BOOK IX.
FROM THE END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE TO THE END OF
THE FIFTH COUNCIL OF THE LATERAN, A.D. 1418-1517.
CHAPTER VI.
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER VI TO THE END OF THE FIFTH
COUNCIL OF THE LATERAN.
A.D. 1503-1517.
CAESAR BORGIA had supposed himself (as he told Machiavelli) to have provided for all the
contingencies which might occur on his father’s death, with a view to controlling
the election of the next pope, and of securing for himself the power which
fortune and skill had combined to put into his hands. But his calculations were
frustrated by the circumstance that, at the time of Alexander’s death, Caesar
was himself disabled for action by the illness which had seized him in the
vineyard of the Vatican. He contrived, however, while on his sick-bed, to enter
into an agreement with the Colonna family, for the purpose of strengthening
himself against the opposition of the Orsini, who had seized the occasion to
make threatening demonstrations. In the meantime the Roman populace, in
vengeance for the insolence of the Spaniards under the late pontificate,
attacked their houses and destroyed their property; and the city was a scene of
tumult, plunder, and slaughter. As the Vatican quarter and the fortress of St.
Angelo were occupied by Caesar’s soldiery, the cardinals, thirty-eight in
number, met in the Dominican church of St. Mary sopra Minerva, and refused to
go into conclave until they were assured that these troops should be removed,
and that the French army should approach no nearer than Nepi.
Their wish as to the French was effected through the influence of cardinal
d’Amboise, who avowedly put himself forward as a candidate for the papacy, and
brought with him to the election Ascanius Sforza, whom he had gained to his
interest by releasing him from his French prison, and by entertaining him
honourably for the last two years. But it soon appeared that d’Amboise could
barely reckon on a third part of the college as his supporters; and the cardinals,
surprised and perplexed by the suddenness of the late pope’s death, resolved to
choose one who should not only be free from party ties, but whose age and
infirmity might seem to promise another speedy vacancy. On the 22nd of
September the election fell on Francis Piccolomini, who, in memory of his
uncle Pius II, styled himself Pius III. The new pope was sixty-four years old;
he had been promoted to the cardinalate by his uncle in 1460, and was regarded
as the most respectable member of the college, which had been greatly sunk in
character by Alexander’s simoniacal and scandalous
appointments. Rome and the ecclesiastical states were still in a condition of
disturbance. Nobles of the Campagna repossessed themselves of lands which had
been taken from them by the duke of Valentinois; the
cities of Romagna invited their expelled lords to return, or these returned
uninvited to resume their power. The Venetians invaded Romagna, and made
themselves masters of Faenza and other places. By entering into an alliance
with the French, Caesar Borgia provoked the Spanish general Gonsalvo to order that all the Spaniards who were in his service should leave it. The
duke renewed the contest with his old enemies the Orsini, but was driven to
withdraw into the Vatican and the adjoining quarter, where he endeavoured to
fortify his position. By these disorders the pope was compelled to take refuge
in the castle of St. Angelo, where he died after a pontificate of
six-and-twenty days.
This short interval between two vacancies of the
papacy had sufficed to ascertain the strength of parties in the college.
D’Amboise, finding that he could not hope to be chosen, exerted himself in
favour of the cardinal who was supposed to be the most devoted to the French
interest, Julian della Rovere. Ascanius Sforza was
gained to the same side by the hope that his family might recover the duchy of
Milan; and, notwithstanding the long and open enmity between Julian and the
Borgias—although Caesar had made the eight Spanish cardinals swear that they
would elect no one but a partisan of his family—even Caesar was induced, by
expectations of recovering his territories, of confirmation in his office of
standard-bearer, and of marrying his daughter to the future pope’s nephew, to
throw his influence into the scale of Julian. Capitulations were drawn up, and
an oath was taken to observe them; among other things, the future pope was
within two years to assemble a general council for the reformation of the church.
Without having been shut up in conclave, thirty-seven out of thirty-eight
cardinals voted for Julian, who, as pope, took the name of Julius—a name which
had been borne by only one of his predecessors, the contemporary of Constantine
and Athanasius. The pope, whose earlier career has been noticed from time to
time, was now sixty years old. He was regarded as a man of sincere and open
character; even Alexander VI allowed him this merit, while censuring him in
other respects. But it would seem that he sometimes traded unfairly on his
reputation for honesty, as when, at the election, he recommended himself to the
French party by referring to his past conduct, and to the Spaniards by
promising a different policy for the future. His manner of life was not immaculate;
he had an illegitimate daughter, whom he married to one of the Orsini; his
amours had affected his constitution, and his love of wine was notorious; but,
as compared with some of his late predecessors, his character and conduct
might almost be styled decorous and respectable.
Caesar Borgia had believed that, although not powerful
enough to dictate the choice of a pope, he was able, through his influence with
the Spanish cardinals, to prevent the election of any individual to the
papacy; and he professed to regret the support which he had given to Julius as
the only mistake that he had ever committed. But, as in his prosperity he had
never scrupled at any treachery, he was now to be the victim of other men’s
deceit. Although his army was scattered by the Orsini and others, he still
retained about 400 or 500 soldiers, and formed a wild scheme for the recovery
of Romagna by means of this little force. But, as he was about to embark at
Ostia for Spezzia, he was arrested by the pope’s
order, and was detained in the Vatican until he consented to sign a document by
which some fortresses, which still held out for him, were made over to Julius.
He then made his way by sea to Naples, and repaired to the camp of Gonsalvo, with whom he had secretly carried on
negotiations. But, although he was received with a great show of honour, he was
carefully guarded until the general should learn the Spanish king’s pleasure
respecting him; and, agreeably to Ferdinand’s usual perfidy, he was arrested
in defiance of the safe-conduct which he had received, was sent as a prisoner
to Spain, and was imprisoned in the fortress of Medina del Campo. From this
confinement, after two years, he made his escape, and he was invested with a
military command by his brother-in-law the king of Navarre, who had vainly interceded
for him with Ferdinand. But in March 1507, his adventurous life was ended in a
skirmish near Viana, within the diocese of Pampeluna,
of which he had formerly been bishop, and on the anniversary of his institution
to the see. So utterly was the terror of the Borgias extinct (although Lucretia
still lived as duchess of Ferrara), that a “Comedy of Duke Valentino and Pope
Alexander” was acted in the ducal palace of Urbino, and that other scenes from
the family story were already represented on the stage.
As Alexander’s great object had been the establishment
of his family in the rank of territorial princes, that of Julius was to extend
the temporal power of the papacy by recovering for it all that it had ever
possessed, or could pretend to claim. And to this end he employed great skill,
energy, tenacity of purpose, and even the talents of a general and the
endurance of a soldier. He desired to reunite under the papacy all those fiefs
which had been taken by Caesar Borgia from their hereditary lords, and which
since Caesar’s fall had again for the most part reverted to the old dominion,
while part had been seized by the Venetians. The Venetians offered to give up
all their acquisitions except Faenza, and to hold that territory under the
same conditions of tribute as its former lords. But the pope for a time refused
even to admit their ambassadors to his presence; and he utterly rejected their
Proposals. In the end of August 1506, he set out from Rome for the purpose of
reducing the fiefs of the church to obedience. Baglioni, a condottiere who had
got possession of Perugia, submitted, and was allowed to continue. The Bentivogli were driven from Bologna; on St. Martin’s day
the pope made his triumphant entry into that city; and his return to Rome was
greeted with a yet more imposing triumph.
The French had been driven out of Naples by Gonsalvo of Cordova, and the whole kingdom was now subject
to Ferdinand. The death of Isabella of Castile (November 26th, 1504), and that
of her son-in-law the archduke Philip (September 25th, 1506), brought into
nearer prospect the vastness of the power which was likely to be concentrated
in the hands of the young Charles, the heir of Spain, Naples, Austria, and the
Netherlands; and Lewis of France was bent on averting the danger which seemed
to threaten him from this cause.
Maximilian, at a diet which assembled at Constance,
told the German estates that it was necessary for him to be crowned as emperor
at Rome, if the empire were to retain any influence in Italy. The promise of
men which he received from the assembly—8000 horse and 27,000 foot for half a
year—was unequal to his wishes and was imperfectly performed; but he set out on
his expedition. The Venetians, although they professed themselves willing to
allow his passage through their territories, refused to admit his army. There
were signs of opposition from other quarters, and on entering Italy from the
Tyrol he found himself compelled by enemies who beset his way to engage in a
warfare which did not result in his favour. The pope, in his desire to keep him
at a distance, allowed him, by a special privilege, to assume the title of
emperor without having gone through the ceremony of a coronation. The army,
ill-fed and unpaid, broke up; and Maximilian, after having concluded a treaty
with the Venetians, returned to Germany.
The republic of Venice was now at its greatest height
of wealth and power, and the success of its prudent, selfish, and grasping
policy had long excited a strong feeling of jealousy in other states. Thus when
Pius II invited the Florentines to take part in the crusade, they had declined
on the ground that whatever might be taken from the Turks would fall to the
Venetians. Julius, in a letter to Maximilian, spoke of them as encroaching, as
aiming at supreme domination in Italy, and even at reestablishing for
themselves the old imperial power; and he had been especially offended by their
rejecting one of his nephews, whom he had nominated to the see of Vicenza, and
substituting a Venetian citizen, whom they required to style himself “bishop by
the grace of the senate”. The emperor considered that the Venetians had formed
their territory at the expense of the empire. The French king was angry with
them for having crossed his designs, for having craftily favoured the interest
of Spain, and for having got possession of some places which had belonged to
his duchy of Milan. In December 1508, a treaty was concluded at Cambray between
the archduchess Margaret, regent of the Netherlands, on the part of her father
the emperor, and by cardinal d’Amboise as representative of France. Spain was
to take part in the treaty, and d’Amboise, as legate, took it on him to promise
the pope’s concurrence.
The treaty began by stating that the emperor and the
French king, having resolved, at the pope’s request, to make war against the
Turks, held themselves bound to restrain the Venetians in their aggressions on
the holy Roman empire and other Christian states; and it pledged the allied
powers to hold by each other until each should have recovered whatever had been
taken from it by the Venetians. For a time this treaty was kept secret from the
power against which it was directed.
Although Julius had special reasons for
dissatisfaction with the republic, he yet felt strongly the inexpediency of
admitting foreigners to exercise dominion in Italy. And the evil was the
greater in proportion to the power of the French and the Spanish sovereigns,
who had respectively possessed themselves of Milan and of Naples. He dreaded
the pretensions which might be advanced on the part of the empire as to Italy;
he dreaded d’Amboise as one who was intriguing to succeed him—whom Lewis, by
interfering in Italian affairs, might help to attain the papacy, in order that
a French pope might transfer the imperial crown from Germany to France. Hence,
although in his enmity to pope Alexander he had himself been the first to bring
the “barbarians” into Italy, the policy of his later years was directed chiefly
to their expulsion. He therefore privately offered to make peace with the
republic on condition that certain territories should be yielded up to him.
But the Venetians, in reliance on their power of raising mercenary troops, and
in the expectation that a league between parties widely differing in interests
would soon break up of itself, declined the proposed terms; and Julius
thereupon joined the league, undertaking to utter the censures of the church
against the Venetians, so that Maximilian should be set free from the
engagements which he had lately contracted with them.
In the spring of 1509 Lewis began hostilities, and
within seventeen days his forces had made themselves masters of all that he was
entitled to claim under the treaty of Cambray. The pope about the same time
sent forth a “monitory” bull, in which he reproached the Venetians for
encroachments and usurpations, for interfering with the rights of the church as
to jurisdiction over clerks and as to patronage of bishoprics, and for harbouring
enemies of the apostolic see. He allowed them twenty-four days for submission
and restitution; in case of their neglecting this opportunity he declared them
to be under interdict, and that their persons and property might be seized and
sold. The Venetians appealed to a general council, and found means to display
their appeal on the doors of St. Peter’s at Rome; and Julius pronounced an
interdict against them.
But the pope did not confine himself to the use of
spiritual weapons. His troops, under the command of his nephew Francis della Rovere, duke of Urbino, marched into northern Italy,
where they reduced Faenza, Rimini, Ravenna, and other places. The Venetians,
pressed by this invasion, by the French king, who inflicted on them a severe
defeat near Agnadello, and by the fear of
preparations in which Maximilian was supposed to be actively engaged, made
overtures to the pope for peace; but these were so ill received that the
republic hesitated between submission to the father of Christendom and an
alliance with the Grand Turk. But Julius dreaded lest the destruction of the
republic should give the French king the sovereignty of all northern Italy; he
was softened by the compliance of a power which had usually been so haughty;
and, although the ambassadors of France and of the empire opposed a
reconciliation, he listened to the intercession which Henry VIII of England
addressed to him through Bainbridge, archbishop of York. The Venetians agreed
to abandon their appeal, to give up all pretensions to ecclesiastical
independence and to jurisdiction over the clergy. Six citizens of high dignity
were sent as ambassadors to Rome, where they were required to enter by night,
and were not greeted with any of the usual marks of honour. Yet they were not
obliged to submit to the full humiliation which had sometimes been inflicted on
penitents. On prostrating themselves before the pope in the porch of St.
Peter’s, they were absolved with a simple injunction to visit the seven
basilicas of Rome, and were at once received, “not as excommunicate or
interdicted, but as good Christians and devoted sons of the apostolic see.” The
pope himself had struck out the usual flagellation from the scheme which had
been drawn up by his master of ceremonies.
Julius had quarrelled with the French king about the
see of Avignon, which had become vacant by the death of a bishop while in
attendance on the papal court. The pope attempted to exercise the patronage,
but as Lewis declared this to be contrary to a late treaty, he was compelled to
yield ungraciously. The death of cardinal d’Amboise, in May 1510, increased the
ill-feeling which had arisen, as Julius claimed for the church the treasures
which the minister-legate had accumulated. The pope resolved to destroy, if
possible, the French king’s influence in Italy. He endeavoured to stir up
troubles against him on the side of England and on that of Switzerland; and in
the violence of his self-will he insisted that others, with whom he had
hitherto acted, should follow him in his change of policy. Hence, when Alfonso,
duke of Ferrara, who was a feudatory of the papacy and had been one of his
generals, refused to break off from the alliance against Venice, Julius
declared that he had forfeited his fief, and refused to accept his tribute. He
issued against him a bull of extraordinary violence, repeated its denunciations
in the customary curses of the holy week, and professed that for the ruin of
this enemy he would risk his tiara and his life. He declared that Lewis had
forfeited his claim to the kingdom of Naples, and granted investiture in it
exclusively to Ferdinand, whom he hoped by this favour to secure to his party.
He negotiated through Mathias Schinner, bishop of Sion in the Valais, with the
Swiss, whom Lewis had offended by resisting their demands of increased pay and
by speaking of them with disparagement; and he was allowed by their diet to
raise as many soldiers as he might require from the confederation.
Lewis, although unwilling to quarrel with the pope,
both from his own feeling and yet more on account of his queen’s influence over
him, found it necessary to act in self-defence. Falling back on a suggestion of
his late minister d’Amboise, he convoked at Orleans a national assembly of
prelates, doctors, and other learned men, which continued its deliberations at
Tours. The chancellor opened the proceedings by denouncing Julius as having
attained the papacy by uncanonical intrigues, and having cruelly troubled Christendom
by his love for war; and the king submitted to the council eight questions,
bearing on the lawfulness of resisting an aggressive pope by force. The answers
were favourable to his wishes: it was declared that a pope might not make war
on a temporal prince except within the church’s territory; that a prince might,
in self-defence, invade the pope’s territory, although not with a view of
depriving him of it; that if a pope should stir up other powers against a
prince, the prince might withdraw from his obedience, although only so far as
might be necessary for the protection of his own rights; that in case of such
withdrawal he ought to fall back on the ancient common law of the church and on
the pragmatic sanction; that any censures unjustly uttered by popes were not to
be regarded.
While Lewis was thus endeavouring to fortify himself
by the sanction of ecclesiastical law, the pope continued to proceed by
forcible means. Neither age nor sickness could check his impetuosity. At
Bologna, where he had made his entry with great pomp on the 23rd of September,
he ordered that all who were able and willing to fight should be assembled in
the market-place; and on being informed that their numbers amounted to 15,000
foot and 5000 horse, although he was suffering from a violent attack of fever, he
rushed from his bed to a balcony, and pronounced his benediction on them.
Towards the end of October his life was despaired of; but he recovered, and
notwithstanding the remonstrances of cardinals and ambassadors, who endeavoured
to restrain him by a regard for his spiritual character, he set out in a litter
for the siege of Mirandola. Arriving there on the 2nd of January 1511, he took
up his abode in a peasant’s hut, under the guns of the fortress. He disregarded
the frost, the heavy snow, the roughness and scantiness of his fare. He
reproved the officers around him for their slowness; and while his pioneers
fled from the discharge of the enemy’s artillery, he himself superintended the
pointing of his cannon, and gave orders for the discharge. On returning to
Mirandola, after a short intermission of the siege, he established himself in a
little chapel, still nearer to the walls than his former quarters. A plan laid
by the famous Bayard for his capture would probably have been successful, but
that a sudden snowstorm drove the pope and his party back to their cover before
they had reached the point at which the French ambush was posted; and, on
finding himself pursued in his return, Julius with his own hand assisted in
raising a drawbridge over which he had just made his escape. Undaunted by
hardships or danger, he persevered in the siege; and when at length Mirandola
was taken, he refused to enter by the gate, and desired that a breach might be
made in the wall, so that he might make his entry in the style of a conqueror,
arrayed in helmet and cuirass.
In Germany, as well as in France, there had been
manifestations of discontent against the papacy. A paper of ten “Grievances”
had been drawn up, setting forth, among other things, the abuses of the Roman
court as to dispensations, as to the ejection of bishops who had been duly
elected, as to the reservation of the greater dignities and benefices for
cardinals and papal protonotaries; as to expectancies, annates, patronage, and
indulgences; as to the exaction of tenths under pretext of crusades which never
took place; as to drawing of causes to Rome which ought to be decided on the
spot. A list of suggested “Remedies” followed; and a paper of “Advices to the
Imperial Majesty” was annexed—recommending the establishment of a pragmatic
sanction, similar to that of Bourges. In consequence of these representations
Maximilian took it on himself to issue an edict forbidding pluralities and
simony, and desired James Wimpheling, a learned
jurist, who was supposed to be the author of the Gravamina, to
draw up a pragmatic sanction adapted to the circumstances of Germany.
Negotiations were attempted between Maximilian and the
pope through Matthew Lang, bishop of Gurk, who appeared at Bologna as imperial
ambassador, and was received with great marks of honour. But Julius was
offended by the assumptions of the bishop, who, when three cardinals were sent
to him, employed three gentlemen of his suite to meet them, as if no one but
the pope himself were worthy to treat with the representative of the emperor;
and Lang, on withdrawing from the court, complained of the impossibility of
moving the pope’s “obstinate and diabolical pertinacity.”
In consequence (it is said) of the death of a cardinal
at Ancona, five of his brethren, among whom Carvajal, a Spaniard, was the
leader, refused to join the pope at Bologna, and obtained from the government
of Florence permission to remain in that city. By this the pope was greatly
incensed, as he supposed their conduct to imply a charge of poison against him,
and he expressed his dissatisfaction to the Florentines. The cardinals removed
from Florence to Milan, where they openly declared themselves in opposition to
the pope. The French king had drawn the emperor into his wish for a general
council; the two sovereigns applied to the pope, reminding him of the promise
which he had made at his election, and telling him that, in case of his
refusal, they would endeavour to accomplish their object by means of the
cardinals; and they acted accordingly.
There was some discussion as to the place where the
council should be held; for while Maximilian wished it to be at Constance,
Lewis proposed Lyons, and the Italian prelates insisted that, as reform was
needed not only in the members, but in the head of the church, some Italian
city would be most suitable. On the 16th of May, three cardinals, in the name
of themselves and of six others (by some of whom the act was afterwards disavowed),
issued a document summoning the council to meet on the 1st of September at
Pisa—a place which was considered of good omen, as having been the scene of the
council which deposed the antipope Anacletus, and of that which, after deposing
the rivals Gregory XII and Benedict XIII, elected Alexander V. They announced
this step to Julius, and charged him in the meantime to refrain from creating
any new cardinals. The emperor and the king of France severally issued their
citations; but it was in vain that they endeavoured to gain the
cooperation of Ferdinand, and Henry of England wrote in strong terms to
Maximilian, expressing his horror at the possibility of a schism.
In the meantime an insurrection broke out at Bologna.
The bronze statue of Julius, lately executed by Michael Angelo, and erected in
front of the cathedral, was thrown down, dragged about the streets with insult,
and afterwards given to the duke of Ferrara, by whom it was melted into cannon.
The Bentivogli returned under French protection. The
cardinal-legate, Alidosi, whose government had been
greatly detested, fled in disguise by night, and made his way to Ravenna,
where, on reporting his arrival, he was invited to the pope’s table. But as he
was on his way to the banquet, he accidentally met the pope’s nephew, the duke
of Urbino, who, after a vehement complaint that the legate had calumniated him
to Julius as inclining to the French interest, drew out a dagger, and stabbed
him mortally. The pope, although greatly distressed by the murder, was afraid
to inflict any punishment on his nephew, lest he should go over to the enemy.
He set out in deep grief for Rome, and on arriving at Rimini, he found the announcement
of the Pisan council placarded on the door of the
convent where he lodged.
On the 16th of July the pope sent forth a bull summoning
a rival council to meet in the church of St. John Lateran on Monday after
Easter-week in the following year. In this document he defended himself as to
his performance of the engagements made at his election, professing to have
been always zealously desirous of a general council, and to have endeavoured to
gain the concurrence of temporal princes towards that object, although the
fulfilment of his wishes had been prevented by public troubles. He compared the
opposing cardinals to “acephalous locusts”, threatened them with deposition
from their dignities and preferments unless they would submit within sixty-five
days, and interdicted Florence, Pisa, and all places in which the schismatical council should meet. He laboured to stir up
his allies against it, and at the expiration of the time of grace pronounced
the refractory cardinals to be deposed, and subject to the penalties of heresy
and schism.
It soon became clear that the council of Pisa would be
a failure. The emperor’s promises of support proved to be delusive. In laying
the subject before a meeting of German prelates at Augsburg, he found that they
were present at the opening, the members of the council were almost exclusively
Frenchmen, who acted under constraint of their sovereign. No confidence was
placed in the cardinals, whose conduct in summoning the council was attributed
to motives of personal ambition. The French king himself is said to have
afterwards avowed that the assembling of it was merely a device for rendering
the pope more tractable. The number of members was never considerable; it is
said not to have exceeded four cardinals, who held proxies for three of their
brethren; two archbishops, thirteen bishops, and five abbots; some doctors of
law, among whom the most famous was Philip Decius (or Dexio),
who vigorously defended the council with his pen; and a few representatives of
universities. On attempting to enter the cathedral of Pisa for the performance
of the opening mass, they found the doors closed, and were obliged to resort to
another church, although an order from the Florentine magistrates afterwards
procured them admission to the cathedral. The clergy of Pisa refused to lend
them vestments, and left the city in obedience to the papal interdict. In the
face of these circumstances the council, under Carvajal as president, affected
to assert its authority by declaring that all that might be attempted against
it by the pope or his cardinals should be null, and that it was not to be
dissolved until the church should have been reformed in head and in members.
But the Florentines, alarmed by the pope’s sentences and threats, became weary
of allowing the rebellious assembly a place within their territory; and after
three sessions the council took occasion from a street-affray between some
servants of its members and some young men of Pisa, to remove to Milan.
About this time Maximilian, whose mind was singularly
fertile in wild designs, conceived the strange idea of getting himself elected
to the papacy. This project appears to have been suggested by an illness of
Julius, which was so serious that for a time he was believed to be dead, and
cries were raised at Rome for the establishment of a republic. But as the old
man recovered in defiance of medical warnings and prescriptions, Maximilian
wished to be appointed his coadjutor, as a step towards being chosen as his successor.
In order to obtain the consent of the Spanish king, he professed himself
willing to resign the empire in favour of Charles, the grandson of both; and he
was ready to pledge his jewels and robes with the Fuggers,
of Augsburg, the great money-dealers of the age, in order to raise funds for
securing the votes of the cardinals. But the plan found no favour with Julius
and appears to have come to nought through its mere extravagance.
The pope offered terms of reconciliation to Lewis;
but, as he had foreseen, they were not accepted, and he entered into a new
alliance with Aragon and Venice. Of this “holy league” (as it was called), the
declared objects were, to preserve the unity of the church against the
pretended council of Pisa, to recover Bologna and other fiefs (among which
Ferrara was understood to be included) for the Roman see, and to drive out of
Italy all who should oppose these designs. The concurrence of England is said to
have been partly gained by a cargo of presents more novel than costly,—Greek
wines, southern fruits, and other provisions, intended for the king and the
chief persons of the kingdom, and conveyed on board of the first papal vessel
that had ever anchored in the Thames.
1511-12. BATTLE OF RAVENNA.
The French troops poured into Lombardy under Gaston de
Foix, duke of Nemours; and it is at this time that Lewis is commonly supposed
to have met the papal threats of interdict by striking the medal which bears
the motto Perdam Babilonis Nomen. The council, which was sitting at Milan, professed to authorize
Gaston, through its legate the cardinal of St. Severino, to occupy the States
of the Church until St. Peter’s chair should be filled by a lawfully-chosen
pope. Brescia, which had risen against the French, was taken, and the capture
was followed by extraordinary excesses of spoliation, cruelty, and brutality.
But at the great battle of Ravenna, fought on Easter-day 1512, although the
French general gained a brilliant victory over the allied Spanish and papal
troops, he himself fell, at the age of twenty-four. Among the prisoners taken
by the French was the cardinal-legate of Bologna, John de’ Medici, whom they
carried off to Milan. But there, when he offered the absolution which the pope
had authorized him to bestow on all who would promise never again to bear arms
against the church, his captors crowded around him, entreating his pardon and
blessing; while the members of the antipapal council could not show themselves
in the streets without being pursued with jeers, curses, and insulting
gestures. The French army, weakened by an order which the emperor had issued
for the recall of the Germans who were serving in it, and by the desertion of
many soldiers who had returned to their own country after sharing in the
plunder of Brescia, was needed at home for defence against the English; and as
it retreated through the Milanese territory, before a force of 20,000 Swiss,
which had entered Italy by the Tyrol for the service of the pope and of Venice,
the inhabitants rose against the stragglers, and slaughtered many in revenge
for the late outrages. The sentence of suspension which the council affected
to issue against the pope, after attempts to draw him into summoning another
general council, and after several delays and extensions of the time of grace
allowed him, was received with general mockery; and the residue of the
unfortunate assembly, after having removed to Asti and thence to Lyons,
vanished so obscurely that its end was not observed.
Julius had treated all the messages of the opposition
council with contempt. He had not been dismayed by the successes of the French,
and had rejected, even with anger, a suggestion that he should withdraw for
safety to Naples. And three weeks after the battle of Ravenna—only a fortnight
later than the time originally appointed—he assembled the fifth Lateran
council. The proceedings were opened by Giles of Viterbo, general of the
Augustine friars, and afterwards a cardinal, who, in a discourse which was greatly
admired, spoke of the evils and dangers of the time, of the benefits of synods,
the providential care which had been shown in the protection of the pope, the
mischiefs of schism, the necessity of ecclesiastical and moral reformation, and
the duty of arming against the general enemy of Christendom.
The first and second sessions were chiefly occupied by
formal business. At the third session, Matthew Lang, bishop of Gurk, appeared,
and produced a commission from Maximilian, with whom the pope had lately
concluded an alliance. In this document the emperor signified his adhesion to
the council, and authorized his representative to do all that might be
possible for the restoration of unity. The bishop then declared that in the
emperor’s name he revoked and annulled all that had been done in the conciliabulum of Pisa, for which, he said, the
emperor had never given any mandate; and he and a lay envoy of Maximilian
reverently kissed the pope’s feet. At the same session was read and accepted a
bull, reprobating and annulling all the proceedings of the refractory
cardinals, and renewing an order by which Julius, in the preceding August, had
interdicted all France, with the exception of Brittany, and had even
condescended to gratify his enmity against the French by so petty an act of vengeance
as the removal of a fair from Lyons to Geneva.
At the fourth session the question of the pragmatic
sanction was brought before the council. After a reading of the instrument by
which Lewis XI had abrogated it, the advocate of the council, Melchior Bardassini, requested that the pragmatic sanction should be
revoked and annulled, and that a monition should be addressed to such
ecclesiastical and lay persons of eminence in France as might be interested in
it, requiring them to appear and to show cause why it should not be abolished.
Two bulls of the proposed tenor were thereupon produced, and received the
approbation of the council.
Julius had quarrelled with his Venetian allies, partly
as to some territories which he claimed on the Po; and while the republic
concluded a treaty with France, the pope, as we have seen, allied himself with
the emperor. But whereas Maximilian set up pretensions to the duchy of Milan
for himself or one of his grandsons, the pope, who could endure no foreign
dominion in Italy, favoured the claims of Maximilian Sforza, son of Lewis the
Moor. This claimant entered the capital on the 29th of December; and it appeared
as if Julius were on the point of completing his work of expelling the “barbarians”
from Italy, when he was seized with an illness which seemed likely to be fatal.
In consequence of this he was unable to be present at the fifth session of the
Lateran council, which was held on the 16th of February 1513; but he got from
it a confirmation of a bull which he had sent forth eight years before, and had
since republished, with a view to checking the practice of simony in elections
to the papacy. The pope retained to the last his clearness of mind and his
strength of will. With regard to the cardinals who had been concerned in the
council of Pisa, he declared that as a private man he forgave them, and prayed
that God would forgive the injuries which they had done to the church, but that
as pope he must condemn them; and he ordered that they should be excluded from
the election of his successor. On the night of the 21st of February Julius
breathed his last, at the age of seventy.
On the 4th of March twenty-five cardinals met for the
election of a successor to the papacy. The warlike ambition of Julius had
produced so much of trouble that there was among them a general wish to fill
the chair with a pope of very opposite character. The younger cardinals
especially resolved to make their influence felt, and among them the most
active was Alfonso Petrucci, cardinal of St. Theodore, and son of the lord of
Siena. Raphael Riario, the senior and richest member of the college, whom some cardinals
were disposed to choose in the hope of sharing in the great preferments which
would become vacant by his election, was soon set aside—partly on account of
his relationship to Sixtus IV and the late pope, and partly from doubts as to
his capacity; and on the 11th of March the election fell on John de’ Medici,
who had entered the conclave two days later than the other cardinals. He had
been detained on his journey from Florence by an ailment which is supposed to
have induced some of his brethren to vote for him on the ground that it seemed
likely to shorten his life. It is said that Petrucci, in announcing the
election of the new pope, as Leo the Tenth, to the people, shouted out, “Life
and health to the juniors!” The result was hailed with general acclamation.
Leo at the time of his election was only thirty-seven
years of age. His early promotion to the cardinalate, and his expulsion with
the rest of his family from Florence, have been already mentioned. During his
exile from his native city he had travelled with a party of friends in Germany,
France, and the Low Countries, and had lived some years at Genoa, where his
sister and her husband, Franceschetto Cibò, had
established themselves. There he became intimate with Julian della Rovere, who, like himself, was under the disfavour of
pope Alexander; and when his friend became pope, cardinal de’ Medici removed to
Rome. Under the pontificate of Julius he lived in splendour, and showed that he
had inherited the tastes of his family by his patronage of literature and art.
He threw open to all a noble library, including as many of the manuscripts
collected by the Medici as he had been able to recover by purchase after the
troubles of Florence; his palace became a resort of painters, sculptors, musicians,
and men of letters; but so far did the expense of indulging his tastes exceed
his means of gratifying them, that he is said to have been sometimes reduced to
pledge his silver plate in order to procure a supply of the most necessary
materials for an intended banquet.
The cardinal had been sent as legate to Bologna, at
the head of a force which was intended to reduce the city after the revolt of
1511; and when the Spanish general Cardona, who commanded the besieging troops,
through disregarding his advice, had allowed the French to advance to the
relief of the Bolognese, the legate appeared at the battle of Ravenna, where,
as we have seen, he was made prisoner. From this captivity he was able to make
his escape; and within a short time he shared in the restoration of his family
to Florence—for which he had contributed to pave the way by the attention which
he was accustomed to bestow on Florentine visitors during his residence at
Rome.
As the pope had not yet advanced beyond the order of
deacon, he was ordained as priest on the 15th of March, and as bishop on the
17th; and he was hastily enthroned on the 19th, in order to avoid interference
with the rites of the holy week. But Leo was not content with this imperfect
ceremony, and a more splendid coronation was celebrated at the Lateran on the
11th of April. In the great procession the gods of Olympus and other heathen
elements were mingled, according to the taste of the age; and the pope rode the
same Turkish horse which, on the same day of the preceding year, had carried
him at the battle of Ravenna. The cost of this second coronation amounted to
100,000 ducats; and such an outlay for such a purpose contrasted strongly with
the practice of Julius II, who, while he incurred enormous expenses on account
of his wars, had spent very little on display. Magnificence and expense were
characteristic of Leo’s court, and in order to find the necessary means he had
recourse to the disreputable expedients of promoting cardinals for money, and
of creating offices for sale. Even the luxury of his table was extraordinary.
He encouraged invention in the culinary art; the flesh of monkeys and crows,
and other unusual kinds of food were served up before him by way of experiment;
and the discovery of peacock sausages was regarded as the highest triumph of
genius in this department. His banquets were enlivened by the brilliant
conversation of wits, and by the follies of bad poets, whom he condescended to
entertain for the sake of the amusement which their vanity and their
absurdities afforded him. The court was a scene of continual diversions, which
were not always of the gravest character. The pope’s favourite companions were
gay, and for the most part highly-born, young cardinals. One of them, Bernard Dovizi, who from his birthplace was called Bibbiena, wrote comedies of a somewhat free character,
which were acted by young performers in the Vatican; and every year a party of
comedians, known as the “Academy of the Roughs”, was brought from Siena for the
diversion of the father of Christendom. Card-playing for heavy stakes was a
common sequel of the pope’s banquets; and, whether a winner or a loser, he was
in the habit of throwing gold pieces among the spectators of the game. He condemned
the practice of dice-playing, however, as dangerous to fortune and morals.
Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, and artists of all other kinds,
found Leo a munificent patron; nor was literature neglected in the distribution
of his favours, although it seems to have received but an inferior share of
them. Before leaving the conclave at which he had been elected, he appointed as
his private secretaries two elegant scholars, Bembo and Sadoleto,
who afterwards became cardinals. He also promoted to the cardinalate some
eminent divines, such as Thomas de Vio (known by the
name of Cajetan), Sylvester Prierias, and Giles of
Viterbo. But the learning which he chiefly favoured was not theological. His
own acquirements in theology were confessedly scanty; while, as might have been
expected in a pupil of Politian, he delighted in the writings of the Greek and
Roman poets. His favourite amusement was hunting, in which he engaged with a
zeal regardless of season, of weather, and of unwholesome air; and nothing
disturbed his usually placid temper more surely than any breach of the laws of
sport.
That Leo had little of piety or devotion in his character
appears unquestionable. But his defects as to religion may be described as
those of a man of the world too much addicted to its objects and enjoyments.
The charges which have been brought against his morals appear to have been
greatly exaggerated and maliciously darkened; and the tales which represent him
as an unbeliever in the Christian revelation may be regarded as utterly
groundless. Good-natured as Leo usually was, he sometimes showed himself stern.
He beheaded Baglioni, who (as we have seen) had made himself tyrant of Perugia,
for acts of tyranny, robbery, and murder, notwithstanding the intercessions of
the Orsini; he hanged a doctor of laws for producing forged documents in a
suit; and he punished with unsparing severity the conspiracy of cardinal
Petrucci.
Leo was desirous, like his predecessor, to exclude the
rule of foreigners from Italy; but his ambition was of a lower kind than that
which had thrown a sort of grandeur over the schemes of Julius, and had in some
degree covered the unscrupulous nature of the means which he employed. It was
not for the church, for the papacy, or for Italy that the Medicean pope laboured, but for his own family. His eagerness to forward the interests
of his relations was shown immediately after his election by his appointing his
cousin Julius, a knight of Rhodes, and son of the victim of the Pazzian conspiracy, to the archbishopric of Florence; and
to this were soon added the dignity of cardinal and the legation of Bologna.
At a later time great troubles arose out of his endeavours to provide a
principality for a nephew by uniting Parma and Piacenza with Reggio, and, on
the failure of that plan, by bestowing on him the duchy of Ferrara, which was
for that purpose to be taken from Alfonso d’Este; and
in a lower degree the pope was noted for his partiality for his countrymen in
general,—so that Rome, to the disgust of its native citizens, swarmed with
Florentines who were employed in all sorts of offices and occupations.
1514-15. BATTLE OF MARIGNANO.
Leo had followed Julius in his hostility to France;
and he was a party to a new league which was concluded against that power at
Mechlin, in April 1513, between the emperor, the king of England, and the king
of Spain, although neither the pope nor Ferdinand formally signed it. But the
course of events speedily induced him to change his policy. The French, after
some successes in northern Italy, were defeated at Novara by Swiss troops in
the interest of Maximilian Sforza, and were driven back across the Alps,
while the fortresses which had been held for them in Italy surrendered, and by
the disasters of France the power of Spain became more alarming, as the vast
dominions of that country (including its acquisitions in the new world), of
Austria, Naples, and the Netherlands, with the dignity of emperor, were likely
to be soon united under the young Charles, the grandson of Ferdinand and of
Maximilian. The pope, therefore, was disposed to conciliate the French king,
who, partly from his own regard for the papacy, and yet more in consequence of
his consort’s importunities, was ready to abandon the unsuccessful council
which he had assembled in opposition to Leo’s predecessor. An agreement was
easily concluded; and at the eighth session of the Lateran council it was
declared that Lewis adhered to that council, and undertook to expel the rival
assembly from Lyons or any other place in his dominions, while the pope
recalled all the censures which had been uttered against France. The schismatical cardinals Carvajal and San Severino, who had
been arrested in Tuscany on their way to the conclave, had at the seventh
session petitioned the council for pardon, and, on making their humble
submission to the pope, and abjuring the council of Pisa, had a few days later
been reinstated in their dignity.
Within three weeks after the reconciliation of France
with the papacy, queen Anne of Brittany died; and on the first day of the year
1415, her death was followed by that of Lewis XII, who in the meantime had
married a third wife—the young princess Mary of England. The crown of France
descended to Francis, duke of Angouleme, the first prince of the blood, and
son-in-law of the late king. At the time of his accession, Francis was only
twenty years old. He was possessed of showy qualities, personal and mental,
which won for him admiration and popularity; but he was thoroughly selfish and
hard-hearted, voluptuous, unsteady, and faithless; and these grave faults were
more and more developed with advancing years.
The new king at once signified his intention of prosecuting
his predecessor’s designs on Italy by assuming the title of duke of Milan; and
in August he crossed the Alps into Lombardy—a country devastated, exhausted,
and reduced to misery by the sufferings of years, during which it had been the
battleground of French and Spanish, German and Venetian, armies. The glory
acquired by Gaston de Foix during his brief career stimulated the emulation of
the young Francis. At the battle of Marignano, the greatest action of the age,
which the veteran general Trivulzio declared to be a
battle of giants, in comparison of which all his former engagements were but as
children’s play, the king’s desire of glory was gratified by a signal victory
over the Swiss, who until then had been regarded as invincible; and when the
fight was over, he distinguished the “fearless and blameless knight”, Bayard,
by asking and receiving knighthood at his hands. In consequence of this battle,
Maximilian Sforza, who had never been able to gain a firm hold on the Milanese,
gave up all pretensions to the duchy of Milan, and withdrew to a life of
privacy in France.
After some negotiation Leo sought a conference with
Francis, and the two potentates met at Bologna. Francis showed the pope all
ceremonious marks of reverence by kissing his feet, his hand, and his mouth,
holding his train, and serving him at mass. And the result of the conference
was greatly in favour of Leo. He obtained the king’s consent to his designs on
the duchy of Urbino; he put off his request for investiture in Naples by
holding out hopes of the changes which might follow on the expected death of Ferdinand
of Spain. But the most important business of the conference related to the
pragmatic sanction, which for three-quarters of a century had been a subject of
contention between France and the papacy. The late pope, at the fourth session
of the Lateran council, had cited the king, the princes, the bishops, and the
parliaments of France, to show cause why the law should not be abrogated. At
the ninth session (May 5, 1514) the procurator of the council reported that the
French had not obeyed this summons; but the bishop of Marseilles explained
that the prelates of France had been unable to procure a safe-conduct from the
duke of Milan. On this, the Milanese ambassador said that his master had not
refused a safe-conduct, but had required time for consideration; and the
subject was further discussed at the following session.
Leo now succeeded in arranging with Francis that that
sanction should be abolished, and a new concordat should be substituted for it.
The blame of this concession was laid by the French on the king’s chancellor,
Duprat, whom the pope had gained to his interest by the hope of the cardinalate
and of other rewards. In return for his concessions the king obtained the
dignity of cardinal for Adrian de Boissy, bishop of Coutances and brother of
the grand-master of France, with a discharge as to certain moneys which had
been collected as if for a crusade, and had been detained by Lewis XII; and in
addition to these favours, the pope professed to bestow on him new privileges
with regard to ecclesiastical elections.
The terms of the concordat were settled at Bologna in
August 1516, and were ratified by the Lateran council at its eleventh session,
on the 19th of December—one bishop only expressing any difference of opinion.
Elections in cathedrals and monasteries were abolished, on account of the
alleged evil consequences. In case of the vacancy of a see, the king was within
six months to present to the pope a person not under twenty-seven years of age,
and having certain other qualifications. If he should present one not so
qualified, he might within a further time of three months present another; and
in case of delay, the pope might appoint a bishop, as he was also authorized to
do when a vacancy was caused by the death of a prelate at the Roman court.
Exceptions were, however, made as to some of the qualifications in the case of
persons of royal or high birth, and of friars who by the statutes of their
order were unable to take the prescribed degrees. A like rule was established
as to monasteries, where the heads were to be chosen from persons of the same
order to which the monks belonged, and not under twenty-three years of age. The
bull of Boniface VIII known as Unam Sanctam, with
the slight modification of it introduced by Clement V, was reenacted, and the
pragmatic sanction—which was spoken; of as “the Bourges corruption of the
kingdom of France”—was abolished. Thus the pope, in order to conciliate the
king, had made over to the crown a large part of the privileges which were
taken from the French church. The Roman practices of reservation and
expectative graces were given up, but the pope found his compensation in the
recovery of the annates.
The report of the concordat was received in France
with general indignation and disgust. The students of the university of Paris
broke out into tumult, and dragged about the streets a figure of the chancellor
Duprat, whom they regarded as the betrayer of the national church. Preachers
loudly denounced from the pulpit the sacrifice of ecclesiastical liberty. When
Francis convened at the Palace of Justice a great assembly of the parliament,
the bishops, the chapter of the cathedral, and the chief doctors of the
university, the concordat and the chancellor’s explanations of it, with his
statement that it must be regarded as a remedy for worse evils, were received
with loud cries of disapprobation. When the king sent forth letters patent, by
which the courts were ordered to take the concordat for the basis of their future
judgments, the advocate-general, instead of requiring that the concordat and
the letters should be registered by the parliament, desired that the pragmatic
sanction might be maintained, and appealed “against the congregation which
claimed the title of Lateran council.”
The parliament of Paris blamed the re-imposition of
annates as a measure which would beggar the kingdom, and also as simoniacal. It appealed “to the pope better advised, and to
the first lawfully assembled council”; and in this it was followed by provincial
parliaments. The university of Paris appealed in like manner, and forbade all
printers and booksellers to circulate the obnoxious document under pain of
being rejected from the academic body.
Francis, in no less indignation, met these demonstrations
by threats, and by high-handed measures. He imprisoned some members of the
university who had made themselves conspicuous in opposition to the concordat.
But the parliament still carried on a long war of formalities, in the hope of
delaying, if not of preventing, the enforcement of the new system. Chapters
and monastic bodies continued to elect their heads, and the parliaments
maintained the men so chosen, to the exclusion of the king’s nominees. The
courts affected to act and to decide as if the pragmatic sanction were still in
force, until Francis, in 1527, by transferring the cognizance of ecclesiastical
causes from them to the great council of state, procured a reluctant submission
to the concordats The chief remaining trace of the Gallican liberties was to be
found in that freer tone of thought by which the French church was until very
recent times distinguished from other portions of the Roman communion.
The Lateran council, although more considerable as to
numbers than that of Pisa, had never been largely attended, and the greater
part of its members (who at the utmost did not exceed sixteen cardinals and
about a hundred bishops and abbots) were Italians or bishops in partibus, although there were also representatives of
England, Spain, and Hungary. Under Leo it had become merely an instrument of
the papal policy. A few decrees for reform of the curia and other such objects
were passed in later sessions; but they were so limited by exceptions and
reservations that little effect was to be expected from them. There was also a
project of an alliance between Christian sovereigns against the Turks. There
was a condemnation of some sceptical opinions which had been vented as to the
eternity of the world and the mortality of the soul; and, in order to check the
indulgence in such speculations, it was decreed that no student in any
university should spend more than five years in philosophical and poetical
studies without also studying theology or canon law, either instead of such
subjects or together with them.
The council broke up at its twelfth session, on the
16th of March 1517, having enabled the pope to triumph over the threatened
schism, and to gain a victory over the church of France which placed his
authority higher than it had ever stood in that country. On the 31st of October
in the same year, Martin Luther began the great movement against the authority
of Rome by publishing his ninety-five propositions at Wittenberg.
