arrest of Morone influenced him powerfully. This procrastination caused dissatisfaction not only to the anti-Imperialists but to the Roman public, who attributed all their misfortunes to the Pope’s indecision and stinginess. Just at this time a powerful impulse was given to the hopes and spirits of the Italians; Pescara, the special object of their hatred and the Emperor’s ablest general, was removed by death in the night between the 2nd and 3rd of December, while France had made fresh promises. Incessant pressure was now put on the Pope to give his adhesion to the League for good and all.

The position in the meantime was such that armed intervention in support of Italy by France and England could not be expected with any certainty. To strike single­handed would have been foolhardiness. Under such circumstances even a man of strong determination would have hesitated; much more Clement VII, whose leading characteristics were timidity and indecision. No one has described his strange character so strikingly as Guicciardini. Always slow in forming his plans as well as in their execution, Clement was easily frightened by the smallest difficulty. Hardly had he come, by good luck, to a decision, than the reasons which had led him fell entirely into the background, and it seemed to him that he had not sufficiently weighed those on the other side. He often gave way to the representations of his advisers without being thoroughly-convinced by them. If only his ministers had been at least of one mind! But Giberti had always been a strong adherent of France, and Schonberg an equally strong Imperialist; this made the confusion complete. The Pope’s attitude depended on which of these two alternating counsellors was in the ascendant.

Giberti’s influence was now once more to be thwarted. If we may believe Guicciardini, the day for the conclusion of the League against Charles V had been already fixed when the news was brought that Herrera had landed at Genoa. This was enough to reopen the whole question from the beginning. The Pope announced that he must first hear the proposals which Herrera was bringing from the Emperor.

Herrera reached Rome at last on the 6th of December, bringing with him very friendly letters from Charles and drafts of a treaty which had been discussed with Salviati. Schonberg was now at once in the ascendant. Giberti, who, on the 5th, still had strong hopes of securing the Pope’s adhesion on the following day, was now in such despair that he threatened to leave Rome. Perhaps, as the opponents of Charles feared, an alliance between the Pope and Emperor might then have been made, if Herrera’s offers had been satisfactory. This, however, was not the case, and the negotiations took shape with difficulty. The Pope was determined that with respect to Reggio and Rubbiera something more concrete and tangible than mere promises should be forthcoming. Over the Milanese question, the turning-point of all, agreement was impossible. Matters having reached this point, Sessa and Herrera proposed that the negotiations should be suspended for two months, with the secret intention of gaining time in which to make fresh preparations for war and arouse suspicion among Clement’s previous friends. Schonberg and Salviati managed to raise Clement’s distrust of the French and other anti-Imperialists to such a pitch that he accepted the Spanish proposal. The Pope, however, expressly declared at the time that if the Emperor did not surrender Milan within the appointed term of adjournment he would enter the League with France and Venice.

The opponents of Charles in Rome, Giberti, Carpi, and Foscari, as well as the ministers of the Queen Regent, were highly exasperated by this decision ; not less so Guicciardini and Canossa. In this respect their complaints of the Pope were hardly justified. The time gained by the adjournment was certainly of advantage to the Emperor, but also to the Pope. Clement might well hope that in two months’ time the state of things, especially the attitude of France and England, would have become so much clearer that he might more easily make the decision charged with such weighty issues.

Before the two months were out, on the 14th of January 1526, the Peace of Madrid was settled between Charles and Francis. By this agreement the captive King of France consented to almost all the demands of the victor. He surrendered the Duchy of Burgundy, the countship of Charolais, and the suzerainty over Flanders and Artois Bourbon and the other rebels were amnestied; all claims to Naples, Milan, Genoa, and Asti were renounced; and lastly, he promised to supply forces on land and sea to accompany Charles on his expedition to Rome, or in warfare against the Turk. After inexplicable delays the Emperor ratified the treaty at last on the 11th of February. On the 17th of March Francis was exchanged for his two sons, who were to remain with Charles as hostages. With the cry : “Now I am once again a King!”—he set foot on French soil.

The Treaty of Madrid was perhaps the gravest political mistake which Charles V had made. Not without reason did his Chancellor Gattinara refuse to declare his agreement with demands which he knew to be excessive and impracticable. The treaty in fact laid upon the vanquished obligations of such vast extent that their fulfilment from a man like Francis I could never be expected. Still less was it to be supposed that such a nation as France would degrade itself to become a power of the second rank and own vassalage to the Emperor. Public opinion on the whole, so far as such a thing could then be spoken of, was now steadily inclining towards Francis. In view of the almost brutal way in which Charles was seizing the spoils of victory, hardly anyone believed that the King would observe the peace. In Italy especially this opinion had wide acceptance.

Although no one had any inkling of the secret protest made by Francis before the conclusion of the treaty, he was counselled on all sides to break the oath he had just sworn. Even Clement VII, the practical politician, was in this instance no exception; he considered that treaty and oath, if extorted, were not binding. The Pope wished in the first place to obtain clear information of the intentions of Francis. He therefore sent, as Venice had done, an embassy to the King, ostensibly to congratulate him on his release from captivity, but really to discover his true intention and, in the event of his not keeping the treaty with Charles, to form an alliance with him. On the 22nd of February 1526 Paolo Vettori was entrusted on the part of the Pope with this mission. Vettori having fallen ill on the journey, Capino da Capo, who was in the confidence of Francis, was ordered to go to France on the 1st of March 1526. Yet a further appointment was made on the 20^th of April, when the Florentine Roberto Acciaiuoli was nominated Nuncio-in-ordinary at the French court.

Capino could hardly travel quick enough to please the Pope; for safety his letters were addressed to a merchant in Rome. By the end of March he arrived at the French court, where at the same time Andrea Rosso, the representative of Venice, made his appearance. The King received Capino most graciously, and assured him that he would willingly do all in his power to prevent Charles from putting his yoke on Italy; he would give a full and definite answer as soon as the solemnities of Easter were over. On Easter Monday, the 2nd of April, the formal negotiations began. By the 8th Capino was able to announce that France was won for the League; Venice and the Pope had only now to send the full powers to conclude the alliance. The news that Francis was prepared to support the work of “the liberation of Italy” and to come to the help of Francesco Sforza, still beleaguered by the Spaniards in the citadel of Milan, caused the greatest excitement in all who were privy to the scheme.

The great coalition against the Emperor was now only a question of time. I fit did not become an accomplished fact until the 22nd of May, this was on account of the gravity of the transaction and the mutual distrust of the contracting parties. However great was the desire of all the Emperor’s enemies that he should be vanquished, no one wished to take the first and principal part in his overthrow. The Italians were still, not without reason, filled with jealousy of France; they wished, therefore, that England should enter the League in order to secure them from any defection on the part of Francis I. Henry VIII, however, wished the League to be ratified in England, a proceeding which would have meant the loss of much precious time. But bold action was called for under any circumstances, for just at that particular moment the Emperor’s forces were in a critical state owing to the want of money and provisions. Since Henry held firm to his demand, the accession of England to the League had to be renounced.

In Venice decisive measures were pushed on. At a very early date movements of troops began, the object of which admitted of no doubt. Even the Pope now stood firm, although his Spanish Nuncio, Castiglione, repeatedly besought him in eloquent language to withdraw from an undertaking certain to bring ruin in its train. “These clever persons”, wrote Canossa on the 19th of February to Giberti from Venice, “who would persuade his Holiness that the league with France involves his own ruin and that of Italy, and that no one is bound to sacrifice himself in order to give freedom to others, ought simply to tell us what ruin can ensue greater than that which we have to fear at this present time”. The direct sovereignty of the Emperor over Milan, in the opinion of a Sienese diplomatist, meant for the Pope and Venice the total loss of independence.

Thus Castiglione's warnings were unheeded. However favourably he and Salviati might represent the Emperor’s intentions, facts in Italy told another story. The whole country cried out for deliverance from the galling yoke of the Spaniards, whose soldiery were driving the people of Lombardy to despair. “Hunt down these wild beasts who have only the faces and voices of men”, exclaimed Macchiavelli. “Alas! poor Italy”, sighed a poet, “whither hast thou fallen? Thy glory, thy fame, thy strength have perished”. Guicciardini expressed the opinion of all patriotic men when he spoke of the war of deliverance as a holy and necessary national event. Clement concurred all the more willingly in the general voice since, duped by the Imperialists, he saw the most important stipulations of the April treaty still left unfulfilled. Parma and Piacenza were still overrun by the troops of Charles and their inhabitants subjected to the heaviest exactions. If this was a cause of resentment to the Pope, not less so were the Emperor’s encroachments, not only in Naples but also in Spain, on the Papal prerogatives regarding presentation to ecclesiastical posts. What turned the scale, however, was Charles’s unmistakable endeavour to secure for himself the sovereignty of Milan and, with it, of all Italy. The idea of European dominion was more and more inseparably bound up with the possession of this noble land. “Let the Emperor,” said a Roman diplomatist, “rule Italy, and he will rule the world”.

Thus on the 22nd of May 1526 was brought about between Clement VII, Francis I, Venice and Sforza, the so-called Holy League of Cognac. By this compact, which was for the greater part the work of Giberti, it was settled that the Duchy of Milan belonged to Francesco Sforza, who, thenceforward, was to pay 50,000 ducats yearly to France; all Italian states were to receive back the possessions which they held before the war; Asti and the suzerainty of Genoa were to fall to France; Venice and the Pope were to decide on the number of the retinue of the Emperor on his journey to Rome for the coronation, and the sons of Francis I were to be ransomed for a reasonable sum. If these terms were refused by the Emperor, the members of the League were to declare war against him and also wrest from him the kingdom of Naples, to be bestowed by the Pope on an Italian prince, who should then pay to the King of France a yearly tribute of 75,000 ducats. In the event of the hoped-for inclusion of England taking place, further special stipulations were agreed upon. Two secret clauses were added by which Florence was also to enjoy the protection of the League, and Clement, in the event of the Emperor complying and retaining the Neapolitan kingdom, was to receive from the revenues of that crown a yearly tribute of 40,000 ducats. “We have succeeded,” Capino reported on the 24th of May to Umberto da Gambara; “the treaty was concluded the day before yesterday; for God’s sake keep all as secret as possible.”

CHAPTER III.

Clement VII and Italy at War with Charles V.—The Raid of the Colonna.

The exorbitant demands made by the victor of Pavia were followed by a natural reaction; this took the shape of the great coalition known as the League of Cognac. To the Italians, in whom thoughts of nationality were stirring, the long-wished-for moment seemed to have come to grasp their freedom and independence. In the opinion of Giberti the war was not undertaken on behalf of affronted honour, nor for revenge, nor to establish the supremacy of this or that city—the stake was the freedom or the perpetual slavery of Italy; never had a more favourable opportunity been given than now to clip the wings of the ever-threatening eagle.

The Pope’s confidant had deceived himself in a matter of the gravest consequence. In the first place, the stipulations agreed to at Cognac were of such a character that, even in case of success, far more influence would accrue to France in the affairs of Italy than would be compatible with the real independence of that sorely tried country. Still more prejudicial was the diversity of personal aims among the members of the League. The Italians hoped, with the help of France, to shake off the Spanish yoke, while Francis I really only wished to make use of the Italians in order to set at naught the Peace of Madrid. Lastly, as regards Francesco Sforza, hard pressed by the Spaniards and in extreme danger in the citadel of Milan, the conclusion of the League was premature, since the forces necessary for his relief were anything but ready;  in Rome these circumstances were completely overlooked. As soon as it was known for a certainty that the League was settled there was an outburst of strong warlike feeling throughout the city.

Orders were given without delay that the Papal troops should concentrate at Piacenza, and everything was done to hasten the advance of the Venetians and Swiss against Lombardy. Arrangements were made as if war against Charles had already been declared. In the first week of June, Guido Rangoni, Vittello Vitelli, and Giovanni de' Medici were enlisted in the service of Florence and of the Pope. Francesco Guicciardini, who had distinguished himself, under very difficult circumstances, as Governor of the ever-restless Romagna, undertook the post of Commissary-General with almost unlimited powers over the army. In Papal circles the most comprehensive plans were proposed for the expulsion of the Imperialists from Italy. The first necessity was to guarantee the safety of Rome and the Papal States prisoners were to be confined in the city itself; it was forbidden to carry arms; the Spaniards were closely watched; no one could travel through the Papal States or Florentine territory without special permission; no one was allowed to raise troops for the enemy. As a safe­guard against the Colonna there was a scheme for seizing Paliano and cutting it off from Naples by the help of the Conti and Gaetani. It was taken for granted that actual war would begin with the capture of the citadel of Milan by Papal and Venetian troops; this having been successful, the Milanese territory would be occupied as thoroughly as possible, and there the arrival of the French and Swiss would be awaited. But at the same time combined attack was to be made on the Imperialists from many other quarters: in Genoa by Andrea Doria; in Siena with the help of the exiles; in Naples by co-operation with the Orsini, and in Apulia by means of a Venetian fleet. There were further projects of obtaining aid from Savoy and the enemies of Charles in Germany. Moreover, to the Venetians was given the task of blockading the passes of the Alps so as to prevent the Imperialists being reinforced from Germany. By these united efforts it was hoped to break down the Emperor’s power, and to replace Italy in the position which she held prior to 1494.

The Pope, who on other occasions was so extraordinarily nervous and apprehensive, shared Giberti’s warlike spirit and his certainty of victory. Both, however, were gravely in error concerning friends and foes alike. They rated the strength of the former too high and that of the latter too low ; neither of them weighed the fact that the last thing for which the Papal finances were adequate was the cost of a war; both believed too easily that their hopes would be realized, and allowed themselves to be drawn into an undertaking the execution of which would have taxed to the utmost even the capacities of a Julius II.

As soon as Charles V became aware of the danger threatening him he determined to break through the enemy’s circle. Ugo de Moncada, already distinguished in the Spanish service by his craft and boldness, and hated for his cruelty towards his foes, was appointed to carry out the enterprise. The choice seemed unfortunate even to so sympathetic an Imperialist as Castiglione, for Moncada belonged to the “Exaltados”, whose policy aimed at the subjection of all Italy to Spanish military despotism.

Moncada first turned to Francesco Sforza in order to induce him to desert the League. On the failure of this mission he betook himself to Rome, which he reached on the 16th of June. He came, “with a barrelful of promises”, too late, for three days before, the College of Cardinals had approved the League of Cognac.

Charles had instructed Moncada to try to bring the Pope to terms in a friendly way, or else, following the suggestion of Cardinal Colonna, to compel him by raising insurrection in Rome, Siena, and Florence, and driving him from the city. The Imperial instruction, dated the 11th of June 1526, closed with the words: “If you are unsuccessful in gaining Clement, speak secretly to Cardinal Colonna, so that he may set in hand, as if on his own initiative, the matter recommended by his agents, and give him privily every support.” The representations and offers of Moncada and Sessa were quite ineffectual, as might have been foreseen from the explicit declaration made to the latter by Clement on the 9th of June. The Pope, prompted by Giberti, insisted on his treaty obligations. Without the consent of his allies, he could not come to terms with the Emperor. The proud Spaniards had not believed this to be possible, and, enraged at the blunt rejection of the ample inducements offered by them, they left the Vatican. On this occasion Sessa mounted a buffoon behind him whose grimaces gave expression to the Ambassador’s feelings. In accordance with the Emperor’s instructions, the Spanish envoys began at once to lay the train for a revolution in Rome.

The circumstances were exceptionally favourable to such a scheme. The Romans were exceedingly incensed by the many taxes necessitated by the preparations for war. When, in the last week of June, the butchers were laid under a fresh impost, they refused to pay and—a sufficiently significant circumstance—took refuge from the threatened arrests with the Imperial Ambassador. Sessa, in fact, forced the Papal police to withdraw without having attained their object. Meanwhile Rome was full of excitement, and two hundred Spaniards gathered round Sessa’s palace. The Government, in consequence, was weak enough to remove the tax, but the levy of troops for the protection of Rome continued. The Pope also called to his assistance the house of the Orsini, for he had not only the Roman populace to fear but the great Imperialist family of Colonna. To all appearances the latter had hitherto behaved peaceably;  but the ashes were smouldering, and it only needed a puff of wind to rekindle them into flame. Cardinal Colonna, Clement’s old enemy, could not forget that the latter had taken from him the tiara. Although this ambitious man had received the Vice-Chancellorship and numerous marks of favour from Clement, yet he thought himself insufficiently rewarded and, indeed, even placed in the background. Since the autumn of 1525 the breach between him and the Pope had become notorious. The Cardinal, in wrath and muttering threats of vengeance, had withdrawn to the strongholds of his family and there remained in spite of a Papal monition. The anti-Imperial policy of the Pope had raised his anger to the uttermost, and he repeatedly proposed to the Ambassadors of Charles to let loose a revolution against Clement in Rome, Siena, and Florence. The Emperor had yielded, and his representatives, Moncada and Sessa, protected by the right of nations, were now proceeding to enter more closely into the arrangements. On the 27th of June Moncada went to Gennezzano; Sessa, who had already, on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, presented the palfrey, but without the usual tribute, went immediately afterwards to Naples to collect money and troops; both travelled with Papal passports.

While the Imperialists were thus acting secretly against the Pope, the latter had entered openly on his contest with Charles. His Brief of the 23rd of June 1526 brought this about. This document contained a complete account of the relations which had existed between the Emperor and Clement since the election of the latter. While endeavouring to justify his own policy he submitted the conduct of the Emperor to a criticism which was not only severe but perhaps immoderate. From the beginning of his pontificate he had made every reasonable attempt not only to maintain the general peace of Christendom, but especially to preserve friendly relations with Charles; but since these overtures had not been reciprocated, and had even been repelled, and the Emperor, either at the instigation of his advisers or from personal inclination and ambition, had determined to diminish and overpower the states of Italy and the Holy See, the Pope had been forced, after long delay and the final pressure of necessity, to declare a war of self-defence. In order to substantiate this position, Clement produced a long array of facts. While Cardinal he had been loyal to the Emperor, and had shirked no sacrifice on his account; likewise, after his elevation to the Papacy, although bound by his office to observe a strict neutrality, he had supported to the best of his power the Imperial interests in Italy, so far as was compatible with the due exercise of his functions as universal Father of Christians and with the interests of the Church.

The alliance with Francis had become a necessity owing to the pressure of circumstances and the strong persuasion of many persons. It had also been represented to him that by entering into the League he would secure great advantages. When the victory of Charles seemed to put an end to the war, he had at once concluded a treaty with him, assuring himself that thereby the greatest blessings would accrue to Italy and the whole of Christendom, and had given 100,000 ducats for the Imperial army, on condition of repayment in case the treaty should in any way be received with suspicion. Although the treaty had never been fully ratified, and the Emperor had thus left the Pope in the lurch, the latter had nevertheless, when informed of the secret intrigues concerning Pescara, apprised and warned Charles, thereby giving him evidence of his unchanging friendship. Again, when, to his sorrow and that of all Italy, Sforza lay besieged in Milan, and the Pope was pressed on all sides to take steps against Charles, the mission of Herrera had at once aroused the wish to come to a good understanding with the Emperor and caused all other counsels to be brushed aside. Herrera's proposals he had accepted almost without alteration ; and in a letter to Charles, written in his own hand, he had adjured him to disprove the charge of immoderate ambition by giving guarantees of peace to Italy, pardon to Sforza in the case of his surrender, and to afford protection to Clement himself.

In return, however, for all these and countless other marks of goodwill, the Pope received at the hands of the Imperialists only the most discourteous treatment. Clement VII could point to the calumnies and insults of the Imperial agents in Italy, in whose words Charles puts more trust than in his; the violence offered to his adherents in Siena, against which he had in vain called to the Emperor for aid; the non-fulfilment of the treaty with Lannoy, of which all the articles favourable to Charles had been complied with while those of advantage to the Pope had been discarded; the delay in repaying the 100,000 ducats; the quartering of Imperial troops on Papal territory contrary to the treaty stipulations and accompanied by brutal oppression on the part of the soldiery; the want of consideration shown in concealing from him the conditions of the negotiations with Francis I; the unjust treatment of Sforza, who had been condemned without any preliminary inquiry; the attacks on the ecclesiastical rights of the Holy See; the concealment from the Papal agents of Lannoy’s dealings with Francis; the long sojourn of Moncada in France; the attempt to snatch Parma from the Pope, and so forth. All these circumstances had, of necessity, filled Clement with deep distrust of the Emperor and induced him to transfer his friendship from the latter to other monarchs better disposed towards him. Therefore, when Moncada, late and after long delay, came to him with fresh proposals, their acceptance was no longer possible, and nothing was left for the Pope to do but to take up arms perforce, not as a personal attack on the Emperor, but to beat off a threatening servitude and to restore a general peace. Once more he adjured the Emperor not to force him into this hard necessity, and no longer to be led by the lust of power, but to give back rest and peace to Christendom, and so gain for himself praise as the most virtuous of princes.

The Pope at once felt that in this despatch he had gone too far. On the 25th of June, before the Cardinals gathered in Consistory, he produced the draft of a short letter to the Emperor, couched in gentler terms, in which he announced that his Nuncio, Baldassare Castiglione, would explain the reasons compelling him to protect by force of arms the freedom of Italy and the Apostolic See. The Cardinals gave their approval to this document, and, in a Consistory on the 4th of July they resolved that on the following Sunday, the 8th, the League should be formally made public. After solemn ratification by the Pope on the 5th the publication took place amid such pomp and ceremony that Carpi reported that he had never in his life seen such a festival held in Rome.

In the meantime the war in upper Italy had begun.

At first the position of the Imperialists was one of great danger. The Imperial generals, almost wholly without money, found themselves opposed to the superior forces of their enemies in the midst of a population driven to the extremities of hatred and downright despair by the cruelties of the Spanish tyranny. Everything turned on the use that the Leaguers made of this fortunate moment for seizing the citadel of Milan by a sudden assault. No one saw this more clearly than the Commissary-General of the Papal troops, Francesco Guicciardini. His plan was to move the troops swiftly and simultaneously on Milan, and to fall without delay on the Imperialists, even if the arrival of the Swiss and French did not take place; for to remain inactive would ruin all. Giberti was also of the same opinion, having already begun to feel anxious at the non-appearance of French help.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Venetians, Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, took an entirely different view; he found Guicciardini’s plan much too bold, and would do nothing without the Swiss. In consequence of this division days were lost when every hour was precious. On the 21st of June Canossa wrote: “Our victory was assured, but is now so uncertain that I, for my part, have lost hope”.

While the allies were making excuses for their inaction, the Imperialists were able to repress a rising in Milan and to take measures for defence ; but their position was still very precarious, especially now that Pescara was gone, and they had not more than ten or eleven thousand men to set against the strong force of three-and-twenty thousand opposing them. On the 24th of June the Imperialists lost the town of Lodi through treachery. The passage of the Adda was now secured to the allies, and the conjunction of the Papal and Venetian troops might have taken place by the end of June. Giberti rejoiced; he saw in spirit the country of his birth freed from the Spaniard. As a matter of fact, no obstacle lay between the army of the League and the walls of Milan, where the people awaited them, in the anguish of suspense, as deliverers from the inhumanity of the Spaniards; the hapless Sforza still held out in the citadel. But the Duke of Urbino obstinately refused to give battle before the arrival of the Swiss, therefore his advance was very slow. His procrastination gave the Constable de Bourbon time to send money and fifteen hundred Spaniards to the help of the Imperialists. On the 7th of July the Duke of Urbino at last ventured on an attack; because he was not at once successful, he gave orders to fall back in spite of all Guicciardini’s counter­representations. His retreat was very like a flight. To such a leader might be applied in an altered form the saying of Caesar: “He came, saw, and fled.” After the arrival of five thousand Swiss the Duke made a fresh advance, but with extreme slowness. On the 22nd of July he took up a strong position before Milan; on the 24th he was still considering his plan of action when the news came that the garrison of the citadel, reduced to starvation, had surrendered to the Spaniards, who had begun to think of leaving the city. The strange conduct of the Duke of Urbino gave rise at the time to the suspicion that he wished to revenge himself on Clement VII for what he had undergone at the hands of Leo X.

Simultaneously with these occurrences an unfavourable turn occurred on the scene of war in central Italy. The possession of Siena was at stake, a city of peculiar importance owing to its situation between Rome, Florence, and Lombardy. There, after the battle of Pavia, the party friendly to the Pope, after having obtained a position of mastery with the help of the Duke of Albany, was overthrown and driven out. The new Ghibelline government was entirely on the Emperor’s side, who claimed the city as his own. On the advice of Salviati, Clement made an attempt to recover this important position, and at the beginning of July a simultaneous attack from five quarters was made on the Sienese territory. The Count of Pitigliano advanced from the Maremma, Virginio Orsini through the Val d’Orcia, the troops of Perugia and the Florentines through the Va. d’Arbia; the remainder of the Florentines through the Val dell’Elsa; the seaports being attacked by Andrea Doria, who succeeded in at once taking Talamone and Porto Ercole. On land also everything at first went well; but afterwards Ugo de Moncada had the good luck to delay the march on Siena by introducing negotiations for peace. In the meantime, the leaders of the expedition fell out among themselves, each one having a different object in view. But the fatal error was the General’s want of forethought in neglecting to make his camp sufficiently secure. On the 25th of July the Sienese made a sortie, took thirteen cannon and routed the besiegers.

The news of the failure of the attack on Siena reached Rome at the same time as that of the surrender of the citadel of Milan. The consternation was great, and Clement VII’s grief at these misfortunes in the field was proportionate to his previous confidence. He complained bitterly of the Duke of Urbino, the Venetians, and Francis I; he had been deserted, he declared, by those for whom he had placed himself in danger. Among the Emperor’s friends hopes arose that the Pope might be led to abandon the League.

The Pope’s complaints were only too well justified. The help promised from France had, at this time, not yet arrived. The time of year favourable to military operations had gone by, and the Italians waited in vain for the succour of their French allies. This made a deep impression everywhere; even so blind a partisan of France as Canossa began to have a glimmering notion that his country was being betrayed by Francis I. His position in Venice became intolerable; by the middle of July he was urgently asking for his recall. Clement VII thought that one more attempt must yet be made; on the 19th of July he sent Sanga, a confidant of Giberti’s, to the French King to remind him, by earnest representations, of his obligations, and if possible to move him to give more supplies of money, and especially to undertake an expedition against Naples. All was in vain; the fickle King seemed to have repented of all his martial zeal and was squandering his time and his revenues on the chase, gambling, and women. England, moreover, held coldly aloof; the Italians and the Pope were isolated.

The Duke of Urbino had in the meantime begun the siege of Cremona, but conducted it with his usual timidity and dilatoriness. On the 3rd of September the Marquis of Saluzzo at last arrived, bringing with him only four thousand five hundred Frenchmen. Guicciardini was now urgently calling on the Duke to raise the siege of Cremona in order that he might devote himself to the capture of Genoa, in Giberti’s opinion an object of the first importance. Before the city a fleet of Papal, Venetian, and French ships had assembled and the siege had begun; but capture was out of the question without the co-operation of land forces. The distress within the city had reached the highest pitch, and the appearance of the Duke’s army before the walls would certainly have led to the surrender of this stronghold, but he seemed only to seek for pretexts to avoid action. When Cremona at last capitulated, on the 25th of September, the League gained little thereby. In Rome, meanwhile, the certainty of victory had given place to fears of defeat; Giberti himself had well-nigh lost all heart. The war dragged on while the allies, and especially the Pope, were finding the want of money almost insupportable. On the 1st of August the secretary of the French Embassy, Raince, described the condition of Clement VII: “I was with his Holiness yesterday, and do not think that I ever before saw a man so distracted, depressed, and care­worn as he was. He is half ill with disappointment, and said to me several times that he had never thought he could have been treated in such a way. You have no idea what things are said about us by persons of high standing in the Curia, on account of our delays and our behaviour hitherto. The language is so frightful that I dare not write it. The ministers of his Holiness are more dead than alive. You can picture to yourself that the enemy will make use of the situation.”

To Moncada, who had never left the Colonna, the moment appeared to have come to carry out the Emperor’s advice, and to take vengeance on the Pope. The way in which he set to work betrayed the politician trained in the school of the Borgia. His plan was to lull Clement into security by means of a reconciliation with the Colonna, to bring about the disarmament of his troops, and then to fall upon the defenceless Pope.

The enterprise succeeded beyond all expectation. The first step of importance was to discover exactly the Pope’s feelings and position and to deceive him as regards the intentions of the Colonna. The sojourn of Moncada in the castles of this family was likely to arouse strong suspicion, therefore throughout July the Colonna maintained an appearance of perfect quiet. That he might keep in touch with affairs in Rome, Sessa, who had fallen ill at Marino, asked the Pope’s leave to return in order to have medical treatment. Clement VII, himself a sufferer at the time, gave his permission. In the Eternal City, where the plague was raging, Sessa's illness soon took a fatal turn but he still had time to show gratitude for the favour granted to him by letting the Colonna and Moncada know in what straits the Pope found himself, especially in his finances. The Colonna had been busily increasing their forces, but to outward appearance had kept perfectly quiet. On the 12th of August the Florentine envoy reported: “No anxiety is felt from the quarter of the Colonna nor from Naples. They are much more frightened for themselves on account of the Venetian fleet expected at Civita Vecchia”. On the 18th of August Sessa died. Shortly before, a fresh Ambassador from Francis had presented himself before Clement, the historian, Guillaume du Bellay, Sire de Langey. It was soon understood that he only brought general assurances of his master’s goodwill. The Florentine envoy who reports this adds: “Here all is quiet, and no suspicions are aroused”. Instead of bringing the expected help, the French agent produced fresh claims on behalf of Francis; he demanded a tenth of the Church revenues of France for his sovereign and a Cardinal’s hat for the Chancellor Du Prat. This must have put the Pope in great ill humour.

Moncada now held that the moment was propitious for entering into negotiations with Clement. At the same time, the Colonna were suddenly to assume a threatening attitude and take possession of Anagni. Moncada asked Clement to give him a free hand in the settlement of the affairs of Italy, but afterwards backed out of the transaction, leaving it to the Colonna alone to draw the Pope into the trap laid for him, since by a settlement of their quarrel Clement would not formally violate his pledges to the League. Vespasiano Colonna, son of Prospero, played the part of mediator. In him, from an early period, Clement VII had placed special confidence; hard pressed by want of money, he listened to the proposals of reconciliation made by Vespasiano in the name of his whole house. In spite of Giberti’s warnings a treaty with the Colonna, to which Moncada was a party , was signed on the 20th of August 1526; they undertook to evacuate Anagni and withdraw their troops into the kingdom of Naples. The Pope pardoned all past injuries, removed the monition against Cardinal Colonna, and guaranteed to the whole house the possession of their properties. On the 26th of August the secretary of the Spanish Embassy, Perez, wrote in triumph from Rome that the Pope, since his treaty with the Colonna, felt himself perfectly safe; he was in great want of money, and dissatisfaction in Rome was increasing.

Relying on the treaty, Clement, whose first object was to reduce expenditure, notwithstanding warnings of all sorts from those around him, cut down the garrison of Rome to five hundred men, and resumed his negotiations with the Ambassador of France. With a reference to the untrustworthy accounts given by Sanga, he complained bitterly that French support was slow in coming, and in order to stimulate Francis to some enthusiasm for the war, he proposed that the latter should have Milan as his share of the booty, thereby totally surrendering all thought of Italian independence.

While these discussions were taking place came the disastrous news of the total destruction of the Hungarian army by the Turks at Mohacs. Clement was profoundly shaken, and in a Consistory on the 19th of September 1526, spoke of going to Barcelona to treat of peace in person. Yet he was still anxious, first of all, to break the excessive power of the Emperor, who at that very moment was equipping his fleet with all energy and, according to reports current in Rome, was threatening to pass over into Italy and to renounce his obedience.

Clement had not yet recovered from the alarm caused by the Turkish victory when he was prostrated by the announcement that the Colonna, with more than five thousand men, had appeared at Anagni with the avowed intention of marching upon Rome. The Pope, who had hitherto refused to believe in the treachery of Vespasiano, gave orders that the gates of the city should be closed and that troops should be raised on the following morning. But it was already too late; the enemy, led by Vespasiano and Ascanio Colonna, as well as by Cardinal Pompeo, had marched with such furious speed —they must have covered sixty miles in four-and-twenty hours—that in the early morning of the 20th of September, they were already before the walls of the defenceless city. By a stratagem they got possession of the Porta S. Giovanni and two other gates and made their way, without meeting any hindrance, through the city as far as the SS. Apostoli. Their rendezvous was the Colonna palace, where they rested for three hours and refreshed themselves with food and drink. On hearing of the raid, the Pope, who was in deadly terror, sent two Cardinals to the Colonna, and two others to the Capitol to call upon the Romans for protection. These messengers effected nothing; the people, bitterly incensed by the recent taxation, attributing every hardship and irregularity of government to Clement himself, and hating him besides for his excessive parsimony, showed themselves much less inclined to take up arms than to allow the Colonna to proclaim themselves their masters. The latter had done no one any harm; it was much more likely that they had come to free Rome from Papal tyranny. This feeling, indeed, was so widespread that the cry for freedom found many echoes, and the Colonna were hailed with joy. Thus it was that the Romans quietly watched the inroad of these marauders as if it were a spectacle; they showed the same inaction when, towards midday, the wild hordes again set themselves in motion and advanced further into the city with shouts of “Empire, Colonna, Freedom!”. They took possession of the Ponte Sisto, moved quickly along the Lungara, stormed the Porta S. Spirito, stoutly defended by Stefano Colonna, who adhered to the Pope's service, and spread themselves in plundering parties over the Vatican quarter.

The Pope, who had at first intended, like Boniface VIII, to await his enemies seated on his throne, had, by midday, yielded to the persuasions of those around him and taken flight, by the covered way, to the castle of St. Angelo. The few Swiss who remained in the Vatican offered no serious resistance. Soon the Vatican, St. Peter’s, and a great portion of the Borgo were in the hands of the marauders, plundering and destroying unchecked. They shrank from no infamy or sacrilege. Relics, crosses, sacred vessels, and vestments were stolen, and even the altar of St. Peter was stripped of its costly ornaments and profaned. Soldiers were seen wearing the white garments and red cap of the Pope, and giving in mockery the solemn Papal blessing. “Such deeds of shame”, wrote a German, then dwelling in Rome, in his diary, “have not been heard of for centuries, and are an abhorrence to all Christian men”. A Venetian recalled a prediction that the altar of St. Peter would be plundered, and compared the ravages of the Colonna with those of the Turks.

The costliest loot was found in the Vatican, where Raphael’s tapestries and the Papal tiara fell into the plunderers’ hands. Girolamo Negri, Secretary of Cardinal Cornaro, has described in detail and as a spectator the havoc wrought in the Vatican and its precincts in the late afternoon of that horrible 20th of September 1526. “The Papal palace”, so recounts this eye-witness,” was almost completely stripped even to the bedroom and wardrobe of the Pope. The great and the private sacristy of St. Peter's, that of the palace, the apartments of prelates and members of the household, even the horse-stalls were emptied, their doors and windows shattered; chalices, crosses, pastoral staffs, ornaments of great value, all that fell into their hands, was carried off as plunder by this rabble; persons of distinction were taken prisoners. The dwelling and stable of Monsignor Sadoleto were plundered; he himself had taken refuge in St. Angelo. Almost all the apartments on the corridors were treated in like manner except those of Campeggio, which were defended by some Spaniards. Ridolfi lost everything; Giberti had removed some of his articles of value, but lost not a few. Among other damage, his porcelain, worth 600 ducats, was broken in pieces. Messer Paolo Giovio, in his History, will be able to recall misfortunes like those of Thucydides, although he, with a presentiment of harm, had concealed in the city, some days before, the best of his belongings. Members of the Emperor’s party, such as Vianesio Albergati and Francesco Chieregati, found that circumstance availed them nothing as regarded the safety of their persons or their property. Berni was plundered out and out; they searched for his correspondence with Giberti, which he had carried on as Sanga’s substitute, but had to desist owing to an alarm. The coffers of all the clerical offices, those of the Piombi, of the Secretariat, and so forth, were cleared out Very little, in short, was left uninjured. A good round sum for drink money saved the library.” While all the houses in the Borgo Vecchio were plundered, their inhabitants ill-treated and carried off as captives, the plunderers did not venture to molest the Borgo Nuovo. That was swept by the heavy artillery of the fortress, and everything that showed itself there or along the walls of the approach to St. Angelo was within range of fire. “At last,” says Negri in conclusion, “whether the enemy were tired out, or had had enough of pillage, or were afraid that the Romans might, after all, come to the rescue of the Pope, they withdrew in such disorder that a very small body of troops could have routed them and taken their booty from them. A few lingered behind the others as far as the Ponte Sisto, but afterwards betook themselves back to the haunts of the Colonna faction.” The total damage was estimated at 300,000 ducats.

The Pope had thought, for a moment, of acting on the defensive; but since the castle of St. Angelo, owing to the carelessness of the castellan, Guido de’ Medici, and the greed of the treasurer, Cardinal Armellini, was not sufficiently provided with either victuals or soldiers, he was forced that very evening to confer, through the Portuguese Ambassador, with Moncada. The latter, much to the disgust of Colonna, who had thought of besieging the Pope in St. Angelo, visited the Pontiff, handed back to him his silver staff and the tiara which had been stolen, and assured him that Charles had never sought the supremacy over Italy. Nevertheless, their negotiations had no result. On the following morning Moncada returned and had a long interview with the Pope, while the Cardinals waited in an adjoining room. The treaty which Clement, on the 2 1st of September, in spite of the counter-representations of Carpi and the Venetian envoys, considered himself forced to accept, was very unfavourable. The terms were: an armistice for four months; the Pope to withdraw his troops and fleet; full pardon for the Colonna and their dependents; their troops to accompany Moncada to Naples; as sureties Filippo Strozzi, the husband of Clarice de' Medici, and a son of Jacopo Salviati to be given as hostages to Moncada.

On the 22nd of September the Colonna, in great confusion and laden with precious spoils, withdrew to Grottaferrata. Their leaders, especially the Cardinal, were extremely dissatisfied; they had hoped to have become complete masters of Rome and to have deposed and perhaps killed the Pope. Moncada, on the other hand, who had sent the Emperor a triumphant account of the success of the raid, considered that his object, the disruption of the League, had been accomplished. He deceived himself; neither the Colonna nor the Pope intended to keep their treaty. The former protested, as they thought that Moncada had overreached them, while the latter could not get over the humiliation inflicted on him by his own vassals, and thought it his duty to vindicate his reputation by the punishment of the guilty on the first opportunity. Clement felt specially grieved at the ingratitude and disloyalty of Vespasiano Colonna, whom he had treated like a favoured son; nor was he less distressed by the behaviour of the Romans he even spoke of leaving Rome for a length of time in order that the inhabitants might know what Rome was without the Pope. The Cardinals, too, were highly indignant at the unheard-of acts of violence and sacrilege that had been committed, and called for summary punishment.

In such a state of feeling special representations, such as were now made to the Pope by the Venetian envoy, were hardly necessary. Domenico Venier pointed out in spirited terms that in the matter of cunning Moncada was no better than the Colonna; that preparations for war must be made, since the Emperor, on the first possible opportunity, would lead his army into Italy, now that he saw how easy it was to take possession of the city and bring the head of the Church into subjection. In Rome it was said that if the Pope submitted tamely to the unprecedented insult offered to him he might as well lay down the triple crown and withdraw from the world as a solitary. Guicciardini, the Commander-in-Chief of the Papal troops, was, on the contrary, most urgent in his counsels that he should adhere to this disgraceful treaty that had been extorted from him. Clement, as a matter of fact, soon showed that he had no inclination to do so. It was not his intention either to leave the Colonna unpunished or to withdraw from the League. He certainly ordered Guicciardini to withdraw across the Po, but he gave him secret instructions to leave as many troops as possible with Giovanni de’ Medici, who, as he was in the French service, was still a member of the League.

In order to get help from France and England, Clement sent, by the 24th of September, Paolo d’ Arezzo to Francis I and Girolamo Ghinucci to Henry VIII. At the same time he addressed personally to the French King, who had hitherto confined himself to empty promises, a long letter containing a harrowing account of the inroad of the Colonna, accompanied by the most pressing appeals for help. On the 26th of September a monition was published against participation in the raid. Two days later the Pope assembled the Cardinals in Consistory to discuss his own situation as well as that of Hungary. He declared himself ready for extremities; his own wish was to take part in the Turkish war or to proceed to Nice to arrange a peace between Francis and Charles. The majority, especially the older Cardinals, recommended that he should take his departure soon and go on board the galleys lying ready at Civita Vecchia, “with what ulterior thought in their heads, God knows!”, remarked the French Ambassador’s secretary. Farnese, on the contrary, who was considered the cleverest and most experienced of the Cardinals, raised objections which gave Clement so much ground for reflection that he again gave up his schemes of travel. The news from upper Italy also influenced him in this decision.

The determination of the Pope to remain in Rome necessitated measures to prevent another onset of the Colonna; this appeared to be all the more necessary as in the beginning of October they were again arming, and their friends were plundering boldly in the Campagna. But the task was a difficult one in view of the enormous expenses already caused by the war. A sale of seats in the Sacred College was proposed; Clement, however, who on this point felt much more strongly than his contemporaries, gave a decided refusal. A committee of Cardinals now made other proposals for raising the money required; the Roman and Tuscan clergy were to contribute; in that way the city would be fortified and garrisoned most expeditiously. By the 13th of October seven thousand men had been collected in Rome. In the presence of these preparations Moncada gave way to open threats which only strengthened the Pope in his determination to take measures of precaution. One night the whole garrison of Rome was given the alarm in order to prove with what rapidity the male population could assemble in the event of a second raid.

By the end of October Clement thought himself strong enough to undertake the chastisement of the Colonna. New and far-reaching promises of the French King, who had expressed his definite intention of entering Italy at the head of his forces to protect the Apostolic See, had filled him with confidence and courage. On the 7th of November the Cardinals, assembled in Consistory, determined to issue citations upon Pompeo Colonna and the other members of his house who had taken part in the raid. The Apostolic Chamber opened in due form the process against the collective participators in the raid. The proceedings against the Cardinal were held before the Consistory. As Pompeo, who was at Naples, disregarded the citation, but appealed to a Council, proceedings against him were begun on the 16th of November, ending, on the 21st, with sentence of deprivation of all his dignities.

The campaign against the Colonna had, meanwhile, begun before the expiration of the four months’ armistice agreed upon in the treaty of the 21st of September. Vitello Vitelli commanded the Papal troops, which advanced victoriously amidst frightful devastation: Marino, Montefortino, Gallicano, Zagarolo, and other places were taken and partly destroyed. Only Paliano and Rocca di Papa withstood all attacks.

The proceedings at the scene of war in Lombardy occupied the attention of the Pope no less than the fighting in the Campagna; there the allies, in spite of the withdrawal of the Papal forces, were still stronger than the Imperialists; yet the Duke of Urbino did nothing decisive, and the Marquis of Saluzzo maintained a like inactivity; thus time was given to Charles V to prepare himself. Important aid came to him from Germany through George von Frundsberg. The famous leader of the landsknechts pawned his towns and possessions in the Tyrol, even his beloved castle of Mindelheim, the cradle of his race, together with the personal ornaments of his wife. By this means he was able, it is true, to raise only 38,000 gulden; but none the less, when his trumpet sounded the rally, there streamed to him from all sides young men fit to carry arms, especially those of the new creed. “Many enemies, much honour”, said George ; he was determined with God’s help to come to the rescue of the Emperor and his people, since it was clear as day that the Pope was oppressing Charles, his noble army, and the house of Colonna. He held to it that it would be pleasing to God and mankind that the Pope, the instigator of the war, the Emperor’s greatest enemy, should be punished and hanged, should he have to do it with his own hand. Within three weeks more than ten thousand lusty soldiers, eager for plunder, had been gathered in the Southern Tyrol, each provided with the fee of a golden gulden. Stout and valorous captains such as Schertlin von Burtenbach and Conrad von Bemelberg likewise joined him.

The passes between the Lago di Garda and the Adige were held by the troops of the Duke of Urbino. But Frundsberg’s brother-in-law pointed out to the wild bands of landsknechts a way over the mountains between the lakes of Idro and Garda, a breakneck path where the men had to clamber like the chamois. By this passage they, on the 19th of November, reached the territory of Brescia without mishap, and thence, with little molestation from the enemy, into the confines—the so-called Serraglio—of Mantua. Here, enclosed on the west by ditches and a wall, on the south by the Po, and on the east by the Mincio, the landsknechts ought, according to the plans of the Marquis of Mantua, to have been entrapped and taken.

When Frundsberg, on the 23rd of November, reached Borgoforte, he found that the ships promised him by the Marquis were not there. As he saw that he had been deceived, he took care to secure the bridge of Governolo, the only egress from the Serraglio. Into what danger they had fallen the Germans found out for themselves when, on the following morning, the allies, commanded by the Duke of Urbino and Giovanni de' Medici, appeared at Borgoforte and tried to drive off Frundsberg’s troops from the narrow causeway leading to Governolo; but the landsknechts, armed with their hand guns, stood like a wall, turned at once to face the enemy, and when the latter drew near, made them retreat and drove them back. Thus they reached Governolo in safety, where money, provisions, and some artillery belonging to Ferrara fell into their hands. Duke Alfonso, who had been treating, for a long time, with both parties, went over finally to the side of the Emperor. At the very beginning of the fight the bold Giovanni de' Medici, the leader of the “Black Band”, was wounded, and on the 30th of November the man on whom the League and the Pope had placed all their hopes died of his wounds. Frundsberg, who had previously, on the 28th of November, effected his passage across the Po, now advanced on Guastalla; from this point he threatened the Papal forces encamped at Parma and Piacenza.

The news of the advance of the landsknechts, the accession of the Duke of Ferrara to the Imperialist side, and the fatal injuries of Giovanni de' Medici, reached Rome in the last days of November, when the city was in dangerous agitation owing to taxation, plague, and famine. Almost at the same time yet another alarming piece of intelligence arrived; Charles de Lannoy, with the Imperial fleet, was approaching the coasts of Italy. Clement now saw himself threatened from the sea, just as on the north he was exposed to the landsknechts bent on plunder and filled with hatred of the Pope. His fear was greater than ever, and he knew not whither to turn.

According to the report of the Milanese envoy Landriano on the 28th of November, Clement was most deeply affected by the desertion of the Duke of Ferrara to the Emperor. “The Pope”, wrote Landriano, “seemed struck dead. All the attempts of the Ambassadors of France, England, and Venice to restore him were in vain. Unless something unexpected takes place he will make a peace or someday take flight. He looks to me like a sick man whom the doctors have given up. From France nothing is heard, and this drives everyone to desperation”. A few days later the same envoy wrote in bitter derision that neither gold nor troops come from France, nor any news other than that the King is amusing himself well with dancing, “and we are more dead than alive. Here, in Bologna and Modena, we are arming in frantic haste, but it will avail nothing. The extreme necessity of the hour will force us to an agreement with the enemy”. The situation was such that even the Secretary of the French Embassy, Raince, admitted frankly that without speedy help from Francis I, the Pope could make no further resistance or stay longer in Rome. Clement himself had done all that was possible ; foreign help, in all probability, would now come much too late.

On the 30th of November the Cardinals consulted what was to be done. Three courses were proposed: pardon, flight, or an armistice. The opinions were divided; pardon was seen to be impossible, flight was ignominious and full of danger; it was determined as the best expedient to open negotiations. Quiñones, the General of the Franciscans, who was much beloved by the Emperor, was entrusted with the difficult mission, and by the 2nd of December he had started to meet Lannoy. The Pope waited with indescribable anxiety for further reports. All thought of flight from Rome seemed closed to him, for he knew that Cardinal Colonna would either summon him before a Council or procure his own election as antipope. Schonberg and his friends never ceased to work upon the harassed Pope by representing to him these dangers, while Carpi, Cardinal Trivulzio, Giberti, and the rest of the French party exerted themselves in the opposite direction. The fate of Florence lay nearest to Clement’s heart, for there disturbances had broken out and the advance of the landsknechts had caused many to flee, taking with them their wives, children, and goods.

In Rome also a panic of the same kind had arisen on the arrival of Lannoy in the harbour of San Stefano, from whence he could also march either on Florence or Rome. On the evening of the 29th of November Lannoy again set sail, and on the 1st of December he reached Gaeta. The galleys of the League which had been intended to hinder his approach reached San Stefano two days too late. “It really seems,” wrote the Secretary of the French Embassy, Raince, to Montmorency, “that all reasonable calculations are miscarrying, and that things could not turn out better than they are doing for the Imperialists.”

By a special Nuncio the Pope, on the 6th of December 1526, let Francis know what the dangers were into which he had fallen. All, except Giberti, were then advising the Pope to come to terms with the Emperor’s party. That even this partisan of France took the worst view of the situation is clear from his correspondence. “We are,” Giberti wrote on the 7th of December to the English Nuncio Gambara, “on the brink of ruin; fate has let loose upon us every kind of evil, so that it is impossible to add to our misery. It seems to me as if sentence of death had been passed upon us, and that we are only awaiting its execution, which cannot be long delayed.” But with the arrival of more favourable news concerning the help to be expected from France, Giberti at once changed his mind.

Clement, a prey to anxiety and impatience, had in the meantime sent Schonberg also to Naples to treat with Lannoy as to terms. The Pope himself was wavering : on the 11th of December he told the Florentine envoy that his heart was no longer in the war, since the allies were so tardy in their support and the conflict only increased the Emperor’s power. The conditions offered by Lannoy, which Quiñones brought back on the evening of the 12th of December, seemed to Giberti very hard and only acceptable in the last extremity. Lannoy demanded a six months’ truce, besides a war indemnity to be agreed upon later on, Ostia and Civita Vecchia or Parma and Piacenza being in the meantime held as preliminary guarantees; at the same time he seemed inclined to force on this exceptional peace by armed force. Still stronger pressure was used by Perez, the Secretary of the Spanish Embassy, acting probably on an understanding with Lannoy, who on the same day, the 12th of December, presented to the Pope with all official formality a series of documents setting forth with unprecedented harshness all the Emperor’s complaints of the Papal policy, and threatening Clement with a Council.

CHAPTER IV.

The Anti-Papal Policy of the Emperor. —Advance of the Imperial Army on Rome.

In order to form a just estimate of Charles V in his opposition to Clement VII, we must represent to ourselves the part played by the Emperor in connection with the raid of the Colonna. Before Charles had been more fully informed of the Pope’s hostile intentions he had already, on the 11th of June 1526, instructed his Ambassador in Rome that if Clement did not show himself compliant he should be driven out by means of the Colonna and a revolutionary movement set up in the States of the Church. While the Emperor, in this way, signified his approval of the treacherous and piratical manoeuvre so unworthy of him, which Moncada carried out by means of the Colonna on the 20th of September, he was giving the Papal Nuncio Castiglione assurances of his filial submission to the Holy See. As soon as the raid had successfully taken place, Moncada advised the Emperor to express to the Nuncio and Clement his great grief at the acts of violence done by the Colonna and to make known to the princes of Christendom how repugnant such occurrences had been to his views and wishes. Before the Emperor, then staying in Granada, could give effect to this advice, he had already taken a fresh step against the Pope. On the 13th of August he announced publicly, for communication to the Christian world, that the aggression of the French, the Pope, and other Italians forced him to take up arms. Moncada was fully empowered to confirm the Duke of Ferrara in the possession of all his fiefs held from the Empire.

In pursuing his contest with the Pope, Charles had recourse also to the advice of learned canonists. The latter were to expound to him in particular how far and under what circumstances an Emperor owed obedience to the Pope, and whether the former would be justified in refusing payment of half the annates and in declaring war against the supreme Pontiff, if he were called upon to do so. Castiglione, who reported upon these consultations, said the views differed, yet all had aimed at pleasing Charles. In a report in cipher he also observed that most secret consultations had been held as to the way in which the Emperor could proceed against the Pope, and whether he was bound to subject himself to excommunication and censures and a thousand other evils.

Such was the state of opinion when the severely worded Brief of the 23rd of June was handed to Charles. The presentation of this all-important document was made on the 20th of August by Castiglione, who had not yet received the second and milder communication with the order to withhold the first. The Brief caused Charles deep resentment, especially as there were about him those who knew how to fan his justifiable agitation into extreme anger; Gattinara, who was sore at not receiving the Cardinalate, was active in this direction. Charles concealed his inward displeasure; he spoke, it is true, of a council before which he would vindicate himself from the Pope’s charges, but, on the whole, he remained outwardly calm, and used, as he had done previously to Castiglione, the most fervent expressions of devotion to the Holy See. Meanwhile a bulky state-paper was drawn up which exceeded in its language even that of the Brief, and opposed to the one-sided statement of the Pope another not less one-sided on the part of the Emperor.

In the opening of this document, dated “Granada, September 17, 1526,” prominence was given to the fact that the Brief of the 23rd of June, handed in by the Nuncio on the 20th of August, was couched in language neither becoming in the Chief Shepherd of Christendom nor consonant with the “filial devotion” which Charles had always shown towards the Apostolic See and the Pope. It was necessary to reply in some detail, as the Emperor was not conscious of blame and could not allow his unsullied reputation to be assailed. He had always shown himself to be a great lover of peace, and had aimed only at the peace and freedom of Italy. Let the Pope consider whether his present behaviour was in keeping with his pastoral office; whether he ought to have drawn the sword that Christ had ordered Peter to replace in its sheath; whether he had a right to weaken the forces of Christendom and to strengthen its enemies, the heretics. When his Holiness, at the beginning of his Brief, lays stress on the necessity of pardon, the position is not an intelligible one, since no one has injured the Pope’s honour and dignity. In order to make his statements more credible, the Brief describes a “long tragedy,” recounts what is in keeping with the Papal conception, but passes over in silence everything that explains the real course of affairs. To show clearly the real sequence of facts, the state-paper refers back to the position assumed by the Papacy in the question of the Imperial election the many marks of favour shown by the Emperor to Clement when he was Cardinal are stated with clear precision the events of the most recent years are set forth very thoroughly The object of the whole representation is to brand Clement VII with disloyalty, and to justify Charles in his treatment of disputed Italian questions (Milan, Reggio, Modena). This is done in exceedingly “energetic, compact” language, not without an admixture of sophistry. Many passages are marked by a refinement of sarcasm as when it is said that it is incredible that the Vicar of Christ on earth should acquire for himself worldly possessions at the cost of a single drop of human blood, since this would be in direct contradiction to the teaching of the Gospel. In another place it is specially pointed out that the Pope would not have lost the praise due to a good shepherd and father if he had kept himself aloof from plots and alliances against the Emperor. In other respects also severe charges are brought against Clement. His conduct has not tended to protect the safety of Italy and Christendom, nor even that of the Holy See, which—seeing that no one was coming forward to attack it—stood in no need of weapons and troops. In consequence of this the Pope has destroyed the means of protecting the Holy See, has squandered the treasure of the Church, and acted in opposition to Christ Himself and to the hurt of Christendom. The Pope cannot justify his deeds before God or men. It is evident—if such language may be used—that he has only occasioned scandal and destruction to the Christian commonwealth. Clement VII might remember that the Curia draws greater revenues from the Emperor's dominions than from any other countries. If the Pope is as anxious for peace as is the Emperor, let him lay down his arms, and it would then be easy to combat the errors of the Lutherans and other heretics. If, on the contrary, his Holiness disregards the Emperor’s defence, insists on maintaining war and opposing himself to the general peace—in which case he is acting not as a father but as a party leader, not as a shepherd but as a hireling—the Emperor will then be forced, seeing that no other higher judge can be appealed to, to turn to a Holy General Council of collective Christendom, in whose hands it shall be left to decide on all questions in dispute. At the end of his indictment Charles solemnly appeals to the judgment of this Council, which the Pope shall summon in some safe and fitting place within limits of time to be definitely settled.

Since the days of Frederick the Second and Louis of Bavaria no ruler of Germany had addressed such language to Rome. There were many passages in which Charles used language “of which no follower of Luther need have been ashamed”. It was at one with the notions of the draftsman of the paper, Alfonso de Valdes, who was steeped in the spirit of Erasmus the humanist.

On the 18th of September 1526 the document was officially handed over to Castiglione, the Papal Nuncio, who entered a protest against such an uncivil reply, and then went on to point out that it was only in consequence of belated instructions that the Brief of the 23rd of June had been presented, and that he was most painfully surprised. Hitherto Charles, in his conversations with him, had always evinced a most conciliatory temper; even as regards the Brief of the 23rd of June he had shown diplomatic self­restraint; the second and more temperate Brief of the 25th had, Castiglione felt certain, restored the Emperor to perfect composure. Charles, indeed, had solemnly assured him that his answer, even if he appealed to a council, would be so gentle that the Pope would have no cause to complain of it. And now there came this official paper! In great anger Castiglione complained to Gattinara and to Charles that he had been deceived, and felt it an affront that he should have been expected to transmit such a violent and insulting reply. It was of really little use that the Imperial Chancery, on this very 18th of September, drew up an answer, in corresponding terms, to the more moderately expressed Brief. The conciliatory and friendly words which the Emperor continued to address freely to Castiglione and others had quite as little meaning. He adhered inflexibly to the standpoint of his paper of the 17th of September. Indeed, in the letter addressed to the Cardinals on the 6th of October, he went still further and endeavoured to stir up an anti-Papal schism. If his Holiness, he wrote, will not summon a council, then the Cardinals, “in conformity with legal right”, must do so.

In thorough keeping with the Emperor’s embittered feeling was the insulting manner in which Perez, the Secretary of the Embassy, communicated to the Pope his master’s message. Perez had received the document on the 9th of December. He kept its existence a close secret until the 12th, when a Consistory was held. On that day he appeared unexpectedly with a Spanish notary and Spanish witnesses before the Cardinals surrounding the Pope and handed to Clement the state-paper, and to the Cardinals the letter of the 6th of October. Immediately after leaving the hall he had an act to notify their delivery drawn up by his notary. Consequently the news of the Emperor's demand for a council was at once spread through Rome.

Two days later Perez had an audience of Clement VII in order to communicate to him a letter which the Emperor had written to Cesare Fieramosca. “Why”, asked the Pope irritably, “have you not brought a notary with you on this occasion as well, so that the delivery of this letter might also be certified?”. Perez, according to his own account, had the audacity to deny altogether the notarial act of the 12th of December. “But”, so he himself relates, “when I perceived that the Pope had observed the whole proceeding and had seen the notary, whom he knew quite well by sight, and the witnesses, I was obliged to admit that I was acting by the express command of your Majesty”. “In that case”, answered the Pope, “if you had given me notice before­hand, I should not have prevented the letter being read in Consistory”. Further excuses from Perez he cut short by bringing the audience to a close; but to the Portuguese Ambassador he remarked that he would, in case of necessity, make use of the Emperor's letter in self-defence.

That the Imperialists were determined on going to extremities is shown by the fact that Lannoy, step by step, increased his demands and ordered his troops to advance on Frosinone. The acceptance of his conditions, which, in their final form, called upon the Pope to give up, as guarantees of peace, Parma, Piacenza, Ostia, and Civita Vecchia, and demanded the surrender by the Florentines of Pisa and Leghorn, would have meant the practical abolition of the temporal possessions of the Holy See. In great agitation the Pope declared that, since they were determined to rob him of everything, it should be done only by force and not under the guise of fair play.

The recruiting of troops for the Papal army was pushed on in haste. In Rome, where the inhabitants, with a view to taking their share in the defence, were employing the best means for the security of the city, the famous engineer Sangallo, in whom the Pope placed special confidence, was active. On the 10th of December the warlike Legate Trivulzio joined the troops intended to oppose Lannoy. Soon afterwards a monition was issued against all invaders of the Papal territories. In closest alliance with Lannoy were the Colonna, still breathing vengeance, who always found strong support among the Imperialists in Naples. Perez had already, on the 4th and 5th of December, informed the Emperor that, sooner or later, the Colonna, with the help of the Viceroy and Moncada, would once more make war on the Pope and try to drive him out of Rome.

Still greater than the danger threatening in the south was the peril slowly drawing nearer from the north.

It was of the utmost importance for the development of events in upper Italy that the Pope, in spite of all negotiations, was unsuccessful in coming to an agreement with the Duke of Ferrara. It was only with Alfonso’s support that Frundsberg was able, at the end of November 1526, to make the difficult passage of the Po and to carry the ravages of war into the states of Parma and Piacenza. Guicciardini, who was stationed here with Papal troops, implored the Duke of Urbino, but in vain, to come to his aid. The Duke remained on the other side of the Po to cover the territory of Venice. “The Emperor's luck”, said Guicciardini, “is boundless ; but the limit has been reached, inasmuch as his enemies have neither the wits nor the will to make use of the forces at their disposal”.

Frundsberg did not seize any of the fortified towns on his route, but encamped in the territory of Piacenza, to await the arrival of the Constable de Bourbon and his army. The latter had the greatest difficulties to surmount with his mutinous and savage troops, who were clamouring with threats for their arrears of pay. On the 1st of February 1527 he had been able at last to satisfy at least the army in Milan after, so he wrote to the Emperor, he had drained the city of its blood. De Leyva remained behind in Milan with twelve thousand men; the remainder went south with Bourbon. In the days between the 7th and 12th of February the conjunction of Bourbon’s army with that of Frundsberg took place not far from Piacenza. The host of nearly twenty-two thousand men took, on the 22nd of February, the ancient Emilian Way; the advance was slow owing to bad weather and the painful scarcity of provisions. If the Duke of Ferrara had not sent frequent supplies of money and victuals, the highly dissatisfied and to some extent mutinous horde would undoubtedly have broken up. Never was there such a good opportunity of attacking the Imperial forces; nevertheless, the Duke of Urbino lay idle. Thus the former were able, although amid the greatest hardships, to march through Parma and Modena and to cross the Panaro, the old river boundary of the States of the Church. On the 8th of March they encamped at San Giovanni, hardly a day’s journey from Bologna.

In the meantime there had been constant alternations in Rome of fear and hope, military preparations and negotiations for peace. During the first days of the year of misfortune 1527 Clement had addressed to Lannoy and the Colonna a solemn admonition to lay down their arms under pain of excommunication and, at the same time, had released Orazio Baglioni from his three years’ imprisonment in St. Angelo and taken him into his pay. On the 4th of January Lannoy’s ultimatum was presented to the Pope. Four days later the long-expected envoy of Francis I, Renzo da Ceri, arrived, but without soldiers and without money. “It would not have been so bad,” thought even a friend of the French, Canossa, “if he had not come at all.” Instead of the necessary help Renzo brought fresh demands from his self-seeking sovereign : the cession of Naples to France. The dissatisfaction and alarm of Clement were still more increased at this time by the growing scarcity of money and the incessant appeals of the Florentines to come quickly to terms with the Imperialists. His fellow-countrymen depicted in the blackest colours the infernal horrors which might be let loose on Florence at any moment by Spaniards and landsknechts. Schonberg made similar representations; moreover, Clement was daily besought, with tears, by Clarice de' Medici, to deliver her husband, held fast in Naples as a hostage; so that, as the Mantuan envoy remarked, the poor Pope, assailed thus on every side, was to be compared to a ship tossed hither and thither on the high seas by conflicting winds.

Cardinal Farnese advised flight from Rome. “Things cannot go on thus”, said the Venetian Ambassador; “the Pope has not a soldo left”. Clement openly confessed his despair. He even declared that he would like to withdraw entirely from politics and confine himself exclusively to his ecclesiastical functions.

The Pope’s cares were made still heavier by the representations of a member of the Sacred College, who urged him to raise the necessary funds by a nomination of Cardinals and to anticipate the Emperor by summoning a council. The sale of Cardinals’ hats had, at an earlier date, been decisively rejected by Clement; and even now he would hear nothing of it “from an honourable conscientiousness”. The thought of bringing these important affairs into his own hands by means of a council was one which in itself pleased him; yet he held back through the fear that his hands would be completely tied in respect of the nomination of Cardinals. So nothing definite was settled, and the plan came to nothing. But the situation was one which imperatively demanded that he should make himself safe in Rome. On the 14th of January 1527 Renzo visited the Papal forces encamped to the south of Rome and afterwards returned to the city, where the citizens were armed and organized on a war footing with all possible haste. Lannoy’s answer consisted in the reopening of hostilities by the siege of Frosinone, although the limits of the armistice had not expired. Thereupon Clement, on the 23rd of January, called upon all the Neapolitan fief-holders to take up arms for the States of the Church. At the same time he entered into closer communication with the Voivode of Siebenbürgen, Joannes Zapolya, who was contesting the crown of Hungary against the Emperor’s brother. While these warlike measures were in progress the negotiations of that strange time went steadily on. On the evening of the 25th of January, Cesare Fieramosca, accompanied by Schonberg and Quiñones, arrived in Rome with proposals for an armistice from Charles. They at once went to see Clement in the Belvedere.

Fieramosca brought from the Emperor, who also continued to employ very friendly language with regard to Castiglione, the best assurances of his good-will towards the Holy See, but very hard conditions for the conclusion of a three years’ peace: the restoration of the Colonna; the payment of 200,000 ducats by the Pope and Florence, and, as security, the surrender of Parma, Piacenza, and Civita Vecchia into the hands of a third party. In spite of the opposition of the Cardinals, Clement VII, in his necessity, entered into the agreement on the 28th of January, but the ratification of the treaty was postponed in order to allow of Venice being asked to give her adhesion; an eight days’ armistice was to be observed provisionally.

Before the latter had run its course the state of affairs had undergone a fresh change. The ink of the treaty was hardly dry before the news arrived that Rene, Count de Vaudemont, the champion of the claims of the house of Anjou on Naples, had come from France with 30,000 ducats, and that the envoy of Henry VIII, Sir John Russell, with a like amount, was on his way to Rome. This was enough to rekindle Clement’s warlike spirit—who very rightly placed no trust in Lannoy—to such an extent that Giberti, on the 29th of January, disregarding the armistice, gave orders to Cardinal Trivulzio to make an offensive movement. On the 1st of February came Vaudemont, and on the 2nd the Rector of the University of Rome mustered the students, fifteen hundred fine well-armed youths eager for service. On the evening of the 4th, beacons on the hills of Tivoli announced the defeat of Lannoy, “the greatest enemy of the Holy See,” at Frosinone. After so many misfortunes, Giberti and the Pope rejoiced at this gleam of sunshine. On the 7th of February Andrea Doria arrived, and it was resolved to turn the victory to account by attacking Naples; and yet a conspiracy had first been discovered at Rome which ought to have been a warning to use extreme caution

In order to create disturbances on the rear of the Papal army, Lannoy and the Colonna had joined themselves with the chief of the Orsini, Napoleone, Abbot of Farfa. This turbulent man was offered pay in the Imperial service and the daughter of Vespasiano Colonna with a dowry of 30,000 ducats. In return Napoleone bound himself to give free passage through his domains to the troops of Charles V, commanded by Ascanio Colonna, and to procure, by means of an adherent in Rome, the opening of one of the city gates. At the same time Orsini was to assemble all his troops and to appear with them in the Leonine city under pretext of protecting the Pope ; in reality, in order to murder him together with eight Cardinals. The attempt had all the more prospect of success as Orsini, the traitor, enjoyed the full confidence of the Pope. Luckily, however, Clement was told of the danger threatening him by the Count of Anguillara, whom Orsini had asked to participate in the plot. The Abbot was therefore arrested at Bracciano on the 1st of February, and brought to the castle of St. Angelo, where, after a struggle, he made a full confession.

The miscarriage of this plot, the defeat at Frosinone, and, lastly, the Papal advance on Naples, made such an impression on Lannoy that he renounced all his previous demands for money payments, the surrender of strongholds, and the restoration of the Colonna. Although the envoys of France and Venice were even now still averse to an armistice, the arrangements for one might very likely have been carried out had not the English representative insisted that the opinion of Venice must first be heard. For this they had to wait, and in the meantime first one and then another messenger of disaster reached Clement.

The King of France had not fulfilled one of all his glittering promises. His auxiliaries arrived late and in insufficient numbers; for the monthly payments of the war subsidy the Roman treasury waited in vain; although a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of the whole of France had been granted him, Francis only sent the ridiculous sum of 9000 ducats. Also, the support intended for the expedition against Naples was so insignificant in men and money that the whole enterprise, started with such hopes, came to nothing. This frivolous Prince was so absorbed in hunting and other pleasures that no time was left to him for things of serious importance. To the Italians Francis was as prodigal as ever of fair words, but he did nothing, and his indifference threw the Papal Ambassador, Acciaiuoli, into sheer desperation. This indifference did not grow less as affairs in Italy turned more and more in favour of the Imperialists; even so true a partisan of France as Canossa had to admit that Francis let the Pope’s business go to rack and ruin. The behaviour of the Venetians was not much better; they certainly did all they could to prevent an agreement between the Pope and the Emperor, but showed no sign of procuring for the former means to prosecute the war. “Venice”, as Canossa had written to Giberti on the 28th of November 1526, “cares for nothing but her own interests: help from that quarter is to be expected as little as from France”.

Meanwhile the danger from the north was drawing ever nearer; Florence and the Romagna were seriously threatened, while Venice and the Duke of Urbino only thought of themselves. In the south the advantages gained against Naples could not be followed up owing to the ever-increasing poverty of the Pope, now left in straits by his allies. In consequence the Papal troops were not only left without pay, but without that bare necessity of life—bread. The half-famished soldiers deserted by the score; the remainder had at last to make their way back to Piperno. At Terracina a plot was discovered to deliver the town to Pompeo Colonna.

In these difficulties Clement, on the 6th of March, forwarded a safe-conduct to Cesare Fieramosca, and five days later this agent of the Emperor entered Rome. Du Bellay also arrived on the same day; he brought many fine promises but not the longed-for 20,000 ducats. According to his wont Clement hesitated for some days but at last, driven to extremity, nothing remained for him to do but to accept the conditions offered by Fieramosca and Serenon as Lannoy’s plenipotentiaries. In the night between the 15th and 16th of March an eight months’ armistice began, the terms of which were that each party should give up their conquests, although the territory wrested from the Colonna remained in the Pope’s possession during the truce. On the other hand, Clement promised to absolve the whole house from the censures passed upon them, to reinstate Cardinal Pompeo, and to pay, as ransom for the hostages Strozzi and Salviati, 60,000 ducats to the Imperialist army, who were, in return, to evacuate the Papal States. Lannoy was to come to Rome in person to ratify the treaty; the Pope saw in that a guarantee that Bourbon also would respect the agreement.

Lannoy came to Rome on the 25th of March. The Pope received him with great honour and assigned him rooms in the Vatican. Charles V’s opponents tried at the last hour  to change Clement’s mind; they represented to him how dangerous it was to sacrifice himself for the good-will of the Imperialists. The whole convention, thought John Russell, was only a trick to separate Clement from his allies. But Clement, after Lannoy’s arrival, held that the execution of the treaty would be quite safe; he repeatedly said in tones of decision to the Ambassadors when they warned him, “Quod scripsi scripsi”. On the 27th of March, in a secret consistory, he addressed the Cardinals on the state of affairs; on the 28th he excused himself to the Doge, referring to the failure of all his means of help; on the 29th followed the ratification of the treaty.

Trusting to the loyalty of Lannoy, Clement VII carried out his treaty obligations at once in the most conscientious manner. There can be no doubt that his pacific intentions were serious. In order to put an end finally to all questions in dispute, the mission of Giberti to England and France was taken into consideration. Although Clement had the  advantage in the Neapolitan war, he withdrew his troops both by land and sea. He even went so far, in order to save money, as to reduce the total of his forces to a hundred light horsemen and two hundred foot soldiers of the so- called “Black Band”. All these measures show how certainly he counted on Bourbon also accepting the treaty. In order to settle this Fieramosca had already, on the 15th of March, arrived at the Imperialist camp fully empowered to take all the necessary steps. It is certain that both the Pope and Giberti had not the least presentiment that the danger threatening them from the Imperial army was not yet fully removed. When the news first reached Rome that Bourbon's army refused to accept the treaty con­cluded with Lannoy, Giberti saw only a daring attempt to extort more money.

Of all the illusions under which Clement VII and his adviser laboured, none was more momentous than their attributing to the Imperial generals an influence over the army which, for a long time past, had got entirely out of control.

On the very first rumour of Lannoy’s negotiations with the Pope, the German and Spanish soldiers, who had bivouacked at San Giovanni, near Bologna, since the 8th of March, were thrown into great excitement. The troops were in a wretched condition they had endured up till then four months of poverty, hunger, and cold, and no end to their hardships was in sight. Heavy downfalls of snow and rain had turned the ground almost into a swamp, where in damp, miserable clothing the soldiers were encamped, many without shoes to their feet, all without pay and a sufficiency of food. The prospect of booty, the riches of Florence, the greater riches of Rome, had alone kept them together and given them courage amid their misery. It can easily be imagined what an impression was made on them by the news that they were to be “thrust out of Italy like beggars” and the prizes of victory snatched from them. As the increasing hurricane lashes the sea into greater and greater agitation until the conflicting tumult of the waves resembles chaos, so the rumour of a disastrous peace, passing from mouth to mouth through the Imperialist host, produced a scene of unparalleled excitement and passion. The Spaniards, to whom the Emperor owed eight months’ pay, were the first to mutiny. They flung themselves in fury on Bourbon’s tent, demanding payment in full with wild uproar. Bourbon had to hide himself in a horse-stall; one of his gentlemen was murdered; his tent was plundered. The Germans, stirred up by the tumult, quickly assembled; they also shouted “Pay, pay”, refusing to march a step further unless they had their money. “All the men were in a kindling temper which burned like fire. They were ready to kill the captains and leaders”.

An attempt to get sufficient money from the Duke of Ferrara failed. Thereupon “Father Frundsberg”, on the 16th of March, gathered the Germans together and gave them an address “so earnest”  in its tone that he “must have moved a stone”. But all the representations of the man who, for a generation, by the power of his presence, of his will, of his word, and of his successes, had held the landsknechts together, were unavailing. “Pay, pay”, shouted the frenzied soldiers. They even turned their pikes against their captains. Then Frundsberg’s giant constitution suddenly gave way; overcome by grief and anger, he fell speechless on a drum. He had been struck down by apoplexy .

The party of Clement VII saw in the unexpected fate of Frundsberg the judgment of God on one who had presumptuously declared his willingness to lay hands on the Pope’s person. But if they hoped that the landsknechts, deprived of their leader, would disband, they soon found themselves bitterly undeceived. The Germans only wished to escape as quickly as possible from the scene of misfortune. The whole army was of one mind that, under any circumstances, an advance must be made on districts that still lay open to plunder and offered a prospect of provision and booty. Bourbon had given each soldier a ducat and promised him unlimited pillage—"the law of Mohammed”.

Such was the situation when, on the 20th of March, Fieramosca produced the treaty of the 15th and 30,000 ducats, but this sum could not satisfy the soldiers; it was only like a drop of water on a hot stone. The reception given to the messenger of peace was in keeping with the soldiers’ mood ; “they were like raging lions”, Fieramosca reported to the Emperor, and he only saved his life by taking flight to Ferrara. Bourbon had lost all power over his army. He stood helpless before the chaos, in which the only element of unity was the desire to be let loose. Forward at any cost, forward to Florence, forward to Rome! On the 29th of March Bourbon sent a message to Lannoy that he was forced of necessity to advance; at the same time he informed the Pope of this decision, by which the armistice was broken. Soon afterwards he raised his demands to 150,000 ducats. “Three things,” wrote Guicciardini on the 29th of March to Giberti, “remain open to you; to accede to everything by a new treaty, to take flight, or to defend yourselves to the death.”

After provisions and munitions had come from Ferrara the Imperialist army set forward on the 30th of March. Many thought that the fierce horde would throw itself immediately on Florence. But the Apennines were still covered with snow, and well protected by troops. They therefore went by way of Bologna, plundering and burning slowly on the ancient Emilian Way as they drew nearer to the Romagna. Guicciardini had, in the meantime, succeeded in getting the Duke of Urbino—who, hitherto solely occupied in guarding Venetian territory, had remained near the Po—to follow up the enemy, although at a considerable distance. This induced Bourbon to turn to the Apennines. He chose the road leading over Meldola into the upper valley of the Arno. The rain fell in torrents; but on went the army, up into the mountains, having to leave behind all their baggage waggons. The hope of the “glorious plunder of Florence” gave wings to the steps of the soldiers, who on the 16th of April reached Santa Sofia, that belonged to Florentine territory.

On the entreaty of Clement VII, Lannoy, with 60,000 ducats from the Pope and 20,000 raised from his own resources, had left Rome for the Romagna on the 3rd of April to try and persuade the Imperialist forces to return. Letters from Bourbon caused him to alter his course and to go direct to Florence. Here he succeeded in arranging with Bourbon’s agents that the Florentines should pay the Imperialist army 150,000 ducats; on receipt of the first half the army was to begin its return march. Clement VII, meanwhile, had continued to dismiss his soldiers. He had hardly had news of the Florentine arrangement when, from misdirected economy and disgust at their insubordination, he parted with the last of his forces, the men of the Black Band. Vaudemont, with his contingent at Civita Vecchia, sailed for Marseilles just as if peace had been securely concluded; all warnings had been in vain. “The imprudence and carelessness”, wrote Francesco Gonzaga on the 11th of April, “is too great; before the armistice has taken effect the Pope has entirely disarmed himself. All this has been done only to save a little money. Everyone is astonished at such proceedings. But without doubt God's will has so ordered this, that the Church and its leaders may be destroyed”.

A feeling of uneasiness, such as almost always precedes great catastrophes, prevailed in Rome. Old predictions of overwhelming judgments on the seat and centre of the Church’s government revived again with increased force. Extraordinary accidents, regarded as portents, a flash of lightning which occurred as Lannoy arrived at the Vatican, caused disturbance in anxious minds; such things were looked upon as a premonition that the wrath of Heaven was about to strike the sinful city.

A still more powerful, if momentary, impression was made on the Romans by one of those fanatical preachers of repentance who even then were constantly trying to add to the excitement of the Italian people, terrified already by prophecies, and sorely visited by war, plague, and Other calamities. On Holy Thursday (18th April 1527), when Clement VII, after the reading of the Bull In Coena Domini, was giving the pontifical blessing to a devout multitude of ten thousand persons, a man with the demeanour of a maniac, almost entirely naked, save only for a leathern apron, clambered on to the statue of St. Paul in front of St. Peter's and shouted to the Pope : “Thou bastard of Sodom, for thy sins Rome shall be destroyed. Repent, and turn thee! If thou wilt not believe me, in fourteen days thou shalt see it”.

A prophet of this sort was nothing new to the Romans; as far back as the summer of 1525 a hermit had declared to them his strange visions. The prophecies of this new herald of misfortune, who was known by the name of Brandano, surpassed, however, in many respects anything of the kind known before. The appearance of this enthusiast was a highly characteristic episode of this agitated time. Bartolomeo Carosi, called Brandano, was a native of Petrojo near Siena. After leading for a long time an evil life in the world, he was suddenly converted and gave himself up, as a hermit, to severe acts of penance. Later on he quitted his solitude and passed through the towns of his native district holding up before the inhabitants their sinful manner of life. The wrath of God would burst upon them, war, plague, and other visitations would follow on the general iniquity. This was on the whole the substance of his penitential preaching. Sometimes in his fiery zeal he gave utterance to more concise discourse. Perhaps his outward appearance produced more effect than his preachings and prophesyings. Clothed only so far as decency demanded, barefooted and with long red hair hanging dishevelled to his shoulders, the prophet went his rounds. His frame was muscular, but emaciated by fasting; his face wan and deeply furrowed, the greenish-yellow eyes hollowed by tears and nightly vigils; his movements were abrupt and uncouth. When preaching he held a crucifix in his right hand, in his left a skull.  Some thought him a crazy fool, others a prophet and saint. The common folk had many a tale to tell of his severe exercises of penance, his frequent pilgrimages to Santiago in Spain, even of miracles he had worked. In Siena he had preached in the cathedral ; now, with cries of woe, he was announcing in the streets of the Eternal City  the certain downfall of its priests and inhabitants and the renewal of the Church.

On Easter Eve 1527 Brandano went from the Campo di Fiore to St. Angelo, and, like a second Jonas, cried with a loud voice, “Rome, do penance! They shall deal with thee as God dealt with Sodom and Gomorrha”. Then he said quietly, as if to himself: “He has robbed the Mother of God to adorn his harlot, or rather his friend”. On hearing of this scandalous speech the Pope put an end to his doings by ordering Brandano to be placed in confinement. He was soon afterwards set at liberty and started afresh on a career which brought upon him renewed imprisonment.

The destruction foretold by this prophet of evil was drawing nearer and nearer with the certainty of fate. Notwithstanding the arrangement with the Florentines, Bourbon’s army continued to march on Rome. After extraordinary exertions the crest of the Apennines was surmounted; the eight field-pieces, attached to ropes, had to be dragged along by hand. On the 18th of April the half-starved troops reached S. Maria in Bagno, on the south side of the mountains, and on the 20th Bourbon encamped at Pieve di S. Stefano in the upper valley of the Tiber. Here Lannoy met him. The latter had left Florence on the 15th of April, and on the 19th had been attacked by the inhabitants of Santa Sofia and forced to take refuge in the abbey of the Camaldoli, S. Maria in Cosmedin. Two days later he suddenly appeared in the Imperialist camp. It was soon discovered that he and Bourbon were trying to deceive the Florentines, who thereupon made energetic preparations for the defence of their city.

When Bourbon now raised his demand for money to 240,000 ducats, this, it was evident, was because he knew his enemy was unprepared. His army was in such a condition that necessity forced him to go forward. Only the hope of plundering Florence held his men together. Bourbon advanced all the more joyfully as he knew that he was thus meeting the Emperor’s wishes, whose first object was to get hold of money to pay his troops and to wring from the Pope the most favourable treaty possible.

Clement VII was highly indignant at the non-observance of the armistice. “To produce 240,000 ducats”, Giberti exclaimed, “was as impossible as to join heaven and earth together”. Bourbon replied by raising his demand to 300,000 ducats. In the meanwhile the Papal and Venetian troops, under the Duke of Urbino, the Marquis of Saluzzo, and Guicciardini, had come to the relief of Florence, already strongly fortified, so that Bourbon, having regard for the condition of his necessitous and wearied soldiers, felt compelled to renounce his purpose of attack. With rapid decision he recalled his troops, who were already making inroads in the valley of the Arno, disencumbered himself of his last pieces of artillery, and on the 26th of April struck the road to Rome.

Not only necessity and the conviction that at Rome he would meet with less opposition, but his ambition to become Viceroy of the whole of Italy urged Bourbon forward on the city. His soldiers, anticipating the plunder of Florence, at first showed signs of mutiny, but he succeeded in quieting them with visions of Rome, where he would “make all of them rich”. In hot haste they came to Montepulciano and Montefiascone. Neither the slow operations of the army of the League, nor the unwonted rain-storms, nor the gnawing want of provisions, could keep back the Imperialists, who were joined on the way by many adventurers eager to have a share in the spoils. On the 2nd of May they had reached Viterbo.

Clement, who up till now had almost intentionally shut his eyes and refused to see his danger, perceived at last that Bourbon had tricked him and that nothing could save him except a desperate struggle. On the 25th of April he rejoined the League. The Duke of Urbino was implored to render help; Giovanni Antonio Orsini was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the newly organized Papal cavalry, while to Renzo da Ceri was entrusted the defence of Rome. But for this the one thing necessary was lacking—money. In vain the Pope called upon the well-to-do citizens to give voluntary contributions. Greed and infatuation were so great, that Domenico Massimi himself, the richest man in Rome, only offered to lend the sum of 100 ducats!

The Pope was besought on every side to raise money for the defence of Rome by the sale of Cardinals’ hats. But Clement, even at this moment incapable of decision, refused his assent. But when, on the 3rd of May, he was informed that Bourbon had already advanced beyond Viterbo, he was driven to take the step so repugnant to him. But it was already too late to obtain the payments from his nominees; these were Benedetto Accolti, Niccolò Gaddi, Agostino Spinola, Ercole Gonzaga, Marino Grimani, and the French Chancellor Du Prat. The Pope could not make up his mind to fly to Civita Vecchia. Quite in contradiction to his usual character, he now displayed an extraordinary confidence. On the 3rd of May he rode through the city, encouraging the citizens, who were determined to defend Rome to the uttermost, and on the 4th he placed Bourbon under the ban of the greater excommunication.

If Clement entirely underrated his danger, the principal blame must be laid on his blind confidence in Renzo da Ceri. The latter, with the utmost assurance, set all fears at naught, and declared that the four thousand men he had raised were ample protection, for so great a city as Rome, against the undisciplined and famished hordes of Bourbon; he went so far as to boast that the city itself could hold out, even were the enemy so successful as to possess themselves of the right bank of the Tiber; he therefore even refused to destroy the bridges. That Renzo placed the greatest confidence in his hastily organized bands, recruited from stablemen, mechanics, and all sorts of persons inexperienced in the ways of war, is shown from the fact that on the 4th of May he sent a message through Giberti to Guido Rangoni, who had brought more than eight thousand men from the army of the League, that Rome was so perfectly secure that from six to eight hundred men, armed with guns, would be a sufficient reinforcement; he advised Rangoni to return to the League with the remainder of his forces, as he would there be of much greater use than at Rome!

A herald of Bourbon, coming to demand the 300,000 ducats from the Pope, received no answer. From the Vatican Clement VII could see the enemy advance across the Neronian fields; but even then he saw no serious danger, especially as they were not supported by artillery. Besides, there was the hourly expectation of the arrival of the army of the League.

Clement VII was confirmed in his mistaken conception of the state of things by the defeat of a troop of landsknechts at the Ponte Molle by Orazio Baglioni. The Mantuan envoy, who reported this on the 5th of May, added, “The Pope is in the best spirits”. Yet on the 4th of May such a panic had broken out in the city that it seemed as if the enemy were already within the walls. Thousands tried to find a safe hiding-place for their property. Many, in spite of prohibitions, fled from Rome.

Meanwhile the Imperialist army had surrounded Rome as far as the Janiculum. The main body encamped in the vineyards behind St. Peter’s. In the cloisters of S. Onofrio, the headquarters of Bourbon, a council of war had decided that the Leonine city should be stormed on the following morning without further preparation. The state of the army was desperate. Deprived of the necessities of life, in an empty and barren country with an enemy in their rear, they now saw before them their only means of deliverance: this was the capture of Rome by storm, the walls of which were defended, as they knew, by only a handful of brave soldiers. Victory or death was Bourbon’s watchword. With longing eyes his soldiers, craving for booty, counted up the prize of victory, now, at last, lying before them. The goal to which they had pressed through so many unheard-of hardships was now reached. The rays of that setting sun of the 5th of May lit up for the last, time all the magnificence of the Rome of the Renaissance, then the fairest and richest city in all the world.

CHAPTER V.

The Sack of Rome. —Captivity of the Pope.

On the morning of the 6th of May, Monday after Misericordia Sunday, a thick fog covered the low, damp levels of the Tiber. In Rome, all through the night, the great bell of the Capitol had rung the tocsin and called the defenders to their posts. They stood along the walls in fighting order, but tried in vain to discern through the impenetrable vapour the movements in the enemy’s camp. Yet, distinctly audible, there rose from the sea of mist a wild tumult of sounds mingled with signals of war. The Imperialist army was getting ready for the assault.

Sciarra Colonna, with light cavalry and Italian infantry, advanced against the fortifications of the Milvian Bridge, while Melchior Frundsberg made an attack on the Trastevere at S. Pancrazio. The chief attacking party, meanwhile, moved on the Leonine city. The north and west sides, where the Belvedere and the Porta Pertusa lay, were attacked at the same time as the south side; there the Spaniards advanced and, on their right, against the Porta S. Spirito, the landsknechts did the same. The attack on the Belvedere and the Porta Pertusa, where Prince Philibert of Orange commanded, was, however, only a feint intended to deceive the defenders and turn their attention from the south side. Here, at the Porta Torrione (now Cavalleggieri) and the Porta S. Spirito, the weakest points of the fortifications, the attack was heaviest, undertaken without artillery, only with spears, pistols, and ladders hastily constructed out of garden palings and bound together with withes. It was a rash enterprise, but the outcome of counsels of despair.

The first onset was successfully repelled by the defenders, although the latter were firing at random into the fog. The Spaniards as well as the landsknechts were forced to withdraw with heavy losses; a second attack also failed. Bourbon, who saw that everything was at stake, thereupon placed himself at the head of the assailants. He succeeded in reaching the walls of the Porta Torrione, near the site, in later days, of the Cesi gardens and villa (now the Collegio di S. Monica). Here there was a very badly secured position, easily exposed to attack. One of the first of the storming party to fall was Bourbon himself, who had pressed forward with headlong rashness. A bullet struck him down; although mortally wounded, he yet had the presence of mind to ask those around him to cover his body with a cloak. In spite of this precaution, the fall of the Commander-in-Chief became known immediately to the Imperialist army. It caused such consternation and alarm that the fighting was for a while suspended. But the enemy, now breathing vengeance, soon resumed their attack on the walls, from which a deadly fire was pouring. This time the hazard was successful, being favoured by the fog, now so thick that it was hardly possible for a man to recognize his neighbour; for the same reason the heavy guns on St. Angelo were kept entirely out of action. About 6 A.M. the Spaniards succeeded in breaking through the walls of the city at the Porta Torrione by making skilful use of a badly guarded position ; almost at the same time the landsknechts scaled the walls of S. Spirito.

Fierce street fighting was carried on in the Borgo, especially near St. Peter’s and S. Spirito. The Roman militia, in their desperate resistance, rivalled the loyal Swiss Guards, who had taken up their position near the obelisk, then still standing not far from the German Campo Santo; these troops were nearly annihilated. A testimony to their valour may still be read today in an inscription near the Church of S. Spirito, which relates that there the Papal goldsmith, Bernardino Passeri, fell fighting for the sacred cause of the city of his fathers, after having slain many of the enemy and captured a standard.

The whole Borgo was soon ringing with the cries of victory of the Imperialists, who, as they rushed irresistibly onwards, cut down all who crossed their path, without regard to age or sex. Almost all the sick in the hospital of S. Spirito, even the inmates of the neighbouring orphanage, were murdered. Blood flowed before the altars in St. Peter's. Already in some places plundering was set on foot, not indeed by soldiers but by the camp rabble for commands had been given to refrain from plunder until the city was completely taken. These were so strictly carried out that the soldiers were under orders to slaughter all beasts of burden found in the Leonine city in order to prevent the transport of booty, and therewith the disorganization of the bodies of troops. The Imperialists were prevented from crossing the bridge of St. Angelo by the hail of cannon balls from the guns of the fortress.

The rush of the enemy into the Leonine city had taken place so suddenly, in the midst of the rolling vapours, that Renzo da Ceri lost his head and fled distractedly to the Vatican. There Clement was praying in his private chapel, when the approaching sound of the cries of battle told him what had happened. The Pope up to this moment had trusted implicitly in Renzo’s promises. The latter had pledged his head that the enemy would not make their way into Rome. Nothing but rapid flight could now save the chief Pastor of the Church. A Spanish account says that if he had lingered as long as the time it takes to say three Credos, he would have fallen a prisoner. With sobs and lamentations he hastened along the covered way leading to St. Angelo; from the small windows of the castle he saw the panic-stricken knots of fugitives cut down in pitiless fury by Spaniards and Germans. The historian Paolo Giovio was of help to Clement in his flight. He flung his violet prelate’s mantle over the white clothing of the Pope so that the latter should not be an easy mark for his enemies as he hurried across the open wooden bridge connecting St. Angelo with the covered way.

To the same asylum of refuge fled the non-Imperialist Cardinals, also Giberti, Jacopo Salviati, Schonberg, the Ambassadors of France and England, the officers of the Papal Court, and a throng of men, women, and children. Cardinal Pucci, who, in his flight, had been thrown from his horse and trampled upon, yet managed to reach the castle at the last moment; Cardinal Armellini was drawn up in a basket. When the drawbridge went up and the rusty portcullis fell, three thousand persons were computed to have found shelter in the stronghold. Even then, many others pressed forward, and fell into the moat. “We stood there”, narrates the sculptor Raffaello da Montelupo, who, like Benvenuto Cellini, was manning the castle guns, “and looked on at all that passed as if we had been spectators of a festa. It was impossible to fire, for had we done so, we should have killed more of our own people than of the enemy. Between the church of S. Maria Transpontina and the gate of the castle more than from four to five thousand persons were crowded together, pell-mell, and, as far as we could see, hardly fifty landsknechts behind them. Two standard-bearers of the latter forced their way through the turmoil with uplifted banners as far as the great gate of the castle, but were shot down at the head of the bridge”.

Many inhabitants of the Leonine city sought refuge in flight ; so reckless was the rush on the boats that many were swamped and sank ; not a few persons flung themselves in despair into the Tiber. The Imperialists were forced to withdraw from the Leonine city, where the guns of St. Angelo made occupation impossible. The commanders accordingly determined to transfer the attack to the second suburb on the right bank of the Tiber, to Trastevere, from which three bridges (Ponte Sisto, Ponte Quattro Capi, and Ponte S. Maria) led into Rome proper. Since the Imperialists could now make use of the captured artillery, they quickly attained their object, the resistance they encountered being at the same time very much weaker. St. Angelo indeed kept up a repeated fire, but the guns had not sufficient range to do serious damage to the besiegers and prevent the capture of Trastevere.

It was now the chief object of the Imperialists to act with the utmost possible despatch before the army of the League drew near and the Romans recovered from their panic and broke down the bridges. The commanders had difficulty in keeping together their men, eager for plunder, and ordered the separate divisions to advance on Ponte Sisto. It was about seven in the evening when the first columns arrived there. Although it sounds incredible, it is yet a fact, that the means taken to secure even this most important point were utterly inadequate. The bridge had not been blown up, and the gate-house was only weakly defended. The question may be asked How was this possible? The Roman Marcello Alberini, who as a young man had lived through the capture of the city, supplies the answer. The defence was organized as badly as possible ; from the beginning there was no one central command. Apart from this, the defenders, who were none too numerous, were dispersed along the entire distance of the long line of the city walls and kept watch at points where the least danger threatened. Many deserted their posts because no one brought them their victuals. Others paraded the streets pompously with military airs, and believed, Alberini adds in bitter irony, that they were thus defending their native land. Besides, the Ghibellines and satellites of the Colonna thought that they had nothing to fear if the Imperialists were victorious; many even wished that Rome might come under the rule of Charles V. Then, again, the consequences of Bourbon’s death were greatly exaggerated, and some were convinced to a certainty that the enemy’s army, having lost its leader, would immediately break up.1 When, at last, the magnitude of the danger was recognized, attempts were made to open negotiations which, from the nature of the case, could have no result. But the populace, as if bewildered by fear, ran about the streets, and people of substance tried to conceal their property in the houses of Imperialist persons. Only a few high-minded and spirited men resolved to raise a couple of hundred horsemen to defend the Ponte Sisto. But those brave men were not able to check for long the inroad of the enemy. From the roof of the palace of the Cancelleria, Alberini saw how Pierpaolo Tibaldi, Giulio Vallati, and Giambattista Savelli fell like heroes, whereupon the leaders gave up all for lost and fled.

The Imperialists now rushed like a mountain torrent in flood through the streets of the capital. “All were doomed to certain death who were found in the streets of the city ; the same fate was meted out to all, young or old, woman or man, priest or monk. Everywhere rang the cry: Empire! Spain! Victory!”

Nevertheless, the Imperialists did not yet feel secure. At any moment the army of the League might appear before Rome. Even if a few, here and there, had begun to plunder, the generals were still able to keep control over the nucleus of the army in its appointed divisions. The landsknechts held the Campo di Fiore, the Spaniards the Piazza Navona, while Ferrante Gonzaga watched St. Angelo. These measures of precaution proved, however, to be unnecessary. Guido Rangoni had, indeed, appeared in the evening at the Ponte Salaro with five hundred light cavalry and eight hundred musketeers, but on hearing of the fall of Rome had immediately fallen back on Otricoli. When the victorious soldiery saw that no one disputed their quickly won success, their leaders were no longer in a position to hold them together. The first to break away in their hunger for booty were the Spaniards; they were soon followed by the landsknechts. Twenty thousand disorganized soldiers, to whom a rabble of vagabonds and banditti had attached themselves, now spread through the streets of the ill-fated capital of the world, to plunder, burn, and kill in accordance with “the rights of war.” Carrying lighted wax candles in their hands, these savage bands passed from house to house in the darkness of the night; they took, however, only gold and silver; whoever offered resistance was at once cut down.

On the morning of the 7th of May, Rome presented a spectacle that baffled description. It was, in the words of Francesco Gonzaga, a sight that might have moved a stone to compassion. Everywhere there was the most ruthless devastation, everywhere rapine and murder. The air re-echoed to the wailings of women, the plaintive cries of children, the barking of dogs, the neighing of chargers, the clash of arms, and the crash of timber from the burning houses. All accounts, even the Spanish, agree that no age, no sex, no station, no nationality, neither Spaniard nor German, neither church nor hospital, was spared.

The soldiers began by carrying off from the houses and palaces all objects of value; they then set a price of ransom on all those whom they had robbed, on men, women, and children, and even on servants; those who were not able to pay were first tortured in the cruellest manner and then murdered. But even the payment of their ransom did not help these wretched victims; this only led to fresh exactions and fresh suffering. Often, when a house was stripped clean of its contents, it was then set on fire. “Hell,” said a Venetian report of the 10th of May 1527, “has nothing to compare with the present state of Rome”. In many places the streets were covered with dead bodies; beneath them lay many a child under ten years of age who had been flung out of the windows by the soldiers.

Still more terrible was the fate of defenceless women and maidens. Neither tender youth nor venerable age nor noble birth shielded the unhappy victims from brutal ill-usage and dishonour. Many were violated and murdered before the eyes of their husbands and fathers; even the daughter of the wealthy Domenico Massimi, whose sons had been slain and his palace burned, fell a victim. More than one contemporary declared that the deeds of the Vandals, Goths, and Turks were outdone. Many young girls, driven to despair by the dishonour wreaked upon them, flung themselves into the Tiber; others were put to death by their own fathers to save them from the extremity of shame. Spaniards, Germans, and Italians rivalled one another in cruelty towards the unhappy inhabitants ; but all accounts coincide in giving to the Spaniards, among whom were many Jews and “Marani,” the palm for ingenuity in unearthing treasure and contriving tortures, although the Italians, and especially the Neapolitans, were, on the whole, scarcely second to them.

A letter of the Venetian, Giovan Barozzi, written to his brother on the 12th of May 1527, describes with appalling truth and directness the unspeakable misery of the Romans. “I am”, he says, “a prisoner of the Spaniards. They have fixed my ransom at 1000 ducats on the pretext that I am an official. They have, besides, tortured me twice, and finished by lighting a fire under the soles of my feet. For six days I had only a little bread and water. Dear brother, do not let me perish thus miserably. Get the ransom money together by begging. For God’s sake do not abandon me. If I do not pay the ransom, now amounting to 140 ducats, in twenty-six days they will hack me in pieces. For the love of God and of the Blessed Virgin help me. All the Romans are prisoners, and if a man does not pay his ransom he is killed. The sack of Genoa and of Rhodes was child’s play to this. Help me, dear Antonio; help me for God's sake, and that as quickly as possible”. The sufferings here spoken of were by no means the most severe; the French physician, Jean Cave, in his account of the sack, remarks that no method of torture was left untried; he gives some examples, in illustration, which the pen shrinks from transcribing. Luigi Guicciardini relates things of, if possible, even greater atrocity. A form of torture which seems to have been especially in favour with the Spaniards was to bind their prisoners fast and leave them to die of slow starvation. The excesses of German landsknechts were not marked by such inventive cruelty. They gave way rather to a stupid and brutal vandalism. Sots and gamblers, knowing nothing of Italy and its language, they were systematically overreached by the shrewd Spaniards, who knew how to single out for themselves the richest houses. The Germans also, in their simplicity, were satisfied for the most part with much smaller ransoms. In disorderly companies they passed through the streets of the city, not sparing even their own countrymen, dressed up in a ridiculous manner in magnificently embroidered silk raiment, with gold chains round their necks and precious stones twisted through their beards, while their faces were begrimed with powder and smoke.

Since the landsknechts were for the most part Lutheran, they did not neglect this opportunity of heaping scorn and ridicule on the Papacy. With the red hats of Cardinals on their heads and the long robes of the Princes of the Church flung round them, they paraded the streets mounted on asses and indulged in every conceivable mummery. A Bavarian captain, Wilhelm von Sandizell, even dressed up as the Pope and bade his comrades, masquerading as Cardinals, kiss his hands and feet. He gave his blessing with a glass of wine, a salutation which his companions acknowledged by drinking to him in return. The whole gang then made their way to the Leonine city, to the sounds of trumpets and fifes, and there proclaimed Luther as Pope in such a way that the inmates of St. Angelo became aware of their doings. A .landsknecht called Grünwald was said to have shouted up to the fortress that he wished he could devour a bit of the Pope’s body, because he was a hinderer of the Word of God. Another carried about a crucifix fastened on the point of his pike before finally breaking it in pieces.

It is almost impossible to describe the destruction and sacrilege wrought by the landsknechts in the churches yet the Spaniards and Italians did not fall far short of them. Every church, even the national churches of the Spaniards and the Germans, was plundered. What the generosity and piety of centuries had amassed in costly vestments, vessels, and works of art, was, in the space of a few days, carried off by this rude soldiery, flung away on play or wine or sold to the Jews. The precious settings of relics were torn off; in many instances even tombs were broken open and ransacked in the search for treasures. Hands were laid on the Blessed Sacrament of the altar itself; the consecrated species were flung on the ground and desecrated in all manner of ways. “Unbelievers”, says a Spanish account, “could not have behaved worse”. It was reported that some soldiers clothed an ass in bishop’s vestments, led him into a church, and tried to force a priest to incense the beast solemnly, and even to offer him the Sacred Host. The priest, on refusing, was cut in pieces.

The desecration of churches was carried to such a pitch that they were turned into stables; even St. Peter’s did not escape this fate, for there also tombs were violated, among others that of Julius II. The head of St. Andrew was thrown on the ground, the napkin of St. Veronica, a relic deeply venerated during the Middle Ages, was stolen and offered for sale in Roman hostelries. A famous crucifix belonging to one of the seven principal altars of St, Peter’s was hidden away in the clothes of a landsknecht countless relics and costly objects were at this time purloined; the Holy Lance was fastened by a German soldier to his pike, and carried in derision through the Borgo. Although the resting-place of the Princes of the Apostles was desecrated, yet the actual tomb of St. Peter was left uninjured. The chapel Sancta Sanctorum, declared in an inscription to be the most sacred spot on earth, was plundered; happily the special treasure of the chapel remained undisturbed in its huge enclosure of iron.

The fury of the captors wreaked itself with special cruelty on all persons of ecclesiastical status. A large proportion of the priests and monks who fell into the hands of the landsknechts were murdered. Many were sold publicly as captives of war; others were made to put on women’s clothing and exposed to shocking ribaldry. The Spaniards made it their main business to extort money from the clergy. The landsknechts declared that they had promised to God to murder all priests, and they acted accordingly; Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Protonotaries, Abbots were ill-treated, fined, and murdered. Venerable priests well stricken in years were treated with violence. The Bishop of Potenza, eighty years of age, being unable to pay his ransom, was at once put to death. The Bishop of Terracina, in his ninetieth year, failing to give the 30,000 ducats demanded of him, was publicly put up for sale, with a truss of straw on his head, like a beast in the cattle market. Other ecclesiastics had their noses and ears cut off, and were forced to perform the lowest services.-

Still more terrible were the sufferings endured by the nuns. Some succeeded at the last hour in securing safe places of concealment. More than a hundred and sixty who had taken refuge in a convent near S. Lorenzo in Paneperna were, on payment of money, protected by a company of landsknechts from their own comrades. One of the nuns of S. Cosimato in Trastevere, all of whom had fled there in a body, describes the deadly agony which she and her companions, mostly women of noble birth, went through. The same chronicle gives a vivid description of the spoliation of the rich church of S. Cosimato, where an image of the Infant Christ Himself, carved in wood, was shattered in pieces. But what was all this compared with the fate of those religious houses of women whose inmates had no hope of escape, as, for example, the nuns of S. Maria in Campo Marzo, S. Rufina, and others! It can easily be understood that the atrocities committed were indescribable. The victims of this bestial rapine were to be counted happy who, after being robbed of all, were slain; the majority of those who survived were reserved for a fate harder than death. Half-naked, or huddled up, in mockery, in Cardinals' robes, they were dragged through the streets to the houses of ill-fame, or sold singly in the markets for two ducats, or even less, apiece. Here again the Spaniards committed the worst abominations. The German landsknechts, at first, were content for the most part with extorting ransoms and securing precious belongings and sometimes they even protected persecuted innocence from their own comrades; but later on they followed the example of the others, and, in not a few cases, tried, indeed, to outvie them in their excesses.

The landsknechts, among whom were many Lutherans, had shown no pity, from the first, for the clergy and the Cardinals, who, moreover, had been handled badly enough by the ruthless Spaniards. Even the Cardinals with Imperialist sympathies did not escape wholesale robbery, savage ill-usage, and cruel mockery. For eight days the palaces of Cardinals Piccolomini, Valle, Enkevoirt, and Cesarini, situated in the Rione S. Eustachio, were spared, their owners having secured the protection of Spanish officers, who declared that they would take nothing from the Cardinals themselves, but demanded large sums from the numerous fugitives who found asylum in those palaces. At first they asked for 100,000 ducats from each palace; but afterwards were satisfied on receiving 45,000 from Cesarini, 40,000 from Enkevoirt, and 35,000 from Valle and Piccolomini each. These sums had to be paid in ducats to the full amount ; all other coins and also precious stones were rejected. But the landsknechts were now also anxious to visit these palaces, and finally the Spaniards announced that they could not guarantee any further protection. The landsknechts fell first on the palace of Cardinal Piccolomini, who thought himself perfectly safe, as he and his family were, from old times, friends of the Emperor and the Germans. After a four hours’ fight the palace was taken and plundered. The Cardinal, who had to disburse 5000 ducats, was dragged, with his head uncovered, amid blows and kicks, to the Borgo. In consequence Cardinals Cesarini, Valle, and Enkevoirt also felt no longer safe, and fled to the Palazzo Colonna. They had hardly left their residences before looting and destruction began. Not content with the huge booty they found there, the landsknechts laid a heavy ransom on every Roman who had taken refuge in these palaces. In addition to this the three hundred and ninety persons in the Palazzo Valle had been fined already, on the 8th of May, by Fabrizio Maramaldo, a captain in the Imperialist army. The Cardinal and his household on this occasion had been mulcted in 7000 ducats ; the other fugitives had been rated individually according to their means. The total sum raised in this one palace alone—of an Imperialist Cardinal—amounted to 34,455 ducats.

Cardinals Cajetan and Ponzetti were also dragged through the streets, fettered, and subjected to ill-usage and ridicule. Ponzetti, who was also an Imperialist, had to pay a ransom of 20,000 ducats he died in consequence of the injuries he had received. The Franciscan Cardinal Numai, then suffering from serious illness, was carried on a bier through the streets by Lutheran landsknechts singing dirges. They then took him to a church, where a mock funeral service was gone through, and threatened to fling him into a grave if he did not pay a ransom. He was afterwards carried to some friends who were bound over to be his sureties. Cristofero Marcello, Archbishop of Corfu, was called upon to pay 6000 ducats; not having the money, he was flung into imprisonment at Gaeta under threats of death.

A heavy ransom was demanded even from the Portuguese Ambassador, who was very nearly related to Charles V, and on his refusing to pay, his palace was plundered. As several bankers had transferred their property thither for safety, the soldiers came into possession of an exceedingly rich haul. The Florentine banker, Bernardo Bracci, was taken by Spanish soldiers to the Bank of the Foreigners, where he had to pay down his ransom of 8206 ducats. On the Ponte Sisto he met the captain. La Motte, who had been appointed governor of the city, who threatened to fling Bracci into the Tiber unless he laid down an additional 600 ducats; Bracci paid and so saved his life. Even Perez, the Secretary of the Imperial Embassy, was in danger of his life at the hands of savage landsknechts, and suffered heavy losses in money and property. The Emperor's procurator, George Sauermann, was so completely despoiled that he was reduced to beggary, and died in the street from hunger and exhaustion. No place afforded safety; the very hospitals, among them even that of the Germans, were not spared.

The Venetian Ambassador, Domenico Venier, and the envoys of Mantua, Ferrara, and Urbino, had fled to the great palace of Isabella, Marchioness of Mantua, at SS. Apostoli. This high-minded Princess had also given asylum in her fortress-palace to a multitude of men and women of noble birth. While it was still night her son, Ferrante Gonzaga, came in haste to protect her; he was unable, however, to prevent the sum of 60,000 ducats being levied as ransom on those to whom his mother had given shelter. Although a watch of Spaniards and landsknechts now guarded the house, it was repeatedly threatened by turbulent bands of the captors. The Marchioness was in deadly fear. On the 13th of May she fled to Civita Vecchia with her escaped the Venetian Ambassador, disguised as a porter. In the letter in which Venier announced his safety to the Doge, he remarks, “The destruction of Jerusalem could not have been worse than that of Rome”.

Pompeo Colonna appeared in Rome on the 10th of May. He found his palace sacked, and the streets covered with dead bodies the scene of cruel desolation moved even this hard man to tears. Giovio states that Colonna took urgent steps to mitigate the misery and gave protection to several fugitives ; but with him some thousand peasants from the environs had made their way into Rome, ready to seize on what had been left over from the pillage of the soldiery. Not only the iron railings, but even the very nails were wrenched by them from the walls of the houses. The Pope's villa on Monte Mario was now given to the flames.

The Frenchman Grolier, who betook himself for safety to the house of a Spanish Bishop, has described, in striking words, the scene that met his eye as he looked, from the terrace of his place of refuge, over the city now given up to fire and sword : “From every side came cries, the clash of arms, the shrieks of women and children, the crackling of flames, the crash of falling roofs. We stood motionless with fear and listened, as if fate had singled us out alone to be the spectators of the ruin of our homes”. There was hardly a house in Rome at last which was not injured. Even the wretched huts of the water-carriers and porters were not spared. “In the whole city”, ran one account, “there was not a soul above three years of age who had not to purchase his safety”. Several paid ransoms twice or even three times over many were in such bodily suffering that they preferred an immediate death to further torture.

It is hardly possible to compute the number of deaths with certainty. In the Borgo and Trastevere alone, two thousand corpses were cast into the Tiber, nine thousand eight hundred were buried. The booty of the soldiers was incalculable. At the lowest estimate it must have amounted in money and objects of value to more than one million ducats, in payments of ransom to three or four millions. Clement VII estimated the total damage at ten millions in gold. Many soldiers had plundered coin in such quantity that they were not able even to drag their booty away; each vagabond camp-follower had as many ducats as he could fill his cap with.

With a pitiless coolness which makes one shudder, the Protestant hero Sebastian Schertlin von Burtenbach relates in his autobiography the misery of the Romans whereby their victors were enriched: “In the year 1527, on the 6th of May, we took Rome by storm, put over 6000 men to the sword, plundered the whole city, seized all that we could find in all the churches and anywhere, burned down a great part of the city, and seldom spared, tearing and destroying all copyists' work, registers, letters, and state documents”.

The last clause touches on an aspect of the sack of Rome which moves the historian to grief: the destruction, namely, of historical documents and literary treasures. The library of the monastery of S. Sabina, the precious private collections and manuscripts of many learned scholars, were scattered or burnt. Six books of Giovio’s history perished. Cardinal Accolti lost his whole library. The remarkable gaps in the private and monastic archives of Rome; the poverty, above all, of the Capitoline records, are certainly a consequence of the destruction wrought at this time. In many despatches of this period it is expressly stated that original Papal documents and valuable manuscripts were lying about the streets, or were used as litter for the horses. Cardinal Trivulzio mentions in particular the destruction of the Apostolic Camera, where many volumes of registers were torn up and the leaden seals of Bulls melted down for bullets. Clement VII himself mentions that all the deeds of the Secret Chancery fell into the soldiers' hands. The Vatican Library, containing the most precious collection of manuscripts in the world, barely escaped destruction; this was saved only owing to the circumstance that Philibert of Orange had his headquarters in the palace; nevertheless, it sustained serious losses.

Orange occupied the Papal apartments. He caused his charger to be stabled close to him lest the animal should be stolen; the most beautiful chambers in the Vatican, even the Sixtine Chapel, were turned into horse-stalls. There is also no doubt that works of art, especially marble statues, were destroyed or taken away. Such famous antiques, in the Vatican, as the bronzes of the Capitol, the masterpieces of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and other artists of the Renaissance, luckily suffered no serious damage. This can be quite well explained by the fact that the soldiery only laid hands, for the most part, on those works of art which attracted them by their adornments of gold, silver, and precious stones. Thus the sack caused irremediable loss among the numerous specimens of the goldsmith's and jeweller’s craft. The gold cross of Constantine, the golden rose presented by Martin V to the Church of St. Peter, and the tiara of Nicholas V were stolen.

For eight days, according to the lowest reckoning, the work of robbery and murder went on unchecked. An order, issued on the third day, that plundering was to cease, was totally disregarded. The want of discipline among the pillaging soldiery was such that if the army of the League had arrived suddenly, it would have hardly met with serious resistance; the gates of the city were never once guarded. Philibert of Orange was nominally the Commander-in-Chief; La Motte was Governor of the city. If the latter extorted money under threats of death, it can easily be supposed that his subordinates would also exact ransom from their captives. This form of torture was unending; many must have redeemed themselves six times over. The thirst for blood had been quenched, the thirst for money remained the very sewers were searched, and yet many a hidden treasure escaped the robbers.

While dogs were gnawing the corpses around them, the soldiers gave themselves up to dice and wine. At the Ponte Sisto, in the Borgo, and on the Campo di Fiore, relates a Roman notary, gold-embroidered garments of silk and satin, woollen and linen cloths, rings, pearls, and other costly articles in a confused medley, proceeds of the sack, were sold, German women had whole sacks of such things, which they traded in at stiff prices; but, once sold, all was soon stolen again. “Children and beggars were rich; the rich were poor”. “I”, says this narrator in conclusion, “was taken prisoner together with my wife by the Spaniards, and had to pay 100 ducats. After losing all my property, I fled first to Tivoli and then to Palestrina”. The same fate befell thousands; the unhappy victims of the sack left Rome half naked, and sought in the surrounding districts the means wherewith to appease their hunger. Among them were citizens who, a short time before, had stalled ten horses in their stables.

Many soldiers made off with their booty at once and went to Naples; others soon gambled it all away, and, as Brandano, the prophet of Siena, now set at liberty by the Imperialists, had once foretold, “the gains of priests, and the plunder of war, quickly come and quickly go”. With menaces they demanded their pay. Moreover, on the 17th of May, some cases of plague had begun to appear. As all provisions had been destroyed in the most wanton manner, a food famine threatened to break out; eatables were worth their weight in gold an egg cost a giulio, a loaf two ducats. Bloody quarrels, also, were of daily occurrence between the Spaniards and landsknechts. Scattered over the whole city, the army was on the verge of total disruption. In a case of alarm the officers had to go from house to house and seek out their men one by one.

All these conditions must have made Philibert heartily anxious to come to terms of peace with the Pope. Clement VII, who found his position in the castle of St. Angelo a desperate one, had already, on the 7th of May, entered into communication with the Imperialists. Bartolomeo Gattinara came to the castle, where the Pope, with tears in his eyes, told him that he flung himself on the Emperor's magnanimity. On the 9th of May a treaty was proposed, in accordance with which the fortress of St. Angelo, Ostia, Civita Vecchia, Modena, Parma, and Piacenza were to be surrendered, 150,000 gold scudi paid to the Imperialists, 200,000 ducats levied on the States of the Church, and the Colonna family reinstated; the Pope and the Cardinals were to be conveyed to Naples. But the Germans now made difficulties; they announced that they would not leave Rome until their arrears of pay, amounting to 300,000 ducats, were paid. Gattinara was at his wits’ end; the army of the League might appear at any moment, and the whole question would be reopened.

On the night of the 12th of May two leaders of the League party made an attempt to rescue the Pope; this bold enterprise was baulked only by an accident. New negotiations now ensued, but Clement was, as always, undecided. Du Bellay described the Pope's attitude in the phrase, “Today peace, tomorrow war; today action, tomorrow rest”. Meanwhile, in the hard-pressed castle of St. Angelo, the position grew more difficult day by day. The arrival of the forces of the League, with whom communication had been opened by means of beacon signals, was hoped for in vain.

Clement VII would have liked best to treat with Lannoy, who was lying in Siena; on the 18th of May he asked the Duke of Urbino to give the Viceroy a free-conduct to Rome. On the 19th, Gattinara, the Abbot of Najera, and Vespasiano Colonna came again to St. Angelo, where the Pope, after long consultation with the Cardinals, decided to surrender. Nothing was wanting to the new terms of capitulation, which had undergone alteration in some particulars, save the signatures, when the news was brought that the army of the League was drawing near. Thereupon the French party succeeded in bringing the Pope to a change of mind. During the night the Imperial council of war had determined to begin the actual siege of the castle. Entrenchments were at once thrown up, reinforcements ordered from Naples, and every disposition taken to repel any attempt at relief on the part of the Leaguers. The latter, with a force 15,000 strong, had at length, on the 22nd of May, reached Isola, nine miles from Rome, where Cardinal Egidio Canisio also joined them with auxiliary troops. But notwithstanding the eloquent representations of Guicciardini and the appeals for help from St. Angelo, the council of war decided not to make any attempt at relief. The soldiers, many of whom had already gone over to the enemy, were not to be trusted, and on the 2nd of June the camp was broken up and the retreat on Viterbo begun.

The departure of the army of the League, without striking a blow, has been branded by Ariosto in scathing words :

Vedete gli omicidii e le rapine

In ogni parte far Roma dolente;

E con incendi e stupri le divine

 E le profane cose ire ugualmente.

II campo de la lega le ruine

 Mira d' appresso, e 'l pianto e 'l grido sente,

E dove ir dovria inanzi, torna in dietro,

E prender lascia il successor di Pietro.

The Pope’s enemies, burning for a fight, planted their cannon on Monte Mario and laid mines in order that they might, in the last extremity, blow up the Pope and all about him.

Such was the situation when, on the 1st of June, Schonberg left the castle and approached the Imperialists; at the same time Pompeo Colonna was invited to have audience with Clement VII. The two enemies soon stood face to face with tears in their eyes. Colonna did all in his power to facilitate an understanding. On the 5th of June an agreement was reached; the conditions were: the surrender of the castle, of the strongholds of Ostia, Civita Vecchia, Civita Casteliana, as well as of the cities of Piacenza, Parma, and Modena; the payment of 400,000 ducats—100,000 at once, 50,000 within twenty days; the remainder to be collected by means of a levy on the States of the Church. The Pope, with the thirteen Cardinals who were with him, was still to remain, for the time being, a prisoner in St. Angelo. As soon as the 100,000 ducats were paid, the surrender of the strong places carried out, and plenipotentiaries appointed for the surrender of the cities, he would be allowed to withdraw to Naples. As security for the money payments, the following were made hostages: Giovanni Maria del Monte, Archbishop of Manfredonia, Onofrio Bartolini, Archbishop of Pisa, Antonio Pucci, Bishop of Pistoja, Giberti, Jacopo Salviati, the father of the Cardinal, Lorenzo Ridolfi, and Simone Ricasoli. Further, the Pope was to restore to the Colonna all their possessions, to reinstate Cardinal Pompeo in all his dignities, and to remove all censures from the Imperialists.

On the 7th of June the Papal garrison left the castle of St. Angelo, whereupon four companies of Spanish and German troops marched in. The Pope was entrusted to the custody of Alarcon, who had once been also the jailer of Francis I. Among the Germans who occupied St. Angelo was Schertlin von Burtenbach, who describes with ruthless brutality the sad plight in which he found the Pope and Cardinals in a narrow chamber. “They were making a great lamentation and weeping bitterly ; as for us, we all became rich”.

CHAPTER VI

The Anarchic Condition of the Papal States. —The Efforts of Henry VIII and Francis I to deliver the Pope. — The Attitude of Charles V. The Flight of Clement VII to Orvieto.

“The Pope”, wrote Guicciardini on the 21st of June 1527, “is treated as an actual prisoner. Only with the greatest difficulty can entrance into the castle or egress from it be obtained, so that it is almost impossible to have speech with him. They have not left him ten scudi worth of property. He is beset daily with fresh demands, and not the slightest attention is shown to his wishes regarding those of his servants who remain in the city”.

There was no limit to the rapacity of the Imperialists. A Ferrarese agent reports that Bartolomeo Gattinara went the length of taking from the Pope’s finger a diamond ring worth 150,000 ducats and of forcing him to sign a paper containing a promise of the Cardinalate. Clement himself told Roberto Boschetti that “the Spaniards had robbed him before his eyes of the chalice he used at Mass”. Clement could only regain his freedom by consenting to the hard conditions of the treaty. But in respect of these very conditions the most serious difficulties at once arose. In the first place, the Spaniards only held Ostia. In the upper parts of the Papal States not the slightest concern was shown for the commands of the captive Pope. Civita Castellana was held by the troops of the League; Andrea Doria held Civita Vecchia and refused to surrender the town until the 14,000 ducats he was called upon to raise were paid. Parma and Piacenza refused flatly to open their gates to the Imperial plenipotentiaries, and by the beginning of June Modena was in the hands of the Duke of Ferrara. The Venetians, “the allied associates” of the unfortunate Pope, in their desire to acquire territory, had taken advantage of the situation to lay hands on Ravenna and Cervia. Sigismondo Malatesta, favoured by Duke Alfonso, had made himself master of Rimini, while Imola had fallen to the lot of Giovanni da Sassatello, and Perugia to the sons of Giampaolo Baglioni. Not less painful to Clement than these losses in the States was the rebellion of his native Florence.

Drawn into the anti-Imperial alliance by the Pope, the Florentines had had to make the heaviest pecuniary sacrifices. Cardinal Silvio Passerini, who had resided in Florence since 1524, a man as inconsiderate as he was selfish and avaricious, was not fitted to quell the rising discontent. His hardness and lack of understanding embittered the spirits of all. To the news of the storming of Rome the Florentines replied by an insurrection against Medicean rule, and on the 17th of May Cardinal Passerini was obliged to leave the city, taking with him his wards, Ippolito and Alessandro, the cousins of Clement VII. This was followed by the restoration of the republican government as it existed prior to 1512. Niccolo Capponi was chosen Gonfaloniere. He repressed the more serious forms of disorder, but was unable to prevent the Florentine youth, whose heads were turned by their newly acquired freedom, from destroying all the armorial escutcheons of the Medici and even the wax effigies of Leo X and Clement VII in the Church of the Annunziata.

At this time Bologna also was very nearly lost to the Pope. The situation grew worse from day to day. The provinces, in Guicciardini’s opinion, were virtually without government. “Our distress”, wrote Giberti to Gambara on the 27th of June, “passes all imagination”. Nowhere was this more felt than at Rome.

The outlook in the Eternal City, a month after the sack, is described by a Spaniard in the following words :

“In Rome, the chief city of Christendom, no bells ring, no churches are open, no Masses are said, Sundays and feast-days have ceased. The rich shops of the merchants are turned into stables; the most splendid palaces are stripped bare; many houses are burnt to the ground; in others the doors and windows are broken and carried away the streets are changed into dunghills. The stench of dead bodies is terrible; men and beasts have a common grave, and in the churches I have seen corpses that dogs have gnawn. In the public places tables are set close together at which piles of ducats are gambled for. The air rings with blasphemies fit to make good men, if such there be, wish that they were deaf I know nothing wherewith I can compare it, except it be the destruction of Jerusalem. I do not believe that if I lived for two hundred years I should see the like again. Now I recognize the justice of God, who forgets not, even if His coming tarries. In Rome all sins are openly committed, sodomy, simony, idolatry, hypocrisy, fraud. Well may we believe, then, that what has come to pass has not been by chance but by the judgment of God.”

A speedy Nemesis, however, was to overtake the victors for the cruelties they had perpetrated. Rome became their destruction; dissension, hunger, and plague threatened to annihilate the Imperialist army. The soldiers no longer obeyed their commanders; always in uproar, they demanded their pay with threats. Because the landsknechts received the first distribution of Papal payments in cash, the Spaniards felt themselves injured; nor were occasions of friction and strife wanting in their drinking bouts, and at the gaming tables. On the loth of June a bloody affray took place between Spaniards and Italians on the one side and Germans on the other. “The game”, wrote Perez on the 11th of June to Charles V, “is now entirely in the hands of the landsknechts, who, not content with having pillaged the houses of Roman citizens, are now plundering those of the Spanish and Italian officers on the pretext of looking for corn, meal, and wine”. In order to prevent further excesses Prince Philibert of Orange ordered a daily patrol of the city by three Spanish and three German officers with their companies, a measure which restored order to a certain extent. This was all the more necessary as hunger and pestilence were pressing daily with increasing severity on the Imperialists.

Already on the 30th of May Perez reported to the Emperor that the want of food was so great that, if the army remained much longer in Rome, thousands must die of hunger. A measure of wheat cost 50 ducats and more, and it was only by force of arms that the price could be kept at this figure. Those of the inhabitants who could, fled. If this state of things lasted no one would be left in Rome except Imperialists. On the 11th of June Salazar sent a like account to Gattinara: “A couple of eggs cost six giulios. One can say with truth that, as far as food and clothing are concerned, the pillage of Rome is still going on, especially by the landsknechts, who lay hands on everything they find. No one can imagine the cruelties that are committed every day. Without respect of rank, age, and nationality, people are ill-used, tortured, and slain daily. If a man cannot pay he is sold—be he an Italian or a German—in open market as a slave, and if he does not fetch a purchaser, they cast dice for him. The soldiers are absolute masters of the city. They obey no man”.  The landsknechts suffered most in consequence of their mad manner of living. “Many of our men die here of plague”, wrote Kaspar Schwegler on the 11th of June. “Many drink heavily, become delirious, and so die; the wine here is very strong”.

The warm season of the year and the effluvia from the many bodies of men and animals, to which the hastiest burial had been given, turned Rome into a “stinking slaughter-pit”. By the 22nd of July two thousand five hundred Germans had died of the plague, and the streets were covered with dead and dying. The pestilence made its way into the castle of St. Angelo and exacted fresh victims among the servants of the Pope.

Clement, in the meantime, was making strenuous efforts to collect the promised sums of money with which to recover his freedom. The Papal tiaras—only that of Julius II was spared,—after their precious jewels had been taken out and concealed, had already been melted down by Benvenuto Cellini in a wind furnace hastily constructed on the top of the castle near the statue of the angel. Now all the rest of the gold and silver plate, even chalices and images of the saints, found its way into the melting-pot. In this way 70,000 ducats were forthcoming in the second half of June. But the troops, now completely out of hand, demanded with menaces further sums. To obtain them, Clement, on the 3rd of July 1527, turned to all the Bishops of the kingdom of Naples with prayers for help. He bitterly bewailed his necessities. He was bound by the treaty to pay 400,000 ducats, but since the assets in gold and metals in St. Angelo could only produce 80,000, he was compelled to appeal to the benevolence of others. Meanwhile no time was left to await the success of these requests. On the 6th of July Clement was forced, under extremely burdensome conditions, to borrow from the Genoese banker Ansaldo Grimaldi and the Catalonian merchant Michael Girolamo Sanchez. The loan amounted to 195,000 gold scudi. It was characteristic of the Pope’s position that the lenders at once deducted from this sum the enormous accommodation charge of 45,000 scudi. Clement had, besides this, to pledge as securities the town of Benevento, the quit-rents and the church tithes of the kingdom of Naples, as well as valuables worth 30,000 scudi. To pay still further sums immediately was, in spite of the Pope's good-will, impossible, which drew from the landsknechts fearful threats.

Meanwhile hunger and pestilence had reached such a pitch in Rome that the city became uninhabitable. Those who could not fight for their daily bread at the point of the sword had to die of hunger. Men dropped down dead in the street like flies. A Venetian report put the cases of death on several days at five hundred, on others at seven hundred, and even, in some instances, at a thousand. The burial of the dead could not be thought of.

Under such circumstances the Spanish and Italian troops left the city about the middle of June and made for the more distant neighbourhood. The landsknechts remained and threatened to murder all their officers and reduce Rome to ashes. Orange and Bemelberg were in a very difficult position, but at last, on the loth of July, they succeeded in inducing their utterly disorganized troops to cross to the further side of the Tiber and there encamp on ground free from plague and wait for the Pope’s remittances. Only the garrison of St. Angelo remained in Rome.

Orange, with a hundred and fifty horsemen, went to Siena. Bemelberg and Schertlin von Burtenbach, with the landsknechts, marched on Umbria. The generals were quite powerless to cope with their tumultuous soldiery; by the time they reached Orte there was mutiny in the distrustful ranks and the general’s tent was destroyed. It was only upon the threat of laying down his command that Bemelberg brought the mutineers to their senses. The inhabitants of the small town of Narni refused to admit the wild horde and made a desperate resistance. They were cruelly chastised (17th July). “With two thousand landsknechts we made the assault without firing a shot, took the town and castle by God’s grace, and then put upwards of one thousand persons to death; women and men”.

Besides the General of the Franciscans, Francesco Quiñones, who had been appointed previous to the great catastrophe, the Pope, under the pressure of his intolerable situation, had, by the middle of May, matured his plan of sending Cardinal Farnese to Charles V, in company with the Portuguese envoy, Don Martin, in order to urge on his liberation. Farnese received comprehensive instructions drawn up in justification of the Papal policy towards Charles. After hearing, on the 24th of June, of the birth of Prince Philip, afterwards King, Clement wrote a letter of congratulation to the Emperor; he did not omit to include some references to his distress, and besought Charles to show his gratitude to God by giving freedom to the Vicar of Christ.

The mission of Farnese was displeasing to the Emperor’s commanders; they would have liked better that Schonberg and Moncada should have gone to Spain. But Clement had not sufficient confidence in Schonberg, whose devotion to Charles was notorious, to entrust him with such a charge; therefore, on the 11th and 12th of July, the letters of safe-conduct were prepared for Don Martin and Cardinal Farnese. The Cardinal started on his journey but remained in upper Italy. Cardinal Salviati also, who was still resident in France, made pretexts for evading the embassy to the Emperor for which the Pope had intended him, and threw the burden on Giacopo Girolami. His instructions for the latter, dated the 10th of July 1527, are preserved in the Papal secret archives, but they do not exactly give evidence of Salviati’s diplomatic talent. In reading them it is especially strange to note how, among other things, the Cardinal is at pains to show that Clement and Charles had never really been enemies, but rather had worked reciprocally for each other’s interests. Among the negative services for which Salviati, quite seriously, gave his master credit, is the fact that Clement had never done the Emperor all the harm which it was in his power to do. In conclusion, Salviati appealed to the magnanimity of Charles, and pointed out to him that the liberation of the Pope would be to his own advantage, since thereby the Imperial army in Rome would be set free and be able to oppose the French forces then advancing into Lombardy.

Francis I was not the only sovereign then threatening Charles V. Henry VIII also seemed determined to do all that was possible to restore Clement to freedom. The alliance between the French and English sovereigns, which had already found expression in the treaty of Westminster, concluded in April 1527, had become still closer under the pressure of events in Italy. The English King promised, on the 29th of May, to pay a monthly subsidy of 32,000 crowns to the French army, and gave Cardinal Wolsey full powers to treat with Francis regarding the further steps to be taken towards the Pope’s release. “The affairs of the Holy See”, Henry declared, “are the common concern of all princes. The unheard-of outrages that See has undergone must be avenged”.

Henry’s concern for the Holy See was in no way disinterested; for he was afraid that the Pope’s captivity might impede his contemplated divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the Emperor’s aunt. Wolsey also had his own objects to serve in intervening in favour of the Pope. On the 3rd of July he left London with a great retinue on his journey to France. In Canterbury he celebrated Mass at the altar of St. Thomas, the martyr of ecclesiastical freedom, and published, as Papal Legate and representative of the King, an edict ordering fasts and processions during the Pope’s captivity. A copy of this ordinance was sent to Salviati for promulgation in France, and the same was done in Venice. It was hoped that this course of action would make a great impression even in Spain, and that in this way the Emperor, under the pressure of a popular movement, would set the chief ruler of the Church at liberty.

Wolsey was welcomed at Calais by Cardinal Jean de Lorraine, who conducted him to Amiens to meet Francis I. The interview between the French King and the English Cardinal took place in that city on the 4th of August, with exceptional marks of respect on the part of Francis. This meeting was looked forward to all the more hopefully because Francis, who hitherto, in spite of all warnings, had maintained his light-hearted indifference, had, after the sack of Rome, appeared to have become a changed man. At the first moment the King had been completely dazed; afterwards he determined to act. His chief inducement, however, was certainly less the liberation of the Head of the Church, than his alarm at the supremacy of the Emperor and his hope of recovering his sons, still kept as hostages. Steps were taken, on a large scale, to recruit the army. Orders were issued to the French fleet in the Mediterranean to prevent, in every way, the removal of the Pope to Spain, and Andrea Doria was taken into the French service, in command of eight galleys. Lautrec was given full powers to carry on the war in Italy; he had already, on the 30th of June, left the French Court in order to join the army then assembling in the neighbourhood of Asti. “After all”, wrote Salviati to Castiglione, who was living as Nuncio at the Court of Charles V, “this victory, or rather this massacre of Rome, has not been of much use to the Emperor. On the contrary, it has roused the princes to greater activity, and”, he adds in a tone of vexation, “for all this poor Italy must pay the bill”.

At Amiens Wolsey discussed matters thoroughly with Francis I, Salviati, the English nuncio Gambara, and the Florentine envoy Acciaiuoli. “Although”, remarked the latter, “the Cardinal displays publicly a somewhat exaggerated and ostentatious pomp and state, yet his talk, bearing, and manner of transacting affairs show a truly large and enterprising mind. He is a man of attractive character, full of noble and lofty thoughts. I do not remember since the days of Alexander VI to have seen anyone who filled his position so majestically; but, in contrast to that Pope, it must be stated that the Cardinal's life is without blame”.

Wolsey explained the aim of his mission to be the liberation of the Pope, the maintenance of the Italian States in their independence and integrity, and the overthrow of the Emperor’s supremacy. He brought with him 300,000 scudi for the war and made extensive proposals in regard to it. Casale was to go into Italy to watch carefully that the monthly subsidies promised by Henry VIII were applied to the right uses, and that Vaudemont, with ten thousand landsknechts, took part in the campaign. From Francis I, Wolsey obtained a promise that he would make no treaty for the surrender of his sons so long as the Pope remained a prisoner. On the 18th of August was concluded the alliance between France and England which was to wring by force from the Emperor the liberation of Clement VII. In this treaty of Amiens the allied sovereigns bound themselves to refuse their assent to any summons of a council as long as the Pope was not free, and to offer a common resistance to any attempt to make the Papal power subservient to the advantage and interest of Charles.

While he was still at Amiens, Francis I issued strict orders that no Frenchman should proceed to Rome on business relating to Church benefices, and that no money from France should be sent there before the Pope recovered his entire freedom. Wolsey made one more special proposal : that all the Cardinals who were at liberty should assemble at Avignon and, while the Pope’s captivity lasted, assume the reins of government. “The assembly of the Cardinals”, such was the opinion of Acciaiuoli, “had two aims in view. On the one hand, the Emperor would be brought to see that if he transported the Pope to Spain or Naples, or kept him a prisoner, the government of the Church and the ordering of ecclesiastical affairs in France and England would be cared for by the Cardinals; on the other hand, in the eventuality of Clement’s death, the Cardinals who were in the Emperor’s power would be prevented from electing a new Pope, since, in such a case, France and England would set up an antipope”. Clearly, it would be proved to the Emperor that, although he held the Pope, he did not hold the Church in his grasp, and that Clement as a prisoner was a useless prize.

“Wolsey”, declared one of his confidential servants to Cardinals Cibo, Passerini, and Ridolfi, “is acting more in the interests of the Church and Italy than of his King, for he is mindful of his dignity and his obligations to the Holy See and the house of Medici”. As a matter of fact the intentions of the English Cardinal were not so disinterested. This did not escape even Cardinal Salviati; in the official correspondence, in which he invited Cardinals Cibo, Passerini, Ridolfi, Egidio Canisio, Trivulzio, Numai, and Cupis to assemble at Avignon, he only set forth in general terms the advantages of such a plan. But in his confidential letters to Castiglione and Guicciardini he did not hold back his real opinion: “The pretext is not a bad one, but the thing itself I dislike. I fear a schism or some other incurable misfortune”. “Wolsey, during the Pope’s captivity, might become his substitute for the whole of Christendom, or at least for England and France.” This shows that the English schism was already casting its shadow before. The ambitious Cardinal aimed at nothing less than becoming, at least for England, the acting Pope; as such he would gratify the will of his monarch by declaring his marriage invalid.

Wolsey’s well-known ambition gave rise in many minds to the worst suspicions. Sanchez thought that Wolsey was certainly aiming at the tiara, in the event of Clement’s death. Canossa expressed his serious doubts to Francis I whether the assemblage at Avignon was for the good of France, as a schism might easily spring from it; Wolsey sought the Papacy, and if the King were unfavourable to this scheme, he would incur his enmity; if the scheme succeeded there would be a Pope far more ill-disposed than Clement.

Wolsey’s ambitious designs encountered at once the greatest obstacles. Although the Kings of England and France sent most pressing solicitations to the Italian Cardinals to meet Wolsey, and promised them every conceivable security and even compensation for their travelling expenses, yet they were opposed to meeting in France. The Cardinals who were at large had first assembled in Piacenza, and determined on a congress at Bologna, Ancona, or Parma to discuss measures for the Pope’s liberation. On the 10th of August Cardinal Cibo informed Henry VIII of this determination; in the beginning of September the free Italian Cardinals met at Parma. Clement VII exhorted them to be firm in their opposition to the removal of the conference to France, but warned them, at the same time, to go to work with caution.

Wolsey in the meantime had carried his plans yet further. He was, indeed, so incapable of putting a check on his ambition that he had already usurped the coveted functions of a Papal Vicar-General before they had been conferred upon him. Together with Cardinals Bourbon and de Lorraine and the Papal Legate Salviati he came to Compiegne and did not hesitate at once to assume Papal privileges, since, in spite of Salviati’s remonstrances, he handed the insignia of the Cardinalate to the Chancellor Du Prat, who had been nominated in a Consistory held before the sack of Rome. Thus he had at his disposal four of the Sacred College, in whose name he addressed, on the 16th of September 1527, a protest to the Pope, which was at once entrusted for delivery to the Protonotary Uberto Gambara. This document set forth, in language full of unction, that the signatories, following the example of the first Christians during the imprisonment of St. Peter, had assembled themselves in the power of the Holy Ghost at Compiegne in order to take preventive measures against the manifold evils which might accrue from the bondage of the head of the Church. Since the Emperor held the Pope in his power and every man was mortal, they were bound to make solemn protest against any alienation of the Church’s rights or property, and against any nomination to the College of Cardinals during the captivity of Clement VII. They declared further that, in the event of the Pope’s death, they would, without regard for the Cardinals now in imprisonment or for any new Cardinals appointed by the Pope while deprived of freedom, repair to some safe place to choose his successor, and would refuse obedience to any Pope who might be elected during the present captivity. In conclusion, Clement VII was called upon to delegate his authority during his imprisonment in order that the free government of the Church might be firmly maintained.

It must be matter for surprise that Salviati should have consented to sign this protest of a minority of the free Cardinals suggesting to the Pope a temporary abdication and containing within it the germ of schism. On the 28th of September he wrote to Gambara asking him to make excuses on his behalf to Clement VII for his participation in Wolsey’s action. All had arisen only from his good intention of compassing, as soon as possible, the liberation of the Pope; if he had refused his signature, great ill-feeling would have been caused and Wolsey’s zeal for the Pope’s deliverance would probably have been chilled or altogether extinguished. A private letter addressed to Castiglione on the 18th of September shows how little Salviati was deceived by Wolsey’s schemes. In this he describes the protest of the 16th as a dangerous move preliminary to enfranchisement from obedience to the Church; he had concurred only to avoid greater evils and to gain time. If he had opposed, then undoubtedly an English and French Patriarchate with Papal authority would have been set up, and thereby, perhaps, the unity of the Church for ever rent asunder. His action had at least averted this. Before the Pope’s answer arrived, a long time would elapse, during which Clement might be set at liberty. “By this, you see”, Salviati continues, “I was compelled to agree in order to prevent a much greater evil. You know Wolsey’s ambition and the bold assurance with which he asks Clement to appoint him his vicegerent. The French agree because he is useful to them. If the Pope refuses, Wolsey will find means to attain his object through his Bishops, a step bound to bring after it the greatest conceivable confusion in the Church. But I have hopes that in the meantime Quiñones will have returned to Rome and Clement been set free. This is the only cure for all these evils.”

At that moment, then, all the efforts of Castiglione, Salviati, and the other Papal diplomatists were directed to securing the Pope’s freedom. What was the attitude of the Emperor towards this question?

Charles V first received news of the capture of Rome in the latter half of the month of June. His joy at this great and unexpected success must have been lessened by the accounts, at first inexact, of the unbridled excesses of the troops. The unheard-of ferocity with which the soldiery had laid waste the city was antagonistic to his interests, since it covered his name with shame and reproach. He certainly had wished to punish the Pope and to render his enmity innocuous; but destruction such as that wreaked by his army on the time-honoured capital of Christendom he had not intended. He therefore, in the beginning of August, protested to the Christian princes against the burden of responsibility for these outrages being laid upon him. But this declaration did not do away with the fact that Charles had allowed his army to fall into a state of insubordination from which, if continued, the very worst was to be expected. He had also expressed himself so ambiguously that it might well be supposed that he would see without displeasure his troops requiting themselves with the plunder of Rome; nor must it be forgotten that for many a long day the enemies of Italy had acted on the principle that “war supports itself.” Charles had now to pay in person for his own shortcomings. The spirit of mutiny took hold of the victorious soldiers after the sack of the city to such a degree that the Emperor could no longer call his army his own. Rome was taken, the Pope was a prisoner, but the Imperial army was threatened from within with complete disruption.

It soon became evident that the crimes committed in Rome were in the highest degree prejudicial to the Emperor’s cause, for they gave to all his enemies an opportune handle for serious accusations which, at the first glance, seemed justified. The spectacle of the army of the secular head of Christendom, the protector of the Church, carrying murder, fire, and outrage into the city of its spiritual head, was turned to account to the fullest extent. Even in the heart of Charles’s empire, in Spain, a by no means inconsiderable opposition was raised to a policy which had ended at last in turning him into the jailer of the Pope.

The full recognition of the extremely difficult situation brought about by the sack of Rome, and the Catholic conscience of the Emperor, were the motives which restrained him from taking advantage of his victory to the uttermost. That he would have done so was the expectation of many, and exhortations even were not wanting directing him on this course. Already, on the 25th of May 1527, Lope de Soria had written to the Emperor from Genoa to try and convince him that it would be a meritorious and not a sinful action to reform the Church, in such a way that the power of the Pope should be exclusively limited to his own spiritual sphere, and secular affairs placed under the sole jurisdiction of the Emperor, since “the things of God belong to God, and the things of Caesar to Caesar”.

Many wished to go further. A letter of Bartolomeo da Gattinara shows clearly that among the Imperialists the question was seriously discussed whether Charles should allow the seat of the Papal government to remain any longer in Rome. Gattinara and others found that any experiment of this sort would be too dangerous, since England, France, and other countries would then choose Popes of their own; but they advised the Emperor to weaken the Roman See to such an extent that it should always be subservient to the Imperial Majesty.

Lannoy on his side pressed the Emperor with earnest representations. It was necessary that his undertakings should be directed towards something else than the ruin of an institution belonging both to the divine and human order the army must not win everything and the Emperor lose all no more violence must be done to the Pope, with the probable result of a schism; the confusion of the spiritual with the temporal power must not continue, and the temporal must no longer obstruct the spiritual by pragmatic sanctions and in other ways; Rome must no longer be an occasion of scandal to the whole world, and heresies and sects must be removed; in a word, what is God’s must be given to God, and what is Caesar’s to Caesar”. Charles should retain possession of the States of the Church only until such time as his affairs with the Pope were put straight and he could put trust in his Holiness; only the towns belonging to Milan and Ferrara must be claimed as fiefs of the Empire. For the rest, the settlement of these points was to be left to a general council or to a congress such as that held at Mantua under Julius II, and the same tribunal was to decide in detail on points connected with the heresies in Germany.

Ferdinand I also recommended a council in a letter of the 31st of May 1527, in which he urged, at the same time, that the Pope should not be set free before order and security were restored: “For if he were out of your hands, I fear that he might behave as he always has behaved, and as the King of France has behaved, only still worse, for he avoids and shuns the council. Apart from this and your presence here, I see no possibility of finding means to oppose the Lutheran sect and the accursed heresies”.

Amid the various influences brought to bear upon him, the Emperor was long in coming to any fixed decision. At first his inactivity was such that it was supposed to arise from some strong physical reaction; this extended to all his Italian affairs. After Bourbon’s death the first necessity was obviously the appointment of a new Commander-in-Chief. Charles’s council was insistent on this point, since the Prince of Orange was too young and inexperienced for the post. Charles handed over the chief command to the Duke of Ferrara, although the latter had already declined the honour in the autumn of 1526. As might have been foreseen, the Duke, on this occasion also, refused to place himself at the head of a “gang of mutineers”. The consequence was that the army, if such it could be called, remained through the greater part of the year 1527 without a generalissimo, and shrank in numbers more and more from sickness and desertions.

The Imperial army in Milan was also in the worst condition. The faithful Leyva reported “that there was not a farthing’s worth of pay for the troops”. The army was more like a swarm of adventurers than a force in Imperial service. The commanders were powerless, the soldiers did what they liked. No wonder that the Imperial troops had to give way on all sides, when Lautrec appeared with his army.

Nor did less embarrassment await the Emperor on account of the imprisoned Pope, for whom the most active sympathy was being shown, not only in France and England, but in Spain itself. The deep Catholic feeling inherent in the Spanish people had long since expressed a growing repugnance to the policy of Charles towards the Pope. “All ranks, high and low”, wrote Castiglione from Granada in November 1526, “are indignant at the raid of the Colonna”. In his later letters he returns repeatedly to the loyal attachment of the Spanish people to the Pope. “If he were to come to Spain, he would be worshipped”, writes Castiglione on hearing rumours concerning the movements of Clement VII. In March 1527 it was reported that the prelates and grandees had openly announced that no more money could be voted, since such grants would be spent on waging war against the head of the Church. The Chancellor made vain attempts to establish the Emperor’s innocence by means of printed publications, but the opposition to the war against the successor of St. Peter increased; the grandees and bishops earnestly urged that peace should be made with Clement. “The loyal dependence of the nation on the See of Peter”, Castiglione reported from Valladolid on the 24th of March, “is more apparent than ever”.

What must have been the impression now made by the news of the Pope’s imprisonment and the sack of Rome! Not only the great ecclesiastics but the grandees of Spain as well made known their indignation. Strong reproaches were addressed to the Emperor by the Archbishop of Toledo and the Duke of Alba. Charles threw all the blame on the undisciplined army. “But”, reported the Venetian envoy on the 16th of July 1527 from Valladolid, “these excuses produce no effect here the prelates and grandees are daily interceding for the Pope with the Emperor. There is a great conflict of opinions. Some say that Charles must show his abhorrence by setting the Pope at liberty; others that the Pope must come to Spain; others again, such as Loaysa, the Emperor’s confessor, maintain that Charles cannot yet trust Clement and must hold him prisoner”. In the meantime the Emperor gave the Nuncio nothing but fair speeches; but he came to no decision. It was credibly reported that Spanish opinion was in favour of the suspension of divine worship in all the churches of the kingdom so long as the Pope’s captivity lasted, and also that the bishops in a body, clad in mourning, intended to present themselves before the Emperor and beseech him to set Clement free. Through the influence of the Court these reports were suppressed, but the general agitation was not abated.

Some decided step became more necessary day by day even Lannoy was pressing on this point. On the 6th of July he wrote to the Emperor : “The present situation cannot go on much longer. The more victories God sends you the more embarrassments you have, the domains of your kingdoms grow less and the ill-will of your enemies grows greater. Some envy your greatness, others hate you for the ill-treatment they have received from your soldiers, who have plundered Genoa and Milan, laid waste the country, and at the present hour brought destruction on Rome”.

Quiñones, who had reached Valladolid in the last weeks of July, after having been held up by pirates, told Charles to his face that if he did not fulfil his duty to the Pope he could no longer claim to be called Emperor he must rather be regarded as the agent of Luther, since, in his name and under his banner, the Lutherans had committed all their infamies in Rome. Quiñones believed it to be his duty to speak thus strongly as he knew that Charles was determined to get as much advantage as possible from the Pope’s imprisonment, and to secure for himself a position which would make the independence of the Church a nullity.

The Papal Nuncio Castiglione, on whom Cardinal Salviati set all his hopes, supported the efforts of Girolami with all his energy; nevertheless, the latter failed to get from Charles any definite decision with regard to Clement’s liberation. The envoys of England were also unsuccessful in their endeavours at the Imperial Court, although they could not have shown more zeal if they had been the Pope's representatives. The representations of Quiñones made more impression on Charles, but even he made little way at first. At the end of July Charles wrote to the Roman Senate and people, to the Legate Salviati, to the Cardinals and Roman nobility, lastly, to all the Christian princes, disclaiming all responsibility for the sack of Rome, to which he was not accessory, and laying the whole blame on Clement VII. At the same time he used strong expressions of sorrow and regret for the injuries inflicted on the Holy See, and declared that he would rather not have won the victory than be the victor under such conditions.

About this time Charles was informed of Henry VIII’s schemes of divorce; on the 31st of July he instructed Lannoy to speak to the Pope on this business, but with caution, lest greater complications should arise if the Pope were to hold out a bait to King Henry in the matter or enter into any mischievous practical understanding with him. Charles wished Clement to make any further advance in the business of the divorce impossible by the issue of Briefs to Henry VIII and Wolsey. This private affair of the Emperor, calling for the full support of the Pope’s spiritual power, warned the former to act with great caution towards Clement, as did also, in no less degree, the threatening attitude of France and England, now joining in close alliance.

Thus influenced, Charles, who, from motives of self­regard had long hesitated before taking any decisive step, wrote from Valladolid on the 3rd of August 1527 two autograph letters to the Pope. In the first of these remarkable communications he laid great stress on his efforts to secure the general peace of Christendom, to reform the Church, and abolish heresy and unbelief. In the attainment of these objects all private interests must be put aside and a unanimous course of action pursued. On these grounds the Pope would be justified in summoning a council for the extirpation of heresy, the destruction of unbelievers, and the exaltation of Holy Church. Charles, in conclusion, pledged his royal word to his prisoner that he would not suffer the council to undertake in any way the deposition or suspension of the Pope; any attempts in that direction, whether they came from a secular or ecclesiastical quarter, he would oppose, while protecting Clement in every way.

In his second letter, of which Quiñones was to be the bearer, Charles reminded Clement of the summons of a council. He besought the Pope in the most urgent way to undertake the promised visit to Spain; such a step would strike terror into the heretics and at least advance the prospects of peace between the Emperor and France. The Emperor’s projects for a council were without result, for before his letters reached Rome, France and England had agreed to refuse their consent so long as the Pope was a prisoner.

Over the demand for Clement’s liberation Charles hesitated still longer. To the Nuncio Castiglione bespoke in such a friendly way that the latter was filled with sanguine hopes. But the instructions received at last on the 1 8th of August 1527, by Pierre de Veyre, who awaited them with Quiñones at Barcelona, did not correspond with these assurances. They were certainly not wanting in regrets for the misfortunes that had befallen the Pope in Rome or in wishes for the peace of Christendom, the reformation of the Church, and the uprooting of Lutheran errors; but with regard to the Pope’s restoration to freedom, it was stated in the most definite terms that under this head nothing was to be understood beyond his liberty in the exercise of spiritual functions. Moreover, as a preliminary, the instructions of the envoys emphatically declared that Lannoy must receive securities, as certain as any human securities could be, against the possibility of Papal treachery or Papal vengeance. Lannoy was left to specify the conditions. But Charles indicated what he believed himself entitled to demand in this respect, namely, Ostia, Civita Vecchia, Parma, Piacenza, Bologna, Ravenna and, in exchange for the castle of St. Angelo, Civita Castellana. The Emperor demanded besides, in return for the restoration of the Pope’s spiritual jurisdiction, nothing less than the surrender of several of the more important towns of the Papal States. But he insisted, at the same time, that he was not making these demands for his own personal advantage, but in order to hold guarantees until such time as general peace should be attained, a council summoned, and the reform of Christendom set on foot.

Clement, meanwhile, had passed through a terrible time. Within the narrow confines of the castle, kept under closest watch by a fierce soldiery, he spent his days as in a living tomb. He sought comfort in prayer, trusted to the Emperor’s magnanimity, then again looked for the help held out by Francis I, yet through all preserved his calmness of mind. This is shown by the Bull prepared on the 15th of July 1527, in which the regulations for the Papal election in Rome, or elsewhere in Italy, or even in some foreign country, were drawn up, in the case of his death during imprisonment. The Bull shows that Clement took all these contingencies into account; the object of this document was to secure freedom of election and to prevent a schism. The Cardinals were empowered to meet in conclave elsewhere than in Rome and enjoined to wait during a certain time for those of their colleagues who should be absent.

The life of Clement VII was, in fact, at this time seriously threatened. It is clear from the reports of Perez that the Spaniards and Germans were continually hankering after the possession of Clement and the Cardinals; the landsknechts did not wish the prisoner to be taken to Spain, but were anxious to carry him off themselves.

Rome was now in the full heat of summer, and the plague at its height. Pestilence and famine made havoc among the inhabitants churches and streets were soon filled with dead bodies. Frightful malaria arose from these “shambles”; if the wind blew from the city, relates one of the captives, it was impossible to remain on the walls of the castle.

The plague had made its way into the fortress long before and helped, together with the sufferings and agitations of captivity, to thin the ranks of the prisoners. Cardinal Rangoni died in August; he was followed in October by Francesco Armellini, broken-hearted at the loss of his riches. The situation of the captive Pope became more and more unbearable. He waited in vain for the envoys of the Emperor as well as for the return of the army of the League to deliver him, and his dread lest the Spaniards or Germans should carry him away increased every day. When Alarcon and Muscettola insisted on his giving adequate security for the payment of the promised 250,000 ducats, he exclaimed with tears in his eyes, “For the love of God do not exact from me promises which must be known to all the world and become engraven on the memories of men for ever! So great is my misfortune and my poverty, that the three Franciscans who are with me would be in want of their daily bread if they were not able to borrow money from some compassionate souls. I leave it to you and your consciences to say whether such conduct is worthy of an Emperor.”

In the first days of September it was reported that Clement in despair had ordered a Bull to be drawn up exhorting the Church to pray for her imprisoned head and bidding the Bishops publish the canonical censures against her persecutors. The draft, couched in language of extreme severity, is preserved in the State Archives of Florence. This Bull, however, was never put into official shape and published. In the hands of the masterful Popes of the Middle Ages such a transaction would undoubtedly have been completed, but Clement VII had not the requisite courage. According to one account it was Alfonso del Vasto who held the Pope back from this extreme step.

When Veyre at last landed at Naples on the 19th of September 1527, Lannoy lay ill of the plague which he had contracted in Rome. His death (September 23rd)  brought everything to a standstill, as fresh instructions had now to be received from the Emperor. This was all the more necessary since the situation, in other respects, had entirely changed from what Charles supposed it to be at the moment of Veyre’s departure. The latter reported to Spain that the Pope had paid only 100,000 ducats of the 400,000 owed by him, while the Florentines had not yet paid anything of their 300,000. Alarcon, from scruples of conscience, had renounced his plan of bringing the Pope to Gaeta. The commanders of the Imperial army had been forced to fly, and their mutinous soldiers, instead of being on the march to meet the French in Lombardy, were again on the road to Rome, where they intended to extort their pay by force. They got there on the 25th of September, and subjected the unhappy city to a second pillage. The same horrors which had accompanied their first onslaught were now repeated, and in some ways increased. The soldiers, according to a German account, did everything they could think of, burning, extorting, robbing, thieving, and doing violence. The money raised by Clement by the sacrifice of his own silver vessels and those of the prelates was insufficient to appease the demands of the furious horde; they threatened Rome with utter destruction and the Pope and Cardinals with death if they were not paid.

Clement had now to make up his mind to give up to the Germans the hostages named in the treaty of June. Gumppenberg has described, as an eyewitness, the surrender of these unfortunate men. The Pope exclaimed with tears, “There they stand, take them with you. I will accompany them”.

The account-book of Paolo Montanaro, expeditor of Clement VII, now preserved in the Roman State Archives, enables us to realize directly the fearful plight to which the Pope had been brought. This account-book, which comprises the quarter from October to the 31st of December, shows clearly how scarce and dear provisions were. Since the treaty of June the Spaniards, who had at first determined to starve out the inmates of St. Angelo, had allowed communications to be renewed. It is a peculiar testimony to the economical bent of Clement VII that the regular account of expenditure begins again as early as the 1st of October. With the most conscientious exactitude Montanaro notes down the smallest sum spent on the table of the imprisoned Pope, and, in like manner, the Master of the Household, Girolamo da Schio, Bishop of Vaison, submits each office to a searching examination.

While the soldiers were robbing in every nook and corner of Rome, Veyre and Ouiñones, in the beginning of October, approached the Pope. Like Alarcon and Morone, they negotiated with a delegation of Cardinals, del Monte, Campeggio, and Lorenzo Pucci; Pompeo Colonna, whom Clement had won over to his side, did all he could to attain a successful result; but in spite of these endeavours no progress was made. Meanwhile the soldiers became more and more furious. In their rage they dragged the hostages to newly erected gallows on the Campo di Fiore and threatened them with death. At the last moment they changed their mind; they were unwilling to lose the last security remaining to them, and the hostages were taken in chains to the Palazzo Colonna.

Although in Rome the scarcity of provisions made itself felt increasingly every day, and the approach of the French troops under Lautrec was a cause of growing anxiety, the army could not be induced to leave the city, since the soldiers held out for payment of their arrears in full. The final result of the total paralysis of the Emperor’s authority was the defection of the Duke of Ferrara and the Marquis of Mantua who, in November, deserted the cause of Charles for that of France.

At this time a decided reaction set in at the Imperial Court. At the end of October the Ambassador of Henry VIII, in the name of his King, “the Defender of the Faith”, presented a solemn protest against the Pope’s imprisonment. In November the Spanish Council discussed the matter; no less a personage than the Chancellor Gattinara there declared that if the Emperor looked upon Clement as the legitimate Pope, he ought no longer to detain him captive. Praet called attention to the danger that the French might set the Pope at liberty; it would be better that the Emperor should do this and, in so doing, set his troops free; on this ground he recommended that Moncada should be ordered to abide, only “as far as was practicable”, by the instructions of Veyre. The result of the deliberation was that the Council of State determined that, in any case, the Pope must be given his freedom.

In the meantime the negotiations in Rome had been endlessly protracted. In despair Clement VII, on the 15th of November, deplored his misery to the Archbishop of Toledo. Moncada, the new Viceroy of Naples, tried to exact as much as possible from the Pope. Clement hoped, not without grounds, that the approach of the French army under Lautrec would force the Imperialists to make more favourable terms; he also succeeded by promises in bringing Quinones and Morone entirely round to his side.

After proposals and counter-proposals had been bandied to and fro amid tedious delays, a basis of agreement was reached at last, and on the 26th of November the terms were settled. In the first place, a treaty was concluded between the Pope and the Cardinals on the one hand, and the representatives of the Emperor (Veyre, Moncada, Quiñones) on the other. It was herein stipulated that Clement should be restored to his spiritual and temporal rights on condition that he—while remaining neutral— advanced the peace of Christendom and convoked a general council for the reform of the Church, the up­rooting of Lutheran teaching, and the pursuance of the Turkish war. As securities the Emperor was to hold six hostages—Giberti, Jacopo Salviati, Galeotto and Malatesta de’ Medici, as well as Cardinals Trivulzio and Pisani—and the towns of Ostia, Civita Vecchia, Civita Casteliana, and Forli. All the remainder of the Papal  States, with the exception of the territories ceded to the Colonna, was, on the other hand, to be restored as before the sack of Rome. The Imperial army would quit Rome and the States of the Church as soon as the troops of the League evacuated the latter.

No one was named in this treaty to execute the restoration of the territories severed from the States of the Church. As a matter of fact, the restoration of the temporal possessions, although conceded in theory, lay practically at the good pleasure of the Emperor. On the other hand, the Pope was free to fix his own time for the convocation of the council.

A second agreement settled in detail the sums payable by the Pope to the Imperialist generals ; in the first place, within ten days 73,169 ducats, as the price of the evacuation of the castle of St. Angelo, and immediately after that 35,000 ducats more, on receipt of which the troops would quit Rome. After fourteen days 44,984 ducats were to be paid, and then in three monthly instalments 150,000, and again finally, at the same rate, 65,000. In order to collect these sums the Pope made new Cardinals and alienated Church property in the kingdom of Naples. On the payment of the 44,984 ducats the Imperialist forces left the Papal States.

Since, in spite of the nomination of Cardinals, sufficient money was not forthcoming, the landsknechts again threatened the hostages with death and rose in mutiny against their leaders, who took refuge in the Alban hills with the Colonna. At the end of November the hostages managed to make their warders drunk and escaped. On hearing this the landsknechts flung down their arms, but order was soon restored. An arrangement was subsequently made with the Pope that he should pay from the 1st of December 100.000 ducats to the Germans, with the exception of the leaders and those in receipt of double pay, 35,000 ducats to the Spaniards, and furnish fresh securities. Accordingly, after Cardinals Orsini and Cesi had been handed over to Colonna, and Cardinals Trivulzio, Pisani, and Gaddi to Alarcon as hostages, and further securities given for the above-mentioned sums of money, the Imperialists left the castle of St. Angelo on the 6th of December 1527.

With this the hard captivity of the Pope, which had lasted full seven months, came to an end. Clement wished to leave Rome at once, where Campeggio was to remain as Legate ; Alarcon advised him to wait a few more days on account of the insecurity of the roads, but this delay seemed very dangerous to Clement, who was afraid of the soldiers awaiting their pay in Rome, and, moreover, he did not trust Moncada. Between the 6th and 7th of December he left St. Angelo suddenly, by night, dressed in the clothes of his majordomo, but certainly not without previous knowledge on the part of the Imperialist commanders. Luigi Gonzaga waited for him on the Neronian fields with a troop of arquebusiers, and under this escort he went in haste to Montefiascone, and from there to the stronghold of Orvieto.

CHAPTER VII.

Clement VII in Exile at Orvieto and Viterbo.—The Imperialists leave Rome. — Disaster to the French Army in Naples.—The Weakness of the Pope’s Diplomacy.—His Return to Rome.

In the old town of Orvieto, guarded by its strong citadel on the cone-shaped hill which separates, like a boundary stone, the Roman and Tuscan territory, the personal freedom of the Pope was secure; yet his situation must still be described as a deplorable one. His ecclesiastical rank excepted, he had lost all he could call his own : his authority, his property, almost all his states, and the obedience of the majority of his subjects. Instead of the Vatican adorned with the masterpieces of art, he was now the occupant of a dilapidated episcopal palace in a mean provincial town. Roberto Boschetti, who visited the Pope on the 23rd of January 1528, found him emaciated and in the most sorrowful frame of mind. “They have plundered me of all I possess”, said Clement VII to him; “even the canopy above my bed is not mine, it is borrowed.” The furniture of the Papal bedchamber, the English envoys supposed, could not have cost twenty nobles. They describe with astonishment how they were led through three apartments bare of furniture, in which the hangings were falling from the walls. In this inhospitable dwelling Clement was confined to bed with swollen feet; there were suspicions that poison had been given him by the Imperialists, but the mischief was caused by his unwonted exertions on horseback on the night of his flight.

At first only four Cardinals, then, on a special summons from the Pope, seven betook themselves to Orvieto. Their position was also a hard one, for no preparations had been made for the fugitives in the town; provisions could only be got with difficulty and at the highest prices, and there was such a scarcity of drinking water that the Pope had at once to give orders for the construction of four wells.

In spite of the distress in Orvieto, little by little numerous prelates and courtiers made their way thither. The business of the Curia, for a long time almost wholly suspended, was again resumed. On the 18th of December 1527 a Bull relating to graces bestowed during the captivity was agreed to in secret Consistory. The conduct of the more important affairs lay in the hands of Jacopo Salviati and of the Master of the Household, Girolamo da Schio, Bishop of Vaison.

The poverty and simplicity of the new court at Orvieto were such that all who went thither were filled with compassion. “The court here is bankrupt,” reported a Venetian; “the bishops go about on foot in tattered cloaks: the courtiers, take flight in despair; there is no improvement in morals; men here would sell Christ for a piece of gold.” Of the Cardinals only Pirro Gonzaga was able to live as befitted his rank; the rest were as poor as the Pope himself, who, in the month of April, was still without the most necessary ecclesiastical vestments. The congratulations on his deliverance, addressed to him in writing by the Cardinals assembled in Parma, personally by the Duke of Urbino, Federigo Bozzolo, and Luigi Pisani, and in letters or by special envoys from nearly all princes and many cities, must have seemed to him almost a mockery. As Clement had only a few troops at his disposal and the neighbourhood of Orvieto was rendered insecure by the bands of soldiery, he was practically shut up in his mountain fortress. He had to complain repeatedly that even communication by letter had become difficult, while any attempt to escape into the surrounding territory was out of the question. The care-laden Pope, wearing the long beard which he had allowed to grow during his captivity, was seen passing through the streets of Orvieto with a small retinue. Rumour exaggerated his poverty still further; he was compared to the Popes of the infant Church.

In spite of spoliation and exile the Pope continued to represent a mighty power. This was best seen in the eager competition of both the forces inimical to him to obtain his patronage. The attempts of France and England in this direction were well known to the Emperor, who made it a matter of express reference in the letter of congratulation addressed to Clement. In his answer of the nth of January 1528 Clement thanked him for the restoration of freedom, assured him that he had never held him guilty of the occurrences in Rome, and declared himself ready to do all that lay in his power to aid him in the questions of peace, the Council, and all other things which Charles desired for the highest good of Christendom; the Emperor, moreover, would see for himself how powerless the Pope was, as long as the hostages were retained and the ceded cities still occupied; Francesco Quiñones would report in detail on all other circumstances under consideration. To an Imperial envoy who had come to Orvieto as early as December 1527 to propose a formal alliance with Charles on the basis of the restoration of the States of the Church, the answer was given that the question could not be considered until the occupied cities had been given back and the hostages set at liberty.

Clement was as little willing to give definite pledges to the League as to the Emperor. In the autograph letter in which, on the 14th of December 1527, he announced his release to Francis I, he certainly thanked the King for the help he had rendered, but showed in no ambiguous terms how insufficient, in reality, it had been. Yet Lautrec’s army had not hastened a step. It was clear from this letter that the Pope had no intention of giving pledges to France; he excused his treaty with the Imperialists as a measure wrung from him by force. “For months, together with our venerable brethren, we had endured the hardest lot, had seen all our affairs, temporal and above all spiritual, go to ruin, and your well-intentioned efforts for our liberation end in failure. Our condition grew worse, indeed, day by day, the conditions imposed upon us harsher, and we saw our hopes threaten to vanish away. Under these circumstances we yielded to the pressure of a desperate state of things. Neither our personal interest nor the peril in which each one of us stood was the mainspring of our action; for eight long months we suffered ignominious imprisonment, and stood daily in danger of our lives. But the misery in Rome, the ruin of the States which had come down to us unimpaired from our predecessors, the incessant affliction in body and soul, the diminished reverence towards God and His worship, forced us to take this step. Personal suffering we could have continued to endure; but it was our duty to do all in our power to remove public distress. Our brothers, the Cardinals, have not shrunk from submitting, as hostages, to a fresh captivity in order that we, restored to freedom, may be in a position to ward off from Christendom a worse calamity.” The bearer of this letter was Ugo da Gambara, who together with Cardinal Salviati was to give fuller information by word of mouth. On the same day (December 14) Clement wrote in similar terms to the Queen, Louisa of Savoy, to Montmorency, Henry VIII, and Cardinal Wolsey, referring also in these letters to Gambara’s information.

Ever since January 1528 Clement had been besieged with the most pressing entreaties to join the League, whose army persisted in its wonted inactivity. In com­pany with Lautrec, who had advanced as far as Bologna, were Guido Rangoni, Paolo Camillo Trivulzio, Ugo di Pepoli, and Vaudemont. In February they were joined by Longueville, who brought the good wishes of Francis I. As envoys of Henry VIII, Gregorio Casale, Stephen Gardiner, and Fox were active; the last-named was especially occupied with the question of the divorce on which the English King was bent.

The League made the most tempting promises to the Pope. Not only should he receive back the Papal States, but also designate to the kingdom of Naples and be compensated for all damages and costs of the war. But the events of the past year had made Clement very cautious. Despite all the pressure brought upon him, he would give no decided answer, and insisted that he was of more use outside the League than within it. His inmost sympathies at this time were certainly with the League, for he feared the power of the Emperor, who, in possession of Naples and Milan, was the “Lord of all things,” and wished for the expulsion from Italy of those who had done him such unheard-of wrong. But from any attempt of this kind he was deterred by weighing closely the actual state of things; a waiting attitude, giving to both parties a certain amount of hope, appeared to the Pope to be the best, and this policy was also in accordance with his natural indecision.

Perhaps the conduct of the League itself had even more influence on Clement than his feeling of helplessness when pitted against the victorious Spaniard. He could not trust a confederacy, the members of which, each engrossed in his own interests, had left him to his downfall in the year of misfortune 1527. Might not this trick be played again at any moment? Above all—and this was decisive—the League had assumed a character which made it quite impossible for the Pope to enter into it. Florence, from which his family had been expelled, was supported by France, Venice had seized Ravenna and Cervia, the Duke of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio. Both were unwilling to give back their plunder, and yet such were the allies whom Clement was to join against the Emperor!

In view of this situation, the Pope and his diplomatists directed their efforts towards securing the restoration of the States of the Church under a guarantee of neutrality.

On New Year’s Day 1528 Cardinal Salviati informed the French Government that the League must be satisfied with a benevolent neutrality on the part of the Pope, deprived, as he was, of all material resources. At the same time he made it clear that Clement insisted on the restoration of the cities taken by Venice, and would consent to no dishonourable agreement with the Duke of Ferrara, the originator of all the misfortunes of the Church. On the 12th of January Gambara arrived in Paris; and, together with Salviati, made the most urgent appeals to the French Government to compel the Venetians and Ferrara to surrender their plunder; if they failed to do so, then the Pope would be forced to try some other means of getting back his possessions. Salviati did not let the matter drop, but afterwards forcibly renewed his representations. But he gained little at first, since the French were afraid that Venice might quit the League, and hesitated to take any steps. It was not until France and England had formally declared war against the Emperor that a stronger pressure was put on Venice.

It was almost coincident with this turn in affairs that Clement determined to send a new Nuncio to Spain in the person of Antonio Pucci, Bishop of Pistoja, who together with Castiglione was to open up the way to a general peace. If Charles, declared Sanga, now Clement’s chief adviser in place of Giberti, would not agree to Pucci’s conditions of peace, then the Pope would join the League, but only after his own just grievances had been redressed. The League, so ran the fuller instructions, must undertake to restore Ravenna, Cervia, Modena, and Reggio, settle upon whom Naples should devolve, and finally bring about a general pacification in Florence. Pucci was to travel through France, to treat personally with Francis I, and explain why the Pope was obliged, for the time being, to remain neutral. The French King, however, was by no means disposed to carry out the wishes of which Pucci was to be the exponent; the mission of the new Nuncio to the Emperor made him uneasy, and he made a plan to put obstacles in his way.

Lautrec’s successes certainly encouraged Francis in his projects. The former had at last left Bologna on the 10th of January 1528, and was pressing towards Naples through the Romagna. Clement now recovered Imola, and, somewhat later, Rimini also. On the 10th of February the French army crossed the Tronto and entered the kingdom of Naples. In Rome, and throughout Papal circles generally, this advance of the French was coupled with the hope that a final deliverance from the dreadful incubus of the landsknechts was at hand. Lautrec gave assurances on all sides that, after reducing Naples, he would set free the Papal States; since his whole course of action was only undertaken in the interest of the Pope, he renewed his insistent entreaties that Clement would now resume his place in the League.

The Imperialists, at first, had not feared Lautrec; now they recognized the peril threatening them. If they were unable to move their army from Rome, then Naples would fall without a blow into the hands of the enemy. Philibert of Orange, who had been in chief command since January, Bemelberg, and Vasto negotiated with the mutinous troops. Money was scraped together in every possible way, and even Clement had to raise 40,000 ducats. Thus, on the 17th of February 1528, the soldiery, who up to the last indulged in acts of violence and depredation, were induced to move. The army, which eight months previously had numbered twenty thousand men, had melted down to one thousand five hundred cavalry, two or three thousand Italians, four thousand Spaniards, and five thousand Germans; so great had been the ravages of the plague among the troops. On the 13th of January Melchior Frundsberg fell a victim; his tomb in the German national church of the Anima recalls one of the most terrible episodes in the history of Rome. “The troops,” says a German diarist, “had destroyed and burnt down the city; two-thirds of the houses were swept away. Doors, windows, and every bit of woodwork even to the roof beams were consumed by fire. Most of the inhabitants, especially all the women, had taken flight.” The neighbourhood for fifty miles around was like a wilderness. The columns of flame, rising up from Rocca Priora and Valmontone, showed the road which the lands­knechts had taken for Naples.

The sufferings of the unfortunate Romans were even then not yet at an end. On the afternoon of the same day (February the 17th) on which the Imperialists departed, the Abbot of Farfa, with a leader of a band from Arsoli, accompanied by a pillaging rabble, who were soon joined even by Romans themselves, entered the city. The streets rang with shouts of “Church, France, the Bear (Orsini)!” and plundering began anew, where anything was left to plunder, especially in the houses of the Jews. All stragglers from the Imperial army were put to death, even the sick in the hospitals were not spared.

On hearing of these fresh outrages Clement sent Giovanni Corrado, and afterwards a detachment of troops under the Roman Girolamo Mattei, to restore order. At the same time the Pope made strenuous efforts to mitigate the distress in Rome caused by the scarcity of provisions and to guard against the danger of plague. The letters of Jacopo Salviati to the Cardinal-Legate Campeggio, who had remained in Rome, throw light on the difficulties which had to be encountered in revictualling the city; transport on land as well as by sea was extremely difficult, and there were those in Rome who did not scruple to take advantage of the existing necessity to sell corn at prices advantageous to themselves. But Clement VII persevered; the extortionate sale of corn came under the sharpest penalties, and to ensure free carriage to Rome Andrea Doria was appointed to guard the coasts.

In the beginning of March a deputation came from Rome to Orvieto to invite the Pope to return to his capital, where the desecrated churches had already been purified. Clement replied that no one longed more eagerly than he to return to Rome, but the scarcity and disorder then prevailing, as well as the uncertainty of the issue of the war in Naples, made any immediate change of residence impossible. Thereupon the Roman delegates begged that at least the officials of the Rota and Cancelleria might go back. Clement, after long hesitation, gave way, on the advice of Cardinal Campeggio; but the officials in question delayed complying with the Papal orders on account of the famine in the city. But by the end of April the majority of the officials of the Curia had to return, though the situation in Rome continued to be critical, and Cardinal Campeggio’s position was beset with difficulties.

The Pope’s own position was so harassing that Jacopo Salviati wrote to Cardinal Campeggio, “Clement is in such dire necessity that, like David, he must, perforce, eat the loaves of proposition” (1 Kings XXI. 6). In the beginning of March, Brandano, the prophet of misfortune of the year 1527, appeared in Orvieto. He foretold for Rome and Italy new and yet greater tribulations; these would continue until 1530, when the Turk would take captive the Pope, the Emperor, and the French King and embrace Christianity; whereupon the Church would enter on a new life. The Papal censures, the hermit went on to say, were void, inasmuch as Clement, having been born out of wedlock, was not canonically Pope. When Brandano proceeded to incite the people of Orvieto against the Pope, the latter gave orders for his arrest. On Palm Sunday (April 5) Clement addressed the Cardinals and prelates then present in earnest language on the need for a reform of the Curia, exhorted them to a better manner of life, and spoke emphatically of the sack of Rome as a chastisement for their sins. On Holy Thursday the customary censures on the persecutors of the Church were published.

Lautrec, in the meanwhile, had achieved successes beyond all expectation. The towns of the Abruzzi hailed him as their deliverer; but after that his operations came to a standstill, for Francis I sent no money for his troops; besides, this valiant soldier was deficient in promptness of decision. Consequently, the Imperialists found time to put Naples in a state of defence; they judged rightly that here the decisive issue must be fought out. Lautrec did not realize this, and wasted time in reducing the towns of Apulia, and not until the end of April did he approach Naples from the east. But the luck of the French did not yet desert them; dissensions, especially between Orange and Vasto, divided the Imperialist generals, the landsknechts were as insubordinate as ever, and hated the Spaniards. On the 28th of April the Imperial fleet was totally destroyed by Filippino Doria off Capo d’Orso, between Amalfi and Salerno. Moncada and Fieramosca fell in the battle; Vasto and Ascanio Colonna were taken prisoners. The fall of Naples, where great scarcity of food was already making itself felt, seemed to be only a question of time. The Emperor’s enemies were already busy with the boldest schemes, and Wolsey, through the English envoys, called upon the Pope to depose the Emperor without delay.

Clement VII watched with strained attention the result of the great contest, on which for him so much depended. The Neapolitan war filled the unfortunate Romans with renewed alarm; they dreaded a repetition of the sack; the landsknechts had, in fact, threatened to return and burn the whole city to the ground. Clement sent Cardinal Cesi to support Campeggio, and later on some troops. The Pope’s anxieties were increased by the stormy demands of the English envoys insisting on the dissolution of their King’s marriage, and by the not less stormy entreaties of the League, especially of Lautrec, to declare immediate war on the Emperor. To crown all came the pressure of famine in Orvieto, which the Sienese would do nothing to relieve on account of their enmity towards the house of Medici. Since a return to the capital, so much desired by the Romans, was impossible, owing to the insecure state of the country, the Pope was counselled to change his residence to Perugia, Civita Casteliana, or Viterbo; it was decided to remove to the last-named place, the fortress having come into the Pope’s possession at the end of April.

On the 1st of June Clement reached Viterbo and was received by the pious and aged Cardinal Egidio Canisio; he first occupied the castle, and afterwards the palace of Cardinal Farnese. Here too, at first, suitable furniture was wanting, while, at the same time, there was great scarcity in the town; but a return to Rome seemed im­possible until the Pope should be again master of Ostia and Civita Vecchia. In place of Campeggio, who was under orders to go to England, Cardinal Farnese was appointed, on the 8th’of June, the Legate in Rome; three hundred men were to garrison the castle of St. Angelo, and Alfonso di Sangro, Bishop of Lecce, was sent to the Emperor to effect the release of the three Cardinals detained as hostages in Naples.

On the 4th of June Gasparo Contarini, as Venetian envoy, and Giovanni Antonio Muscettola, commissioned by the Prince of Orange, made their appearance in Viterbo; the latter was instructed to try and induce Clement to return to Rome. The Pope, shrinking from thus placing himself in the hands of the Spaniards, laid the matter before the Cardinals, who were unanimous in declaring the return to Rome desirable but impossible of execution so long as the Spaniards were masters of Ostia and Civita Vecchia. Just then a prospect of recovering these places was opened up; a French fleet appeared off Corneto, and Renzo da Ceri made an attempt, but an unsuccessful one, to take Civita Vecchia; the Pope, unmindful of his neutrality, gave material assistance towards this attempt.

In the meantime Contarini had done all he could to persuade the Pope to surrender his claims on Ravenna and Cervia, but his endeavours were unsuccessful; Clement stood firm, and insisted that he was pledged by honour and duty to demand the restoration of those towns. The support lent by Venice to the Pope’s enemy, Alfonso of Ferrara, and the provocation given to Clement himself by the excessive taxation of the clergy of the Republic and the usurpation of his jurisdiction, did not lessen the difficulties of Contarini’s position. On the 16th of June the Pope complained to Contarini of such actions as constituting a breach of the treaty made with Julius II; he had bestowed the bishopric of Treviso on Cardinal Pisani, but the Republic had not allowed the latter to take possession of his see. His disposal of patronage was entirely disregarded in Venice, and it seemed as if the Venetians wished to show him how little he was considered by them. “You treat me,” he said, “with great familiarity ; you seize my possessions, you dispose of my benefices, you lay taxes upon me.” The Pope’s irritation was so great that, a few days later, in the course of another interview with Contarini, he said to himself in a low voice, but so that the Ambassador could understand him plainly, that, strictly speaking, the Venetians had incurred excommunication.

All doubt as to Clement’s determination to recover the captured towns vanished in the course of Contarini’s communications with Sanga, Salviati, and other influential personages of the Papal court. The Master of the household, Girolamo da Schio, informed the Venetian Ambassador that he had spoken in vain to the Pope of some compensation in the way of a money payment; Clement had rejected the suggestion at once with the greatest firmness and, moreover, had complained not only of the conduct of Venice but also of France.

Clement VII had good grounds for displeasure with Francis I, who had supported Alfonso of Ferrara and at last taken overt measures against the Pope. Seized with alarm lest the new Nuncio, Pucci, should prepare the way for an understanding between Pope and Emperor, Francis I determined to detain the Papal envoy by force.

To this, however, his English ally would not agree; Henry VIII, who had more need than ever of the Pope’s favour in the matter of his divorce, was doing all in his power to arrive at some accommodation with Clement in his demands on Venice. The French Chancellor, on the other hand, told Pucci that Francis I could not permit him to make his journey to Spain, since he was certain that he would otherwise lose the support of Venice, Ferrara, and Florence; rather than give up such in­dispensable allies, France would sooner dispense with the aid of the Pope and England. The arrogance of the French increased with the news of Lautrec’s successes.

At the end of April the French Chancellor gave the Nuncio, Pucci, to understand that the king insisted on an immediate declaration from the Pope. Salviati replied that his master would make his intentions known if Ravenna and Cervia were surrendered at once, and Modena and Reggio after the war. In consequence of the firm behaviour of the Papal representative the French court at last became aware that something must be done, at least in the case of Cervia and Ravenna. Strong representations were made to the Venetians but at the same moment a grievous wound was inflicted upon Clement by the formation of an alliance of the closest kind with the Pope’s bitterest enemy, Ferrara: Renee, the daughter of Louis XII, was betrothed to Ercole, the hereditary Prince of Ferrara.

The French proposals to the Venetian Government proved futile. Contarini had, as hitherto, to try and justify the robbery. The Pope, however, prone as he was in other respects to give way, showed in this instance inflexible determination. He repeated his declaration that an agreement with the League was impossible while Venice and Ferrara withheld from him his legitimate possessions. Contarini thought he saw signs of. a leaning towards the Emperor on the part of Clement, although the latter feared the power of Charles and placed little trust in him.

A step, however, in this direction was taken after the opening of hostilities on the scene of war in Naples. The victory of the 28th of April had destroyed the Imperialist fleet, and since the 10th of June Naples had been completely cut off at sea by Venetian galleys; the necessaries of life were hardly procurable in the great city. With the rising heat of summer came a new enemy with whom not only the besieged but also the besiegers had to engage. Typhus and a bad form of intermittent fever broke out and spread daily.

In July, when the disease was at its worst, an event occurred bringing with it far-reaching results; this was the rupture between Francis I and his Admiral, Andrea Doria. Charles consented to all Doria’s demands; the Genoese squadron set sail, and Naples, which the French had looked upon as certain to fall into their hands by the end of July, was thus set free by sea. Later, Genoa also, so important on account of its situation, was lost to France.

Lautrec had made the greatest exertions to bring about the fall of Naples. By the 5th of July it was believed, in the French camp, that further resistance was impossible. But the Imperialists held out and defended themselves so skilfully that Philibert of Chalon, Prince of Orange, who had succeeded on Moncada’s death to his command, was able to report to his master : “The French in their entrenchments are more closely besieged than we in the city.” The Imperialists’ best ally, however, was the sickness which made great strides in the marshy encampment of the French. “God,” said a German, “sent such a pestilence among the French hosts that within thirty days they well-nigh all died, and out of 25,000 not more than 4000 remained alive.”

Vaudemont, Pedro Navarro, Camillo Trivulzio, and Lautrec fell ill, and on the night following the Feast of the Assumption Lautrec died. As Vaudemont also was carried off by the disorder, the Marquis of Saluzzo assumed the chief command. He soon perceived that the raising of the siege had become inevitable, and on the night of the 29th of August, amid storms of rain, began his retreat. The Imperial cavalry at once rode out in pursuit; Orange, with his infantry, turned back to meet them; but the sickly French soldiers could not face the onslaught; quarter or no quarter, they were forced to yield; they were stripped and disarmed and then left to the mercy of God and to the peasantry, “who put nearly all of them to death.” The wretched scattered remnant of the great French army wandered about in beggary; a few bands made their escape as far as Rome, where they were compassionately succoured, but forced to depart by the landsknechts. A German resident in Rome relates how he had supplied the sick and naked with food and clothing, and how in the streets and environs the corpses of those who had perished miserably lay exposed.

“Victoria, victoria, victoria,” wrote Morone on the 29th of August 1528 to the Imperial envoy in Rome. “The French are destroyed, the remainder of their army is flying towards Aversa.” Cardinal Colonna and Orange at once informed Clement of the victory, and at the same time sent more special messages. Orange added that he had tried persistently to describe as faithfully as possible the position of affairs, and had always foretold the issue as it had come to pass; he besought the Pope to attach himself as much as possible to Charles V. The complete triumph of the Emperor was, in fact, no longer in question. Although the campaign still lingered on in Apulia and Lombardy, yet, such was the weakness of the French and the lukewarmness of the Venetians, that the end could be foreseen with certainty.

Clement thanked God that he had not accepted the baits of the League. “If he had acted otherwise,” wrote Sanga, “in what an abyss of calamity should we now be.” In the beginning of September Clement VII and Sanga determined, in spite of Contarini’s warnings, to make serious approaches to the victorious Emperor. “The Pope,” as Contarini expressed it on the 8th of September 1528, “is accommodating himself to the circumstances of the hour.” His own position, as well as that of Italy, left him, in fact, no other choice. In letters and messages Orange expressed his loyalty to the Pope; he assured Clement, in a letter of the 18th of September, that he might look upon the Imperial forces as his own and return without anxiety to Rome: “in case of necessity we are ready to sacrifice our lives in defence of your Holiness.” Charles also tried to gratify the Pope in circumstances of a different sort, for he gave a promise, through Orange, to restore the Medicean rule in Florence. But from Venice came the tidings through the French envoy, that all his efforts to induce the Signoria to give back Ravenna and Cervia were unavailing. So great was the acquisitiveness and lust of possession of the Venetians that, instead of giving back the Pope his own, they were more likely to make further aggressions.

In September Clement made up his mind to return to Rome, in accordance with the Emperor’s strong desire, although Civita Vecchia and Ostia were still occupied by the Spaniards. Contarini vainly tried to dissuade him. Orange had given his solemn oath to protect the Pope, if the latter would only go back to Rome and save the Emperor, who was actually and in intent a faithful son of the Church, from the contumely which would certainly accrue to him if Clement VII refused, from distrust, to return to his See. Already, on the 17th of 1528, the Pope had sent Cardinals Sanseverino and Valle to Rome. His own return was delayed owing to a violent feud between the Colonna and Orsini, whereby the neighbourhood of Rome was laid waste.

At the last hour France made an attempt to thwart this beginning of an understanding between the Pope and the Emperor. On the 1st of October a messenger from Carpi approached the Pope. He brought a promise of the immediate restoration of Ravenna and Cervia as soon as Clement gave his adhesion to the League; while Modena and Reggio would be given back simultaneously with his acting in the interests of France. The Pope sent a refusal. On the 5th of October he left Viterbo with his whole court, under the protection of about a thousand soldiers, and on the following evening, amid torrents of rain, re-entered his capital. He forbade any public reception on account of the distressing state of the times; he first paid a visit to St. Peter’s, to make. an act of thanksgiving, and then repaired to the Vatican.

The city presented a truly horrifying picture of misery and woe. Quite four-fifths of the houses, according to the computation of the Mantuan envoy, were tenantless; ruins were seen on every side—a shocking sight for anyone who had seen the Rome of previous days. The inhabitants themselves declared that they were ruined for two generations to come. The same authority, quoted above, emphasizes the fact that of all his many acquaintances, inmates of or sojourners in Rome, hardly anyone was left alive. “I am bereft of my senses”, he says, “in presence of the ruins and their solitude.” The churches were one and all in a terrible condition, the altars were despoiled of their ornaments, and most of the pictures were destroyed. In the German and Spanish national churches only was the Holy Sacrifice offered during the occupation of the city.

A Papal Encyclical of the 14th of October 1528 summoned all Cardinals to return to Rome. Clement wrote in person to Charles, on the 24th of October, that, relying on the promises of Orange and the other representatives of his Majesty, to whom this intelligence will be certainly acceptable, he had returned to Rome, “the one seat ” of the Papacy. “We too,” he added, “must rejoice on coming safe to shore, after so great a shipwreck, even if we have lost all things; but our grief for the ruin of Italy, manifest to every eye, still more for the misery of this city and our own misfortune, is immeasurably heightened by the sight of Rome. We are sustained only by the hope that, through your assistance, we may be able to stanch the many wounds of Italy, and that our presence here and that of the Sacred College may avail towards a gradual restoration of the city. For, my beloved son, before our distracted gaze lies a pitiable and mangled corpse, and nothing can mitigate our sorrows, nothing can build anew the city and the Church, save the prospect of that peace and undisturbed repose which depends on your moderation and equity of mind.”

CHAPTER VIII.

Reconciliation of the Emperor and the Pope.—The Treaties of Barcelona and Cambrai.

On the day after his return to Rome, Clement assembled the Cardinals and conservators in order to confer with them on the restoration of the city. The Pope’s first care was to provide for the most pressing necessity, the import of articles of food, of which there was the greatest scarcity. Steps were also taken to set in order the despoiled churches, and to repair the destruction wrought on buildings. The business of the Curia now resumed its regular course; persons belonging to the court tried to install themselves as best they could. Life in the city showed signs of a complete change; the luxury and frivolity of previous days had vanished, for the general poverty stamped an impress of seriousness and gloom on everything. Instead of the throng of showy equipages, religious processions made their way through the deserted streets. The unlucky inhabitants were in want not only of nourishment but of clothing; traders from Venice and other places came in numbers, but hardly anyone had money to make purchases. Strangers were especially struck by the wretched plight of most of the Cardinals. Ecclesiastical ceremonies, even those in which the Pope took a part, were shorn of their splendour owing to the lack of ornaments and vestments. Yet, notwithstanding the general misery, the Pope was glad to be back in Rome, his own See.

While in Viterbo, Clement had published the nomination of Quiñones, the General of the Franciscans, then at the Emperor’s court, to the Cardinalate. He awaited his return, with more precise information as to the Emperor’s intentions, with anxious impatience. In the meanwhile the agents of the League, led by Contarini, were active in trying to hinder the advances of the Pope to the Emperor, and a new French envoy was also busy in the same direction as Contarini. These attempts were not, at the time, altogether without hope of success, for Charles V, with icy reserve, let the Pope feel that he was dependent on his favour. The Emperor’s servants in Italy did not fail their master in keeping up this impres­sion. The return of Quinones was delayed in such a remarkable manner that the Pope was nearly worn out with impatience. Expressions made use of by Clement VII and by his advisers as well, in November and the first half of December, show how heavily the Emperor’s preponderance weighed upon him, and how gladly he would have seen a weakening of the Imperial power, whether from the side of Bavaria or from that of the Voivode of Siebenbürgen.

The Pope had begun to despair of Quiñones’ return when, on the 17th of December 1528, came the intelligence that the latter had landed at Genoa in the company of Miguel Mai. This was welcome news, for now there seemed a certainty of ascertaining the Emperor’s position. On the 30th of December Quinones reached Rome, and was immediately provided with a lodging close to the Papal apartments. The hopes that the Emperor’s attitude would now be clearly explained proved illusory, for Quinones brought with him only civil speeches; all matters of detail were to be discussed with the Viceroy of Naples.

Contarini considered this a favourable moment for expending all his gifts of eloquence on the Pope in order to persuade him to renounce his claims on Cervia and Ravenna, and to win him over to the League. He thought it necessary to show all the more energy in the matter as a report was current that the Pope had a mind to lay Venice under an interdict. On the 4th of January 1529 he entered the Papal presence; he announced that he had come not as the envoy of Venice, but as an Italian, as a private personage and as a Christian, in order to submit to his Holiness his opinion on the state of affairs. The Pope having invited him to speak freely, Contarini set forth, in impressive language, that the whole question resolved itself into one point, namely, that at that given moment the Head of the Church should not, like the rulers of secular states, pursue particular interests only, but fix his eyes on the general welfare of Christendom, and thereby divert the other princes of Europe also from their purely selfish systems of policy. Proceeding further, Contarini suggested to the Pope nothing less than the renunciation of a portion, nay, even of the entirety, of the Papal States. “Let not your Holiness suppose,” he said, “that the welfare of the Church of Christ stands or falls with these morsels of worldly dominion. Before their acquisition the Church existed, and, indeed, existed at her best. She is the common possession of all Christians; the Papal States are like any other states of an Italian prince, therefore your Holiness must set in the forefront of your responsibilities the welfare of the true Church, which consists in the peace of Christendom, and allow the interests of the temporal states to fall for a time into the background.” The Pope made answer: “I well perceive that you are speaking the truth and that I, as one faithful to his trust, ought to act as you exhort me; but then, those on the other side ought to act in like manner. Nowadays it has come to pass that the craftiest man is held to be the most capable, and wins most applause in this world; of anyone who acts otherwise, all that is said is that he is a good-natured but impracticable fellow, and, with that, they leave him to himself.” Contarini rejoined: “If your Holiness were to explore all the contents of Holy Scripture, which cannot err, you would find that nothing is prized therein more highly than truth, virtue, goodness, and a noble purpose. On many private occasions I have tested this standard and found it true. Let your Holiness take courage and go on your way with a good intention, and God, without doubt, will support you and give you glory, and you will find the right path without toil and without intrigue.”

In his reply the Pope kept to his former standpoint. He referred to the danger of an alliance of the Emperor with Florence, Ferrara, and Venice. “You,” he added, “would be allowed to keep all that you have got, while I, as the good-natured man, who has been robbed of all his belongings, would be left where I am without a chance of recovering one single thing.” To Contarini’s assurance that Venice would not conclude a separate treaty with Charles apart from the other members of the League, the Pope replied with the remark, “With you everything depends on a single ballot.” All further representations of the Ambassador were in vain, although his words had not been without a certain effect. “I admit,” said Clement, “that the course you recommend would be the right one; otherwise Italy falls entirely into the power of the Emperor, and you will try to get some advantage from the Turkish danger. But I tell you, we have no common ground to meet on, and the good-natured man is treated as a simpleton.”

Contarini’s advice certainly sounds like that of an idealist; but a dispassionate critic will admit that the Venetian was confusing the interests of his native city and the still unrecovered independence of Italy with the welfare of Christendom. The Medici Pope did not try to conceal that he was a practical politician to the core; if, in an age when hardly anything was respected except material power, when political considerations controlled every question, even the purely ecclesiastical, he refused to renounce his secular sovereignty, he certainly was acting intelligibly from a merely human standpoint; but higher and more Christian conceptions were demanded in one holding the office of the Vicar of Christ. The pursuit of temporal power was to a certain extent fully justified, but ought always to have been subordinated to the supreme interest, that of devotion to the supernatural claims of the Church. That Clement only too often forgot this, throws a heavy shadow over his pontificate.

In January 1529 Quiñones went to Naples in order to negotiate on the spot for the surrender of Ostia and Civita Vecchia, the liberation of the hostages, and an understanding between the Emperor and the Pope. Clement also appointed Schonberg as his colleague, and sent a token of high distinction to the Viceroy. At this time Miguel Mai arrived in Rome to represent the Emperor, “a bold, unscrupulous character, wholly devoted to his master’s interests.” Mai announced that he had full powers to give back Ostia and Civita Vecchia; the restitution would take place as soon as he had spoken with the Pope. This was impossible, for, just at this juncture, Clement was taken with a serious illness, the consequence, very probably, of the agitation and suffering of the previous year.

In spite of a cold, contracted on the Feast of the Epiphany, in the Sixtine Chapel, Clement VII had held a Consistory on the 8th of January; thereupon he fell ill; on the evening of the 9th he was in a state of high fever, and the following morning his life was despaired of. Although an improvement set in, the case seemed to give so clear a warning of his approaching end that on the night of the 10th of January the Pope summoned the Cardinals to him and with their approval bestowed the purple on Ippolito de’ Medici. Somewhat earlier the same honour had been intended for Girolamo Doria, nephew of Andrea Doria, who had promised to relieve the scarcity of food in Rome. After some hesitation, all the Cardinals assented to this nomination also. On this occasion Clement declared to the Sacred College that if God restored him to health it was his intention to journey into Spain in order to restore peace to Christendom. During the next few days the condition of the sick Pontiff continued to be very critical, and on the. evening of the 15th of January Clement was so weak that it was not believed he could live through the night.

The sudden assembling of the Cardinals at the Vatican had already thrown the Romans into dismay, and the excitement was increased by the spread of more and more alarming accounts of the Pope’s illness. Not a few believed that he was already dead; the citizens began to arm. The Cardinals met together in the Palazzo Monte for consultation, as the doctors had for the moment given Clement up. Since Ostia and Civita Vecchia were still in the Imperialists’ hands, and the unruly host under Orange was still encamped at Naples, the freedom of a Papal election seemed in serious danger. The majority of the Cardinals were therefore of opinion that the conclave ought not to be held in Rome. Even Quiñones, with his Imperialist sympathies, took this standpoint, and feared a schism, the responsibility for which would be thrown on the Emperor. Miguel Mai declared later that Wolsey had roused the anxiety of the Cardinals as to the freedom of the conclave in order to induce them to transfer it to Avignon, where this ambitious churchman considered his election would be sure.

However that may be, it is a fact that the Cardinals took into consideration the issue of a Bull in which the seat of the conclave should be assigned to Bologna, Verona, Civita Casteliana, or Avignon. Cardinals Enkevoirt and Quiñones approached Mai secretly, and told him that if the fortified places were not given up immediately there would be an uproar in Rome. Almost all the Sacred College threatened him with dismissal in the event of the Pope’s death. “The majority of the Cardinals,” Mai was forced to inform the Emperor, “are unfriendly to me on account of the ruthless havoc committed by our soldiery throughout Italy, from Piedmont to Apulia.” It was seen on the Imperialist side that something must be done to allay the excitement. Accordingly, the Cardinals kept as hostages in Naples were set free, and the order was given for the surrender of Ostia and Civita Vecchia.

In the meantime Clement had made a remarkably quick recovery from his illness, although the fever did not wholly leave him; his condition varied from day to day, but remained so far stationary that it was impossible for him to grant audiences. It was feared in the Vatican that the constantly recurring fever would at last wear out the Pope’s strength, and a commission of Cardinals was appointed to despatch the most pressing business. On the 18th of February Clement had another bad attack, and the question of the freedom of election came once more to the front. The negotiations of the Cardinals over the delivery of Ostia and Civita Vecchia proved as fruitless as ever, for, in spite of the orders from Orange, communicated by Mai, the commandants of the fortresses refused to evacuate them until their soldiers’ clamours for pay had been satisfied. “If the Pope were to die,” reported Quinones to the Emperor, “before the fortresses belonging to him are given up, a schism will be inevitable.”

By the middle of February the report gained ground that the Emperor was making serious preparations for his descent upon Italy. These tidings aroused great excitement among the diplomatists resident in Rome; the Pope was greatly alarmed, and declared himself ready to visit Spain and France in person, accompanied by six or seven of the Cardinals, on a mission of peace­making, in order to show his impartiality towards King and Emperor alike.

The Pope’s neutrality was displeasing to the representatives of the Emperor and of the League. The former saw in the Pope’s projected journey only an attempt to thwart the expedition of Charles; the latter hoped that Clement, in his alarm at the Emperor’s coming, might be drawn to their side. Thus the Pope, not yet wholly recovered from his illness, became the occasion of a sharp diplomatic struggle in which neither threats nor enticements were spared on either side.

The Emperor’s agent, Miguel Mai, had been commissioned to obtain the Pope’s consent to an offensive, or, if this was not possible, at least to a defensive alliance. The League hoped to attain its object by inviting Giberti, who had so often already won Clement over to France, to come to Rome. On the 23rd of February the Bishop of Verona arrived. He was at once able to corroborate Contarini, that Clement was now more inclined to a general peace. But, he added, two things are necessary: in the first place, no one must try to force him to change his views; and, secondly, no one must give him cause for fresh complaint. This last hint referred to Ravenna and Cervia, which the Venetians, in spite of the pressure brought to bear on them, especially by England, had no intention of giving up.

Giberti was almost all day with the Pope, who was showing marked improvement. Even though their conversation has not been reported, it is yet easy to conjecture its import. The Imperialists were fully aware of the danger threatening them. Miguel Mai wrote angrily to the Emperor that “these devils of Leaguers are besieging the Pope might and main, and spinning round him a web of lies and artifices of all sorts.” Andrea da Burgo, the representative of Ferdinand I, also saw with anxiety how the Pope, in his alarm and indecision, was being plied with every possible promise by the French and English, and encouraged in his distrust of the Emperor. Already, on the 2nd of March 1529, he reported that the French were promising Cervia and Ravenna, and anything else that the Pope wished, if he would only declare himself for the League. From his timidity, and the wholly French character of his surrounding influences, Andrea, and many others with him, inferred that Clement would certainly not make any advances towards the Emperor and Ferdinand I; they ought to be glad, thought Andrea, if he remained neutral.

In the meantime the Pope’s condition had improved so much that on the 7th of March he was able to leave his bed, and his audiences, although on a limited scale, were resumed. On the 9th of March Burgo sent a report to Ferdinand on Mai’s negotiations with the Pope and Schonberg. Clement, in his conversation with Charles’s envoy, insisted on his duty of remaining neutral, and on his poverty, which was so great that he was hardly able to afford the upkeep of his household. He refused an alliance, offensive or defensive, with the Emperor. At the same time he again went over his plan of visiting France and Spain in person, and, with this object in view, he spoke of sending Schonberg to the Emperor, and Giberti to Francis I. To Burgo the absence of Schonberg seemed dangerous, for the latter was the Emperor’s most loyal representative in Rome, and in his audiences with the Pope expressed himself in the same way.

Miguel Mai was in close communication with the Cardinals as well as with the Pope: but he found out that the former were for the most part inclined towards France. Even if Mai, occasionally, had recourse to threats,  yet his chief endeavour was, by meeting the Pope’s wishes, especially in financial matters, to induce him to renounce his neutrality and ally himself with Charles. But in all their efforts to gain the Pope, the Imperialists sought to drive home the argument that Charles could give assistance towards the restoration of the Medici as rulers of Florence. To play on Clement’s fears, the League made use of the reports, then taking definite shape, of the approaching arrival of the Emperor in Italy. He was told that in the end Charles would make himself master of the whole of the Papal States.

The excitement occasioned by these transactions and the more threatening aspect of the divorce suit of Henry VIII brought on a relapse, and Clement was unable to celebrate Mass in St. Peter’s on Easter Day. On Easter Monday 18,000 ducats were paid into the hands of the Imperial envoy, whereupon Ostia and Civita Vecchia were restored to the Pope. At the same time came the sorrowful news of Castiglione’s death; this was a heavy loss for the Pope, for none stood higher in the Emperor’s favour than this gifted diplomatist.

The repeated promises of the Imperialists to render service to the Pope both in respect of the restoration of the Medici as rulers in Florence, and of the restitution of Cervia and Ravenna, could not fail to make a deep impression on Clement. But, amid the uncertainty of affairs in Italy, nothing was less easy than a decision, and thus he continued to hesitate. The feeling that, notwithstand­ing the surrender of Ostia and Civita Vecchia, his hands were as much tied as before, weighed heavily in the balance in favour of procrastination. On the whole, shrewd diplomatist that he was, Clement did not betray this; but sometimes his emotion had the mastery of him. Thus on the 9th of April he complained to Cardinal Trivulzio, whose  sympathies were French, of the way in which the Emperor’s agents tried to hurry him into a treaty with Charles. He would gladly withstand them if he could, but his position in this matter was still just as bad as it had been during his imprisonment in St. Angelo; the only difference consisted in this, that now, at least, he had personal liberty; in the former condition of things he had no other choice left him than to fly from Rome, leaving the Papal territory to its fate, or to come to the least disadvantageous terms with those whose troops were so close at hand that they might at any hour have overwhelmed him. “What the Pope will do in the last resort, I do not know”, wrote Trivulzio ; “it is certain that he is in the greatest anxiety and perplexity, and will avoid a settlement as long as possible. When at last he does make one he will be driven to it by main force, pulled along, as it were, by the hairs of his head.”

Trivulzio was mistaken, for a few days after his despatch was written, the Pope made up his mind. He had been greatly influenced by a personal letter from the Emperor, dated Toledo, the 28th of February, the contents of which were communicated to Contarini by the Pope on the 12th of April. Charles first of all congratulated his Holiness on his recovery, and then announced definitely his speedy voyage to Italy; he wished to start from Toledo as early as the 8th of March, since personal negotiations with his Holiness could alone conduce to that general peace for which the initial preparations must begin in Italy, the victim of so much calamity. Therefore by the 16th of April a new Nuncio to the Imperial court with full legatine powers was appointed to succeed Castiglione; this was Girolamo da Schio, Bishop of Vaison, Master of the Papal Household. This staunchly Imperialist diplomatist, who had kept up assiduous intercourse with Miguel Mai and Andrea da Burgo, received secret instructions from the Pope.

The complete reconciliation, the alliance between Emperor and Pope, was now close at hand, and with good reason, since the members of the League seemed deliberately to be doing their best to drive Clement into their adversary’s arms. Venice and Ferrara, now as before, refused to hand back their spoils, while France kept up a lingering warfare in upper and lower Italy, encouraged the obduracy of Florence, and even gave trouble to Clement in his own territory by protecting his enemies Malatesta Baglioni and the domineering Abbot of Farfa. “The misdeeds which can be laid to the account of the Leaguers”, said Salviati,  “are such that they must force the Pope to side with the Emperor.”

In addition to these considerations, it had been known in Rome since the beginning of April that France was prepared to make, single-handed, conditions of peace with the Emperor. Even Giberti said at the time, “I am afraid that the French may make a treaty of their own with the Emperor, and then put off their allies with fair speeches.” Contarini was not willing to believe this, but it was soon made evident that Giberti had discerned aright. With a full knowledge of the state of affairs, a further sojourn in Rome seemed superfluous to this skilled politician; under the pretext of compliance with the duty of residence in his diocese, he earnestly begged for permission to return. Contarini and the Pope detained him for some time longer, but he soon gave up all hope, and on the 26th of April, regardless of the entreaties of his friend Contarini, left Rome.

Undoubtedly the Pope’s attitude towards the Emperor was greatly influenced by the hope that, through the help of Charles, Florence would once more be governed by the Medici. With what dissimulation Clement tried to disguise this anticipation is described in the reports of Contarini and other diplomatists. He tried to keep the plan a secret even from his most trusted and intimate friends, but without success, for in the beginning of March Girolamo Balbi said to Andrea da Burgo that Clement wished nothing so much as a change of government in Florence.

Just at this moment news reached Rome of a turn in Florentine affairs which Clement attributed wholly to the help of Charles.

For a long time the Pope had hoped to attain his object in Florence by peaceable means. As long as Capponi, a well-disposed and moderate man, stood at the head of affairs there, this expectation was by no means altogether visionary, especially when the timid character of the Pope, then in such sore distress, is taken into consideration. Capponi formed a scheme for freeing his native city by means of an arrangement with the Pope; with Jacopo Salviati as a go-between, he opened up secret communications with Rome; their discovery led to his fall on the 17th of April 1529. His successor was Francesco Carducci, a violent partisan, in whose circle Clement was spoken of only as the tyrant and bastard. The hatred of this democrat towards the Medici made any accommodation impossible. The fate of Florence was thus decided; everything was done there to exasperate the Pope to the utmost. The half-forgotten fact of his illegitimate birth was dragged to light; he was made the butt of scorn and ridicule in verses and pictures, and his Papal authority was often repudiated.

On the 18th of April, Clement, as feudal lord of Perugia, had forbidden all its citizens, under threat of the severest penalties, to take foreign service. Nevertheless, on the 4th of May the Florentines appointed as their captain Malatesta Baglioni; further, they paid two hundred soldiers to occupy Perugia. Clement was carried away by anger, and declared to the English envoy he would rather be the Emperor’s chaplain or equerry than allow himself to be insulted by his rebellious subjects and vassals. To Contarini he declared that the disgraceful mortifications inflicted on him by the Abbot of Farfa and Baglioni were instigated by the French and Florentines. They had compelled him to look to his private interests and no longer to maintain an indeterminate position. He did not wish to be made prisoner a second time and be carried off to Florence. To the counter-representations of Contarini the Pope replied, “What ought I, in your opinion, to do? I have taken no decided course, and thereby given satisfaction to none; rather have I exposed myself to the contempt of all.” He feared that the peace negotiations between France and the Emperor would end badly for Italy, that both one and the other would leave him in the lurch as one who could not be safely relied on. “For appearance’ sake there will be a stipulation that I am to be the protector of the peace, and with that they will rest satisfied. I tell you, Ambassador,” said Clement in conclusion, “I am forced to act as I do. What do you wish me to do? I cannot act otherwise.”

The decisive step was taken in the first days of May. On the 7th of that month the Pope sent to the Emperor an autograph letter of thanks for the restoration of the fortresses. His illness had hindered him from sending an earlier answer; he now sends to him his Master of the Household, Girolamo da Schio, Bishop of Vaison, whom his Majesty can trust as he would Clement himself, since the Nuncio knows all the secrets of his heart. Schio, who carried together with this letter the Bull of the Cruzada and other tokens of grace, had full powers to conclude a treaty with the Emperor; he left Rome on the 9th of May. Two days later, Andrea da Burgo reported to Ferdinand I. this mission of such decisive importance, and the favourable dispositions of the Pope. Miguel Mai wrote at the same time to Charles V. that the choice of a Nuncio could not have fallen on a better man than Schio, since he was a person of marked distinction, and a good Imperialist at heart.

Schio embarked on the 25th of May at Genoa for Barcelona, where Charles had been staying since the 30th of April. The Emperor ordered preparations to be made to receive the Papal Nuncio with every mark of honour. He arrived on the 30th of May; the negotiations began at once, and ran very smoothly, and on the 10th of June Charles committed to Mercurino dl Gattinara, Louis de Praet, and Nicholas Perrenot the necessary powers. By the 23rd of June a compact relating to the marriage of Alessandro de’ Medici with Margaret, the Emperor’s natural daughter, had been concluded. There was no longer any possible doubt for whom Florence was intended. On the 29th the signatures were attached to the treaty, to which the Emperor on the same day bound himself by oath before the splendid high altar of the Cathedral of Barcelona.

In view of the Turkish encroachments and the trouble arising from heresy, a defensive alliance was struck between Pope and Emperor. The Emperor promised his help towards restoring the Medicean rule in Florence and reinstating the Church in her temporal possessions, by insisting on the restitution of Ravenna and Cervia on the part of Venice, and of Modena, Reggio, and Rubbiera on the part of Alfonso of Ferrara, the rights of the Empire being left unimpaired. The Duke of Ferrara was to be declared forfeited of his duchy, a fief of the Church, and the Emperor’s support was to be given to the execution of the Papal sentence. In taking possession of the Duchy of Milan, “the fountain-head of the troubles of Italy,” Charles, in the event of Sforza being found guilty of felony, would act in conjunction with the Pope, although not bound to do so legally. All arbitrary usurpation of the patronage of the Neapolitan bishoprics on the part of the Imperial Government would cease. All amicable means of dealing with the reform in Germany having been exhausted, Charles and Ferdinand, his brother, who was included in the terms of the treaty, were to take forcible measures for the suppression of that movement. The Pope, on his side, supported these undertakings. In the renewed assumption of the Neapolitan fief he contents himself with the palfrey tax (chinea, in Spanish hacanea), hands over to the Emperor and his successors the nomination to four-and-twenty Neapolitan-bishoprics, and permits the passage of Imperialist troops through the Papal territory. Two additional articles relate to the Pope’s support of the war against the Turks. Besides the spiritual means at his disposal, Clement promises to further the work by guaranteeing to Charles and Ferdinand, for this purpose, a fourth of the ecclesiastical revenues of their countries, on the same scale as under Adrian VI, and absolves the Imperial army from all the ecclesiastical penalties incurred in consequence of the attack on Rome. Lastly, Clement increases the privileges of the recently issued Bull of the Cruzada.

At the first glance it seems astonishing that Charles should have conceded such favourable terms to the despoiled and vanquished Pope. But on closer inspection the leniency of the Emperor admits of an easy explanation. In spite of all humiliation, the status of the Papacy in human society was still one of high importance. The friendship of Clement was an imperative necessity to Charles, unless his interests in England, in Scandinavia, in Switzerland, in Hungary, and Germany were to suffer the most grievous injury. Moreover, the exhaustion of the Imperial finances and the doubtful outlook of the continuation of the campaign in Italy came into consideration. Lastly, Charles hoped that his alliance with the Pope would deal a mortal blow to the League; and even if his concessions to Clement were considerable, his own interests in Italy were not nullified by the treaty.

The treaty of Barcelona accelerated the peace negotiations between Francis and Charles.

The contradictory reports from Lombardy had caused the French king to fluctuate between one policy and another. Sometimes he unfolded before the Italian envoys far-reaching plans of campaign, and spoke of attacking the Emperor in Spain or of leading in person a great army into Italy. But these were passing paroxysms of war­like ardour. One look at his kingdom would have told Francis that the burdens of war were no longer endurable. Then there was the dissatisfaction of the French Government with their English allies, who were liberal of critiism but not of money. The scheme for entering on peace negotiations grew in popularity at the French court. In November 1528 there were thoughts of appealing to the Pope’s mediation, but the notion was soon given up. There was a greater leaning towards the Regent of the Netherlands, the Archduchess Margaret, and the Queen Mother, Louisa of Savoy, entered into direct communication with the Archduchess in order to bring about a peace. Cardinal Salviati, in May 1529, was still disinclined to believe in the seriousness of these negotiations. Nevertheless, these two women, distinguished alike for intellectual qualities and political experience, succeeded in their difficult task.

The French Government showed consummate skill in concealing their transactions from the other members of the League. On the 23rd of June 1529 Francis declared to their envoys that he would sacrifice his own life and that of his son to save the allied Leaguers; the Queen and the Admiral, Anne de Montmorency, spoke in the same sense. On the 10th of July the latter made the most solemn disclaimer of the report that France intended to desert Venice. Twelve days later the King, with equal solemnity, swore that Florence would be included in the treaty of peace, and on the 3rd of August Francis still affirmed that nothing would be concluded without the consent of his allies. On the 5th the treaty was signed at Cambrai in which he completely threw them over. Up to the last there were still great difficulties to be overcome, but matters were brought quickly to a conclusion by the news that de Leyva’s victory over St. Pol at Landriano (21st of June) had made Charles master of Lombardy and at one with the Pope.

The treaty concluded by Francis was highly disadvantageous; he saved nothing except the integrity of his own country. He had to promise that thenceforward he would abstain from all interference in Italian and German affairs; within six weeks all his troops were to be withdrawn from Italy; he was to compel Venice and Ferrara to surrender the stolen cities; in case of necessity to expel with arms the Venetians from Apulia; he was to pay Charles for the expenses of his coronation journey 200,000 thalers and furnish him with twenty galleys, and his son was to be set free at a ransom of two million crowns.

In Rome the result of the negotiations at Barcelona and Cambrai had been watched with anxious attention, above all by Contarini, who, with the tenacity of a born diplomatist, had up to the last moment urged the cause of the League, but without the least success, on the Pope, who was still unwell. On the 17th of June Andrea da Burgo could report that Salviati, by order of the Pope, had told him that the latter rejected all the offers of the League. Two days earlier Schonberg had left Rome in order to take part in the negotiations at Cambrai. On the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul the Pope, in presence of all the Cardinals, received the “Chinea” from Miguel Mai; on the same day came the news of the overthrow of the French at Landriano. The reports then current as to the Emperor’s frame of mind justified Clement in having the best hopes. On the 15th of July the conclusion of the treaty with the Emperor was made known for certain in Rome through the Abbate de’ Negri. On the following day came the decision on the divorce suit of Henry VIII, which the Pope cited before the court of the Rota in Rome.

The treaty of Barcelona was conveyed to Italy by the Emperor’s special messenger, Louis de Praet, who arrived in Rome on the 22nd of July, where he was visited at once, by command of the Pope, by Salviati, Sanga, Alessandro de’ Medici, and Cardinal Ippolito. Nor was the remainder of the Sacred College, the majority of whom now showed Imperialist leanings, wanting in marks of attention. In the afternoon of the 24th of July, Praet, together with Mai and Burgo, had an audience of the Pope, whom they saw in bed, bearing evident traces of his long illness. Clement read the Emperor’s letter, brought to him by Praet, and expressed his delight at the peace, and his hope that Charles, on his arrival in Italy, would be a protection to the Holy See. For Florentine affairs he referred the Imperial envoys to Cardinal Pucci. After a conversation with this Prince of the Church, whose devotion to the Emperor and the Medici was entire, they had a second audience, on the 25th of July, in which the Pope, still forced to keep his bed, swore fidelity to the Treaty of Barcelona Salvos of musketry from the Vatican, St. Angelo, and the palaces of the Imperialists announced the great event to Rome. Clement’s condition having much improved by the end of July, the envoys were able to discuss with him personally the Florentine enterprise which Praet had warmly advocated with the Emperor. On Sunday, the 1st of August, the Pope participated in person at the thanksgiving service in St. Peter’s on the occasion of the conclusion of peace.

Some days before, Philibert, Prince of Orange, had made his entry with a body of fifteen hundred foot. The negotiations concerning the submission of Florence, with which those relating to Perugia were combined, now reached a definite stage. Since the Treaty of Barcelona contained no terms relating to the cost of the war with Florence, serious difficulties were not wanting. It was said that the ambitious Orange demanded for himself nothing less than the hand of Catherine de’ Medici, the Pope’s niece—a marriage which would have made him master of Florence. In Clement’s immediate circle it was pointed out to him that he would be exposing his native city to great peril if he turned against her an army composed of such different nationalities. Among those who opposed the Florentine expedition, Jacopo Salviati, Roberto Pucci, and Sanga were named—those, in fact, who were in the Pope’s confidence.

No wonder that Clement fell back on his usual vacillation. If there were difficulties in coming to an understanding, the blame lay to a great extent with the Florentines, who kept up their methods of provocation towards the Pope. They were not only in the closest alliance with Malatesta Baglioni, but also with that Abbot of Farfa who had already caused Clement so much trouble.

To this turbulent leader of faction they sent 3000 ducats towards the recruiting of troops; this sum, however, was intercepted by the Papal party, whereupon the Abbot determined on revenge. In the beginning of August Clement had sent Cardinals Farnese. Medici, and Quinones to greet the Emperor on his arrival at Genoa. Quinones was set upon in the hill forest of Viterbo and kept prisoner until the 3000 ducats were repaid. How  bitterly the Pope must have resented this unprecedented occurrence1 can easily be understood. An agreement on the question of the subjection of Florence and Perugia was arrived at by the special interposition of Cardinal Pucci, who from his private resources advanced such a considerable sum that Clement was able to dispose of 36,600 scudi. But with this he could only at first clear off a small instalment of his obligations, for, on the 17th of August, Clement had to concede the demands of Orange: 80,000 scudi to be paid down, 50,000 to be added after the capture of Florence, and a final 150000 to be raised by taxation on the city. The Pope, besides, was to support Orange with artillery and recruits, and once more Rome and the Papal territory became the scene of active military movements. The Pope’s thoughts henceforward were absorbed in this unhappy enterprise against his native city. On the 13th of August Mercurino da Gattinara received from Clement, now fully restored to health, the long-coveted rank of Cardinal, as a reward for his services in bringing the Treaty of Barcelona to a conclusion.

CHAPTER IX

The Meeting of Clement VII. and Charles V. at Bologna. —The Last Imperial Coronation.—Restoration of the Medicean Rule in Florence.

On the 12th of August, 1529, Charles V, with a stately retinue of Spanish grandees, had landed at Genoa, where he was welcomed with shouts of “Long live the Ruler of the World!”. The coming of the Emperor raised the hopes of his followers to the highest pitch. Typical of the pride with which Charles was regarded by the Germans in Rome is the diary of Cornelius de Fine, who even associates the plenteous harvest of the autumn of 1529 with the coming of the Emperor. By command of the Pope, Cardinals Farnese, Medici, Quiñones, and his nephew Alessandro de’ Medici awaited his coming at Genoa. The Imperial troops, twelve thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, landed for the most part at Savona. With this force Charles might have attacked Venice and Sforza successfully, had not his brother Ferdinand at this very moment reported the threatening advance of the Turks in Hungary. This intelligence forced Charles to act with foresight and caution; he gave up the idea of an aggressive movement against the Venetians and expressed himself in a pacific sense. The hopes of the anti-imperialists in Italy, those of Venice before all, were, in fact, based on the victory of the Turks; the Venetian Senate instructed their Ambassador at Constantinople, on the 25th of August, to stir up the Moslem to push on against Ferdinand. In this state of things Charles was thrown more than ever on his friendship with the Pope; this accounts for the rude treatment of the Florentine envoys at Genoa who had come to plead for a postponement of the expedition against the city. Charles refused this peremptorily as an engagement undertaken without the cognizance of the Pope; he exhorted them, but certainly in vain, to come to terms with Clement. Gattinara spoke even more clearly, since he told the Florentines that they would have to reinstate Clement and his family in their former position. This, indeed, was the whole end and aim of the Pope; heedless of all warnings and dangers, he pursued without scruple the policy of the aggrandizement of the house of Medici.

Orange had left Rome in the middle of August. His troops were gathered in the flat country between Foligno and Spello; there were three thousand landsknechts, the remnant of Frundsberg’s army, and four thousand Italians under Pierluigi Farnese, Camillo Marzio, Sciarra Colonna, and Giovan Battista Savelli; the Spanish infantry were to be brought up from Apulia by Vasto.

The expedition against the rebellious Malatesta Baglioni was carried out swiftly. While reconnoitring near Spello, Giovanni d’ Urbino, the bravest of the Spanish captains, was indeed killed, but Spello surrendered in September. Vasto had now come up; on the 6th of September the army crossed the Tiber and pitched camp before Perugia, and by the 10th this stronghold had also capitulated. The conditions were very favourable to Malatesta Baglioni: he was allowed free egress for himself and his artillery, protection for his property, and permission to take service for Florence. Perugia returned to its former relations with the Holy See, retaining its privileges, and, on the evening of the nth of September, Cardinal del Monte took posses­sion of the city in the Pope’s name.

The hopes of the Florentines, that the campaign would be concentrated on Perugia, were thus baffled; once more the war was confined exclusively to their own territory. They also failed completely in their attempts to drive Orange off by means of negotiations. Since Malatesta had betaken himself to Montevarchi without giving a thought to the protection of the Florentine frontier towns, little resistance was offered to the Imperialist troops. In a short time they became masters of Cortona, Castiglione Florentino, and finally of Arezzo. The further advance of Orange into the valley of the Arno was very slow; this gave the inhabitants of Florence time to defend themselves. Orange laid himself open to the suspicion of acting with a view to his own interests rather than to those of the Pope, but there is no adequate proof of this; on the contrary, his delay arose from altogether different causes. The letters of Charles V to Orange show that the former expressly wished for a protracted advance against Florence, in order that, if possible, an agreement might be reached between the Pope and the citizens of his own town. Only in the case of this being altogether unsuccessful did the Emperor, that he might not incur the loss of Clement’s friendship, consent to carry the expedition through.

Up to the last, Clement had hoped that the Florentines, isolated from all help, would surrender and avoid the issue of a struggle with the fierce soldiery. He was doomed to see how far he had deceived himself. With admirable heroism, the Florentines had made preparations to fight for their freedom to the death. With their own hands they had devastated the fair surroundings of their city in order to deprive the enemy of any points of advantage. By every means in their power, even to the sale of Church property, money had been raked together to provide pay for the troops. They would rather, declared some, see their city in ashes than stoop to obey the Medici. The walls were manned by soldiers ready to resist any assault of the Imperialists. Orange had to make up his mind to invest the city, and at the end of October his artillery fire was trained upon the heights of San Miniato. Michael Angelo, who, on the 6th of April 1529, had already been appointed overseer of the fortifications, had transformed the noble basilica, on its lofty eminence, into a bulwark of such strength that the fire from Orange’s guns was ineffectual.

The success of their measures of defence filled the Florentines with fresh courage. Preachers of the order of which Savonarola had been a member sought zealously to revive the old belief in the inviolable security of the city; the holy angels, it was declared, would be the saviours of Florence; to gainsay such teaching was deemed a transgression against the State. The popular excitement was fanned especially by the Dominicans Fra Zaccaria of San Marco and Benedetto da Fojano. Like Savonarola, once the object of their heated adulation, these religious made their pulpits resound with politics. Their sermons, according to the testimony of Varchi, were filled with derisive gibes against the Pope and flattery of the government in power. The hatred of the Medici in some amounted at last to madness. It reached the length of a proposal that vengeance in a shameful form should be visited on Catherine de’ Medici, a child of ten, who was then detained as a hostage in a convent.

While in Genoa, Charles V. had sent a request to the Pope that his coronation might be solemnized at Bologna. Such threatening intelligence had come from Germany that it became more necessary than ever that the head of the Empire should speedily have recourse thither. The pressure to which Ferdinand was exposed from the Turks had altered the situation in such a way that it appeared impolitic for Charles to be at too great a distance from the hereditary domains of the Hapsburgs. Nor could Clement deny the force of this argument; but the state of his health, only just restored, and the cost of the journey were against it Moreover, an Imperial coronation outside the walls of Rome was something unknown, contrary to all precedent, the closest adherence to which was in Rome a fixed and unchanging principle. Many of the Cardinals, the Curia, and the Romans, almost without exception, were against the journey. But the Legates who had followed Charles to Piacenza supported him in his wish, to which he gave renewed expression in a letter of the 20th of September 1529. They also announced that Charles had sworn at Piacenza, as at Parma, to undertake nothing to the detriment of Holy Church. Clement was strongly influenced by the knowledge that he was dependent on Charles for the Florentine enterprise and the restoration of the Papal territory. He had also repeatedly previously announced his intention of going into Spain in the cause of peace. How could he now decline to make a comparatively trifling journey? By the end of August he had made up his mind to gratify the Emperor’s wish; but he kept his resolve a secret for some days, and allowed the belief to prevail that the notion of a Roman coronation had not been given up. On the 19th of September the Treaty of Cambrai was officially announced in Rome; before the Pope proceeded to the ceremony of its publication he made known to the Cardinals his intention of going to Bologna, but he left it optional to the members of the Sacred College whether they accompanied him or not. On that the Cardinals withdrew any opposition, and the Romans were pacified by the arrangement that the Rota and Cancelleria were to remain in Rome.

The date of the journey, for which preparations were now beginning to be made, depended a good deal on the news from Florence. The frightful danger hanging over his native city was a source of increasing agitation to Clement. He still hoped for a peaceful solution, and this hope was encouraged by Contarini. On the 22nd of September a Florentine envoy arrived in Rome. As he was the bearer only of general expressions, the Pope determined to send Schonberg to Orange and to Florence with the task of arranging a peaceful settlement, if such were by any means possible. Schonberg, who had only returned from Cambrai on the 19th, was once more on his way by the 23rd. But his mission was as unsuccessful as was that of one of the Papal Chamberlains despatched by Clement when he was already on the road to Bologna.

The obstinacy of the Florentines occasioned alterations in the Pope’s travelling arrangements. Instead of going through Tuscany, he had to take the road through the Romagna. Before starting, Clement drew up a series of precautionary regulations. By a special Bull the freedom of the Papal election, in case he died at Bologna, was secured. Cardinal del Monte was made Legate in Rome, and special Nuncios were ordered to go to France and England to acquaint their respective governments with the circumstances of the Pope’s journey, and to ask that full powers should be sent to Bologna for dealing with the Turkish question. Cardinal Cibo was instructed to make the necessary preparations in Bologna.

On the afternoon of the 7th of October the Pope left Rome amid torrents of rain. In immediate attendance were Cardinals Accolti, Cesi, Cesarini, and Ridolfi; most of the remaining Cardinals as well as the Ambassadors followed. The insecurity of the road made an escort necessary and considerably impeded the progress of the journey, which the Emperor, with renewed insistence, begged might be accelerated. The Pope’s route lay by Civita Casteliana, Orte, Terni, Spoleto, and Foligno to Sigillo on the Via del Furlo. On the way, important despatches were brought by members of the Imperial court. They contained Charles’s wish that the settlement of Italian affairs might be made as quickly as possible, seeing that the Turks were advancing on Vienna. He therefore would give up Parma to the Pope, although still in his (the Emperor’s) possession, and would deal with the affairs of Milan in conformity with Clement’s advice. At Sigillo the new Imperial envoy, Gabriele Merino, Bishop of Jaen and Archbishop of Bari, together with Praet and Mai, had his first audience with the Pope, whom he found full of confidence in the Emperor’s good intentions.

On the 20th of October Clement was at Cesena, where a Florentine deputation appeared, to announce that their city would make a willing submission if honourably treated. On the 21st the distinguished travellers were welcomed at Forli by the Bolognese envoys. On the 23rd feux de joie and peals of bells informed the inhabitants of Bologna that the head of the Church had reached the convent of the Crociferi, one mile distant from the city. On the following day the solemn entry, for which preparations on a vast scale had been undertaken, was made.

The road to San Petronio was overspread by draperies from which hung green garlands enclosing the arms of the Medici. Magnificent triumphal arches in the Doric order of architecture, with allegorical reliefs, paintings, and stucco groups of figures, had been constructed at the Porta Maggiore, the Palazzo Scappi and on the Piazza Maggiore. The Pope made his entrance borne on the sedia gestatoria; sixteen Cardinals, numerous Archbishops and Bishops, as well as bodies of Bolognese officials, went with him to San Petronio, from whence, after giving his solemn benediction, he betook himself to the Palazzo Pubblico, where splendid apartments had been prepared for him. A special messenger of the Emperor, Pedro de la Cueva, greeted Clement VII, a compliment acknowledged by the Pope in an autograph letter.

In a secret Consistory held on the 29th of October, six Cardinals were appointed to make all the needful prepara­tions for the Emperor’s coronation, and it was decided, in the event of the rite being performed in Bologna, that a Bull should be issued declaring the solemnity to have the same validity as it would have had if carried out in Rome. At the same time the Pope was able to proclaim the joyful news that the Turks had abandoned the siege of Vienna. In celebration of this event a solemn function was held in San Petronio on the last day of October, at which the Pope gave his benediction and absolution.

The entry of Charles V was looked for on the 5th of November. He had left Piacenza on the 27th of October. In Borgo San Donnino he received a letter from his brother announcing the complete failure of the Turkish attack on Vienna. Thus Charles’s position in Italy was remarkably improved, and his enemies, who had reckoned on the Turks, lost spirit.

With renewed hopes Charles went by Parma to Reggio, where the Duke Alfonso of Ferrara besought him on his knees to support him against the Pope. This crafty Prince made lavish promises in order to gain the favour of the powerful Emperor, whom he accompanied as far as Modena. The personal intercourse between them was destined to have important results. When Charles reached Borgo Panigale on the 4th of November, he found almost all the Cardinals and a numerous company of prelates there assembled ; Cardinal Farnese welcomed him in the Pope’s name and escorted him to Certosa. On the following day the Emperor made his state entry into the second city of the Papal territories.

On this occasion the decorations of Bologna far surpassed those employed on the arrival of the Pope. If on the former occasion the ecclesiastical element was the most prominent, the chief place was now occupied by secular pomp. In correspondence with the character of the Renaissance, now at its zenith, the festal decorations were marked by the utmost prodigality. Architects, sculptors, and painters competed in the creation of a scheme of ephemeral decoration striking the eye with magnificence and colour and transporting the spectator into the very heart of ancient Rome. From the windows of every house hung coloured tapestries, and awnings overspread the streets ; garlands of green leaves formed an admirable contrast to the arches which make Bologna a city of arcades. On the ravelin of the Porta S. Felice, through which Charles was to enter, was seen, on one side, the triumph of Neptune surrounded by tritons, sirens, and sea-horses, and on the other, Bacchus in the midst of satyrs, fauns, and nymphs, with the inscription, "Ave Caesar, Imperator invicte!”. On the gateway itself were conspicuous the Papal keys and the Imperial eagle, inscriptions in imitation of those of ancient Rome, medallion portraits of Caesar, Augustus, Titus, and Trajan, and lastly the equestrian statues of Camillus and Scipio Africanus. The architectural illusions were also, on this occasion, of exceptional splendour; the triumphal arches erected in the Doric style were all profusely adorned with stucco figures and paintings, mostly in chiaroscuro. Besides the painters of Bologna, those of other cities, such as Giorgio Vasari and a Flemish pupil of Raphael, were employed on these works.

At three o’clock in the afternoon the head of the Imperial procession reached the Porta S. Felice: first came lancers, then the artillery, two hundred landsknechts, cavalry, and again numerous foot-soldiers, followed by many princes and knights on horseback and in gleaming armour. Cardinal Campeggio, recently returned from England, as bishop of the city, met the Emperor at the gate, before whom were borne the standard of the Empire, the banner of St. George, and an unsheathed sword. Surrounded by Spanish grandees in magnificent attire rode Charles, on a white charger, in flashing armour inlaid with gold. His baldachino was carried by nobles and senators of Bologna. Behind him came the Count of Nassau, Alessandro de’ Medici, the Marquis of Montferrat, Andrea Doria, the Cardinal Chancellor di Gattinara, Cles, Bishop of Trent, Bishop George III of Brixen, Antonio Perrenot, Bishop of Arras, his confessor Garcia de Loaysa, and numerous ecclesiastical and secular dignitaries; the rearguard was composed of Spanish troops. While treasurers flung coins and medals to the closely packed crowds, who were shouting “Cesare, Imperio”, the procession slowly made its way to San Petronio, before which a richly decorated platform had been raised; here the Pope, in full pontifical garb, the triple crown upon his head, with five-and-twenty Cardinals around him, awaited the Emperor, on whose approach fanfares from trumpets were blown, all the city bells pealed, and the cannon thundered forth salutes. Two members of the Sacred College led Charles to the platform, where he knelt, and kissed the foot, hand, and forehead of the Pope. Thus, for the first time, the two men came face to face who had been engaged in such a long and bitter contest until their common interests brought them together. Charles addressed the Pope briefly in Spanish, and Clement made a friendly reply. The Emperor was then conducted to the church by the Pope, who afterwards withdrew. A Te Deum was sung in San Petronio.

It was six o’clock in the evening when the Emperor left the church and betook himself to the Palazzo Pubblico, where his lodgings also had been prepared. His apartments immediately adjoined those of the Pope. A private door of communication enabled them both to hold intercourse, at any time, free from interruption and observation. A well-known picture in the palace of the Signoria in Florence represents the Emperor and Pope in animated conversation.

Charles as a politician was more than a match for Clement in shrewdness; nevertheless he made most careful preparation on each occasion of conference with the Pope, noting down on a slip of paper all essential points. Italian writers of despatches were struck in Charles, who was not yet full thirty years old, by his seriousness, his sense of religion, and a certain slow deliberation of speech. Contarini, who had followed the Pope to Bologna, was impressed by the Emperor’s absorption in affairs while there; he seldom left the palace except in order to hear Mass. Of the Pope, then in his fifty-first year, he says that the traces of the long and dangerous illness he had gone through were plainly visible on his countenance. Among the Pope’s advisers the Venetian Ambassador mentions as the most influential Jacopo Salviati, French in his sympathies, but now accommodating himself to the conditions of the time; then Sanga, the friend of Giberti; Cardinal Pucci, entirely occupied with the Florentine business; as well as Schonberg and Girolamo da Schio, both Imperialists.

The negotiations of Clement VII with Charles were made easier by the conclusion of the treaties of Barcelona and Cambrai. But there still remained certain points which were very difficult of adjustment between them. The Pope was still distrustful of Charles, and, if Contarini is to be believed, it was not until after long intercourse with him at Bologna that Clement’s opinion in this respect underwent a change.

Clement insisted, as was to be expected, on an exact fulfilment of the stipulations in his favour of the Treaty of Barcelona. Charles, for his part, was determined, to retain the Pope’s friendship in any event, on account of the Turkish danger, not as yet by any means extinct, the condition of Germany, and the exhaustion of his resources. But his views regarding Milan and Ferrara differed essentially from those of Clement. The expedition against Florence gave rise to difficulties only in so far as Orange was incessant in his demands for money and reinforcements; an understanding on this point was made easier because Charles saw in the Florentine alliance with France a standing menace to his supremacy in Italy. It was otherwise with the Milanese question, to a favourable settlement of which Charles attached the greatest value. Previous to the meeting at Bologna, negotiations on this matter had already begun. In September and October the Imperialist envoys had proposed to Clement that Alessandro de’ Medici should be given Milan; but they received the negative reply that the Pope could not commit himself to so great an undertaking, productive as it would be of perpetual difficulties to those of his own house. Nevertheless, the Emperor at Bologna returned to this proposal, but with no better success; on the other hand, influences were at work to secure Milan for Federigo Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. As things were, any investiture of the duchy on another than Francesco Sforza would have kindled afresh another war in Italy. It was therefore fortunate that Charles listened to the representations of the Pope, Gattinara, and Contarini, and summoned Sforza to appear at Bologna to vindicate his claims. On the 23rd of November 1529 Sforza had his first audience with the Emperor; he conducted his case with such skill that the Pope succeeded in bringing Charles completely round. By the 3rd of December the investiture of Sforza with Milan was practically settled.

The Venetian Government having already, on the 10th of November, given full powers to Contarini to restore Ravenna and Cervia to the Pope, now declared themselves also ready to evacuate the Apulian towns; they objected, however, at first to enter into the defensive Italian league desired by the Emperor. On the 26th of November the Senate determined to make this concession also, in the hope that Charles would then make reductions in his demands for money from Milan and Venice. On the representations made to him by Contarini, the Emperor consented to a substantial reduction of the war indemnity payable by the Republic; but from Sforza he demanded as before, together with enormous sums of money, the castles of Milan and Como as security for payment. On the 12th of December a messenger from Venice arrived with in­structions to Contarini to comply with the Emperor’s wishes.

The Pope, yielding to the requests of Venice, recognized the right of the Duke of Urbino to the possession of his entire dominions. The Emperor, made uneasy by the news from Germany and the renewal of danger from Francis I, now decided to bring the negotiations to an end at once. The interests of Ferdinand were no longer considered, and his representatives were obliged, perforce, to agree with the Emperor’s determination. Thus, on the 23rd of December 1529, it became possible to conclude a treaty of peace, the parties to which were Clement, Charles, Ferdinand, Venice, Sforza, Mantua, Savoy, Montferrat, Urbino, Siena, and Lucca. On New Year’s Day the treaty was solemnly proclaimed in the Cathedral of Bologna, and on the 6th of January 1530 ratified on oath by all the contracting parties.

The only points still left unsettled were the dispute between Clement and Alfonso of Ferrara, and the conclusion of a confederacy against the Turks. The Pope’s antagonism to Alfonso had been made all the more vehement by the encroachments of the latter on purely ecclesiastical matters. With regard to political controversies, Clement let Alfonso understand that he was quite willing not to interfere with him, but if he were to renounce his claim to Modena and Reggio, Parma and Piacenza would then be separated from the Papal States in such a way that it would be almost equivalent to their alienation. Clement appealed expressly to the promises given by Charles at Barcelona; but in vain, for Alfonso had succeeded in completely winning over to his side the Emperor’s advisers, as well as the Emperor himself. In this he was greatly helped by the secret intention of Charles to curb the power and independence of the Papal States. In public Charles spoke threateningly to Alfonso’s envoys; but they knew very well that his anger was all assumed. The Pope, in his irritation, said to the French Ambassador, “I am being betrayed, but I must act as if I were unaware of it.” Yet he declared expressly that under no circumstances would he allow Alfonso to participate in the coronation of the Emperor.

For a long time the claims of Rome to be the scene of this solemnity had been seriously considered; but at last, after lengthy deliberation, the choice had fallen on Bologna. The reason for this decision was principally the gloomy account of the state of Germany sent by Ferdinand I, which rendered necessary the presence of Charles, as speedily as possible, in that portion of his empire.

Burgo and Salinas, representing Ferdinand I, convinced him that there was no longer any time to await their arrival. Ferdinand, wrote the envoys on the 12th of February 1530, could make excuses for his brother to the German princes and show them that it had not lain in Charles’s power to fix beforehand the date of the coronation, which he was now compelled to proceed with without preparation in order to accelerate his arrival in Germany.

All the necessary arrangements were, in fact, made in great haste.2 On the 16th of February the Pope confirmed, in a Bull, the election of Charles and his coronation at Aix-la-Chapelle, and gave orders that he should be crowned with the iron and the golden Imperial crowns. As early as the 22nd of February, the festival of St Peter’s Chair at Antioch, Charles received in the chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico the iron crown of Lombardy, which had been brought from Monza. Two days later the coronation as Emperor was to take place in San Petronio; Charles had chosen this day because it was his birthday and the anni­versary of the victory of his forces at Pavia.

Except as regarded the customary place for the enact­ment of this solemn rite, all other observances of the coronation were carried out with painstaking exactitude. In San Petronio the very side-chapels and the rota porphyrea itself were copied from St. Peter’s, so that the entire ceremony could be held as if at the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Rome. A wooden bridge decorated with tapestries and garlands, and high enough to allow the passage of vehicles beneath, led from the palace to the church, which was adorned with Flemish tapestries of great value. Four hundred landsknechts guarded the bridge, two thousand Spaniards and ten pieces of artillery were drawn up on the piazza. All the city gates also were guarded by landsknechts and Spaniards.

At nine o’clock the Pope, clad in a mantle embroidered with gold and studded with precious stones, and wearing the triple crown, was borne to the church; the Cardinals and all the members of his court followed him. In the meantime the secular dignitaries, all, especially the Spanish grandees, wearing the most costly garments, had assembled in the palace to meet the Emperor. Pages and servants of the princes and the Emperor opened the procession; then came the nobles, the Imperial bodyguard, and all the envoys. Before the Emperor, the Marquis of Montferrat carried the golden sceptre; the Duke of Urbino, the sword; the young Count Palatine Philip, the nephew of the Elector, the orb of the Empire; the Duke of Savoy, the kingly crown. Charles wore the iron crown of Lombardy; having on his right Cardinal Salviati, and on his left Cardinal Ridolfi; the Counts of Lannoy and Nassau followed with a great train of nobles, mostly Spanish.

Before the church, on the right-hand side, a wooden chapel had been erected, representing S. Maria in Turri at Rome. After the Papal Bull relating to the coronation had here been read aloud by the Bishop of Malta, Charles swore on a book of the Gospels held before him by Cardinal Enkevoirt, to be the faithful champion of the Holy Roman Church, whereupon he was received into the Chapter of St. Peter’s. Charles had hardly crossed the wooden bridge when a portion of it fell in. In spite of this perilous incident he maintained his composure, and knelt down in the portal of the church, where two Cardinals recited the customary prayers. He was then conducted into yet a second chapel, to which the Roman name of S. Gregorio had been given, and was there clad in the Deacon’s tunic and a pluviale sown with pearls, rubies, and diamonds. He then took his place at the rota porphyrea, going on to a spot arranged in imitation of the confession of St. Peter’s, and finally passing into a chamber, representing the chapel of S. Maurizio at Rome, to be anointed with the holy oil. During these proceedings a sharp dispute arose between the envoys of Genoa and Siena as to precedence; not until this had been composed could the ceremonies proceed.

The solemn act of the coronation itself was reserved for Clement. After the reading of the Epistle, Charles was girt with the sword; then he likewise received from the hands of the Pope the orb and sceptre, and lastly the Imperial crown; whereupon Clement spoke the words: “Receive this symbol of glory and the diadem of the Empire, even this Imperial crown, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, that thou, despising the ancient enemy and guiltless of all iniquity, mayst live in clemency and godliness, and so one day receive from our Lord Jesus Christ the crown of His eternal kingdom.” Before the oblation the Emperor offered the three customary gold pieces and served as Deacon, bringing to the altar the paten with the wafers and the cruet of water, “in so seemly and devout a fashion, as one long accustomed to fulfil such services, that all standing around were filled with wonder and joy.” After receiving Holy Communion the Emperor kissed the Pope’s forehead, after which the latter bestowed the benediction. Together the two heads of Christendom, in all the pomp of their respective dignities, left the Church. Although Clement tried to prevent him, the Emperor insisted on holding his stirrup and on leading his palfrey a few paces forward; then with youthful alacrity he mounted his own charger.

Then came the great cavalcade. “Under the same golden canopy,” says a contemporary, “shone, like sun and moon, these two great luminaries of the world.” In the procession, the gorgeous outlines of which the artists of the day were swift to fasten on their canvases, were conspicuous, first the banners of the Crusade, then those of the Church and of the Pope, followed by the standards of the Empire, of the city of Rome, Germany, Spain, the New World, Naples, and Bologna. Treasurers flung gold and silver coins among the vast crowds with which all the streets were filled. At San Domenico the Pope left the procession, while the Emperor from a throne conferred knighthood on about a hundred persons. Not until four o’clock in the afternoon was Charles, amid the jubilant greetings of his troops, able to regain his apartments. The coronation banquet brought the celebrations to an end.

At nightfall bonfires blazed everywhere. The Duke of Milan, although suffering from illness, allowed these demonstrations to last three days. On the 1st of March a Papal Bull was issued declaring the coronation as fully valid as it would have been if solemnized at Rome, and renewing the dispensation permitting Charles to combine the possession of Naples with that of the Imperial dignity.

Since Florence remained stubborn in her resistance, Clement saw that he must make two further concessions of great importance to Charles; first of all by nominating three Cardinals acceptable to the Emperor. The appointments were made public on the 19th of March. These were Bernhard Cles, Bishop of Trent, on whose behalf Burgo had been active for some time past; the Emperor’s confessor, Garcia de Loaysa; and the Savoyard, De Challant. With much greater reluctance Clement granted his permission that Alfonso of Ferrara should, after all, come to Bologna. But although on this point also he gave way, the Duke was not allowed to make his entry in state. Clement also demanded once more the restoration of Reggio, Modena, and Rubbiera. An agreement was at last reached on the 21st of March; Alfonso was to cede Modena to the Emperor, who, on the expiration of six months, should pronounce a final decision as to the ownership of the three towns and the computation of the assessment of Ferrara. This gave Charles, who had never acquired a real trust of Clement, a decided influence over the fortunes of the Papal States; the exceptional favour shown by him to the Duke of Urbino was also of service in this direction.

Charles, moreover, knew how, in a masterly way, to widen the firm foundations of his power in Italy by means of the possession of Naples and the dependent position of the Duke of Milan, and to link closely to himself the minor states of the Peninsula. In order to secure Alfonso absolutely he invested him with the fief of Carpi, wrested from Alberto Pio as a punishment for his attachment to France. He gave Asti to his brother-in-law, the Duke of Savoy, who was at Bologna during his stay, and the marquisate of Mantua was erected into a duchy. He could reckon besides on the republics of Siena, Lucca, and Genoa with certainty. For centuries no Emperor had wielded so much power in Italy; national independence was practically at an end. By no means the least share in this guilt belongs to Clement VII, even although a good deal may be said to excuse his ultimate reconciliation with Charles. But the Pope was not the only culprit; all the heads of the Italian states without exception contributed towards the subjection of their fair lands to the supremacy of the alien Spaniard. Yet in the existing state of things even this was a boon; for otherwise Italy must have fallen a prey to the Turks, to whose aid not only Venice but even Florence had appealed.

When Charles left Bologna on the 22nd of March to take his journey into Germany he was able to do so with feelings of satisfaction. Not so the Pope. The Papal territories had certainly been restored in essentials, but in many respects they were dependent on the Emperor. More galling even than this was the continued resistance of Florence, for when he made his way to Bologna, Clement had expected its speedy subjection. During his residence there his impatience had grown greater day by day; now, after five months, the heroic spirit of the Florentines flouted, as at the first, all the efforts of their besiegers. It was reported that as Clement’s distrust of Orange grew more intense the latter might have fallen upon him in Bologna and renewed the lessons of the sack of Rome, and that this suspicion hastened the Pope’s departure. He left early on the 31st of March, touching Urbino, Gualdo, and Foligno on his way, and by the 12th of April he was once more in Rome; his entry, however, was unaccompanied by any public reception.

Consumed with impatience, Clement now waited daily for the capitulation of his native city, whose inhabitants were defending themselves with the courage of despair. The war was consuming vast sums of money; besides, since June, the Pope had been engaged in attempts to suppress the Abbot of Farfa, so that his finances, deplorable enough in any case, were threatened with total bankruptcy. There was also the fear that France and England might help the Florentines; but, on the other hand, in the city on the Arno things might be pushed to the last extremity and Florence be stormed and plundered. What would then happen might be presaged from the frightful havoc and cruelty perpetrated by the ungovernable troops of the besieging army. With these fears mingled the con­sciousness of the heavy reproaches levelled far and wide against this almost fratricidal enterprise. When the French envoy, Gabriel de Gramont, Bishop of Tarbes, in April 1530, represented this fully to Clement and earnestly exhorted him to come to terms, the Pope exclaimed distractedly, “Would that Florence had never existed!”

Yet this same Florence still held out. As it was in May, so it was in June; as it was in June, so it was in July. Neither the enemy without nor dissension within, neither hunger nor pestilence, could break down the desperate resistance of the inhabitants. They were resolved to carry it on to the last extremity; better that Florence should be reduced to ashes than that their city should fall into the hands of the Medici. There were even rumours that a plot had been made to put the Pope to death by poison.

Affairs began to take a final turn after the failure of Francesco Ferruccio in his heroic attempt to raise the siege. On the 3rd of August an engagement was fought at Gavinana, in the hills of Pistoja, in which Ferruccio, as well as Orange, met their death. Florence, ravaged by famine and plague, was now lost. Malatesta Baglioni, who since the beginning of the year had chief command of the Florentine troops, made further resistance impossible by turning his guns against the city. On the 12th of August the final capitulation was agreed upon: within four months the Emperor was to appoint a constitution with “safeguards of freedom”; the exiles were to return home, 80,000 scudi to be paid to the Imperial troops, and the Florentine territory preserved without diminution; a complete amnesty to be declared for all who had acted as opponents of the house of Medici.

After Malatesta’s departure (12th of September) two hundred landsknechts, under the Count of Lodron, occupied the city, where the Medicean party, in shameful violation of the terms of capitulation, began to take savage reprisals on their enemies. Carducci, Bernardo da Castiglione, and four other members of the former government were beheaded; numerous sentences of exile and confiscation were passed. The Dominican, Benedetto da Fojano, who had inveighed heavily against the person of the Pope, was handed over to Rome by Malatesta, where, if Varchi is to be believed, Clement allowed him to suffer lingering imprisonment, on bread and water, in the foul dungeons of St. Angelo.

The Pope, at first, gave Bartolomeo Valori, Francesco Guicciardini, and Roberto Acciaiuoli permission to rule the sorely visited city as they thought best, but afterwards he took things into his own hands. Valori was made governor of the Romagna, Guicciardini of Bologna; but in February 1531 Schonberg was sent to Florence. The Emperor made no haste to despatch Florentine affairs; he allowed nearly a whole year to pass before paying attention to the wishes of the Pope, whose impatience grew from day to day. In the summer of 1531 he at last issued a decree which secured to the Medici “a sort of hereditary presidentship” in the Florentine republic, but also contained a reassertion of the Imperial supremacy. Ales­sandro de’ Medici, bearing the decree, appeared in Florence in July 1531. In the following year Clement succeeded in doing away with the Republican forms of the constitution, although their preservation was recognized by the Emperor’s decree. In attaining this end he acted, as in other cases, according to the well-known saying of Varchi, that “he could sling a stone so that no one should see the hand of the slinger.” On the 27th of April 1532 the new constitution was made known, whereby Alessandro de’ Medici became hereditary Duke of Florence. The actual reins of government remained, none the less, in the hands of Clement VII.

CHAPTER X.

The Religious Divisions in Germany.

The grave political complications with which the first six years of the Pontificate of Clement VII. were filled reacted with decisive influence on the spread of the Lutheran heresy throughout Germany.

Immediately after his election Clement received disquieting reports on the subject; the adherents of the new belief were steadily increasing in numbers, and, the decentralization of the Empire having made great strides, it was practically impossible to put the Edict of Worms into execution. Consequently, in his first consistory, held on the 2nd of December 1523, Clement spoke of the dangers menacing Christendom, quite as much from the side of the Lutherans as from that of the Turks. In accordance with his own proposal, a commission of Cardinals, which soon included the names of Egidio Canisio and Numai, was appointed to deal with both aspects of the question. The immediate result of their deliberations was, that the commission, on the 14th of December, recommended the despatch of two Nuncios, one to Germany and a second to Switzerland.

Clement, in his anxiety concerning the advance of Lutheranism, also invited men thoroughly acquainted with German affairs, such as Eck and Aleander, to furnish him with reports as to what should be done with regard to the heretical movement While Eck laid before him what was substantially a summary of his conversations with Adrian VI, Aleander composed a special memorandum on the means to be employed to suppress heresy in Germany. In this he requested the Pope to remove the abuses in the Curia, and to punish unworthy priests with the extreme penalty of deprivation; he further advised him not merely to summon the Emperor and the other temporal princes to take steps against the heretics, but also to exhort, under pain of censure, the negligent German bishops to the performance of their duties. The concordats should be strictly observed, and diocesan and provincial synods held under the presidency only of men of approved loyalty to the Holy See. The Inquisition Aleander wished to see transferred, not to princes or monks, who were objects of popular hatred, but to the bishops. He deprecated the total abolition of indulgences, but urged that they should be issued sparingly and with caution. The Nuncios in Germany should narrowly watch the monks, the men of learning, and the printers, since with these classes they would have to reckon before all others if they wished to provide an effectual antidote to the diffusion of poisonous doctrine. He then made very detailed proposals for dealing with the above-named classes of persons in order to foster the good in them and counter­act the evil. In cases of contumacious heresy, Aleander counselled, with a reference to the procedure of a Gregory VII and an Innocent III, the application of the severest penalties: the interdict and an embargo on trade for the cities of the Empire, withdrawal of privileges from the University of Wittenberg, and the proclamation of the Ban of the Empire and deposition against the Elector of Saxony. Since all the good-will of Leo X and Adrian VI had proved fruitless, lenient measures were no longer of any avail; they only helped to spread the evil, until it had at length reached Rome itself. For the sins of Christendom God had permitted this affliction to fall upon the Church; therefore the only real and lasting succour must be sought in the revival of her ancient virtues.

The report of an anonymous writer is occupied with a thorough examination of the complaints of the German nation presented to the Diet of Nuremberg in the year 1523. The author, evidently a member of the Curia, seeks to throw the responsibility, for the most part, on the German Bishops. With a strange hallucination, he will admit no guilt on the part of the Roman Curia, and only recommends an improvement of the existing system in a few points. The report comes to a point in the proposal to send a Nuncio of unimpeachable character and eminent learning, with the powers of a Legate a latere, to the German Empire, there to use his authority with moderation and firmness towards the patrons of the erroneous teaching.

Clement VII followed the advice given in this document, but it was not easy to find the personage fully qualified for the German legation. The Pope’s choice fell at last on Cardinal Campeggio, who had proved himself to be an experienced diplomatist and to have a knowledge of German affairs; a staunch Churchman, he was yet profoundly convinced of the necessity of thorough reforms. At the same time, at the end of December 1523, Clement VII. determined to send his chamberlain, Girolamo Rorario, as a Nuncio to Germany, to be Campeggio’s forerunner and to prepare the way.

For the instruction of the Legate, Aleander prepared a memorandum on the measures to be adopted in dealing with Luther. He here lays great stress on the necessity of the Legate and those with him being conspicuous for their good reputation and observance of all the laws and customs of the Church. The Legate himself must use his faculties with moderation and circumspection; all benefices are to be conferred only on good and learned men of German birth; in his demeanour he must show the utmost modesty, friendliness, seriousness, and dignity, and, above all, discretion; he is not to be drawn into disputations concerning truths of the Faith ; he must be thoroughly acquainted with the points of controversy, and draw his proofs from the Scriptures and the Fathers rather than from the scholastic system, then in great odium in Germany; and especially he must avoid sophistries and paradoxes. Aleander examines in close detail the grievances of the German nation, declaring them to be only in part justifiable; for these redress should be promised; but he complains of the superfluous trouble caused to the Holy See by the manufacture of gravamina. For the refutation of unfounded complaints he gives full and thorough recommendations. He does the same with regard to dealings with the bishops and the mendicant Orders. On no account whatever is the Legate to show his instructions to anyone, so that he may not undergo experiences similar to those of Chieregati at Nuremberg. He is neither to promise nor refuse a Council; if he calls attention to the difficulties standing in the way of one, let him point out, in that connection, that, in the meantime, the laws against heresy must be put in force. Aleander tries to refute in detail the objections made to the collection of annates, and then concludes by once more imparting counsels to the Nuncio concerning his behaviour: he is not to be arrogant or violent, neither is he to show timidity, but to maintain a steady courage and, above all, a wise discretion. Especially must he and his personal following avoid all cause of scandal or offence, adapt themselves as much as possible to the customs of Germany, and with unbiassed minds recognize the existing good in that nation.

Campeggio, whose appointment as Legate a latere for the whole of Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and the three northern kingdoms was ratified in a consistory held on the 8th of January 1524, was primarily and before all other considerations to represent the Catholic interests in the forthcoming Diet at Nuremberg, but also to urge on the support of Hungary against the Turks. In order to make fitting preparation for Campeggio’s mission, and in support of it, Clement VII. undertook a series of steps the success of which had at first to be waited for. For this reason the Legate did not leave Rome until the 1st of February, and then travelled slowly; on the 26th of February he was at Trent, on the 3rd of March at Innsbruck, on the 9th at Augsburg, and on the 14th he reached Nuremberg. In the course of this journey he had already an opportunity of realizing the critical and increasing alteration in popular feeling, due to the unscrupulous agitation conducted against Catholic institutions from the pulpit and the printing press, at the instigation of the Lutheran leaders. In Augsburg he was made the object of popular derision. At Nuremberg the ecclesiastical ceremonies of his reception were omitted, while the preacher Osiander was allowed to discourse on the Roman Antichrist.

In the presence of these hostile dispositions towards the Holy See, which were almost general throughout the Empire, and were specially dominant in Nuremberg, Campeggio thought it wise to proceed with great caution. His first speech in the Diet, on the 17th of March, was therefore conciliatory in tone; nevertheless he spoke quite distinctly of the task assigned to him, for he called for the execution of the Edict of Worms. To the question of the Princes concerning the joint complaints of the German nation presented at the Diet of the previous year, Campeggio explained that the Pope had no official knowledge of the document, which had been transmitted to Rome only in a private manner; he, Campeggio, had seen a copy, but did not believe that a document of such “exceeding impropriety” could have been agreed to by the Estates. If he had no present instructions concerning this particular missive, yet he had full powers to treat with the Estates on the question of the national grievances; in his opinion, it was to be recommended that the Germans, like the Spaniards, should send envoys to Rome; he did not doubt that the Pope would meet the just demands of their nation. Thereupon the old complaints, with some fresh ones added, were presented.

Although Campeggio, supported by learned Italians and Germans, such as Cochlaus and Nausea, was zealously active in the Diet, the negotiations over the new doctrines entered upon a new phase which was, to him, highly unacceptable. The Estates did not, indeed, deny their obligation to carry out the Edict of Worms, but at the same time they demanded a National Council empowered to deal, not merely with the complaints against the Curia and the complaints of the laity against the clergy, but with the controversies on religious doctrine. This proposal, full of danger to the Catholic cause, if not directly put forward by Bavaria, was at any rate supported by that Catholic country.

The Cardinal-Legate, who represented the view that the reformation of the Church would be better carried out in any other way than by a General Council, must have been still more averse to an independent authoritative National Council. In consequence of his opposition, concessions were so far made that, in the resolutions presented at the recess of the Diet, only a provisional settlement of controversial questions was assigned to the National Council, the final ruling being reserved for the General Council; also the expression “National Council” was dropped, and “General assembly of the German nation”—to meet at Spires in November—substituted for it. To this also the Legate objected, but without result. The Lutheran towns and nobles protested, on their side, against the renewal of the Edict of Worms in the final decree, although to please the Estates the execution of the Edict was qualified by the significant phrase “as far as is possible.” Campeggio disclosed his attitude towards the decree of the Diet by promising to use his influence with the Pope in favour of a General Council, and declaring himself ready to enter into negotiations over the German grievances and the reform of the clergy; to the assembly at Spires he refused to give his approval. His stand­point seems to have been, so far, the correct one; for, if the Edict of Worms held good, a fresh investigation of the doctrines therein repudiated was an absurdity.

During his stay in Nuremberg, Campeggio was kept closely informed of the serious defects of the German Church by men who had the Catholic cause deeply at heart; he had also convinced himself of the pressing necessity for that reform of the German clergy demanded by so many of the princes, if Lutheranism was to be successfully encountered. On the receipt of his report at Rome, Clement VII, on the 14th of April 1524, gave him full authority to hold a convention in Germany for the reform of the national clergy. This Assembly, in which the Archduke Ferdinand, the Bavarian Dukes, many bishops of South Germany, and the most important literary champions of German Catholicism (Cochlaus, Eck, Johann Faber, and Nausea) took part, opened in June at Ratisbon. A scheme of clergy reform prepared by Campeggio and already produced at Nuremberg was here discussed, accepted, and published for the whole of Germany in a legatine decree with full apostolic authority on the 7th of July. The ordinances formed a first and important step towards a reformation of the Church from within; in carrying them out she would be freed from many defects, and many grievances would be removed. At the same time Campeggio succeeded at Ratisbon in combining for the first time the forces of at least the South German Catholics (the Archduke Ferdinand, the Bavarian Dukes, and twelve bishops) by an act of union. The above-named pledged themselves to uphold the Edict of Worms, and to resist all religious innovations.

At Rome the proceedings at Nuremberg had been followed attentively. The fatal delusion that only Saxony was on the side of Luther had soon to give way in the face of facts. In the beginning of May, Clement and the Cardinals consulted as to the measures to be taken to meet the resolutions of the Diet, and Cardinals Monte and Numai drew up special reports. It was determined not to refuse the demand for a General Council absolutely; attention, of course, was to be drawn to the hindrances in the way arising from the warlike complications in Europe, but at the same time the prospect of negotiations was to be held out. With regard to the grievances, redress was promised by the suspension of the regulations of the Lateran Council, and the appointment of a commission of Cardinals to investigate further. If on these two important questions an understanding was come to with the German opposition, the execution of the Edict of Worms was all the more strongly insisted on, and the National Council at Spires was not the less strongly opposed. Not merely the Emperor, but even foreign sovereigns, such as the kings of England, France, and Portugal, were asked to protest, and a series of briefs, couched in this sense, was despatched in May. At the same time also the Nuncios were ordered to take action; especially full instructions were sent to the Papal representatives at the Emperor’s court.

This action of Clement had as its result that Charles V. repeatedly and in sharp and peremptory terms prohibited the National Council of Spires, and ordered the observance of the Edict of Worms and the avoidance of all religious innovation. If Charles directed his envoys at Rome to acquaint the Pope with these measures, he made it plain at the same time that he considered that it would be of advantage to summon a General Council; he recom­mended Trent, a place which was practically a German town, although within Italian territory; but the Pope would be at liberty to transfer the Council to Italy at some later date.

The union of Ratisbon and the reforms undertaken there, the Emperor’s strict insistence on the observance of the Edict of Worms, and the obstruction of the National Council at Spires were undoubtedly remarkable successes. Campeggio, who remained in Vienna until the 8th of December, actively engaged from thence in his campaign against the Lutherans in Germany and in his reconciliation of the Bohemian Utraquists, might well be proud of them ; he believed that half of his principal task had been achieved. But the great social revolution so soon to break out in Germany brought all his fair hopes again to an end.

Clement VII was thoroughly informed by the reports of Girolamo Rorario, Nuncio to Ferdinand I., and through various private persons, of the bloodshed which was turning Germany into a second Bohemia. Campeggio also, who remained in Ofen till well on in June, sent him numerous communications. The Pope was greatly alarmed, and informed Ferdinand on the 29th of May of the despatch of a subsidy to the amount of 20,000 ducats; the Emperor, who, unfortunately, was still lingering in Spain, he exhorted to more strenuous action in order to avert yet greater dangers. The disorders in Germany and the enmity between France and Spain were adduced by the Pope as reasons which prohibited him from convening a Council.

Notwithstanding the detailed reports received in Rome, as in foreign countries generally, of the peasants’ insurrection, there was no correct conception of the real state of affairs. The accounts that came in were fatally misleading, and men were under the delusion that Lutheranism had, to all intents and purposes, been suppressed simultaneously with the sanguinary extinction of the social revolution, in which both friends and foes of the new teaching had co-operated. The only person who did not share in this delusion, Campeggio, was recalled because, in the opinion of many, his mission had not been sufficiently successful, and also, as is most probable, because his sympathies were too Imperialist.

The functions of the Nunciature were now concentrated in the person of Rorario, the Nuncio to Ferdinand. And yet, in face of the difficult and complicated situation, not merely was the presence of a permanent Cardinal-Legate necessary, but also the despatch of a fresh Nuncio in the interests of accurate information. How defective information was as to the real state of affairs in Germany is best shown from the fact that, when Clement VII on the 23rd of August 1525 wrote numerous letters of congratulation to the German princes on their victory over the Lutherans, one of those thus addressed was the Landgrave Philip of Hesse. The Pope, and the Cardinals appointed to sit as a commission on Lutheran affairs had evidently not the slightest notion that since the end of 1523 Philip had been a patron of the new teaching. The affairs of Bohemia also had been grossly misrepresented in Rome. The sanguine hopes fostered by Campeggio of the return of the Utraquists to the Church and of the defeat of Lutheranism were soon shown to be entirely futile.

What random and, in some instances, nonsensical reports obtained credence in the Curia, is illustrated by the circumstance that in the consistory of the 6th of September 1525 it was stated that Catholic worship had been restored at Wittenberg and that Luther had narrowly escaped capture. It was excusable that the sentiments of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order should long have deceived the Roman court; for this prince had allayed with consummate ability the early awakened distrust of Clement VII. The first certain intelligence of the apostasy of Albert of Brandenburg was brought to Rome in letters from German bishops in the latter half of March 1525. Of the alliance of the Grand Master with King Sigismund of Poland so little was known that the Pope intended to present the latter with the consecrated sword on the 27th of March. It was not known until the beginning of May that Albert had broken his oath to the Church, the Order, and the Empire, that he had constituted himself secular lord of the territory of the Order, and had received the latter as a fief from the Polish king. The consternation of the Pope and his advisers was very great on the subsequent receipt of a letter from King Sigismund, in which he tried to justify his behaviour and made protestation of his Catholic zeal. Clement comforted himself with the assurance that the king, whose intentions were so good, would, if he could once more gain the ascendancy over Prussia, make amends for his faults and again help on the ancient faith to victory. In a Brief of the 20th of July 1525 he urgently appealed to Sigismund to this effect. On the 31st of January 1526 the Pope approached Charles with the entreaty that he would not give his sanction to Albert’s alteration of the constitution of the Order. A commission of Cardinals examined the whole case thoroughly, whereon Clement, on the 21st of January 1527, empowered the loyal remnant of the Teutonic knights to elect a new Grand Master.

Although the Bishop of Trent and the Nuncio Rorario himself had asked in August 1525 for the despatch of a special representative of the Holy See to Germany, this had not been done. Consequently the final decrees of the Diets of Augsburg and Spires (9th of January and 27th of August 1526) were framed in a sense unfavourable to Catholic interests. The resolution of the Diet of Spires, that in the matter of the Edict of Worms each Estate, pending the summons of a General Council, should act in such a way as they could answer for before God and the Emperor, did not certainly afford a legal basis for the self-development of the Protestant system of State Churches, but it was used as a starting-point for their formation. A change was in process of accomplishment, the vast scope of which was hardly understood in Rome, where purely political concerns were more and more absorbing men’s attention. Luther conceded to the princely and civic authorities a power over their territories far greater than that hitherto possessed by the Pope. Not merely the constitution and government, but the worship and doctrine of the Church were surrendered to the princes and civic magistrates as State bishops; the latter forthwith determined what their subjects had to believe as their “Evangelium.” From this absolute episcopate of the rulers of the State was reached, as a logical conclusion, the application of the axiom which flouts all freedom of conscience: “Cujus regio illius religio”.

The development of the Lutheran State Church system and the forcible suppression of the Catholic Church, first in Hesse and the Saxon Electorate, and then in many of the territories belonging to the princes and cities of Germany, were singularly favoured by the unhappy strife between Emperor and Pope; while they were alternately checkmating one another, the half-political, half-religious opposition unfriendly to them was securing a firm footing in Germany. The Protestants rejoiced to see the heads of Christendom at warlike variance with each other, and made full use of this circumstance to spread their doctrines and apply coercive measures against Catholics. The conflict between Emperor and Pope weakened also the resistance of the Catholics, and checked the progress of the reform of the Church from within begun by the latter in 1524, and thus the fruits of Campeggio’s labours were, for the most part, again wasted. In consequence of the same struggle, the activity of the Catholic scholars in defence of the ancient faith, so zealously encouraged by the Cardinal, and the significant action of Erasmus in taking part openly against Luther, failed to have the anticipated effect. Political troubles made such claims on the attention of the Curia that the affairs of Germany gradually passed out of sight. It was a sign of the times that the Papal briefs dealing with Germany became fewer and fewer; for a considerable length of time the relations between Germany and the Roman Curia were practically broken off.

At last, in 1529, the regular representation of the Holy See in Germany was resumed by the mission of Gian Tommaso Pico della Mirandola, a layman, to the Diet of Spires. This nobleman announced on the 13th of April that the Pope was prepared to give hearty support to Germany against the Turks, to make efforts for the restoration of peace, and, finally, to summon a Council for the ensuing summer. But this declaration made no impression on the Estates. To what an extraordinary extent things had altered to the disadvantage of Catholics was shown in the deliberations on the recess of the Diet. Although the latter confirmed to the Protestant States the retention of the new forms of doctrine and Church order within their own boundaries, and only asked for toleration towards the Catholics among them, a protest was raised on the 19th of April by the Elector of Saxony, the Margrave George of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the Dukes Ernest and Francis of Lüneberg, and Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt. On the 25th of April the protesting party appealed from all existing and future grievances to the Emperor and the forthcoming free council. This set the seal on the religious severance of the German nation.

Two months later came the conclusion, at Barcelona, of the treaty of peace between Charles V and Clement VII, coupled, in the February of the following year, with the meeting of the Emperor and the Pope at Bologna. At this conference, Charles, who had never lost sight of the conciliar question even during the recent troubles, obtained Clement’s consent to a General Council, to be held as soon as this means of overcoming heresy and restoring the unity of the Church should be proved to be necessary. It was the Emperor’s object to induce the Protestants to submit temporarily to the authority of the Church, so that on this basis some reasonable expectation might be founded that the Council would terminate once for all the religious divisions of Germany. In the hope of attaining this end with the co-operation of the States of the Empire, Charles wrote from Bologna, on the 21st of January 1530, appointing a Diet to be held at Augsburg on the 8th of April.

Charles left Bologna on the 22nd of March on his journey to Germany. He was accompanied by Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, who had been appointed Legate to Germany in the Consistory of the 16th of March 1530. At Innsbruck, where the Emperor arrived on the 3rd of May with the intention, at first, of staying a few days in order to acquaint himself more fully with the state of affairs in Germany, his halt lasted until the 6th of June. Here Charles was awaited by his brother Ferdinand and the Cardinals of Salzburg and Trent, while the Dukes of Bavaria and George of Saxony came later. Charles found special gratification in the reconciliation to the Church of his brother-in-law, Christian of Denmark, which took place in the capital of the Tyrol. On the other hand, the reports brought in from the States of the Empire as to the religious conditions there existing were disquieting. On the ground of the information then received, Campeggio wrote on the 4th of May to Rome, to the Pope’s private secretary, Jacopo Salviati, that Germany was, as he had supposed, in great disorder. A principal difficulty concerning the Council wished for by both parties was whether it should now be a General Council of the Church or a council of the nation; the Dukes of Bavaria, prominent Catholic princes, especially looked upon the council as the most effectual means of salvation. There were weighty reasons for opposing a national council; as regards a General Council, he would do his duty. On the 8th of May the Emperor asked Campeggio to lay before him a written opinion on the most suitable means to be resorted to for the removal of the religious contentions—a request which was complied with on that or the following day.

Campeggio did not expect much from the good-will of the Protestant princes; he was much more in favour of decisive measures against the innovators. He advised, in the case of failure to restore unity by measures of kindness, the use of force, especially by the execution of the terms of the Edict of Worms. He also expressed himself in the same sense a few days later in conversation with the Emperor and King Ferdinand. He was particularly opposed to negotiations on the subject of the Council; the Protestants, in demanding one, were not actuated by an honourable intention of submitting to its decisions, but only of keeping the Emperor in check so that, during his sojourn in Germany, he could take no serious measures against them. Thereupon the Emperor himself explained to him that he had come to an agreement with the Pope at Bologna that the Council should be held at a time of general peace and quiet in Christendom; but he hoped that, despite the many difficulties, all would yet go well, if the Kings of England and France did not encourage the Protestants in their opposition. Campeggio also discussed the circumstances with the other Catholic princes in Innsbruck, who were in favour of a council being held; he was successful in convincing Duke George of Saxony of the dangers therein involved.

On the 15th of June the Emperor entered Augsburg, and on the 20th the Diet was opened. After the Mass of the Holy Ghost the Papal Nuncio, Vincenzo Pimpinella, who had accompanied Campeggio, delivered an oration on the war against the Turks, and the unity of belief which that undertaking demanded. In the second session, on the 24th of June, Campeggio made a speech on the removal of disunion, in which he avoided any expression likely to offend the Protestants. On the 25th of June the Augsburg Confession, as it came to be afterwards called, was read to the Diet. It began with a demand on the part of the Protestants that a “general free Christian council” should be held in the event of their failing to come to an agreement in the present Diet. The document, which was signed by the protesting princes of the Diet of Spires, and on behalf of the cities of Nuremberg and Reutlingen, attempted to mitigate and disguise, as much as possible, the deeply rooted points of controversy, in order to keep up the delusion that the innovators only formed a party within the Church, which could easily be reconciled by means of a mutual understanding. Immediately after the presentation of the Confession the Emperor had written to Rome declaring that it afforded an excellent beginning for the return of the Protestants to the Church. In Papal circles the arrival of the Emperor in Germany and his accord with Campeggio on the religious question had given great satisfaction. As early as the 3rd of June, Clement, in a letter addressed to the Emperor, had expressed the hope that the latter, after the expected fall of Florence, would devote himself without interruption to the Turkish war and the cleansing of Germany from heresies. With reference to the reconciliation of Christian of Denmark through Charles’s influence, the Pope remarked that already, on his first appearance, his resplendent virtue had begun to scatter the darkness. Christian’s example would have an incalculable influence; he hoped in God that Charles would bring to a glorious conclusion an undertaking so happily begun for the welfare of Christendom and the Apostolic See.

This sanguine hope was stimulated by false reports of the decline of Lutheranism, as well as by the Catholic attitude of the Emperor, who was acting hand in hand with the Cardinal-Legate, and by the moderate terms of the Augsburg Confession. How great the optimism of the Roman Curia had become is shown by a report of the Venetian envoy on the 10th of July; it was hoped that the Emperor’s appearance on the scene would soon make short work of Lutheranism. Another noteworthy symptom of Roman opinion is apparent in a letter of Charles’s former confessor, Garcia de Loaysa, who relates that in a Consistory held on the 6th of July the Emperor was hailed by almost all the Cardinals as an angel sent from heaven for the salvation of Christendom. In this Consistory a despatch from Campeggio, dated the 26th of June, was read, containing the triumphant announcement that the Protestant princes had agreed to the Emperor’s prohibition of Protestant preaching in Augsburg. Campeggio, who saw in this a first and hopeful step towards the attainment of his object, reported further that the Emperor, in matters of religion, and in a scheme for confuting the Augsburg Confession, was acting on his, the Legate’s, advice. “I cannot write more today,” he added, “but this I can say: things are in a good way.” With regard to the Protestant demands, Campeggio in the same letter reports that they concern, apart from the Council, three points : communion under both kinds, the marriage of the clergy, and the reformation of the Canon of the Mass and many ecclesiastical ceremonies.

The concession of these demands was the subject of close deliberation in the Consistory of the 6th of July; the decision arrived at was a refusal. The demands were incompatible with faith and discipline, and in contradiction to the principles of the Church; they must therefore be rejected. It was decided further, however, to thank the Emperor for his zealous endeavours to bring back the adherents of error to the truth. In order to accomplish this there was a willingness to make concessions, but none so prejudicial as those just dealt with could be considered.

All other decisions would depend on the course of the negotiations at Augsburg, where the Cardinal-Legate was indefatigable in his exertions, not only with the Catholic members of the Diet and the theologians engaged on a rejoinder to the Confession, but with the Emperor.

Campeggio, to whom Charles had given a Latin copy of the Confession, wrote for him on the 28th of June an opinion in Italian and Latin on the treatment of the religious question. In this he opposed the Council in terms similar to those employed in his letter from Innsbruck of the 20th of May. On the receipt of this memorial from the Legate Charles summoned his council, who handed him a written opinion on the 30th of June or thereabouts. In this the Emperor was strongly advised to ask the signatories to the Confession if, in the first place, they would accept his adjudication on the religious questions. If they declined to do so, and if it appeared that a betterment could only be reached by means of a General Council, then the proposals for the latter would be made at the suitable time, but on condition that in the interval all innovations contrary to the belief and institutions of the Catholic Church should be put on one side and the Edict of Worms observed to the letter. Besides this, it seemed absolutely necessary, in order to gain the Lutherans more easily, that by means of the Papal and Legatine authority a stop should be put as soon as possible to the abuses in the Church and in the lives of the clergy. No public disputation was to be allowed; but the Legate might choose men of learning to examine the articles of the Confession. Not until the Protestants showed themselves unwilling to submit either to the authority of the Emperor or to that of the Council, and remained stubbornly contumacious, should forcible measures against them be considered, subject to the express opinion of the Legate.

Campeggio, with whom the Emperor had a long conversation as to this view of his advisers, gave a general assent, but declared himself decidedly against a Council, while the Emperor explained that he still held to the stand­point agreed upon at Bologna between himself and the Pope; namely, that a Council would be good and useful if Christendom were at peace, but not under present circumstances, and that the convening of such a synod might be effective for good, provided that there was a recurrence to the former state of things.

On the 4th of July, Campeggio handed to Charles V his written reply to the Imperial suggestions. In this he proceeded to show in detail that a Council would be of no avail to restore religious order, even if, at first sight, the contrary appeared to be the case. As the Lutherans had openly discarded previous Councils and their decisions, it was not probable that they had any serious intention of submitting themselves to a future synod. They persisted in their demand for one only in order to gain time in the meanwhile to push forward without hindrance their monstrous schemes, since they knew well that it would be a very long time before the Council itself could assemble. But the Emperor, if such were his pleasure, might consult the Pope further on the matter. Campeggio was in full agreement with the Emperor and the Catholic princes in their intention to insist on the observance of the Edict of Worms. As regards the removal of abuses, he recommended that men of approved virtue and pure life should be sent to Rome to report on these matters to the Pope; there was no doubt that the latter would prescribe remedies where proof of actual abuses was forthcoming, and he, as Legate, would not be wanting in his co-operation when cases were presented to him which, on due examination, were shown to be genuine abuses. To bring the religious division of Germany to an end, Campeggio held that the right and necessary way was to act with requisite firmness.

The Catholic princes, to whom Charles presented the answer of the Legate on the 5th of July, approved, in their reply of the 7th, and also in a second communication on the 13th, of the Emperor’s proposal concerning the Council.

On the evening of the 13th of July, Campeggio once more stated his objections, in the sense of his former declarations, to Granvelle, who had been sent by the Emperor to inform him that he was on the point of writing to the Pope on the subject of the Council. Thereupon, on the 14th, the Emperor sent to Clement a full account of the state of the negotiations at Augsburg. As things then stood, the Protestants refused to accept the Emperor as judge in religious questions; on the contrary, they held out for the Council, and if their wishes were not granted in this respect they would grow yet more obdurate; therefore the Emperor, in agreement with the Catholic princes, was also of opinion that this should be promised them on the condition that, in the meanwhile, they returned to the obedience of the Church. Charles had also written shortly before to his Ambassador in Rome in similar terms. On the 24th of July he again had a long conversation with Campeggio, in which he gave his opinion on the seat of the Council, expressing his strong preference for an Italian city, in opposition to the view of the princes, who were desirous that it should be held in Germany. He mentioned Mantua in particular, that city having already been spoken of in his discussions with the Pope at Bologna.

On the 18th of July, immediately after the receipt of the Emperor’s letter to the Ambassador, Clement called together the twelve Cardinals specially commissioned to deal with German affairs to hear their views on the question of the Council; no final decision was come to, as the Cardinals held that the matter was one for the full Consistory to consider. “Although many of the Cardinals,” wrote Loaysa, one of the twelve, on the same day, in his report of the conference to the Emperor, “object to the Council for factitious reasons, yet the most of us in this congregation held it fitting that a Council should be promised, on the condition that the Protestants in the meanwhile abandon their errors and live as their forefathers lived before them. It would be much better, however, if the Protes­tants would accept the Emperor as their arbitrator, since the success of a Council is in itself doubtful, and even its meeting perhaps impossible, owing to the difficulties that other Christian princes may in some way raise, and to the dangers of the Turkish invasion.” Loaysa feared, however, that they would not accept the Emperor’s arbitration with a good will, and that in the end no other means would remain but to have recourse to force.

On the arrival of the Emperor’s letter of the 14th of July, Clement, at the end of the month, once more assembled the twelve Cardinals and acquainted them with its contents. Both the Pope and the Cardinals received it, as Loaysa wrote to the Emperor, with great satisfaction. Loaysa had not, indeed, been present at the meeting owing to illness, but he had a private interview with Clement afterwards, to whom he spoke in support of the Emperor’s opinion. Clement replied that Charles was right, the Council could not be avoided; it was Loaysa’s opinion, however, that Clement wished in his heart of hearts that it might not take place. He would certainly agree to one, and even go the length of convoking it, but in the meantime he would secretly use his influence with the Christian princes in order to put hindrances in the way. He was led to this presumption by the conduct of the French Cardinal, Gabriel de Gramont, Bishop of Tarbes, who in the first meeting of the Cardinals had spoken strongly in favour of a Council, while in the second conference he dwelt on all the difficulties, especially on those which had arisen on the part of the King of France; this inconsistency, Loaysa surmised, was due to the influence of the Pope. In spite of this “evil” suspicion, as he himself calls it, Loaysa was still in hopes that Clement, “on perceiving the truthfulness and uprightness of your Majesty’s behaviour in this matter, and how necessary a Council is for the quieting of his conscience and the avoidance of lasting dishonour,” would eventually control events in accordance with the Imperial wishes.

In two audiences held on the 28th and the 30th of July, Clement addressed Andrea da Burgo in terms favourable to the Council, provided that the conditions fixed by Charles should be fulfilled, namely, that until it assembled the Lutherans should desist from their innovations; Rome he considered suitable as the seat of the Council; but, if the Emperor objected, he would propose Mantua, Piacenza, or Bologna. In this sense Clement sent a reply to the Emperor on the 31st of July.

He first of all went thoroughly into the reasons against a Council adduced by some of the Cardinals, but, trusting to the good sense and insight of the Emperor, whose sojourn in Germany had made him a better judge of the situation than those at a distance, he promised to convene the Council when he deemed it necessary, and under the conditions of which he had already written, namely, that the Protestants should renounce their errors and return immediately to the obedience of their Holy Mother the Church and the observance of her customs and doctrine, so long as it was not otherwise appointed by the Council, to the decisions of which in all points and unreservedly they were willingly to submit. Apart from these conditions, a Council could only cause scandal and set a most evil example. It was therefore absolutely necessary that the Emperor should insist on these conditions being accepted, so that there might also be certainty of their actual fulfilment; for otherwise, not the removal of error, but only pernicious and deadly effects, were to be expected. The Pope then promised that, as soon as the Emperor informed him of the acceptance and observance of these conditions by the Protestants, he would summon a Council at such time as appeared to him suitable; the Emperor might feel assured that the earliest possible date would be appointed, and that certainly no postponement would be allowed. Regarding the seat of the Council, since it was highly necessary that it should not be held anywhere else than in Italy, Rome had the first claim to consideration—a claim, moreover, favoured by the circumstance that, after all the misfortunes the city had undergone, another lengthened withdrawal of the Curia would involve total ruin. But if Rome were not acceptable, then the Pope proposed Bologna, Piacenza, or Mantua. Concerning abuses, Clement remarked in conclusion, he was waiting for the reply of the Legate, who would report wherein a reformation was called for; on receipt of this reply he would take such measures that everyone would acknowledge his intention to reform what was amiss, and to meet where it was possible the wise and charitable exhortations of the Emperor.

In the Curia the greatest difference of opinion on the question of the Council prevailed. Clement VII, partly from personal and partly from higher reasons, had such strong apprehensions that it seemed to him even less dangerous to tolerate the prolongation of the existing state of affairs in Germany than to summon a Council. That the Pope’s anxiety was to a certain extent justified was admitted by the Imperial envoy Mai himself. On this account many doubted whether the Council would be held; but others looked upon this as certain. It was not surprising that such an assembly, bound to take into consideration the question of reform, should be displeasing to the many prelates of a worldly type. The latter took comfort in the supposition that the Protestants were not in earnest in their demands for a General Council. The envoy of the Duke of Mantua had special satisfaction in knowing that his city was eligible as a meeting-place. “A reformation,” he said in closing his report, “is certainly necessary in view of the great corruption. God grant that it may not be brought about by the Turks instead of by the Council.”

The Papal letter of the 31st of July reached Augsburg on the 7th of August, where a few days before the refutation of the Augsburg Confession had been publicly read. This important document was presented by Campeggio to the Emperor on the 9th; but, in consequence no doubt of Loaysa’s letter of the 31st of July already mentioned, he found Charles biassed against the Pope and distrustful of his good intentions. The Emperor himself no longer held to his former tenacious insistence on the Protestant acceptance of the conditions, but now asked that, waiving the latter entirely, the Council so necessary for the general welfare of Christendom should, under any circumstances, be summoned as soon as possible, without prejudice to the objections and representations made by Campeggio in the sense of their former agreement. As regards the seat of the Council Charles avoided any definite pronouncement on the choice of Rome, as desired by Clement and recommended by the Legate, by calling attention to the Pope’s own alternative suggestion of Bologna, Mantua, or Piacenza.

Charles, meanwhile, was still possessed by the delusive hope that he might succeed in arriving at a temporary suspension of the religious strife until such time as a general synod should assemble. On the 7th of September he once more ordered the promise of the Council under the specified conditions to be tendered to the protesting Estates, who thanked him for his exertions and urged speedy action, but refused in round terms the abandonment for the time being of the innovations. On the 23rd of September Charles once more had a discussion with Campeggio on the Council; after his experience, during this very month of September, of the obstinacy of the Protestant princes, he again declared to the Legate that the Council, quite irrespective of the Lutheran situation, was absolutely necessary, or otherwise, within the space of ten years, there would be no obedience left in Germany. He added, however, that, if Clement nevertheless thought otherwise, he, as an obedient son, would submit; but in that case he hoped the Pope would inform him openly and as soon as possible, as this would be better than that the Council should be hindered by the King of France, when in the general opinion the blame would still be laid upon the Pope.

In the draft of the decree of the Diet which Charles laid before the protesting Estates on the 22nd and 23rd of September, he once more charged the latter “to discuss and consider among themselves, until the 15th of April of the forthcoming year, whether, as regards the articles on which there was still disagreement, they would reunite themselves with the Christian Church, the Pope, the Emperor’s Majesty, and the princes of the Empire and other heads and members of Christendom at large, until such time as the future Council should open its discussions.” The protesting princes rejected this message finally; their spokesman, the Elector of Saxony, at once left the Diet, from which the Landgrave of Hesse had already withdrawn on the 6th of August in precipitate haste. Duke Ernest of Lüneburg, Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt, the Chancellor Bruck, and the Saxon theologians also left Augsburg. They thus destroyed all further possibility of reconciliation.

CHAPTER XI.

Negotiations as to the Council, to the Pacification of Nuremberg, 1532.

In Rome the transactions of the Diet had been followed with strained attention. Even if as early as the beginning of August the provocative attitude of some of the Protestant princes had made the armed interference of the Emperor a possibility to be reckoned with, there was still a desire to await fuller information, and a temporary hope of a peaceful agreement, especially as Melanchthon continued to show his previous conciliatory disposition. When afterwards the Catholic princes succeeded in once more setting in motion negotiations for a settlement, Salviati wrote, on the 8th of September, to Campeggio that the Pope was ready to permit communion in both kinds and the marriage of the clergy if the protesting party would give way on the remaining points.

Clement VII wished by these means to facilitate the Emperor’s negotiations for a settlement. At this time he was especially active in his endeavours to gratify the wishes of Charles V; only in the matter of the Council did he raise difficulties. “This,” wrote the Roman correspondent of the Duke of Mantua on the 7th of September, “will be a tedious matter, even if the Council takes place, which I do not believe.” The longer the question was treated in the Diet the greater grew the suspense in Rome. On the 4th of October came the announcement of the departure of the Elector of Saxony; it was now as clear as day that all attempts at union had miscarried. To the whole Sacred College it now appeared that force was the only resource available, and it was hoped that Charles would have recourse to it.

The Emperor had certainly promised the Pope, in the Treaty of Barcelona, that, in the case of contumacy on the part of the Protestants, he would terminate the schism, which had been the cause of so much violence towards Catholics, with the sword. But such a policy was alien to his character; nor was he adequately prepared for it, and the support of the Catholic Estates was by no means certain. Urgent as were the recommendations of Campeggio to apply force, Charles still persisted in his preference for peaceful methods. His patience seemed to have no limits, and only when he could no longer shut his eyes to the fruitlessness of all his efforts at peace did he turn his thoughts to a policy of repression, but without being able even then to come to a firm decision in its favour. “Force,” he wrote to his Ambassador in Rome on the 4th of September 1530, “would certainly be the most productive of results, but the necessary weapons are not forthcoming.” The insulting departure from the Diet of the Elector of Saxony was certainly the cause of this change in the Emperor’s feelings. Further obstinacy on the part of the Protestant princes, so he declared to the Cardinal-Legate, he was determined to punish, but it was an undertaking which he could not carry out single-handed. On the 4th of October he addressed a letter to Clement VII in which he expressed himself still more clearly and incisively. In it he announced his intention of putting forth all his power to subdue in open warfare the contumacious Protestants; the Pope would see that the other princes were invited to co-operate with him and support him with contributions in money.

Clement VII met this communication in a most characteristic way. Already, on the 13th of October, when the Ambassador Miguel Mai made known the contents of the Imperial letter, Salviati had emphasized the Pope’s confidence in the Emperor’s course of action, since the latter had already exterminated by his might other and even greater heresies than those of Luther. But after the letter had been received Clement relapsed into his habitual indecision and pleaded various objections. Besides the considerable pecuniary resources required he referred to the danger of an invasion of the Turks, with the Lutherans as confederates; but, on the other hand, the Pope realized the extreme danger of allowing the Lutherans to remain unpunished; the Imperial authority as well as the Catholic cause would, in such a case, suffer incalculable injury. Soon afterwards Charles ordered Muscettola to unfold his plans more minutely in Rome. The defiance of the Lutherans, he was charged to explain, had been on the increase since the disbanding of the Imperial army; he therefore intended to collect a force of ten thousand Spaniards and Italians for service in Germany, in order not merely to strike fear among the Lutherans but also, if circumstances should call for it, to act on the offensive towards the Turks; to keep up such an army he must have financial help from the Pope and the princes of Italy. Clement now called on the Italian States to help, while Charles, in a letter of the 25th of October, in which he requested the Cardinals to further the cause of the Council, solemnly declared that he would, in the affair of Luther, spare neither kingdoms nor dominions in order to accomplish what was necessary.

Immediately after the Emperor’s first announcement Clement had invited the opinion of the Venetian Government concerning warlike operations against the Protestants; that their answer would be in the nature of a refusal he was led to infer from the objections previously tendered by the Ambassador of the Republic. The remaining Italian states showed no enthusiasm in the matter, notwithstanding the Pope’s advocacy, and to Clement’s great disgust the Republic sent a direct refusal. The whole scheme fell through, for the Emperor, in view of the unreliability of the Catholic Estates, soon abandoned it. On the 30^th of October he sent his majordomo, Don Pedro de la Cueva, to Rome to inform the Pope that owing to the advanced season of the year it was no longer possible to think of an immediate undertaking against the Lutherans, for which Clement might be engaged in preparations. Cueva was also instructed to represent to Clement that, since all hopes of converting the heretics by friendly means had been shattered by their obstinacy, the summons of a Council was the only means remaining of saving Germany from permanent apostasy; his Holiness should therefore take the necessary steps to convene the same as soon as possible, since every delay was detrimental. The choice of locality was left by the Emperor to the Holy Father; but the Ambassador was to do his best to secure the choice of some place as near as possible to German territory, say Mantua or Milan.

Charles spoke in a similar sense in the letter to Clement to be personally handed to him by the Ambassador. He thanked the Pope for his reply of the 31st of July, and showed him that he had left nothing undone to bring the Protestants to accept the conditions on which the Council was to depend. But notwithstanding the failure of these endeavours he was now or opinion that the Council, the demand for which came not only from the Protestant but also from the Catholic princes, must not be abandoned as, in view of these very circumstances, it offered the only remaining means of salvation. He held it to be his duty to declare plainly and distinctly “that the meeting of the Council must take place for the cure of the present errors, the welfare of Christendom, the settlement of belief, the elevation of the Apostolic See, and the personal honour of your Holiness; failing this, no adequate course is open, and far greater are the evils contingent on the Council not taking place than those which, it is supposed, would accrue from its deliberations, for the present errors are many, various, and daily increas­ing in number.” Nor could the danger of the Turkish war be made a valid argument against the Council, for, on the contrary, it would afford the best means of uniting the whole of Christendom in effectual opposition to the infidels. Charles V therefore begged the Pope, in the most urgent terms, to sanction the summons of the Council as soon as possible, and to obtain the agreement of the other Christian sovereigns. In the meanwhile Clement might also consider what steps could be taken against the Lutherans. The Emperor accounted for his wish that the Council should be held near German territory on the ground that, in this way, the Lutherans would be deprived of any excuse for non attendance. Cueva reached Rome on the 15th of November, and on the following day he waited on the Pope together with the Imperial Ambassador. In addition to the letter already referred to, he presented a second touching the election of Ferdinand I. as King of the Romans, and a communication on Florentine affairs.

Clement VII sent an answer to Charles as early as the 18th of November, without at first committing himself definitely. He had so much confidence in the Emperor’s sympathy and discretion that he would like nothing better than to be guided by his advice entirely; but, as a matter of decorum, he must first consult the Cardinals; yet, seeing how important the matter was for Christendom in general, he would give a definite reply as soon as possible. Accordingly the deputation of Cardinals was summoned to meet on the 21st of November. The “pros” and “cons” were thoroughly considered. Opinions differed so greatly that the final vote was postponed until the 25th of November. The interval was made use of by the Imperialist Cardinals and envoys in trying to bring about a speedy decision favourable to the policy of Charles. At the second meeting of the deputation the Cardinals who shirked reform again brought forward the dangers involved in a Council; still, the majority were of opinion that the Emperor’s advice should be followed, since still greater dangers were to be expected if the Council did not take place; yet, if the presence of the Emperor were called for, that of the other Christian princes ought also to be invited.

On the 28th of November the Pope, who had still the gravest apprehensions, laid the matter before a secret Consistory, in which Cardinals Farnese, Monte, and Canisio spoke so warmly in favour of a Council that all the six-and-twenty Cardinals present gave their unanimous support.2 Nevertheless Loaysa, and with him Mai and Cueva, did not alter their opinion that the Pope and Cardinals shrank from a Council and were working against it. “If they now vote otherwise,” wrote Loaysa, “it is because they see that, in your Majesty’s opinion, all is lost if the Council is not held; they realize that the consequence of their’ rejection would be to offend all Christian people and especially your Majesty. These Cardinals in thus voting are acting like merchantmen, who fling their goods into the sea in order to save their own lives. With the exception of five or six, among whom is Monte in particular, I do not know one among them whose heart is really in the matter. So true is this, that although the Pope has said exactly what I have written, I am yet afraid that, under the condition of inviting the other princes to the Council, opportunities will be sought and made to hinder and destroy the objects which your Majesty, as the servant of God, is aiming at. The Pope is so astute and crafty that we shall only find this out when your Majesty comes yourself to recognize the impediment, and to say that the Council is impossible ; then the blame will not fall on the guilty party, but, with much greater probability, will be dealt out to the innocent.” On the other hand, there were those who believed that Clement really wished for a Council. One was the agent of the Duke of Mantua, to whom the Pope had spoken approvingly of Mantua as the place of assembly.

On the 30th of November the deputation of Cardinals was consulted on the form of the briefs to be addressed to the princes. Already, on the following day, the 1st of December, the work of composing and despatching them began. On the 6th of December the Pope sent a brief communication to the Emperor that he had written to the princes, and had made up his mind to conform his opinion to that of Charles. Even Loaysa’s unfavourable view of Clement underwent a change.

For the purpose of closer verbal communication, Clement sent Uberto da Gambara, Bishop of Tortona, to the Emperor, in place of Nicolas von Schonberg, Archbishop of Capua, originally nominated for the mission, but prevented by illness from making the journey. In his instructions, drawn up by Cardinal Cajetan, the objec­tions to the Council, which the envoy was once more to lay before the Emperor in the name of the Pope and the Cardinals, held a special place. They were six in number. If the heretics were allowed to raise fresh disputations concerning their errors, already condemned by several councils, a bad and dangerous precedent would be established; but if they were forbidden discussion they would complain that they had been condemned unheard, and, while repudiating the decrees of the Council, would adhere more closely to their errors. If they refused to acknowledge the authority of previous councils what ground was there for the hope that they would submit to the forthcoming one? But, this being so, the situation would be changed very much for the worse if conciliar decrees were to be passed which could not be put into execution. The Protestants would stand by the letter of the Bible, and, rejecting the authority of councils and fathers, refuse to be convinced with the obstinacy habitual in heretics. The whole conduct of the heretics at the Diet of Augsburg showed that in their demand for a Council, they were only carrying out their intention of persisting in their tenets up to the moment of its summons and decisions, in the hope that in this way much time would be consumed and that eventually the Council might be dissolved without coming to any general decision. If, as might easily happen, the old controversy as to the supremacy of the Pope or Council were to be revived, a schism might thus be brought about and great injury would be inflicted on the authority of the Emperor as well as on that of the Pope. It was open to question whether the other princes would attend a Council held under the protection of the Imperial power, while, on the other hand, the Pope could only preside if that protection were given. The dangers arising from the Turks, and the objections put forward on this score, were also urged for further consideration. Gambara, who had left Rome on the 30th of December 1530, reached Aix on the 15th of January 1531, just as Charles V was taking farewell of his brother Ferdinand, and preparing to begin his journey into the Netherlands; on the 16th or 17th of January, in Liege, he had the first opportunity of speaking to the Emperor; he handed him the Pope’s letter and unfolded to him his objections in accordance with his instructions.

It is impossible to say definitely whether, on the occasion of this interview, Gambara also laid before the Emperor the five conditions attached by Clement to the convening of the Council, or whether this took place at some other time. These five conditions were: (1) The Council was to be summoned and held only for the discussion of the affairs of the Turkish war, the reconciliation of the Lutherans, the extirpation of heresies, and the adequate punishment of the contumacious. (2) The Emperor was to attend the Council in person from its beginning to its end, and on his departure the sessions were to terminate. (3) The Council was to be held in Italy and nowhere else, the Pope nominating beforehand a city for its seat. (4) Those only to have a decisive vote who were canonically qualified. (5) The Lutherans were to sue formally before the Council and to send their plenipotentiaries with proper mandates, a course which appeared to be of great use towards facilitating their safe return.

The effect of Clement’s present mood, who, during the deliberations with the Cardinals in November 1530, was prepared to carry out the Emperor’s wishes in reliance on the latter’s friendly dispositions, was to throw the responsibility of a decision entirely on Charles. If he gave a favourable reply and accepted the conditions, then without doubt the speedy summons of the Council would have been decided on.

But it was now the Emperor who, by his delay in sending the anxiously expected answer to Rome, hindered the further progress of affairs. It was not until the 4th of April 1531 that Charles, who was then in Brussels, caused his reply to be made known to the Legate, Cardinal Campeggio, and to the Bishops Gambara and Girolamo de Schio in Ghent through Covos and Granvelle. He had, as he here explains, first informed his brother Ferdinand of the hindrances and objections to a Council as set forth by Gambara, and by Ferdinand they were to be made known to the other Catholic princes of Germany. The result of their consultation was that the princes declared themselves “bound by their former determination, and that no other adequate method of healing the existing disorders was to be found except in the Council; even if the matters to which the Pope had called attention were of great importance and significance, yet it appeared to them that neither the existing errors nor those to be looked for in the future could be met by any other means; nor had the evils in question reached such a pitch as to justify the abandonment of the Council.” Charles showed less discernment in thinking that it was necessary to sound Francis I beforehand on his opinion with regard to the Council.

Charles V, as well as the Pope, had allowed himself to be deceived for a while as to the real sentiments of his wily adversary by the letter written by Francis to Clement VII on the 21st of November 1530, and communicated in December to the Emperor at Mayence. The French King’s policy had been directed unfalteringly to frustrating a Council which was to heal the disunion in the German Empire. In his letter he seemed to proclaim his thorough good-will towards such a project, but he expressed himself in such a way that, in the event of the Council becoming a serious probability, many pretexts should remain open to him whereby he might yet nullify the action of that assembly. But when the letter was read in Consistory on the 5th of December 1530, such an impression was made that the Pope and Cardinals were filled with joy and thanked God that the two greatest rulers were now of one mind on this weighty topic. On the 13th of December, Clement wrote a letter of thanks to Francis, full of lavish praise for having shown himself worthy of the title of “most Christian King.” Trusting to the present sincerity of Francis, Charles sent to him, on the 1st of February 1531, Louis de Praet to inquire of him how he stood with regard to the question of the Council. Francis kept the Emperor waiting two months for an answer; when at last it was received at Ghent, on the 28th of March, it was seen to contain the demand that the agreement of all princes to the Council should first be invited, and that for this object a convention should be held at Rome to which all Christian kings and princes should send their representatives. “That,” wrote Loaysa to the Emperor, when the terms of this answer were made known in Rome on the 14th of April, “makes the Council quite impossible and shows a determination that it shall not take place.” The further negotiations of Charles with the King had also no better success.

The Emperor, in the answer already mentioned, which was at length given to the Papal Ambassador on the 4th of April, accounted for the long delay, for which he was not to be blamed, on the ground of his previous negotiations with Francis I., and announced that he left it to the Pope to make a final decision, with the petition that the latter would avoid the scandal which must be expected if the Council were delayed; he gave his assurances that the Pope might count upon him and his brother Ferdinand. At the same time, Covos and Granvelle gave the Emperor’s answer touching the five conditions under which the Council was to be summoned. On the first point the Emperor remarked that, in order to safeguard the procedure hitherto observed in the Holy Councils and strictly regulated by law, as well as to obviate any opportunity for depreciating or calumniating a Council held under such limitations, it seemed to be more fitting that it should be summoned simply and without restrictions. Having been summoned, the Pope could then decide what matters were to be brought forward and dealt with. To the second condition the Emperor assented, and, putting his own affairs in the background, promised to attend the Council so long as this was deemed to be conducive to favourable results. As to the seat of the Council, he expressed himself as personally satisfied with all the cities proposed by the Pope, but the German princes and others of that nation asked for Mantua or Milan. On the fourth point, the Emperor observed that the laws and usages of the Holy Councils must be observed in accordance with former precedents. The fifth condition had been already dropped by the Bishop of Tortona himself. The Emperor added that there was, besides, no object in disputing with the heretics in cases of recognized contumacy.

Gambara, on the receipt of this answer, should, in accordance with the Emperor’s intentions, have left immediately for Rome, but he wished to speak with the latter once more on the affair of the Council. He went to him at Brussels, Charles having deferred his journey from thence to Ghent, from which former place, on the 19th of April, he was dismissed, after an interview, with a letter for the Pope. At the same time, Gambara had drawn up, while in Brussels, for the Imperial Council a counter document to the Emperor’s reply on the five conditions; he explained, in particular, how much better it would be to restrict the synod to a definite task than to assign to it an entirely general purview.

When the Emperor’s answer was at last received in Rome, it was understood that the strange delay was not due to him, but that the obstacle standing in the way of the Council was Francis I., and that all efforts were unavailing if it proved impossible to bring that monarch to another mind. Clement VII therefore agreed that the Emperor should continue his negotiations through Louis de Praet, and wrote himself to the Nuncio in France, Cesare Trivulzio, as to the methods for winning Francis. He also conceded to the Kings of England and France, who were preparing to raise difficulties about the seat of the Council, that to Milan and Mantua, already proposed by the Emperor, the choice of Piacenza and Bologna should be added, places to which no objection could be taken.

On the 25th of April 1531, Clement VII wrote to the Emperor that if the consent of the French King were procured, he would summon the Council at once; but if Francis were unwilling or made difficulties it would be better to refrain, since a Council held in the face of disagreement between two such sovereigns would only embolden the Lutherans to be more obstinate. At the same, time the Pope, through Salviati, informed the Legate Campeggio of the deliberations in Consistory. The Cardinals were determined that the Council should not be summoned for general purposes, but with the specific object of dealing with matters of belief and the Turkish war. Moreover, the Cardinals, dissatisfied with the general terms of Charles’s announcement, wished him to give a direct promise that he would assist at the Council throughout its entire duration, and they requested that the fifth point, too easily granted by Gambara, that the Lutherans should be represented, should be again withdrawn. If the Emperor made these concessions and the King of France agreed to its summons, then the Council would take place. But if Francis (and Henry VIII) were not willing, then it would be better that the Council should fall through and no more time be wasted, and other steps taken to restore order in Germany, either by the Emperor endeavouring to suppress Lutheranism by force, in which case the Pope would assist him with all the means in his power, or by trying to bring them back to obedience by means of Confessions of Faith stated in terms not detrimental to Catholic belief. These letters were so long on the way that Campeggio could not discuss them with the Emperor before the 5th of June, and then without making any progress, for the latter was stubborn in his determination regarding the summons of the Council and his own attendance at it. At the same time, he was informed by Charles that an answer had come from the King of France which was even more unfavourable than his previous communication on the subject.

Gambara returned from his mission on the 13th of May, and gave a full report to the Pope. Four days later Cardinal Gramont, whose coming was eagerly desired, arrived; on his instructions the fate of the Council depended. Unfortunately, they no longer left it doubtful that Francis was determined to thwart the general assembly of the Church. He would never consent in any way to the Council, unless it were held in Turin and he present in person. If the Emperor also wished to attend, well and good, but in that case each of them must be attended by an equal number of armed men. To the question of Clement VII.: Why then did the king object to Piacenza or Bologna? Gramont answered, because His Majesty did not wish to travel through the Duchy of Milan if it did not belong to him. To the Pope’s further remark that it was not really necessary that Francis should be present in person, and that he could send a representative in his name, Gramont rejoined that that was impossible. The Emperor must not suppose that he can lay down laws for the French. That Clement VII was not in any underhand way connected with this French policy, as has often been asserted without proof, is shown also by Salviati’s letter of the 31st of July 1531 to Campeggio on the subject of French practices.

On the 23rd of June Charles V informed Campeggio that he intended to assemble a new Diet before his return to Spain. He expressed, indeed, a doubt whether he would be able in this way to produce any effect on the obstinate Lutherans; but he wished to hold the Diet, for he had promised at Augsburg that the Council should be held, and the latter was still a remote contingency. On the question of the Council the Emperor held out the prospect of an answer at a later date; this was presented to the Legate by Covos and Granvelle on the 17th of July, and on the 27th it was forwarded to Rome with a letter from the Emperor. Charles expressed his displeasure at the hindrances always being raised against the Council; he did not fail to recognize their importance, but begged that the Pope would persevere in his efforts to remove them, since he knew of no other remedy than a Council. He would soon visit Germany in person and exert himself to the same end. Other expressions of the Emperor showed that at this time he very strongly suspected that the Pope was in secret understanding with the French policy of obstruction. This suspicion was nourished by the French proposal for a marriage between Catherine de’ Medici, Clement’s niece, and the second son of King Francis, Henry, Duke of Orleans, by which alliance the French King thought to draw the Pope over to his side. But on this occasion even Loaysa, who in prior circumstances had spoken his mind so sharply, defended Clement’s sincerity against the suspicions of Charles V in letters of the 9th of June and the 26th of July. Loaysa also informed the Emperor that the arrangement of this marriage, so far as it depended on the Pope, was not by any means an accomplished fact.

The responsibility for the failure of the Council under Clement VII. falls undoubtedly in the first instance on Francis I. But it certainly was a great mistake on the part of the Pope to have been drawn into negotiations with the King of such a kind that he was bound to incur the suspicion of complicity with Francis in this question. In any case the prospects grew worse and worse, so that even Loaysa wrote to the Emperor, on the 12th of September, that he could only entreat him a thousand times “to withdraw as soon as possible from this dark undertaking, the Council; for on many grounds,” he went on to say, “which are clear to me, I see no advantage in it for your Majesty, and what has hitherto taken place has only brought you harm. Your intentions could not be better; ... but since you perceive plainly that you are here opposed by envy and pusillanimity, rest satisfied with having secured the favour of God, and lead your affairs some other way by which you will quicker attain your own advantage; the blame of having abandoned the good which you might have done will fall on others to their condemnation, while your glory will remain unimpaired.”

The communication to Clement of the Emperor’s intention of holding a Diet at Spires on his return to Germany was received by the former with joy, which found expression in his letters to Charles on the 24th and 26th of July. In the latter he even assented to certain concessions being made to the heretics in Germany, if there were good hopes that by this means their obedience could be secured, in order that undivided attention might be given to the Turkish question. The Legate Campeggio held other views on the latter point. Having had opportunities of studying events close at hand, he could not discard his opinion that armed force, and armed force alone, was the only method to pursue with the heretics.

The Pope was inclined to give way on three particular points: communion under both kinds; the marriage of the clergy as practised by the Greeks; and, further, that in respect of the transgression of ecclesiastical ordinances, only that which was forbidden de jure divino was to be looked upon as mortal sin. Cajetan was especially in favour of an agreement based on such far-reaching terms, while other Cardinals were opposed to it.

In the Consistory of the nth of August 1531 it was determined that a special Nuncio should be sent to the Diet. A resolution was passed that the Pope should apply himself to the removal of the hindrances which stood in the way of the meeting of the Council. At the end of August, Aleander, who had been nominated Nuncio by the Pope, left Rome with Briefs for the Emperor, King Ferdinand, and other temporal and spiritual princes of the Empire. In his Brief to the Emperor, Clement VII spoke especially of his wish, on which point the Nuncio also had received full instructions, to support Charles in his good intentions concerning the Council. In another letter to the Emperor, which reached Aleander when he was already on his way, Clement recommended special caution in the contingency of any concessions being made; if the Emperor were convinced of the necessity of such concessions, in order to avoid greater evils, he must take care that they were not entered into recklessly, for otherwise scandal might be given to the rest of Christendom. Charles must make such a settlement in Germany as should render a return to the former disorders impossible. Moreover, any concessions allowed to the Germans must be of such a character as not to give an impetus to other nations to make similar demands for themselves.

As the Diet appointed to be held at Spires was postponed and transferred to Regensburg at a later date, Aleander at once betook himself to the Netherlands to meet the Emperor, to whom he presented the Papal messages at Brussels on the 6th of November 1531. On the 14th Aleander had a long interview with the Emperor, to whom he read the Brief. To the expressions of the Pope relating to the Council, Charles observed that he “thanked God that his Holiness kept true to his promise and gave the lie to those who asserted that he wished with heart and soul to be rid of the Council.” Aleander replied that the Pope had no wish to be rid of it, if only it could be held in a befitting manner; that is, if Charles, before all things, were always present in person, as were the Emperors of old at oecumenical councils; if, further, there were solid grounds for hoping that the Lutherans would consent and return to the bosom of the Church, that no other schism with Catholic nations arose, as would happen if France, England, and Scotland did not join, and finally, that a good and holy reformation of the whole Church of God in head and members would be taken in hand. To this the Emperor replied that the Pope’s first hope was well grounded ; that, on the other hand, the fear of a schism had no foundation ; with the desire for a reformation he was in entire agreement—the laity, indeed, stood in need of one themselves.

On the 18th of November 1531 the report reached Rome that the Elector of Saxony had become reconciled and had ordered the restoration of Catholicism throughout his territories. As this astonishing announcement came from the Imperial Court, it obtained credence with Clement. But subsequently it proved just as fallacious as the other numerous reports of Lutheran advances towards the Church, which were occasioned not a little by the vacil­lating and often ambiguous attitude of Melanchthon. Clement VII. in his hours of weakness gave only too ready an ear to such fantastic rumours. In the beginning of May 1532 Clement VII again wrote to the Emperor that the Council must in any case be held, and that he was straining every nerve to ensure its assembling, only the consent of the French King must be obtained, for without that it might lead to results contrary to those hoped for.

In the meantime the Protestants in Germany had created a strong political organization. This was the League of Schmalkald, formed in February 1531. Confident of their strength, they not only let the term allowed for their submission (15th April 1531) by the decree of Augsburg to pass by, but they also refused to give any help to the Emperor in his struggle with the Turks, now a serious menace to Austria and Hungary. Thus, at the opening of the Diet of Regensburg, on the 17th of April 1532, Charles found himself compelled to enter on fresh negotiations. In these Campeggio, who had come in the Emperor’s suite, took a part. The reports of the small attendance of princes at Regensburg had from the first the most depressing effect on the hopes aroused at Rome on this occasion.

In his crying need for help against the Turks, Charles was prepared to make extraordinary concessions to the Protestants. He was strengthened in this resolve by his fear lest the latter should put their threats into execution and turn their arms against the Catholics during an attack of the infidels. Even in Rome this danger was fully understood. Consequently Clement VII, as Muscettola relates, urged the Emperor, in March, to persevere in his negotiations with the Protestants: if he could not get all that he wished, he might at least get what was then prac­ticable, so that, if the Turks should come, they would be met by a resistance not in any way weakened by the dissensions of Germany; although their opponents were Lutherans, they were yet, for all that, Christians. It is clear from a report of Muscettola, of the 19th of April, that efforts were being made at Rome at this time to find some via media whereby the German troubles might be disposed of.

When the Papal Nuncio became aware of the Emperor’s negotiations with the Protestants for a temporary religious peace, he gave way to an outburst of indigna­tion. Campeggio, who, on other occasions, in opposition to Aleander, had advocated a policy of procrastination, was now entirely at one with his colleague. On the 1st of June he presented a memorial to the Emperor in which he pronounced the concessions offered to the heretics, especially the permission to adhere to the Augsburg Confession until the next Council should meet, to be pernicious in the highest degree; he also objected that no express statement about the Council had been made to the effect that it was to be held in conformity with the ancient oecumenical councils, and that submission to its decrees was to be promised. By the agreement as proposed, so Campeggio declared, the return of the erring would be made more difficult and the path of the Protestants’ advance more easy.

In spite of this urgent warning, the Emperor, taking into consideration the invasion of Hungary by the Turks, guaranteed his toleration to the members of the Schmalkaldic League, as well as to Brandenburg-Culmbach, and the cities of Nuremberg and Hamburg, to the greatest portion, that is to say, although not to all, of the Protestant Estates, until the next general, free, Christian Council as decided on by the Diet of Nuremberg.” He added that he would devote all his energy to having the Council summoned within six months and held within a year from then; should circumstances turn out to the contrary, a fresh Diet would be assembled to deliberate. These ample concessions were not made, however, on the authority of the Empire; the Emperor guaranteed them on his own personal responsibility. Of this agreement he only laid before the Estates at Regensburg the stipulation concerning the Council. This gave rise to heated debate; the Catholic Estates, under the influence of the Bavarian Chancellor, Eck, an old enemy of the house of Hapsburg, demanded a Council with unwonted vehemence, and cast upon the Emperor the blame for its delay. They even went so far as to abandon the Catholic standpoint altogether and to call upon the Emperor, if the Pope did not soon summon the Council, to exercise his Imperial authority by convoking one, or, at least, a council of the German nation.

Charles informed the Estates that the delay in holding a Council was not to be attributed to the Pope, but to the King of France, from whom, regardless of all the letters and embassies sent to him, no agreement could be obtained either regarding its character or the place where it should be held. He would do all in his power to urge the Pope to send out his summons within six months and to hold the Council within a year. Failing this, he would convene a fresh Diet, lay before the Estates the causes of the delay, and take counsel with them as to the best means of relieving the pressing needs of the whole German people, whether by a Council or by other means, and in a decisive way. To the suggestion that he should call a Council on his own responsibility, the Emperor declined to listen, as it was not any affair of his.

In Rome, as in Germany, opinion as to the policy to be pursued towards the Protestants was much divided. It seems that Clement personally, confronted with the appal­ling danger threatening Christendom from the Turks, was in agreement with the Emperor’s policy of indulgence. Aleander therefore from the first had pledged himself to the Pope to refrain from any approval of the religious compromise and to recommend complete neutrality on this very delicate question. Clement VII, on his part, abstained from any express approval of the pacification of Nuremberg, which was followed by the participation of the Protestants in the war of the Empire against the Turks.

CHAPTER XII.

Clement VII’s Efforts to protect Christendom from the Turks.

From the beginning of his pontificate, Clement VII, like his predecessors, was repeatedly occupied with the Eastern question.

Already, in his first Consistory, on the 2nd of December 1523, the Pope dealt with the dangerous position of Hungary, of which kingdom he had, when Cardinal, been the Protector. A special Commission of Cardinals was appointed to deal with the conduct of Turkish affairs and the restoration of peace. In view of the prevailing financial distress, it was exceptionally difficult to raise the sums necessary for the Turkish war. Clement VII, in extreme disquietude on account of the powerful military preparations of the enemy, did what lay in his power. When he learned that the garrison of Clissa in Dalmatia was hard pressed, he sent thither considerable help, thus rendering possible the relief of that important frontier stronghold. To the Hungarian King Louis he gave the assurance that he would continue to do all that his predecessors had done in the interests of his kingdom. The Cardinal-Legate for Germany, Campeggio, also accredited to Hungary, was commissioned to urge upon the Diet of Nuremberg the community of interests between these two countries and to work for the sanction of a liberal grant towards the expenses of the Turkish war. Clement also sent a special Nuncio to Hungary in the person of Giovanni Antonio Puglioni, Baron of Burgio, in place of Cardinal Cajetan, recalled on the 28th of January 1524. This accomplished diplomatist knew the country from former residence there, and was accurately informed on the extremely difficult circumstances of the situation.3 Clement, like previous Popes, also formed an alliance with Achmed of Egypt, one of the intestine enemies of the Turk.

Burgio was instructed to convey to the King of Hungary the subsidy, collected with difficulty by Clement, and the Papal permission to sell Church property in order to maintain the war against the infidel. In the beginning of April 1524 he reached Ofen, and was at once successful in dissuading the King from his scheme of making peace with the Turks. For his remaining task, the organization of the defensive forces of the Hungarian kingdom, circumstances could not possibly have been less favourable. The country was torn by fierce party strife, and her ruler, youthful, pleasure-seeking, and empty-headed, was the personality the least fitted to counteract the elements of disruption working in the kingdom. The saying applied by his contemporaries to the last of the Jagellons, “Woe to the country whose sovereign is a child!” was about to receive a frightful fulfilment. But among the magnates there was none who could have superseded the King. Party spirit, want of patriotism, combined with widespread corruption, held sway everywhere. On his arrival at Zengg, where Burgio first set foot in Hungarian territory, he found that of all the stores of grain sent by Adrian VI. for the provisioning of the Croatian border castles, only the scantiest portion of each had reached the place of its destination, for the Captain of Zengg and his officials had sold the greater part and spent the proceeds on themselves. In Ofen the Papal repre­sentative had no better experience; during his sojourn there of four months, he had convinced himself that neither from the King nor from the magnates at the head of the Government was the deliverance of the country to be looked for. Therefore in the beginning of July he left for Cracow in order to obtain help from Sigismund of Poland, the King’s uncle. This mission also was a complete failure, for Poland was suffering from the same conditions of internal dissolution and decay as Hungary.

In August 1524 Burgio returned to Ofen. There he found utter chaos; the nobility were in vehement opposition to the King and his associates, and were busy with the scheme of invoking, on their own authority, the intervention of a Diet. Meanwhile the danger in southern Hungary grew apace: the Turks were already besieging the fortress of Severin, the last bulwark of the kingdom on the lower Danube. Burgio did all he could to obtain relief for the besieged, but he appealed to deaf ears. The King referred him to his council; the council sent him back to the King; everywhere the most short­sighted selfishness prevailed. Burgio, during the Diet held on the Rakosfeld at Ofen, with emotion adjured the nobility to lay aside their old dissensions and come to the rescue of the kingdom in the hour of trouble. On this occasion he promised, if the Estates would do their duty, to place at once at the disposal of the kingdom the Papal subsidies deposited in the banking house of the Fuggers at Ofen. His words died away in a storm of party hatred, and thus Severin was lost, a calamity which only gave rise in Hungary to an outburst of mutual recrimination.

On Burgio’s invitation the Cardinal-Legate, Campeggio, left Vienna for Ofen in the beginning of December 1524. There he was received by King Louis with marks of friendship on the 18th of the same month. Both the Papal representatives worked together to induce the King and the magnates to take steps to equip the border fortresses and to raise an army; but in Paul Tomori alone, the excellent Archbishop of Kalocsa and commandant of the troops in the southern division of the kingdom, did they find a faithful and self-sacrificing ally. When the latter, in the beginning of January 1525, came in despair to Ofen, bent on his resignation, they prevented him from taking this step, and also insisted on his receiving support in money from the Government. Campeggio, at his own cost, raised three hundred foot-soldiers for the defence of Peterwardein. These Papal troops were the only force which Tomori was able to take back with him from Ofen in the beginning of February 1525 to the hard-pressed fortress. As they marched out, the populace gathered on the banks of the Danube raised their voices in praise of the Pope who had not forsaken their country in its extremity.

In the Diet also, held in May 1525, it was recognized that Clement VII and his Ambassadors were doing all they could to help the kingdom. Stephen Verboczy, the head of the national party among the nobles, praised in enthusiastic terms the services rendered to Hungary by the Holy See. But Burgio’s summons to war against the Turks, in obedience to the mandate of Clement VII., was uttered in vain. The Diet could attend to nothing but the complaints against the Palatine Stephan Bathory, the Primate Ladislaus Szalkay, the Treasurer Emmerich Szerencses, and the hated German courtiers. The removal of the latter was angrily demanded by the followers of Johann Zapolya, the richest and most powerful of all the magnates. As the King’s answer to this request was to some extent evasive, the resolution was passed that the combined nobility should meet in arms on the 24th of June at Hatvan, to the north-east of Ofen, to take counsel for the interests of the kingdom. On the 2nd of July King Louis appeared in person at this gathering; he was accompanied by Burgio, now, on the recall of Campeggio, the sole representative of the Pope. The assembly, in which Zapolya’s adherents had a majority, overthrew the whole existing government; the disloyal councillors were deposed, and Verboczy acclaimed as Palatine.[148] With regard to the most pressing need of all, the defence of the kingdom against the Turks, nothing was done then or even subsequently—only the Pope sent sums of money for the pay of the troops upon the frontier. In Hungary itself the bitterness of party strife continued.

While this political chaos, productive of the gravest crisis in the State, prevailed, the Sultan Suleiman continued his offensive preparations on the most comprehensive scale. Burgio sent reports on these to Rome, on the 18th of January 1526, while at the same time deploring the deficiencies in the Hungarian defences. Not even the garrisons of the border strongholds could be paid; the King was so poor that he even often suffered from want of food; the great as well as the lesser nobility were split into factions. Moreover, there was little prospect of assistance from the powers abroad, or of a federation of the Christian princes. “Thus,” said Burgio in conclusion, “your Holiness alone can give help; yet I know full well the hardships of the Church and that there is but little in her power to do, deserted as she is by all. My intelligence cannot fail to depress your Holiness; but it is my duty to write truthfully; willingly would I forward to you more favourable reports.”

In Rome, throughout the whole year (1525), the anxiety caused by the Sultan’s preparations was intensified by the danger to which the Italian coasts had for some time been exposed from the attacks of Turkish pirates. In November it was determined to send to Hungary fresh support in the form of liberal supplies of money, provisions, and ammunition. On receiving Burgio’s alarming reports, Clement called together the Sacred College in the beginning of February, 1526, and received on this occasion the representatives of the Christian princes. He communicated to them the reports that had reached him, and called upon them to urge their rulers to come to the aid of Hungary; as the time of year no longer permitted the despatch of troops, they might forward supplies of money for recruiting. The Pope set in this respect a good example; he addressed invitations to the Emperor, to the King of France, and to many other Christian princes to come to the assistance of Hungary. Clement VII informed King Louis of these steps taken on his behalf and exhorted him to perseverance and a vigorous resistance. When Burgio, on the 4th of March 1526, informed the Council of State, assembled round the King, of the Pope’s proceedings, many of his hearers were moved to tears; they vied with each other in expressions of gratitude and passed excellent resolutions to defend their country. But this conversion to patriotism soon proved to be only a short-lived flare of excitement; the resolutions were never more than a dead letter. Even when there was no longer any possible doubt of the imminent approach of the Turks, no decisive measures of resistance were taken. In the Council of State, which met in the afternoon, when the King had thrown off his slumbers, nothing was done save to indulge in mutual accusations. Burgio, who reports this, adds: “Here there is neither preparation for defence nor obedience; the magnates are afraid of each other, and all are against the King; some even are unwilling to take precautions against the Turk.” No wonder that the Nuncio repeatedly begged to be recalled. Of what use was he to a country that was rushing headlong to its ruin? “The spirit of faction grows more bitter every day,” reported Burgio; “the King, in spite of my remonstrances, has gone hunting as if we were living in the midst of profound peace.

On the day after the King’s departure, on the 13th of April, Tomori arrived with the alarming news that the Sultan had left Constantinople with the intention of making himself master of the capital of Hungary. The Nuncio thereupon betook himself at once to the King, and, representing to him the greatness of the danger, induced him to return to his capital. There a Council of State was at once held and Tomori, who had to defend Peterwardein, was promised ample help. The Nuncio supplied him with fifteen hundred infantry, two hundred hussars, and thirty small pieces of artillery : but his example produced little effect; the Council relapsed into their previous indolence. “If the Sultan really comes,” wrote Burgio on the 25th of April 1526, ‘'then I repeat what I have so often said before: your Holiness may look on this country as lost. Here the confusion is without bounds; every requisite for the conduct of a war is wanting; the Estates are given over to hatred and envy; and if the Sultan were to emancipate the subject classes, they would rise against the nobles in a bloodier insurrection than that of the Crusade (the Hungarian peasants’ war of 1514): but if their emancipation were to come from the King, he would then alienate from himself the nobility.”

Some still hoped that a remedy would be found in the Diet then about to assemble. Here the victory of the court party was complete; Verboczy was deposed and fined; Bathory was restored to the office of Palatine; the resolutions of Hatvan were annulled and a sort of dictatorship conferred on the King. But Louis had no means of enforcing obedience, for the authority of the Crown had fallen into desuetude, and the finances of the country were as bankrupt as its defences. How could absolute power be wielded by a king whom nobody obeyed, whose credit was gone, and who, in the presence of overwhelming danger, slept undisturbed until midday?

Neither the Diet nor the King brought deliverance. The foreign powers also, to whom the country had turned, did nothing; the Pope alone made the affairs of Hungary his own. He turned anew to the princes of Europe, gave his consent to a Crusade indulgence, sent 50,000 ducats, and permitted the taxation of ecclesi­astical benefices and the sale of a large amount of Church property. Had the King and the Estates of Hungary shown the same ready self-sacrifice and energetic action, the catastrophe then threatening might perhaps have been yet averted. Unfortunately, this was not the case; thus the doom drew nearer every day, and on the 28th of July 1526 Peterwardein fell. The garrison, half of whom were Papal troops, died like heroes. The Pope’s representative continued up to the last to do all that was possible, and raised 4000 soldiers. The forces of the King, with the reinforcements brought in at the last hour, amounted to 28,000 men. With them he moved southwards to the plain of Mohacs. Here a battle was fought on the 29th of August which decided in an hour and a half the fate of the Hungarian kingdom. Many magnates, five bishops, and the Archbishops of Gran and Kalocsa, were left lying on the field of battle. Two thousand heads were ranged as trophies of victory before the tent of the Sultan; on the following day fifteen hundred prisoners were slaughtered. King Louis was one of the few who succeeded in saving their lives by flight; but in crossing a small brook swollen by heavy rains his horse stumbled from exhaustion and buried the King in the watery morass.

On the 10th of September 1526 the Sultan made his entry into the Hungarian capital; far and wide, as far as Raab and Gran, his hordes swarmed over the unhappy kingdom, and there was already a fear lest they should attack Vienna also. But the approach of the colder season and the tidings of revolts in Asia Minor caused Suleiman to retire at the end of September, without leaving a garrison behind him in a single place.

The forward advance of the Turks and the catastrophe of Mohacs caused the greatest alarm in Rome, as in the rest of Christendom. Clement VII gave expression to his grief in a Consistory held on the 19th of September, when he called on all Christian princes to recover their unity and give their aid, and declared himself ready to go to Barcelona to negotiate in person for peace. On the following day the Pope saw himself plundered in his own capital by the troops of the Emperor!

If the dissensions between the two heads of Christendom had hitherto reacted most injuriously on the project of a Crusade against the Turks, so now the danger from the latter was almost entirely forgotten amid the raging flames of the present conflict between Pope and Emperor. But in Hungary civil war was raging. The brother-in-law of Louis, Ferdinand I, and the Voivode Zapolya were rival competitors for the crown; the Sultan soon found himself the recipient of solicitations from both parties. All the enemies of the Hapsburgs, especially France and Bavaria, favoured Zapolya, who also lost no time in making strenuous efforts to gain the Pope. Clement cannot be absolved from the reproach of having been drawn for a time into transactions of doubtful import with this man; but the statement of one of his bitterest enemies, that he had given pecuniary support to the Voivode, is without confirmation; on the contrary, there exists a Papal letter, of the 30th of August 1528, in which Clement refuses a request of this kind.

The warlike condition of Italy and the contest for the throne in Hungary, whereby the spread of Protestantism in that country was promoted, encouraged the Sultan to mature his plan of striking a blow at the heart of Christian Europe. In the beginning of May 1529 “the ruler of all rulers,” as Suleiman styled himself, left Constantinople at the head of a mighty host, bent on the capture of Vienna and the subjugation of Germany. Fortunately his advance was so slow, owing to heavy rainfalls and the consequent inundations, that he did not reach Belgrade until the 17th of July.

Ferdinand I, whose forces were quite inadequate to cope with those of the Turks, looked round on every side for help. His Ambassador in Rome and that of the Emperor made the most urgent representations on the pressing danger. Clement VII therefore determined to send Vincenzo Pimpinella, Archbishop of Rossano, as permanent Legate to the court of Ferdinand. The subsidies in money, subsequently approved by the Pope and Cardinals, were perforce slender owing to the limited means at their disposal. On the other hand, it was of importance that in the Treaty of Barcelona (29th June 1529) the Pope agreed to give the Emperor, for the expenses of the Turkish war, a fourth of the incomes of the ecclesiastical benefices to the extent already conceded to him by Adrian VI. A Bull of the 27th of August 1529 gave full authority to Pimpinella to dispose, in upper Germany, of the treasures, and, in case of necessity, even of the landed property of churches and convents, in order to levy an army to meet the Turks, who, welcomed by Zapolya, had captured Ofen on the 8th of September, and before the end of the month had invested Vienna. But all their attempts to take possession of this bulwark of Christendom were frustrated by the heroic spirit of the defenders. After a final ineffectual assault on the 14th of October, the Sultan withdrew, warned by the approach of adverse seasons and the news that relief was close at hand. For the first time he saw an enterprise, on which all his resources had been brought to bear, broken by an enemy whom he had likened to “the dust.” Hungary, certainly, was still in his power, and to the Venetians, who had done him service continually as spies, Suleiman wrote on the 10th of November : “I have overcome this kingdom and bestowed its crown upon Zapolya.”

After the disasters of the year 1529, a cessation of the Turkish lust of conquest was not to be thought of; the capture of Vienna was only postponed. In the West there were no illusions on this score. During the conferences between the Pope and Emperor at Bologna, the Turkish question played an important part. Clement VII. promised, on this occasion, to pay a subsidy of 40,000 ducats, a sum which certainly could not be raised without great difficulty. Another and not less important result of the Imperial policy was the sentence of excommunication passed on Zapolya on the 21st of December 1529.

As the consultations at Bologna on the comprehensive measures of defence to be taken against the Turks had led to no final result, it was determined to pursue the matter further at Rome. This was all the more necessary as in the spring of 1530 news had arrived of increased military preparations on the part of the Turks. A congregation of six Cardinals was entrusted, in the beginning of June, with the consideration of the whole matter. On the 24th of that month the Pope assembled these six Cardinals and the Ambassadors, all of whom, including even the Venetian envoy, were present. Clement VII made an opening speech, in which he insisted upon the necessity for taking steps to meet the attack which the Sultan was making vast preparations to deliver in the coming year. To the question of the Pope, whether the Ambassadors were furnished with the requisite mandates, only the representatives of Charles V and Ferdinand I replied in the affirmative. Cardinal Gramont and the English envoys announced that they had none; the Portuguese Ambassador made excuses for his sovereign, who was actively engaged in Africa; the Milanese envoy assured Clement that it would be impossible for his master to raise any extra taxes this year. When the envoy of Ferdinand, Andrea da Burgo, observed that three things were necessary: money, money, and always money, Cardinals Farnese and del Monte agreed, with the remark that unity among the Christian powers was equally essential. It was resolved that the Pope should address himself to all the Christian princes and call upon them to support the holy war with all their might and supply their envoys with the fullest powers. Briefs to this effect were drawn up on the 27th of June. Since the answers of the princes were long in coming, Andrea da Burgo asked the Pope to make up his mind at once as to the sums to be guaranteed to Ferdinand I.

Clement VII was obliged to insist that his resources had been so drained by the war with Florence that he had no means left at his disposal. He made sanguine representations to the Ambassador as to the time when Florentine affairs would be settled; once the city had fallen, the Turkish Crusade would be taken up again with energy. By the 9th of August fresh Briefs had been despatched to the princes of Christendom; it was proposed that a monthly levy of 80.000 ducats should be paid towards the war; of this the Pope and Cardinals were to raise 10,000, the Emperor and Francis I 20,000 each, Henry VIII 10,000, the Kings of Portugal, Scotland, and Poland jointly 15,000, the Italian States 5000. All these efforts were unavailing; on the 23rd of August not one of the Ambassadors, except those of Charles and Ferdinand, had received full powers from their sovereigns. Neither the Italian powers, England or France were willing to support the Crusade; the Pope alone gave Ferdinand assistance. At a later date the Turkish war and the proceedings against the Lutherans were combined—but still no results were obtained. The Pope, da Burgo reported from Rome on the nth of December 1530, wished to raise funds for the Turkish war, but he had no means of so doing. His relations with Ferdinand I remained friendly, and it was of great value to the latter that Clement VII promoted in every way the Hapsburg candidature for the kingship of the Romans and gave his recognition ungrudgingly. In he sent the King a consecrated sword and hat1 by the hands of Albertus Pighius.

Of late the Pope had been repeatedly occupied with the affairs of the Knights of St. John. Clement VII gave them hearty support in their efforts to reinstate themselves in the possession of Rhodes; on their failure to do so he asked the Emperor to bestow Malta on the Knights as a residence. It was an excellent suggestion, for the central situation of the island made it a place of high strategical importance. Charles V was favourable to the Pope’s request; on his return journey from Bologna, on the 23rd of March 1530, at Castelfranco, he issued the document by which he bestowed on the Knights of St. John, Malta and its adjacent islands as a Sicilian fief. The Order, now known as that of the Knights of Malta or the Maltese Order, fortified the new bulwark of Christendom in accordance with all the rules of military science as then known, and defended it with the utmost valour. Through the Knights the Pope was kept closely informed of the intentions of the Turks.

In 1530 Clement VII found the Turkish difficulty even more engrossing than in the previous year. For a time this filled the foreground of affairs so completely that all other considerations, even the threatening aspects of the Lutheran movement, seemed to become of minor importance. “This is the only topic of conversation here,” wrote an envoy on the 20th of February 1531. In March all preachers within the Papal States were directed to explain to the people the dangers to which they were exposed from the Turks. The perils of the Mahommedan attack on Christendom were felt all the more keenly in middle and lower Italy, for the navigation of the Mediterranean was so insecure owing to the corsairs of Barbary that in many places, even in Rome, the difficulty of importing provisions was beginning to cause distress. As a measure of relief the Pope was planning the despatch of a fleet under the command of Andrea Doria.

Clement was assiduous in taking counsel with the Ambassadors and Cardinals on the subject of the Crusade. The question was especially considered whether the war should be carried out on defensive or offensive lines. Francis I let it be understood that he would take part only in operations of the former class; thereupon the Genoese and others withdrew from their previous agreements concerning the support to be given to the Emperor’s forces. “The Pope alone,” wrote Andrea da Burgo, “adheres to his promise to pay 12,000 ducats per month; in this case,” he added, “I certainly cannot see how, wanting money as he does, he can give any help to your Majesty.”

In spite of the pretensions of Francis I, Clement was never weary of making plans to utilize the power of France on behalf of the common undertaking, as well as to raise the necessary sums for the protection of the Italian seaboard and the support of Charles and Ferdinand. He met with not a little opposition on the part of some of the Cardinals. When the Pope urged the necessity of raising funds in presence of the common danger, it was put forward in reply that the princes had very often expended such levies for totally different purposes, and that, on that account, no one in Italy was willing to contribute. Clement VII proposed that the sums intended for the protection of the coasts of Italy against the attacks of Mohammedan pirates should be collected and then forwarded to the spot where the most immediate succour was required. All the Cardinals were unanimous that the funds for the Crusade should not be raised by the creation of new Cardinals or the sale of Church property. It was at last agreed that there should be a tax on grain.

The enemies of the Hapsburgs pointed to the general policy of Charles V and the increase of his brother’s power by the acquisition of the Hungarian and Bohemian crowns, as standing in the way of the aggrandizement of Italy and of the Pope in particular. It was said plainly that the empire and monarchy of the Hapsburgs threatened to establish a world-power even more dangerous than that of Turkey: their agents in Italy were, it was alleged, on the one hand, always asking the Pope for money and, on the other, by their incessant demands for a Council, frustrated the very means by which money could be raised, and sowed the seeds of endless difficulties for the Holy See in Italy. In addition, there was also the Emperor’s decision in the dispute with Ferrara, which must have offended the Pope in the highest degree. Since Charles V, in spite of the counter-representations of Ferdinand I, clung obstinately to this determination, the negotiations over the subsidy against the Turks came to a standstill.

Andrea da Burgo, Ferdinand’s Ambassador, was in a difficult position. Repeatedly in the course of these negotiations he had been made to understand by the Pope that no serious arrangement could be come to in this matter unless the Emperor consented to some relaxa­tion of the too rigid conditions of the treaties of Madrid and Cambrai. In spite, however, of the imprudence of the Imperialists and the constant intrigues of the French, this indefatigable diplomatist achieved a great success in the autumn of 1531. In a Brief of the 16th of September of that year, Clement VII promised Ferdinand, in view of the menacing reports of Turkish preparations, the payment of 100,000 ducats in six months in the case of invasion, unless Italy itself were visited by a like calamity.

Contradictory as the reports often were concerning the Turkish plans, yet in the second half of December they all agreed in announcing for the coming spring a fresh attack from the Sultan, for which he was making preparations in force. On the first receipt of this information Clement showed great zeal. On the 16th of December he informed a full Consistory of Cardinals that, according to most trustworthy intelligence, a Turkish fleet of three hundred ships, with forty thousand men on board, would in the early spring set sail for Italy, while at the same time the Sultan, at the head of a hundred and fifty thousand, would advance on Hungary. On the 26th of December the Cardinals again met to deliberate on the Turkish question.

Two days later the Pope assembled the Cardinals and Ambassadors; of the latter none were absent except the Venetian envoy, whose Government was determined not to break the peace with Turkey, and the envoy of Ferrara. The Pope made a long speech, showing that a combined attack by sea and land was in preparation by the Turks for the coming spring, and urging the necessity of speedy assistance. The representatives of the Emperor and King Ferdinand gave the strongest assurances; those of Henry VIII and Francis I only proffered fair speeches, although the Pope had been urgent and even threatening in his appeal. In his closing words Clement again warned his hearers that not a moment should be lost, and declared himself ready to do his utmost.

In the beginning of January 1532 the Pope’s calls for help addressed in the preceding August to the Christian princes were emphatically renewed. At the same time it was resolved to fortify the Papal sea-ports, especially Ancona, the most exposed to danger, and to support with ample supplies of money the two Hapsburg brothers, whose extremity was the greatest. A commission of twelve Cardinals was appointed with full powers to deal with the whole Turkish question. The coming invasion of the Turks seemed all the more perilous as there were three opposing parties at strife in Hungary; Ferdinand and his adherents, Zapolya, and a party of independence led by Peter Perenyi. The friends of Francis I in Rome, including many of the Cardinals, had been trying for a long time to obtain from Clement the repeal of Zapolya’s excommunication. In spite of all the pressure brought to bear on him by the French party, Clement refused to give way, but, on the other hand, he told several Cardinals that Ferdinand, who was not in a position to subjugate Hungary, might hand over that kingdom to the Voivode, as the latter, once in tranquil possession of the country, would willingly break with the Turk and ally himself with the Christians. But the Pope took no decided step in favour of Zapolya. His intervention in the troubles of Hungary was confined to the despatch of a letter on the 17th of February 1532 exhorting all the inhabitants of the country to unite in their own defence against the infidels; their danger had reached the present pitch, he said expressly, owing to some among themselves having courted the favour of the Turks ; but they must not allow themselves to be deceived, only dishonourable subjection awaited them if they did not at once put aside their delusions.

It would have been of exceptional importance if Venice had taken a part in the Turkish war. In January 1532 Clement had already instructed Giberti to make represen­tations in this sense to the Signoria. The answer given to the Papal agent cut off all hope; Venice had no intention of interrupting the peace with the Turks. The tension between Venice and Rome on the question of the bishoprics was thus strained much further, and the Signoria went the length of imposing war taxes on the clergy without asking for the approval of the Pope. Clement felt himself deeply aggrieved by such conduct; he issued a Brief threatening excommunication to all rulers who demanded taxes of the clergy on their own sole authority. Attempts were made in vain on the part of the Republic to move Clement; he often said that the Republic had never shown respect to the Apostolic See. Once before, on an earlier occasion, he had remarked that the God of Venice was their own aggrandizement, they always tried to fish in troubled waters. How steady he was in his enmity to the over­weening policy of Venice is shown by the fantastic schemes propounded by him in May 1532 to Andrea da Burgo, concerning the reconstruction of political conditions in Hungary and Italy.

The intentions of the infidels continued to be the subject of the most varying reports in Rome during the spring of 1532. The Imperialists declared that all the rumours of Turkish invasion were inventions of the Venetians and French in their own interests. They gave this as their opinion until a letter arrived from the Emperor which left no further doubt as to the gravity of the situation.[203] A Turkish fleet of two hundred vessels was bound for Sicily and Apulia and a large army was to attack Hungary. The result of this news was a regular panic in Rome. The Pope declared on the 13th of March that he intended to levy taxes at the rate of 80,000 ducats a month for three months; it was matter of daily consultation how this sum was to be raised. Although at the Pope’s command processions passed through the streets offering up prayers of intercession, the fickle-minded Romans very soon recovered their tranquillity.

In the beginning of April Clement received letters from Constantinople dated the 18th of February; according to these an attack on Hungary was certainly impending; from the fleet, further reports declared, there was nothing to fear, as the ships would only make a demonstration. In May these reports were confirmed; nevertheless, Clement declared that all the measures of defence must be taken; he wished nothing to be omitted. He was active in three directions. In the first place, he pushed on the equipment of a fleet at Genoa under the command of Doria to ensure the safety of the Mediterranean. At the same time he was anxious for the protection of the coasts of Italy; Ancona in particular was to be strongly fortified. Lastly, the Emperor and his brother were to receive 40,000 ducats monthly as a subsidy. All this demanded an immense outlay of money, and innumer­able difficulties arose in obtaining it.

The situation was still further complicated by the bad behaviour of King Francis, whose intentions with regard to Italy scarcely admitted of doubt. He had demanded from the Pope, under a threat of apostasy, the grant of a double tithe on the Church revenues in consideration of the danger from the Turks. Clement gave his consent, but added the condition that ten French galleys should join the Imperial fleet under the command of Doria. The French King replied that this would be inconsistent with his honour. He had likewise, on first hearing of the Pope’s naval undertaking, launched out against Clement in very violent terms, in the presence of the Nuncio; he, the Pope, allowed himself to be plundered by the Emperor, who, under the cloak of the Turkish war, concealed designs against France; when the proper time came he, Francis, would come down on Italy with such a power that he would be able to drive thence Pope and Emperor. Let Clement look to it lest his protection of Genoa did not one day cost him the loss of Florence. All the Pope’s attempts to make Francis give way were unavailing. Urged and harassed by the Imperialists, distrusting the French, Clement at last had no other course open to him than to withdraw his consent, already given, to the appropriation by France of the ecclesiastical tithes.

The Pope addressed himself with all his energy to the fortification of Ancona, Ascoli, and Fano. Antonio da Sangallo was appointed master of the works; his plans for the fortification of Ancona are still to be seen in the Uffizi; a huge citadel arose manned in September by Papal troops. To the extreme dissatisfaction of Venice, the independence of Ancona was thus brought to an end, and the direct Papal authority established. This proceed­ing was uncommonly characteristic of the Pope; not less so was the sale of the legatine government of the marches of Ancona to Cardinal Benedetto Accolti for the sum of 19,000 ducats.

All manner of proposals were made to raise money for the Turkish war, but no one showed any readiness to make sacrifices for the cause, and the Cardinals refused to hear of a reduction of their incomes. But Clement on this point stood firm, and in a Consistory held on the 21st of June 1532, carried a resolution that the Cardinals should be included in the Bull imposing on the whole body of the Italian clergy the payment of half their yearly incomes. Later on a hearth-tax of one ducat was levied throughout the Papal States.

In the same Consistory of the 21st of June the despatch of Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici to the Emperor and Ferdinand I was agreed to; the latter received 50,000 ducats for the pay of troops. The preparations for his journey were hurried on as quickly as possible. The Cardinal, who had always lived in the most secular manner, now assumed the Hungarian dress ; he has thus been painted in a masterpiece of Titian’s, now one of the ornaments of the Pitti Gallery. A robust figure clad in a reddish-brown garment with gold buttons; on the head a red biretta with peacocks’ feathers; the left hand grasps a scimitar, with the right he rests a Hungarian mace upon his knee. Ippolito de’ Medici, whose mission gave rise to various conjectures, left Rome on the 8th of July, and travelled by rapid stages to Regensburg, which he reached on the 12th of August.

A few days before, the Sultan with the bulk of his army had arrived before Guns, a few miles distant from the Austrian frontier. He at once opened the siege, but met with a very stout resistance. Nicholas Jurischitsch defended the small town with heroic determination and held out against the enemy until the 30th of August. The Sultan, who had set forth in true oriental pomp, reckoned on an easy victory on account of the divisions in Germany. On closer consideration he did not deem it advisable to risk a decisive battle at so advanced a season of the year and at such a distance from home; the accounts he had received of the strength of the Imperial army did not justify him in expecting a swift and certain triumph. Therefore the Turkish forces, after having made a rush forward as far as Oedenburg, fell back through Styria on Slavonia and Belgrade, suffering terrible losses on their way. In the Wienerwalde the army corps commanded by Kasimbeg was almost annihilated.

Misfortune also overtook the Turks by sea; for Andrea Doria was successful in sweeping the Ottoman fleet from the Ionian waters as well as in capturing Koron and Patras. To both these successes the Pope had materially contributed by his aid. Unfortunately, the hopes thus raised came to nothing; Doria did not think his forces sufficient for further enterprises, and returned to Genoa after plundering the territory of Corinth. Charles V also, notwithstanding the exhortations of Clement and Loaysa to follow up the advantages of the fortunate opening of the campaign, remained inactive. The accounts that reached him of the unruly and undisciplined spirit of his army, composed as it was of the most incongruous elements, made it appear to him inadvisable to persevere in the war except under the most urgent necessity. Not merely the Italian soldiers but many troops of the Empire refused to go into Hungary; the Protestants took up the cry that the aid supplied by the Empire was intended exclusively for the defence of Germany; they objected to strengthen the Catholic Ferdinand. Above all there was the danger threatening the Emperor from France and England, as well as the unfavourable condition of Italian affairs. The latter as well as the question of the Council seemed to call imperatively for a personal discussion with the Pope. Therefore Charles made up his mind that on his journey to Spain he would take Italy on his way.

CHAPTER XIII

Clement the Seventh’s Second Meeting with the Emperor at Bologna.—The Conciliar Question in the Years 1532-1533.—The Pope and Francis I at Marseilles.— The Marriage of Catherine de’ Medici.

Although Pope and Emperor were drawn into a position of close interdependence on account of the dangers threatening them from the Turkish and Protestant side alike, there were yet, at the same time, many questions open between them which, unfortunately, gave rise to disagreement and friction. Arbitrary enactments concerning Neapolitan benefices, excesses and hostile behaviour of the Imperialist troops in Italy, drew forth many complaints from Clement, and in addition to these grievances he and Charles were at variance on the question of the Council.

The political predominance of the Emperor in Italy and the dependence of the Papacy on Spain, as the great world­power, were felt all the more bitterly by the Pope as Charles had, without any disguise, favoured the Duke Alfonso of Ferrara in every way, and confirmed to him in April 1531 the entire possession of his states as well as of Modena and Reggio, to which the Pope had a counter-claim. This decision, which was contrary to the Emperor’s previous engagements, was disapproved of even by Ferdinand’s representative in Rome.

This was a blow that Clement could never get over; his relations with Charles were henceforward destroyed. In order to reconcile the Pope, to promote the cause of the Council in accordance with the promises of Regensburg, and to restore some order in the unsettled condition of Italy, Charles was anxious to meet Clement personally; therefore, in October 1532, he came into Italy from Friuli. His anxiety to soothe the Pope would have been still greater if he had known how badly his affairs had been represented in Rome.

The number of Cardinals in the Curia on whom the Emperor could count was not great; most of the Italians adhered to France. The principal cause of this was the fear, only too well grounded, of the supremacy of Charles, which was a pressing burden on Italy and the Holy See. The Italian national feeling grew restive under the Spanish supremacy, represented by men who did nothing to wipe out the remembrance of the sufferings endured by the Romans during the sack of their city. Many of the Roman prelates were under obligations to Francis I on account of pensions and preferments. Further causes of unpopularity were the insistence of the Hapsburgers on the dreaded Council, and injudicious demands on the part of Charles and Ferdinand which would have had the effect of diminishing the Cardinals’ incomes. As Cardinal Quinones had almost altogether withdrawn from affairs, and Charles’s close adherent Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci was dead (September 1531), the conduct of the Imperial interests was in the hands of Cardinal Garcia de Loaysa. He was without doubt a remarkable man, of high moral character and a great ecclesiastic, full of energy and ability, and thoroughly loyal to the Emperor, but wanting in the qualities of statesmanship; he showed a lack of consideration and a rigid hardness, not uncommon in Spaniards, which gave general offence. Loaysa was entirely wanting in the one great essential of a diplomatist—tact; he was at the mercy of his impetuous temperament. He soon found himself in difficulties with everyone, even with the Emperor’s Ambassador Mai, calling him in his despatches a blockhead in plain words, and demanded of the Emperor his recall. The indignation of Mai, who was acquainted with all this, can be imagined. Andrea da Burgo, Ferdinand’s clever representative, and much esteemed by Clement VII., had great difficulty in preventing an open breach between Mai and Loaysa; all the deeper on this account was the secret grudge between them.

It cannot be matter of surprise that Loaysa should have also given free vent to his vehement nature, even towards the Pope, to whom he repeatedly gave open offence.5This was especially the case in the transactions over the appointment of fresh Cardinals, when the Imperialist and French parties measured their strength. Clement VII was averse to new creations chiefly because, if he made concessions to the Emperor’s wishes, England and France would at once put forward claims of their own. In March 1531, after the creation of two Spaniards, Alfonso Manrico and Juan Tavera, the Pope was exposed to the gravest reproaches; the English Ambassador told him outspokenly that he had become the Emperor’s slave. In May 1531 the Consistory again became the scene of agitating negotiations; Francis I demanded the nomination of a Cardinal, whereupon the Imperialists put forward claims for two. As no agreement could be come to, the matter was left in suspense. In order to pacify Francis I to some extent, Clement VII determined, in June 1531, in spite of Loaysa’s opposition, to concede to the French monarch the right of nomination for life to those abbacies which in virtue of their privileges had hitherto enjoyed powers of free election. Soon afterwards Clement proposed to recall Giberti to his service. The Imperialists viewed the plan with anything but satisfaction, and the Pope’s intentions were frustrated by the refusal of Giberti, who met this pressing invitation with the plea that his presence was necessary in Verona.

As Clement in the following year showed himself ready to make special efforts to support the Emperor and his brother in their urgent need of aid against the Turks, the French were again in the highest degree dissatisfied with him. He fared in the same way in the negotiations relating to the divorce of Henry VIII. Whatever Clement might do, one of the rival parties was sure to complain of his conduct.

In May 1532 Clement was willing to bestow the purple on G. A. Muscettola, the Imperial agent. Although the Sacred College objected to this, as generally to every other creation, Clement held to his resolve, for Muscettola stood high in his favour. But France now demanded the elevation of Giberti at the same time. Clement was quite willing, but found a strong opponent in Loaysa; Giberti, the latter protested, was a bastard, and on that account could not become a Cardinal; that this was a grave affront to the Pope did not trouble him a whit. Clement VII complained of Loaysa’s conduct to the Emperor’s representative; he would rather live in a desert than endure such behaviour. Loaysa was so little conscious of his stupidity that he stubbornly declared that he had only done his duty, and would not depart from it; if the Pope showed his displeasure, he would then take up his residence in Naples until the Emperor came! The costs of this wanton outburst fell upon his friend Muscettola, who had already given orders for his Cardinal’s insignia; for the Pope now gave up all idea of a creation.

The breach between Loaysa and Mai also showed itself in their opinion of the Pope, concerning whom their views were in direct contradiction. While the former accounted and made excuses for Clement’s constant vacillation by his character and the circumstances in which he was placed, Mai saw in all the Pope’s dealings only duplicity and dangerous craft. His hatred of Clement was also extended to Muscettola, who was regarded favourably by the Pope. The relations between the two assumed in time the character of an actual feud. Things had gone so far in the autumn of 1530 that Muscettola applied for his recall; but he nevertheless remained two years longer in Rome. Obviously a dissension of this kind between the representatives of the Emperor must often have given a very unwished-for turn to his affairs in the Roman Curia.

The French envoys worked with much greater tact, and they had also this advantage over the Imperialists, that, being supplied with plenty of money, they were able to keep up a great establishment and make handsome presents. Their leader, Gabriel de Gramont, Bishop of Tarbes, a Cardinal since the 8th of June 15 30, understood admirably how to play constantly on the Pope’s distrust of the Emperor, and even to intimidate him in case of necessity by open threats. Gramont at the same time was trying to bring about a family alliance between the houses of Valois and Medici which should bind Clement inseparably to France. The second son of Francis I, Henry, Duke of Orleans, was to marry Catherine de’ Medici, born in 1519, daughter of Lorenzo of Urbino. When Gramont brought the matter forward in the autumn of 1530, he also hinted that Parma and Piacenza might go with the bride as her dowry. Clement VII refused to agree to such an alienation of Church property, and indeed acted as if the whole scheme were not seriously meant; evidently he did not wish then to go further into the affair out of regard for Charles V, who, on his side, looked with favour on a marriage between Catherine and the Duke of Milan. Clement for a long time acted in the matter with his habitual indecision. That finally he decided in favour of France cannot cause surprise. What comparison was there between the Dukedom of Milan, with its precarious tenure, and the brilliant alliance with the royal house of France, which at the same time guaranteed a hope of firm support against the Spanish supremacy in Italy! The Venetian Ambassador Soriano was also of opinion that another induce­ment to incline the Pope in favour of this marriage was the hope of gaining thereby the French partisans in Florence. In addition, the project of marriage was espoused by the French themselves with the greatest eagerness. In the beginning of November 1530 John Stuart, Duke of Albany, arrived in Rome on a mission from Francis to push forward the arrangements initiated by Gramont. Catherine had left Florence in October, where she had lived with her aunt, Lucrezia Salviati. The Milanese envoy who saw her in the streets of Rome thought her tall and comparatively good-looking, but still of such a tender age that he was of opinion her marriage could not be thought of for another year and a half. Nevertheless, the affair was negotiated more ardently than ever. Clement’s indecision was in­creased by his fear of Charles’ and Albany’s great demands. As Gramont in the meantime was once more in Rome, the Pope gave his consent in secret to the marriage and to the conditions which Francis attached to his “gift of the Danai.” In a treaty of the 9th of June 1531 Clement VII. declared himself ready to give Catherine, after her marriage with the Duke of Orleans, Pisa, Leghorn, Modena, Reggio, and Rubbiera, and also to hand over Parma and Piacenza in return for a compensation to be agreed upon. He even was willing to assist in the reconquest of Urbino; only as regards Milan and Genoa, which Francis had also demanded for the young bridal couple, he gave no conclusive answer. A few days later Cardinal Gramont returned to France: the Pope gave orders that he should be received in Florence with all honour.

The members of the French court were under a great delusion if they believed that the old influence over Clement VII had been regained and that he was once more securely in their hands. When the Pope weighed more closely the conditions of the agreement of June, he was alarmed at having committed himself in advance to such an extent; he now tried, under different pretexts, to have the marriage postponed. So little was the “astute, circumspect, and timid” Medici thinking of a breach with the Emperor, that, on the contrary, he determined to work with all his power for the reconciliation of Charles and Francis. On this he brought to bear all his penetration and all his diplomatic ability. Thus was conceived the visionary plan of bringing the two rivals together at the expense of Venice; a project, however, which nowhere met with a favourable reception. As the Ottoman invasion later on drew attention in another direction altogether, the Pope bethought him of a fresh scheme applicable to the wholly altered state of affairs. Charles V and Francis I were to be reconciled and unite all their military forces in one comprehensive onslaught on the Turks, after whose destruction Ferdinand I should receive Hungary and the adjoining territories, Venice the possessions taken from her in the Levant, and, finally, France should receive Milan, which until then should be retained by the Emperor and the Pope, as the friends of both parties!

But the situation had once again entirely changed; on the withdrawal of the Sultan the Emperor had abandoned the Turkish war and undertaken his journey to Italy to meet the Pope. For the place of conference Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, then also Genoa and Pisa, had been proposed: particulars were to be settled by Pedro della Cueva at Rome. While the negotiations were in progress an accident threatened to interfere finally with the proposed meeting. On the 25th of October 1532 the Pope received a report of which he complained, with tears in his eyes, to Mai and Burgo: the Emperor had placed Cardinal Medici under arrest for a day; for the latter, displeased with the suspension of the Turkish war, had foolishly tried to play the part of commander-in-chief. The incident led to no further results, owing to the apologies of the Imperialists, who wished to ward off a misunderstanding, and the hopes of Clement that the meeting would be efficacious in bringing about a peace with France.

Cueva reached Rome at the end of October and announced that the Emperor wished the conference to be held at Piacenza. The matter was discussed in Consistory; most of the Cardinals, Farnese at their head, declared it fitting that Charles V. should come to Rome. This was hotly opposed by the Imperialist group and was also contrary to Clement’s own wishes. Since in the meantime Medici made it known that Charles agreed to Bologna, as proposed by the Pope, the departure of the latter thither was fixed for the 12th of November in a Consistory held on the 4th. Owing to the necessary preparations the departure was put off until the 18th, and before this a Bull was issued making regulations in the event of a Papal election; Cardinal Salviati acted as Legate in Rome.

The late season of the year, unfavourable weather, and the bad condition of the roads made the journey a very arduous one for the Pope, who was hardly recovered from the gout. Six Cardinals travelled through Tuscany, and six others went with the Pope. Their way was by Castelnuovo, Civita Castellana, Narni, Terni, Trevi, Perugia, Citta di Castello, S. Sepolcro, S. Agata, Cesena, Forli, and Castel S. Pietro. On Sunday the 8th of December he entered Bologna on horseback, where he was received with the customary solemnities. On the following day a Consistory was held in which it was resolved to send Cardinals Grimani and Cesarini to meet the Emperor.

Charles, on the 13th of December 1532, made his entry into Bologna with military pomp and was received with great ceremony by the Papal court and the most prominent citizens. Over five thousand men-at-arms escorted him; he rode between Cardinals Farnese and Spinola; in his suite were noticed the Dukes of Milan, Mantua, and Florence. The Pope awaited him in San Petronio on his throne, in full pontificals and wearing a costly tiara. Charles made the customary triple obeisance on bended knee and kissed the Pope’s foot. The latter, waiving the kissing of his hand, rose and embraced the Emperor. After the Emperor’s suite had paid their reverence to his Holiness, Clement led the Emperor to the state apartments prepared for them in the Palazzo Publico. On the following days also there was no lack of demonstrative friendliness between Pope and Emperor, the latter receiving on Christmas Eve as a gift of honour a sword and hat. Great as were the confidence and friendship displayed in public between the two potentates, in the long conferences, held almost always in private, it was only too evident that there was a lack of unanimity. In Bologna the influx of strangers had given rise to a high cost of living, and the Emperor, on this account, would have been glad to quit the city soon, but the negotiations shaped themselves with such difficulty that his departure was deferred from week to week.

Clement VII was eager to make a reconciliation between Francis I. and Charles V. The Emperor considered this quite hopeless, and thought only of securing Milan and Genoa against any French attacks; with this object he proposed the formation of an Italian defensive league. On his instructions Granvelle, Covos, and Praet conducted the matter with Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici, Francesco Guicciardini, and Jacopo Salviati. It was soon evident that such a confederacy was little in keeping with the policy of a Pope who was considered neutral; his representatives asserted that Venice would absolutely oppose such a league; they also made it clear that Clement still clung to the restoration of Modena and Reggio, and would not suspend his claims on this score during the existence of the League. But the influence which bore with most force on Clement VII. was the threatening attitude of Francis I, the ally of Henry VIII, when the representatives of the former, Cardinals Gramont and Tournon, appeared in Bologna in the beginning of January 1533.

To make sure of Milan the Emperor wished Clement to give his niece Catherine de’ Medici in marriage to Francesco Sforza. The Pope’s objection to this was that the contract with Francis had priority, and the King would feel it to be an extreme affront if the intended wife of one of his sons were to wed his declared enemy. Unfortunately, the Emperor was under the impression that Francis I. had not been in earnest over the marriage contract; he therefore asked the Pope to urge upon Francis that the marriage should speedily take place. He assumed in this that Francis would refuse, and then the Pope would convince himself that he had been the dupe of vain words. In this case the friendship of Clement for Francis would certainly have been turned into bitter enmity. But the contrary came to pass; Francis, perceiving the impending danger, sent at once to the Cardinals above-named full powers to ratify the marriage contract of his son with Catherine de’ Medici; at the same time he sent an invitation to the Pope to meet him in Nice. Clement VII now declared that such a wish was all the more to be complied with as he had already on two occasions undertaken a journey in order to meet the Emperor. Thus the latter saw the connection between the Pope and France only further strengthened. He suspected that Clement would combine with Francis in order to conquer Milan for the Duke of Orleans, but the Pope did all he could to convince him that such a suspicion was groundless. Thus a secret treaty between Pope and Emperor was signed on the 24th of February, a day of momentous significance to Charles, for it was the date of his birth, of his victory at Pavia, and of his coronation. Clement VII and Charles gave mutual pledges not to form alliances with other princes; they exchanged promises as to the holding of the Council, help against the Turks, the maintenance of the existing state of things in Italy, and the hearing of the English divorce case in Rome.

The negotiations with the Italian envoys, already begun in January, were brought a few days later to a conclusion. On the 27th of February Clement VII, Charles V, Ferdinand I, the Dukes of Milan, Mantua, and Ferrara, with Siena, Lucca, and Genoa, united themselves on acceptance of certain contributions of troops and money to defend Italy against any attack. The difficulty with Ferrara was removed in this way, that Clement VII undertook, only for eighteen months, to leave the Duke in peace. Florence and Savoy, and above all Venice, were not named in the bond. If this was annoying to the Emperor, much more so was the failure of his then renewed attempts to draw Clement out of the French marriage agreement. The Pope stood firm; in this he could take no backward step.

The negotiations concerning the nominations of Cardinals demanded by the Emperor went also contrary to his wishes. He had proposed Schonberg, Muscettola, and Stefano Gabriele Merino, Archbishop of Bari, The Pope’s nominees were Giberti, Simonetta, Auditor of the Rota, and the Bishop of Faenza, Rodolfo Pio. But at the same time Francis I and Henry VIII demanded the purple for three of their dependents. The general feeling of the Sacred College was against new creations; an effort was therefore made to defer the question until the Pope had returned to Rome, and Clement, who inclined to this view, handed over the matter to Cardinals Farnese, Campeggio, and Cesi to report upon. On the 19th of February the Consistory debated the subject far into the night without coming to a decision. Loaysa took up the cause of Muscettola with all his energy but met with the most decided opposition. On the 21st of February the Cardinals voted for the elevation of Merino in order to defeat the creation of Muscettola and Schonberg. Also, as a satisfaction to France, the nomination of Jean d’Orleans to the Sacred College was soon afterwards made public. The Imperialists were little pleased with this result.

Not less stirring were the negotiations at Bologna on the question of the Council. On the 15th of December 1532 Charles had already discussed the question with Clement in an interview lasting two hours. On the following day the Consistory was consulted; only a few Cardinals were in favour of an immediate summons; the majority were of the opinion that peace must first be restored to Christendom and the agreement of all the princes be secured; a decision was postponed until the next sitting. In this, held on the 20th of December, the whole matter was once more thoroughly considered. The use of the temporal sword against Protestants was also made subject of remark. Only a few, however, voted for such measures ; the majority of the Cardinals were for a Council; they certainly objected to it being held in Germany, and still more to a national council of that nation, as the latter would only give occasion to the Kings of France and England to bring about a schism. The final resolution was that the Council should be held in a suitable place, and after the consent of all Christian princes had been invited. For the execution of this decision a congregation was formed in which the Pope was represented by Farnese, Campeggio, Cesi, and Aleander, and the Emperor by Merino, Covos, Granvelle, and Mai.

After the Emperor had agreed to the Council meeting in Italy, it was possible, as early as the 2nd of January 1533, to prepare the Briefs to the Kings of France and England, and to other Christian princes inviting their consent to and presence at the Council. More protracted negotiations were occasioned by the question whether the princes and States of the German Empire should also be written to at the same time. This was agreed to, for Aleander was strongly in favour of such a step. Accordingly, about the 10th of January, letters of the Emperor were addressed to all the States, as well as from the Pope to King Ferdinand I, the six Electors, and the six Circles of the Empire. In these letters the Pope praised the Emperor’s zeal on behalf of the Council, whereby he had been led to consent to its summons, although for other reasons he was not yet quite prepared for it. But as it was necessary that all members and nations of Christendom should participate, he would not neglect to procure the consent of other princes than those of Germany by means of letters and Nuncios. While the answers, that of France in particular, were awaited, the Emperor did not desist in the course of negotiations in demanding through his deputies that the Council should be summoned at once, for he had given his promise on this point to the German princes, and in no other way could the desire for a national German council be successfully opposed. On the other hand, the Papal deputies insisted that Clement was ready to proclaim the Council in accordance with the usage hitherto observed by the Church, and on condition that the dogmatic decrees of earlier synods were acknowledged by all, and that all promised their willingness to submit to the decrees of the forthcoming assembly ; but in any case the answers of the princes must still be waited for.

As the Emperor was always insistent and the time of his return was drawing near, while no answers had as yet been received, the Papal deputies proposed that under these circumstances Nuncios should be sent to Germany, France, and England, an arrangement with which Charles expressed his agreement. The Nuncio appointed for Germany was Ugo Rangoni, Bishop of Reggio; for France and England the Papal chamberlain and protonotary, Ubaldino de Ubaldinis. On the 20th of February the two Nuncios were presented with the Briefs of which they were to be the bearers.

In the meantime Cardinals Tournon and Gramont had presented the long-expected answer of Francis I. It was short, cold in tone, and insisted on the necessity of the questions of religion being dealt with in a becoming manner, in accordance with the wishes of those taking part in the Council assembled in a place agreeable to them, and of the decrees being of such a kind that no one afterwards would refuse his consent to them. This reply was all the more unsatisfactory as Francis, besides these general observations, said nothing about his wishes regarding the representation at the Council.

The Instruction drafted by Aleander for the Nuncio Rangoni on the 27th of February 1533 contained the conciliar conditions under eight articles:—(1) The Council is to be free, and to be held according to the customs obtaining in the Church since the first General Councils. (2) The members of the Council are to promise obedience to its decisions and their unbroken observance. (3) Members unable to be present for legitimate reasons are to send deputies with full legal powers and satisfactory mandates. (4) In the meantime, no fresh matter of con­troversy is to be introduced into the religious questions in debate in Germany until the Council shall have given its decisions. (5) A choice, on which all should agree, must be made of some suitable place; the Pope pro­poses Mantua, Bologna, or Piacenza. (6) Should any princes, without just cause, reject the summons and meeting of the Council, the Pope is nevertheless to proceed with the same. (7) Against those princes who wish to put obstacles in the way of the Council, the remainder are to support the Pope in its favour. (8) On receipt of the consenting replies the Pope shall convene the Council within six months and take steps for opening it within a year. To Lambert von Briaerde, who accompanied Rangoni as Imperial orator, Charles communicated special instructions agreeing with the Pope’s intentions. The Emperor left Bologna on the 28th of February and the Pope on the 10th of March.

Rangoni and Briaerde first visited the court of Ferdinand I at Vienna and stayed there from the 1st of April to the 13th of May. Ferdinand expressed his full agreement with the meeting of the Council and the articles. Duke George of Saxony did likewise, whom they visited at Dresden on the 25th of May. Thence they made their way to Weimar, where on the 3rd of June they were courteously received by the Elector John Frederick and listened to by him; in his answer to the Nuncio, communicated on the following day, he expressed his joy at the prospect of a Council but explained that, greatly as he wished personally to give a definite answer at once, he could only do so in company with his allies, who in the approaching assembly of Protestant princes at Schmalkald would take counsel on the matter. With this message Rangoni and Briaerde left Weimar on the 5th of June and proceeded to Mayence to Cardinal Albert, who expressed personally his full agreement and his adhesion to everything that the Pope and Emperor might further determine, even with regard to the meeting-place of the Council, but for a definite answer he referred them to the Congress of the Catholic Electors about to be held at Mayence. The same answer was given by his brother, the Elector Joachim of Brandenburg, with whom the envoys discussed the question at Berlin on the 17th of June. Through Brunswick, where they missed Duke Henry, they came to Cologne on the 5th of July, and on the 9th at Bonn had an interview with the Elector Hermann of Wied; on the 13th they were similarly occupied at Coblentz with Johann von Metzenhausen, the Elector of Treves, and on the 20th at Heidelberg with the Elector Palatine Louis.

After all the Electors had thus been visited, the Imperial envoy Briaerde, having accomplished his mission, returned to the Netherlands, while the Nuncio Rangoni went yet further to Munich in order to treat also with the Dukes William and Louis of Bavaria. To the meeting of a General Council all the princes interrogated had, on the whole, given their ready consent; in respect of the articles enumerated above, only the two Bavarian Dukes were unwilling to give a final reply on their own responsibility. The Nuncio and Briaerde were not without grounds for indulging in hopes on the close of their round of inquiries. In the course of the foregoing deliberations the principal question under discussion had been the meeting-place of the Council. On this as on the other points, by the exercise of a little good-will on all sides, there ought not to have been difficulty in coming to an agreement. This was especially the case as the Elector of Saxony himself had shown apparently the best intentions, and in all probability at the last would have given his final decision in a favourable sense. But his theologians and the other princes of Protestant Germany were of a different way of thinking. John Frederick, in the first place, asked the theologians of Wittenberg to give their opinion and furnish him with reports. Melanchthon, indeed, declared that on account of the other nations the Council could not well be refused, nor had he any objections to Protestants appearing there under a safe-conduct, but he repudiated in the most express terms the article on the duty of submission to the conciliar decrees. Luther spoke in the same sense, only in a much more offensive manner, for he called the Pope a “liar” and a “cursed bloodhound and murderer.” This position of the theologians corresponded therefore with the answer, dated the 30th of June 1533, of the Protestant princes and Estates3 assembled at Schmalkald. They demanded a “free council” to be held in Germany, with the Bible as the only standard; the Pope’s articles were rejected in coarse and offensive terms. By this declaration all previous exertions on behalf of a Council were brought to nothing.

No better success attended the mission of the Nuncio Ubaldino to Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England. Both monarchs avoided any definite declaration.

On leaving Bologna Clement VII had gone first to Fano in order to compose the disorders which had broken out in that place; he then paid visits to Ancona and the sanctuary of Loreto; on the 3rd of April 1533 he was once more in Rome. Here awaited him a mass of business which had accumulated in his absence. There was, moreover, anxiety on account of Koron, hard pressed by the Turks, and still greater anxieties arising from the divorce suit of Henry VIII. The Pope’s nephew Bernardo Salviati was sent to the relief of Koron with twelve galleys. Francis I, meanwhile, was pressing for the conference agreed to by the Pope, and the conclusion of the family alliance; his representatives, the Cardinals Gramont and Tournon, encountered, however, unsuspected difficulties. These were in part the outcome of the intrigues of the Imperialists, who were naturally doing all they could to frustrate the dangerous interview and still more dangerous marriage.

Before the conference at Bologna was over, a fundamental change had taken place in the diplomatic service of the Emperor at Rome. Charles V had at length come to see that Loaysa with his immoderate temper, and Mai with his brusque ways, were not the men to conduct his affairs aright. With Loaysa fell also Muscettola. In their place Fernando da Silva, Count of Cifuentes, was appointed Ambassador, and Rodrigo Davalos as agent; in the Sacred College the place of Loaysa was taken by the Cardinal of Jaen, Stefano Gabriele Merino, as representative of the Imperial interests. Charles soon found out that the change was in no way a fortunate one, for the evil of disunion had been handed on and made itself felt with undiminished intensity, as the enmity between Cifuentes and Merino was acute.

The French party reaped the advantage of this feud. Cardinal Tournon played his part with great skill; he knew how to paint in the most glowing colours the advantages of the French alliance to Clement, and even to encourage in him the hope that this connection would be a means of bringing order into the tangle of the English divorce. Personally the Pope was strongly inclined to an alliance with France in order to secure a counterpoise to the Emperor’s power in Italy.[257] But unexpected hindrances now arose on the side of the Cardinals. Farnese and others adduced the most various objections; Cardinal Gramont declared haughtily : “The Pope has more need of my king than my king of him.” Meanwhile a letter came from Charles to the effect: “Since his Holiness persists in his interview with Francis, he (the Emperor) makes no further difficulties but warns him to look to the pre­servation of peace in Italy.” On the 25th of May 1533 Clement showed the letter to a full Consistory; but although he used every argument to prove the necessity of the conference, the majority of the Cardinals remained quite unconvinced. As the question was one of such great importance, a decision upon it was deferred.

Notwithstanding the almost general opposition of the Curia, Clement did not in the least abandon the plan of the conference, but put it off until the month of September. On the 28th of May he wrote in this sense to Francis I. At the same time he sent to him the Bishop of Faenza to settle the details of the interview which was to take place at Nice. A fresh postponement was subsequently caused by the breach with England which took place in July, at the very moment when the marriage treaty signed by the French King reached Rome. Francis I would now have willingly put off the interview, but Clement refused to withdraw.

On the 1st of August the Papal officials were formally notified that their presence would be required at Nice on the 3rd of September. As no reply came from France concerning the ship on which the Pope was to be conveyed to the latter place, many looked upon the journey as doubtful, but the majority believed that it certainly would take place. The Pope also expressed himself in the same way. Then there was a rumour that Marseilles would be the place of meeting, as the Duke of Savoy, in consideration of the Emperor, had made difficulties about Nice. This was unacceptable to the Pope, for on French soil Francis could bring to bear upon him a preponderant influence. Meanwhile the bride’s dowry was settled; on this occasion Clement laid aside his usual parsimony; the jewels alone were valued at more than 30,000 ducats. On the 1st of September Catherine de’ Medici set forth on her journey, accompanied by Caterina Cibo, Duchess of Camerino, Maria de’ Medici-Salviati, the widow of Giovanni “delle Bande Nere,” Filippo Strozzi, and the historian Guicciardini. At Portovenere the galleys of the Duke of Albany awaited her.

The departure of the Pope, who at the end of August had heard with delight of the relief of Koron, took place on the 9th of September. Three days before, the death had taken place of the man who, among the Pope’s relations, had been his peculiarly trusted adviser, Jacopo Salviati. Cardinal del Monte remained behind in Rome as Legate, and Salviati’s place, whose death was generally lamented, was taken by Alessandro Farnese. The Pope’s departure was a hard blow for the Romans; their city had now the appearance of being deserted. Clement on this journey avoided his native city, Florence, and passed slowly through Sienese territory to Pisa, which he reached on the 24th of September, remaining there on account of bad weather until the 3rd of October. On the 22nd of September, at San Miniato al Tedesco in the valley of the lower Arno, he saw Michael Angelo for the last time.

Not until the 5th of October did Clement set sail from Leghorn. The Papal galley was entirely covered with gold brocade; ten French vessels, and many others, especially those of the Knights of St. John, accompanied the Pope, in whose suite were nine Cardinals. A favourable wind carried the stately fleet—consisting in all of sixty sail—to Villafranca on the 7th of October, where Catherine de’ Medici was taken on board. On the 11th the fleet entered the harbour of Marseilles, in which city the Grand Master Anne de Montmorency had made splendid preparations for the solemn entry of the Pope. This took place on the 12th of October. Fourteen Cardinals and nearly sixty prelates surrounded the Pope, who was carried on the sedia gestatoria by nobles of the highest rank. On the following day Francis I made his state entry, after having had already a secret interview with Clement. Both were lodged so near to each other that visits could be exchanged without remark.

Despite the youth of Catherine de’ Medici, her marriage with Duke Henry of Orleans took place on the 28th of October; the Pope himself performed the ceremony. In the brilliant festivities of the wedding Cardinal Medici was conspicuous ; his display of magnificence surpassed even that of the King himself. On the 7th of November three French Cardinals were nominated in Consistory (Jean Leveneur de Tillier, Claude de Languy, and Odet de Coligny); a fourth (Philippe de la Chambre) was publicly declared as such. Long and animated transactions had preceded this act, for Clement himself seems to have had objections to this large increase of the French element in the Sacred College. The Imperial envoys objected that a creation should only take place in Rome; the majority, however, led by Gaddi and Sanseverino, and under pressure from Francis I, determined otherwise; Clement gave his consent reluctantly.

Pope and King vied with each other at Marseilles in displays of friendship and exchanged rich gifts. During the ecclesiastical ceremonies Francis made an ostentatious show of his subjection to the Papal authority. Notwithstanding the numerous festivities, Clement and Francis, during their meeting of more than four weeks’ duration, completed numerous negotiations, the nature of which, however, was kept a profound secret. All the accounts given by envoys and chroniclers of these oral transactions, carried on without any intermediary, are mere conjectures. The only written document of importance is the draft of a secret treaty drawn up in Francis’ own hand; according to this not merely Urbino, but Milan also, was to be taken possession of for the Duke of Orleans, whereupon Clement would raise no difficulties even on account of Parma and Piacenza.

How far Clement agreed to demands of this kind is uncertain; in any case he cannot here have gone beyond verbal assurances, since no written agreement was completed; but even in conversation so experienced a politician would most certainly have observed the utmost caution. The enemies of Clement VII, at a later date, brought against him, among other accusations, the charge of having acquiesced at Marseilles in the alliance between Francis I and the Turks and Protestants; the onus of proof rests with them. Clement VII was so little in agreement with the shameful project of giving support to the hereditary foe of Christendom, spoken of by Francis at their conference, that he had information of the same conveyed to the Emperor. As to the support given to Philip of Hesse in his forcible restoration of the Protestant Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, the communications of Guillaume du Bellay appear to  exonerate “Clement VII as having been deceived by Francis.”

All the Pope’s exhortations to a reconciliation with Charles fell on the French King’s pugnacious temperament like seed on a barren soil. It is undoubted that during the conference Clement exerted himself to bring about a peace between the two; very well-informed envoys state this expressly.

Substantial successes for Francis I were, besides the above-mentioned nomination of Cardinals, the gift of the last tithe for the Crusade and the recall of the Swiss Nuncio Filonardi. Clement excused himself to Ferdinand I for this act of submissiveness by suggesting that he had found himself at Marseilles in the French King’s power, and that the latter had threatened him with apostasy from Rome.

Very important transactions also took place on the subject of the Council. Francis was inflexible in his opposition to one held in Italy; he also insisted that in the actual condition of Christendom such an. assembly should be deferred until more propitious and peaceable times. His arguments succeeded in inducing Clement, with feeble pliability, to consent to a postponement. Even in the divorce suit of Henry VIII he yielded to the request of Francis I, and on the 31st of October 1533 consented to a fresh respite of a month before giving effect to the threatened excommunication.

Clement VII left Marseilles on the 12th of November 1533, whereupon Francis started for Avignon. The Pope’s voyage to Spezia was made under difficulties owing to heavy storms; as far as Savona he made use of French vessels; from thence he was conveyed to Civita Vecchia by Doria’s squadron, and three days later he re-entered his capital, where he was joyfully received. Soon afterwards an event occurred of vast consequence to the Church and the world. The complete separation of England from the Holy See, long threatened, became an accomplished fact.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Divorce of Henry VIII and the English Schism.

The separation of England from the Holy See was not like that of Germany, the result of a combined movement of the common people and the learned classes; it arose rather from the sensual passion and autocratic temper of the sovereign, and consequently for a considerable length of time had a schismatical rather than an heretical character. The separation was favoured by the ecclesiastical and political development of the nation, which since the fourteenth century had begun to slacken its ties with Rome. The dependence of the clergy on the throne had already become close under the first Tudor, Henry VII, whose accession, in 1485, not only put an end to the “War of the Roses” of the houses of York and Lancaster, but was the beginning, especially for England, of a new epoch. Henry VII resembled in character Ferdinand the Catholic. A man with strong gifts of government, imbued with a sense of the prerogatives of the Crown, he let the weight of his authority fall heavily on the nobility and the Church. When he died, on the 21st of April 1509, he had laid deep the foundations of absolute monarchy in England; the Parliament had learned docility, the nobles and church­men submission. His successor, Henry VIII, then in his eighteenth year, determined in these respects to walk firmly in his father’s footsteps. The capricious and despotic side of his character was at first kept in the background; all the more conspicuous was his love of pleasure and enjoyment. Good-looking, expert in all chivalrous accomplishments, the youthful King made a most favourable impression on the people by his spendthrift liberality, his splendid appearance, and the endless succession of festivities at his court. Nor was England long in playing a great and often successful part in the politics of Europe. After the dissolution of Parliament in 1515 the King and his Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, governed without it.

Wolsey’s position, not only as a politician but as an ecclesiastic, was an exceptional one. Since 1518 he had held the rank of Papal Legate; this office had been conferred on him at first for one year, and the tenure of it was afterwards prolonged to three. The extensive faculties thus acquired, and the extraordinary plenary powers, as visitor of monasteries, wrung by him from Leo X in August 1518, gave him an altogether abnormal influence over Church affairs. He made use of it without scruple to gratify his love of power and wealth. Still dissatisfied with what he had already attained, this ambitious man demanded from Adrian VI that his legatine office should be extended to the term of his natural life.

Luther’s new doctrine had found adherents also in England. Wolsey was comparatively lenient in his punishment of such; he indeed threatened them with the laws against heresy, but was restrained from enforcing them by his temperament of man of the world. The Cardinal endeavoured to maintain discipline and order among the clergy. Worthy also of recognition are his benefactions to the University of Oxford, where he raised a lasting memorial to his name in the truly regal foundation of Christ Church. It was characteristic of him that he obtained the necessary means by the dissolution of monasteries, under special powers obtained after a struggle from Clement VII.

The English King, in recompense for his book against Luther, had received from Leo X the title of “Defensor Fidei,” from Clement VII the golden rose, and from Luther, on the other hand, a “counter-reply of unspeakable coarseness and obscenity.” Henry complained of Luther’s insults to the Elector of Saxony, and employed Thomas More and John Fisher to compose fresh refutations of the reformer. Nevertheless, Luther for some time afterwards indulged in the flattering hope that he might make a convert of the King of England, to whom with this object he addressed a very servile letter in September 1525 begging for pardon. But Henry dismissed his approaches with contempt. Ten years later the same King tried by flattery to obtain from the doctor of Wittenberg an opinion favourable to his divorce. Only this one circumstance, only the desire to discard his lawful wife in order to marry a wanton, was the cause that led Henry to rend asunder the links that for nearly a thousand years had bound his kingdom to the See of Peter.

Soon after his accession, Henry VIII had married the widow of his brother Arthur, Catherine of Aragon, who, as a daughter of King Ferdinand the Catholic, was the aunt of Charles V. On the 26th of December 1503 Pope Julius II had issued a Bull granting the necessary dispensation from the obstacle to a valid marriage caused by the first degree of affinity. Catherine was five years older than Henry, but from the first the marriage appeared to be a perfectly happy one. Five children, three boys and two girls, were born, but the only one who lived was Mary, born in 1516. The Queen, as pious and virtuous as she was tender-hearted, bore these successive losses with Christian resignation. Like others of her countrywomen she aged early; she also had frequent illnesses, and the hope of a male heir vanished. Consequently the passionate King turned to other women. As early as 1519 he had adulterous relations with Elizabeth Blount and later with Mary Boleyn. Yet so little did the thought of a divorce occupy his mind that in 1519 he commissioned the Florentine sculptor, Pietro Torregiano, who had also executed the monument of his father, to prepare for him and his wife a common tomb.

That Henry VIII had other mistresses besides the two already named is probable, but not proven. According to his own testimony, conjugal relations between him and the Queen had ceased since 1524. The King, moreover, asseverated that serious scruples had arisen in his mind regarding the validity of his marriage; as the Scripture forbade marriage with a brother’s wife, he feared that he might have been living incestuously with Catherine. It became evident only too soon that this scruple coincided with the passion, amounting almost to ail obsession, which seized him in 1526. A lady of Catherine’s court, Anne Boleyn, had by her attractions aroused the King’s sensual admiration. Her resistance to his unlawful addresses, mingled as it was with coquetry, kindled her suitor’s ardour to the highest pitch. Anne was sister of that Mary Boleyn who had previously been Henry’s mistress. A marriage with her was confronted by exactly the same obstacle, only in an intensified degree, as that which now so grievously troubled the tender conscience of the King with regard to his union with Catherine.

The bold thought of ousting the legitimate Queen and supplanting her could hardly have entered into the head of Anne Boleyn. Behind her stood two members of the great English nobility: her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Duke of Suffolk. For long these two had looked with jealousy and hatred on the position of Cardinal Wolsey in the councils of the King. From this quarter came the notion of a divorce; the idea itself originated in a subtly contrived plan to overthrow the all-powerful Chancellor. Should the divorce and the marriage with Anne succeed, the downfall of the Cardinal would follow upon them; if they did not succeed, then Wolsey would incur the King’s wrath on account of their miscarriage, so that in either case the fall of the hated favourite seemed certain. In entire contradiction to the facts is the theory, at one time often upheld, that Wolsey, who was at first antagonistic, had, against his better conscience, and to his own undoing, consented to become the King’s tool in carrying out the business, and was the originator of the scheme of divorce.

It is impossible to say precisely at what moment the thought of divorce in order to remarry with Anne Boleyn took possession of Henry, at first as a secret between him and his advisers of the Norfolk party, and without Wolsey’s previous knowledge; the scheme can be traced back as far as the spring of 1527, when Henry took the first steps towards its realization. With a cunning dishonesty he managed at first to conceal the design lurking in his heart from those who were not initiated, even from Wolsey. The strange circumstance that, all at once, after eighteen years’ marriage with Catherine, conscientious objections to the validity of that union should have arisen within him, he explained by referring to expressions used by the French Bishop, Gramont of Tarbes, who, in March and April 1527, stayed in England as head of an embassy to the English court, and then discussed a proposal of marriage between Mary, Henry’s daughter, and Francis I or one of his sons. The Bishop, so Henry asserted at a later date, had given utterance to suspicions of the legitimacy of the Princess Mary, as the marriage of Henry and Catherine had not been valid. There can be no doubt that the words attributed to the Bishop of Tarbes were a pure invention and Henry’s pretended scruples sheer hypocrisy.

On the day after the departure of the French Ambassador (May 8th) Wolsey appears to have been initiated, for the first time, into the secret of the divorce, but not in any way into the ulterior object, the fresh marriage with Anne Boleyn. If at first he made objections and pointed out difficulties, later events showed that his opposition could not have lasted very long nor have been of great importance; for on the 17th of May he was already holding, after previous arrangement with Henry, as Apostolic Legate, with Archbishop Warham of Canterbury as assessor, a Court of Justice before which the King was cited “to answer for eighteen years’ sinful cohabitation with Catherine.” The whole business had been preconcerted; by means of this farce a sentence of divorce in Henry’s favour was to be concocted, so that the King, by contracting a fresh marriage, might establish as soon as possible an accomplished fact. After two further sittings, on the 20th and 31st of May, it became evident that this was not the way by which the desired end was to be reached. It was now determined to try to obtain, as far as possible, episcopal sanction for the divorce. Opinions were invited from bishops and canonists, but not with the wished for result; the reply of Bishop Fisher in particular—and he did not stand alone among the rulers of the Church—was unconditionally in favour of the validity of the marriage. This probably caused Wolsey to reflect; but the Cardinal had taken the first fatal step, and he could now withdraw only with the greatest difficulty. As he allowed the whole month of June to go by without carrying the matter any further, Henry showed him clear signs of his dissatisfaction, so that he thought it well henceforward to beat down all objections and pursue the business with the utmost energy.

The Cardinal had now come to be pointed at generally as the originator of the whole affair, and his enemies lost no time in spreading this report in all directions. In reality Wolsey had entered only with great reluctance into a matter which appeared to him almost hopeless. As he knew the King’s obstinate will, he held that no other choice was possible for him than to maintain his position. On former occasions he had always bowed before Henry’s expressed wishes, and only ruled his master by convincing him that in a given case the conduct of his servant was the means most suitable for attaining the royal end. Confronted with the fierce passion of the King it now never entered his mind to offer a direct opposition ; and to exhibit negligence seemed a course full of danger.

On the 22nd of June 1527, Henry, in a brutal manner, ordered Catherine to separate from him; he told the unhappy woman in plain words that after questioning various theologians and canonists he had become certain that during the whole of their married life she had been living in mortal sin. Catherine refused with determination to admit the charge, and in her rejoinder she brought into prominence a point which hitherto had been over­looked. Even if it were granted that serious objections might be raised against the Papal dispensation permitting a marriage with the wife of a deceased brother, yet in her case they could not apply, for, as her husband well knew, she had been Arthur’s wife only in name, for their marriage had never been consummated.

For this disclosure Wolsey and the other advisers of the King were not prepared. They consulted as to what should now be done. On the 1st of July, just as the Cardinal was on the point of starting for France, the King caused him to be told that he was no longer deceived, that he, the Cardinal, seemed to be calling in question the justice of the King’s “secret business.” Wolsey at once replied with the assurance that this was not the case. Even on the assumption that the marriage with Arthur had never been consummated, the fact still remained that he and Catherine had been married “in facie ecclesiae”; this established the impediment of open wedlock from which the Papal Bull gave no dispensation. Therefore the invalidity of the King’s marriage could be asserted as much as ever, for the dispensation had been insufficient.

After Wolsey had thus completely identified himself with the King’s cause he started on his journey to France on the 3rd of July, in order to meet Francis I. at Amiens, and as representative of his master conclude the treaty with the French King. On his way from Westminster to Dover he made an attempt to win over, or rather to circumvent, Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fisher. To the latter he alleged, with total want of truthfulness, that the recent steps had been taken only in order to refute the objections to the validity of the marriage. He had another object in view as well: to blacken Catherine in the eyes of Fisher, who possessed the Queen’s confidence, by suggesting that it was a totally unjust supposition on her part that Henry was aiming at a divorce, and that by her violence and impatience she was thwarting the good intentions of the King. Wolsey, in acting thus dishonestly, had not the least suspicion that he himself throughout the whole affair was playing the part of the duper duped; he was still in entire ignorance of Henry’s ulterior aims and of the sordid character of the business of which he had made himself an agent. He therefore believed that he would achieve a masterpiece of political ability if, when in France, where his mission, besides its main and avowed task, had also the secret object of cautiously initiating Francis into the scheme of divorce, he were to pursue, on his own responsibility, the project of preparing the way for a second marriage at some future time between Henry and a French Princess, Renee, the daughter of Louis XII. As he remained in France after the conclusion of the treaty with Francis (16th of August 1527) up to the middle of September, it is presumable that during that month he set his plan in motion. He believed that under the circumstances of the hour he could carry the divorce through before the Pope became aware of it. His ambitious scheme was nothing less than this: he wished during the continuance of the imprisonment of Clement VII. to be appointed Papal Vicar-General, with the fullest conceivable powers, and by means of this delegated authority to settle the marriage question in Henry’s favour. To secure this appointment he sent, on the 15th of September 1527, the Protonotary Uberto da Gambara to the Pope.

Meanwhile Henry VIII himself was about to take steps totally destructive of the schemes of the Cardinal, who hitherto was under the belief that he held in his hands the conduct of the whole affair. In the beginning of September Wolsey was informed that Henry was on the point of sending his secretary Knight to Rome. Anticipating mischief, he wrote on the 5th of September to the King dissuading him from this step; nevertheless Knight arrived at Compiegne on the 10th of September. As Wolsey himself had despatched agents to Rome on the King’s behalf, he hoped that Knight’s mission would be regarded as superfluous, and that the next King’s messenger, Christopher Mores, would bring with him his recall. In order to avoid suspicion, Knight consented to wait for Mores’ arrival; as the latter did not bring with him Knight’s recall, the Cardinal had, on the 13th of September, to allow the latter to continue his journey to Rome. To deceive Wolsey, Knight was enjoined to take instructions from him; therefore the Cardinal gave the King’s secretary the draft of a Bull conferring on him the appointment of Vicar-General of the Pope. But Wolsey was carefully kept in ignorance of the real object of Knight's mission. Henry, in fact, had given the latter a draft of a Bull by which the King should obtain a dispensation to contract a fresh marriage, and that too either without a dissolution of his marriage with Catherine—in other words, to commit bigamy—or after a legal divorce.

Knight’s mission must have convinced Wolsey that the intention now was to take the management of the whole affair out of his hands. Now for the first time the suspicion arose that Anne Boleyn was the person designed to supplant the Queen. Accordingly he changed his plans and determined to return to England as quickly as possible, in order to regain that place in the King’s confidence now imperilled by the secret intrigues of his enemies. Before leaving Compiegne he addressed, on the 16th of September, together with four other Cardinals, a letter to the Pope praying him to delegate his authority during the period of his captivity; then, on the following day, he began his journey to England. On his first reception at court he at once perceived what a recognized position Anne Boleyn now held with the King. The Cardinal’s eyes were at last opened to the real state of things. Then it was that he remained upon his knees long imploring Henry to depart from his resolution. Bitterly he repented the willingness with which he had flung himself from the first, under mistaken suppositions and unconditionally, into the scheme of divorce; but now it was too late to draw back; he saw that his position and his life depended on this issue.

The only point on which Wolsey was able to move Henry was that the latter should at least at first abstain from the scandalous demand for a dispensation involving bigamy, to which the Pope, even if he were in the last extremity, could not be expected to consent. Consequently the King agreed to send Knight a fresh draft of a dispensation to take the place of that previously given him. But even now the King was again deceiving Wolsey. While Henry and Wolsey between them drew up a new draft of dispensation, destined for Knight, the King had already secretly despatched another draft, of the contents of which Wolsey knew nothing; moreover, Knight had received a strictly confidential intimation not to make use of the draft concocted with Wolsey until the secret draft should prove impracticable. The Bull of dispensation which Henry asked for in order to contract marriage with Anne Boleyn after divorce from Catherine, was to contain a clause dispensing from the impediment of affinity in the first degree caused by his previous illicit and adulterous intercourse with Anne Boleyn’s sister.

Knight reached Rome in November 1527, but owing to the Pope’s confinement in St. Angelo he could not gain access to him. Through intermediaries, however, he received Clement’s assurance that, if he would withdraw from Rome and wait at Narni, he should obtain all that he asked for. After the Pope’s liberation Knight went with him to Orvieto, and here he actually obtained, after some hesitation, the Bull desired by Henry. It certainly had been revised in form by the Pope and the Grand Penitentiary Pucci, but in substance was in agreement with Henry’s draft. The Bull was drawn up on the 17th of December 1527 and sent off on the 23rd. It was only a conditional Bull dependent on the proof of the invalidity of the marriage with Catherine. Before this proof was clearly established, the Bull was absolutely valueless. Its contents were unimpeachable. The only evil results that might follow from it were that it tended to harden the King’s determination to procure a divorce, and gave him a hope that Clement would be ready to give a prompt adhesion to his wishes. The King was all the more prone to indulge in such expectations as the political situation was highly favourable to him.

The Pope, smarting from the deep injuries inflicted on him by the Emperor, was, together with Francis I, still his ally. The material and moral support guaranteed to him by France was subsequently of still greater importance. On his journey home Knight met, near Bologna, an English courier carrying fresh instructions for him, Gregorio Casale, and the Protonotary Gambara. He was therefore obliged to return to Orvieto.

The instructions contained the above-mentioned draft of dispensation, as jointly composed by the King and Wolsey, but also a document of much greater importance, by which Wolsey, in accordance with an original plan of his own, sought to intervene decisively in the whole train of circumstances. This was the draft of a Decretal Bull to be signed by the Pope, transferring to Wolsey the entire adjudication of the case. On the English side five points were raised to invalidate the dispensation of Julius II of the 26th of December 1503 :—

1. The Bull states falsely that Henry VIII wished for the marriage with Catherine, whereas his father, Henry VII, without his son’s knowledge, had procured the Bull.

2. The reason adduced for the issue of the dispensation, the maintenance of peace between England and Spain, was null or at least insufficient, as the two States had not been previously at war.

3. Henry VIII was at the time (1503) only just twelve years old, and therefore not yet capable of a marriage dispensation.

4. The dispensation had lapsed, for at the time of the consummation of the marriage one of the persons, between whom peace was to be maintained by this alliance, Isabella, Queen of Castille, was dead.

5. Henry VIII had protested against the marriage with Catherine before its consummation, and thereby had renounced the benefits of the dispensation.

In the Decretal Bull which Wolsey asked Clement to publish, the Pope was to declare that these five points, if capable of substantiation, were sufficient to invalidate the dispensation of Julius II and therewith the marriage itself. Nothing therefore now remained to be done but to test the soundness of these five points, and if their validity were established in one single instance only, then Wolsey, either alone or along with the Illyrian prelate Stafileo, was to have full powers given him to declare null and void the dispensation of Julius II, and therewith the marriage of Henry and Catherine; for this decision, placed in Wolsey’s hands, the Papal ratification was to be guaranteed unconditionally and irrevocably. Never before had such a demand as this of Henry’s been submitted to a Pope and his spiritual authority.

The draft of this decretal commission was laid by Knight and Gregorio Casale before the Pope at Orvieto at the end of December. They appealed to the King’s submissiveness towards the Church and urged that if the doubt concerning the dispensation of Julius II were not laid to rest there was the greatest danger in England of a contested succession. Greatly as Clement appreciated the dangers that threatened England from the failure of a male succession to the crown, yet it appeared to him impossible to accede to the immoderate demands of the English envoys. He first of all referred them to Cardinal Pucci, who was charged with the management of this affair. The envoys had no greater success in this quarter; an attempt to bribe Pucci failed. The latter moreover declared, after an examination of the draft, that the Bull as it then stood could not be granted without bringing indelible disgrace on the Pope as well as on Henry VIII and Wolsey. The envoys obtained instead a commission for Wolsey and Stafileo, drawn up by Pucci, from which the very point was omitted on which Wolsey set the greatest value, namely, the declaration that the five points laid down, if substantiated, would suffice to annul the marriage, so that he was also deprived of the wished-for possibility of a final decision being given in England. As a matter of fact the plenary powers conferred on Wolsey were thus made worthless.

Two fresh envoys were therefore sent to Orvieto, Dr. Stephen Gardiner, Wolsey’s chief secretary and one of the most gifted canonists in England, and Dr. Edward Fox, with instructions to obtain the decretal commission in its original form, only, this was no longer to be drawn up for Wolsey alone or in conjunction with Stafileo, but a Papal Legate, if possible Campeggio, was to be sent in order to decide the case together with Wolsey. In the case of the decretal commission being unobtainable, the envoys were instructed at least to secure a general commission of the most comprehensive character possible for Wolsey and Campeggio, or even for Wolsey alone, or for him and Archbishop Warham of Canterbury. Gardiner and Fox left London on the nth of February 1528, and on the 21st of March, at Orvieto, met the Pope, now stripped of every vestige of temporal power. The negotiations began on the 23rd of March and lasted until the 13th of April. During their progress the English envoys were unceasing in their efforts to wring from Clement the plenary powers as specified in the English drafts. Almost daily the Pope and Cardinals held discussions of from three to four hours’ duration, and on one occasion a conference of five hours lasted until one in the morning. According to his own reports, Gardiner, even if he exaggerated a good deal in order to emphasize his own zeal, displayed towards the Pope the most unblushing arrogance; but he did not succeed thus in extorting a full consent to the English demands.

The Pope and the Cardinals were on their guard, and met the importunity of the English officials with great calmness and self-control. In spite of the insolence of Gardiner’s demands, Clement never for a moment allowed himself to give way to a hasty expression. He as well as the Cardinals were firm in their rejection of terms which they could not and dared not concede.

The Pope was not shaken even by the intervention of Francis I, who, in a special letter, gave his advice on the affair of Henry VIII. There is no justification for the charge then brought against Clement by the English party, and renewed in our own days by recent historians, that throughout the whole matter he was actuated entirely by political motives, that fear of the Emperor was the only ground on which he resisted the claims of England. The fear of the Emperor was a catchword constantly in men’s mouths, and it was often used by the Pope himself as an excuse for his lack of acquiescence in the English demands. But in this particular case this was not the ruling motive ; that was to be found in his conscientious regard for the duty of the chief ruler of the Church. What Gardiner had at last perforce to content himself with were the Bulls of commission of the 13th of April and the 8th of June 1528 respectively, which, in order to leave an opening for two possibilities, were drawn up in similar terms for Wolsey and Warham as well as for Wolsey and Campeggio. The first Bull was despatched at once on the 13th of April, the second, also dated from Orvieto, the 13th of April, with the commission for the two Cardinals, was not officially executed until the 8th of June, at Viterbo. As the mission of Campeggio to England was a certainty, the second Bull only was made use of. By this Bull the Cardinals received full powers thoroughly to examine whatever could be brought forward for or against the marriage of Henry and Catherine, and especially for or against the dispensation of Julius II.; then, after hearing both sides, to take summary proceedings, to declare the dispensation and the marriage severally, according to the just circumstances of the case and their convictions, to be valid and legal, or invalid and null, if judgment should be called for by one of the parties. In case of invalidity, in the same summary proceedings, the decree of divorce was to be declared and liberty be given to the King and Queen to contract a fresh marriage, but in such wise that, if it seemed good to the Cardinals, the children of the first marriage, as well as those of the second, should be declared legitimate, and their legitimacy protected from all question under the usual punishments and censures of the Church.

The two Cardinals were jointly delegated for this examination and adjudication; the English envoys, however, had carried the clause that either of the two would be justified in carrying on the proceedings alone, if the other were either unwilling or prevented by death or by some other just cause. Against the procedure of the Cardinals no objection, no appeal would be admissible; on the contrary, they were the representatives of the full and unlimited Papal authority. But the Bull did not contain that which for Wolsey had become the essential thing. There was no guarantee that the Pope would confirm the decision of the Cardinals; there was no specification of the ground on which the invalidity of the dispensation and of the marriage in the given instances was to be pronounced.

When Fox returned to England with these results he was received on the 3rd of May by Henry and Anne Boleyn with great delight; it seems that both were of opinion that the goal was now almost reached. Wolsey, on the contrary, who saw deeper, knew that from the results brought back by Fox nothing was gained for the final decision of the case in England; but on closer re­flection he concealed his dissatisfaction in order at least to gain time and postpone as far as possible the downfall that he knew to be inevitable. He therefore immediately made a last effort to obtain the Decretal Bull by means of Gardiner, who had remained behind in Italy. In connection with this scheme Wolsey, on the 10th of May 1528, arranged a curious scene.

In the presence of Henry VIII, Fox, and several of the King’s procurators, he gave utterance to the solemn declaration : Although no other subject was so devoted to his prince as he was to his King, and though, on that account, his obedience, truth, and loyalty to Henry were so steadfast that he would willingly sacrifice goods, blood, and life to satisfy his “just desires,” yet he felt that his duty towards his God was greater, before whom he must once for all give an account of his actions, and therefore in this matter he would rather incur the King’s gravest displeasure, rather allow himself to be torn limb from limb, than do any act of injustice, or that the King should demand of him in this question anything that justice could not sanction. On the contrary, if the Bull (of Julius II) should be pronounced sufficient, he would declare it so to be. It was a pure piece of acting, got up simply in order that Fox, who was taken in by it, and on the following day was to send Wolsey’s new instructions to Gardiner, should send an account of it to the latter, who would in turn relate the incident to the Pope. In this way Clement would be brought round to such an assurance of Wolsey’s conscientiousness and love of justice that he could have no further objections to granting him the Decretal Bull.

The instructions sent by Fox to Gardiner on the nth of May were to the effect that he must carry through in any possible way the secret execution of the Decretal Bull. It must be represented to the Pope that Wolsey’s esteem and influence with the King, and therewith the esteem attaching to the Holy See itself, are greatly dependent on the granting of such a Bull. In order to remove the Pope’s objections Gardiner and Casale were instructed solemnly to declare and swear in Wolsey’s name that the latter would never on the ground of this Bull begin the process of divorce, nor show the document to a single person or in any way make use of it so as to expose the Holy See to the least prejudice or scandal. He would only show it to the King, and then keep it in his own private custody simply as a pledge of the Pope’s fatherly disposition towards Henry, as a token of personal confi­dence in himself, as a means of maintaining and strengthening his position in the King’s esteem with a view to the best interests of the Pope. There is no doubt that these solemn promises were only attempts to deceive, and that they would not have been kept if the Pope had committed the blunder of placing unreservedly such a compromising document in the hands of so unscrupulous a diplomatist as Wolsey; for, if the promised secrecy were observed, the Bull, on the whole, would be useless.

After repeated and lengthy negotiations and much pressure from the English envoys, Gardiner was at last able, on the nth of June 1528, to report to Henry VIII that Campeggio’s mission to England was settled and that the Pope had promised to send the Decretal Bull by him. In granting the Bull, Clement had carried consideration for Henry and Wolsey to its furthest limits, but he had taken the precaution to do so under such conditions that in reality it could never be anything more than what Wolsey, in asking for it, had pretended it to be. The latter saw to his great disgust that he had, in the strictest sense of the words, been taken in. The object, put forward by Wolsey as a pretext, that the Decretal Bull was only a means of protecting his position as much as possible and proving to the King that he had done all that lay in his power to carry out his wishes, was attained when Campeggio showed the document and read it aloud to the King and Chancellor. But the misuse of the Bull, in spite of all Wolsey’s promises, could only be prevented by Campeggio keeping the document in his own hands and destroying it at the right moment. The contents of this document can only be conjectured, but it must have been of such a character as to have made the divorce between Henry and Catherine possible and even an accomplished fact, had not the Pope entirely withheld it from the free disposal of Henry and Wolsey. Even if Clement, in granting this illusory document, which confirmed the demands of Henry to their full extent, was guilty of incredible weakness, yet he was acting under the belief that the grievous blunder thus committed could be repaired by depriving the Bull of any possible practical use, and that he could avoid all difficulties and misunderstandings, by declaring firmly and clearly that he could never have allowed it to be put into execution, since, as the guardian of faith and truth, he must have repudiated its contents.

Campeggio, who entered on his mission in July 1528, was instructed to prolong his journey as much as possible, to defer crossing the channel as long as he could, and even when in England to do his utmost to protract the process of the divorce, and if possible to bring about a reconciliation between the King and Queen, but in no case was he to pronounce a final verdict without fresh and express faculties from the Pope; for it was hoped that in the meantime God’s saving grace would perhaps incline the heart of the King to abstain from asking the Pope to grant what could only be granted with injustice, danger, and scandal. Campeggio reached London on the 7th of October, suffering severely from gout. Although the court rejoiced, his reception by the people was cold and even unfriendly. He appeared, among other aspects, to be the harbinger of a closer approximation to France. Men said openly that he came to be the ruin of England and to complete a deed of injustice. After several interviews with Wolsey he had his first audience of Henry on the 22nd of October. On the very next day the King in his impatience came to Campeggio, and in a long conversation announced his inflexible resolve to separate from Catherine. He urged strongly that in order to facili­tate this step the Queen should spontaneously renounce her rights and retire into a convent. Campeggio and Wolsey were on the following day to begin to use all their arts of persuasion on the unfortunate woman. Before seeing her they were both received by the King; in this audience, held on the 24th of October, Campeggio read both the Bulls, of the 13th of April and the 8th of June respectively, in which the examination of the case was entrusted to the two Cardinals. Afterwards Henry expressed a wish to see the Decretal Bull; Campeggio showed it to him and read it aloud, but did not let it leave his hands, nor did anyone see it except the King and Wolsey. If no other order came from the Pope the document, after it had achieved its object, was to disappear. After this the Cardinals repaired to the Queen, who received them with deep distrust; the proposal that she should betake herself to a cloister was refused decisively on this as well as on a second occasion on the 27th of October. Nothing would have been gained even if she had consented, for the question of the validity of the marriage was still open. That Catherine should have clung to her rights is quite intelligible. A Spaniard, a daughter of the Catholic King, she certainly could not have admitted to all the world that she had been anointed and crowned unlawfully, that for four-and-twenty years she had been her husband’s concubine, while in her inmost heart she believed in the validity of her marriage. She therefore was convinced that she durst not endanger, by an act of surrender, the right of her only child to the succession to the throne.

Wolsey, much dissatisfied with the course things had taken up to this time, made yet another attempt to obtain the Pope’s permission that the Decretal Bull should be shown also to the King’s advisers, for in the instructions to Gregorio Casale of the 1st of November 1528 he wrote down the deliberate falsehood that it was the Pope’s intention that the Bull should be used for the information of Cardinal Campeggio and the King’s councillors. The Pope, who now clearly perceived how imminent the danger was that the English double-dealing might lead to some misuse of the Bull, bitterly bewailed, when Casale presented to him Wolsey’s demands, his previous complaisance, accused the English Cardinal of falsehood, and declared that if it were possible he would willingly lose a finger of his hand to undo what he had done. All Casale’s further representations were useless, even his suggestion of the evil results which would follow on the Pope’s refusal, the apostasy of the King and with him that of the country. But Clement now stood firm and disclaimed the responsibility for the effects upon England of Henry’s action; he had done all that he could do, reconcilable with his conscience, to serve the King. According to a later report from Casale to Wolsey of the 17th of December 1528, he repeatedly declared that he had drawn up the Decretal Bull in order that it might be shown to the King and after that burned forthwith.

If from the date of Campeggio’s arrival in October 1528 until far on in the following year nothing essential was done, not even the Court of Justice itself being constituted, this delay was certainly in correspondence with the Legate’s intentions. It was, however, on the whole, occasioned by Wolsey’s persevering efforts to guard the decision to be given in England from any uncertainty regarding its legality and to be forearmed against any appeal, before the suit began. In order to secure this he was bent either on obtaining the Papal confirmation beforehand or on so tying the Pope’s hands that it would be impossible for him to refuse his ratification.

An incident highly unfavourable to Henry’s case and at the same time the cause of further delays was the sudden appearance in England of a hitherto unknown Brief of Dispensation of the 26th of December 1503, a copy of which Catherine had procured from Spain from Charles . and produced, probably, in November 1528. By this document Henry’s plea against the validity of the dispensation resting on the phraseology of the Bull of Dispensation was shaken. This Brief, auxiliary to the Bull of Dispensation, differed from the latter in certain particulars. In the Bull the actual consummation of the marriage of Catherine with Arthur was left open to doubt, by the addition of the word “perhaps,” while in the Brief this word was absent, the consummation of the marriage thus being taken for granted; again, in the Brief, after stating the grounds on which the dispensation was given, the words were also added, “and on other definite grounds.” Wolsey exerted himself to render the Brief innocuous in two ways. He first tried to obtain possession of the original, the Queen herself being treacherously induced, as though it were in her own interest, to obtain this from the Emperor. As this attempt failed, an endeavour was then made to get the Pope to declare that the Brief was a forgery; this was the main object of the mission of Bryan and Vannes at the end of November 1528, who were followed by Knight and Bennet on the same errand. The dangerous illness of Clement VII in the beginning of 1529, when his death seemed not improbable, once more aroused Wolsey’s longing for the tiara and in Henry the hope that all he wished for might be obtained without trouble; but the progress of negotiations was thereby suspended. On his recovery the Pope declared definitely that he could not pronounce the Brief to be a forgery.

Even Campeggio felt so certain of the reports from various quarters of the Pope’s death that on the 4th of February 1529 he discontinued his despatch of reports to Rome. He did not again resume them until the 18^th when he addressed a letter to the Secretary of State, Jacopo Salviati. This document, written for the most part in cipher, is in many respects of great importance and throws a very interesting light on the “whole tragic wretchedness of the subject.” It relates how Wolsey with clasped hands adjured the Legate to co-operate with him so that the Pope, at any price, might give a decision favourable to the King, as in no other way could the impending calamities be kept back. “And in fact,” Campeggio continues, “so far as I can see this passion of the King’s is a most extraordinary thing. He sees nothing, he thinks of nothing but his Anne; he cannot be without her for an hour, and it moves one to pity to see how the King’s life, the stability and downfall of the whole country, hang upon this one question.”

Wolsey made through Gardiner one more attempt to obtain from the Pope an extension of the legatine powers so as to include absolute power of decision; but Clement now stood firm against any further concessions. In the meantime also Charles V. had intervened at Rome on behalf of Catherine, with such success that already in April the question had arisen of revoking the powers given to the Legates in England, and transferring the whole case to Rome. In presence of this danger Wolsey found it advisable to abstain from pushing any further his unattainable demands, and to open the suit and bring it as quickly as possible to an end.

On the 31st of May the court of the two Legates was constituted, and the King and Queen were cited to appear on the 18th of June. Catherine appeared on the first summons only in order to protest against the tribunal. At the next sitting, on the 21st of June, at which the King and Queen were present, the latter repeated her protest, threw herself at the King’s feet to entreat him once more to have compassion, declared that she would lodge an appeal with the Pope, and withdrew, never to appear again before the Legates’ court. She was consequently declared to have acted in contumaciam, and the case proceeded without her with great rapidity and on the pleading of one side only. In a cipher despatch to Salviati, Campeggio complained : “In the house of a foreigner one cannot do all one wishes; the case has no defence. A king, especially in his own house, has no lack of procurators, attornies, witnesses, and even laity who are hankering after his grace and favour. The Bishops of Rochester and St. Asaph have spoken and written in support of the marriage, also some men of learning have done the same, but in fear and on their own responsibility; no one comes forward any longer in the Queen’s name.” The only person who championed the unhappy princess with unfaltering courage was John Fisher, the saintly Bishop of Rochester. The marriage of Henry and Catherine, so he declared in the fifth sitting, on the 28th of June, was indissoluble, no power could break their union; for this truth he was ready, like John the Baptist, to lay down his life. Contrasted with the diplomacy and temporizing of almost all the rest, this declaration roused twofold sympathy. But all Fisher’s determination was powerless to effect anything. Notwithstanding Campeggio’s objections, the case was hurried on with precipitate speed and the decision was already looked for on the 23rd of July. This, however, Campeggio prevented, for in the sitting of that date he adjourned the court during the Roman law vacations until the 1st of October. The sittings were never resumed, and in this way Wolsey was defeated.

It was high time for the case to be transferred to Rome; there had been too much delay. Not until Clement VII felt that he was strongly backed by his alliance with Charles V did he urge him to take decided steps. A Consistory of the 16th of July 1529 determined that on the ground of the Queen’s appeal the case should be brought before the judicial court of the Rota at Rome. This did away with the powers of the English Legates. On the 19th of September Campeggio had his farewell audience of Henry and took leave of him on friendly terms. His journey was delayed by an attack of gout; he had intended to leave Dover, where he had been since the 8th of October, on the 26th of that month, but before he could do so he had to submit to treatment of a most disrespectful kind; his luggage was searched on the pretext that he might be taking to Rome treasure and compromising letters from Wolsey; the real reason, at all events, was that it was hoped in this way still to get possession of the Decretal Bull. As this, however, had been long since destroyed, this inquisition was without result.

Before Campeggio left, the news of Wolsey’s downfall had already reached him. The latter was now paying for the miscarriage of the divorce suit; by the 9th of October the proceedings against him had begun; on the 16th he was called on to deliver up the Great Seal. Robbed of his property and forbidden the court, again for a brief moment appearing to be restored to his sovereign’s favour, he was finally charged with high treason. Arrested at Cawood on the 4th of November 1530, he died on the 29th of that month at Leicester Abbey, a house of Augustinian canons, on his way to London, where, it may well be, the supreme penalty awaited him.

Together with Henry VIII, whose adulterous passion would submit to no check, Wolsey, by his base servility to the King, undoubtedly shares a great portion of the guilt of the severance of England from the Church. He himself passed judgment on his conduct in the words spoken shortly before his death: “If I had served God as diligently as I have done my King, He would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is the just reward I must receive, for in my diligent pains and studies to serve the King, I looked not to my duty towards God, but only to the gratification of the King’s wishes.”

In the light of history Wolsey stands out as the powerful statesman to whom the England of Henry VIII was indebted for her greatness and importance, but also as the pliant and unconscientious prelate who, by his unworthy obsequiousness in subserving the King’s shameful desires, became in a degree responsible for the unhappy rupture in the Church which he wished to avoid. Too willing courtiers and servile diplomatists, even when clothed in ecclesiastical garb, have in all ages only been a cause of misfortune to the Church.

After Wolsey’s fall, Anne Boleyn, as the French Ambassador clearly pointed out, wielded through her uncle and father an influence in the Cabinet as unlimited as that which she had hitherto for long held over her suitor, the King. There now appeared gradually on the scene another counsellor not less ambitious and not less unscrupulous than Wolsey, who was ready to shrink from nothing that could serve the purposes of the lustful king. This was Thomas Cranmer, the domestic chaplain of the Boleyns. He eagerly pursued the scheme of procuring from the most famous universities of Europe opinions favourable to the divorce. In England the same attempt was made by the issue from the press of writings unfit for publica­tion. In France and Italy recourse was had to bribery.

At the same time Henry made a fresh effort to win over to his side the Emperor as well as the Pope. In the beginning of 1530 he sent Anne Boleyn’s father, recently raised to the earldom of Wiltshire, to Bologna with the ostensible mission of conferring with the Pope and Emperor on the general peace and confederation against the Turks; in reality he was sent in the interests of the divorce. He was to lay before the Emperor strong arguments against the validity of Henry’s marriage with Catherine, but Charles made short work of his representations. He was not more successful with the Pope, who eight days before Wiltshire’s arrival had, by a Brief of the 7th of March 1530, transferred the matter of the English marriage to Capisucchi, Auditor of the Rota. A Brief of the 21st of March prohibited anything being said or written against the validity of the marriage. The presence of the English Ambassador was made use of to deliver to him the citation summoning Henry to appear at Rome before the tribunal of the Rota. Yet the Pope consented to a postponement of the case, if Henry would promise in the meantime not to make any alteration in the state of things in England, and the King accepted the offer upon this condition.

In the meantime the opinions of the universities, extorted by force and cunning, were coming in. Henry’s delight at the favourable replies, many of which he was particularly successful in obtaining from French seats of learning, was diminished by the fact that other universities declared that the dissolution of his marriage with Catherine was only justifiable on the ground of the consummation of her marriage with Arthur, which the Queen denied on oath and the King was unable to prove. The hope also that the favourable opinions of the universities would move the Pope to give way proved idle. It now occurred to Henry VIII that a meeting of Parliament might bring pressure to bear on the Holy See. On the 13th of July 1530 an address to the Pope, composed at Henry’s instigation, was issued by the English prelates and nobles. In it, with a reference to the opinions of the universities, the demand was put forward that Clement without delay should pronounce the dissolution of the King’s marriage; with this was coupled the threat that otherwise England would settle the question unaided. The Pope’s answer, of the 27th of September, was a calm refusal of this demand. His decision would be given with such speed as was consonant with justice; neither the King nor his subjects could demand any other treatment.

About this time the English envoys seem again to have importuned the Pope with a demand for his sanction of a double marriage. Gregorio Casale, on the 18th of September 1530, sent a report on the matter giving the impression that the proposal had come from the Pope, and that the latter was inclined towards such a solution of the difficulty. Casale represents himself as having, “with an astonishing semblance of sanctimoniousness,” replied that he durst not write in such terms to the King, as he feared that the Royal conscience, which it was the main object in this whole affair to pacify, would not consent to such an issue.

How unreliable this account was is shown by the despatch of William Bennet, in any case a more trustworthy man, sent to Henry on the 27th of October 1530. Soon after his arrival Clement had engaged him in conversation on the subject of a dispensation to have two wives, but his remarks were so ambiguous that Bennet suspected that the Pope either intended to draw from Henry a recognition of the unlimited nature of the dispensing power—since a dispensation to contract a bigamous marriage was at least no easier matter than the previous one for the marriage with Catherine—or that he wished in this way to keep the King in check in order to gain time. “I asked Clement VII,” Bennet continued, “if he were certain that such a dispensation was admissible, and he answered that he was not; but he added that a distinguished theologian had told him that in his opinion the Pope might in this case dispense in order to avert a greater evil; he intended, however, to go into the matter more fully with his council. And indeed the Pope has just now informed me that his council (known as the Consistory of Cardinals) had declared to him plainly that such a dispensation was not possible.” If Clement had thus really hesitated for a time over the possibility of a dispensation for a dual marriage, his uncertainty was soon brought to an end by this categorical denial of its admissibility, and there are not the remotest grounds for speaking of a parallel between Clement’s attitude and that of Luther towards double wedlock.

On the 6th of December 1530 Henry VIII wrote a letter to the Pope containing violent complaints and taunting him with complete subserviency to the Emperor. Cardinal Accolti was instructed to send a reply. “As,” said Clement, “we stand between the Defender of the Faith on one hand and the Advocate of the Church on the other, no suspicion of partiality ought to be raised against us, since we are governed by the same sentiment of affection towards the one as towards the other. Besides, we call on God as our witness and give the surety of our pontifical word that the Emperor has never asked of us anything except simple justice. For he said to us that if the Queen’s cause was unjust it was not his intention to uphold it, rather must he in that case cast the burden of the matter on those who were the means of bringing such a marriage about. But if the Queen was in the right he would then be doing shameful despite to his honour if he allowed her to be unlawfully oppressed. Whether the English envoys have demanded justice from us in like way is a matter of which the King cannot be ignorant.” The Pope protested that his decision would be given only in accordance with justice.

A Papal Brief of the 5th of January 1531 renewed the edict of the 7th of March 1530 containing the threat of ecclesiastical punishments and censures for Henry VIII and any female who should contract marriage with him while the case was under adjudication by the Rota. Henry, who had now no further hope of bending Clement to his will, took, without further delay, the first step on the road leading inevitably to the total separation of Englandfrom the Holy See. A general convocation of the English clergy, held in the middle of January 1531, was called upon to acknowledge the King as supreme head of the Church and clergy of England, to which declaration con­vocation, now forced to abandon their previous opposition, added at least the clause “so far as the law of Christ permits.”

The inquiry set on foot in Rome made no advance of any importance in the year 153I. Henry neither appeared in person on his citation nor did he send a representative, but he protested through his Ambassador and Dr. Carne, who had been sent to Rome as “Excusator” for his non-appearance and to demand that the case should again be remitted to England. The proposal, by way of compromise, emanating from Rome that the case should be transferred to some neutral locality, such as Cambrai, was rejected both by the English King and by the Emperor as Catherine’s representative. Henry then proceeded to discontinue the recognition of Catherine as Queen de facto, for in August 1531 he banished her from court, while the apartments formerly belonging to her were occupied by Anne Boleyn.

On the 25th of January 1532, Clement, according to an agreement with the Emperor, addressed a Brief to Henry containing earnest but temperate remonstrances against his course of action and exhorting him to recognize Catherine as his lawful wife and to dismiss Anne Boleyn until the decision in the case was given. This Brief was delivered to the King on the 13th of May, but produced no effect. On the contrary, in the spring of this year he took another and more important step hostile to the Holy See, for he carried an Act of Parliament abolishing annates, the execution of which was left to the King’s discretion. At the end of October 1532 a meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I took place at Boulogne. The former hoped at that time that Francis would succeed in inducing the Pope to lay aside his opposition to the divorce. France in that case might depend on the support of England in the event of a war with the Emperor.

Francis entered into this plan. He sent Cardinals Gramont and Tournon to Rome with instructions to threaten the apostasy of the Kings of France and England if the Pope did not assist the one in his schemes for the acquisition of the Duchy of Milan and the other in his marriage with Anne Boleyn. In consequence, however, of Charles’s successful campaign against the Turks, the terms of this message were considerably toned down. Before leaving Bologna the Pope once more addressed an admonition to Henry which was also couched throughout in gentle language. This was occasioned by the elevation of Anne Boleyn on the 1st of September 1532 to the rank of Marchioness of Pembroke, and her journey in company with Henry to Calais in October, when she was presented to Francis I as the future Queen. The Pope threatened the adulterous couple with excommunication if they did not separate before the expiration of a month and Henry did not return to his legitimate consort; at the same time he renewed all former enactments against attempts to procure a divorce in England and the marriage with Anne Boleyn, and declared afresh the nullity of all such proceedings. Henry retorted by the strict prohibition “of the publication of anything whatever against the Royal authority if coming from Rome, or any attempts to hinder the execution of those Acts passed in the last Parliament for the removal of abuses abounding among the clergy.”

On the 25th of January 1533 Henry VIII was secretly married to Anne Boleyn, whose pregnancy as affecting the future child’s right of succession made further delay impossible, although of the final decision regarding the dissolution of his marriage with Catherine not a syllable had hitherto been uttered. On the 12th of April (Easter) Anne Boleyn appeared publicly for the first time as his consort.

In the meantime the death of Archbishop Warham of Canterbury, in August 1532, was of great advantage to Henry, for he was thus enabled to appoint a successor to the see on whose entire subserviency he could depend. His choice fell on Thomas Cranmer, who had become his secretary through Anne Boleyn’s influence. He was “an obsequious servant and an intriguer, fertile in ideas, whose services were also at the disposal of his master’s wishes.” Although for long alienated at heart from the Church, this immoral priest succeeded in deceiving the Pope as to his position, so that after receiving the confirmation of his appointment on the 30th of March 1533, he was able to be consecrated. In him Henry and Anne found a worthy instrument ready to carry out all their wishes. Henry, in previous collusion with Cranmer, went through the farce of a judgment on his marriage. Cranmer cited Henry and Catherine before his court at Dunstable, where the proceedings began on the 10th of May. Catherine, however, only signed two protests, for she refused to recognize Cranmer as judge, and took no further notice of his proceedings. On the 23rd of May Cranmer pronounced the marriage of Henry with Catherine null and void, and on the 28th he declared the marriage with Anne Boleyn valid. Thereupon the latter was, on June the 1st, crowned with great pomp as Queen.

On being informed of these proceedings, Clement VII hesitated in characteristic fashion for some time, and then at last, on the nth of July 1533, he gave sentence against Henry, pronounced the marriage with Anne Boleyn null and void, and the offspring, if any, of the union illegitimate, and laid the King under the greater excommunication. But even yet a time of grace was given him up to the end of September. The excommunication was not to take full effect until he showed his final disobedience in retaining Anne Boleyn and refusing to restore Catherine to her rightful place as Queen and wife. Cardinal Tournon succeeded in obtaining from Clement a further respite of a month from the 26th of September. The latter hoped, it would seem, that a reconciliation might be brought about, although all hope of one had for long been abandoned, and consented, on his meeting Francis I at Marseilles, to a yet further postponement to the end of November at that King’s request and out of regard for the new English envoys whose arrival was expected. The mission, headed by Gardiner, treated Clement, to the great disgust of Francis, with extreme insolence and demanded the withdrawal of the sentence against Henry. To the Pope’s friendly proposal that the whole case should be reheard at Avignon by special Legates, on condition that Henry recognized the Papal authority and promised to accept the final decision, Gardiner replied that he had no powers. On the 7th of November 1533 the English envoys presented to the Pope Henry’s appeal to a council.

In the session of Parliament opened on the 15th of January 1534 Henry passed a series of resolutions of an anti-Papal tendency; the annates and other payments to Rome were finally abolished; the power of jurisdiction hitherto exercised by the Pope was transferred to the King; the bishoprics were to be filled by capitular election, which, however, was to be determined in favour of the person chosen by the King. A further Act contained a declaration against the “usurped authority of the Bishop of Rome,” as the Pope henceforward was to be designated. By the Act of Royal Succession the marriage with Catherine also was declared null from the beginning and the Princess Mary illegitimate, while on the other hand the children of Anne alone were in the rightful succession to the throne. The sanguinary measures against the opponents of Henry’s policy began with the trial of the “Maid of Kent”; the execution of this nun and her fellow-sufferers opened up a period which lasted throughout the following thirteen years of Henry’s reign and may well be described  as a “reign of terror.”

Almost simultaneously with Henry’s last step, so long dreaded by the Roman Curia, towards severing the bonds which for a thousand years had linked England with the Church and the Papal authority, came the final decision in the Rota on the question of the divorce. If the Pope, hoping that the King’s passion would cool down with time, had previously carried compliance to too great a length and repeatedly arrested the course of true justice, while also exposing himself by his imperturbable silence to the unjust reproaches of the English envoys, there was one thing still remaining which he would not sacrifice at any cost, namely, the sanctity of the marriage bond. Even at the risk of losing England to the Church he withstood the tyrannical king on this point from the consciousness of a higher duty. After long and thorough deliberation Clement, on the 24th of March 1534, pronounced in secret Consistory the final sentence, in which the marriage with Catherine was declared valid and lawful and the King bound in duty again to receive and honour the unhappy woman as his wife. As a rejoinder thereto Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell now proceeded to carry out without scruple the recent Parliamentary enactments. Those who, like Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher of Rochester, refused the new oath of the Royal succession, containing by tacit implication a recognition of the King’s supremacy over the Church, fell victims to the tyrant’s wrath. The severity of Henry’s action surprised his people, who had not anticipated so extreme a crisis, and in a credulous optimism had hoped that the storm would soon pass over. In addition there was the unfortunate circumstance that the exceptional position long held by Wolsey as Chancellor and Legate had habituated men’s minds to the combination in one person of the highest temporal and spiritual power.

The boundless pusillanimity of the majority of the clergy was fatal. The full significance was now made clear of the principle of the supreme authority of the English Crown in matters spiritual which was involved in the so-called statute of Praemunire passed as long ago as 1365. If so learned a man as Thomas More held erroneous and perverted views on the Primacy until closer study brought him to the light, we can measure the extent to which such views were current among the majority of Englishmen. The oppressive measures of Henry, unflinchingly carried out, did the rest. When, in the summer of 1534, the oath was tendered to the whole of the secular and regular clergy, abjuring the Papal and acknowledging the Royal supremacy over the Church, almost all submitted. The Observants of the Franciscan Order were conspicuous in their resistance, but among the secular clergy the threat of the confiscation of their benefices had for the most part the desired effect.

When Clement VII died on the 25th of September 1534, the English schism had become an accomplished fact. The Parliament and most of the clergy were in complete subjection to the King, who now held the temporal and spiritual authority combined, and had raised his mistress to the throne. If Henry, in dragging down the English Church to a state of schism in an outburst of despotic caprice and adulterous passion, had not at first thought of more inward revolutions in faith and worship, yet assuredly it was only a matter of time that by the further exercise of the arbitrary power of the sovereign, that Church should be transformed into a community based on principles of Protestantism.

CHAPTER XV.

The Protestant Revolt in Scandinavia and Switzerland. —Heretical Movements among the Latin Races.

The separation of the Scandinavian kingdoms from the centre of Christian unity had a close affinity with the same movement in England. In the former case as in the latter the momentous change originated with and was accomplished by the despotic authority of the Crown. One feature, however, differentiated the two; while Henry VIII was an opponent of the teaching of Luther, the latter was encouraged by all the means in their power by Frederick I of Denmark and Gustavus Wasa of Sweden.

That the overthrow of the ancient Church among the vigorous peoples of the Scandinavian kingdoms was carried out in a comparatively short space of time is more easily understood if we reflect that Christianity was of late growth in those regions and that, lying at the furthermost bounds of the sphere of Papal authority, they felt but feebly the influence of the Holy See. Other circumstances leading up to an apostasy and making it easier were the secular lives of so many of the clergy, the great riches of the Church exciting the covetousness of needy kings, and last, but not least, the deep implication of the episcopate in political affairs.

In order to ward off the dangers threatening the Catholic religion, the bishops of Denmark had inserted in the capitulation on the election of the new King, formerly Duke Frederick of Holstein, not merely a promise to protect “Holy Church and her servants,” but also the express stipulation never to permit a “heretic, whether a follower of Luther or others, to spread his teaching privately or publicly” in his kingdom. The capitulation of the 3rd of August 1523 established further that only Danish nobles were to be appointed to bishoprics, only Danish subjects to benefices, and that no foreigner—thus not even the Pope—should dare take proceedings against Danish prelates, or pronounce any decision in Rome in connection with the Danish episcopate on any ecclesiastical matter. These decrees can only be partially explained and excused on the ground of the abuses in the Roman Curia, but they shot far beyond the mark; indeed, they opened the road to a Danish National Church on the lines of the Gallican, and that at a moment when it was of vital importance that the ties of Church unity should not be relaxed From this time onwards the spirituality were compelled, in their opposition to the Protestant teaching already permeating Denmark, to seek their only support in the nobles and the Crown. That no reliance could be placed on either was, only too quickly, to be shown.

As soon as King Frederick I felt himself secure on his throne, he began with great caution and shrewd calculation to take steps prejudicial to the Church. He broke his oath and gave assistance to the Protestant movement; on the 23rd of October 1526 he appointed as his chaplain Hans Tausen, a Knight Hospitaller who had broken his vows. At the Diet at Odense in November of the same year he demanded that the fees on presentation to livings paid to the Papal treasury, as well as the annates, should in future be spent on the defences of the kingdom. The Royal Council agreed, and, as it seems, the Bishops also, who hoped to save the main position by making concessions. Their endeavours to win over the nobility through a “questionable servility” to take part against Luther’s “unchristian teaching” also came to nothing, and all further compliance proved useless. The King extended his protection to the Protestants in an increasing degree, tolerated their violence towards Catholics, and filled vacant sees with creatures of his own, who were neither consecrated, nor acknowledged by the Pope. At the Diet at Copenhagen in 1530 upwards of one-and-twenty Lutheran preachers appeared and presented as their Confession of Faith forty-three articles containing passionate and injurious attacks on Catholics. The Catholic prelates, who were accompanied by their ablest theologians, in particular by the Carmelite Paulus Helia, a noted disputant, raised bitter complaints of their unjust treatment. They appealed to the election capitulation, and demanded the suppression of the Protestant movement. It was all in vain. Frederick I. came forward openly on the side of the Lutheran preachers and declared that throughout the kingdom “he who had grace” should have permission to teach.

Under cover of the King’s favours the Protestants in Copenhagen and other places took possession by force of churches and convents. A further impetus was given to the Lutheran cause by the unsuccessful attempt of Christian II, who had ostensibly become reconciled to the Church, to recover his kingdom. After the death of Frederick I (10th of April 1533) an interregnum ensued in the hands of the nobles and bishops, who deferred the election of a new king. While this lasted the majority in the Royal Council who were still Catholic tried to restore the Church to her ancient rights, but the attempt was a complete failure from the beginning, for the higher clergy thought more of power and property than of the old faith. Although the recess of the Diet in June 1533 afforded legitimate opportunity for strenuous action against the preachers, the bishops showed no energy. Therefore the Lutheran agitation, even if not quite openly, was able to pursue its course.

Almost at the same time as Denmark, Sweden was torn from the Catholic Church. Here also the decisive steps were taken by the Crown; Gustavus Wasa knew that the introduction of Lutheran teaching was the surest method of breaking down the power of the bishops and improving his scanty revenues from Church property. Although Clement VII. showed a very conciliatory spirit, and at the end of 1525 confirmed Johann Magni in the administration of the Archbishopric of Upsala until the affair of Trolle should be settled, the King gave powerful support to everyone who showed hostility to Catholicism; members of religious orders especially who were disloyal to their vows could be sure of his protection. At the same time, on the plea of the “revolutionary axiom that necessity knows no law, human or divine,” he set to work, by a system of open spoliation, to destroy the material foundations of the ancient Church.

It was a circumstance of great advantage to the King that five sees (Upsala, Strengnas, Vesteras, Skara, and Abo) were uncanonically occupied and that Bishop Ingemar of Vexjö was aged and compliant, so that the noted Bishop Johann Brask of Linkoping, “the cleverest and most learned Swede of his day and the truest friend of his country,” stood alone. Yet the majority of the nation, especially the country folk, held fast to their old faith. The brave and stubborn inhabitants of the province of Dalekarlien, with whose help Gustavus Wasa had once gained his victory over the Danes, were, in particular, roused to serious revolt Their uprising was fanned by former favourites of Gustavus who had quarrelled with him: the deposed Bishop Peter Sunnanvader of Vesteras and his capitular provost Knut. The poverty and suffering among the people was a punishment, they declared, for the conduct of the King, who although, on his election, he had sworn to defend the Church, was now despoiling churches and convents, priests and monks, and carrying off monstrances and chalices and shrines of saints.

Gustavus Wasa, however, knew well how to get the upper hand of the movement in Dalekarlien; judicious leniency and promises of money quelled the rebellion; Sunnanvader and Knut fled to Norway. Yet the King only displayed greater ruthlessness towards the property of the Church, and the truly catholic Johann Magni he got rid of by sending him on an embassy to Poland and Russia.

On the 19th of September 1526 Clement VII addressed the Bishops of Linkoping and Vesteras. He complained that the Swedish clergy took wives, changed the ritual of the Mass, gave Communion in both kinds, and neglected Extreme Unction; he ordered the bishops to invoke the aid of the secular arm, and adjured his beloved son Gustavus and the nobles of Sweden to take up the cause of the endangered faith. That the Pope even now continued to hope in Wasa shows strikingly how insufficiently they were informed at Rome as to the true state of things in the north. By the next year all illusions on the subject of the Swedish King’s position were at an end. The conflict between the Pope and Emperor had entered on its most acute phase when Gustavus broke away. On this occasion as on others he had grasped, with the intuition of genius, the appropriate moment to choose. With no less skill he knew how to turn opinion against Clement VII.

At this time the Swedish Catholics were completely cowed. Under letters of safe-conduct Gustavus had enticed into Sweden the two leaders of the Dalekarlian rising: first Knut and afterwards Sunnanvader as well. As soon as they were there he gave them over to the harshest insults and later ordered their execution. While the impression made by these vindictively penal measures against two great ecclesiastics was still fresh, the separation of Sweden from Rome ensued by means of the coup d’état of the Diet of Vesteras in June 1527. Before the assembly had yet opened the bishops drew up a protest against the threatened persecution of the Church ; but none had the courage to present it! In the Diet itself, the Bishop of Linkoping, Johann Brask, alone at first had the spirit to speak out against the proposals of the King ; without the Pope’s assent he could not agree to alterations in doctrine and the existing condition of the Church. After the leader of the nobles had spoken in the same sense, the King announced with tears that he must abdicate the crown and leave the country he had freed from Danish servitude to its fate. This “brilliant piece of acting” did not fail of its effect. As the Bishop-elect of Strengnas, Magnus Sommar, weakly counselled compliance, and the nobles saw a vision opening before them of a share in the plunder of the Church, the acceptance of the King’s demands was not withheld. Accordingly the Crown took free possession of the appointment to bishoprics, chapters, and convents, with the disposition of their revenues. “The pure word and Gospel of God” was also to be preached within the realm ; the nobility were empowered to demand back gifts made by their predecessors since 1454, and the bishops declared in a special decree that “they rejoiced to leave their riches or their poverty to the King’s will.” By a special enactment the Church in Sweden was thus at once made dependent in every respect on the will of the sovereign. The first step that followed was a great spoliation of churches and convents in which the victims were specially enjoined to submit to secularization “without making much fuss.” Bishop Brask went into exile, and on the 7th of November 1527 Gustavus instructed the Bishop-elect of Strengnas that, as the common people would not be contented with unconsecrated bishops, he might take steps for his early consecration, although the rite in itself was not necessary.[334] Thereupon the above-named, together with two others, had himself consecrated by Bishop Magni of Vesteras on the 5th of January 1528. Magni had given his consent to this schismatical act on receiving a written promise from the consecrandi that they would afterwards seek confirmation from Rome. Naturally the matter was never heard of again. In February 1529 a “National Council” held at Orebro agreed to the retention of many Catholic externals in order to deceive the people, the majority of whom were averse to a change of faith. Nevertheless, the people on the whole refused to be deceived. In many provinces, especially in Smaland, East and West Gothland, and also in Dalekarlien, risings occurred; but the King, by judicious kindness in some cases, by merciless severity in others, was able to overcome such troubles.

In 1531 Gustavus ordered the election to the Archbishopric of Upsala of Laurentius, younger brother of Olaus Petri. The Bishops of Vesteras and Strengnas, who at heart were still Catholics, drew up a protest against it. Indeed, even the Bishops of Skara and Vexjö declared that they only consented because otherwise they had nothing to expect but imprisonment and the ruin of their churches—a clear evidence that Lutheranism had not sunk deep into the Swedish clergy. Still, the opposition of the Catholic-minded clergy could only be expressed in private. For their overthrow the Swedish clergy were not free from responsibility. Weak-spirited servility and worldliness of life made it easy for a monarch gifted intellectually and possessed of all the resources of an effective monarchy, to destroy the ancient Church and from its wealth bestow on the Crown a solid basis of material power. In Sweden as in Denmark the monarchy had of course to surrender to the nobility a share of the plunder of the inheritance of the Church; for the great bulk of the people the social and political consequences of the change of religion were highly unfavourable.

The Swiss were more fortunate than the Swedes in their opposition to the introduction of the new teaching. The man who headed the Protestant movement in Switzerland, Ulrich Zwingli, had certainly come under Luther’s influence, but in many respects was entirely independent of him. There were points of essential difference in their doctrines. This man, who at the same time was flinging himself into schemes of vast scope and of grave danger to the existence of the Confederation, went far further than Luther, and in his antagonism to the Catholics was more uncompromising. The movement for the overthrow of the Catholic Church let loose in Zurich by Zwingli had spread itself very soon over a considerable portion of German Switzerland, yet Lucerne, Zug, and the three forest cantons Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, the original nucleus of the Confederation, remained true to the Catholic faith. Clement VII. had already turned his attention to Swiss affairs in a Consistory held on the 14th of December 1523. The Swiss Nuncio Ennio Filonardi was recalled to Rome to make a report and receive fresh instructions. At the end of February 1524 Filonardi returned to his post, but he was obliged at first to remain at Constance, for the French envoys were working against him in the Catholic cantons; but in Zurich, now given over to the new teaching, the very mention of a Papal representative was scouted. Clement, on his part, made the payment of the outstanding arrears of pay to Zurich dependent on the fidelity of the canton to the Catholic religion.

The Catholic cantons, in view of the wide dissemination of the new doctrine, wished a learned theologian to be sent them who should make head against Zwingli and at the same time have full powers to provide for the reforms to be taken in hand for the remedy of ecclesiastical evils. To the latter request Clement gave an evasive answer, and in February 1525 once more delegated Filonardi, a man who. had proved himself a clever diplomatist in secular affairs but who, notwithstanding all his knowledge of the situation in Switzerland was wanting in the deeper understanding of the ecclesiastical question. No wonder that his mission was a failure. How little the real state of things was understood in Rome is shown by Clement’s action in sending in 1526 a summons to the Government of Zurich to send deputies to Rome to discuss the settlement of questions in dispute. The Curia was at that time so engrossed in high policy of state that it was impossible to bestow the necessary attention on the Church affairs of Switzerland. For this reason the success obtained by the Catholics in May 1526 at the Disputation of Baden was never adequately followed up; support from Rome was lacking; communication with the Holy See grew less and less, while the ecclesiastical revolution sped upon its way.

Even after the settlement of Italian affairs the Pope, irresolute and parsimonious, did not give sufficient support to the champions of the Catholic cause in Switzerland. Even when Zurich laid an embargo on the transport of provisions to the Catholic cantons, thus conjuring up the outbreak of the civil war, Clement confined his assistance to the despatch of briefs and recommendations. Things reached a climax when at last he forbade the transport of grain and salt, and tried to rouse the Catholic princes, especially the Emperor, to intervene with military force. Charles V, summing up the situation coolly, refused to be drawn in. Although the Catholic cantons were thus thrown on their own resources, the wager of battle was in their favour. On the nth of October 1531 the men of Zurich were defeated at Kappel, and Zwingli, who had taken part in the fight in full armour, was among the slain. The illusions already cherished by Clement VII regarding the Zurichers now acquired fresh strength; he hoped that the success just gained would bring to an end the Swiss revolt from Rome. “Now,” after the Catholic victory, wrote Loaysa from Rome on the 24th of October 1531, “Clement will persevere in trying to persuade them to return and retrace their steps”; only if the other cantons are determined on revenge, should help, in the Pope’s opinion, be given to the Catholic cantons.

When this proved to be the case, Clement at last, on the 29th of October 1531, sent 3000 ducats to the gallant defenders of the Catholic cause. In November, after long consultation, he gave orders for the enlistment of four thousand men, and appointed Filonardi Legate to the Swiss and Commissary-General of the Catholic forces. Further generous help would be raised by a tax on the Italian clergy in general; this plan, however, was frustrated by the opposition of Venice, and the Papal relief came too late, for by the 20th of November 1531 the five cantons had made peace with Zurich on very moderate conditions—so moderate that Luther deeply deplored that “they had left any room in their treaty for the continuance of Zwinglism, and had not even condemned that error, but allowed it to exist alongside of what they call their ancient, unquestioned faith.” Clement also regretted that the Catholics had not followed up their victory more completely, and expressed the hope that the unity of Switzerland might be restored by the return of the separated members to the Church. What took place in the latter respect was greatly exaggerated by Filonardi. His despatched to Rome show how his judgment on affairs was influenced by his optimism.

The Swiss Catholics also overestimated the success at first secured in a series of places by the restoration of Catholic order. Only gradually did the Nuncio, who had hoped to recall the rebellious to their obedience by means of friends and money, begin to realize the deeper significance of the movement of revolt. Once more despatched to Switzerland in July 1532, Filonardi’s reports dwelt no longer on the reconquest of the lapsed cantons by the Church; on the other hand, his presence in the country proved to be of even greater utility for the religious strengthening of those portions which remained true to the faith. Since he was the rallying-point for the true elements of the Catholic system, his recall, ordered from Marseilles on the 17th of October 1533, out of considera­tion for Francis I, was a measure bound to do harm to the interests of that system in Switzerland.

If the Swiss Catholics did not make as good a use of their victory as they might have done, this was due, in great part, to the envoys of Francis I, who, in pursuit of their master’s policy of conquest, encouraged the religious dissensions of Switzerland as well as those of Germany. In his own country, in which Luther’s followers had already begun to be active, although at first only within a narrow circle, the King’s attitude from the beginning had been an undecided one. As a man “in whom an insatiable love of pleasure was joined with a thoroughly Gallic frivolity,” Francis was entirely wanting in that genuine catholicity of feeling which animated his rival Charles V. The King’s sister, Marguerite of Angouleme, was in open sympathy with the reformers. The French Catholics had strong support in the Parliament and the Sorbonne; the latter had immediately declared against Luther, and, notwithstanding an attitude by no means friendly to the Papacy, was stoutly opposed to the Protestant doctrine. Also the Chancellor Du Prat, since 1525 Archbishop of Sens, and the Grand Master of France, Anne de Montmorency, stood firm for Catholic interests. The captivity of Francis I. appeared to earnest Catholics to be a punishment for his previous negligence regarding the heretics. The Queen Regent now associated herself with the Pope in taking penal measures, and the Parliament took several steps against the reformers, two of whom were executed. In December 1527 the clergy demanded, in return for their financial support of the King, among other things, the “destruction of the Lutheran sect,” to which Francis had to agree. In several provincial synods, to the satisfaction of Clement VII, measures were taken for the reform of ecclesiastical evils and the punishment of the new teachers. The latter injured their cause seriously by seizing, on a night in May 1528, in Paris, a picture of Our Lady and the Infant Christ, and throwing it in the mud. The Catholic feeling of the populace was aroused by this impiety to such a degree that even Francis I found it advisable to take part in the procession of reparation which followed. As the total defeat of the French army in Naples in August 1528 forced the King to seek the friendship of the Pope, the Government completely threw over the Protestant party. The Lutheran, Louis de Becquin, who had on two occasions been protected by Francis (1523 and 1526), was now condemned and executed (April 1529).

That Francis I, in questions of religion, was governed by motives of political expediency only, is proved by his alliance in 1531 with the German Protestants, whose support seemed to him valuable since they were a source of weakness in the Emperor’s dominions. It is worth noting in this connection that immediately after his meeting with the Head of the Church at Marseilles, Francis engaged in a conference with the most enterprising of all the leaders of Protestantism in Germany, Philip of Hesse.

On his way back from Marseilles, where Clement VII. had issued a Bull against the French Lutherans, he sent written instructions to the Archbishop of Paris to take proceedings against heresy in the capital. But six months later the King’s Councillor, Guillaume du Bellay, was opening up negotiations with Melanchthon to bring about an agreement on the religious question. Du Bellay gave the German Protestants to understand that Francis was inclined to approve of the Lutheran doctrine and prepared to enter into an alliance for the protection of that sect from the attacks of the Emperor.

Such was the position of things in the spring of 1534, when Clement VII, who with an eye to the spread of heresy in France had sharply prohibited preaching without episcopal permission, died. The attitude of the French King was more than doubtful, while the Sorbonne continued as before to maintain a strongly Catholic position. At this juncture two circumstances combined to the advantage of the Catholic cause; the Church, bound up with the greatest traditions of the French nation, was dear to the bulk of the population; an opposition between the people and the clergy, such as was to be found in many places in Germany, did not exist. Another factor of not less importance was the absence, owing to the Concordat, of any temptation for the Crown to lay hands on Church property ; on the contrary, it was to the advantage of the monarchy that the status quo should be maintained in France.

Like France, Italy did not escape the impact of the new teaching; but in the latter country there were almost insuperable impediments to a widespread diffusion of the Protestant doctrine. In the first place, throughout the length and breadth of the Italian people there existed, in spite of all ecclesiastical abuses, a great body of traditional religious feeling of a genuine Catholic character. This raised a barrier against any defection on a large scale from the Church of the past ages. In no other country in Europe, with the exception of Spain, had the Catholic faith struck deeper roots and knit itself more completely into the fibres of national life. The manifold development of Christian beneficence and, not less, the magnificent creations of art, bore witness to the living energy of this Catholic force. The genuine Catholic instinct, resident in all classes of the Italian people, taught them to distinguish, with precision, between persons and things. Therefore the dangerous feeling of hostility to the secularized Papacy was kept within strict limits and in all matters of importance was limited to the middle and higher ranks of society. Yet the latter were influenced by material and national points of view which made any idea of a breach with the Holy See abortive. The Italian saw with pride that Italy comprised the central point of Christendom together with the highest civilization in art and learning, and thus acquired the sure position of leader among all the countries of the West. Again, there were the countless but very tangible advantages, especially to the middle and higher classes, accruing from the fact that the “magisterium” of the Church was wielded on Italian soil. Granted that indignation at the secularization of the Papacy was sometimes acute, a sober consideration of actual facts brought men back to the conviction that the general interest lay not in the destruction but in the maintenance of the Holy See. Again, the Pope and the deeply Catholic-minded Emperor possessed a political power in Italy which made any support of Lutheranism by the minor principalities of the peninsula a sheer impossibility. Lastly, it was a point of vital importance that Clement VII was thoroughly informed on Italian affairs and was therefore in a position to intervene in them with success.

The first intrusion of Lutheran views began, naturally enough, in upper Italy, where communication with Germany and Switzerland was always active. A constant stream of travellers, drawn mainly from the mercantile and student classes, passed to and fro and very early brought Lutheran notions and Lutheran writings into these localities. As early as 1519 and up to 1520 Luther’s writings were sold not only in Venice but also in Pavia and even in Bologna, and in the spring of 1520 a monk named Andrea da Ferrara, who followed Luther’s doctrine, preached sermons in Venice; a similar preacher in Milan was mentioned in despatches in the following year. Leo X, as well as the Patriarch of Venice, was not slow in taking preventive measures corresponding to the occasion. Nor was Clement VII deficient in vigilance; on the 24th of January 1524 he urged on the Nuncios at Venice and Naples that the decrees of the Lateran Council concern­ing preachers and printers should be observed. At the same time the Pope took measures against those who were suspected of heresy in Mirandola, Padua, and Naples.

Not merely Luther’s views but the far more advanced tenets of Zwingli found early acceptance in Italy. Letters of the Augustinian Egidio della Porta of Como prove that he and some of his associates were prepared in 1525 to quit Italy and throw in their lot with Zwingli.5 In November 1526 Clement VII instructed the Chapter of Sitten, and in January 1527 the Minorite, Tommaso Illyrico, to take proceedings against the Lutherans in Savoy. A Papal Bull of July 1528 ordered the Bishop and Inquisitor of Brescia to support the gratifying activity of the citizens of that city against Lutheranism, and in particular to pronounce judgment on the Carmelite Giambattista Pallavicini, who in the preceding Lent had proclaimed Lutheran doctrines from the pulpit. In Bergamo the excellent Bishop Pietro Lippomano had been busy since 1527 in preventing the spread of Lutheran writings smuggled in from Switzerland. On the 27th of August 1528 Clement addressed from Viterbo a circular letter to the bishops of Italy exhorting them as good pastors of the flock of Christ to suppress the heresy now beginning to penetrate the fold; the penitent were to be treated graciously, but the obstinate punished severely with the help of the secular power.

The decree sent by Clement VII from Bologna on the 15th of January 1530 to the General of the Dominicans, Paolo Butigella, inquisitor in Modena and Ferrara, had also a general character. In it the Pope dwelt on the spread of Lutheran error among clergy and laity in various parts of Italy, so that some by speeches, some even by sermons in church, were trying to turn away the faithful in Christ from their obedience to the Church. The Arian heresy, at first merely a spark, had, because unsuppressed, become a conflagration embracing the whole world; he wished therefore to take measures in time. Butigella and all inquisitors of his order were therefore exhorted to act vigorously against Luther’s adherents; at the same time full powers were given for the reconciliation of the penitent as well as spiritual graces for the associations founded by the inquisitors for the prevention of erroneous teaching. Besides these general directions special orders were also sent in individual instances, and these especially concerned the Duchy of Savoy and the Venetian Republic.

The propagation of Lutheran views in the Duchy of Savoy was another outcome of the proximity of Switzerland. Clement VII called on the inquisitors, the bishops, the Nuncio, and before all the Duke Charles III, to take measures. Charles viewed the whole situation from a purely political point of view. The outbreak of Protestant tendencies in Geneva was very advantageous to him, as he was now able to invest his long-standing dispute with that city with a religious character. His reports to Clement of the state of things in Geneva were so bad that the Pope, in his increased anxiety, placed at his disposal a portion of the Church revenues for the subjection of the city. Clement was not aware that Charles had greatly exaggerated the danger to Catholicism in Geneva, nor had he perceived that the Duke, working only in his own interest, was rendering a sorry service to the Church by mixing up the political question of Genevan independence with that of the religious innovations. The Pope only saw in the Duchy of Savoy a strong bulwark against the intrusion of Protestantism into Italy, and therefore issued exhortations in all directions to give support to Charles III.

While Clement VII was alarmed at the introduction of Protestant views into the west of upper Italy, their influence had already become firmly established in the east. Notwithstanding the repeated burning of heretical books and the sermons of Dominican preachers, Luther’s followers had increased to such an extent that at Easter 1528 he was able to give public expression to his delight. In March 1530 the Council of Ten expressly refused to take action, as the Republic of Venice was a free state. The purveyors of Lutheran teaching were, in the main, members of religious orders who had broken their vows. The activity of such Protestant “brothers” was not con­fined to Venice; they were busy in many other places as well. The attitude of the Venetian Government made the position of the Nuncio and his sympathetic predecessor Gian Pietro Carafa by no means an easy one. The latter, in October 1532, had sent the Pope a memorial which made the dangers of the situation clear as day. Herein Carafa, in the plainest terms, drew the Pope’s attention to the half-hearted fidelity of the Venetians to the ancient faith shown in their neglect of fasts and the confessional, and in their toleration of heretical teaching and heretical books. The leaders of the movement were members of religious orders, many of whom had broken their vows and were roaming about. Carafa named some of them, disciples of a deceased Franciscan. He announced that the Franciscans Girolamo Galateo and Alessandro of Pieve di Sacco were in confinement, while their associate and sympathizer Bartolomeo Fonzio had fled to Augsburg. The latter had powerful friends in the Curia who had procured for him a Papal Brief; to this Carafa opposed earnest remonstrances. “A heretic,” he said, “must be treated as such; the Pope lowers himself if he writes to him and flatters him or even allows graces to be procured for him; it is, indeed, possible that in this or that instance some good result may follow, but as a rule the recipients of such favours are only made more obdurate and gain fresh adherents.” He then urged the Pope to hold the reins more tightly on his officials and to be less generous in the matter of apostolic Briefs. In the cause of God’s honour and his own responsible office he must apply himself to measures of opposition; in times of danger such as the present, it is inadmissible to remain in the old grooves. Ori the outbreak of a war every day some new preparations for defence are called for, so also in the spiritual contest in which the Church is now engaged the Pope must be ever on the alert. His Holiness should provide an able inquisitor, such as was Martino da Treviso, and despatch a special Papal Legate to Venice. Since heresy, in most cases, is the product of erroneous writings and preaching or of evil living, the attack should be made in that direction. Owing to the apathy of the bishops and heads of religious orders the Pope should insist strongly on the faculties for preaching and hearing confessions being exclusively confined to priests of blameless character. Moreover, it is absolutely necessary that an end should be made to the monstrous prevalence of vagrant monks—“the apostates,” as Carafa calls them. The Penitentiary should abstain henceforth from dispensing permissions to leave the cloister; for these “apostates,” to the incalculable scandal of religion, had unfortunately become masters within a wide circle of the cure of souls and only too often were the servants of heresy and men of evil life. The Pope therefore would do well to reserve to himself the permission to leave the cloister, and only grant such permission in cases of pressing necessity; but to the “ apostates ” no pastoral charge should be given. Carafa, in addition, drew up a formal programme of reform of the secular and regular clergy, of which further mention will be made later on.

As a fountain-head of heresy Carafa noted the dissemination of heretical writings which were sold in Venice without any attempt at concealment, were bought by many persons, clerical and lay, by whom they were read, sometimes in contempt of the ecclesiastical censures thereby incurred, and sometimes on appeal to the possession of the necessary permission. Such licences must in future be granted very rarely, while those already issued should be recalled.

Clement VII was not the man to carry out such stringent precautions; in single instances, e.g. with regard to the sale of heretical writings, he certainly directed his Nuncio to take steps, and also renewed some earlier ordinances against itinerant monks. But the comprehensive regulations for reform called for by Carafa, especially in the case of the regular and secular clergy, came to nothing. Since in this way the sources of heresy were not dammed up, repressive measures, such as the appointment of the Augustinian Callisto da Piacenza as Inquisitor-General for the whole of Italy, gave only a superficial help. Although Carafa in his struggle with heresy was warmly supported by Aleander, sent as Nuncio  to Venice in March 1533, the situation continued to be dangerous.

Aleander’s reports as Nuncio contain many complaints both of the corruption of the clergy and of the growth of heresy, now making its way in Venice even among the lower classes. Among the preachers of Lutheran opinions there was a carpenter who, on being brought to trial at the instance of Aleander, defended himself by quoting sentences from the Bible. In October 1533 Aleander set in motion a Papal prohibition against the misuse of the Pauline epistles as commented upon from the pulpit in Italian by some illiterate members of the mendicant Orders. The ferment in the city was increased by the preaching of the Florentine, Fra Zaccaria, who publicly depicted in glowing colours the corruption in the Curia, and even spoke of the Pope in insulting terms. The Signoria, then on strained relations with Clement VII, took no steps against the offender, and in the matter of heresy Aleander repeatedly had to complain of their indifference. Not until an improvement took place in the Pope’s relations with Venice, consequent on the change in his political and ecclesiastical position, did an alteration begin. The trial of the Lutheran carpenter, who had found many protectors, now came to a close after having dragged on through a whole year, and ended in the condemnation of the accused to perpetual imprisonment. The same punishment befell Pietro Buonavita of Padua, who held Lutheran views. While Aleander was occupied in contending with other promoters of Lutheranism, among them being a French glovemaker, he received the news in June 1534 of the appearance of the new doctrines in Istria. In Venice itself the announcement of the success of the Protestants in Würtemberg reacted on the Government and their zeal against the Protestants slackened

Outside Venetian territory, in the closing days of Clement VII, only isolated followers of the German teachers were to be found in Italy, although writings by Luther and Melanchthon, in Italian translations, were scattered about among the people, sometimes under false names.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Close of the Pontificate of Clement VII.—His Position towards Literature and Art.

When in December 1533 Clement VII returned from Marseilles to Rome, a Milanese envoy reported that the Holy Father was in such good health that he looked as if he had only come back from an excursion to his villa on Monte Mario. No one suspected, at that moment, that the life of this man of fifty-three was nearing its end. Least of all did it occur to the French party that all the far-reaching schemes interwoven with the marriage of Catherine de’ Medici were destined to come to nothing. On the Imperialist side this alliance had been looked upon with the greatest suspicion. Both before and during the conference at Marseilles, Vergerio, the resident Nuncio at the court of Ferdinand I, “had sent reports of his distrust”—a distrust which grew although Clement laboured to counteract it. The Nuncio found his position one of increasing difficulty. Little fitted for diplomacy, this representative of the Pope was surrounded by the worst feelings of suspicion and by bitter animosity against Clement himself.

Vergerio’s communications on German affairs were a source of grave anxiety. In the very first despatch sent to Rome after his arrival in Vienna he had to report the advance of Lutheranism and the evil plight of the Catholic Church in Germany. The anti-Papal feeling which had taken possession even of circles loyal to the old faith was intensified by various ill-sounding rumours concerning the Marseilles conference. “It is my belief,” he wrote on the 18th of November 1533 to the Papal private secretary, Carnesecchi, “that here not only the Pope and Italians, but also the Catholic faith and Jesus Christ, have many enemies; but in Rome they have no real notion how corrupt the minds of almost all men here have become.”  From Prague, whither he had followed the court, he sent on the 28th of December to Rome a despatch of a very agitating character. “Listen,” he appealed to Carnesecchi, “to the state of the Church of Christ in this country. In the whole kingdom of Bohemia at this time only six priests have been ordained, and these are quite poor men to whom, on account of their necessity, I gave gratuitously the dispensations enabling them to receive their orders from any bishop. The Bishop of Passau told me that in his entire diocese within four years only five priests have been ordained. The Bishop of Laibach said that out of his diocese in eight years only seventeen had become priests. The reports of benefices standing empty on account of this lack of clergy are quite incredible. But this is not the case merely in schismatical Bohemia, but in the whole of Austria and the whole of Germany.”

With his reports on the existing decline of the Catholic faith in Germany, Vergerio combined urgent representations that efforts should be made in Rome to supply so many endangered souls with the needed succour; he recommended especially the support of the literary champions who, like Eck in Bavaria, Cochlaus in Saxony, Nausea on the Rhine, and Faber in the Austrian patrimonial states, were courageously defending the Catholic faith. The behaviour of Clement in this particular matter is only too significant of his ecclesiastical policy. Already in 1530 Campeggio, and in 1532 Aleander, had called attention to the necessity of giving substantial help to . these writers who were, for the most part, men of very slender means. Cardinal Cles had discussed the matter personally with the Pope at Bologna and received the best assurances; nevertheless, by the spring of 1533 practically nothing had been done. Cles therefore made serious representations to Vergerio, and the Nuncio himself left nothing undone to advance the matter at Rome. He was even ready, he said, to spend 200 ducats from his own pocket on these learned men, if he could entertain the hope of being repaid. The attitude of the Curia also was a strange one. There was certainly no attempt to deny the necessity of supporting the Catholic men of learning, but a warning was given not to exceed the strictest economy in so doing, since the finances were in a very distressed condition; Ferdinand I, it was suggested, could do something much more easily. It is stranger still that even when the opportunity arose of contributing to the support of these scholars it was not made use of. In conformity with an evil custom of long-standing, rich livings continued to be given to men who had no need of them. Thus in October 1533 a man who had already an income of 4000 ducats received 1000 ducats more in rents by the transference of some German benefices. Vergerio protested against this with justice; such a proceeding would give occasion of fresh complaint to numerous enemies of the Church, and drive the few deserving Catholic scholars to despair in their con­tinual supplications for benefices. Nevertheless, the Curia withheld any adequate support. In the following spring Vergerio could still report that the poor Catholic scholars were being starved to death; still, something might be done for them in Rome, for in Germany there were no benefices to dispose of; the few that were vacant he had bestowed upon them, but on account of certain reservations they were of no use. It was therefore urgently requisite that the Pope should supply them with support in hard cash; no guarantee for such was given. Further, the Nuncio himself was so badly paid that he was not in a position to give pledges to any great extent.

All this proves how lacking in earnestness Clement VII was as regards duties of an essentially ecclesiastical kind, and at the same time it shows how greatly he underestimated the danger with which the Papacy was threatened from the side of Germany. In this he was encouraged by the crafty King of France, who succeeded in producing the impression in Rome that the leaders of the Lutheran cause were dependent on France, and that French media­tion would easily bring about an agreement with them.

How little Clement appreciated the full significance of the politico-religious tendencies in Germany and how blindly in this respect he trusted in Francis I, is shown by his behaviour in a matter of great moment to the existence of the Church in southern Germany. In the spring of 1534 the Landgrave of Hesse, who received French support, began war for the restoration of the Protestant Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg to his duchy. Francis I managed to conceal so cleverly from the Pope that the successful issue of this conflict would be the surrender of Würtemberg to Protestantism that Clement looked upon the Landgrave’s whole enterprise as merely a counter-stroke to the private interests of the Hapsburgs, involving no danger to the Church. The Ambassadors of Ferdinand I sought in vain to turn him from this erroneous view, and in vain appealed to him for help. Clement assured them of his sympathy, but excused himself on the score of his exhausted treasury. The war, the Pope considered, misled by French misrepresentations, was a personal contest in which he could not interfere unless the Landgrave did something against the Catholics; also, without the consent of the Sacred College, no such support as he was called upon to give would be possible. But among the Cardinals Francis had secured a certain majority by means of liberal pensions, thus preventing any help being given to Ferdinand.

Accordingly, in a Brief of the 16th of June 1534, any support of Ferdinand was flatly refused. This inexcusable conduct called forth not merely at the courts of Charles and his brother, but also among the most loyal adherents of Rome in Germany, strong expressions of disapproval. Finally came Clement’s behaviour in the question of the Council. In accordance with the engagements made at Marseilles the Pope had already, in March 1534, officially declared his determination to defer, until a more propitious and peaceable season, the Council announced in the previous year. In a letter from Duke George of Saxony to Vergerio the clearest expression is given to the bitterness aroused in the German Catholics at this fresh postponement by the Pope, under the influence of fear and his French sympathies. In this document the most Catholic of all the Catholic princes of Germany complains with vehemence that the Pope, in the question of the Council, has allowed himself to be befooled by Francis, the inveterate enemy of Germany. If the Roman Church, he exclaims in his indignation, were to lose 10,000 ducats of her revenues, excommunications would be hurled and swords drawn and all Christendom called upon for aid; but if a hundred thousand souls, through the fraud of the devil, are brought to ruin, the Chief Shepherd listens to the counsels of him who is continually bent on injuring and enslaving Christendom. Utterances such as these, the violence of which could hardly be surpassed, were dictated by a genuine anxiety for fatherland and religion.

Under these circumstances it must be considered fortunate for the Church that the Pope’s days were numbered.

In June 1534 Clement VII was taken ill; this was attributed to the agitation caused by the senseless conduct of his nephew Ippolito de’ Medici. After a short improvement his condition changed for the worse, and gave rise to great anxiety. The doctors were uncertain as to the nature of the malady ; some thought that the Pope had been poisoned on his journey from Marseilles, and accusations were not wanting in which the Florentines on one hand and the French on the other were charged with the crime. In reality his complaint was probably a gastric one, perhaps of a malignant character. As the doctors were unable to agree, Clement lost confidence in them; his condition meanwhile underwent extraordinary changes. At the beginning of July he seemed to have recovered, but then followed a relapse of such a dangerous kind that he was reported to be dead, but this rumour, in consequence of which all Rome had taken to arms, was premature ; the strong constitution of the Pope was once more victorious, and by the beginning of August he showed a marked improvement. On the 30th of July he had made his will, by which Florence was left to Alessandro and all his remaining possessions to Cardinal Ippolito.

Rome was not then in a healthy condition, and many deaths occurred in the ranks of the Sacred College. On the 19th of July 1534 Enkevoirt died; on the 4th of August he was followed by Cardinal della Valle. The renowned Cajetan was also stricken with grievous illness, and died in the night of the 9th or early on the 10th of August. It was the wish of this high-minded and learned Cardinal to be buried in the simplest manner.

The Pope, meanwhile, continued to improve, although he was still very weak. On the 18th of August, while the Romans were filled with alarm at the news of the sack of Fondi by the pirates employed by Chaireddin Barbarossa, the city was moved to its depths by the announcement that the Pope was lying between life and death owing to a renewed attack of fever and sickness. On the following day Clement’s condition seemed so dangerous that on the evening of the 24th of August he received Extreme Unction. The day after that death seemed certain; fever was exhausting his strength, and as he lay writhing in cramp he rejected all nourishment. But again, in the beginning of September, there was another sudden change for the better. Notwithstanding their patient’s great exhaustion, the doctors believed that he would make another rally. The vital crisis lasted until the 8th of September; after that his condition daily became more hopeful. Giberti visited the sick man, whose delight at seeing his old and trusted friend was intense. “The improvement continues,” reported Ferdinand’s Ambassador on the 21st of September: “The Pope talks with those about him and laughs over the manoeuvres and ambition of the Cardinals. He still has a certain amount of fever; the court oscillates between hope and fear; but the former predominates so greatly that all conclave intrigues have ceased.”  But on this very 21st of September there came a permanent change for the worse. The fever increased in intensity and day by day his strength ebbed away. On the 25th of September, three hours after midday, Clement VII was released from his sufferings after hovering for a month between life and death.

Many troubles had combined against him during his last days. While corsairs were plundering his coasts and filling Rome with terror, his own position between Francis I and Charles V was one of acute anxiety. Then a dangerous quarrel threatened to break out in his own family; Cardinal Ippolito, whose dissolute life had already caused him many hours of care, wished to renounce the purple in order to expel Alessandro de’ Medici from Florence. In order that this “foolish devil”, as Clement once called his nephew, might be otherwise employed he bestowed upon him, on the 5th of September 1534, the Legation of the Marches, which Accolti was obliged to vacate. In the delirium of fever Clement was still occupied with the prospects of his nephews, and one of the last briefs of the dying Pope, addressed on the 23rd of September to the Emperor, contained, besides the entreaty that he should care for the interests of Italy and the Church, a warm recommendation of Ippolito and Alessandro. The trusted Carnesecchi was to be the bearer of the letter.

The mortal remains of Clement VII were at first laid in St. Peter’s and afterwards transferred to S. Maria sopra Minerva. There on the right side of the choir, opposite the tomb of Leo X, Baccio Bandinelli, from plans drawn up by Sangallo, erected a monument to Clement VII in the form of an antique triumphal arch in white marble that might be mistaken for the monument of his cousin. In the central niche is a seated statue of Clement, sculptured by Nanni di Baccio Bigio, surmounted by a relief representing the coronation of Charles V. In the niches on either side are statues of St. Jerome and St. John the Baptist; the reliefs above show the former saint in the desert, and the Baptist in the act of preaching There is hardly another spot in Rome conducive to more serious reflection than these tombs of the two Popes of the house of Medici. Differing widely in character and fortunes they were both, in their pontificates, of momentous import to the Church.

Clement has been called the most unlucky of all the Popes. This verdict is justified not merely as regards his reign but as regards his memory. It was astonishing how quickly he was forgotten in Rome. The Romans remembered only the misfortunes of his reign, his financial disasters, and his heavy taxation; they no longer recalled the judicious regulations of the deceased Pope for the commissariat of the city.

Clement VII has had no biographer, and almost all the historians of his time, with Guicciardini and Giovio at  their head, pass severe judgments upon him. Even those who recognize his praiseworthy qualities, his piety, purity of life, and indefatigable love of work, blame “ the coldness of his heart, his indecision, his weakness coupled with duplicity, his pettiness of spirit.” To judge with fairness it ought to be borne in mind that Clement in many instances had to expiate the sins of his predecessors, that only too often he was the victim of circumstances for the existence of which he was not responsible. Terrible was the retribution brought on him for the introduction of the Spaniards into Naples by Alexander VI. Vettori has already pointed out that “Clement VII was not cruel, nor proud, nor a simonist, nor avaricious, nor dissolute, but temperate, simple, pious, zealous in the fulfilment of his religious duties—nevertheless, upon him and Rome came dire calamity, and others who were full of vices lived and died happily as far as this world goes.”

Even granting that this eulogy is just, yet the second Medici Pope cannot escape the reproach that during his eleven years’ pontificate he never showed himself competent to deal with the difficulties of the situation. Incapable of large calculations, he allowed himself to be led by petty considerations when great interests were at stake. Timid in the extreme, he only arrived at a decision slowly and then was easily induced to alter it, for he was only too prone to substitute for every good plan some other that he considered better. With him “the fresh hues of determination were sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.” He was entirely wanting in masterly initiative and courageous decision. What the reign of so irresolute a personality must inevitably produce has been hit off to perfection by Berni in an epigram of excessive bitterness:

Un papato composto di rispetti

Di considerazioni e di discordi,

Di piu, di poi, di ma, di si di forsi

Di pur, di assai parole senza effetti.

The most regrettable feature of Clement’s pontificate was his absorption in politics and family interests, whereby he was blinded to the specially spiritual tasks of the Papacy, the most essential thing of all. Consequently he must undoubtedly bear a share of the blame for the loss of great portions of Germany to the Church. Clement was not sufficiently informed on German affairs, and therefore did not realize the momentum with which events were developing. If Germany was the central point of the interest of Adrian VI, the very reverse was the case with Clement VII. At first greatly disturbed by Luther’s success, he was too much a Medici to allow anxiety for Germany to take precedence of political and Italian preoccupations. By making himself the centre of resistance to Charles V he allowed the politico-ecclesiastical upheaval in the German Empire to have full scope. Later on he swung between two extremes, between plans of forcible suppression of the reformers and plans of mutual agreement. A temporizer by nature, he was incapable of a strong, clearly defined course of action, all the more so as the King of France cleverly kept him deceived as to the dangers in Germany.

His conduct in English affairs is also open to objection. The charge that the Pope, by his precipitate sentence of excommunication on Henry VIII, made himself responsible for the separation of England from the Holy See is certainly without justification. On the other hand, it does not admit of doubt that he was wanting in the necessary resolution to intervene firmly and, before it was too late, place an imperative alternative before Henry VIII. As the King had come forward decidedly against Luther his threats of apostasy had not been taken seriously at Rome where, hoping against hope, it was thought that time would cool the adulterous passion which had reached a pitch almost of frenzy. The Pope therefore adopted a dilatory policy, did not speak out at once and unmistakably, made unintelligible concessions, and even consented to the elevation to the episcopate of opponents of the Holy See. While the Curia still clung to the empty expectation that sooner or later some settlement must be reached, Henry was paving the way towards separation. However much Clement’s weakness may admit of explanation from the point of view of human nature, it was inconsistent with the ideal of the high office with which he was invested, and did injury to the interests of the Church.

Clement had no greater success in his European policy than he had in Church affairs. Employing with restless activity all the arts of a diplomatist of the Renaissance and conducting all his undertakings with cleverness and acumen, he yet achieved nothing. His constantly shifting policy, the outcome of over-subtlety and a lack of courage and stability, could produce only small results. In all great questions his policy completely broke down, and involved him in incessant discomfiture. Clement VII dug the grave of Italian freedom, while the great political authority of the Papacy moved steadily to its downfall. Nothing but misfortune attended Clement’s purely political machinations, so much so that one might be tempted to see therein a sign that Providence was bent on once more leading back the Papacy to its special vocation. This much was evident when Clement passed away; all his political schemes had come to nothing; the road along which he had travelled was henceforth closed. A radical change was necessary if the Church was not to lose still more than she had already lost within the last few years.

The ill-fortune which set its stamp on the pontificate of Clement VII also threw its shadow over his relations to literature, science, and art.

True to the traditions of his family, the Pope, during his Cardinalate, had already gathered round him a throng of poets and men of letters. To this day the Vatican Library preserves an imposing series of works dedicated to him at this period

It is easy to imagine the delight with which, on the death of the unsympathetic Adrian VI, the election of such a man as Giulio de’ Medici was hailed in literary circles. Amid eulogies of the house of Medici, always the patron of the learned, the return of the golden age was proclaimed in prose and verse, and many voices began to celebrate the events of the new reign.

Clement VII had every wish to continue the traditions of Leo X. In spite of the misfortunes of the time he did more in this respect than is commonly supposed. Among his secretaries names of note appear early: Angelo Colocci, Blosio Palladio, Evangelista Tarasconio, Giovanni Battista Sanga, Sadoleto. The latter, however, returned in April 1527 to his diocese of Carpentras. Pietro Bembo also had friendly relations with Clement VII through letters and dedications, and saw the Pope during the Jubilee year of 1525, and afterwards at the first meeting of the latter with Charles V at Bologna. On this occasion Romolo Amaseo delivered before the Emperor and Pope his oration on the Latin language which excited an admira­tion that is hardly intelligible at the present day.

The attention bestowed by Clement VII on the Vatican Library is shown remarkably in this; that, following in the steps of Leo X he took measures, notwithstanding the necessitous times, to increase the printed and manuscript treasures of this collection Thus, in the year 1526, Johann Heitmers, who had already been entrusted with a literary mission in 1517, was again sent to the North to make fresh discoveries. He was assisted by the Dominican Wilhelm Carnifex, whose activity Clement sought to encourage in every way. The Pope on this occasion was not merely recalling the exertions of Leo X; he bore expressly in mind those of Cosimo, Giuliano, and Lorenzo de’ Medici in finding out new Greek, Latin, and Hebrew manuscripts. If the Pope hoped by these searches after manuscript treasures to confer an advantage also on religion in the hour of danger, this may be explained by the fact that a clue was supposed to have been found to the existence of a valuable manuscript of St. Paul’s Epistles. From the Gonzaga, Clement borrowed a manuscript of Eustathius to which Lascaris had called his attention. The Pope, who was also interested in the reform of the calendar, is entitled to special honour for the attitude he assumed towards the new system of Nicolas Copernicus; in 1533 he ordered the learned Johann Albert Widmanstadt to explain it in the gardens of the Vatican.

Clement VII also had friendly relations with Erasmus, who tactfully greeted the Pope on his accession by presenting him with a copy of his paraphrase of the Acts of the Apostles; he also wrote a very respectful letter in which he apologized for the imprudent tone of his earlier writings by saying that at that time he could not have anticipated the outbreak of the religious divisions. Clement VII thanked him in a very kind letter on the 3rd of April 1524, accompanied by a present of 200 gold gulden; he exhorted Erasmus to place his talents at the service of the Church, and assured him that his enemies would be ordered to hold their peace. On this friendly footing they continued to stand, all the more so when Erasmus, in the autumn of 1524, attacked the heart of the Lutheran doctrine in its denial of the freedom of the will. Clement so highly appreciated the outspoken opposition of Erasmus to Luther that in 1527 he imposed silence on the Spanish opponents of the former, and kept silence himself regarding Erasmus’ own attempts to bring about a reconciliation, which were in part not easy to understand, and the objections to which had been brought before the Pope’s notice. If Clement had hitherto always kept himself aloof from the learned controversies between the friends and foes of Erasmus, he now thought it a counsel of expediency that such a man should be spared as much as possible and that he should express himself satisfied with his assurances of loyalty.

Among the poets to whom Clement VII extended his favour, Sannazaro and Vida hold the first place. The former dedicated to the Pope, in the autumn of 1526, his celebrated poem on the Nativity of Christ, to the appearance of which Leo X had looked forward so eagerly. Seripando had the honour of presenting the work to the Pope, who, in a Brief composed by Sadoleto, thanked the poet, for whom he foretold an immortality of renown. The Pope’s invitation to come to Rome was declined by Sannazaro on account of the period of calamity which had begun to break over the Eternal City. He remained in Naples, where he found his resting-place in the church of his own foundation, S. Maria del Porto on the Mergellina. His monument, the work of Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli, does not discredit the pupil of Michael Angelo. The tomb is flanked by marble statues of Apollo and Minerva; inscriptions added by a later hand have  transformed these figures into a David and a Judith. Strange as is the admission into a Christian church of these two pagan deities, they are yet strikingly appropriate in the case of a poet like Sannazaro, who in his works indulged to excess in illustrations drawn from heathen mythology.

Vida, still at work on his Christiade, begun under Leo X, was made Bishop of Alba by Clement VII. However fitting this post may have been for the poet, the bishopric of Nocera de’ Pagani was certainly not the place for Paolo Giovio the historian, appointed in 1528. Giovio badly requited the favour shown to him by Clement.

Early in 1524 Francesco Guicciardini was made President of the Romagna, where a very bad state of things prevailed; he succeeded, although his task was often made difficult from Rome, in restoring order. The part taken by him in the campaigns subsequent to the League of Cognac has been already narrated. After a short interval of rest he re-entered the Papal service in 1530 and gave valuable assistance towards the restoration of the Medicean rule in Florence. From June 1531 Guicciardini was Vice-Legate of Bologna, and not merely here but in other directions also, especially against Ferrara, he rendered most important services to the policy of the house of Medici.

Machiavelli visited Clement VII in 1525 in order to present him with the five books of his Florentine history. His reception was gracious, and a gift of 100 ducats was accorded him. He made use of this occasion to recommend to the Pope his old plan of a national militia. Clement for a moment seemed disposed to enter into the scheme, but he very soon drew back from the dangerous undertaking.

In spite of their dissolute lives Agnolo Firenzuola and Francesco Berni received tokens of favour from the Pope. From 1524 Berni was secretary to the Datary Giberti, who with extraordinary patience and certainly with too great indulgence put up for a considerable time with the eccentric behaviour of the highly talented poet: but at last he had to be dismissed. At a later date Berni attached himself to the court of Ippolito de’ Medici, of all the Cardinals the most devoted to pomp, enjoyment, and secularly.

Berni’s irreconcilable enemy appears in the person of Pietro Aretino, the master of the art of scandalous pasquinade, of which he considered himself to have the monopoly. The friction between the two dated from the very beginning of Clement’s reign, into whose favour Aretino had already insinuated himself. Berni liked Giberti as much as Aretino detested him. Although Giberti’s opponents, Girolamo da Schio and Schonberg, took sides with Aretino, whose pen inspired fear, the latter got the worst of it and had to fly from Rome at the end of July 1524; but he was back again in November, now singing the praises of Clement and receiving rewards for so doing. On a night in July in the following year Aretino was implicated in a stabbing affair and was wounded in several places. As his assailant was in Giberti’s service and went unpunished, Aretino attacked the Datary in the bitterest terms and finally went on to revile the Pope also. The scandal was so great that he left Rome and joined Giovanni “delle Bande Nere.” After the death of the latter he lived at the court of the Marquis of Mantua, from whence he launched forth such biting invectives against the Pope and the Roman court that Clement’s confessor com­plained to the Mantuan envoy.6 Meanwhile Aretino had found a safe refuge in Venice. Here he displayed a most remunerative industry, for, by sending his poisoned shafts in every direction, he extorted huge sums of money from those highly placed in the world and the Church. The sack of Rome gave Aretino an opportunity for composing a touching elegy and a pasquinade of savage ferocity. The latter was of such a tenor that Clement flung it to the ground exclaiming, with tears: “Is it to be borne that a Pope should be spoken of in such cruel terms!”. This time Clement’s displeasure lasted longer. Aretino’s attempts, through influential persons, to obtain pardon were unavailing. It was only when no less a personage than the Doge Gritti himself applied to the Pope that he succeeded, in September 1530, in obtaining an official reconciliation. But the banishment from Rome continued in force, and so for a long time to come did the feelings of rancour and hatred in the mind of Aretino.

The great throng of literati of all sorts, poets and men of learning, who since the days of his Cardinalate had been associated with Clement, would form a catalogue too long to enumerate. The following only may be mentioned: Zaccaria Ferreri, Bernardo Accolti, Giangiorgio Trissino, Giovanni Rucellai, Fra Sabba da Castiglione, Pietro Alcionio, Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, Andrea Fulvio, Maria Fabio Calvo, Pierio Valeriano, Johann Eck, Santes Pagnino, Cardinal Cajetan, Cristoforo Marcello, Antonio Pigafetta, Achille Bocchi, Stefano Joanninense, Giovanni Gennesio Sepulveda Albert Pighius, Giano Lascaris, and many others.

The sack of Rome brought ruinous loss to all men of letters living there, while many perished. The humanist Pierio Valeriano described the fate of individuals in his well-known treatise “On the Misfortunes of the Learned.” The Roman University was completely ruined. Clement VII had shown the greatest interest in its erection, and gave orders that the buildings should be restored. He failed, indeed, in securing the services of Erasmus, but was successful in his invitations to many other scholars. The Papal archives and the Vatican Library also suffered badly in the year of misfortune 1527, but Clement VII made vigorous efforts to make good the losses.

The consequences of the sack were perhaps more disastrous for art than for literature. Not merely had the whole brilliant group of painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths been scattered in all directions, and many of their works destroyed, but the exhaustion of the finances was injurious, for it made all work impossible for a great length of time, and then, when the worst difficulties had been overcome, no one was able to come forward as a general patron of the arts. In this respect, too, Clement VII differed from  his cousin Leo X. The heedless prodigality of the latter was as foreign to Clement as his rich versatility of culture; dry, earnest, sparing of his purse, he was not the man to act the Maecenas for whom the world of art had been hoping; they were soon to undergo a great disappointment.

On the announcement of the election of Clement VII most of the artists who had been driven from Rome by the death of Leo X and the pontificate of Adrian VI at once returned. Their recollections of the reign of the first Medici filled them all with the most pleasing hopes for the future. To have survived the day of the “barbarian” Pope and of the plague filled the joyous band with fresh spirit. “Friends sought each other out again,” says Benvenuto Cellini, “and embraced and greeted with cheering words those whom they once more met alive. Painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths, the best in Rome, drew closer together in a society founded by the jovial Michael Agnolo of Siena, and held joyous festas in which Giulio Romano and Penni also took part.” What Cellini tells us of these festas makes it clearly evident that the austere Adrian VI would have nothing to do with such folk. Clement VII himself was soon obliged to take steps against Marcantonio Raimondi for having made copper­plates of some obscene drawings of Giulio Romano; had the latter not already made his way to Mantua, the anger of the Pope would have fallen upon him heavily.

In spite of the financial difficulties which Clement VII had to contend with from the first, in spite of the political embarrassments and the unprecedented blows of fate which were so soon to overwhelm him, he had set on foot many works of importance, while in another direction his pontificate saw the development in Rome of artistic activity on no small scale. The most remarkable work of painting belonging to this reign was undoubtedly the decoration of the great hall leading to the Stanze, then called the Papal Hall, and later the Hall of Constantine; for the victorious entry of Christianity into universal history under that Emperor is there depicted.

The programme of this monumental work was, as regards essentials, settled under Leo X. But as yet nothing had been executed, except the general division of subjects and the figures of Virtue and Justice which Raphael’s pupils, Giulio Romano and Penni, had painted in oil on the wall; besides this the background of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge had been begun. This, however, was taken down when Clement gave orders for the resumption of the work interrupted by his cousin’s death. The new method of painting chosen out of consideration for the co-operation of Sebastiano del Piombo was now given up and the customary use of fresco retained. In this great undertaking Giulio Romano executed the “Apparition of the Cross” and the battle-piece, while the “Baptism” and “Donation” of Constantine fell to Penni.

These great frescoes are painted apparently in the style of vast tapestries stretched along the walls, an evidence how fashionable this kind of decoration had become since the production of Raphael’s famous hangings. Only the incomparable “Battle of Constantine” was sketched by the great master himself, and it was his thought that placed in the centre of this colossal picture, at the head of the band of horsemen pressing forward in the irresistible onset of victory, the youthful Emperor mounted on a noble white charger, with lance in poise, while the angels hovering over him point to his opponent Maxentius, who falls head­long into the rushing Tiber. The turning-point in this world-famed battle is thus most happily indicated. All around rages the turmoil of battle with its thrilling episodes represented with vivid fidelity to truth.

The results of the victory, the “Baptism” and “Donation ” of Constantine, were painted by Penni; in both frescoes St. Sylvester is represented with the features of Clement VII. The former event takes place in the baptistery of the Lateran; the “Donation,” which by a stroke of genius is symbolized by the presentation of a golden figure of Rome, gives an admirable sketch of the interior of the old church of St. Peter.

Between these two powerful frescoes are throned in painted niches under baldachini the figures, larger than life size, of famous Popes of the early Church, among whom Clement I and Leo I bear the traits of the two Medici Popes. Around these likenesses of the predecessors of Clement VII are grouped angels and allegorical figures, whose crudely realistic forms as well as the almost nude mythological figures on the pilasters are characteristic of the age. Giulio’s pupils, Giovanni da Lione and Raffaello del Colle of Borgo San Sepolcro, executed the ornaments and arabesques which border the frescoes as well as the caryatides with the badges of the Medici on the brackets.

According to the account books the above-named painters were engaged for the greater part of the year 1524 in the Hall of Constantine, which might perhaps be better named after St. Sylvester. The last instalment of the stipulated 1000 ducats was paid on the 3rd of July 1525, but the work, in all essentials, was finished as far back as September 1524. Giulio Romano thereupon left Rome in October 1524, for no more work of importance was to be expected there. Clement VII was not merely struggling with his money difficulties, but politics were making increasing claims on his attention; thus it was that Penni and Giovanni da Udine also came to be engaged on tasks of only a trivial character, the painting of banners in particular.

The catastrophe which befell the artistic world in the sack of Rome was so terrible that it must once more be considered. The few, such as Benvenuto Cellini and the sculptors Lorenzo Lotto and Rafifaello da Montelupo, who were able to find occupation as gunners on St. Angelo, were to be counted lucky. The remainder underwent the hardest experiences. The painter Maturino died of the plague; Perino del Vaga, Marcantonio Raimondi, Giulio Clovio, and many others were tortured and robbed of all they had. Those who could took refuge in flight, and the school of Raphael was completely broken up. Although Clement VII, after 1530, made strenuous efforts to restore the patronage of art, the life-blood of art itself had been drained. The gifted Giovanni da Udine was now extensively employed. He restored, in 1531, the mosaics in the apse of St. Peter’s, and painted, two years later, the ceiling of the sacristy of S. Lorenzo in Florence ; the glass windows of the Laurentian Library are, probably rightly, also attributed to him. The artistic activity of Sebastiano del Piombo was affected by his appointment in 1531, by Clement VII, to be a “Bullarum plumbator” or medallist of Papal Bulls, a remunerative function. After that this distinguished painter confined himself almost entirely to portraits.

Clement VII. had always taken a special interest in the art of illumination. He ordered several specimens to be executed for the choir books of the Sixtine Chapel. But in the account books, which, to be sure, are not in com­plete preservation, the name of Giulio Clovio, the greatest illuminator of the age, does not appear.

The troubles of the time were the principal cause why Clement, in the domain of architecture, had to restrict himself to what was absolutely necessary. The reconstruction of St. Peter’s had a prior claim to anything else. One of the Pope’s first acts of administration was the appointment of a commission of sixty members for the special purpose of seeing that the money collected for this purpose was not diverted to other objects. To raise the necessary sums, the right application of which was a matter of such extreme importance with the Pope, the same measures were used as under Leo X; but the same difficulties had also to be met. As the clumsy machinery of the College of Sixty proved unsuccessful, a special congregation of the “Fabbrica di S. Pietro” was afterwards appointed. The seal of the Fabbrica was the work of Benvenuto Cellini. The accounts from 1525 have been preserved, and afford a good survey of the slow progress of the work, the completion of which, as the Venetian Ambassador remarked in 1523, would hardly be seen by the generation of their grandchildren. Giuliano Leno continued to be master of the works under Clement VII. Before the sack Baldassare Peruzzi had been appointed architect of St. Peter’s for life; during the catastrophe he saved his life with difficulty, and on the 1st of July 1531 Clement VII renewed his former appointment.

Although the nomination in this instance also was for life, Peruzzi withdrew himself from Rome for a long time, so that in April 1533 Clement VII had to summon him back.

In the palace of the Vatican Clement VII completed the court of St. Damasus. Here as well as in the castle of St. Angelo many minor works and improvements were carried out. In the castle, the defences of which were strengthened, two chambers are shown at the. present day, one of which served as the Pope’s bedroom. The most recent restorations have also brought to light the Pope’s bathroom; it contains mythological scenes from the life of Venus very characteristic of the licence which marked the spirit of the age. The decoration also of the Papal villa on the eastern slope of Monte Mario, which was  partly destroyed by fire during the sack, was purely mythological in character.

In Rome itself, besides the rebuilding of the Mint (now Banco di S. Spirito) restorations were undertaken by Clement in the baptistery’ of the Lateran, in S. Agostino, S. Maria sopra Minerva, S. Pietro in Montorio, S. Pietro in Vincoli, S. Maria Maggiore, S. Matteo in Merulana, S. Gregorio de’ Muratori, S. Maria in Domnica, and in the cloister of S. Maria in Ara Coeli. On S. Giovanni de Fiorentini, Jacopo Sansovino was employed. On the northern portion of the Campo Marzio Clement VII in 1525 finished Leo X’s construction of the three streets leading to the Porta del Popolo. The Pope also did a great deal for the improvement of traffic in Rome. The sack, which had reduced the population from 55,000 to 32,000; the plague, and the great inundation of the Tiber in 1530 had done heavy damage to the Papal capital.

Notwithstanding these calamities Rome had revived with comparative alacrity, and at the time of Clement’s death the condition of the city was fairly satisfactory. For fortifications in Rome and elsewhere throughout the States of the Church Clement VII availed himself of Antonio da Sangallo and Michele Sanmicheli. The former, at his orders, constructed at Orvieto the great well (Pozzo di San Patrizio) which, after the cathedral, the inhabitants look upon as the second wonder of their city. In Fano the reconstruction of the harbour, and in Loreto the erection of the apostolic palace were undertaken. In Florence in 1533 the erection of the citadel of S. Giovanni Battista was set on foot.

Clement VII was too true a Medici to neglect the adornment of the Vatican with noble tapestries, costly faience, carved doors, and gold and silver vessels. Here also the sack caused serious losses, but it was not long before the work of restoration began. This was especially the case with regard to the goldsmiths’ art, which under Clement VII was in a most flourishing condition. As soon as to any extent his finances permitted it, the Pope began to renew his personal appointments. His principal commissions were for the golden roses, swords of honour and other Papal gifts, and for articles of ecclesiastical use. Besides Caradosso, who died in 1527, his most famous workmen were Benvenuto Cellini, Valerio Belli, and Giovanni Bernardi da Castel Bolognese. In the accounts many other names occur of more or less note.

This brilliant coterie of artists does not, perhaps, always appear in the most favourable light; fierce, reckless characters predominate, and acts of violence were frequent. The well-known autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini reveals with a startling fidelity to nature the sharp contrasts between culture and savagery, faith and superstition, the fantastic mixture of outward splendour and moral laxity which gave the tone to these artistic circles. In June 1529 Clement bestowed on this versatile genius the post of an engraver in the Roman Mint. Vasari considers that no such beautiful coinage had ever been designed for the Popes before; the pieces that have been preserved are certainly splendid works of art. The bust of Clement reproduces with remarkable fidelity his cold though handsome features; many of the designs drawn by Cellini for Papal coins are uncommonly original. Thus on a gold doubloon the Pope and Emperor are represented upholding the cross together; on the reverse side of a silver piece a very effective composition shows the Saviour rescuing Peter from the waves, with the inscription, “Wherefore hast thou doubted?” A medal with Moses bringing water from the rock refers to the well made by Clement at Orvieto; another medal of 1534 celebrates the then prevailing peace.

As a medallist Giovanni Bernardi da Castel Bolognese held an even more distinguished place than Cellini. In the art of “intaglio” Valerio Belli of Vicenza surpassed all his contemporaries. Distinguished also as a medallist, this artist executed for Clement VII the costly crystal reliquary presented to the basilica of S. Lorenzo in Florence. But his most famous work was the magnificent casket of which the principal adornment was scenes from the life of our Lord cut in crystal; this, executed on the occasion of the marriage of Catherine de’ Medici, is now an object of admiration in the galleries of the Uffizi.

The best-known work of sculpture in Rome, belonging to the reign of Clement VII, is Lorenzetto’s not very successful statue of St. Peter placed, at the Pope’s command, in 1530, alongside of Paolo Romano’s statue of St. Paul at the lower end of the bridge of St. Angelo. For the fortress, Raffaello da Montelupo executed a new angel of colossal size to take the place of the bronze effigy which had been melted down. At Monte Cassino the sepulchral monument of Pietro de’ Medici was begun in 1531 and only completed in 1559. At Loreto, Sansovino made progress with work on the Holy House remarkable for beauty and truly Christian feeling; as early as 1523 he had finished the relief of the Annunciation, which is conspicuous for its dramatic movement; the relief of the Adoration oi the Shepherds with its noble group of angels, set up in 1528, is full of sincerity; the Adoration of the Kings, the Birth and Espousals of Mary, already begun by Sansovino, were finished by his pupils after his death in 1529; to his drawings is also to be referred the panel of the Visitation. Of the statues placed in the twenty niches, that of Jeremias belongs for the most part to Sansovino; all the others came from his pupils. The latter also carried out the subordinate decoration of the structure. Tribolo, Sangallo, and Montelupo have here left work which is very effective. The lions’ heads, eagles and festoons of Mosca are especially good, and the same can be said of the panels with pictorial decorations introduced at the sides and at the foot of the doors. The former contain the arms of the Medici, and the latter ornamental figures of angels praying, tritons, sphinxes, birds, vases, and candelabra

The Pope’s predilection for Baccio Bandinelli was unfortunate. The latter, ambitious and self-seeking, tried to enter into a discreditable competition with Michael Angelo which was only productive of unpleasing creations. Bandinelli’s best work was the copy of the Laocoon executed for Leo X and placed, under Clement VII, in the second court of the Palazzo Medici at Florence. It is now in the Uffizi. On the right of the principal entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio stands Bandinelli’s marble group of “Hercules slaying Cacus,” as a pendant to Michael Angelo’s “David.” The satirical wit of the Florentines soon made a butt of this pompous composition. Another work entrusted to Bandinelli, the Archangel Michael triumphing over the seven deadly sins, and intended to adorn the castle of St. Angelo, was never executed.

Like Bandinelli, Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli had an apartment set apart for him in the Belvedere. Montorsoli was accounted a master in the art, then coming into repute, of restoring antique statues by additions which were often the result of a correct calculation. At Clement’s bidding he added the left arm to the Belvedere Apollo and the right to the figure of Laocoon. The Pope, who liked to visit the Belvedere in the morning when saying his office, took great interest in the progress of this work.

Like many other artists, even the greatest of all saw in the elevation of Clement to the Papacy ground for far-reaching expectations. “You will have heard,” wrote Michael Angelo on the 25th of November 1523 to a friend, “that Medici is chosen Pope. This, it seems to me, has been a matter of general congratulation, and I believe we shall see great things.” Clement VII had, in fact, throughout the whole of his pontificate a strong appreciation of the worth and greatness of this unique genius. The letters in particular of Sebastiano del Piombo and Giovan Francesco Fantucci bear eloquent testimony to this feeling. In the letters of the latter we have often verbatim reports of the conversations he had with Clement VII. Full of kind feeling, the Pope bore with truly astonishing patience the rudeness and ill-temper of the irascible artist. On one occasion he asked him to remember two things; first, that he is not able to make everything himself; and secondly, that we have only a short time to live. The thought that Popes do not for the most part have long reigns was recalled by Clement on another occasion in a postscript written in his own hand, in which he begged that he would make as much speed as possible in the execution of some work on which he was-

Three tasks of great magnitude were entrusted by Clement to Michael Angelo : the construction of the Medici memorial chapel (Sagrestia Nuovo) of S. Lorenzo, the execution of the monuments to be placed therein, and the erection of the Laurentian Library in Florence. At first Michael Angelo devoted himself with all his energy to this new and fascinating work, but the political events between 1527 and 1529 deprived him of all artistic capacity. Inflamed with love of the freedom of his native city, he flung chisel and hammer aside and undertook the indispensable service of providing defences for Florence, especially for the protection of San Miniato. When the Medici finally prevailed Michael Angelo was in very great danger; but Clement not only shielded him from the injuries instigated by a pitiless party hatred, but preserved unimpaired the old terms of intercourse. With what deep sorrow and anger Michael Angelo once more grasped his chisel can be seen clearly in the immortal verses laden with despondency which he composed for his statue of Night. At the end of his reign Clement had in his mind yet another work to be executed by Michael Angelo in Rome: the painting of the Last Judgment. It was certainly his greatest service to art that he should have suggested this magnificent subject for the display of the great painter’s Titanic power.

CHAPTER XVII

Clement VII and the internal Affairs of the Church.— His Attitude towards the Questions of the Council and Reform.

While in Europe the ancient Church was suffering loss upon loss, many thousands were coming within her obedience in the newly discovered countries beyond the Atlantic. Exposed in her former domains to the bitterest reproaches and insults, from the lips of the converts of the New World came blessings for their deliverance from the darkness of heathendom, gratitude for protection from the cruelty of their conquerors

To the sons of St. Dominic and St. Francis this beneficent work was mainly due. The two Orders vied with each other in sending out a continuous stream of devoted missionaries to the continent of America, and in this work were supported in many ways by Clement VII. How ample were the measures taken by the Pope to forward the missionary work in Spanish America may be clearly seen from a letter written on the 19th of October 1532 to Charles V, empowering him to choose a hundred and twenty Franciscans, seventy Dominicans, and ten Hieronymites for the East Indian colonies, and to send them there, in case of necessity, even if contrary to the wishes of the rulers of the Orders.

Clement VII gave strong support to the Christianizing of the newly discovered portions of America by constituting a hierarchy for the purpose of providing regular ecclesiastical guidance for those who had become converts. On the nth of May 1524 he created the new Patriarchate of the West Indies, entrusting this post to Antonio Rojas, Bishop of Palencia. On the 28th of December 1528 the two dioceses of Haiti were consolidated into the single bishopric of San Domingo. The autumn of 1530 saw the creation of the see of Mexico and the appointment of Gabriele Merino as Patriarch of the West Indies; in 1531 sees were erected in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Honduras, and in 1534 S. Marta and Panama in Colombia were made bishoprics. Clement bestowed similar attention on the possessions of Portugal. The bishopric of Funchal in Madeira, created by Leo X, was elevated on the 31st of January 1533 into an archbishopric, with four suffragan bishoprics attached to it. These were San Miguel in the Azores, the island of Santiago in the Cape Verde group, St. Thomas in Ecuador, and Goa in the East Indies. This formed certainly the largest Metropolitan see in the world.

In harsh contrast to the happy results in the New World was the complete failure of the attempts to re­unite Russia and the Holy See. Clement had already written on the 25th of May 1524 to the Grand Duke Vasili calling upon him to recognize the Roman Primacy and appealing to the negotiations that had already taken place under Alexander VI and Leo X. This recognition he made conditional to his bestowing upon him the kingly title. Thereupon in the autumn of 1525 Demetrius Gerasimov appeared in Rome as Russian Ambassador and was treated with the most marked attention. Gerasimov was admirably fitted to foster the Pope’s optimism with regard to the views prevalent at the Russian court. At the end of 1525 he went back to Russia accompanied by the Minorite, Francesco da Potentia, Bishop of Skara, as Papal Legate.

The latter certainly was successful in arranging an armistice between Poland and Russia, but on the other hand he failed in the question of ecclesiastical union. In 1527 another embassy visited the Pope from Russia, and a meeting took place at Orvieto in January 1528. From the Briefs handed to them by Clement VII on their return, it is clear that the Pope’s illusions concerning Russia were as strong as ever. The true state of affairs remained hidden from the Roman Curia ; this was not surprising on account of the great distance and the difficulty of means of communication.

Clement VII tried to confirm the Maronites and Armenians in their loyal adherence to the Union of Florence, and with this object he wrote many Briefs and sent many special messengers. During his second meeting with Charles V. at Bologna he received an embassy from the King of ^Ethiopia bearing letters and gifts and tendering solemn obedience.

In the year 1525 the great Jubilee took place. Although the disturbed state of ecclesiastical and political affairs made it seem to many injudicious to hold this solemnity, Clement had already decided on the 18th of April 1524 that it should take place. Nor did the outbreak of the plague in Rome move him from this decision. He took account of the altered circumstances by a reform of the Roman clergy and by setting aside the obligation of paying a sum of money to obtain the Jubilee indulgence. Stringent regulations were enacted to ensure the safety of pilgrims. Nevertheless, principally on account of the rupture of peace and terrible confusion in Germany, the pilgrims came in smaller numbers than at any previous Jubilee. Some alterations in the ceremonial were introduced on this occasion; among others the Pope, on opening the Holy Door, made use of a golden hammer. A noteworthy feature was the resumption of the impressive Passion Play in the Colosseum during the year of Jubilee. To the hindrances already mentioned were soon added the perils of a Turkish descent on the coasts of Italy and a fresh outbreak of the plague in August 1525. Almost up to the end of the Jubilee year the plague prevailed in Rome. Also during the extension of the Jubilee into the following year the Pope insisted that the money contributions of the faithful should be left to their free discretion. Nevertheless, the Protestants continued to declare that the Jubilee was instituted only to gain money, ridiculing it in coarse and odious satires.

The Bull announcing the beatification of Archbishop Antonino of Florence, delayed owing to the death of Adrian VI, was published by Clement VII. He canonized the Venetian, Lorenzo Giustiniani and the  Cardinals Aleman and Peter of Luxembourg. The Pope also sanctioned the cultus of St. Hyacinth of Poland and the office composed by Bernardino da Busti in honour of the Name of Jesus. In many ways he encouraged devotion to Our Lady and the recitation of the Rosary. Special Bulls dealt with the Rota, the Vice-Chancellorship, the observance of the German Concordat, and the prohibition of duelling.

In ecclesiastical policy Clement repeatedly found himself forced to make great concessions to temporal princes who, like the sovereigns of Spain, France, Poland, and Bavaria, did not yield to the inducement to apostatize. Owing to his powerlessness when opposed to the Emperor, his representations of the constantly recurring encroachments on the freedom of the Church in Spain, and especially in Sicily, produced no effect. In this respect the Pope had many causes of complaint against other princes, Francis I in particular. Even King John III. of Portugal, otherwise so friendly to him, had to be strongly admonished in the year 1524 for the arbitrary imprisonment of two bishops At the end of his pontificate the question of the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in Portugal gave rise to serious differences. Clement only gave a partial assent to the wishes of King John when, on the 17th of December 1531, he appointed a Commissary Apostolic and Inquisitor for the whole of Portugal, to institute, in conjunction with the bishops, an inquiry into the accused Jewish Christians, with orders to punish the guilty. As the King, on the 14th of June 1532, by a new law tried to subject the Jews and Jewish Christians to his arbitrary authority, they appealed to the Pope, complaining of the violent treatment and the unjust and harsh proceedings of the King and the Inquisition. 

Clement would not associate himself with the King’s unjust treatment of his subjects. He first suspended, on the 17th of October 1532, the Bull of December 1531. As all his representations remained ineffectual, on the 7th of April 1533, to the entire exclusion of the Portuguese Inquisition, he cited the guilty before his own special court and gave the Nuncio full powers to effect the reconciliation on the easiest terms possible. He thus declared expressly that the Jews who had been treated so severely were not to be punished as heretics. John III raised objections to these injunctions, and forbade their publication. The Pope therefore instructed his Nuncio to defer the publication of the Bull for a while; in a Brief he justified himself against the King’s complaints by explaining the reasons for his clemency towards the Jewish Christians. Already nearing his end, on the 26th of July 1534 he ordered the Nuncio to execute the orders of April 1533, which were as just as they were merciful.

In other instances as well the Pope showed such tenderness and large-hearted good-will towards the Jews that a learned member of their nation of that day did not refrain from calling him “ Clement, the gracious friend of Israel.” The position of the Jews in Rome as well as in the Papal States was, in consequence, a prosperous one.

The absolutism of the Venetian Republic was a source of repeated and angry conflict. Towards the jealous Signoria, Clement, in several questions of ecclesiastical policy, showed great readiness to conciliate; nevertheless, the Venetian Government renewed their claim, abandoned expressly in the treaty of peace of 1510, to the right of appointing to bishoprics within their territory. This treaty was infringed with the utmost disregard of obligations, and treated as if it were non-existent. The disputes about the possession of bishoprics began as early as 1524. Afterwards, particularly between 1530 and 1532, the question played a prominent part and, in the latter year, became acute owing to the Venetian Government taxing, on its own initiative, the clergy of the Republic for the purposes of the Turkish war. In this question of nomination to bishoprics Clement showed great steadfastness; the consequence was that the Signoria finally yielded in June 1533 as far as five bishoprics were concerned, but would make no concession concerning Treviso or Corfu, although Clement VII in May had already threatened the heaviest ecclesiastical penalties. The Pope made passionate complaints to the Venetian Ambassador; in Venice itself the procurator Francesco Donato said that “Christ had deputed the pastoral office to Peter; do not let us interfere in questions of Church benefices which belong to the Pope.” Others pointed to the danger of Clement, in his approaching conference with Francis I, making terms unfavourable to the Republic. The majority therefore decided in favour of giving way as regarded Corfu; on the other hand, the controversy over Treviso, which had been in suspense since 1527, remained unsettled. Up to the last the Venetian diplomatists hoped that from political motives the Pope would in the end give way.

The appointments to the Cardinalate made by Clement VII. are uncommonly characteristic of his reign. The assertion, however, that, of all his nominations, he did not make one as a free agent, is an exaggeration; but, in justice, it must be admitted on the other hand that in the majority of cases the ruling motive in his creations was political expediency or compulsion.

In the first four years of his reign Clement VII was especially reluctant to increase the number of the Sacred College. Although the Emperor had already, in June 1525, asked for the appointment of two new Cardinals, and there was repeatedly talk of approaching creations, the Pope always deferred as long as possible the decisive step. His first creation was not made until the eve of the sack of Rome. To the six Cardinals then appointed seven others were added1 on the 21st of November of the same year, with whom on the 7th of December Quinones, and on the 20th of December 1527 Francesco Cornaro were associated. In the beginning of 1529 Ippolito de’ Medici, who had only entered his eighteenth year, and Girolamo Doria, were made Cardinals. The nomination of Mercurino di Gattinara took place on the 13th of August of the same year.4 During the first conference at Bologna on the 9th of March 1530, Clement agreed to the elevation of four Imperialists (Cles, Loaysa, de Challant, and Stunica). To satisfy Francis I, Tournon was received into the Sacred College on the 19th of March and Gramont on the 8th of June.

On the 24th of March 1530 Clement VII promised the Duke of Savoy that he would make his son, then a child of three years, a Cardinal as soon as he had reached the lawful age. This very strange engagement was never carried out, for the person whom it concerned preferred later on to follow a secular career. The influence of Charles V secured the nomination, on the 22nd of March 1531, of the Spaniards Alfonso Manrico and Juan Tavera; on the 25th of September Antonio Pucci was made Cardinal. During the second conference at Bologna the Emperor only carried one candidate, instead of three, in the person of Gabriele Merino; soon afterwards the Frenchman, Jean d’Orléans, was appointed. Francis I was luckier than Charles V, for at the conference of Marseilles in 1533 he secured the elevation of four of his dependants.

The total number of Cardinals made by Clement, in fourteen creations, amounted to thirty-three, of whom nine were Spaniards, with an equal number of Frenchmen, one a German, and all the rest Italians. The preponderating political character of these appointments shows that spiritual fitness for the post was not made of much account in the selection. Even if all were not personally so unworthy as the youth Ippolito de’ Medici, yet the greater number consisted of worldly men of conspicuous rank. Many of them were only ecclesiastics in garb, and were occupied with any other interests than those of the Church. How accustomed men had become to such incongruous conditions is shown by a very suggestive remark in the report of 1531 of Antonio Soriano, the Venetian envoy: “I will not say that the present Cardinals are saints; yet I cannot but speak of them with respect as of men of lordly rank who live in a manner worthy of their noble station.”

But how was this manner of life to be reconciled with the stringent decrees of the Lateran Council ? This question is closely connected with the attitude assumed by the Pope towards the very necessary removal of ecclesiastical abuses. From the very first it was disastrous that under Clement VII. Church affairs did not, as in the days of Adrian VI, rank before all others. Medici, to his own misfortune and that of the Church, was eminently a political Pope; the necessity of a reform could not have escaped the observation of so clear-sighted an intelligence.

The activity displayed by Clement as Cardinal and Archbishop of Florence in carrying out the reformatory decisions of the Lateran Council led to the hope that as Pope he would also prosecute his work in this sphere.

As a matter of fact, in the first year of his pontificate he showed himself a zealous reformer, acting evidently under the influence of the excellent Giberti.

Already on the 18th of January 1524 Clement had addressed a Consistory on the reform of the Curia and invited the Cardinals to make proposals. Together with this went a scheme for a general reform of the conditions of the Church ; for this purpose prelates and bishops of Italy and other countries, such as Spain, were summoned to Rome, and a special commission of Cardinals was formed to consider the question of reform. On the 24th of February 1524 the Pope made more detailed proposals to the Cardinals on a reform of the Curia and ordered the decisions of the Lateran Council bearing on this point to be strictly enforced. In the autumn of 1524 the conditions of reform were dealt with in a series of consistories and drawn up with greater precision.

With express reference to the coming Jubilee the Pope introduced, on the 9th of September, three administrative proposals: first, a general visitation of the churches of Rome; secondly, an examination of the Roman secular clergy; those among them who were found to be unfitted for their functions should be prohibited from saying Mass at least during the Jubilee year; thirdly, precautions were to be taken to procure qualified confessors during this sacred time. These proposals were carried, and were at once put into operation. A strict supervision was also made of the observation of the rules appertaining to the dress of the priesthood and the disuse of the beard. The measures taken were so stringent that those ardent for reform began to indulge in the brightest hopes. Many of the laxer prelates submitted only with great reluctance to these ordinances, but they did submit. For the visitation a special commission was appointed, which met every Sunday and at the same time exhorted the Cardinals to support this salutary work, and to set good examples to those under their authority. Strong measures were also taken against open immorality. On the 7th of November 1524 Clement again called the attention of the Consistory to the reform of the Curia. He insisted primarily on the observance of the Lateran decrees of the 5th of May 1514 on reform being pressed home, for they were weapons against a legion of abuses. He entrusted Cardinal Pucci with the drawing up of a Bull on this subject4 which was agreed to on the 21st of November and forthwith published.

In the execution of these reforms Giberti and Sadoleto were Clement’s supporters. In the beginning of December the Cardinals were exhorted to take care of their churches; soon after three commissaries were appointed to visit all churches, convents, and hospitals in Rome. Already on the 8th of September the Pope had issued an emphatic decree to remove the scandal of the Minorites frequenting Rome without wearing the habit of their Order. On the 30th of November he commanded the Roman magistrates to throw such vagrants into prison.

A wholesome measure for the improvement of the clergy was the issue of instructions to Bishop Gian Pietro Carafa, then resident in Rome, concerning the candidates for holy orders, by which every form of simony was repressed. In certain cases also Clement showed himself averse to the accumulation of benefices; while recognizing the gravity of this abuse, he was yet often compelled to yield to the force of circumstances. A whole series of Papal enactments for the year 1524 dealt with the reform of the secular and regular clergy of the dioceses of Florence, Parma, Naples, Venice, Milan, Burgos, and Mayence. In the same year the Pope gave orders for a general reform of the Carmelite Order, and in 1525 similar measures were taken in regard to the Order of the Humiliati.

Unhappily these hopeful beginnings had no correspond­ing results. Political distractions soon absorbed more and more the attention of the Pope, and, in consequence, the measures of reform slackened. On the 2nd of March 1526 Clement stated in writing that he had certainly not abandoned his plans for a reformation of morals but that, owing to the adverse conditions of the time, he was forced to defer their execution. During the troubles that afterwards arose practical measures of reform lay almost entirely dormant.

That Clement VII had always realized the necessity of raising the standard of life within the Church is evident from the earnest address made to the Cardinals at Easter 1528, when he spoke of the sack of Rome as a judgment of God. But he still held back from decisive and comprehensive action. Political and ecclesiastical troubles of every kind beset him but, over and above, he was preoccupied by the interests of the house, of Medici.

The years 1529 and 1530 were marked, however, by a series of special enactments of reform, but inadequate to existing circumstances. There was no vigorous attack on abuses in the Curia, no thorough application of the measures already laid down. In this respect Clement lies open to the grave reproach of having receded from the path opened by Adrian VI; he allowed things to drift back into a contrary course. Outside Rome itself the condition of things was no better. The evils had passed beyond the reach of special regulations, and the cure lay  beyond the scope of ordinary remedies. Far and wide the demand for a Council was raised; but this was an heroic measure from which Clement shrank with the utmost misgiving.

Clement dared not openly refuse a Council; but with the innate diplomacy of an Italian he tried by a policy of delay to weaken the necessity of convoking one; he was afraid that more harm than good would result from such an assembly. He weighed beforehand all the dangers that a Council undoubtedly might involve, and in his treatment of the whole matter showed such timidity and indecision that, in the end, he forfeited the belief of all men in his sincerity. The Pope’s objections to the Council were, in the main, half religious and half political. Nor was he unaffected by personal considerations; his illegitimate birth and certain defects of character counted for something, but this could not, as Charles V and his party believed, have formed the decisive motive for the Pope’s behaviour; that was partly grounded on politics and partly on religion.

The synods of Constance and Basle, with their aggressive attempts to weaken Papal authority, were still fresh, with their ominous import, in the memory of the Roman See. What security was there that the controversy over conciliar authority might not revive again. Should this happen, developments beyond the ken of man were to be feared. To the Pope, always a prey to anxiety, a not less serious consideration was the reaction which a thoroughgoing system of reform would effect in the conditions of life in Rome. If we grasp that the mere rumour of the summons of a Council caused a sudden fall in the price of all saleable offices, we can estimate the amount of pressure brought to bear on the Pope in his financial necessity by the officials of the Curia. Further, there was the serious apprehension that the all-powerful Emperor would exercise a preponderant influence in the Council and practically annul the independence of the Holy See.

Again, how often during the previous century had the demand for a Council been basely misused by the Pope’s enemies to subserve the worst purposes. Already in 1526 Charles V had not disdained, in his political contest with Clement, to employ the Council as a weapon against him. How easily might such proceedings be repeated! And a factor of great influence was the policy of the King of France, who laboured assiduously to prevent a general assembly of the Church, and in pursuit of this object did not seem to shrink even from schism. Finally, the conditions tendered by the Protestants with regard to the participation in “a free Christian Council” not merely of the temporal princes but even of heretical preachers, were such that no Pope could entertain them. Thus there was urgent need for the greatest caution. Nevertheless, the most painful feelings were aroused by the Pope’s opposition to a general Council, and especially by his unnatural subordination of the religious and ecclesiastical tasks of his office to those which were political. This unfavourable impression was only partially mitigated by the encouragement given by Clement, in a measure, to the efforts at reform which took practical shape in the hands of men such as Gaetano di Tiene, Giberti, Carafa, Miani, Zaccaria, and others.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Beginnings of the Catholic Reformation.—The Oratory of the Divine Love.—Gaetano di Tiene and Carafa.

Even in times of deepest depression true reformers have arisen within the Church. In spite of abuses and secularity in high places they have never sought occasion to renounce their loyalty to the divinely appointed authority, but have striven to bring about the necessary ameliorations in lawful ways and in closest adhesion to Catholic dogma and the Holy See. Working in this direction, they have rejected every change incompatible with the permanent and divine institutions of the Church, and with her authority and doctrine.

During the fifteenth century, in every country in Europe, men of high character were pursuing reforms in this spirit on the firm foundations of the Catholic faith. But nowhere were these efforts to secure a completely satisfactory renewal crowned with success. In Spain itself, where Cardinal Ximenes, that powerful and far-seeing Franciscan, was achieving, comparatively speaking, the most remarkable results in Catholic reform, his work was lamentably injured in its permanent effect by the absolutism of the Royal power.

In Italy Egidio Canisio of Viterbo had laid down the programme of the Catholic reformation at the opening of the Lateran Council in words of weighty meaning: “Men must be transformed by religion, not religion by men.” Even if the Council drew up its decrees of reform in agreement with this principle, yet the most important thing of all was wanting: the practical execution of the same. Even the outbreak of the religious severance did not draw Leo X into a different course; consequently the state of the Church became so menacing that many despaired of a remedy. When all seemed lost a change for the better was coming to pass in perfect quietness, and this proceeded from the inner circles of the Church. It was essentially a new expression of the indwelling element of the divine life and an evident witness to the protection promised by Christ to the Church for all time.

While almost the whole official world of the Curia was given up to politics, and the Italian clergy, conspicuous among whom were the Roman prelates, to corruption and frivolity to an alarming degree, while Leo X himself, heedless of the threatening signs of the times, was sunk in aesthetic enjoyment amid the whirl of a gorgeous secular life, a certain number of men, clerics and laymen, noted for virtue and knowledge, had united themselves, under the guidance of the spirit of God, in a confraternity under the protection of St. Jerome bearing the significant name of the Society or Oratory of the Divine Love. Deeply penetrated by the extent of the corruption around them, they started as true reformers with the view that they ought not to indulge in useless lamentations, but begin the much-needed reformation of the whole body with a reform of themselves and their immediate surroundings. From these small and unpretentious beginnings they, in the fulness of their holy enthusiasm, laid the foundations of a citadel for the observance of the means of grace, for the contest against vice and abuses, and for the exercise of works of charity.

The main principle of the members of the Oratory of the Divine Love, to begin with the inward renewal of their own lives through religious exercises, common prayer, and preaching, frequentation of the sacraments and works of neighbourly love, and to point the right way to reform by means of example, was a thoroughly Catholic one; for the Church, in accordance with the will of her Founder, has always considered and set forth inward sanctification as the essential thing. All the members of the Oratory were also united by a strong Catholic feeling. Not one of these men thought even remotely of abandoning the foundations of Church doctrine on account of defects in the clergy, high and low, or of seeking reforms in unlawful ways. Their place of meeting was the little church of SS. Silvestro and Dorothea, which, near to S. Maria in Trastevere, lay in a quarter of the city to which the then existing tradition assigned the dwelling-place of St. Peter; on the adjoining slope of the Janiculum the Prince of the Apostles had, as was then believed, suffered martyrdom. Thus when the members of the confraternity betook themselves to their meetings the loftiest associations of Christian Rome were called up before their eyes.

As the Oratory was founded in 1517 at the latest, it is probable that its institution was an echo of the intensified religious feeling connected with the Lateran Council closed on the 16th of March of that year. This religious feeling had found incomparable expression in the visions of Christian art displayed in the masterpieces of Raphael. What devotion radiates from the forms of the Sixtine Madonna and the Divine Child whom she shows to mankind from her height of glory! It has been said with justice, that the great lustrous eyes with which the infant Christ meets the gaze of the beholder might well urge an unbeliever to confess the faith. The same deep life of faith and grace is mirrored in the Transfiguration. The ancient Umbrian piety speaks here in the more powerful accents of the art of a new age. There is certainly no evidence that Raphael was a member of the Oratory of the Divine Love; but with two of its most distinguished members, Sadoleto and Giberti, he was on terms of friendship and spiritual sympathy. It may be said at least that these, his greatest masterpieces, were executed in the spirit of the Oratory.

The greater elevation of religious feeling in those days found expression also in the foundation of yet other con­fraternities which, together with the encouragement of a Christian tone of life, especially devoted themselves to works of practical charity. In the first rank mention must here be made of the “Confraternita della Carita.” It had been founded in 1519 by no less a man than Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, afterwards Clement VII, for the support of poor persons above the mendicant class, for the visiting of prisoners, and the burial of the destitute. As early as 1520 this association numbered more than eighty members, including bishops, prelates, and officials of the Curia. Leo X, on the 28th of January 1520, raised it to the status of an archconfraternity and bestowed upon it indulgences and spiritual graces. In the first year of his pontificate Clement provided for this, his own institution, by endowing it with the Church of S. Girolamo, in the neighbour­hood of the Farnese palace, and ever since known as “della Carita,” together with the buildings belonging to it The protectorate, which Clement as Pope had to resign, was held by Cardinal Antonio Ciocchi del Monte; he was followed by Enkevoirt (1529), Cupis (1533), Carafa (1537), and Morone (1553). During Clement’s lifetime we find among the deputies of this confraternity, together with lesser officials, the Pope’s Master of the Household, Girolamo da Schio, and the Cardinals Enkevoirt, Quinones, and Ercole Gonzaga.

The Confraternity of S. Girolamo della Carita was, by the autumn of 1524, in such prosperity that Valerio Lugio saw therein the hand of God. “Twelve chaplains,” he reported to Venice, “attend to divine worship in the church; the members are unwearied in visiting the hospital, the poor, the wounded, the sick, the imprisoned; they bestow burial on the dead and perform every imaginable work of charity.”

The members also of the Oratory of Divine Love did not restrict themselves to purely religious exercises. They were not less diligent in offices of neighbourly charity, and there is an express tradition that in the days of Leo X they devoted themselves to the maintenance of the ancient Hospital of S. Giacomo degli Incurabili. Here arose another confraternity in which Leo X, all the Cardinals, and many prelates and courtiers were enrolled. The convent for female penitents on the Corso owed its origin to the Oratory of the Divine Love. Cardinal Medici obtained the sanction of Leo X for this institution, and when Pope continued his support.

The members of the Oratory of the Divine Love, whose numbers rose in course of time to between fifty and sixty, were men differing from one another considerably in culture and social position. Together with those whose interests lay exclusively in ecclesiastical life, such as Giuliano Dati, parish priest of SS. Silvestro and Dorotea, Gaetano di Tiene, Gian Pietro Carafa, Luigi Lippomano, with whom, later on, in the person of Giberti, a politician and diplomatist also became associated, we find several humanists like Sadoleto, Latino Giovenale Manetti, and Tullio Crispoldi. The influence of these latter explains to some extent the curious form of the single contemporary memorial that brings back to day in Rome the memory of the Oratory at S. Dorotea. This is a holy water vessel in stone in the shape of an ancient heathen altar, bearing on the front side the name, title, and arms of Giuliano Dati, who died previous to 1524, The inscription on the right side shows that it was composed by persons who delighted in expressing their thoughts in the language of classical antiquity. Here, if anywhere, is evidence that the employment of phraseology not only classical but even pagan in tone, does not warrant the conclusion that this was the outcome of unchristian sentiment.

It was of great importance that the quiet activity of the Oratory of the Divine Love, the members of which, under Clement VII, also showed care for the poor class of pilgrims to Rome, should have set an example to different cities of Italy, Verona, Vicenza, Brescia, and Venice being among the earliest to imitate the Roman model. These communities were connected with their brethren in Rome. They held to the same genuine Catholic principle that the sanctification of the individual must necessarily precede any attempt to bring a reforming influence to bear on others. How important for the revival of the inner life of the Church was the Oratorian practice of the frequent use of the sacraments of penance and of the altar, long before the days of Jesuit activity had come, is evident from the well-authenticated fact that, prior to this, the number of those who approached the altar more than once a year, namely, at Easter, was very small.

Important and full of blessing as the work of the Oratory and its offshoots proved to be, yet, from their very nature, associations of this kind were debarred from exercising a wider and more penetrating influence. As confraternities they lacked a strict organization. In addition to the constant fluctuation in the number of members, there were the repeated claims, of duties and business of other sorts calling them away from the good work for the sake of which they had united together.

The recognition of these drawbacks led to a plan for the formation of a special order of regular clergy, the so-called Theatines. This Order, which was essentially a product of the Oratory of the Divine Love, soon won a position of exceptional importance in the progress of Catholic reform and restoration. We can thus understand the enthusiastic praise lavished by the historian of the  Theatines on the Oratory of the Divine Love as the cradle of their society. If at first the Oratory was only a hopeful omen of the quiet reaction towards reform working within the Church, its full significance became known at last through the new and powerful organization which owed to it its birth.

To two men of very different character the foundation of the new Order was due ; they were Gaetano di Tiene and Gian Pietro Carafa.

The ancestors of Gaetano di Tiene were nobles of Vicenza who bore the title of Count. Born about 1480, he studied jurisprudence at Padua and came to Rome in 1505, where he was appointed Protonotary-Apostolic by Julius II. Not until he had reached his thirty-sixth year, in the autumn of 1516, did he receive minor and sacred orders. It is evident from the letters of this devout priest to the Augustinian nun Laura Mignani of Brescia that he had hitherto held back from entering the service of the sanctuary from humility and a holy fear of that high voca­tion. Gaetano, who devoted eight hours a day to prayer, dwells in these letters in touching language on his unworthiness to offer up the sacrifice of the Mass wherein he, “a poor worm of earth, mere dust and ashes, passes, as it were, into heaven and the presence of the Blessed Trinity, and dares to touch with his hands the Light of the sun and the Maker of the universe.” Such a priest must have found in the Oratory of the Divine Love the expression of his innermost soul. If Gaetano nevertheless left Rome as early as 1518, it was in obedience to a call of filial duty bidding him return to Vicenza, where his mother had just undergone a heavy loss in the death of a second son. There he worked in the spirit of the Oratory in Rome and urged worthy and repeated reception of the sacraments. In this direction Gaetano’s efforts were specially effective, for he infused fresh life into the Confraternity of S. Girolamo. It was he also who induced this society to take over the administration of a decayed hospital for incurables. On this work of compassion he spent large sums of money, and also obtained for it from Leo X. all the privileges and indulgences belonging to the great Hospital of S. Giacomo in Rome.

In the summer of 1519 a brotherhood at Verona, the Secret Confraternity of the Most Holy Body of Christ, which had also been one of Gaetano’s revivals, addressed a petition to the confraternity at Vicenza to be admitted into fellowship with them in spiritual possessions, prayers, and good works. In his great humility Gaetano inverted the petition and requested admission to the brotherhood in Verona, whither he went, accompanied by the leading members of the community of Vicenza. When it came to the signing of the form of aggregation he made his companions take precedence. His own subscription was as follows: “I, Gaetano di Tiene, wholly unworthy to be a priest of God, have been received as the last among the members of this holy community in July 1519.”

From 1521 to 1523 Gaetano, with the exception of a short visit to Brescia where he saw Laura Mignani, devoted himself to works of spiritual and temporal compassion in the city of Venice. There also he bestowed much attention on the hospital for incurables, and in an astonishingly short time brought it into a better condition. In spite of this success he was not satisfied; the worldliness of life in the city of the lagoons grieved him deeply. From thence on the 1st of January 1523 he wrote to his friend Paolo Giustiniani: “How pitiful is the state of this noble city! One could weep over it. There is indeed not one who seeks Christ crucified. Jesus waits and no one comes. That there are men of good will among this fine people I do not deny. But they will not stand forth ‘for fear of the Jews.’ They are ashamed to be seen at confession or Holy Communion.”

These discouraging conditions probably led to Gaetano’s return to Rome at the end of 1523. There, in the Oratory of the Divine Love, he found Bonifazio da Colle, Paolo Consiglieri, and Gian Pietro Carafa all full of reverence for his own ideals. His intercourse with Carafa especially was to be followed by most important results.

Seldom have two such different characters combined in the pursuit of the same aim as these two men whose activity in the beginning of the great movement of the Catholic reformation was fertile in influence. A waft of sacred poetry breathed through the life of Gaetano, who, like the saint of his deep veneration, Francis, glowed with a mystic love for the poor Child in the manger. Amid all the fire of his religious emotion he was yet a personality of exceeding gentleness and tenderness. Yielding, given to self-communing, silence, and reserve, it was only with great reluctance that he took a public place. He thus gave rise to the remark that he wished to reform the world, but without letting the world know that he was in it. A beautiful saying, and the best description of the peculiar character of a man who was filled with a boundless trust in the providence of God. In long hours of meditation Gaetano prepared for the sacrifice of the Mass. He was often seen to burst into tears at the moment of consecra­tion. Daily, in the sacrament of penance, he clad his soul in the purest wedding garment, and was himself unwearied in the duties of the confessional and in the visitation of the sick and poor.

Carafa also was full of love towards God and his neighbour. His sense of religion was not less deep than that of Gaetano; but in him, the typical southern Italian, it found a very different expression. Brimming over with eloquence, impetuous, glowing with a zeal not always tempered with wisdom, capable of inconsiderate obstinacy and hardness, he flung his whole being into the work that seemed to him to be necessary. The embodiment of strength of will, and driven by an irresistible urgency to work and originate, he formed a striking supplement to Gaetano, the tranquil servant of prayer and meditation.

Carafa’s career was also much more troubled and full of vicissitude than that of his friend. Born on the vigil of the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul (June 28) 1476, this scion of one of the oldest, noblest, and most influential families in the kingdom of Naples wished, while yet in his twelfth year, to enter the Dominican Order, but was prevented by his father, Gian Antonio, Baron of S. Angelo della Scala and, in right of his wife, Vittoria Camponesca, also Count of Montorio. Gian Pietro’s sister Maria, eight years his senior, felt the same vocation for the cloister. On Christ­mas night 1490 they both escaped from their parents’ house. The brother sought out the Dominicans, the sister the nuns of the same Order. Once more the father snatched his son from the cloister; but, on the other hand, he gave him permission to study theology for, as the nephew of an Archbishop and Cardinal, brilliant advancement seemed certain. On completing his studies in 1494 Gian Pietro received the tonsure, and in accordance with his father’s wishes he went to Rome to his uncle, Cardinal Oliviero Carafa. The latter wished at once to procure a bishopric for the lad of eighteen, who conscientiously refused to entertain the notion. Even later (about 1500), when a Papal chamberlain, he only accepted benefices to which the duty of residence was not attached. Entirely given up to study, prayer, and works of charity, he passed through the corrupt court of Alexander VI pure and unspotted. The keen insight of Julius II. soon recognized his worth; by 1503 he had appointed him a Protonotary and in 1504 Bishop of Chieti in the Abruzzi. Carafa accepted this honour unwillingly. From this and from the opposition of the Spanish government to the appointment of an offshoot of a family always inimical to their interests, we can explain why Carafa’s consecration did not take place until 1506. Immediately afterwards he was sent by Julius II. as Nuncio to Naples to welcome Ferdinand the Catholic on his arrival from Barcelona. On this occasion also Carafa had to experience the hardness of the Spanish character. Ferdinand flatly refused to pay the annual tribute on in­vestiture with the kingdom demanded by the Nuncio in the Pope’s name. He rejoiced when, in 1507, his mission came to an end, and at once returned to Chieti to find his diocese in an evil plight.

Carafa as a genuine reformer began to introduce an improvement by his own example and the change of behaviour in his household, in accordance with the motto adopted by him at this time: “For the time is, that judg­ment should begin at the house of God.” In his new position Carafa had often to resist the encroachments of the Spanish officials on his own jurisdiction. But no obstacle turned back this man of iron purpose. In every way, especially by his visitations, he laboured for five toilsome years to raise the standard of the diocese; so intent was he on this work that he did not attend the first four sittings of the Lateran Council. As soon as his diocese was to some extent set in order he went to Rome in the beginning of 1513 where, as a member of the commission for the restoration of peace and the removal of the schism, he soon attracted the attention of Leo X, who in 1513 appointed him Legate to Henry VIII. During his stay in England he came to know Erasmus, on whom he urged the duty of pre­paring an edition of the works of St. Jerome. Erasmus praised Carafa in a letter, speaking with admiration of his dignity, his eloquence, and his knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and theology. Leo X in 1515 sent him as Nuncio to Spain. On his journey thither he formed a friendship in Flanders at the court of Margaret of Austria with the Dominican, Juan Alvarez de Toledo, an earnest supporter of reform. At first his reception at the court of Ferdinand the Catholic was of the best; the King gave him a place on his Council and made him Vice Grand Chaplain. Carafa tried to make his influence felt in Aragonese affairs, on behalf of the independence of Naples. But all his attempts to move Ferdinand to a renunciation of that kingdom were unsuccessful. He appealed in vain to the conscience of the dying King, reminding him of his broken pledges to Frederick of Naples and his sons. This attitude also reacted on his relations with the new King, Charles. Although Carafa was on the King’s side during the revolt of the Comuneros, he was viewed with dislike at court. He was suspected of disclosing State secrets to the Pope, and one of his colleagues on the Council even taunted him with the words: “If the Neapolitans had their deserts, they would get dry bread and a stout stick”. When, on the appointment of a new Grand Chaplain, Carafa was passed over, he requested leave to retire. Charles V tried to reconcile him by appointing him Archbishop of Brindisi, but Carafa withdrew from the court in bitter displeasure. Henceforth a deep-rooted distrust and dislike of the Hapsburg King of Spain took possession of him.

But in other respects his long residence in Spain had been of great importance to Carafa. While it lasted he had formed friendly relations with the men who were anxious to carry out a scheme of reform on sound Catholic principles and without making a breach in the established order of things. He was in near touch not merely with Cardinal Ximenes but with Adrian of Utrecht and the Neapolitan, Tommaso Gazella di Gaeta. Powerful as the Spanish influences were in this connection, yet they must not be overrated. Like Adrian, Carafa had been a friend of reform long before he had come to know in Spain the fruits of the activity of a Ximenes. In one important point his plan of reform differed from the Spanish programme. He abominated any intru­sion of the secular power into the ecclesiastical sphere, and had, especially, a higher sense of his position as a churchman than the Spanish prelates. What was the amazement of the latter when Carafa once in the Chapel Royal replied to a court official who had asked him to delay beginning Mass until the King arrived : “ Within these sacred walls I represent the person of Christ, and therefore, vested with such an office, would deem it an indignity to await the coming of an earthly king.”

Carafa returned to Rome from Spain by Naples, where he restored the Confraternity of the Bianchi, who ministered to persons lying under sentence of death. When in 1520 he reached Rome, the affair of Luther was being discussed. Leo X made use of him during the deliberations; he also may have had a share in formulating the Bull of Condemnation, otherwise his chief occupation in Rome was the pursuit of works of charity; he was most constantly seen in a hospital for incurables he had founded earlier with the help of Ettore Vernacci, and in the Oratory of the Divine Love. Devoted as he was to the objects of this association, agreeing as they did with the motto of his choice, yet he was soon once more in his dioceses of Brindisi and Chieti, where a great field lay open for his reforming energies. He did not return to Rome until an express summons from Adrian VI. called him back in 1523. He gladly obeyed the request of the Pope, who was determined to give practical shape to his idea of reform. Of the impression made in Rome by Carafa we have some information from a letter of Paolo Giustiniani in which he gives an account of some of the devout men whose acquaintance he had made in the city. Carafa, he says, was a man of learning and humility, and so holy in his manner of life that no one in Rome could be compared with him. How much might have been hoped if such a man had been permitted to co-operate for long with the lofty-minded German Pope in his reforming efforts! But Providence had decreed otherwise. Carafa, in July 1523, had just obtained for Paolo Giustiniani a confirmation and extension of plenary powers for the congregation of the hermits of Camaldoli when Adrian died.

Carafa, with the penetration which was peculiar to him in such matters, perceived that Clement VII, notwithstanding his previous good intentions, could not be expected to follow the course on which his predecessor had entered. For a moment he dwelt on the thought of withdrawing himself into the solitude of the hermits of Camaldoli: fortunately for the Church, the bent of his character towards energetic work had the upper hand. Carafa was not mistaken in supposing that political interests would more and more predominate at the court of Clement VII.

In closest intimacy with the members of the Oratory of the Divine Love, and especially with Gaetano, he drew up new plans. With all their enthusiasm for the Oratory, these two friends were well aware that a mere confraternity offered no guarantee for a comprehensive and permanent renewal throughout the Church. Besides, since all ordinances from higher authority and all Papal decrees of reform were almost a dead letter, the idea was pressed home to them that, by the force of example, the deeply needed improvement might be begun first of all among the ranks of the secular clergy. Thus there ripened in the conversations of Carafa and Gaetano, to which some other friends, such as Bonifazio da Colle of Alessandria and the Roman Paolo Consiglieri had been admitted, the plan of substituting for the Oratory a special foundation with fixed rules and a life in community consisting of regular clerics in immediate dependence on the Holy See. Instead of the old orders which, partly from deterioration, partly from their organization, were no longer adapted to the needs of the times, a new institution, instinct with life, was to arise, the members of which, as simple priests of blameless life and faithfulness to their vocation, were to shed a guiding light of example before the great mass of the secular clergy, numbers of whom were sunk deep in the prevailing corruption. The fundamental idea of the founders was to form a society of devoted priests who should give themselves up entirely to the administration of the sacraments, the work of preaching, and the conduct of ecclesiastical ceremonies so as to set an example before the Church. Of friars there were plenty, and many were disreputable men; the members of the new Order, therefore, were not to bear names, many of which had fallen into wide discredit. At their head there was to be neither prior nor guardian, but simply a superior. Attention was also paid to the form and colour of their clothing; the customary black garment of the ordinary priest seemed the only suitable one for a community with the primary task before it of effecting by example and hard work a thorough reform in the secular clergy, and a return to apostolic standards of life.

While any imitation of the externals of the existing orders was thus avoided, Carafa and his associates were all the more anxious to be true to the inner character of lives devoted to a religious rule. They therefore demanded a secluded community life and the observance of the three vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty. On this last point they went much further than the followers of the poor man of Assisi. The members of the new institution were to practise poverty in its most rigorous form. They were to have no capital, no income; they might not even once ask for alms. Depending calmly on the divine providence, they were to wait for spontaneous gifts and in this way bring back clergy and people to the enthusiasm of the first Christians. A fountain-head of evil in the Church was the immoderate striving after possessions, whereby so many were enticed without vocation into the sanctuary. This grievous abuse was to be torn up by the roots by an association of priests subject to vows, and leading lives of poverty in the fullest sense. This idea had taken possession of two men sprung from families of noble descent, who thus sought to make expiation for the scandals brought on the Church by others in their own station in their pursuit of worldly possessions.

This summons to absolute poverty aroused in the Curia of Clement VII, where most men were absorbed in money and the acquisition of money, general observation and great opposition. If amid the chilling of Christian love the mendicant Orders were hardly able to exist, how could a new order maintain itself by repudiating the appeal to the alms of the faithful? To such objections Gaetano replied in the words of Christ: “Be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat; nor for your body, what you shall put on.” So fervently did he dwell on God’s providence in the presence of the Pope that the latter exclaimed: “I have not found such faith in Israel.” But difficulties of a more serious kind were not wanting. Gaetano had scruples in allowing Carafa to become a member, as he was already a bishop. Clement VII. on his side saw with reluctance so capable a man, to whom he had given an important function in respect of the reform of the Roman clergy, removed from his service. The Pope also feared the difficulty of finding a substitute for him in the dioceses of Chieti and Brindisi. But the fervent Carafa, supported by his old friends Giberti, Sadoleto, and Schonberg, gave Clement no rest until he yielded and consented to his resignation of the two sees. The decisive Brief, drawn up by Sadoleto, was issued on the 24th of June 1524. It gave permission to Carafa, Gaetano, and their associates, after solemnly taking the three essential vows, to live in community as regular clergy while wearing the garb of the ordinary ecclesiastic. They were to be in immediate subordination to the Pope, to choose a superior holding office for a period not longer than three years, while secular clergy and laymen were to be admitted to the vows after a probation of one year; they, moreover, held all the privileges of the Canons of the Lateran, together with permission to accept benefices with a cure of souls. The special constitutions were not to be presented for acceptance until later, when greater experience of their working had been acquired.

Gaetano now resigned all his benefices and handed over his patrimony to his kinsfolk. “I see Christ in poverty and I am rich,” he wrote on the 24th of August 1524; “He is despised, and I am honoured. I wish to draw one step nearer to Him, and therefore have resolved to renounce all yet remaining to me of this world’s goods.”

Carafa also distributed his property among needy relations and the poor; at the same time he resigned both his sees. This instance of a self-sacrifice unprecedented in that age created a great sensation; to many such a heroic step was simply unintelligible; others indulged in depreciation or ridicule, but Gaetano and Carafa went on their way unheeding. On the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14), 1524, in company with Bonifazio da Colle and Paolo Consiglieri, after receiving Holy Communion they presented, at the tomb of St. Peter, to Bonziano, Bishop of Caserta, as Apostolic Commissary, the Brief by which their institute was recognized as an Order, and then proceeded to take the solemn vows. Carafa was immediately afterwards chosen Superior, retaining, according to the desire of Clement VII, his title as Bishop. The new foundation was in closest communication with the Holy See, and its members, directly subject to the Pope, looked upon St. Peter as their special patron.

The new regulars, who were called Theatines or Chietines from Carafa’s first see, and sometimes Cajetans or Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence, were clad entirely in black; they always wore the cassock, high collar, and white stockings, and their head covering was the clerical biretta. Carafa strictly required them to be clean shaven and wear a large-sized tonsure. They lived, as much as possible, in seclusion; but when they appeared in public their demeanour was full of dignity. They began with a small house in the Strada Leonina, leading to the Campo Marzio, once the property of Bonifazio da Colle. On the 30th of April 1525 the first novice was received; he was the learned priest Bernardino Scotti, afterwards a Cardinal.

Before the close of 1525 Giberti provided the Theatines with a new dwelling on the Pincian, then quite unbuilt upon, where the Villa Medici now stands.[554] There they gave themselves up assiduously to prayer, meditation, the study of Holy Scripture, and the care of souls. Especially were they diligent in preaching, avoiding all profane alloy in their sermons and fervently teaching devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the frequentation of the sacraments. At the same time they aroused violent enmity and vulgar contempt; Carafa in particular suffered in this respect, for he stood high in Clement’s favour and, being the Superior of the community, was a representative personality. The worldly-minded ridiculed the new Order as a collection of laughable eccentrics who were neither monks nor simple clergy, but among the people respect for them increased on account of their mortified lives and their exemplary devotion to the sick and the poor pilgrims during the outbreak of the plague in the Jubilee year of 1525. A deep impression was made by the sight of men of illustrious and noble lineage, to whom all the enjoyments of life might have lain open, choosing of their own accord the strictest poverty and, without fear of infection, visiting the poor and plague-stricken in hospitals and private houses, to tend, cheer, and succour them in the pains of death. It was then that a nun of Ravenna declared that God was now sending His saving help to reform the Church and renew the lives of men.

Whoever led a more interior life, with greater piety and strictness than others, was spoken of as a Theatine. Even among the Roman clergy the earnestness and asceticism of the new Order, whose members, notwithstanding the almost insupportable scarcity, never lacked the necessaries of life, began to produce a wholesome effect. What a change was brought about in Rome by the quiet, plodding labours of the first Theatines is seen from a letter written on the 5th of January 1527 by one of themselves to their friends of like mind in Venice, who had charge of the Hospital for Incurables there. “Christ,” he says, “is now more feared and honoured here than in days past. The proud humble themselves, the good praise God, the wicked are without hope. Let us pray for their conversion, pray for the fathers, and specially for Carafa! God is making use of his own in the Church. Bethink you, the first prelates and lords in Rome, who at first despised us in their pride, now come daily to us with such submission, as if they were our servants, that I am quite ashamed. They show a willing spirit of penitence, prayer, and pious works. They do all that the fathers bid them. And yet more—daily the Holy Father asks for the prayers of us poor wretches.” He then goes on to relate how the great Tommaso Campeggio came one day to Carafa and asked him very humbly to bestow on him the episcopal consecration, which he had hitherto deferred, as he desired henceforward to be a true bishop of the see of Feltre. Although Campeggio was a man of learning, Carafa examined him as if he had been a simple priest. He submitted with touching humility, and might have received all the grades at once, and even have asked for consecration at the hands of the Pope himself; but he preferred to act in obedience to Carafa’s wishes. He fasted with the Theatines, kept the canonical hours along with them, and at each ordination communicated with such humility that all present were put to shame. Giberti too, at that time next to the Pope the most influential man in Rome, visited Carafa daily, and often shared with him his frugal meals. Just then Clement VII showed his attachment to the Theatines by the bestowal of new indulgences. The new community grew day by day in men’s regard, but their labours in support of the hospitals and other benevolent institutions did not diminish in zeal.

Carafa and Gaetano looked to the future in hope and joy. Then came the catastrophe of the sack of Rome; Carafa, Gaetano, and their twelve associates were brutally treated by the soldiers and thrown into prison. They managed, as by a miracle, to escape from the hands of their tormentors. The Venetian envoy, Venier, took compassion upon them in Ostia and was the means of enabling them to make the journey to Venice, which they reached in June. The Confraternity of the Hospital for Incurables, with whom they had always had close ties, procured for them in their entire destitution a refuge at S. Eufemia. Thence they migrated to S. Gregorio, and finally found a suitable community house in the Oratory of S. Nicola da Tolentino.

The Theatines, who had, on the 14th of September 1527, chosen Gaetano as Superior, lived as retired a life in Venice as in Rome, so that they were spoken of as the “hermits.” They continued to urge the frequent use of the sacraments; they were also occupied with raising the observance of divine worship to a higher level of solemnity and with the improvement of the Breviary by the excision of unhistorical narratives. Their pastoral zeal, their heroism amid the famine and plague of 1528, won them an increase of friends, and one of their greatest benefactors was the Doge Andrea Gritti.

It was of the greatest importance for the Theatines that in Venice they came into closer relations with such eminent advocates of Catholic reform as Gasparo Contarini, Reginald Pole, and the regenerator of the Benedictine Order, Gregorio Cortese. The garden of S. Georgio Maggiore, Cortese’s monastery, was the scene of many learned and pious conversations, for which reason Bruccioli chose it as the background for his “Dialogue on Moral Philosophy” Carafa drew up the earliest rules for the Theatines, over whom he was again Superior from 1530 to 1533. The object of these statutes was the formation of a blameless type of priestly character enjoying the utmost possible freedom for the exercise of the different branches of the pastoral office. The several rules were not to bind the members of the Order under sin.

Carafa showed great prudence in his guidance of the Order. When Clement-VII, in February 1533,2 enjoined the erection of an affiliated house in Naples, the Superior raised difficulties, for he feared lest his slender forces should be broken up. The Pope, in entire confidence, left the matter to Carafa’s sole decision. The latter did not make up his mind until August, and then sent two of his best colleagues, Gaetano and Giovanni Marino, to Naples, where the Theatines, supported by Gian Antonio Caracciolo, soon secured a firm footing. Gaetano, who was the Superior in Naples, although in other respects a gentle character, was inflexible in the observance of the strictest poverty, as he showed in his resistance to the Count of Oppido, who wished to press upon the Neapolitan house settled revenues. In order to escape from him Gaetano moved into the Hospital for Incurables. Afterwards he obtained a new house through the good offices of the devout Maria Laurenzia Longa, who was to become the foundress of the Capuchin nuns.

Gaetano was also quite as strict as Carafa in the reception of new members. This and the requirement of complete poverty accounts for their numbers not having exceeded, after nine years, one-and-twenty persons. Consequently the burden of work falling on the individual members became so heavy that Clement VII, in 1529, ordered other forms of prayer to be substituted for the daily office to relieve those who were already over­charged with the duties of study, visiting the sick, and the confessional.

The system of scrupulous selection observed by the founders of the Order had thoroughly justified itself. The great success of the Theatines undoubtedly is to be attributed to no small extent to this characteristic, that here a small, carefully chosen circle of men, deeply schooled in obedience to the Church, formed, as it were, a corps d’élite with which Carafa won his victories. Thus the Theatine Order was not so much a seminary for priests, as at first might have been supposed, as a seminary for bishops who rendered weighty service to the cause of Catholic reform. One of the chief causes of the failure attending the efforts of Adrian VI. was the want of a suitable organism to carry into effect the right measures; such an organism was found in the new Order.

In Rome Carafa had many opponents, especially among the worldly minded Cardinals. It is to the credit of Clement VII that he almost always was on the side of Carafa in his many encounters, and that he fostered the development of the Order by means of extensive privileges. In the presence of the secularized character of the episcopate, Carafa held it to be of the greatest importance that his community should remain in direct dependence on the Holy See. He knew no rest until this vital point was expressly settled by a Brief issued on the 7th of March 1533 which also contained yet other graces and privileges.

Full of rejoicing and encouragement at the Pope’s support the Theatines worked, as Carafa expressed it in writing, day and night. Although often visited with illness Carafa was indefatigable in hearing confessions and preaching; an ardent lover of souls, he sought out the erring, thinking the conversion of sinners the priest’s first task. It is astonishing how he also found time for other occupations as well. From the time when Clement VII, in 1529, had appointed him to bring order into the complicated situation of the Greeks in Venice and to renew a better life in the eremitical settlements in Dalmatia, his activity had gone on increasing; where the question of reform arose he was at once active. He endeavoured to influence the Pope through Giberti, and made representations to him with frankness and courage. In his correspondence he addressed himself not merely to members of religious orders who had gone astray, but to bishops who neglected their duties. “Why do you not preach?” he wrote to one of them, “if you are not able to, you ought not to have taken the bishopric.” In Verona, again at the Pope’s special request, he supported the work of Giberti. In Naples in 1530 his advice was of powerful aid to his sister in her reform of the Dominican convents. In the same year Clement entrusted him with the process against the Lutheran Galateo and with the much-needed reform of the Franciscans of the province of Venice. A more suitable choice seemed impossible, for Carafa was on excellent terms with the Venetian authorities and he praised the Republic as the seat of Italian freedom and the bulwark against the barbarians. In course of time he acquired in Venice a peculiar and important position. He intervened in the politico-ecclesiastical disputes between the Republic and the Pope; in this as in other instances it was to his advantage that the Signoria preferred the services of a man uninfluenced by private interest, who was more than a prelate merely in name and not absorbed in ecclesiastical affairs only, to those of the Nuncio. Carafa’s reputation in the highest circles stood so high that the ambitious Signoria, even in purely political affairs, such as the boundary disputes with Ferdinand I, made use of his and asked him to draw up for them a memorial on the reform of ecclesiastical conditions. Even if his intention to punish heresy before all things met with no response, his position in the Republic was none the less a most influential one.

Carafa was not discouraged when his endeavours to meet heresy in Venice with severity fell through. He now had recourse to Rome, for in October 1532, in an exhaustive memorial to the Pope, he drew a deplorable picture of the religious condition of Venice and with the greatest candour made far-reaching proposals for the removal of abuses. Together with stringent measures against heretics Carafa called most emphatically for a thorough reform of the degenerate Venetian clergy; for he knew well that mere measures of repression would only touch the symptoms of the disease without being able to cut at its root.

Carafa laid down that the sources of heresy were three­fold : bad preaching, bad books, and bad ways of living. What he had already for three or four years been calling the attention of his Holiness to, he once more exposed: a commission, consisting of the Patriarch, the bishops, and some men of approved piety, should be appointed to examine all clergy desirous of preaching and hearing confessions, with regard to their probity and manner of life, their vocation, and the Catholic faith. Those only who were found worthy should be allowed in future to exercise pastoral functions. Henceforth no exceptions should be made to this rule. Carafa, without hesitation, gives a warning against these examinations being left in the hands of the generals of orders. He dismisses as absolutely unworthy of notice the fear that monks suspended from the pulpit and the confessional would become heretics, or that the number of qualified priests would be a small one; better that they should be few but good. How much depends on the preacher requires no illustration. Of still greater importance is the function of the confessor; what Carafa here reports of the abuses that had crept into this institution make his indignation intelligible. There were convents of Conventuals in which friars, who were not even priests, installed themselves in the confessionals in order to filch a couple of soldi. In consequence of the horrible scandals caused by such proceedings, the majority of the Venetian upper classes neglected their Easter confession. In this connection Carafa went on to speak of the monstrous abuse of the vagabond monks, against whom the strongest measures should be taken. The penitentiaries, greedy of fees, must be restrained from the heedless issue of dispensations to leave the cloister. A new Grand Penitentiary1 having just been appointed, now was the exact moment to take steps, and monks who had become secularized should be deprived of all pastoral charges.

Carafa saw a further source of grave abuses in the decay of the episcopate. The great majority of the bishops neglecting the duty of residence, the office of chief shepherd had become an unreality. Ambition led the bishops from court to court, while they relegated their diocesan duties to degenerate monks who called themselves titular or suffragan bishops. These subordinates conferred orders in many instances for money on unworthy and incompetent men, even on boys of sixteen. Hence the contempt for the priesthood and the Holy Mass among the people. In the presence of such scandals, what reply could be made to the heretics who saw in them cause of exultation? So noisome is this state of things, exclaims Carafa, that every place reeks with its foulness. If, in spite of the excellent enactments of 1524, there are still to be found in Rome many who will without conscience bestow holy orders, what measure can one take of the state of things in Venice? All these unprincipled titular bishops should be deprived of ordaining faculties, but those already ordained must be thoroughly examined, and all who are unworthy be suspended.

Carafa ends by speaking once more of the incredible corruption of the religious orders, on whose condition the salvation or the ruin of mankind depends. That Carafa does not exaggerate in his description of the disorders here prevailing is proved by the contemporary reports of the Nunciatures. But deep as the wounds of the Church at large were. Carafa still saw the means of healing if only the Pope would make use of them. Two things, above all, were necessary: in the orders in which abuses prevailed, further decay must be arrested; a free hand must be given to the few good remaining by separating them from the bad. Thus only can a real reform be opened up, as even Eugenius IV. had perceived in his day, and as Spain and Portugal have attempted with good results in more recent times. Although every Order has need of a regenera­tion, yet this is especially the case with the Franciscans ; therefore with them a beginning might be made, and that certainly at once in Venice.

CHAPTER XXVI

Gian Matteo Giberti.—The Somaschi and the Barnabites.

The comprehensive reform of the secular and regular clergy as demanded by Carafa for Venice in his memorial of 1532, had already been begun since 1528 in the diocese of Verona by a member of the Oratory of the Divine Love. The man from whom, in this case, came the impetus towards improvement was one of Carafa’s most sincere friends, and at the same time deep in the confidence of Clement VII, Gian Matteo Giberti.

He was born at Palermo in 1495, the illegitimate son of a Genoese admiral, and while yet a youth of eighteen became a secretary to Cardinal Medici, greatly against his wish, for, being of a pious disposition and fond of retirement, he had longed to enter some religious order. He submitted, however, to his father’s wishes. As secretary to the Cardinal, Giberti showed such devotion to his work that he not only won the entire confidence of his master, but also the special favour of Leo X. As time went on he was initiated into the most important political and ecclesiastical business. In the completion of the offensive alliance of the 8th of May 1521, between the Pope and the Emperor, he took a part of no small importance. Notwithstanding his many political preoccupations, Giberti found time as well for his spiritual and mental development. He was in close relations with many of the humanists of Leonine Rome, who were glad to find a rallying-point in his house; one of his particular friends was Vida, who had also celebrated Giberti’s ordination to the priesthood in a beautiful ode.

After Leo X’s death Giberti continued to be of the household of Cardinal Medici, who sent him on a mission to Henry VIII and Charles V. On his return from Spain he came with Adrian VI to Rome. Even then, although he looked young in years, he seemed to have the wisdom and virtue of the aged; it therefore caused no surprise when Clement appointed him his Datary and at once made use of him as his first minister. Giberti would have preferred the quiet fulfilment of his priestly duties to his novel position, which, although highly influential, was also an agitating one. But he did not possess enough determination to say “No” with firmness; his loyalty to his master turned the scale against himself. For the same reason, from having been in the highest degree friendly to the Emperor, he became one of the most ardent champions of the League of Cognac. In these years of unresting political activity at Rome, as well as on foreign embassies, he displayed astonishing capacity for work; but the excessive strain sowed the seeds of great irritability. As Datary his conduct was irreproachable; in other respects also he gave evidence of a sterling character in close sympathy with the noblest personages of his time, among others with Vittoria Colonna. The Pope was justified in placing full confidence in him.

In August 1524 Clement had already bestowed upon him, to his great reluctance, the bishopric of Verona. He would now gladly have broken with Rome, and devoted, himself to the administration of his neglected see; but the Pope held back his trusted servant. Giberti from Rome did all he could to regenerate morally and intellectually the regular and secular clergy of Verona, a work in which Clement gave him ready support. He also took an active share in the efforts at reform during the opening years of this pontificate, as well as being the animating spirit of all that was good in Rome. With Carafa he was on terms of closest intimacy, and rendered him most important services in connection with the founding of the Theatine Order. His greatest delight was to pass his time in their pious circle and that of the Oratory of the Divine Love, regretting that there was so little of it to spare from the hard claims of his political engagements.

Notwithstanding his increasing distaste for political life, Giberti persevered in his loyal devotion to the Pope; with him he passed through the calamitous years 1526 and 1527 in Rome, and shared the captivity in St. Angelo. Thence he went as a hostage to the Imperialist camp, where he was placed in chains and narrowly escaped execution. During those terrible days the old unquenched longing for a life of tranquil occupation in sacred things revived with increased energy. He now reproached himself bitterly for not having listened earlier to the voice of God calling him to carry out his duties as a bishop resident amid his people. From his captivity, he begged Carafa, on the 15th of November 1527, to go to Verona in his stead and reform that diocese; at the same time he expressed the hope that his misfortunes might open a way for that which had so long been the object of his desire—to withdraw from political life and give himself up entirely to his ecclesiastical work. “Willingly will I carry these fetters,” he added, “if they should become the occasion for freeing myself from other bonds which I have found not less heavy to bear.”

Giberti succeeded in escaping from his persecutors, and at Orvieto informed the Pope of his resolve to withdraw to his diocese; Clement tried in vain to keep him at his side. On the 7th of January 1528 he had already reached Venice. One of the first whom he visited was Carafa, with whom he was in full agreement on the points of Church reform, the better preparation and closer examination of the clergy, and the radical restoration of discipline in the religious orders. If Carafa had been formerly his counsellor in spiritual matters, so was he also now when the arduous work was about to begin of transforming a diocese given over to the secular spirit into an example of what a reformed bishopric should be.

What he did in this respect is best understood from a description of the state of things he had to encounter on entering his see. Many of the clergy were non-resident, leaving the cure of souls to hirelings who, for the most part, were persons of demoralized habits. The ignorance of many of them was so great that Giberti had to order the rubrics of the Missal to be translated into Italian for the sake of those who knew no Latin. Preaching in many places had been given up altogether. The confessional was treated with laxity, and the churches were so neglected that they looked like stables. There was a corresponding disorder in the lives of the people, who had sunk into the worst vices.

Giberti entered on the difficult task of reform with great courage, but with even greater wisdom and calmness. First and foremost he relied on the influence of his personal example. In accordance with the bad custom of his times, even Giberti had gone further than was right in the accumulation of benefices; now he resigned all those to which a cure of souls was attached. The incomes of the rest, which he conscientiously believed himself entitled to retain, he spent only on worthy objects. But in other respects also he underwent a great change of character. The geniality, which no burdens of statecraft could destroy, disappeared, and he embraced the strict asceticism for which he became famous.[His day was divided between prayer and work, and his table was one of the most frugal. In the performance of his ecclesiastical functions he set the best example. Unwearied in giving audience, he first gave access to the poor, then to country-folk, and lastly to the citizens of Verona. Naturally prone to impulsiveness, he listened with the utmost patience to everything brought before him; in deed and word he was at every man’s disposal.

In his diocese he at once started on trenchant reforms in which he displayed the practical sense acquired during long years of experience of affairs. How much depended on the presence of a resident bishop was now made apparent. Formerly he had made attempts at reform through his representatives, but in an inadequate way; now, under his own eye, a different state of things was set in motion. In November 1528 it was already reported from Verona: “The priests in this diocese are marked men; all are examined; the unworthy or unsuitable suspended or removed from their offices; the gaols are full of concubinarii; sermons for the people are preached incessantly; study is encouraged; the bishop, by his life, sets the best example.”

In January 1529 Giberti undertook the visitation of his diocese. He wished in this way to carry into practical effect his numerous ordinances, and devoted the closest attention to the visitation, which was partly conducted in person and partly by delegates. With a small retinue he went from village to village undeterred by any obstacle, so great was his holy zeal; on one occasion he was nearly drowned in a flooded stream. When he reached a parish he chose in preference the worst quarters for the night, and went into a minute examination of the conduct of the clergy, the condition of the churches, and the lives of the common people. In a volume specially set apart for this purpose he noted down the actual facts of each case. That his information might not be one-sided, he also heard laymen and gave them practical encouragement in their troubles. In order to bring long-standing enmities to an end, this man of refined culture did not shrink from seeking out the rudest peasants and exhorting them on his knees to be reconciled to one another. He had a wonderful way of combining gentleness with strength. In cases of gravity he was inexorable in using excommunication and public penances. With his clergy he was urgent in insisting on .the exact observance of the duty of residence and the maintenance of irreproachable conduct. Whoever failed in these respects was dismissed without regard to the patron, even if he were a bishop. At first Giberti refused to allow any female, not even a sister, to be the inmate of a priest’s house; but at a later date somewhat relaxed on this point, and permitted women of whose integrity he was personally convinced to act as housekeepers. In order to put a stop to the tenure of a plurality of benefices with cure of souls attached, he caused all dispensations, hitherto given in such cases by Rome, to be revoked. The execution of the visitation orders was to be carefully watched over by his vicarii foranei; in addition to which the parish priest or preacher was to send him reports.

In order to ensure a regular and continuous discharge of the cure of souls, Giberti took particular pains to restore the former dignity of the office of parish priest. He therefore forbade stringently any encroachment on their rights by the religious orders, and insisted on parishioners attending on Sundays and festivals the parish priest’s Mass, while the latter was not to be celebrated in the other churches. The erection of new chapels and the saying of Mass in private houses he tried to limit as much as possible.

The worship of the parish church was to be conducted with the utmost possible solemnity and dignity; therefore the closest observance of the ritual and due reverence on the part of the celebrant were strictly enjoined. Giberti’s exactitude in these respects is shown by his reprimanding such an apparently insignificant offence as a priest laying his biretta on the altar. But of greater importance to him than any externals were inward piety and purity of heart. He therefore enjoined on all priests weekly confession. He sought to ensure a faultless administration of the sacraments by numerous instructions, some of which went into minute details. The reservation of the Holy Eucharist In a locked tabernacle on the high altar, and the ringing of the bell at the elevation seem to have been introduced first by him. He also sought to promote the adoration of the most Holy Sacrament by means of confraternities. He subjected confessors to the strictest discipline, and by the suspension of all who were unfit and by repeated examina­tions he cleansed their ranks inexorably. Here also he was not indifferent to externals; confessors were always to exercise their office wearing cotta and stole and seated as judges, not standing, as often happened when the penitents were persons of high station. It is not improbable that the confessionals of the shape now generally in use originated with Giberti.

Parish priests were also exhorted to administer con­scientiously the revenues of their churches, and to keep a watchful eye over the schools, hospitals, associations and confraternities, the poor, the widows and orphans; but especially he bade them lay to heart the need of a fruitful ministry of preaching. This was well timed in view of the danger of Lutheran teaching being introduced, against which Giberti had already issued a strong edict on the 10th of April 1530: In every parish church throughout the year on Sundays and festivals the Gospel of Christ was to be preached to the people in “love and simplicity of heart, without superfluous quotations from poets or the discussion of theological subtleties.” Without the permission of the bishop, preaching was not to be allowed preachers from without were enjoined to consult the parish priest as to the special requirements of the congregation. Giberti tried to secure the best preachers in Italy for the cathedral and conventual churches of Verona. He often despatched them into country places where the priests were frequently not competent to preach; he also instituted instructions for children on Sunday afternoons. Even the peasants gathered round the church doors before the beginning of divine service were not forgotten by this zealous bishop; an acolyte was to be sent out to them to read aloud from some sacred book.

Together with the reform of the secular clergy went that of the Orders. There were certainly still some monasteries of excellent character, but in many others corruption had reached an unbearable pitch. Giberti entered on the campaign with spirit.1 Clement VII. gave him special powers with regard to the exempt convents of men. All preachers and confessors were put under the same strict regulations as the secular clergy, and visited with the severest punishment in cases of moral delinquency. With great vigour Giberti also set himself against the abuses connected with the system of indulgences, which for the most part was carried on by monks. Through his representations to the Holy See it was settled that in future no questor was to collect alms in the diocese of Verona without Giberti’s permission, and all powers to the contrary, even if they originated with the Pope himself, were to be declared null. In the autumn of 1528 Giberti had already begun the visitation of the convents of nuns. He often made his appearance at an entirely unexpected hour. He collected detailed information on all points. Some convents he closed; others he improved by the introduction of good elements; in all he took care, as a matter of the first importance, to have good confessors. In some convents of women where the corruption was deep-seated, and where rich and powerful relatives were mixed together, Giberti met with incredible difficulties. He therefore in 1531 had his regulations for the reform of nunneries confirmed by the Doge. In these convents he even forbade the use of the organ and artistic choir singing. The severest precautionary rules were drawn up for the observance of the enclosure and the probation of novices. Here Giberti recurs to the principle of his old friends Gaetano and Carafa: better to have few and good, than many and useless.

Still greater difficulties than those caused by refractory nuns awaited Giberti in his Cathedral Chapter. Here as elsewhere exemptions stood in the way of the execution of his enactments. On this account Clement VII had already given him, in 1525, full jurisdiction over all exempts. As the Canons proved stubborn, the Pope on the 26th of March 1527 removed by express order the Cathedral Chapter from the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Aquileia, and placed them directly under that of the Holy See, naming Giberti, for life, Legatus natus, for the city and diocese of Verona. When Giberti, on the ground of this appointment, installed a provost in 1529, the Canons left the cathedral and held their choir services in S. Elena. Although Rome pronounced in the Bishop’s favour, the Chapter kept up their resistance. Not until January 1530 was Carafa, as mediator, able to bring about an agreement to which Giberti, with great magnanimity, consented. Nevertheless, at a later date there were fresh misunder­standings with the Chapter

On other occasions also serious conflicts arose with the corrupt clergy as well as with the citizens; Carafa, and on one occasion also Gaetano, had to intervene. It went so far that Clement VII thought that Giberti ought to give up his difficult post and return to Rome, but he had no intention of doing so. He certainly obeyed the Pope’s summons to come to him in 1529 and 1532, but he went back to his diocese as soon as it was possible. Even the Cardinalate, in connection with which his name was so often mentioned, had no attraction for him. Patiently and gently he worked at the reform of his clergy, always receiving steady support from Clement.

Giberti never allowed his devoted efforts to relieve the physical and moral wretchedness of his people to relax. The social activity of the Bishop of Verona was an almost unique phenomenon in that age. It formed a beautiful complement to his activity as a Church reformer, although in that capacity he always kept his eyes steadily fixed on the broad ranks of the people. With fatherly love he provided for the accommodation of the sick, poor, and orphaned children, and opened Sunday schools for the lower classes. He founded in Verona a refuge for poor young women in way of temptation, and another for those who had fallen. A sign of the practical sense which was uppermost in all he did was his endeavour to find domestic service or husbands for those who, under such circumstances, had come back to a better life. At the same time he made regulations to check the prevalence of public immorality in the city.

Giberti endeavoured to give an entirely new start to works of public benevolence by reforming the confraternities intended to carry out such purposes, but most of which had become disorganized. On the model of the Monte di Pieta at Verona he caused similar institutions to be set up by the country priests in their parishes. They were not to be used merely as pawn­shops, but also as mutual loan societies which should prevent the peasantry from having recourse to Jewish usurers.

In order to remedy the mendicancy which, in true Italian fashion, had become intolerable in Verona, he founded the Society of Charity, composed of clerical and lay members, and obtained for it from Clement VII all the graces conferred on the “Societas Pauperum” in Rome. The new association, which met every month, was a sort of Society of St. Vincent de Paul for the material and moral elevation of the poor. The members supplied the really deserving with money, provisions, and articles of clothing, procured medical attendance for the sick, furnished dowries for poor girls, dissolved concubinage, undertook legal proceedings for widows and orphans, and made peace between obstinate enemies. Francesco Zini is right in calling this “society of Christian love” the greatest and noblest of all Giberti’s works, surpassing all the rest together in the way that charity surpasses all other virtues. This most benevolent institution, which Giberti first of all raised with such care in Verona, was afterwards spread by him throughout the country. In every parish seven men were chosen to carry out, together with the priest, all works of Christian charity, and at the same time to act as a sort of moral police. The object of such an association, writes Francesco Zini, is “that no man should offend God, no man suffer hunger, no man do injury to his neighbour, no man, above all things, commit sin, no man be deprived of the necessities of life; finally, that enmity and all hatred and anger should be taken away, so that we, as men once did in the first and happiest days of the Church, should all live with one heart and one soul in the fear and praise of God.”

Giberti, in the midst of his strenuous exertions, found his one recreation in the pursuit of knowledge and the society of learned men. Every leisure hour he devoted to study, especially of the Holy Scriptures in the original text and the commentaries of the Fathers; from the primitive sources he wished to become familiar with the discipline of the ancient Church, the ever-present ideal of his efforts at reform. To many of the humanists, scattered abroad by the tempest of the sack of Rome, his see of Verona became an asylum of hospitality. Under his patronage arose an association of men of learning and poets known as the Accademia Gibertina. In the pleasant loggia of the episcopal palace, looking down on the Adige, this company met together within sight of one of the most beautiful of Italian landscapes. But even in this atmosphere Giberti did not forget the question of ecclesiastical reform. He tried to entice the poets from the profane to the religious muse, he urged the philologists to translate and comment on works of religion, notably the Greek Fathers. For this purpose he set up in his house a private printing press in which Greek types were specially prepared. The humanist Tullio Crispolai, a member of the Oratory of the Divine Love, prepared, at his instance, a small Catechism and a Manual for Preachers.

The example thus set was not lost on other bishops. To confine oneself to the reign of Clement and his personal encouragement, among the foremost may be named Cardinal Bernhard Cles in Trent, Cardinal Cornaro in Brescia, Pietro Lippomano in Bergamo, Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga in Mantua, Cardinal Ridolfi in Vicenza, Aleander in Brindisi, Vincenzo Carafa in Naples, Vida in Alba, Federigo Fregoso in Salerno and Gubbio, Girolamo Arsagi in Nice, Sadoleto at Carpentras, Ludovico Canossa at Bayeux, who were all followers of Giberti’s reforming zeal. Each of these prelates had a high sense of his official responsibility; some of their ordinances, for example the visitations conducted by Cardinal Gonzaga in his diocese, point unmistakably to the influence of the Bishop of Verona.

That this change in the character of the episcopate was due in great part to Carafa’s untiring energy is substantiated by not a few witnesses, and his influence was often direct.

There was, at the same time, a slow but gradual revival of synodal life in Italy. Clement VII while yet a Cardinal had organized a Provincial Council at Florence in accordance with the regulations of the Lateran Council. Cardinal Farnese, supported by his excellent Vicar-General, Bartolommeo Guidiccioni, after beginning in 1516 to lay the foundations of reform in his diocese of Parma by visitations, held in the same city in November 1519 a diocesan synod. Rangoni, in 1522, did the same in Modena, and in the autumn of 1534 Giberti was thus active in Verona. Synods held in Poland, Germany, France, and England showed, under Clement VII, the same interest in Church reform. Amid the general confusion signs of fresh life were stirring at points of the Church’s life the most remote from one another. That this reaction should have found its greatest impetus soonest and most decisively in Italy was due largely to Giberti. His example was a stimulus raising a zealous emulation in an increasing number of bishops; St. Charles Borromeo himself did not disdain to follow in the steps of Giberti, and the voice of the latter has been embodied in not a few of the decrees of the Council of Trent Verona, although a see of small extent, became a source of super­abundant blessing to the Church at large.

The Catholic reformation set on foot by Giberti was eminently popular in character. It was not devised in a scholar’s study, and thus did not primarily apply to the learned but to the great bulk of the middle and lower classes. Among the latter a point of contact was reached with an undercurrent of religion which, even in the worst days of the Italian Renaissance, had always been a living force.

The distresses of the time—and this was a point of great importance for the carrying through of Catholic reform—played their own part in giving a stronger impetus to this movement. The horsemen of the Apocalypse, war, famine, and death, depicted at the close of the fifteenth century by Dürer as portents of things coming on the earth, made the circuit of Italy with their accompanying horrors. Like a hurricane let loose the furies of war harried the land, devastating dwellings and fields and driving men before them. The garden of Europe was changed at last into a field of slaughter covered with dead, and soon to become a hotbed of pestilence. The frightful events they saw, the sufferings they underwent, roused the population to a pitch of excitement which was not diminished by the constant predictions of hermits and solitaries.

An exceptionally deep impression was made by the crowning catastrophe of the sack of Rome, by which the leading members of the Oratory of the Divine Love were driven from the city to upper Italy, where a fresh sphere of fruitful activity was opened to them. The moral effect of this disaster was greater even than the material loss.

Throughout all Italy, and in all other countries of Europe as well, the sound of lamentation arose over the ruin of a city which, from century to century, had exercised a matchless witchery over the minds of men. Unheard-of atrocity and infamy, murder, violence, robbery, plunder, fire and sacrilege of the worst kind had visited Rome the eternal, and turned the scene of a brilliant civilization, the centre of the literary and artistic Renaissance, the seat of the supreme government of the Church, into a waste place over which hovered the breath of pestilence. As in the days of St. Jerome so now many a writer bewailed in prose and verse the downfall of the lordly city. In a letter to Sadoleto, Erasmus expressed himself in the words: “It is not the city, but the world that has gone to ruin.” Here spoke the humanist. The sack marked, in fact, the end of the Renaissance, the end of the Rome of Julius II and Leo X.

A world had disappeared, a new one had to arise in its place. The connection between the Papacy and the Renaissance on its pagan side was doomed to be dissolved in time, and the catastrophe which brought their union to such a pitiful end introduced the subsequent great sobering of human society and prepared the way for the Catholic reformation. This terrible event became one of the great land­marks not merely of literary and artistic but also of religious history. Generally, among heretical Germans as well as orthodox Spaniards and easy-living Italians, the horrors of the sack of Rome were looked upon as a just judgment of God on the deep depravity of the chief city of Christendom, a frightful retribution for the evil example given to the world by many prelates and not a few Popes during the age of the Renaissance. In Italy this was the view taken not merely by the educated, but by the masses of the

The knowledge that God had punished with fire and sword the iniquity that cried to heaven from the Eternal City brought many to examine their own hearts. Even so ardent a disciple of the culture of the Renaissance as Pierio Valeriano had now to admit that they had had no firm principles of life to offer, and that a revolution in morals had become a necessity. In the school of suffering men were beginning to learn better and purer things. As once amid the storms which accompanied the downfall of the Roman Empire, so now many men of noble birth took refuge in solitude and penance. All the better elements in the Church recognized the guilt in which all more or less were implicated. This self-knowledge was bound by degrees to bring on a reaction. No less a person than Sadoleto saw therefore, with prophetic vision, in the misery of the present the gleams of a new dawn, the coming purification of the souls of men. “If,” he wrote to the Pope, “the wrath and might of God have been satisfied by our calamities, if this fearful punishment should open a way once more for a better morality and better laws, then perhaps our misfortune has not been the greatest that could befall us. What is God’s own, God can take care of; but we have before us a life of renewal that no power of the sword can wrest from us; only let us so direct our acts and thoughts as to seek the true glory of the priesthood, and our own true greatness and strength in God.”

Clement VII and many Cardinals and prelates with him had indeed, in their hour of calamity, entered into their own hearts. But the former, a Medici to the core, was brought back only too soon into the labyrinth of politics; many prelates also led lives as before, but an entire restoration of the previous state of things was impossible. With Clement’s successor came the immediate perception of the task imposed on the Papacy for a century to come by the apostasy of the North. The speech delivered by Bishop Stafileo on the reassembling of the Rota on the 15th of May 1528 is a remarkable proof of the serious change in many members of the Curia as well. After a description of all that Rome had undergone through plunder, pestilence, and famine, the Bishop put the question why the capital of the world had been so sorely visited. He answered with a frank confession of sin recalling that of Adrian VI: “Because all flesh has become corrupt, because we are not citizens of the holy city of Rome, but of Babylon, the city of corruption.” Stafileo did not shrink from applying to Rome the apocalyptic image of the woman of Babylon. From the terrible catastrophe whereby the Lord had driven the buyers and sellers from His temple he drew for himself and his colleagues the lesson that they should now amend themselves and administer justice incorruptibly. “We have all sinned grievously,” he exclaimed; “ let us reform, turn to the Lord, and He will have pity upon us.”

The sack had, like a storm, cleared the air of Rome and left ineffaceable traces behind. The city had suffered too much ever again to become the brilliant, deeply corrupt Rome of Leo X. The indiscriminate enthusiasm for classical antiquity, the life of splendour and festivity with its moral decay, which the great masters of art with difficulty concealed, all the joyous spirit of the Renaissance, had gone for ever. The feast of Pasquino, once neglected but restored in 1525, became a failure; the frolics of the Carnival fell flat. Instead of the half-pagan masquerades on feast­days religious processions were now seen in the streets, and the voices of preachers of penance had more attraction for the Romans than the compositions of poets and musicians.

The destruction had, indeed, been so great, so much that was good had been swept away with the bad, that Rome at first was but a barren field for such religious efforts. The Oratory of the Divine Love, indeed, renewed its life, but Carafa’s attempt to bring about a fresh settlement of the Theatines did not succeed.

The horrors of war were not confined to the Papal States. Lombardy in particular suffered hardly less, on the whole, than Rome; war, hunger, plague, and the Spanish methods of extortion drove the inhabitants to despair. The most productive portions of the country resembled a desert infested by prowling wolves; by 1528 the famine was so great that the peasants looked on the flesh of dogs, cats, and mice as dainties. These half-famished wretches fled to Venice in such numbers that there also there was a heavy rise in prices. Among those who were foremost in their heroic efforts of charity to aid the prevailing misery, the Venetian noble Girolamo Miani was conspicuous.

Born in 1481, Miani had devoted himself to military service and had lived entirely for the world. In the war of the Republic with Maximilian I he was taken prisoner, but had a wonderful deliverance and in consequence became converted. By penitential exercises and works of charity he sought to atone for his former life; his favourite prayer was, “Most sweet Jesus, be not my judge but my redeemer.” In 1518 he entered the priesthood and thenceforward lived only for good works, closely attached to Carafa and directed by him. His labours in the famine and plague year of 1528 aroused the admiration of all; he sold the whole of the furniture of his house to help the needy; at night he buried the dead, their bodies, on account of the great mortality, often being left lying on the streets. An attack of typhus, contracted during his self-sacrificing work, raised him to still higher stages of perfection. On his recovery he renounced, in February 1531, all his means of living in order to devote himself as a mendicant to the service of the poor. He was specially moved to compassion by the troops of orphan children wandering about in utter destitution. He collected them in a house near San Rocco, where they were simply provided for, received religious instruction, and were trained in some handicraft, a point which he thought of great importance. In order that the children might not in tender years become accustomed to ways of idleness and beggary, he repeated to them constantly, “The man who will not work, shall not eat.” The Venetian Government supported his philanthropic efforts, in which Miani was helped by a settler from Vicenza.

Orphanages were also founded on the same footing by Miani in Brescia and Bergamo; in the latter town he also instituted a house of refuge for the fallen. He soon included in his programme instruction for the country people, and gathered round him a number of excellent priests and also devout laymen Thus a religious association was formed occupied in the first instance with the management of the orphan asylums founded by Miani, but with the special care besides of other victims of misfortune, the sick, the poor, the ignorant. From their place of meeting, the lonely village of Somasca, near Bergamo, the members got their name of Somaschi.

Miani had always followed Carafa as his spiritual guide; if the latter declined the honour of being at the head of this new association of Clerks Regular, he was yet their intellectual founder. So impartially did the founder of the Theatines watch the growth of the community of Somasca that he never attempted to win over Miani to his own congregation. As soon as he recognized Miani’s special characteristics he handed over to him even the orphan schools hitherto conducted by the Theatines in the Hospital for Incurables in Venice.

It was also due to Carafa that Miani extended his work into the Milanese territory. For the mitigation of bodily and spiritual suffering hardly any field was more suitable at that time than that district, ravaged as it had been by unspeakable inroads of war, hunger, and plague. In Milan, as in Venice, many were converted by the troubles of the time. What had seldom happened before, the sons of distinguished families now gave up riches and honours in order to follow Christ as His poor. Preachers called on the people to repent; among them one especially distinguished himself, the Spanish Dominican, Tommaso Nieto. In the year 1529 he intro­duced a solemn procession of the Blessed Sacrament, when the Host was carried in a sort of ark borne by four priests.

More hidden and more permanent work in Milan was carried out by Antonio Maria Zaccaria, a nobleman of Cremona, whose character strongly resembled that of Gaetano di Tiene. Zaccaria, who was born in 1502 and was at first a doctor, turned in his twenty-sixth year to the study of theology, and after his ordination as priest he displayed an eager pastoral activity in his native city. At the end of 1530, at the wish of the pious Countess Lodovica Torelli of Guastalla, he went to Milan. There, in the Confraternity of the Eternal Compassion, he made friends with kindred souls in Bartolommeo Ferrari and Jacopo Antonio Morigia, who had already become famous for conspicuous works of charity. These good men believed that the best way of checking the misery and immorality caused by the war was to form a society of Clerks Regular primarily devoted to the in­struction of the young and the cure of souls. After the adhesion of two other Milanese, Jacopo de’ Casei and Francesco Lecchi, Clement VII, in a Brief drawn up at Bologna on the 18th of February 1533, gave permission to Bartolommeo Ferrari and to Antonio Maria Zaccaria to live in community with three other associates in accordance with special statutes, under a superior, but subject to the jurisdiction of their Ordinary, to receive new members, and make their vows before the Archbishop of Milan.2 The new community took possession in autumn 1533 of a small house near S. Caterina, not far from the Porta Ticinese of Milan. This they soon enlarged with the permission of the Duke of Milan.

The constitutions, as drawn up by Zaccaria, who was chosen Superior, have many points of resemblance with those of the Theatines. The manner of living of these “sons of St. Paul,” as they called themselves in their deep veneration for the Apostle of the Gentiles—a name long afterwards changed to that of “Barnabites,” from the seat of the community in the ancient Milanese monastery of St. Barnabas—closely resembled that led by the members of the foundation of Gaetano and Carafa. In the foreground they placed a life of mortification, an eager care for souls, and the visiting of the sick. The chronicler Burigozzo relates the astonishment caused by these priests, who went about their duties in threadbare garments and round biretta, their heads bent and, in spite of their youth, an air of earnestness about them all. Zaccaria instructed his sons to influence especially priests and parents; only in this way could the coming generation be improved. He therefore very soon opened his house to priests desirous of making spiritual exercises and founded a confraternity of married people. The Barnabites differed from the Theatines in seeking publicity. They took pains to stir the feelings of the ruder sort of people by open-air missions and public exercises of penance; they were to be seen, crucifix in hand, preaching in the most crowded thoroughfares ; some carried heavy crosses, others confessed their sins aloud. Complaints were made that they were disturbers of the peace, but as Zaccaria in his full trust in God had foretold, they came through this first persecution completely justified. This community, though slow in growth, became a powerful instrument of which St. Charles Borromeo made use in reforming his diocese.

CHAPTER XXVII

Reform of the Older Orders.—The Capuchins.

While the new foundations of the Theatines, Somaschi, and Barnabites were rising into existence, the older orders also were awakening to the necessity of reform. In their case also the movement started from small and obscure circles. In order to withdraw themselves from the spirit of the world, which was now too generally prevalent, the better spirits in the older orders sought out a life of solitude. Paolo Giustiniani of the Camaldolese had already introduced in this way improvements in the Order under Leo X, for he had erected at Pascelupo in the Apennines and Massaccio in the province of Ancona, hermitages of Camaldolese under very strict regulations. Each member lived by himself in a small separate hut, and together with a strict observance of the vows, Giustiniani attached a high importance to complete seclusion. In one of his letters he extols this manner of life, far apart from the movement of the world in a sublime isolation, as the best way to attain the peace of the soul and spiritual perfection. Like Adrian VI., Clement VII also gave encouragement to this congregation of Camaldolese hermits. Giustiniani’s (d. 1528) second successor, the recluse Giustiniani of Bergamo, made Monte Corona at Umbertide in the upper valley of the Tiber the headquarters of the foundation, which has given the whole congregation its name. The industry of these hermits changed the inhospitable slopes of the mountain into one of the most picturesque settlements of recluses in the world. Here also Clement VII gave his support by graces and privileges, and confirmed the statutes.

Among the Augustinian hermits the learned General, Egidio Canisio, also pursued under Leo X the reforming activities on which he had previously entered, while the congregation of Benedictines of Monte Cassino settled at S. Justina in Padua were led in the same direction by the classical scholar, Gregorio Cortese.

Serious efforts at reform had also already been made by the Franciscan Observants under Leo X. Their excellent General, Francesco Lichetto, in 1517 advised those of stricter aspirations to follow the Spanish example and make use of the houses of so-called Recollects, that is, convents to which they might voluntarily repair in order without disturbance there to carry out as strictly as possible the rules of the Order, and to devote themselves especially to penitential exercises and continual meditation. The oldest houses of this kind, Fonte Colombo and Grecio, lay in the valley of Rieti, hallowed by the sojourn of St. Francis himself. The inmates were called Brothers of the Stricter Observance, and later, Riformati. They found, however, more resistance than encouragement from the cismontane commissary-general Ilarione Sacchetti, who was a strong upholder of the unity of the Order. On the other hand, the earnest Spanish reformer, Quiñones, chosen General in 1523, was a great friend of the Brothers of the Stricter Observance, to whom he at once gave a strict rule in Spain, and assigned five houses of Recollects. When Quiñones came to Italy in 1525 he supported these special reforms, as well as all others in the Order. Two high-minded fellow-countrymen, Martino di Guzman and Stefano Molina, could congratulate themselves on his special favour. He appointed them to plant the new institution of the Stricter Observance—afterwards known as that of the Riformati—in the Roman province. These Riformati led an exceptionally hard life. Only on two days of the week did they eat cooked food; for the rest they were satisfied with bread, fruit, and vegetables; their bed was either the bare ground or a board, and the day began and ended with prolonged meditation; at night there was prayer in common. Had Quiñones remained longer at the head of the Observants this institution would certainly at that time have risen to great importance, for, especially in the years of terror after the sack of Rome, the number of those Observants who were working for the most exact possible compliance with the rule, increased greatly. Unfortunately the new General, Paolo Pisotti, was an opponent of this and every other tendency to strict observance.

At this critical moment Clement VII., on the advice of Carafa, took up the cause of the Riformati. In a Bull of the 14th of November 1532 he ordered the General and Provincials of the Observants to abstain from molesting in any way the Riformati, but rather to give them every assistance and to reserve for them an adequate number of convents. The Riformati were now privileged to receive novices, and to choose for themselves a Guardian in each province. But their dress and hood were not to differ from those of other Observants, and they were to be subject to visitation from the Provincial.

Although the Pope thus showed his favour towards the new institution, it did not at first make much way in Italy. All the more remarkable was another reform which grew up among the Italian Franciscan Observants. This was begun by Matteo da Bascio (born about 1495, died 1552), a native of the hill-country of Umbria. Nowhere else in Italy did the mystic and yet popular spirit of St. Francis survive with such vitality as among the poor, contented, believing, and brave-spirited populations dwelling in the remote valleys and gorges of this picturesque district, which, in a wider sense, included also the territory beyond the Apennines. Here, on a hill not far from Pennabilli, lay the market town of Bascio, politically under the Dukes of Urbino and ecclesiastically within the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Montefeltro.

The earliest accounts of Matteo’s youth as well as of his later years already bear a legendary character; it is no longer possible to examine their statements, but the historical residuum may be given as follows:—At an early age, about his seventeenth year, as alleged, Matteo entered the Order of Franciscan Observants at Montefalcone in the March of Ancona. Here he was conspicuous for piety and his strong grasp of his vocation. On his entry into the Order he brought with him little education, nor did he afterwards make much progress beyond what was necessary for the immediate tasks of his calling. Perhaps it was exactly on this account that the homely sermons of the simple peasant’s son won the hearts of the poor folk dwelling among the hills. Matteo became known to a wider circle by the spirit of self-devotion displayed by him in 1523, when Camerino was visited by the plague. Voluntarily he left his convent at Montefalcone and hastened to the above-named town, where he shrank from no peril of death in order to succour the sick and dying. This self-denying activity of Matteo drew at once the attention of the Duke of Camerino, Giovan Maria Varano, and his wife Caterina Cibo to the humble Franciscan.

Caterina Cibo belonged, like Vittoria Colonna, to that class of women of the Italian Renaissance who combined wide cultivation with deep piety and a great purity of life. She knew Latin and Greek, and also took lessons in Hebrew in order to read the Old Testament in the original. As a niece of Leo X and Clement VII she often visited Rome, where she came into contact with the men of letters living there. She was interested in an exceptional degree in religious matters, and especially in the reform of the clergy in her husband’s duchy. Herself a rough and almost virile character, she must have been attracted by Matteo’s strong qualities.

After the plague had ceased at Camerino, Matteo returned to his seclusion at Montefalcone; while there he often withdrew into the woodland solitudes so beloved of St. Francis. The life of his brethren seemed to him to correspond less and less to the original severity of the Order. He seemed to hear the voice of the seraphic Patriarch calling to him in threatening tones, “I wish my rule to be observed, to the letter, to the letter, to the letter.” Deeper and deeper grew Matteo’s resolve to live entirely according to the holy rule in the utmost possible solitude and in strictest poverty. While such thoughts were working in his inmost soul he learned by accident from a pious countryman that his dress was not in keeping with that of the founder of the Order, who had worn a habit of the coarsest sort on which was sewn not a round but a four-cornered pointed hood. After receiving this information Matteo did not rest until he had procured for himself this new habit. All his fervour for the strict observance of the rule was now concentrated on this one point; wearing his new hood, he started without leave on the road to Rome in the Jubilee year 1525. He had to endure much on this journey on account of his unusual attire. Nevertheless, he reached Rome safely and made his way into the presence of Clement himself. He made his petition that he might retain his new habit, live as a solitary according to the rule of St. Francis, and preach the Word of God. Clement VII—so it is related—gave his consent, but imposed the condition that Matteo should annually declare his adhesion to the Observant Order by presenting himself before the Provincial Chapter.

When Matteo, in April 1525, obeyed this injunction, but could produce no written authorization from the Pope for his new manner of life and garb, the Provincial of the March of Ancona, Giovanni da Fano, who was as energetic as he was learned, ordered the too simple-minded brother to be incarcerated as a runaway and contumacious. Giovanni could appeal to the authority of John XXII, who had already forbidden the introduction of a new hood, while Leo X and Clement VII had forbidden any absence without leave from the society of the Order.

Matteo’s misfortune did not long remain unknown ; even the Duchess Caterina Cibo became aware of it. Through her powerful intercession Matteo was free again by July; he now betook himself to Camerino, and had a great success as a preacher of penance, and was soon joined by other Observants. Among the first were the two brothers Lodovico and Raffaello da Fossombrone, the first a priest, the other a lay brother. Matteo had no thought of founding an order; all he desired was to carry out to the very letter the rule of St. Francis. In Lodovico he was joined by a kindred spirit, who by his energy and boldness was well fitted to carry far what Matteo had set in motion.

At first, indeed, the co-operation of the two brothers with Matteo led to a serious crisis. The Superiors, bent on maintaining the unity of the Order, threatened the former with excommunication for having left their convent without leave, and even tried to get permission from Rome to arrest them. Lodovico da Fossombrone, convinced that his case was a thoroughly sound one, himself made haste to Rome in the beginning of 1526 with letters of recommendation from the Duchess of Camerino, and there addressed himself to Carafa, “the friend of all reforms.” The latter, on principle, was by no means favourably disposed to those religious who separated themselves from their Order; but he very soon perceived that in this case the cause of separation was not laxity but its opposite, and this, like all other efforts at reform, also received his support. Through Carafa’s influence Lodovico soon attained his object. The Cardinal Grand Penitentiary, Lorenzo Pucci, on the 18th of May 1526, gave vouchers to Lodovico and Raffaello da Fossombrone as well as to Matteo da Bascio by which, in the case of their Superiors refusing the permission asked for, they were empowered by Papal authority to lead the life of anchorites under the rule of St. Francis outside the houses of their Order in the new district, but certainly subject to the supervision of Bishop Giangiacomo Bongiovanni of Camerino.

The quiet hill town now became the centre of the new movement, which Giovanni da Fano continued to look upon as an unlawful act of separation. Firmly convinced that he was dealing here with a case of apostasy, he did all that lay in his power to compass its suppression. He had no idea that the reform of the Order, which even he was striving for, was to come from below, from very simple and insignificant men. The position of the Franciscan hermits, as Matteo’s associates at first were called, became so bad that for some time they had thoughts of going out as missionaries to the infidels. In this time of distress, the Bishop of Camerino, the like­minded Camaldolese, and especially the ducal family stood by the persecuted community. But these simple men won the love of the people in the terrible times of trouble which broke over Camerino after 1527. When all others fled before the plague they remained steadfast at their posts. On the 10th of August 1527 the Duke himself fell a victim to the disease.

In consequence of the continued hostility of the Observants, Lodovico da Fossombrone put himself into communication with the Provincial of the Conventuals in the Marches, who later took him and his colleagues into his province, on condition that they reported themselves once a year either to him or to the Chapter and submitted themselves to visitation. Through the influence of the Duchess Caterina Cibo, Lodovico obtained the Pope’s confirmation of this ordinance. This was contained in a Papal brief addressed from Viterbo on the 3rd of July 1528, to Lodovico and Raffaello da Fossombrone. It conveyed the ecclesiastical confirmation of the branch of the Franciscans, subsequently known, from their habit, as the Capuchins. This document sanctioned the mendicant life in hermitages or other places according to the rule of St. Francis; the beard was permitted to be worn as well as the new habit with the four-cornered hood. Finally, new members were permitted to be chosen from the ranks of the secular clergy and the laity. At the same time, all the privileges of the Conventuals and of the Camaldolese hermits were extended to the new congregation.

The Bishop of Camerino ordered this Brief to be solemnly published, and then followed the foundation of the first settled establishment outside the gates of the episcopal city. Within the territory of the latter a second convent on Monte Melone very soon arose.

Though the number of Franciscan hermits at that time was comparatively small, yet their activity must be described as exceptional. Bernardino da Colpetrazzo, who had personally known the earliest fathers, has left a sketch of their first entrance on their mission, which is striking in its bare simplicity. Their garments were the roughest that could be procured. They went barefoot always, even in winter, holding the crucifix in their hands. Their nourishment consisted of water, bread, vegetables, and fruit; flesh was eaten only very seldom; the fasts were kept rigorously—many fasted almost continually. Their dwellings, built by preference in lonely places, were as inconspicuous and poor as possible; they were composed only of wood and loam. A board served for a bed; for those who were weaker there was a mat; the doors of the cells were so low that they could not be entered without stooping; the windows were very narrow and small, and unfurnished with glass. This simplicity extended even to the churches. Everything, even outwardly, was to preach the utmost poverty in an age in which not only the worldly, but also many great ecclesiastics, and even members of the mendicant Orders themselves, worshipped the lavish display of wealth.

The inmates of these literally poverty-stricken convents had, in the first period of their existence, two main objects in view, and, above all, to be preachers of repentance to the common people. The plain speaking of these simple men, which spared no man, had such power that the hardest hearts quailed and the most stubborn sinners were converted. People often went five or six miles to hear the Franciscan hermits. “They preached,” says Bernardino da Colpetrazzo, “the Holy Scriptures, especially the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ, exhorting their hearers to fulfil the commandments of God.” The same chronicler mentions as strange novelties that they brought with them a crucifix into the pulpit and urged a frequent reception of the Blessed Sacrament.

The behaviour of the poor hermits during the epidemic called forth even greater admiration than their preaching. A rich field for heroic acts of genuine Christian charity was opened up during the terrible days of the sack of Rome. The plague was soon followed by scarcity of food and famine, which lasted, according to Bernardino da Colpetrazzo, during 1528 and 1529. Like other contemporaries, this narrator saw in the sufferings by which Italy was visited a punishment of the general wickedness. The streets and roads were covered with dead, some cut off by the plague, some by famine, some by the sword; wolves gnawed the corpses, for in the districts devastated by war there were none left to dig graves. Bernardino da Colpetrazzo, who at that time was also suffering from the plague, was unable in after years to find words to describe the panic that prevailed. As watchers of the sick could not be got in Camerino and its neighbourhood, the Franciscan hermits voluntarily undertook their duties. They carried the Viaticum to the dying and buried the dead; they took care of orphan children and collected alms for the famishing survivors of the population. They refused all offers of gifts to themselves; all was done for the love of God. With heroic self-sacrifice the little band worked on until the plague died out at the close of 1529; half of the population had fallen prey to its ravages.

This example of Christian love, which, to the end of the century, clung to the memory of the thankful people, combined with their inspired preaching, drew to the Franciscan hermits after the extinction of the plague many new members. The two first settlements were no longer sufficient, two more had to be built; one at Alvacina in the district of Fabriano, the other at Fossombrone in the Duchy of Urbino. For these four places, all, with the exception of the last, in the diocese of Camerino, guardians were appointed in 1529 at the first General Chapter held in a wretched hut at Alvacina. At this meeting Matteo da Bascio, in spite of his resistance, was chosen Vicar-General, and at the same time the constitution of the new institute was sketched in outline. The main principle was the closest observance of the rule of St. Francis, particularly in respect of the “virtue of holy poverty.” Therefore, in collecting alms they were never to accept provisions beyond a week’s supply at the utmost. Their cells were to be very narrow, more like jails than dwellings. Their very churches were to reflect their poverty; precious metals and stuffs were banished, and the psalmody was not to be sung. Moreover, the most austere life was prescribed, nightly prayer, severe discipline, the roughest and worst clothing; bare-headed and unshod, they were never to journey except on foot. The duty of earnest preaching for those thus gifted is still a noticeable feature of the rule. They are to avoid all flowers of speech and all subtle speculations, to keep in view the practical needs of their hearers, and to proclaim “purely and simply the Holy Gospel of our Lord.”

The change in the direction of the new community was of great importance. Matteo, who wished to give himself entirely to preaching, resigned his post in a very short time, whereon, with the Pope’s consent, the energetic, self­confident Lodovico da Fossombrone took his place. He entered into communication with a number of Calabrian Observants who were at the same time seeking a stricter compliance with the rule, and established a settlement in Rome. Here also it was Caterina Cibo who, through her brothers, opened a way for these Observants, already known as Franciscan hermits. Her brothers were guardians of the Hospital of S. Giacomo for incurables. The little church of S. Maria dei Miracoli, near the Piazza del Popolo and attached to the hospital, became the first Capuchin settlement in Rome. They now took charge of the hospital, and the care which they there bestowed on the sick drew to them the sympathy of the lower as well as the higher classes in Rome.

The rapid extension of the new community made a deep impression on the Observants, and spurred them on to fresh action against the hermits. Many saw in the behaviour of the members of the new body an excess of enthusiasm on the part of some, on the part of others defiance and rebellion. The latter view found favour with the masterful Giovanni da Fano, who was convinced that he was carrying out a good work in opposing the upstarts. In other Observants the leading motive was simply jealousy, and in Paolo Pisotti, then their General, there was undoubtedly a repugnance to all reform.

To all these antagonists Lodovico now gave good grounds for complaint, for in his unreflecting zeal to obtain as many new members as possible for his community, he drew into it not a few Observants. The reception of the latter was a consequence of the Grand Penitentiary’s indult. The Observants, fearing a gradual dismemberment of the whole Order, made such passionate representations to the Pope of the injuriousness of the indult and of the misuse of it, that Clement VII in May 1530 cancelled all his concessions to the new Franciscan offshoot. But the Papal Brief of July 1528 was not expressly mentioned in this enactment. Lodovico, in his opposition to the new measures, was able to take his stand on the earlier document; besides, he and his patrons did all in their power to show that the complaints raised were unfounded, and to nullify the Pope’s severe regulations. At first they were unsuccessful, but at last they succeeded in having the whole dispute referred by Clement VII to the Cardinals Antonio del Monte and Andrea della Valle for fresh examination; these gave as their decision, on the 14th of August 1532, that in future the Franciscan hermits must not receive any more Observants, but that the Observants must abstain from any molestation of those who had left them for the Franciscan hermits, and of the hermits themselves.

This decision, pronounced in the Pope’s name, was a striking success for the new institution over the old. The Franciscan hermits now spread their settlements not only through the Marches and in Calabria, but in other parts of Italy and even in Sicily. A certain increase of difficulty as regards admission into their ranks was nothing but beneficial, for there were some who presented themselves from motives which were not without worldly alloy. All the storms through which the new foundation had to pass served only to impart inward strength. The defection of the Observants was mainly due to the aversion of the General, Pisotti, to all plans of reform. When Clement VII was in possession of the proofs of this man’s bad government, he insisted on his resignation (December 1533). By neglect of the lax and persecution of the strict, Pisotti had brought his Order to the brink of ruin; no wonder that the better spirits passed over to the Franciscan hermits. In 1534 they were joined by the most famous preachers in Italy, Bernardino Ochino and Bernardino of Asti. In the same year the man who had been their most violent opponent, Giovanni da Fano, took the same step.

The Observants were as much convinced as ever of the danger in which their Order was placed; their complaints were so importunate that Clement thought that he must once more give them a hearing. On the 9th of April 1534 a Brief was addressed to Lodovico and to all his associates forbidding them henceforward, without special Papal permission, to receive any Observants or take over any convents belonging to them. This prohibition was also  extended to those who had gone over to the Conventuals or had left the Order entirely. To this document the first use of the expression “Capuchin,” in the mention of Lodovico, can be traced.

The opponents, emboldened by this success, now hoped to achieve the overthrow of the whole hermit congregation. But Clement VII positively refused to repeal the Bull of 1528, although he consented to the banishment of the Capuchins from Rome. On the 25th of April 1534 appeared the edict enjoining their departure. The fathers were just about to partake of their simple midday meal when the order was brought to them; without a moment’s demur they obeyed the command of the Head of the Church, and without touching their food they went forth. Thirty in number, they walked, two and two, with the cross carried before them, through the city to S. Lorenzo outside the walls, where they were kindly received. While the majority stayed there temporarily, a few, among them Giovanni da Fano, went into upper Italy, there to found new settlements. Thus the misfortunes of the Capuchins turned eventually into a blessing.

The banishment of the worthy friars from Rome caused a storm of indignation among the people, who had come to value them as the succourers of the sick. As interpreter of public opinion the hermit Brandano, so well known during the sack, appeared on the scene. “All the wicked, all the sinful,” he exclaimed, “can come to Rome; the good and the virtuous are driven out.” At the same time many of the Roman nobility came forward on behalf of the exiles. It was precisely the utter poverty and entire contempt of the world of the Capuchins that had made an ineffaceable impression on the nobler characters. Among the Roman aristocracy, Vittoria Colonna hastened from Marino, and she and Camillo Orsini made representations to Clement as frank as they were touching. Caterina Cibo also made her way to Rome, but when she reached the city Clement VII had already sanctioned the return of the Capuchins.

So this storm also passed over happily. Others, heavier still, were to arise under Clement’s successor, but they too had their hour, and the Capuchin Order grew up in the Church to be a great instrument of reform and restoration in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Poor themselves, they became the friends of the poorer classes, whose needs and sufferings they knew as few others did, and to whom in the time of trouble they brought aid with heart and hand.

The pursuit of practical aims, before all others the care of souls, preaching, and the tending of the sick to which the Capuchins, as well as the Theatines, Somaschi, and Barnabites, in accordance with the needs of the age, had devoted themselves, was to reappear even more sharply accentuated in another company of regular clergy which, in activity and diversity of aims, in inward power and outward range of influence, was far to surpass the older orders as well as their more recent successors.

The days of Clement VII were drawing to a close when this new organization started on its career. It was on the Feast of the Assumption, 1534, that Ignatius Loyola, on the height of Montmartre, on the spot where the first Apostle of Paris had met a martyr’s death, unfolded to a gathering of six trusted friends his plan of enlisting a spiritual army “whose leader should be the Saviour Himself, whose banner the Cross, whose watchword God’s honour, and whose meed of victory the salvation of men and the glory of the Church.” Only one of these inspired men was a priest, Peter Faber, a Savoyard. From his hands, on consecrated ground, the group of friends received Holy Communion; into his hands, together with the vows of poverty and chastity, they laid yet another—to go, at the close of their theological studies, to Jerusalem, to engage in the conversion of the infidels, or, if this were not possible, to place themselves at the disposal of the Pope for any apostolic mission on which he might choose to send them.

Such was the origin of the Society of Jesus, destined to attain to a world-wide importance in the history of the Church as the most powerful bulwark of the Papacy during the catastrophe of the sixteenth century.