Absolute Monarchs

by John Julius Norwich

  Yet, despite all his misfortunes—for many of which he had been himself responsible—the pope never forgot that he was a Medici and a Renaissance prince. He was a patron of Cellini and Raphael, and he commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Last Judgment on the east wall of the Sistine Chapel, as well as completing his work on the Medici tombs in San Lorenzo. His family had fought its way back into Florence in 1530, and the city was now ruled by Alessandro, generally believed to have been the bastard son of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s grandson Lorenzo II.3 Now, within a year of his death, Clement achieved the only real diplomatic success of his career: a double marriage, linking the Medici with the two most powerful—yet always bitterly opposed—royal houses of Europe, the Valois and the Habsburg. The first of these was between Lorenzo II’s daughter Catherine and Henry, Duke of Orleans, son of Francis I and future King Henry II of France; the second was between Alessandro and Margaret of Austria, the natural daughter of Charles V. It was to officiate at the first of these that the pope traveled to Marseille in October 1533;4 when he returned to Rome at the end of the year, he was already a sick man. He never recovered his health, and on September 25, 1534, he died.

  1. The abbreviation Fid. Def. (or the initials F.D.) appears to this day on British coins.

  2. See chapter 16.

  3. Several historians, however, have suggested that he was the son of Clement himself.

  4. Fourteen years later, his kinswoman was Queen of France. The second marriage was less successful, Alessandro being assassinated in 1537 by his distant cousin Lorenzino.

  CHAPTER XX

  The Counter-Reformation

  Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who on October 13, 1534, was elected as Pope Paul III, was the senior member of the Sacred College. He was only sixty-six, but he had not worn well. Bent almost double, with a long white beard and hobbling on a stick, he gave the impression of being at least a decade older; it comes as something of a surprise to learn that he was elected unanimously after only two days and was to reign for the next fifteen years. Already in 1522, at the conclave which had elected Hadrian VI, he had been an early favorite, but his character assassination by Cardinal Egidio had utterly destroyed his chances. By now, however, he had distanced himself from his former life and Egidio’s objections had been forgotten; moreover, Farnese had made meticulous plans in advance to pave the way to the Papacy.

  Paul had been known in former days as the “petticoat cardinal,” since—according to popular belief—he owed his red hat entirely to the fact that his sister Giulia had been a favorite mistress of Alexander VI. From the start, however, he made it clear that he was to be no petticoat pope. Like Giulia, he was a child of the Renaissance, reared in the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent; as Egidio had been at pains to point out, although a cardinal at twenty-five he had since cheerfully fathered a number of offspring. He was equally shameless in his nepotism, raising two of his grandsons to the Sacred College at the ages of sixteen and fourteen, respectively. He revived the Carnival in 1536; Rome resounded to the cheers of bullfights, horse races, and fireworks displays, the Vatican to the music of balls and banquets. Yet—and this is what makes Paul III one of the most interesting popes of the sixteenth century—he turned out to be a man of strong moral conscience and a reformer.

  Let us look at his worldly side first. Architecturally, his supreme achievement is the Palazzo Farnese in Rome.1 He had begun it in 1517; but such were its size and splendor that it was not completed till 1589, forty years after his death. One of its four architects was Michelangelo, whom Paul also commissioned to redesign the Campidoglio (Capitol)—into which the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius was now moved to provide a centerpiece—and to succeed Antonio da Sangallo as architect of St. Peter’s. Michelangelo worked on the new basilica for seventeen years, during which he designed the great dome, until his death at the age of eighty-nine. Throughout that time he refused all fees; it was, he said, an offering to God.

  Dynastically, like all Renaissance popes, Paul III was determined to further his family fortunes. The Farnese were an old and distinguished family of condottieri with estates around Viterbo and Lake Bolsena, but they were not aristocrats like the Orsini or Colonna. Clearly, there was room for improvement: Paul first appointed his notoriously dissolute son Pierluigi as Captain General of the Church.2 Next he invested Pierluigi’s son Ottavio as Duke of Camerino; then, in 1538, he married Ottavio to Margaret of Austria, the fifteen-year-old widow of the assassinated Alessandro de’ Medici.3 Finally in 1545, he created Pierluigi Duke of Parma and Piacenza, a dynasty that was to continue for almost two centuries.

  But these artistic and dynastic considerations, important as they were, took up relatively little of his time. Most of it was taken up by the Church and the perils that beset it. One of the greatest problems was posed by the Turks. Under their brilliant Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent they were not only steadily advancing through Central Europe, they were threatening the coasts of Italy as well as the remaining Christian outposts in the eastern Mediterranean. If they could be defeated at all, it could only be by a concerted effort of all the Catholic nations. Somehow, therefore, those two archrivals, Francis of France and the Emperor Charles, must be reconciled.

  The other peril was Protestantism. It was by now far too late to eradicate it: most of northern Europe had already been engulfed in the tide. Paul could concentrate only on damage limitation. The more he considered how best to contain the surge, the more convinced he became that the prime necessity was for a General Council—and one that would include a strong contingent of Lutherans. Objections, inevitably, were raised on all sides. The cardinals saw any reform as a threat to their own comfortable lifestyles; the emperor, terrified that the proposed Council might take so rigid a stand on doctrine as to make a compromise with his Protestant subjects impossible, preferred that it leave aside all theological questions and confine itself to measures of reform; the Lutherans demanded a totally uncommitted meeting of all Christians and steadfastly refused to attend any assembly that was held on Italian soil or presided over by the pope. As for the King of France, he was only too pleased to see Charles enmeshed in religious problems and had no wish to see them resolved.

  But Paul persisted; meanwhile he summoned a special commission, which he ordered to report on all the ills of the Church and to recommend measures that should be taken to remedy them. It was composed of a number of cardinals, specially admitted to the Sacred College for the task; they included the devout English humanist Reginald Pole, a cousin of Henry VIII, and Giampietro Carafa—the future Paul IV—an elderly Neapolitan who had served as papal nuncio in England and had subsequently founded the Theatine order.4 The commissioners submitted their report in March 1537. One of our leading church historians5 describes it in a single word: dynamite. It listed the current abuses and laid the blame for all of them—the sale of indulgences and Church benefices, the sinecures, stockpiling of bishoprics, and countless others—squarely on the Papacy. The result of all this had been the Protestant Reformation, and no wonder: had the Church kept its house in order, the Reformation would never have occurred. The horrified Curia—deliberately unrepresented on the commission—did all it could to sweep the report under the carpet; but a copy was leaked, and before long a German translation was going the rounds of the Lutheran churches.

  Now at last reform—serious reform—was in the air, and Pope Paul did everything he could to encourage it. He gave an enthusiastic reception to the young priest Filippo Neri, whose mission was concentrated in the seedy inns and whorehouses of the Roman underworld; and a few years later he accorded a similar welcome to the rather older Ignatius Loyola, a Basque who had arrived with half a dozen like-minded colleagues from Spain, grouped together in what they called the Society of Jesus. In 1540 the pope issued a bull giving the Society his official approval. The Jesuits, with no distinctive dress for their order, no fixed headquarters, and no choral prayer, were bound together by two things only: strict discipline and unconditional
obedience. As we shall see, they were to have a checkered history, but they were the spearhead of the Counter-Reformation.

  Finally the pope had his reward: on December 13, 1545, the long-delayed Council opened at Trent, a city recommended by the emperor because it lay safely in imperial territory. It got off to a shaky start, its first sessions being attended by only a single cardinal, four archbishops, and thirty-one bishops, but it was gradually to gather momentum and continue on and off for the next eighteen years. It was overwhelmingly weighted in favor of the Italians; even when it was best attended, with over 270 bishops, the Germans never numbered more than 13. But the important thing about the Council was that—in the teeth of all the opposition—it actually happened; moreover, it showed itself ready to defy the emperor and fearlessly to debate the hoary old questions of doctrine: justification by faith, transubstantiation, Purgatory, and many more.

  It was never to be more than a partial success. When it was at last dissolved, the Protestants, who understandably saw it as little more than a Roman puppet show, naturally remained unsatisfied—how could they have been anything else? Even for the Catholics its reforms were less radical and comprehensive than many had hoped for. Not a word was said, for example, about the reform of the Papacy, which was far more necessary than anything else. Owing largely to the undiminished mutual hostility of the emperor and the King of France (Francis I was succeeded by Henry II in 1547) it sat only intermittently, often without the French contingent. It never came near to being the ecumenical council of union for the whole of Western Christianity that had been for so long hoped and prayed for; it was simply the confessional council of the Counter-Reformation, with the purpose of re-Catholicizing Europe, if necessary by force. The results were all too evident: in France no fewer than eight civil wars against the Huguenots (more than three thousand of whom perished in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris in 1572); a war between Spain and the Netherlands that lasted for more than eighty years; and the nightmare Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which caused untold devastation through northern Europe.

  But the Council nonetheless established a solid basis for the renewal of discipline and spiritual life in the Church, which emerged a good deal stronger and more focused than before. It was thanks to the Council of Trent that the Protestant tide was eventually halted and thanks to the vision and determination of Pope Paul III that it was held at all.

  Had Pope Paul died at the end of 1545, he would probably have closed his eyes a happy man; sadly for him, he was to live another four years, during which personal tragedy struck. In September 1547 the people of Piacenza rose up against his son Pierluigi and assassinated him; then, to escape papal vengeance, they sought the emperor’s protection. Charles granted it; once Piacenza was under his guardianship it was virtually his, and if he played his cards right he might soon acquire Parma as well. For Paul this was a betrayal of trust. His initial reaction was angrily to reclaim Parma as papal territory, only to find that Pierluigi’s son Ottavio refused to give it up and that his other grandson—one of his own cardinals—had taken Ottavio’s side. Ottavio was beyond his jurisdiction; the cardinal was not so lucky. Summoned to the papal presence, he felt his biretta snatched from his head and hurled to the ground. But the pope was by now in his eighty-second year, and the emotion was too much for him. A few hours later he was dead.

  PAUL III HAVING died in mid-November, the conclave to elect his successor was held during the following winter. Despite the hardships involved, it lasted nearly three months. In the fifteenth century conclaves had been attended only by those members of the Sacred College who formed part of the Curia and were consequently in Rome; by the sixteenth, cardinals were summoned from all over Europe—although this did not mean that their colleagues necessarily waited for them. During the early stages in 1548 the dominant figure was the Englishman Reginald Pole: on the first round he secured twenty-five votes out of the twenty-eight required. Had he been prepared to lobby in his own interest, he would probably have swept the board; but that was not his way. He made no effort to convince the xenophobe Italians, who were determined on one of their own number, and the conclave was still undecided when the French cardinals arrived. Horrified at the thought of an English pope, they accused Pole of heresy and managed to alienate several of his supporters. Pole’s principal champion, the former pope’s grandson Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, proposed the magnificently Machiavellian ploy of a late-night scrutiny during which the majority would be too sleepy (or drunk) to take much interest, but that was not Pole’s way either. If, he said, he was to enter the Vatican, he would do so through the open door, not like a thief in the night.

  This conclave was probably the only one in papal history that incorporated a deliberate tease. The victim was Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, whose brother had already made a fool of himself by being caught scrambling over the roof of the Sistine Chapel in a vain attempt to eavesdrop on what was going on. The cardinal was at that moment suffering from an unfortunate condition in which his hair and beard were falling out in handfuls. The cause, as everyone knew perfectly well, was almost certainly alopecia, but he was arraigned before his fellows, who strongly hinted that the problem was due to syphilis. Indignantly, poor d’Este fell into the trap and protested that he had led a life of exemplary chastity for over a year. After that he was no longer considered a serious contender.

  Finally, after the usual intrigues, the French and Italian factions agreed, despite the emperor’s opposition, on a relative nonentity. Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte—henceforth to be known as Julius III—was a competent canon lawyer who had suffered grievously during the sack of Rome a quarter of a century before6 and had later been copresident at the opening of the Council of Trent; he was, however, better known for his infatuation with a seventeen-year-old boy, somewhat inappropriately named Innocenzo, whom he had picked up in the streets of Parma two years before and whom on his accession he instantly made a cardinal.

  He began as he meant to go on. Here once again was a typical Renaissance pope, shamelessly self-indulgent and nepotistic, whose banquets—it was widely whispered in Rome—tended to deteriorate into homosexual orgies after the principal guests had taken their leave. He lavished vast sums on his exquisite country villa, the Villa Giulia;7 he took an active interest in Michelangelo’s work on St. Peter’s; he appointed Palestrina choirmaster and magister puerorum of his personal chapel. He was, perhaps surprisingly, a staunch believer in the need for Church reform—he encouraged the Jesuits and certainly did everything he could to keep the Council of Trent firmly on the rails—and he genuinely rejoiced when, with the succession of Mary I to the English throne, her country returned to the Catholic fold. But there can be no doubt that his principal object was the pursuit of pleasure. For a man notorious—inter alia—for his gluttony, there was a certain poetic justice in his end: his digestive system ceased to function, and on March 23, 1555, he died, effectively of starvation.

  CARDINAL MARCELLO CERVINI was a humanist and scholar. He had translated Greek works into Latin and Latin works into Italian; he had been appointed bishop of three successive sees, where, despite long absences, he had assiduously promoted reforms; he had been one of the three copresidents of the Council of Trent; and he had reorganized the Vatican Library. When, after a short conclave in which, thanks to a stalemate between the French and imperialists, he was elected as a compromise candidate, he chose to keep his own name and became Pope Marcellus II. He was a reformer through and through. He cut his coronation expenses to a minimum and pared his court to the bone. Such was his horror of nepotism that he forbade all members of his family to show their faces in Rome. Aged only fifty-three at the time of his coronation, he might have achieved great things; alas, after just twenty-two days in office he suffered a massive stroke which killed him. Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli is his only lasting memorial.

  On his election on May 23 as Pope Paul IV, Giampietro Carafa was seventy-eight years old—the oldest pope of the sixteenth centu
ry and by far the most terrifying. In his intolerance, his bigotry, his refusal to compromise or even to listen to any opinions other than his own, he was a throwback to the Middle Ages. He suspended the Council of Trent, replacing it with a commission of cardinals and theologians; he introduced the Index of Forbidden Books, including on it the complete works of Erasmus;8 he took a special delight in the Inquisition, never missing its weekly meeting; finally, he opened the most savage campaign in papal history against the Jews, to the point where, in the five short years of his pontificate, the Jewish population of Rome was halved.

  Anti-Semitism had first manifested itself in Rome soon after Constantine the Great adopted Christianity in the fourth century, and with succeeding centuries it had grown steadily worse. But it was under Paul IV that the Jews were first rounded up into a ghetto, forbidden to trade in any commodity except food and secondhand clothing, permitted only a single synagogue in each city—in Rome seven were demolished—compelled to speak only Italian or Latin, and obliged to wear yellow hats in the street. The bull Cum Nimis Absurdum of July 17, 1555, which laid down these and innumerable similar regulations, was to remain in force for the next three centuries.

  Next to the Jews, Paul IV hated the Spaniards. Coming as he did from an old Neapolitan family, this was hardly surprising; but his immoderation led him, as always, to go too far. He had never forgiven the Emperor Charles for concluding the Peace of Augsburg, which in 1555 pacified Germany by conceding to the Lutherans all the areas which had Lutheran rulers. Two years later, abandoning the neutrality of his immediate predecessors and ignoring the fact that Charles was now the principal champion of the Catholic Reformation, he allied himself with Henry II of France and declared war on Spain. The result was disaster. The Spanish Viceroy of Naples, the Duke of Alba, led an army north, and the Romans prepared for yet another siege; fortunately for the pope, Alba proved merciful, taking Ostia but sparing Rome itself. The duke was generous, too, in the terms of the Treaty of Cave which followed. But Paul refused to be mollified. His hatred of the Habsburgs even led him to quarrel with Charles’s daughter-in-law Queen Mary I of England, who had restored her country to Catholicism. He deprived the estimable Cardinal Pole of his legateship, summoning him back to Rome to answer charges of heresy, and generally made himself so unpleasant as greatly to facilitate the efforts of Queen Elizabeth I—Mary’s half sister and successor—to return her realm to the Protestant religion.