PART II.

Tales illustrative of Bravi and Banditti--Cecco Bibboni--Ambrogio Tremazzi--Lodovico dall'Armi--Brigandage--Piracy--Plagues--The Plagues of Milan, Venice, Piedmont--Persecution of the Untori--Moral State of the Proletariate--Witchcraft--Its Italian Features--History of Giacomo Centini


RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.

CHAPTER I.

THE SPANISH HEGEMONY.

Italy in the Renaissance--The Five Great Powers--The Kingdom of Naples--The Papacy--The Duchy of Milan--Venice--The Florentine Republic--Wars of Invasion closed by the Sack of Rome in 1527--Concordat between Clement VII. and Charles V.--Treaty of Barcelona and Paix des Dames--Charles lands at Genoa--His Journey to Bologna--Entrance into Bologna and Reception by Clement--Mustering of Italian Princes--Francesco Sforza replaced in the Duchy of Milan--Venetian Embassy--Italian League signed on Christmas Eve, 1529--Florence alone excluded--The Siege of Florence pressed by the Prince of Orange--Charles's Coronation as King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor--The Significance of this Ceremony at Bologna--Ceremony in S. Petronio--Settlement of the Duchy of Ferrara--Men of Letters and Arts at Bologna--The Emperor's Use of the Spanish Habit--Charles and Clement leave Bologna in March, 1530--Review of the Settlement of Italy effected by Emperor and Pope--Extinction of Republics--Subsequent Absorption of Ferrara and Urbino into the Papal States--Savoy becomes an Italian Power--Period between Charles's Coronation and the Peace of Cateau Cambresis in 1559--Economical and Social Condition of the Italians under Spanish Hegemony--The Nation still Exists in Separate Communities--Intellectual Conditions--Predominance of Spain and Rome--Both Cosmopolitan Powers--Leveling down of the Component Portions of the Nation in a Common Servitude--The Evils of Spanish Rule.

In the first volume of my book on Renaissance in Italy I attempted to set forth the political and social phases through which the Italians passed before their principal States fell into the hands of despots, and to explain the conditions of mutual jealousy and military feebleness which exposed those States to the assaults of foreign armies at the close of the fifteenth century.

In the year 1494, when Charles VIII. of France, at Lodovico Sforza's invitation, crossed the Alps to make good his claim on Naples, the peninsula was Independent. Internal peace had prevailed for a period of nearly fifty years. An equilibrium had been established between the five great native Powers, which secured the advantages of confederation and diplomatic interaction.

While using the word confederation, I do not, of course, imply that anything similar to the federal union of Switzerland or of North America existed in Italy. The contrary is proved by patent facts. On a miniature scale, Italy then displayed political conditions analogous to those which now prevail in Europe. The parcels of the nation adopted different forms of self-government, sought divers foreign alliances, and owed no allegiance to any central legislative or administrative body. I therefore speak of the Italian confederation only in the same sense as Europe may now be called a confederation of kindred races.

In the year 1630, when Charles V. (of Austria and Spain) was crowned Emperor at Bologna, this national independence had been irretrievably lost by the Italians. This confederation of evenly-balanced Powers was now exchanged for servitude beneath a foreign monarchy, and for subjection to a cosmopolitan elective priesthood.

The history of social, intellectual, and moral conditions in Italy during the seventy years of the sixteenth century which followed Charles's coronation at Bologna, forms the subject of this work; but before entering upon these topics it will be well to devote one chapter to considering with due brevity the partition of Italy into five States in 1494, the dislocation of this order by the wars between Spain and France for supremacy, the position in which the same States found themselves respectively at the termination of those wars in 1527, and the new settlement of the peninsula effected by Charles V. in 1529-30.

The five members of the Italian federation in 1494 were the kingdom of Naples, the Papacy, the Duchy of Milan, and the Republics of Venice and Florence. Round them, in various relations of amity or hostility, were grouped these minor Powers: the Republics of Genoa, Lucca, Siena; the Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio; the Marquisates of Mantua and Montferrat; and the Duchy of Urbino. For our immediate purpose it is not worth taking separate account of the Republic of Pisa, which was practically though not thoroughly enslaved by Florence; or of the despots in the cities of Romagna, the March. Umbria, and the Patrimony of S. Peter, who were being gradually absorbed into the Papal sovereignty. Nor need we at present notice Savoy, Piemonte, and Saluzzo. Although these north-western provinces were all-important through the period of Franco-Spanish wars, inasmuch as they opened the gate of Italy to French armies, and supplied those armies with a base for military operations, the Duchy of Savoy had not yet become an exclusively Italian Power.

The kingdom of Naples, on the death of Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1458, had been separated from Sicily, and passed by testamentary appointment to his natural son Ferdinand. The bastard Aragonese dynasty was Italian in its tastes and interests, though unpopular both with the barons of the realm and with the people, who in their restlessness were ready to welcome any foreign deliverer from its oppressive yoke. This state of general discontent rendered the revival of the old Angevine party, and their resort to French aid, a source of peril to the monarchy. It also served as a convenient fulcrum for the ambitious schemes of conquest which the princes of the House of Aragon in Spain began to entertain. In territorial extent the kingdom of Naples was the most considerable parcel of the Italian community. It embraced the whole of Calabria, Apulia, the Abruzzi, and the Terra di Lavoro; marching on its northern boundary with the Papal States, and having no other neighbors. But though so large and so compact a State, the semifeudal system of government which had obtained in Naples since the first conquest of the country by the Normans, the nature of its population, and the savage dynastic wars to which it had been constantly exposed, rendered it more backward in civilization than the northern and central provinces.

The Papacy, after the ending of the schism and the settlement of Nicholas V. at Rome in 1447, gradually tended to become an Italian sovereignty. During the residence of the Popes at Avignon, and the weakness of the Papal See which followed in the period of the Councils (Pisa, Constance, and Basel), it had lost its hold not only on the immediate neighborhood of Rome, but also on its outlying possessions in Umbria, the Marches of Ancona, and the Exarchate of Ravenna. The great Houses of Colonna and Orsini asserted independence in their principalities. Bologna and Perugia pretended to republican government under the shadow of noble families; Bentivogli, Bracci, Baglioni. Imola, Faenza, Forlì, Rimíni, Pesaro, Urbino, Camerino, Città di Castello, obeyed the rule of tyrants, who were practically lords of these cities though they bore the titles of Papal vicars, and who maintained themselves in wealth and power by exercising the profession of condottieri. It was the chief object of the Popes, after they were freed from the pressing perils of General Councils, and were once more settled in their capital and recognized as sovereigns by the European Powers, to subdue their vassals and consolidate their provinces into a homogeneous kingdom. This plan was conceived and carried out by a succession of vigorous and unscrupulous Pontiffs--Sixtus IV., Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X.--throughout the period of distracting foreign wars which agitated Italy. They followed for the most part one line of policy, which was to place the wealth and authority of the Holy See at the disposal of their relatives, Riarios, Delia Roveres, Borgias, and Medici. Their military delegates, among whom the most efficient captain was the terrible Cesare Borgia, had full power to crush the liberties of cities, exterminate the dynasties of despots, and reduce refractory districts to the Papal sway. For these services they were rewarded with ducal and princely titles, with the administration of their conquests, and with the investiture of fiefs as vassals of the Church. The system had its obvious disadvantages. It tended to indecent nepotism; and as Pope succeeded Pope at intervals of a few years, each bent on aggrandizing his own family at the expense of those of his predecessors and the Church, the ecclesiastical States were kept in a continual ferment of expropriation and internal revolution. Yet it is difficult to conceive how a spiritual Power like the Papacy could have solved the problem set before it of becoming a substantial secular sovereignty, without recourse to this ruinous method. The Pope, a lonely man upon an ill-established throne, surrounded by rivals whom his elevation had disappointed, was compelled to rely on the strong arm of adventurers with whose interests his own were indissolubly connected. The profits of all these schemes of egotistical rapacity eventually accrued, not to the relatives of the Pontiffs; none of whom, except the Delia Roveres in Urbino, founded a permanent dynasty at this period; but to the Holy See. Julius II., for example, on his election in 1503, entered into possession of all that Cesare Borgia had attempted to grasp for his own use. He found the Orsini and Colonna humbled, Romagna reduced to submission; and he carried on the policy of conquest by trampling out the liberties of Bologna and Perugia, recovering the cities held by Venice on the coast of Ravenna, and extending his sway over Emilia. The martial energy of Julius added Parma and Piacenza to the States of the Church, and detached Modena and Reggio from the Duchy of Ferrara. These new cities were gained by force; but Julius pretended that they formed part of the Exarchate of Ravenna, which had been granted to his predecessors by Pepin and Charles the Great. He pursued the Papal line of conquest in a nobler spirit than his predecessors, not seeking to advance his relatives so much as to reinstate the Church in her dominions. But he was reckless in the means employed to secure this object. Italy was devastated by wars stirred up, and by foreign armies introduced, in order that the Pope might win a point in the great game of ecclesiastical aggrandizement. That his successor, Leo X., reverted to the former plan of carving principalities for his relatives out of the possessions of their neighbors and the Church, may be counted among the most important causes of the final ruin of Italian independence.

Of the Duchy of Milan it is not necessary to speak at any great length, although the wars between France and Spain were chiefly carried on for its possession. It had been formed into a compact domain, of comparatively small extent, but of vast commercial and agricultural resources, by the two dynasties of Visconti and Sforza. In 1494 Lodovico Sforza, surnamed Il Moro, ruled Milan for his nephew, the titular Duke, whom he kept in gilded captivity, and whom he eventually murdered. In order to secure his usurped authority, this would-be Machiavelli thought it prudent to invite Charles VIII. into Italy. Charles was to assert his right to the throne of Naples. Lodovico was to be established in the Duchy of Milan. All his subsequent troubles arose from this transaction. Charles came, conquered, and returned to France, disturbing the political equilibrium of the Italian States, and founding a disastrous precedent for future foreign interference. His successor in the French kingdom, Louis XII., believed he had a title to the Duchy of Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The claim was not a legal one; for in the investiture of the Duchy females were excluded. It sufficed, however, to inflame the cupidity of Louis; and while he was still but Duke of Orleans, with no sure prospect of inheriting the crown of France, he seems to have indulged the fancy of annexing Milan. No sooner had he ascended the French throne than he began to act upon this ambition. He descended into Lombardy, overran the Milanese, sent Lodovico Sforza to die in a French prison, and initiated the duel between Spain and France for mastery, which ended with the capture of Francis I. at Pavia, and his final cession of all rights over Italy to Charles V. by the Treaty of Cambray.

Of all the republics which had conferred luster upon Italy in its mediaeval period of prosperity Venice alone remained independent. She never submitted to a tyrant; and her government, though growing yearly more closely oligarchical, was acknowledged to be just and liberal. During the centuries of her greatest power Venice hardly ranked among Italian States. It had been her policy to confine herself to the lagoons and to the extension of her dominion over the Levant. In the fifteenth century, however, this policy was abandoned. Venice first possessed herself of Padua, by exterminating the despotic House of Carrara; next of Verona, by destroying the Scala dynasty. Subsequently, during the long dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-1457), she devoted herself in good earnest to the acquisition of territory upon the mainland. Then she entered as a Power of the first magnitude into the system of purely Italian politics. The Republic of S. Mark owned the sea coast of the Adriatic from Aquileia to the mouths of the Po; and her Lombard dependencies stretched as far as Bergamo westward. Her Italian neighbors were, therefore, the Duchy of Milan, the little Marquisate of Mantua, and the Duchy of Ferrara. When Constantinople fell in 1453, Venice was still more tempted to pursue this new policy of Italian aggrandizement. Meanwhile her growing empire seemed to menace the independence of less wealthy neighbors. The jealousy thus created and the cupidity which brought her into collision with Julius II. in 1508, exposed Venice to the crushing blow inflicted on her power by the combined forces of Europe in the war of the League of Cambray. From this blow, as well as from the simultaneous decline of their Oriental and Levantine commerce, the Venetians never recovered.

When we turn to the Florentines, we find that at the same epoch, 1494, their ancient republican constitution had been fatally undermined by the advances of the family of Medici towards despotism. Lorenzo de'Medici, who enjoyed the credit of maintaining the equilibrium of Italy by wise diplomacy, had lately died. He left his son Piero, a hot-headed and rash young man, to control the affairs of the commonwealth, as he had previously controlled them, with a show of burgherlike equality, but with the reality of princely power. Another of his sons, Giovanni, received the honor of the Cardinalship. The one was destined to compromise the ascendency of his family in Florence for a period of eighteen years, the other was destined to re-establish that ascendency on a new and more despotic basis. Piero had not his father's prudence, and could not maintain himself in the delicate position of a commercial and civil tyrant. During the disturbances caused by the invasion of Charles VIII. he was driven with all his relatives into exile. The Medici were restored in 1512, after the battle of Ravenna, by Spanish troops, at the petition of the Cardinal Giovanni. The elevation of this man to the Papacy in 1513 enabled him to plant two of his nephews, as rulers, in Florence, and to pave the way whereby a third eventually rose to the dignity of the tiara. Clement VII. finally succeeded in rendering Florence subject to the Medici, by extinguishing the last sparks of republican opposition, and by so modifying the dynastic protectorate of his family that it was easily converted into a titular Grand Duchy.

The federation of these five Powers had been artificially maintained during the half century of Italy's highest intellectual activity. That was the epoch when the Italians nearly attained to coherence as a nation, through common interests in art and humanism, and by the complicated machinery of diplomatic relations. The federation perished when foreign Powers chose Lombardy and Naples for their fields of battle. The disasters of the next thirty-three years (1494-1527) began in earnest on the day when Louis XII. claimed Milan and the Regno. He committed his first mistake by inviting Ferdinand the Catholic to share in the partition of Naples. That province was easily conquered; but Ferdinand retained the whole spoils for himself, securing a large Italian dependency and a magnificent basis of operations for the Spanish Crown. Then Louis made a second mistake by proposing to the visionary Emperor Maximilian that he should aid France in subjugating Venice. We have few instances on record of short-sighted diplomacy to match the Treaties of Granada and Blois (1501 and 1504), through which this monarch, acting rather as a Duke of Milan than a King of France, complicated his Italian schemes by the introduction of two such dangerous allies as the Austrian Emperor and the Spanish sovereign, while the heir of both was in his cradle--that fatal child of fortune Charles.

The stage of Italy was now prepared for a conflict which in no wise interested her prosperous cities and industrious population. Spain, France, Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon various pretexts to partake of the rich prey she offered. Patriots like Machiavelli perceived too late the suicidal self-indulgence which, by substituting mercenary troops for national militia, and by accustoming selfish tyrants to rely on foreign aid, had exposed the Italians defenceless to the inroads of their warlike neighbors. Whatever parts the Powers of Italy might play, the game was really in the hands of French, Spanish, and German invaders. Meanwhile the mutual jealousies and hatreds of those Powers, kept in check by no tie stronger than diplomacy, prevented them from forming any scheme of common action. One great province (Naples) had fallen into Spanish hands; another (Milan) lay open through the passes of the Alps to France. The Papacy, in the center, manipulated these two hostile foreign forces with some advantage to itself, but with ever-deepening disaster for the race. As in the days of Guelf and Ghibelline, so now again the nation was bisected. The contest between French and Spanish factions became cruel. Personal interests were substituted for principles; cross-combinations perplexed the real issues of dispute; while one sole fact emerged into distinctness--that, whatever happened, Italy must be the spoil of the victorious duelist.

The practical termination of this state of things arrived in the battle of Pavia, when Francis was removed as a prisoner to Madrid, and in the sack of Rome, when the Pope was imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo. It was then found that the laurels and the profit of the bloody contest remained with the King of Spain. What the people suffered from the marching and countermarching of armies, from the military occupations of towns, from the desolation of rural districts, from ruinous campaigns and sanguinary battles, from the pillage of cities and the massacres of their inhabitants, can best be read in Burigozzo's Chronicle of Milan, in the details of the siege of Brescia and the destruction of Pavia, in the Chronicle of Prato, and in the several annals of the sack of Rome. The exhaustion of the country seemed complete; the spirit of the people was broken. But what soon afterwards became apparent, and what in 1527 might have been thought incredible, was that the single member of the Italian union which profited by these apocalyptic sufferings of the nation, was the Papacy. Clement VII., imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo, forced day and night to gaze upon his capital in flames and hear the groans of tortured Romans, emerged the only vigorous survivor of the five great Powers on whose concert Italian independence had been founded. Instead of being impaired, the position of the Papacy had been immeasurably improved. Owing to the prostration of Italy, there was now no resistance to the Pope's secular supremacy within the limits of his authorized dominion. The defeat of France and the accession of a Spanish monarch to the Empire guaranteed peace. No foreign force could levy armies or foment uprisings in the name of independence. Venice had been stunned and mutilated by the League of Cambray. Florence had been enslaved after the battle of Ravenna. Milan had been relinquished, out-worn, and depopulated, to the nominal ascendency of an impotent Sforza. Naples was a province of the Spanish monarchy. The feudal vassals and the subject cities of the Holy See had been ground and churned together by a series of revolutions unexampled even in the mediaeval history of the Italian communes. If, therefore, the Pope could come to terms with the King of Spain for the partition of supreme authority in the peninsula, they might henceforward share the mangled remains of the Italian prey at peace together. This is precisely what they resolved on doing. The basis of their agreement was laid in the Treaty of Barcelona in 1529. It was ratified and secured by the Treaty of Cambray in the same year. By the former of these compacts Charles and Clement swore friendship. Clement promised the Imperial crown and the investiture of Naples to the King of Spain. Charles agreed to reinstate the Pope in Emilia, which had been seized from Ferrara by Julius II.; to procure the restoration of Ravenna and Cervia by the Venetians; to subdue Florence to the House of Medici; and to bestow the hand of his natural daughter Margaret of Austria on Clement's bastard nephew Alessandro, who was already designated ruler of the city. By the Treaty of Cambray Francis I. relinquished his claims on Italy and abandoned his Italian supporters without conditions, receiving in exchange the possession of Burgundy. The French allies who were sacrificed on this occasion by the Most Christian to the Most Catholic Monarch consisted of the Republics of Venice and Florence, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, the princely Houses of Orsini and Fregosi in Rome and Genoa, together with the Angevine nobles in the realm of Naples. The Paix des Dames, as this act of capitulation was called (since it had been drawn up in private conclave by Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, the mother and the aunt of the two signatories), was a virtual acknowledgment of the fact that French influence in Italy was at an end.[1]

The surrender of Italy by Francis made it necessary that Charles V. should put in order the vast estates to which he now succeeded as sole master. He was, moreover, Emperor Elect; and he judged this occasion good for assuming the two crowns according to antique custom. Accordingly in July, 1529, he caused Andrea Doria to meet him at Barcelona, crossed the Mediterranean in a rough passage of fourteen days, landed at Genoa on August 12, and proceeded by Piacenza, Parma and Modena to Bologna, where Clement VII. was already awaiting him. The meeting of Charles and Clement at Bologna was so solemn an event in Italian history, and its results were so important for the several provinces of the peninsula, that I may be excused for enlarging at some length upon this episode.

[Footnote 1: It is significant for the future of Italy that both the ladies who drew up this agreement were connected with Savoy. Louise, Duchess of Angoulême, was a daughter of the house. Margaret, daughter of Maximilian, was Duchess Dowager of Savoy.]

With pomp and pageantry it closed an age of unrivaled intellectual splendor and of unexampled sufferings through war. By diplomacy and debate it prescribed laws for a new age of unexpected ecclesiastical energy and of national peace procured at the price of slavery. Illustrious survivors from the period of the pagan Renaissance met here with young men destined to inaugurate the Catholic Revival. The compact struck between Emperor and Pope in private conferences, laid a basis for that firm alliance between Spain and Rome which seriously influenced the destinies of Europe. Finally, this was the last occasion upon which a modern Caesar received the iron and golden crowns in Italy from the hands of a Roman Pontiff. The fortunate inheritor of Spain, the Two Sicilies, Austria and the Low Countries, who then assumed them both at the age of twenty-nine, was not only the last who wielded the Imperial insignia with imperial authority, but was also a far more formidable potentate in Italy than any of his predecessors since Charles the Great had been.[2]

[Footnote 2: In what follows regarding Charles V. at Bologna I am greatly indebted to Giordani's laboriously compiled volume: _Della Venuta e Dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pont. Clemente VII. etc._ (Bologna, 1832).]

That Charles should have employed the galleys of Doria for the transhipment of his person, suite, and military escort from Barcelona, deserves a word of comment. Andrea Doria had been bred in the service of the French crown, upon which Genoa was in his youth dependent. He formed a navy of decisive preponderance in the western Mediterranean, and in return for services rendered to Francis in the Neapolitan campaign of 1528, he demanded the liberation of his native city. When this was refused, Doria transferred his allegiance to the Spaniard, surprised Genoa and reinstated the republic, magnanimously refusing to secure its tyranny for himself or even to set the ducal cap upon his head. Charles invested him with the principality of Melfi and made him a Grandee of Spain. By this series of events Genoa was prepared to accept the yoke of Spanish influence and customs, which pressed so heavily in the succeeding century on Italy.

Charles had a body of 2000 Spaniards already quartered at Genoa, as well as strong garrisons in the Milanese, and a force of about 7000 troops collected by the Prince of Orange from the _débris_ of the army which had plundered Rome. While he was on his road from Genoa to Bologna, this force was already moving upon Florence. He brought with him as escort some 10,000 men, counting horse and infantry. The total of the troops which obeyed his word in Italy might be computed at about 27,000, including Spanish cavalry and foot-soldiers, German lansknechts and Italian mercenaries. This large army, partly stationed in important posts of defence, partly in movement, was sufficient to make every word of his a law. The French were in no position to interfere with his arrangements. His brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was engaged in a doubtful contest with Soliman before the gates of Vienna. He was himself the most considerable potentate in Germany, then distracted by the struggles of the Reformation. Italy lay crushed and prostrate, trampled down by armies, exhausted by impost and exactions, terrorized by brutal violence. That Charles had come to speak his will and be obeyed was obvious.

To greet the king on his arrival at Genoa, Clement deputed two ambassadors, the Cardinals Ercole Gonzaga and Monsignor Gianmatteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona. Gonzaga was destined to play a part of critical importance in the Tridentine Council. Giberti had made himself illustrious in the Church by the administration of his diocese on a system which anticipated the coming ecclesiastical reforms, and was already famous in the world of letters by his generous familiarity with students.[3] Three other men of high distinction and of fateful future waited on their imperial master. Of these the first was Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who succeeded Clement in the Papacy, opened the Tridentine Council, and added a new reigning family to the Italian princes. The others were the Pope's nephews, Alessandro de'Medici, Duke of Florence designate, and his cousin the Cardinal Ippolito de'Media. Six years later, Ippolito died at Itri, poisoned by his cousin Alessandro, who was himself murdered at Florence in 1537 by another cousin, Lorenzino de'Medici.

[Footnote 3: See _Ren. in It._, vol. v. p. 357.]

It had been intended that Charles should travel to Bologna from Parma through Mantua, where the Marquis Federigo Gonzaga had made great preparations for his reception. But the route by Reggio and Modena was more direct; and, yielding to the solicitations of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, he selected this instead. One of the stipulations of the Treaty of Barcelona, it will be remembered, had been that the Emperor should restore Emilia--that is to say, the cities and territories of Modena, Reggio, and Rubbiera--to the Papacy. Clement regarded Alfonso as a contumacious vassal, although his own right to that province only rested on the force of arms by which Julius II. had detached it from the Duchy of Ferrara. It was therefore somewhat difficult for Charles to accept the duke's hospitality. But when he had once done so, Alfonso knew how to ingratiate himself so well with the arbiter of Italy, that on taking leave of his guest upon the confines of Bologna, he had already secured the success of his own cause.

Great preparations, meanwhile, were being made in Bologna. The misery and destitution of the country rendered money scarce, and cast a gloom over the people. It was noticed that when Clement entered the city on October 24, none of the common folk responded to the shouts of his attendants, Viva Papa Clemente! The Pope and his Court, too, were in mourning. They had but recently escaped from the horrors of the Sack of Rome, and were under a vow to wear their beards unshorn in memory of their past sufferings. Yet the municipality and nobles of Bologna exerted their utmost in these bad times to render the reception of the Emperor worthy of the luster which his residence and coronation would confer upon them. Gallant guests began to flock into the city. Among these may be mentioned the brilliant Isabella d'Este, sister of Duke Alfonso, and mother of the reigning Marquis of Mantua. She arrived on November 1 with a glittering train of beautiful women, and took up her residence in the Palazzo Manzoli. Her quarters obtained no good fame in the following months; for the ladies of her suite were liberal of favors. Jousts, masquerades, street-brawls, and duels were of frequent occurrence beneath her windows--Spaniards and Italians disputing the honor of those light amours. On November 3 came Andrea Doria with his relative, the Cardinal Girolamo of that name. About the same time, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggi, Bishop of Bologna, returned from his legation to England, where (as students of our history are well aware) he had been engaged upon the question of Henry VIII.'s divorce from Katharine of Aragon. Next day Charles arrived outside the gate, and took up his quarters in the rich convent of Certosa, which now forms the Campo Santo.

He was surrounded by a multitude of ambassadors and delegates from the Bolognese magistracy, by Cardinals and ecclesiastics of all ranks, some of whom had attended him from the frontier, while others were drawn up to receive him. November 5 was a Friday, and this day was reckoned lucky by Charles. He therefore passed the night of the 4th at the Certosa, and on the following morning made his solemn entry into the city. A bodyguard of Germans, Burgundians, Spaniards, halberdiers, lansknechts, men at arms, and cannoneers, preceded him. High above these was borne the captain-general of the imperial force in Italy, the fierce and cruel Antonio de Leyva, under whose oppression Milan had been groaning. This ruthless tyrant was a martyr to gout and rheumatism. He could not ride or walk; and though he retained the whole vigor of his intellect and will, it was with difficulty that he moved his hands or head. He advanced in a litter of purple velvet, supported on the shoulders of his slaves. Among the splendid crowd of Spanish grandees who followed the troops, it is enough to mention the Grand Marshal, Don Alvaro Osorio, Marquis of Astorga, who carried a naked sword aloft. He was armed, on horseback; and his mantle of cloth of gold blazed with dolphins worked in pearls and precious stones. Next came Charles, mounted on a bay jennet, armed at all points, and holding in his hand the scepter. Twenty-four pages, chosen from the nobles of Bologna, waited on his bridle and stirrups. The train was brought up by a multitude of secular and ecclesiastical princes too numerous to record in detail. Conspicuous among them for the historian were the Count of Nassau, Albert of Brandenburg, and the Marquis Bonifazio of Montferrat, the scion of the Eastern Paleologi. As this procession defiled through the streets of Bologna, it was remarked that Charles, with true Spanish haughtiness, made no response to the acclamations of the people, except once when, passing beneath a balcony of noble ladies, he acknowledged their salute by lifting the cap from his head.

Clement, surrounded by a troop of prelates, was seated to receive him on a platform raised before the church of San Petronio in the great piazza. The king dismounted opposite the Papal throne, ascended the steps beneath his canopy of gold and crimson, and knelt to kiss the Pontiff's feet. When their eyes first met, it was observed that both turned pale; for the memory of outraged Rome was in the minds of both; and Caesar, while he paid this homage to Christ's Vicar, had the load of those long months of suffering and insult on his conscience. Clement bent down, and with streaming eyes saluted him upon the cheek. Then, when Charles was still upon his knees, they exchanged a few set words referring to the purpose of their meeting and their common desire for the pacification of Christendom. After this the Emperor elect rose, seated himself for a while beside the Pope, and next, at his invitation, escorted him to the great portal of the church. On the way, he inquired after Clement's health; to which the Pope replied somewhat significantly that, after leaving Rome, it had steadily improved. He tempered this allusion to his captivity, however, by adding that his eagerness to greet his Majesty had inspired him with more than wonted strength and courage. At the doorway they parted; and the Emperor, having paid his devotions to the Sacrament and kissed the altar, was conducted to the apartments prepared for him in the Palazzo Pubblico. These were adjacent to the Pope's lodgings in the same palace, and were so arranged that the two potentates could confer in private at all times. It is worthy of remark that the negotiations for the settlement of Italy which took place during the next six months in those rooms, were conducted personally by the high contracting parties, and that none of their deliberations transpired until the result of each was made public.

The whole of November 5 had been occupied in these ceremonies. It was late evening when the Emperor gained his lodgings. The few next days were ostensibly occupied in receiving visitors. Among the first of these was the unfortunate ex-queen of Naples, Isabella, widow of Frederick of Aragon, the last king of the bastard dynasty founded by Alfonso. She was living in poverty at Ferrara, under the protection of her relatives, the Este family, On the 13th came the Prince of Orange and Don Ferrante Gonzaga, from the camp before Florence. The siege had begun, but had not yet been prosecuted with the strictest vigor. During the whole time of Charles's residence at Bologna, it must be borne in mind that the siege of Florence was being pressed. Superfluous troops detached from garrison duty in the Lombard towns were drafted across the hills to Tuscany. Whatever else the Emperor might decide for his Italian subjects, this at least was certain: Florence should be restored to the Medicean tyrants, as compensation to the Pope for Roman sufferings. The Prince of Orange came to explain the state of things at Florence, where government and people seemed prepared to resist to the death. Gonzaga had private business of his own to conduct, touching his engagement to the Pope's ward, Isabella, daughter and heiress of the wealthy Vespasiano Colonna.

Meanwhile, ambassadors from all the States and lordships of Italy flocked to Bologna. Great nobles from the South--Ascanio Colonna, Grand Constable of Naples; Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto; Giovanni Luigi Caraffa, Prince of Stigliano--took up their quarters in adjacent houses, or in the upper story of the Public Palace. The Marquis of Vasto arrests our graze for a moment. He was nephew to the Marquis of Pescara (husband of Vittoria Colonna), who had the glory of taking Francis prisoner at Pavia, and afterwards the infamy of betraying the unfortunate Girolamo Morone and his master the Duke of Milan to the resentment of the Spanish monarch. What part Pescara actually played in that dark passage of plot and counterplot remains obscure. But there is no doubt that he employed treachery, single if not double, for his own advantage. His arrogance and avowed hostility to the Italians caused his very name to be execrated; nor did his nephew, the Marquis of Vasto, differ in these respects from the more famous chief of his house. This man was also destined to obtain an evil reputation when he succeeded in 1532 to the government of Milan. Here too may be noticed the presence at Bologna of Girolamo Morone's son, who had been created Bishop of Modena in 1529. For him a remarkable fate was waiting. Condemned to the dungeons of the Inquisition as a heretic by Paul IV., rescued by Pius IV., and taken into highest favor at that Pontiff's Court, he successfully manipulated the closing of the Tridentine Council to the profit of the Papal See.

Negotiations for the settlement of Italian affairs were proceeding without noise, but with continual progress, through this month. The lodgings of ambassadors and lords were so arranged in the Palazzo Pubblico that they, like their Imperial and Papal masters, could confer at all times and seasons. Every day brought some new illustrious visitor. On the 22nd arrived Federigo Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who took up his quarters in immediate proximity to Charles and Clement. His business required but little management. The house of Gonzaga was already well affected to the Spanish cause, and counted several captains in the imperial army. Charles showed his favor by raising Mantua to the rank of a Duchy. It was different with the Republic of Venice and the Duke of Milan. The Emperor elect had reasons to be strongly prejudiced against them both--against Venice as the most formidable of the French allies in the last war; against Francesco Maria Sforza, as having been implicated, though obscurely, in Morone's conspiracy to drive the Spaniards from Italy and place the crown of Naples on Pescara's head. Clement took both under his protection. He had sufficient reasons to believe that the Venetians would purchase peace by the cession of their recent acquisitions on the Adriatic coast, and he knew that the pacification of Italy could not be accomplished without their aid. In effect, the Republic agreed to relinquish Cervia and Ravenna to the Pope, and their Apulian ports to Charles, engaging at the same time to pay a sum of 300,000 ducats and stipulating for an amnesty to all their agents and dependents. It is not so clear why Clement warmly espoused the cause of Sforza. That he did so is certain. He obtained a safe-conduct for the duke, and made it a point of personal favor that he should be received into the Emperor's grace. This stipulation appears to have been taken into account when the affairs of Ferrara were decided at a later date against the Papal interests.

Francesco Maria Sforza appeared in Bologna on the 22nd. This unfortunate bearer of one of the most coveted titles in Europe had lately lived a prisoner in his own Castello, while the city at his doors and the fertile country round it were being subjected to cruelest outrage and oppression from Spanish, French, Swiss, and German mercenaries. He was a man ruined in health as well as fortune. Six years before this date, one of his chamberlains, Bonifazio Visconti, had given him a slight wound in the shoulder with a poisoned dagger. From this wound he never recovered; and it was pitiable to behold the broken man, unable to move or stand without support, dragging himself upon his knees to Caesar's footstool. Charles appears to have discerned that he had nothing to fear and much to gain, if he showed clemency to so powerless a suitor. Franceso was the last of his line. His health rendered it impossible that he should expect heirs; and although he subsequently married a princess of the House of Denmark, he died childless in the autumn of 1535. It was therefore determined, in compliance with the Pope's request, that Sforza should be confirmed in the Duchy of Milan. Pavia, however, was detached and given to the terrible Antonio de Leyva for his lifetime. The garrisons of Milan and Como were left in Spanish hands; and the duke promised to wring 400,000 ducats as the price of his investiture, with an additional sum of 500,000 ducats to be paid in ten yearly instalments, from his already blood-sucked people. It will be observed that money figured largely in all these high political transactions. Charles, though lord of many lands, was, even at this early stage of his career, distressed for want of cash. He rarely paid his troops, but commissioned the captains in his service to levy contributions on the provinces they occupied. The funds thus raised did not always reach the pockets of the soldiers, who subsisted as best they could by marauding. Having made these terms, Francesco Maria Sforza was received into the Imperial favor. He returned to Milan, in no sense less a prisoner than he had previously been, and with the heart-rending necessity of extorting money from his subjects at the point of Spanish swords. In exchange for the ducal title, he thus had made himself a tax-collector for his natural enemies. Secluded in the dreary chambers of his castle, assailed by the execrations of the Milanese, he may well have groaned, like Marlowe's Edward--

But what are Kings, when regiment is gone, But perfect shadows in a sunshine day? My foemen rule; I bear the name of King; I wear the crown; but am controlled by them.

When he died he bequeathed his duchy to the crown of Spain. It was detached from the Empire, and became the private property of Charles and of his son, Philip II.

During the month of December negotiations for the terms of peace in Italy went briskly forward. On the part of Venice, two men of the highest distinction arrived as orators. These were Pietro Bembo and Gasparo Contarini, both of whom received the honors of the Cardinalate from Paul III. on his accession. Of Bembo's place in Italian society, as the dictator of literature at this epoch, I have already sufficiently spoken in another part of my work on the Renaissance. Contarini will more than once arrest our notice in the course of this volume. Of all the Italians of the time, he was perhaps the greatest, wisest, and most sympathetic. Had it been possible to avert the breach between Catholicism and Protestantism, to curb the intolerance of Inquisitors and the ambition of Jesuits, and to guide the reform of the Church by principles of moderation and liberal piety, Contarini was the man who might have restored unity to the Church in Europe. Once, indeed, at Regensburg in 1541, he seemed upon the very point of effecting a reconciliation between the parties that were tearing Christendom asunder. But his failure was even more conspicuous than his momentary semblance of success. It was not in the temper of the times to accept a Concordat founded on however philosophical, however politic, considerations. Contarini will be remembered as a 'beautiful soul,' born out of the due moment, and by no means adequate to cope with the fierce passions that raged round him. Among Protestants he was a Catholic, and they regarded his half measures with contempt. Among Catholics he passed for a suspected Lutheran, and his writings were only tolerated after they had been subjected to rigorous castration at the hands of Papal Inquisitors.[4]

On Christmas eve the ambassadors and representatives of the Italian powers met together in the chambers of Cardinal Gattinara, Grand Chancellor of the Empire, to subscribe the terms of a confederation and perpetual league for the maintenance of peace. From this important document the Florentines were excluded, as open rebels to the will of Charles and Clement. There was no justice in the rigor with which Florence was now treated. Her republican independence had hitherto been recognized, although her own internal discords exposed her to a virtual despotism. But Clement stipulated and Charles conceded, as a sine qua non in the project of pacification, that Florence should be converted into a Medicean duchy. For the Duke of Ferrara, whom the Pope regarded as a contumacious vassal, and whose affairs were still the subject of debate, a place was specially reserved in the treaty. He, as I have already observed, had been taken under the Imperial protection; and a satisfactory settlement of his claims was now a mere question of time. On the evening of the same day, the Pope bestowed on Charles the Sword of the Spirit, which it was the wont of Rome to confer on the best-beloved of her secular sons at this festival. The peace was publicly proclaimed, amid universal plaudits, on the last day of the year 1529.

[Footnote 4: See Ranke, vol. i. p. 153, note.]

The chief affairs to be decided in the new year were the reduction of Florence to submission and the coronation of the Emperor. The month of January was passed in jousts and pastimes; ceremonial privileges were conferred on the University of Bologna; magnificent embassies from the Republic of S. Mark, glowing in senatorial robes of crimson silk, were entertained; and a singular deputation from the African court of Prester John obtained audience of the Roman Pontiff. Amid these festivities there arrived, on January 16, three delegates from Florence, who spent some weeks in fruitless efforts to obtain a hearing from the arbiters of Italy. Clement refused to deal with them, because their commonwealth was still refractory. Charles repelled them, because he wished to gratify the Pope, and knew that Florence remained staunch in her devotion to the French crown. The old proverb, 'Lilies with lilies,' the white lily of Florence united with the golden fleur-de-lys of France, had still political significance in this day of Italian degradation. Meanwhile Francis I. treated his faithful allies with lukewarm tolerance. The smaller fry of Italian potentates, worshipers of the rising sun of Spain, curried favor with their masters by insulting the republic's representatives. On their return to Florence, the ambassadors had to report a total diplomatic failure. But this, far from breaking the untamable spirit of the Signory and people, prompted them in February to new efforts of resistance and to edicts of outlawry against citizens whom they regarded as traitors to the State. Among the proscribed were Francesco Guicciardini, Roberto Acciaiuoli, Francesco Vettori, and Baccio Valori. Of these men Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori, and Baccio Valori were attendant at Bologna upon the Pope. They all adhered with fidelity to the Medicean party at this crisis of their country's fate, and all paid dearly for their loyalty. When Cosimo I., by their efforts, was established in the duchy, he made it one of his first cares to rid himself of these too faithful servants. Baccio Valori was beheaded after the battle of Montemurlo in 1537 for practice with the exiles of Filippo Strozzi's party. Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori, and Roberto Acciaiuoli died in disgrace before the year 1543--their only crime being that they had made themselves the ladder whereby a Medici had climbed into his throne, and which it was his business to upset when firmly seated. For the heroism of Florence at this moment it would be difficult to find fit words of panegyric. The republic stood alone, abandoned by France to the hot rage of Clement and the cold contempt of Charles, deserted by the powers of Italy, betrayed by lying captains, deluged on all sides with the scum of armies pouring into Tuscany from the Lombard pandemonium of war. The situation was one of impracticable difficulty. Florence could not but fall. Yet every generous heart will throb with sympathy while reading the story of that final stand for independence, in which a handful of burghers persisted, though congregated princes licked the dust from feet of Emperor and Pontiff.

Charles had come to assume the iron and the golden crowns in Italy. He ought to have journeyed to Monza or to S. Ambrogio at Milan for the first, and to the Lateran in Rome for the second of these investitures. An Emperor of the Swabian House would have been compelled by precedent and superstition to observe this form. It is true that the coronation of a German prince as the successor of Lombard kings and Roman Augusti, had always been a symbolic ceremony rather than a rite which ratified genuine Imperial authority. Still the ceremony connoted many mediaeval aspirations. It was the outward sign of theories that had once exerted an ideal influence. To dissociate the two-fold sacrament from Milan and from Rome was the same as robbing it of its main virtue, the virtue of a mystical conception. It was tantamount to a demonstration that the belief in Universal Monarchy had passed away. By breaking the old rules of his investiture, Charles notified the disappearance of the mediaeval order, and proclaimed new political ideals to the world. When asked whether he would not follow custom and seek the Lombard crown in Monza, he brutally replied that he was not wont to run after crowns, but to have crowns running after him. He trampled no less on that still more venerable religio loci which attached imperial rights to Rome. Together with this ancient piety, he swept the Holy Roman Empire into the dust-heap of archaic curiosities. By declaring his will to be crowned where he chose, he emphasized the modern state motto of _L'état, c'est moi_, and prepared the way for a Pope's closing of a General Council by the word _L'Eglise, c'est moi_. Charles had sufficient reasons for acting as he did. The Holy Roman Empire ever since the first event of Charles the Great's coronation, when it justified itself as a diplomatical expedient for unifying Western Christendom, had existed more or less as a shadow. Charles violated the duties which alone gave the semblance of a substance to that shadow. As King of Italy, he had desolated the Lombard realm of which he sought the title. As Emperor elect, he had ravished his bride, the Eternal City. As suitor to the Pope for both of his expected crowns, he stood responsible for the multiplied insults to which Clement had been so recently exposed. No Emperor had been more powerful since Charles the Great than this Charles V., the last who took his crowns in Italy. It was significant that he man in whose name Rome had suffered outrage, and who was about to detach Lombardy from the Empire, was by his own will invested at Bologna. The citizens of Monza were accordingly bidden to send the iron crown to Bologna. It arrived on February 20, and on the 22nd Charles received it from the hands of Clement in the chapel of the palace. The Cardinal who performed the ceremony of unction was a Fleming, William Hencheneor, who in the Sack of Rome had bought his freedom for the large sum of 40,000 crowns. On this auspicious occasion he cut off half the beard which he still wore in sign of mourning!

The Duke and Duchess of Urbino made their entrance into Bologna on the same day. Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, Prefect of Rome, and Captain General of the armies of the Church, was one of the most noted warriors of that time. Yet victory had rarely crowned his brows with laurels. Imitating the cautious tactics of Braccio, and emulating the fame of Fabius Cunctator, he reduced the art of war to a system of manoeuvres, and rarely risked his fortune in the field. It was chiefly due to his dilatory movements that the disaster of the Sack of Rome was not averted. He had been expelled by Leo X. from his duchy to make room for Lorenzo de'Medici, and report ran that a secret desire to witness the humiliation of a Medicean Pontiff caused him to withhold his forces from attacking the tumultuary troops of Bourbon. Francesco Maria was a man of violent temper; nineteen years before, he had murdered the Pope's Legate, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi, with his dagger, in the open streets of Bologna. His wife, Eleanora Ippolita Gonzaga, presided with grace over that brilliant and cultivated Court which Castiglione made famous by his Cortegiano. The Duke and Duchess survive to posterity in two masterpieces of portraiture by the hand of Titian which now adorn the Gallery of the Uffizzi.

February 24, which was the anniversary of Charles's birthday, had been fixed for his coronation as Emperor in San Petronio. This church is one of the largest Gothic buildings in Italy. Its façade occupies the southern side of the piazza. The western side, on the left of the church, is taken up by the Palazzo Pubblico. In order to facilitate the passage of the Pope and Emperor with their Courts and train of princes from the palace to the cathedral, a wooden bridge wide enough to take six men abreast was constructed from an opening in the Hall of the Ancients. The bridge descended by a gradual line to the piazza, broadened out into a platform before the front of San Petronio, and then again ascended through the nave to the high altar. It was covered with blue draperies, and so arranged that the vast multitudes assembled in the square and church to see the ceremony had free access to it on all sides. On the morning of the 24th, the solemn procession issued from the palace, and defiled in order down the gangway. Clement was borne aloft by Pontifical grooms in their red liveries. He wore the tiara and a cope of state fastened by Cellini's famous stud, in which blazed the Burgundian diamond of Charles the Bold. Charles walked in royal robes attended by the Count of Nassau and Don Pietro di Toledo, the Viceroy of Naples, who afterwards gave his name to the chief street in that city. Before him went the Marquis of Montferrat, bearing the scepter; Philip, Duke of Bavaria, carrying the golden orb; the Duke of Urbino, with the sword; and the Duke of Savoy, holding the imperial diadem. This Duke of Savoy was uncle to Francis I. and brother-in-law to Charles--- his wife, Beatrice, being a sister of the Empress, and his sister, Louise, mother of the French king. This double relationship made his position during the late wars a difficult one. Yet his territory had been regarded as neutral, and in the pacification of Italy he judged it wise to adhere without reserve to the victorious King of Spain. It was noticed that Ferrante di Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, though known to be in Bologna, occupied no post of distinction in the imperial train. He was closely related to the Emperor by his mother, Maria of Aragon, and had done good service in the recent campaigns against Lautrec. The reason for this neglect does not appear. But it may be mentioned that some years later he espoused the French cause, and was deprived of his vast hereditary fiefs. In his ruin the poet Bernardo, father of Torquato Tasso, was involved.

To enumerate all the nobles of Spain, Italy and Germany, with the ambassadors from England, France, Scotland, Hungary, Bohemia and Portugal; who swelled the Imperial _cortège_; to describe the series of ceremonies by which Charles was first consecrated as a deacon, anointed, dressed and undressed, and finally conducted to the Pope for coronation; to narrate the breaking of the bridge at one point, and the squabbles between the Genoese and Sienese delegates for precedence, would be superfluously tedious. The day was well-nigh over when at length Charles received the Imperial insignia from the Pope's hands. _Accipe gladium sanctum, Accipe virgam, Accipe pomum, Accipe signum gloriae_! As Clement pronounced these sentences, he gave the sword, the scepter, the globe, and the diadem in succession to the Emperor, who knelt before him. Charles bent and kissed the Papal feet. He then rose and took his throne beside the Pope. It was placed two steps lower than that of Clement. The ceremony of coronation and enthronization being now complete, Charles was proclaimed: _Romanorum Imperator semper augustus, mundi totius Dominus, universis Dominis, universis Principibus et Populis semper venerandus_. When Mass was over, Pope and Emperor shook hands. At the church-door, Charles held Clement's stirrup, and when the Pope had mounted, he led his palfrey for some paces, in sign of filial submission.

The month of March was distinguished by the arrival of illustrious visitors. The Duchess of Savoy, with an escort of eighteen lovely maids of honor, made her pompous entry on the 4th, and took up her quarters in the Palazzo Pepoli. On the 6th came the Duke of Ferrara, for whom Charles had procured a safe-conduct from the Pope. During the Emperor's stay at Bologna, Alfonso d'Este had been assiduous in paying him and his Court small attentions, sending excellent provisions for the household and furnishing the royal table with game and every kind of delicacy. The settlement of his dispute with the Holy See was the only important business that remained to be transacted. Charles prevailed upon both Clement and Alfonso to state their cases in writing and to place them in the hands of jurisconsults, to report upon. There is little doubt that his own mind was already made up in favor of the duke; but he did not pass sentence until the following December, nor was the decision published before April in the year 1531. The substance of the final agreement was as follows. Modena, Reggio and Rubbiera were declared fiefs of the Empire, seeing that they had not been included in Pepin's gift of the Exarchate. Charles confirmed their investiture to Alfonso, in return for a considerable payment to the Imperial Chancery. He had previously conferred the town of Carpi, forfeited by Alberto Pio as a French adherent, on the Duke. Ferrara remained a fief of the Church, and Clement consented to acknowledge Alfonso's tenure, upon his disbursement of 100,000 ducats. This decision saved Modena to the bastard line of Este, when Pope Clement VIII. seized Ferrara as a lapsed fief in 1598. In the sixty-seven years which passed between the date of Charles's coronation and the extinction of the duchy, Ferrara enjoyed the fame of the most brilliant Court in Italy, and shone with the luster conferred on it by men like Tasso and Guarini.

The few weeks which now remained before Charles left Bologna were spent for the most part in jousts and tournaments, visits to churches, and social entertainments. Veronica Gambara threw her apartments open to the numerous men of letters who crowded from all parts of Italy to witness the ceremony, of Charles's coronation. This lady was widow to the late lord of Correggio, and one of the two most illustrious women of her time.[5] She dwelt with princely state in a palace of the Marsili; and here might be seen the poets Bembo, Mauro, and Molza in conversation with witty Berni, learned Vida, stately Trissino, and noble-hearted Marcantonio Flaminio. Paolo Giovio and Francesco Guicciardini, the chief historians of their time, were also to be found there, together with a host of literary and diplomatic worthies attached to the Courts of Urbino and Ferrara or attendant on the train of cardinals, who, like Ippolito de'Medici, made a display of culture. Meanwhile the Dowager-Marchioness of Mantua and the Duchess of Savoy entertained Italian and Spanish nobles with masqued balls and carnival processions in the Manzoli and Pepoli palaces. Frequent quarrels between hot-blooded youths of the rival nations added a spice of chivalrous romance to love-adventures in which the ladies of these Courts played a too conspicuous part. What still remained to Italy of Renaissance splendor, wit, and fashion, after the Sack of Rome and the prostration of her wealthiest cities, was concentrated in this sunset blaze of sumptuous festivity at Bologna. Nor were the arts without illustrious representatives. Francesco Mazzola, surnamed Il Parmigianino, before whose altar-piece in his Roman studio the rough soldiers of Bourbon's army were said to have lately knelt in adoration, commemorated the hero of the day by painting Charles attended by Fame who crowned his forehead, and an infant Hercules who handed him the globe. Titian, too, was there, and received the honor of several sittings from the Emperor. His life-sized portrait of Charles in full armor, seated on a white war-horse, has perished. But it gave such satisfaction at the moment that the fortunate master was created knight and count palatine, and appointed painter to the Emperor with a fixed pension. Titian also painted portraits of Antonio de Leyva and Alfonso d'Avalos, but whether upon this occasion or in 1532, when he was again summoned to the Imperial Court at Bologna, is not certain. From this assemblage of eminent personages we notice the absence of Pietro Aretino. He was at the moment out of favor with Clement VII. But independently of this obstacle, he may well have thought it imprudent to quit his Venetian retreat and expose himself to the resentment of so many princes whom he had alternately loaded with false praises and bemired with loathsome libels.

[Footnote 5: See _Ren. in It._ vol. v. p. 289.]

People observed that the Emperor in his excursions through the streets of Bologna usually wore the Spanish habit. He was dressed in black velvet, with black silk stockings, black shoes, and a black velvet cap adorned with black feathers. This somber costume received some relief from jewels used for buttons; and the collar of the Golden Fleece shone upon the monarch's breast. So slight a circumstance would scarcely deserve attention, were it not that in a short space of time it became the fashion throughout Italy to adopt the subdued tone of Spanish clothing. The upper classes consented to exchange the varied and brilliant dresses which gave gayety to the earlier Renaissance for the dismal severity conspicuous in Morone's masterpieces, in the magnificent gloom of the Genoese Brignoli, and in the portraits of Roman inquisitors. It is as though the whole race had put on mourning for its loss of liberty, its servitude to foreign tyrants and ecclesiastical hypocrites. Nor is it fanciful to detect a note of moral sadness and mental depression corresponding to these black garments in the faces of that later generation. How different is Tasso's melancholy grace from Ariosto's gentle joyousness; the dried-up precision of Baroccio's Francesco Maria della Rovere from the sanguine joviality of Titian's first duke of that name! One of the most acutely critical of contemporary poets felt the change which I have indicated, and ascribed it to the same cause. Campanella wrote as follows:

Black robes befit our age. Once they were white; Next many-hued; now dark as Afric's Moor, Night-black, infernal, traitorous, obscure, Horrid with ignorance and sick with fright. For very shame we shun all colors bright, Who mourn our end--the tyrants we endure, The chains, the noose, the lead, the snares, the lure-- Our dismal heroes, our souls sunk in night.

In the midst of this mirth-making there arrived on March 20 an embassy from England, announcing Henry VIII.'s resolve to divorce himself at any cost from Katharine of Aragon. This may well have recalled both Pope and Emperor to a sense of the gravity of European affairs. The schism of England was now imminent. Germany was distracted by Protestant revolution. The armies of Caesar were largely composed of mutinous Lutherans. Some of these soldiers had even dared to overthrow a colossal statue of Clement VII. and grind it into powder at Bologna; and this outrage, as it appears, went unpunished. The very troops employed in reducing rebellious Florence were commanded by a Lutheran general; and Clement began to fear that, after Charles's departure, the Prince of Orange might cross the Apennines and expose the Papal person to the insults of another captivity in Bologna. Nor were the gathering forces of revolutionary Protestants alone ominous. Though Soliman had been repulsed before Vienna, the Turks were still advancing on the eastern borders of the Empire. Their fleets swept the Levantine waters, while the pirate dynasties of Tunis and Algiers threatened the whole Mediterranean coast with ruin. Charles, still uncertain what part he should take in the disputes of Germany, left Bologna for the Tyrol on March 23. Clement, on the last day of the month, took his journey by Loreto to Rome.

It will be useful, at this point, to recapitulate the net results of Charles's administration of Italian affairs in 1530. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with the Island of Sardinia and the Duchy of Milan, became Spanish provinces, and were ruled henceforth by viceroys. The House of Este was confirmed in the Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio. The Duchies of Savoy and Mantua and the Marquisate of Montferrat, which had espoused the Spanish cause, were undisturbed. Genoa and Siena, both of them avowed allies of Spain, the former under Spanish protection, the latter subject to Spanish coercion, remained with the name and empty privileges of republics. Venice had made her peace with Spain, and though she was still strong enough to pursue an independent policy, she showed as yet no inclination, and had, indeed, no power, to stir up enemies against the Spanish autocrat. The Duchy of Urbino, recognized by Rome and subservient to Spanish influence, was permitted to exist. The Papacy once more assumed a haughty tone, relying on the firm alliance struck with Spain. This league, as years went by, was destined to grow still closer, still more fruitful of results.

Florence alone had been excepted from the articles of peace. It was still enduring the horrors of the memorable siege when Clement left Bologna at the end of May. The last hero of the republic, Francesco Ferrucci, fell fighting at Gavignana on August 2. Their general, Malatesta Baglioni, broke his faith with the citizens. Finally, on August 12, the town capitulated. Alessandro de'Medici, who had received the title of Duke of Florence from Charles at Bologna, took up his residence there in July, 1531, and held the State by help of Spanish mercenaries under the command of Alessandro Vitelli. When he was murdered by his cousin in 1537, Cosimo de'Medici, the scion of another branch of the ruling family, was appointed Duke. Charles V. recognized his title, and Cosimo soon showed that he was determined to be master in his own duchy. He crushed the exiled party of Filippo Strozzi, who attempted a revolution of the State, exterminated its leaders, and contrived to rid himself of the powerful adherents who had placed him on the throne. But he remained a subservient though not very willing ally of Spain; and when he expelled Alessandro Vitelli from the fortress that commanded Florence, he admitted a Spaniard, Don Juan de Luna, in his stead. During the petty wars of 1552-56 which Henri II. carried on with Charles V. in Italy, Siena attempted to shake off the yoke of a Spanish garrison established there in 1547 under the command of Don Hurtado de Mendoza. The citizens appealed to France, who sent them the great Marshal, Piero Strozzi, brother of Cosimo's vanquished enemy Filippo. Cosimo through these years supported the Spanish cause with troops and money, hoping to guide events in his own interest. At length, by the aid of Gian Giacomo Medici, sprung from an obscure Milanese family, who had been trained in the Spanish methods of warfare, he succeeded in subduing Siena. He now reaped the fruits of his Spanish policy. In 1557 Philip II. conceded the Sienese territory, reserving only its forts, to the Duke of Florence, who in 1569 obtained the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from Pope Pius V. This title was confirmed by the Empire in 1575 to his son Francesco.

Thus the republics of Florence and Siena were extinguished. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was created. It became an Italian power of the first magnitude, devoted to the absolutist principles of Spanish and Papal sovereignty. The further changes which took place in Italy after the year 1530, turned equally to the profit of Spain and Rome. These were principally the creation of the Duchy of Parma for the Farnesi (1545-1559), of which I shall have to speak in the next chapter; the resumption of Ferrara by the Papacy in 1597, which reduced the House of Este to the smaller fiefs of Modena and Reggio; the acquisition of Montferrat by Mantua in 1536; the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy in 1598, and the absorption of Urbino into the Papal domains in 1631.

It was hoped when Charles and Clement proclaimed the pacification of Italy at Bologna on the last day of 1529, that the peninsula would no longer be the theater of wars for supremacy between the French and Spaniards. This expectation proved delusive; for the struggle soon broke out again. The people, however, suffered less extensively than in former years; because the Spanish party, supported by Papal authority, was decidedly predominant. The Italian princes, whether they liked it or not, were compelled to follow in the main a Spanish policy. At length, in 1559, by the Peace of Cateau Cambresis signed between Henri II. and Philip II., the French claims were finally abandoned, and the Spanish hegemony was formally acknowledged. The later treaty of Vervins, in 1598, ceded Saluzzo to the Duchy of Savoy, and shut the gates of Italy to French interference.

Though the people endured far less misery from foreign armies in the period between 1630 and 1600 than they had done in the period from 1494 to 1527, yet the state of the country grew ever more and more deplorable. This was due in the first instance to the insane methods of taxation adopted by the Spanish viceroys, who held monopolies of corn and other necessary commodities in their hands and who invented imposts for the meanest articles of consumption. Their example was followed by the Pope and petty princes. Alfonso II. of Ferrara, for instance, levied a tenth on all produce which passed his city gates, and on the capital engaged in every contract. He monopolized the sale of salt, flour, bread; and imposed a heavy tax on oil. Sixtus V. by exactions of a like description and by the sale of numberless offices, accumulated a vast sum of money, much of which bore heavy interest. He was so ignorant of the first principle of political economy as to lock up the accruing treasure in the Castle of S. Angelo. The rising of Masaniello in Naples was simply due to the exasperation of the common folk at having even fruit and vegetables taxed. In addition to such financial blunders, we must take into account the policy pursued by all princes at this epoch, of discouraging commerce and manufactures. Thus Cosimo I. of Tuscany induced the old Florentine families to withdraw their capital from trade, sink it in land, create entails in perpetuity on eldest sons, and array themselves with gimcrack titles which he liberally supplied. Even Venice showed at this epoch a contempt for the commerce which had brought her into a position of unrivaled splendor. This wilful depression of industry was partly the result of Spanish aristocratic habits, which now invaded Italian society. But it was also deliberately chosen as a means of extinguishing freedom. Finally, if war proved now less burdensome, the exhaustion of Italy and the decay of military spirit rendered the people liable to the scourge of piracy. The whole sea-coast was systematically plundered by the navies of Barbarossa and Dragut. The inhabitants of the ports and inland villages were carried off into slavery, and many of the Italians themselves drove a brisk trade in the sale of their compatriots. Brigandage, following in the wake of agricultural depression and excessive taxation, depopulated the central provinces. All these miseries were exacerbated by frequent recurrences of plagues and famines.

It is characteristic of the whole tenor of Italian history that, in spite of the virtual hegemony which the Spaniards now exercised in the peninsula, the nation continued to exist in separate parcels, each of which retained a certain individuality. That Italy could not have been treated as a single province by the Spanish autocrat will be manifest, when we consider the European jealousy to which so summary an exhibition of force would have given rise. It is also certain that the Papacy, which had to be respected, would have resisted an openly declared Spanish despotism. But more powerful, I think, than all these considerations together, was the past prestige of the Italian States. Europe was not prepared to regard that brilliant and hitherto respected constellation of commonwealths, from which all intellectual culture, arts of life, methods of commerce, and theories of political existence had been diffused, as a single province of the Spanish monarchy. The Spaniards themselves were scarcely in a position to entertain the thought of reducing the peninsula to bondage vi et armis. And if they had attempted any measure tending to this result, they would undoubtedly have been resisted by an alliance of the European powers. What they sought, and what they gained, was preponderating influence in each of the parcels which they recognized as nominally independent.

The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though much reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in cities marked by distinct local qualities, and boastful of their ancient glories. The Courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers uttered their thoughts with tolerable freedom, and libertines indulged their tastes unhindered. Rome early assumed novel airs of piety, and external conformity to austere patterns became the fashion here. Yet the Papal capital did not wholly cease to be the resort of students and of artists. The universities maintained themselves in a respectable position--- far different, indeed, from that which they had held in the last century, yet not ignoble. Much was being learned on many lines of study divergent from those prescribed by earlier humanists. Padua, in particular, distinguished itself for medical researches. This was the flourishing time, moreover, of Academies, in which, notwithstanding nonsense talked and foolish tastes indulged, some solid work was done for literature and science. The names of the Cimento, Delia Crusca, and Palazzo Vernio at Florence, remind us of not unimportant labors in physics, in the analysis of language, and in the formation of a new dramatic style of music. At the same time the resurgence of popular literature and the creation of popular theatrical types deserve to be particularly noticed. It is as though the Italian nation at this epoch, suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by Jesuitical hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of open air, indulging in dialectical niceties and immortalizing street-jokes by the genius of masqued comedy.

This most ancient and intensely vital race had given Europe the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the system of Roman law, the Romance languages, Latin Christianity, the Papacy, and, lastly, all that is included in the art and culture of the Renaissance. It was time, perhaps, that it should go to rest a century or so, and watch uprising nations--the Spanish, English, French, and so forth--stir their stalwart limbs in common strife and novel paths of pioneering industry.

After such fashion let us, then, if we can contrive to do so, regard the Italians during their subjection to the Church and Austria. Were it not for these consolatory reflections, and for the present reappearance of the nation in a new and previously unapprehended form of unity, the history of the Counter-Reformation period would be almost too painful for investigation. What the Italians actually accomplished during this period in art, learning, science, and literature, was indeed more than enough to have conferred undying luster on such races as the Dutch or Germans at the same epoch. But it would be ridiculous to compare Italians with either Dutchmen or Germans at a time when Italy was still so incalculably superior. Compared with their own standard, compared with what they might have achieved under more favorable conditions of national independence, the products of this age are saddening. The tragic elements of my present theme are summed up in the fact that Italy during the Counter-Reformation was inferior to Italy during the Renaissance, and that this inferiority was due to the interruption of vital and organic processes by reactionary forces.

It would not be just to condemn Spain and the Papacy because, being reactionary powers, they quenched for three centuries the genial light of Italy. We must rather bear in mind that both Spain and the Papacy were at that time cosmopolitan factors of the first magnitude, with perplexing world-problems confronting them. Charles bore upon his shoulders the concerns of the Empire, the burden of the German revolution, and the distracting anxiety of a duel with Islam. When his son bowed to the yoke of government, he had to meet the same perplexities, complicated with Netherlands in revolt, England in antagonism, and France in dubious ferment. A succession of Popes were hampered by painful European questions, which the instinct of self-preservation taught them to regard as paramount. They were fighting for existence; for the Catholic creed; for their own theocratic sovereignty. They held strong cards. But against them were drawn up the battalions of heresy, free thought, political insurgence in the modern world. The Zeitgeist that has made us what we are, had begun to organize stern opposition to the Church. It was natural enough that both the Spanish autocrat and the successor of S. Peter should at this crisis have regarded Italian affairs as subordinate in importance to wider matters which demanded their attention. Yet if we shift our point of view from this high vantage-ground of Imperial and Papal anxieties, and place ourselves in the center of Italy as our post of observation, it will be apparent that nothing more ruinous for the prosperity of the Italian people could have been devised than the joint autocracy accorded at Bologna to two cosmopolitan but non-national forces in their midst. An alien monarchy greedy for gold, a panic-stricken hierarchy in terror for its life, warped the tendencies and throttled the energies of the most artistically sensitive, the most heroically innovating of the existing races. However we may judge the merits of the Spaniards, they were assuredly not those which had brought Italy into the first rank of European nations. The events of a single century proved that, far from being able to govern other peoples, Spain was incapable of self-government on any rational principle. Whatever may have been the policy thrust upon the chief of Latin Christianity in the desperate struggle with militant rationalism, the repressive measures which it felt bound to adopt were eminently pernicious to a race like the Italians, who showed no disposition for religious regeneration, and who were yet submitted to the tyranny of ecclesiastical discipline and intellectual intolerance at every point.

The settlement made by Charles V. in 1530, and the various changes which took place in the duchies between that date and the end of the century, had then the effect of rendering the Papacy and Spain omnipotent in Italy. These kindred autocrats were joined in firm alliance, except during the brief period of Paul IV.'s French policy, which ended in the Pope's complete discomfiture by Alva in 1557. They used their aggregated forces for the riveting of spiritual, political, and social chains upon the modern world. What they only partially effected in Europe at large, by means of S. Bartholomew massacres, exterminations of Jews in Toledo and of Mussulmans in Granada, holocausts of victims in the Low Countries, wars against French Huguenots and German Lutherans, naval expeditions and plots against the state of England, assassinations of heretic princes, and occasional burning of free thinkers, they achieved with plenary success in Italy. The center of the peninsula, from Ferrara to Terracina, lay at the discretion of the Pope. The Two Sicilies, Sardinia and the Duchy of Milan, were absolute dependencies of the Spanish crown. Tuscany was linked by ties of interest, and by the stronger bonds of terrorism, to Spain. The insignificant principalities of Mantua, Modena, Parma could not do otherwise than submit to the same predominant authority. It is not worth while to take into account the tiny republics of Genoa and Lucca. Their history through this period, though not so uneventful, is scarcely less insignificant than that of San Marino. Venice alone stood independent, still powerful enough to extinguish Bedmar's Spanish conspiracy in silence, still proud enough to resist the encroachments of Paul V. with spirit, yet sensible of her decline and spending her last energies on warfare with the Turk.

At the close of the century, by the Peace of Vervins in 1598 and two subsequent treaties, Spain and France settled their long dispute. France was finally excluded from Italy by the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy, while Savoy at the same moment, through the loss of its Burgundian provinces, became an Italian power. The old antagonism which, dating from the Guelf and Ghibelline contentions of the thirteenth century, had taken a new form after the Papal investiture of Charles of Anjou with the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, now ceased. That antique antagonism of parties, alien to the home interests of Italy, had been exasperated by the rivalry of Angevine and Aragonese princes; had assumed formidable intensity after the invasion of Charles VIII. in 1494; and had expanded under the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I. into an open struggle between France and Spain for the supremacy of Italy. It now was finally terminated by the exclusion of the French and the acknowledged overlordship of the Spaniard. But though peace seemed to be secured to a nation tortured by so many desolating wars of foreign armies, the Italians regarded the cession of Saluzzo with despondency. The partisans of national independence and political freedom had become, however illogically, accustomed to consider France as their ally.[6] They now beheld the gates of Italy closed against the French; they saw the extinction of their ancient Guelf policy of calling French arms into Italy. They felt that rest from strife was dearly bought at the price of prostrate servitude beneath Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs, Spanish Bourbons, and mongrel princelings bred by crossing these stocks with decaying scions of Italian nobility. As a matter of fact, this was the destiny which lay before them for nearly two centuries after the signing of the Peace of Vervins.

[Footnote 6: See, for instance, temp. Henri IV., _Sarpi's Letters_, vol. i. p. 233.]

Yet the cession of Saluzzo was really the first dawn of hope for Italy. It determined the House of Savoy as an Italian dynasty, and brought for the first time into the sphere of purely Italian interests that province from which the future salvation of the nation was to come. From 1598 until 1870 the destinies of Italy were bound up with the advance of Savoy from a duchy to a kingdom, with its growth in wealth, military resources and political self-consciousness, and with its ultimate acceptance of the task, accomplished in our days, of freeing Italy from foreign tyranny and forming a single nation out of many component elements. Those component elements by their diversity had conferred luster on the race in the Middle Ages, by their jealousies had wrecked its independence in the Renaissance, and by their weakness had left it at the period of the Counter-Reformation a helpless prey to Papal and Spanish despotism.

The leveling down of the component elements of the Italian race beneath a common despotism, which began in the period I have chosen for this work, was necessary perhaps before Italy could take her place as a united nation gifted with constitutional self-government and independence. Except, therefore, for the sufferings and the humiliations inflicted on her people; except for their servitude beneath the most degrading forms of ecclesiastical and temporal tyranny; except for the annihilation of their beautiful Renaissance culture; except for the depression of arts, learning, science, and literature, together with the enfeeblement of political energy and domestic morality; except for the loathsome domination of hypocrites and persecutors and informers; except for the Jesuitical encouragement of every secret vice and every servile superstition which might emasculate the race and render it subservient to authority;--except for these appalling evils, we have no right perhaps to deplore the settlement of Italy by Charles V. in 1530, or the course of subsequent events. For it is tolerably certain that some such leveling down as then commenced was needed to bring the constituent States of Italy into accord; and it is indubitable, as I have had occasion to point out, that the political force which eventually introduced Italy into the European system of federated nations, was determined in its character, if not created, then. None the less, the history of this period (1530-1600) in Italy is a prolonged, a solemn, an inexpressibly heart-rending tragedy.

It is the tragic history of the eldest and most beautiful, the noblest and most venerable, the freest and most gifted of Europe's daughters, delivered over to the devilry that issued from the most incompetent and arrogantly stupid of the European sisterhood, and to the cruelty, inspired by panic, of an impious theocracy. When we use these terms to designate the Papacy of the Counter-Reformation, it is not that we forget how many of those Popes were men of blameless private life and serious views for Catholic Christendom. When we use these terms to designate the Spanish race in the sixteenth century, it is not that we are ignorant of Spanish chivalry and colonizing enterprise, of Spanish romance, or of the fact that Spain produced great painters, great dramatists, and one great novelist in the brief period of her glory. We use them deliberately, however, in both cases; because the Papacy at this period committed itself to a policy of immoral, retrograde, and cowardly repression of the most generous of human impulses under the pressure of selfish terror; because the Spaniards abandoned themselves to a dark fiend of religious fanaticism; because they were merciless in their conquests and unintelligent in their administration of subjugated provinces; because they glutted their lusts of avarice and hatred on industrious folk of other creeds within their borders; because they cultivated barren pride and self-conceit in social life; because at the great epoch of Europe's reawakening they chose the wrong side and adhered to it with fatal obstinacy. This obstinacy was disastrous to their neighbors and ruinous to themselves. During the short period of three reigns (between 1598 and 1700) they sank from the first to the third grade in Europe, and saw the scepter passing in the New World from their hands to those of more normally constituted races. That the self-abandonment to sterilizing passions and ignoble persecutions which marked Spain out for decay in the second half of the sixteenth century, and rendered her the curse of her dependencies, can in part be ascribed to the enthusiasm aroused in previous generations by the heroic conflict with advancing Islam, is a thesis capable of demonstration. Yet none the less is it true that her action at that period was calamitous to herself and little short of destructive to Italy.

After the year 1530 seven Spanish devils entered Italy. These were the devil of the Inquisition, with stake and torture-room, and war declared against the will and soul and heart and intellect of man; the devil of Jesuitry, with its sham learning, shameless lying, and casuistical economy of sins; the devil of vice-royal rule, with its life-draining monopolies and gross incapacity for government; the devil of an insolent soldiery, quartered on the people, clamorous for pay, outrageous in their lusts and violences; the devil of fantastical taxation, levying tolls upon the bare necessities of life, and drying up the founts of national well-being at their sources; the devil of petty-princedom, wallowing in sloth and cruelty upon a pinchbeck throne; the devil of effeminate hidalgoism, ruinous in expenditure, mean and grasping, corrupt in private life, in public ostentatious, vain of titles, cringing to its masters, arrogant to its inferiors. In their train these brought with them seven other devils, their pernicious offspring: idleness, disease, brigandage, destitution, ignorance, superstition, hypocritically sanctioned vice. These fourteen devils were welcomed, entertained, and voluptuously lodged in all the fairest provinces of Italy. The Popes opened wide for them the gates of outraged and depopulated Rome. Dukes and marquises fell down and worshiped the golden image of the Spanish Belial-Moloch--that hideous idol whose face was blackened with soot from burning human flesh, and whose skirts were dabbled with the blood of thousands slain in wars of persecution. After a tranquil sojourn of some years in Italy, these devils had everywhere spread desolation and corruption. Broad regions, like the Patrimony of S. Peter and Calabria, were given over to marauding bandits; wide tracks of fertile country, like the Sienese Maremma, were abandoned to malaria; wolves prowled through empty villages round Milan; in every city the pestilence swept off its hundreds daily; manufactures, commerce, agriculture, the industries of town and rural district, ceased; the Courts swarmed with petty nobles, who vaunted paltry titles; and resigned their wives to cicisbei and their sons to sloth: art and learning languished; there was not a man who ventured to speak out his thought or write the truth; and over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy.

CHAPTER II.

THE PAPACY AND THE TRIDENTINE COUNCIL.

The Counter-Reformation--Its Intellectual and Moral Character--Causes of the Gradual Extinction of Renaissance Energy--Transition from the Renaissance to the Catholic Revival--New Religious Spirit in Italy--Attitude of Italians toward German Reformation--Oratory of Divine Love--Gasparo Contarini and the Moderate Reformers--New Religious Orders--Paul III.--His early History and Education--Political Attitude between France and Spain--Creation of the Duchy of Parma--Imminence of a General Council--Review of previous Councils--Paul's Uneasiness--Opens a Council at Trent in 1542--Protestants virtually excluded, and Catholic Dogmas confirmed in the first Sessions--Death of Paul in 1549--Julius III.--Paul IV.--Character and Ruling Passions of G.P. Caraffa--His Futile Opposition to Spain--Tyranny of his Nephews--Their Downfall--Paul Devotes himself to Church Reform and the Inquisition--Pius IV.--His Minister Morone--Diplomatic Temper of this Pope--His Management of the Council--Assistance rendered by his nephew Carlo Borromeo--Alarming State of Northern Europe--The Council reopened at Trent in 1562--Subsequent History of the Council--It closes with a complete Papal Triumph in 1563--Place of Pius IV. in History--Pius V.--The Inquisitor Pope--Population of Rome--Social Corruption--Sale of Offices and Justice--Tridentine Reforms depress Wealth--Ascetic Purity of Manners becomes fashionable--- Piety--The Catholic Reaction generates the Counter-Reformation--Battle of Lepanto--Gregory XIII.--His Relatives--Policy of Enriching the Church at Expense of the Barons--Brigandage in States of the Church--Sixtus V.--His Stern Justice--Rigid Economy--Great Public Works--Taxation--The City of Rome assumes its present form--Nepotism in the Counter-Reformation Period--Various Estimates of the Wealth accumulated by Papal Nephews--Rise of Princely Roman Families.

It is not easy to define the intellectual and moral changes which passed over Italy in the period of the Counter-Reformation[7]; it is still less easy to refer those changes to distinct causes. Yet some analysis tending toward such definition is demanded from a writer who has undertaken to treat of Italian culture and manners between the years 1530 and 1600.

In the last chapter I attempted to describe the depth of servitude to which the States of Italy were severally reduced at the end of the wars between France and Spain. The desolation of the country, the loss of national independence, and the dominance of an alien race, can be counted among the most important of those influences which produced the changes in question. Whatever opinions we may hold regarding the connection between political autonomy and mental vigor in a people, it can hardly be disputed that a sudden and universal extinction of liberty must be injurious to arts and studies that have grown up under free institutions.

But there were other causes at work. Among these a prominent place should be given to an alteration in the intellectual interests of the Italians themselves. The original impulses of the Renaissance, in scholarship, painting, sculpture, architecture, and vernacular poetry, had been exhausted.

[Footnote 7: I may here state that I intend to use this term Counter-Reformation to denote the reform of the Catholic Church, which was stimulated by the German Reformation, and which, when the Council of Trent had fixed the dogmas and discipline of Latin Christianity, enabled the Papacy to assume a militant policy in Europe, whereby it regained a large portion of the provinces, that had previously lapsed to Lutheran and Calvinistic dissent.]

Humanism, after recovering the classics and forming a new ideal of culture, was sinking into pedantry and academic erudition. Painting and sculpture, having culminated in the great work of Michelangelo, tended toward a kind of empty mannerism. Architecture settled down into the types fixed by Palladio and Barozzi. Poetry seemed to have reached its highest point of development in Ariosto. The main motives supplied to art by mediaeval traditions and humanistic enthusiasm were worked out. Nor was this all. The Renaissance had created a critical spirit which penetrated every branch of art and letters. It was not possible to advance further on the old lines; yet painters, sculptors, architects, and poets of the rising generation had before their eyes the masterpieces of their predecessors, in their minds the precepts of the learned. All alike were rendered awkward and self-conscious by the sense of laboring at a disadvantage, and by the dread of academical censorship.

In truth, this critical spirit, which was the final product of the Renaissance in Italy, favored the development of new powers in the nation: it hampered workers in the elder spheres of art, literature, and scholarship; but it set thinkers upon the track of those investigations which we call scientific. I shall endeavor, in a future chapter, to show how the Italians were now upon the point of carrying the ardor of the Renaissance into fresh fields of physical discovery and speculation, when their evolution was suspended by the Catholic Reaction. But here it must suffice to observe that formalism had succeeded by the operation of natural influences to the vigor and inventiveness of the national genius in the main departments of literature and fine art.

If we study the development of other European races, we shall find that each of them in turn, at its due season, passed through similar phases. The mediaeval period ends in the efflorescence of a new delightful energy, which gives a Rabelais, a Shakspere, a Cervantes to the world. The Renaissance riots itself away in Marinism, Gongorism, Euphuism, and the affectations of the Hôtel Rambouillet. This age is succeeded by a colder, more critical, more formal age of obedience to fixed canons, during which scholarly efforts are made to purify style and impose laws on taste. The ensuing period of sense is also marked by profounder inquiries into nature and more exact analysis of mental operations. The correct school of poets, culminating in Dryden and Pope, holds sway in England; while Newton, Locke, and Bentley extend the sphere of science. In France the age of Rabelais and Montaigne yields place to the age of Racine and Descartes. Germany was so distracted by religious wars, Spain was so down-trodden by the Inquisition, that they do not offer equally luminous examples.[8] It may be added that in all these nations the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries are marked by a similar revolt against formality and common sense, to which we give the name of the Romantic movement.

[Footnote 8: With regard to Germany, see Mr. T. S. Perry's acute and philosophical study, entitled From Opitz to Lessing (Boston).]

Quitting this sphere of speculation, we may next point out that the European system had undergone an incalculable process of transformation. Powerful nationalities were in existence, who, having received their education from Italy, were now beginning to think and express thought with marked originality. The Italians stood no longer in a relation of uncontested intellectual superiority to these peoples, while they met them under decided disadvantages at all points of political efficiency. The Mediterranean had ceased to be the high road of commercial enterprise and naval energy. Charles V.'s famous device of the two columns, with its motto Plus Ultra, indicated that illimitable horizons had been opened, that an age had begun in which Spain, England and Holland should dispute the sovereignty of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Italy was left, with diminished forces of resistance, to bear the brunt of Turk and Arab depredations. The point of gravity in the civilized world had shifted. The Occidental nations looked no longer toward the South of Europe.

While these various causes were in operation, Catholic Christianity showed signs of re-wakening. The Reformation called forth a new and sincere spirit in the Latin Church; new antagonisms were evoked, and new efforts after self-preservation had to be made by the Papal hierarchy. The center of the world-wide movement which is termed the Counter-Reformation was naturally Rome. Events had brought the Holy See once more into a position of prominence. It was more powerful as an Italian State now, through the support of Spain and the extinction of national independence, than at any previous period of history. In Catholic Christendom its prestige was immensely augmented by the Council of Trent. At the same epoch, the foreigners who dominated Italy, threw themselves with the enthusiasm of fanaticism into this Revival. Spain furnished Rome with the militia of the Jesuits and with the engines of the Inquisition. The Papacy was thus able to secure successes in Italy which were elsewhere only partially achieved. It followed that the moral, social, political and intellectual activities of the Italians at this period were controlled and colored by influences hostile to the earlier Renaissance. Italy underwent a metamorphosis, prescribed by the Papacy and enforced by Spanish rule. In the process of this transformation the people submitted to rigid ecclesiastical discipline, and adopted, without assimilating, the customs of a foreign troop of despots.

At first sight we may wonder that the race which had shone with such incomparable luster from Dante to Ariosto, and which had done so much to create modern culture for Europe, should so quietly have accepted a retrogressive revolution. Yet, when we look closer, this is not surprising. The Italians were fatigued with creation, bewildered by the complexity of their discoveries, uncertain as to the immediate course before them. The Renaissance had been mainly the work of a select few. It had transformed society without permeating the masses of the people. Was it strange that the majority should reflect that, after all, the old ways are the best? This led them to approve the Catholic Revival. Was it strange that, after long distracting aimless wars, they should hail peace at any price? This lent popular sanction to the Spanish hegemony, in spite of its obvious drawbacks.

These may be reckoned the main conditions which gave a peculiar but not easily definable complexion of languor, melancholy, and dwindling vitality to nearly every manifestation of Italian genius in the second half of the sixteenth century, and which well nigh sterilized that genius during the two succeeding centuries. In common with the rest of Europe, and in consequence of an inevitable alteration of their mental bias, they had lost the blithe spontaneity of the Renaissance. But they were at the same time suffering from grievous exhaustion, humiliated by the tyranny of foreign despotism, and terrorized by ecclesiastical intolerance. In their case, therefore, a sort of moral and intellectual atrophy becomes gradually more and more perceptible. The clear artistic sense of rightness and of beauty yields to doubtful taste. The frank audacity of the Renaissance is superseded by cringing timidity, lumbering dulness, somnolent and stagnant acquiescence in accepted formulae. At first the best minds of the nation fret and rebel, and meet with the dungeon or the stake as the reward of contumacy. In the end everybody seems to be indifferent, satisfied with vacuity, enamored of insipidity. The brightest episode in this dreary period is the emergence of modern music with incomparable sweetness and lucidity.

It must not be supposed that the change which I have adumbrated, passed rapidly over the Italian spirit. When Paul III. succeeded Clement on the Papal throne in 1534, some of the giants of the Renaissance still survived, and much of their great work was yet to be accomplished. Michelangelo had neither painted the Last Judgment nor planned the cupola which crowns S. Peter's. Cellini had not cast his Perseus for the Loggia de'Lanzi, nor had Palladio raised San Giorgio from the sea at Venice. Pietro Aretino still swaggered in lordly insolence; and though Machiavelli was dead, the 'silver histories' of Guicciardini remained to be written. Bandello, Giraldi and Il Lasca had not published their Novelle, nor had Cecchi given the last touch to Florentine comedy. It was chiefly at Venice, which preserved the ancient forms of her oligarchical independence, that the grand style of the Renaissance continued to flourish. Titian was in his prime; the stars of Tintoretto and Veronese had scarcely risen above the horizon. Sansovino was still producing masterpieces of picturesque beauty in architecture.

In order to understand the transition of Italy from the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation manner, it will be well to concentrate attention on the history of the Papacy during the eight reigns of Paul III., Julius III., Paul IV., Pius IV., Pius V., Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., and Clement VIII.[9] In the first of these reigns we hardly notice that the Renaissance has passed away. In the last we are aware of a completely altered Italy. And we perceive that this alteration has been chiefly due to the ecclesiastical policy which brought the Council of Trent to a successful issue in the reign of Pius IV.

[Footnote 9: These eight reigns cover a space of time from 1534 to 1605.]

Before engaging in this review of Papal history, I must give some brief account of the more serious religious spirit which had been developed within the Italian Church; since the determination of this spirit toward rigid Catholicism in the second half of the sixteenth century decided the character of Italian manners and culture. Protestantism in the strict sense of the term took but little hold upon Italian society. It is true that the minds of some philosophical students were deeply stirred by the audacious discussion of theological principles in Germany. Such men had been rendered receptive of new impressions by the Platonizing speculations of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, as well as by the criticism of the Bible in its original languages which formed a subordinate branch of humanistic education. They had, furthermore, been powerfully affected by the tribulations of Rome at the time of Bourbon's occupation, and had grown to regard these as a divine chastisement inflicted on the Church for its corruption and ungodliness. Lutheranism so far influenced their opinions that they became convinced of the necessity of a return to the simpler elements of Christianity in creed and conduct. They considered a thorough-going reform of the hierarchy and of all Catholic institutions to be indispensable. They leant, moreover, with partiality to some of the essential tenets of the Reformation, notably to the doctrines of justification by faith and salvation by the merits of Christ, and also to the principle that Scripture is the sole authority in matters of belief and discipline. Thus both the Cardinals Morone and Contarini, the poet Flaminio, and the nobles of the Colonna family in Naples who imbibed the teaching of Valdes, fell under the suspicion of heterodoxy on these points. But it was characteristic of the members of this school that they had no will to withhold allegiance from the Pope as chief of Christendom. They shrank with horror from the thought of encouraging a schism or of severing themselves from the communion of Catholics. The essential difference between Italian and Teutonic thinkers on such subjects at this epoch seems to have been this: Italians could not cease to be Catholics without at the same time ceasing to be Christians. They could not accommodate their faith to any of the compromises suggested by the Reformation. Even when they left their country in a spirit of rebellion, they felt ill at ease both with Lutherans and Calvinists. Like Bernardino Ochino and the Anti-Trinitarians of the Socinian sect, they wandered restlessly through Europe, incapable of settling down in communion with any one of the established forms of Protestantism. Calvin at Geneva instituted a real crusade against Italian thinkers, who differed from his views. He drove Valentino Gentile to death on the scaffold; and expelled Gribaldi, Simone, Biandrata, Alciati, Negro. Most of these men found refuge in Poland, Transylvania, even Turkey.[10]

There were bold speculators in Italy enough, who had practically abandoned the Catholic faith. But the majority of these did not think it worth their while to make an open rupture with the Church. Theological hair-splitting reminded them only of the mediaeval scholasticism from which they had been emancipated by classical culture. They were less interested in questions touching the salvation of the individual or the exact nature of the sacraments, than in metaphysical problems suggested by the study of antique philosophers, or new theories of the material universe.

[Footnote 10: See Berti's _Vita di G. Bruno_, pp. 105-108.]

The indifference of these men in religion rendered it easy for them to conform in all external points to custom. Their fundamental axiom was that a scientific thinker could hold one set of opinions as a philosopher, and another set as a Christian. Their motto was the celebrated _Foris ut moris, intus ut libet_.[11] Nor were ecclesiastical authorities dissatisfied with this attitude during the ascendancy of humanistic culture. It was, indeed, the attitude of Popes like Leo, Cardinals like Bembo. And it only revealed its essential weakness when the tide of general opinion, under the blast of Teutonic revolutionary ideas, turned violently in favor of formal orthodoxy. Then indeed it became dangerous to adopt the position of a Pomponazzo.

[Footnote 11: This maxim is ascribed to the materialistic philosopher Cremonini.]

The mental attitude of such men is so well illustrated by a letter written by Celio Calcagnini to Peregrino Morato, that I shall not hesitate to transcribe it here. It seems that Morato had sent his correspondent some treatise on the theological questions then in dispute; and Calcagnini replies:

'I have read the book relating to the controversies so much agitated at present. I have thought on its contents, and weighed them in the balance of reason. I find in it nothing which may not be approved and defended, but some things which, as mysteries, it is safer to suppress and conceal than to bring before the common people, inasmuch as they pertained to the primitive and infant state of the Church. Now, when the decrees of the fathers and long usage have introduced other modes, what necessity is there for reviving antiquated practices which have long fallen into desuetude, especially as neither piety nor the salvation of the soul is concerned with them? Let us, then, I pray you, allow these things to rest. Not that I disapprove of their being embraced by scholars and lovers of antiquity; but I would not have them communicated to the common people and those who are fond of innovations, lest they give occasion to strife and sedition. There are unlearned and unqualified persons who having, after long ignorance, read or heard certain new opinions respecting baptism, the marriage of the clergy, ordination, the distinction of days and food, and public penitence, instantly conceive that these things are to be stiffly maintained and observed. Wherefore, in my opinion, the discussion of these points ought to be confined to the initiated, that so the seamless coat of our Lord may not be rent and torn.... Seeing it is dangerous to treat such things before the multitude and in public discourses, I must deem it safest to "speak with the many and think with the few," and to keep in mind the advice of Paul, "Hast thou faith? Have it to thyself before God."'[12]

[Footnote 12: _C. Calcagnini Opera_, p. 195. I am indebted for the above version to McCrie's Reformation in Italy, p. 183.]

The new religious spirit which I have attempted to characterize as tinctured by Protestant opinions but disinclined for severance from Rome, manifested itself about the same time in several groups. One of them was at Rome, where a society named the Oratory of Divine Love, including from fifty to sixty members, began to meet as early as the reign of Leo X. in the Trastevere. This pious association included men of very various kinds. Sadoleto, Giberto, and Contarini were here in close intimacy with Gaetano di Thiene, the sainted founder of the Theatines, and with his friend Caraffa, the founder of the Roman Inquisition. Venice was the center of another group, among whom may be mentioned Reginald Pole, Gasparo Contarini, Luigi Priuli, and Antonio Bruccioli, the translator of the Bible from the original tongues into Italian. The poet Marcantonio Flaminio became a member of both societies; and was furthermore the personal friend of the Genoese Cardinals Sauli and Fregoso, whom we have a right to count among thinkers of the same class. Flaminio, though he died in the Catholic communion, was so far suspected of heresy that his works were placed upon the Index of 1559. In Naples Juan Valdes made himself the leader of a similar set of men. His views, embodied in the work of a disciple, and revised by Marcantonio Flaminio, _On the Benefits of Christ's Death_, revealed strong Lutheran tendencies, which at a later period would certainly have condemned him to perpetual imprisonment or exile. This book had a wide circulation in Italy, and was influential in directing the minds of thoughtful Christians to the problems of Justification. It was ascribed to Aonio Paleario, who suffered martyrdom at Rome for maintaining doctrines similar to those of Valdes.[13] Round him gathered several members of the great Colonna family, notably Vespasiano, Duke of Palliano, and his wife, the star of Italian beauty, Giulia Gonzaga. Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, imbibed the new doctrines in the same circle; and so did Bernardino Ochino. Modena could boast another association, which met in the house of Grillenzone; while Ferrara became the headquarters of a still more pronounced reforming party under the patronage of the Duchess, Renée of France, daughter of Louis XII. These various societies and coteries were bound together by ties of friendship and literary correspondence, and were indirectly connected with less fortunate reforming theologians; with Aonio Paleario, Bernardino Ochino, Antonio dei Pagliaricci, Carnesecchi, and others, whose tragic history will form a part of my chapter on the Inquisition.

[Footnote 13: Though as many as 40,000 copies were published, this book was so successfully stamped out that it seemed to be irrecoverably lost. The library of St. John's College at Cambridge, however, contains two Italian copies and one French copy. That of Laibach possesses an Italian and a Croat version. Cantù, Gli Eretici, vol. i. p. 360.]

It does not fall within the province of this chapter to write an account of what has, not very appropriately, been called the Reformation in Italy. My purpose in the present book is, not to follow the fortunes of Protestantism, but to trace the sequel of the Renaissance, the merging of its impulse in new phases of European development. I shall therefore content myself with pointing out that at the opening of Paul III.'s reign, there was widely diffused throughout the chief Italian cities a novel spirit of religious earnestness and enthusiasm, which as yet had taken no determinate direction. This spirit burned most highly in Gasparo Contarini, who in 1541 was commissioned by the Pope to attend a conference at Rechensburg for the discussion of terms of reconciliation with the Lutherans. He succeeded in drawing up satisfactory articles on the main theological points regarding human nature, original sin, redemption and justification. These were accepted by the Protestant theologians at Rechensburg and might possibly have been ratified in Rome, had not the Congress been broken up by Contarini's total failure to accommodate differences touching the Pope's supremacy and the conciliar principle.[14] He made concessions to the Reformers, which roused the fury of the Roman Curia. At the same time political intrigues were set on foot in France and Germany to avert a reconciliation which would have immeasurably strengthened the Emperor's position. The moderate sections of both parties, Lutheran and Catholic, failed at Rechensburg. Indeed, it was inevitable that they should fail; for the breach between the Roman Church and the Reformation was not of a nature to be healed over at this date. Principles were involved which could not now be harmonized, and both parties in the dispute were on the point of developing their own forces with fresh internal vigor.

[Footnote 14: It should be observed, however, that Luther rejected the article on justification, and that Caraffa in Rome used his influence to prevent its acceptance by Paul III.]

The Italians who desired reform of the Church were now thrown back upon the attempt to secure this object within the bosom of Catholicism. At the request of Paul III. they presented a memorial on ecclesiastical abuses, which was signed by Contarini, Caraffa, Sadoleto, Pole, Fregoso, Giberto, Cortese and Aleander. These Cardinals did not spare plain speech upon the burning problem of Papal misgovernment.

Meanwhile, the new spirit began to manifest itself in the foundation of orders and institutions tending to purification of Church discipline. The most notable of these was the order of Theatines established by Thiene and Caraffa. Its object was to improve the secular priesthood, with a view to which end seminaries were opened for the education of priests, who took monastic vows and devoted themselves to special observance of their clerical duties, as preachers, administrators of the sacraments, visitors of the poor and sick.

A Venetian, Girolamo Miani, at the same period founded a congregation, called the Somascan, for the education of the destitute and orphaned, and for the reception of the sick and infirm into hospitals. The terrible state in which Lombardy had been left by war rendered this institution highly valuable. Of a similar type was the order of the Barnabites, who were first incorporated at Milan, charged with the performance of acts of mercy, education, preaching, and other forms of Christian ministration. It may be finally added that the Camaldolese and Franciscan orders had been in part reformed by a spontaneous movement within their bodies.

If we compare the spirit indicated by these efforts in the first half of the sixteenth century with that of the earlier Renaissance, it will be evident that the Italians were ready for religious change. They sink, however, into insignificance beside two Spanish institutions which about the same period added their weight and influence to the Catholic revival. I mean, of course, the Inquisition and the Jesuit order. Paul III. empowered Caraffa in 1542 to re-establish the Inquisition in Rome upon a new basis resembling that of the Spanish Holy Office. The same Pope sanctioned and confirmed the Company of Jesus between the years 1540 and 1543. The establishment of the Inquisition gave vast disciplinary powers to the Church at the moment when the Council of Trent fixed her dogmas and proclaimed the absolute authority of the Popes. At the same time the Jesuits, devoted by their founder in blind obedience--_perinde ac cadaver_--to the service of the Papacy, penetrated Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the transatlantic colonies.

The Pope who succeeded Clement VII. in 1534 was in all ways fitted to represent the transition which I have indicated. Alessandro Farnese sprang from an ancient but decayed family in the neighborhood of Bolsena, several of whose members had played a foremost part in the mediaeval revolutions of Orvieto. While still a young man of twenty-five, he was raised to the Cardinalate by Alexander VI. This advancement he owed to the influence of his sister Giulia, surnamed La Bella, who was then the Borgia's mistress. It is characteristic of an epoch during which the bold traditions of the fifteenth century still lingered, that the undraped statue of this Giulia (representing Vanity) was carved for the basement of Paul III.'s monument in the choir of S. Peter's. The old stock of the Farnesi, once planted in the soil of Papal corruption at its most licentious period, struck firm roots and flourished. Alessandro was born in 1468, and received a humanistic education according to the methods of the earlier Renaissance. He studied literature with Pomponius Laetus in the Roman Academy, and frequented the gardens of Lorenzo de'Medici at Florence. His character and intellect were thus formed under the influences of the classical revival and of the Pontifical Curia, at a time when pagan morality and secular policy had obliterated the ideal of Catholic Christianity. His sister was the Du Barry of the Borgian Court. He was himself the father of several illegitimate children, whom he acknowledged, and on whose advancement by the old system of Papal nepotism he spent the best years of his reign. Both as a patron of the arts and as an elegant scholar in the Latin and Italian languages, Alessandro showed throughout his life the effects of this early training. He piqued himself on choice expression, whenever he was called upon to use the pen in studied documents, or to answer ambassadors in public audiences. To his taste and love of splendor Rome owes the Farnese palace. He employed Cellini, and forced Michelangelo to paint the Last Judgment. On ascending the Papal throne he complained that this mighty genius had been too long occupied for Delia Roveres and Medici. When the fresco was finished, he set the old artist upon his last great task of completing S. Peter's.

So far there was nothing to distinguish Alessandro Farnese from other ecclesiastics of the Renaissance. As Cardinal he seemed destined, should he ever attain the Papal dignity, to combine the qualities of the Borgian and Medicean Pontiffs. But before his elevation to that supreme height, he lived through the reigns of Julius II., Leo X., Adrian VI., and Clement VII. Herein lies the peculiarity of his position as Paul III. The pupil of Pomponius Laetus, the creature of Roderigo Borgia, the representative of Italian manners and culture before the age of foreign invasion had changed the face of Italy, Paul III. was called at the age of sixty-six to steer the ship of the Church through troubled waters and in very altered circumstances. He had witnessed the rise and progress of Protestant revolt in Germany. He had observed the stirrings of a new and sincere spirit of religious gravity, an earnest desire for ecclesiastical reform in his own country. He had watched the duel between France and Spain, during the course of which his predecessors Alexander V. and Julius II. restored the secular authority of Rome. He had seen that authority humbled to the dust in 1527, and miraculously rehabilitated at Bologna in 1530. He had learned by the example of the Borgias how difficult it was for any Papal family to found a substantial principality; and the vicissitudes of Florence and Urbino had confirmed this lesson. Finally, he had assisted at the coronation of Charles V.; and when he took the reins of power into his hands, he was well aware with what a formidable force he had to cope in the great Emperor.

Paul III. knew that the old Papal game of pitting France against Spain in the peninsula could not be played on the same grand scale as formerly. This policy had been pursued with results ruinous to Italy but favorable to the Church, by Julius. It had enabled Leo and Clement to advance their families at the hazard of more important interests. But in the reign of the latter Pope it had all but involved the Papacy itself in the general confusion and desolation of the country. Moreover, France was no longer an effective match for Spain; and though their struggle was renewed, the issue was hardly doubtful. Spain had got too firm a grip upon the land to be cast off.

Yet Paul was a man of the elder generation. It could not be expected that a Pope of the Renaissance should suddenly abandon the mediaeval policy of Papal hostility to the Empire, especially when the Empire was in the hands of so omnipotent a master as Charles. It could not be expected that he should recognize the wisdom of confining Papal ambition to ecclesiastical interests, and of forming a defensive and offensive alliance with Catholic sovereigns for the maintenance of absolutism. It could not be expected that he should forego the pleasures and apparent profits of creating duchies for his bastards, whereby to dignify his family and strengthen his personal authority as a temporal sovereign. It is true that the experience of the last half century had pointed in the direction of all these changes; and it is certain that the series of events connected with the Council of Trent, which began in Paul III.'s reign, rendered them both natural and necessary. Yet Paul, as a man of the elder generation filling the Papal throne for fifteen years during a period of transition, adhered in the main to the policy of his predecessors. It was fortunate for him and for the Holy See that the basis of his character was caution combined with tough tenacity of purpose, capacity for dilatory action, diplomatic shiftiness and a political versatility that can best be described by the word trimming. These qualities enabled him to pass with safety through perils that might have ruined a bolder, a hastier, or a franker Pope, and to achieve the object of his heart's desire, where stronger men had failed, in the foundation of a solid duchy for his heirs.

Paul's jealousy of the Spanish ascendancy in Italian affairs caused him to waver between the Papal and Imperial, Guelf and Ghibelline, parties. These names had lost much of their significance; but the habit of distinction into two camps was so rooted in Italian manners, that each city counted its antagonistic factions, maintained by various forms of local organization and headed by the leading families.[15] Burigozzo, under the year 1517, tells how the whole population of Milan was divided between Guelfs and Ghibellines, wearing different costumes; and it is not uncommon to read of petty nobles in the country at this period, who were styled Captains of one or the other party.

[Footnote 15: See Bruno's Cena delle Ceneri, ed. Wagner, vol. i. p. 133, for a humorous story illustrative of the state of things ensuing among the lower Italian classes.]

The wars between France and Spain revived the almost obsolete dispute, which the despots of the fifteenth century and the diplomatic confederation of the five great powers had tended in large measure to erase. The Guelfs and Ghibellines were now partisans of France and Spain respectively. Thus a true political importance was regained for the time-honored factions; and in the distracted state of Italy they were further intensified by the antagonism between exiles and the ruling families in cities. If Cosimo de'Medici, for example, was a Ghibelline or Spanish partisan, it followed as a matter of course that Filippo Strozzi was a Guelf and stood for France. Paul III. managed to maintain himself by manipulating these factions and holding the balance between them for the advantage of his family and of the Church.

He thus succeeded in creating the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza for his son, Pier Luigi Farnese, that outrageous representative of the worst vices and worst violences of the Renaissance. It will be remembered that Julius had detached these two cities from the Duchy of Milan, and annexed them to the Papal States, on the plea that they formed part of the old Exarchate of Ravenna. When Charles decided against this plea in the matter of Modena and Reggio, he left the Church in occupation of Parma and Piacenza. Paul created his son Duke of Nepi and Castro in 1537, and afterwards conferred the Duchy of Camerino on his grandson, Ottavio, who was then married to Margaret of Austria, daughter of Charles V., and widow of the murdered Alessandro de'Medici. The usual system of massacre, exile, and confiscation had reduced the signorial family of the Varani at Camerino to extremities. The fief reverted to the Church, and Paul induced the Cardinals to sanction his investiture of Ottavio Farnese with its rights and honors. He subsequently explained to them that it would be more profitable for the Holy See to retain Camerino and to relinquish Parma and Piacenza to the Farnesi in exchange. There was sense in this arrangement; for Camerino formed an integral part of the Papal States, while Parma and Piacenza were held under a more than doubtful title. Pier Luigi did not long survive his elevation to the dukedom of Parma. He was murdered by his exasperated subjects in 1547. His son, Ottavio, with some difficulty, maintained his hold upon this principality, until in 1559 he established himself and his heirs, with the approval of Philip II., in its perpetual enjoyment. The Farnesi repaid Spanish patronage by constant service, Alessandro, Prince of Parma, and son of Ottavio, being illustrious in the annals of the Netherlands. It would not have been worth while to enlarge on this foundation of the Duchy of Parma, had it not furnished an excellent example of my theme. By this act Paul III. proved himself a true and able inheritor of those political traditions by which all Pontiffs from Sixtus IV. to Clement VII. had sought to establish their relatives in secular princedoms. It was the last eminent exhibition of that policy, the last and the most brilliant display of nepotistical ambition in a Pope. A new age had opened, in which such schemes became impossible--when Popes could no longer dare to acknowledge and legitimize their bastards, and when they had to administer their dominions exclusively for the temporal and ecclesiastical aggrandizement of the tiara.

Nevertheless, Paul was living under the conditions which brought this modern attitude of the Papacy into potent actuality. He was surrounded by intellectual and moral forces of recent growth but of incalculable potency. One of the first acts of his reign was to advance six members of the moderate reforming party--Sadoleto, Pole, Giberto, Federigo, Fregoso, Gasparo Contarini, and G.M. Caraffa--to the Cardinalate. By this exercise of power he showed his willingness to recognize new elements of very various qualities in the Catholic hierarchy. Five of these men represented opinions which at the moment of their elevation to the purple had a fair prospect of ultimate success. Imbued with a profound sense of the need for ecclesiastical reform, and tinctured more or less deeply with so-called Protestant opinions, they desired nothing more intensely than a reconstitution of the Catholic Church upon a basis which might render reconciliation with the Lutherans practicable. They had their opportunity during the pontificate of Paul III. It was a splendid one; and, as I have already shown, the Conference of Rechensburg only just failed in securing the end they so profoundly desired. But the Papacy was not prepared to concede so much as they were anxious to grant: the German Reformers proved intractable; they were themselves impeded by their loyalty to antique Catholic traditions, and by their dread of a schism; finally, the militant expansive force of Spanish orthodoxy, expressing itself already in the concentrated energy of the Jesuit order, rendered attempts at fusion impossible. The victory in Rome remained with the faction of intransigeant Catholics; and this was represented, in Paul III.'s first creation of Cardinals, by Caraffa. Caraffa was destined to play a singular part in the transition period of Papal history which I am reviewing. He belonged as essentially to the future as Alessandro Farnese belonged to the past. He embodied the spirit of the Inquisition, and upheld the principles of ecclesiastical reform upon the narrow basis of Papal absolutism. He openly signalized his disapproval of Paul's nepotism; and when his time for ruling came, he displayed a remorseless spirit of justice without mercy in dealing with his own family. Yet he hated the Spanish ascendancy with a hatred far more fierce and bitter than that of Paul III. His ineffectual efforts to shake off the yoke of Philip II. was the last spasm of the older Papal policy of resistance to temporal sovereigns, the last appeal made in pursuance of that policy to France by an Italian Pontiff.[16]

[Footnote 16: Paul IV. as Pope was feeble compared with his predecessors, Julius II. and Leo X.; the Guises, on whom he relied for resuscitating the old French party in the South, were but half-successful adventurers, mere shadows of the Angevine invaders whom they professed to represent.]

The object of this excursion into the coming period is to show in how deep a sense Paul III. may be regarded as the beginner of a new era, while he was at the same time the last continuator of the old. The Cardinals whom he promoted on his accession included the chief of those men who strove in vain for a concordat between Rome and Reformation; it also included the man who stamped Rome with the impress of the Counter-Reformation. Yet Caraffa would not have had the fulcrum needed for this decisive exertion of power, had it not been for another act of Paul's reign. This was the convening of a Council at Trent. Paul's attitude toward the Council, which he summoned with reluctance, which he frustrated as far as in him lay, and the final outcome of which he was far from anticipating, illustrates in a most decisive manner his destiny as Pope of the transition.

The very name of a Council was an abomination to the Papacy. This will be apparent if we consider the previous history of the Church during the first half of the fifteenth century, when the conciliar authority was again invoked to regulate the Papal See and to check Papal encroachments on the realms and Churches of the Western nations. The removal of the Papal Court to Avignon, the great schism which resulted from this measure, and the dissent which spread from England to Bohemia at the close of the fourteenth century, rendered it necessary that the representative powers of Christendom should combine for the purpose of restoring order in the Church. Four main points lay before the powers of Europe, thus brought for the first time into deliberative and confederated congress to settle questions that vitally concerned them. The most immediately urgent was the termination of the schism, and the appointment of one Pope, who should represent the mediaeval idea of ecclesiastical face to face with imperial unity. The second was the definition of the indeterminate and ever-widening authority which the Popes asserted over the kingdoms and the Churches of the West. The third was the eradication of heresies which were rending Christendom asunder and threatening to destroy that ideal of unity in creed to which the Middle Ages clung with not unreasonable passion. The fourth was a reform of the Church, considered as a vital element of Western Christendom, in its head and in its members.

The programme, very indistinctly formulated by the most advanced thinkers of the age, and only gradually developed by practice into actuality, was a vast one. It involved the embitterment of national jealousies, the accentuation of national characteristics, and the complication of antagonistic principles regarding secular and ecclesiastical government, which rendered a complete and satisfactory solution well-nigh impracticable. The effort to solve these problems had, however, important influence in creating conditions under which the politico-religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were conducted.[17]

The first Council, opened at Pisa in 1409, was a congress of prelates summoned by Cardinals for the conclusion of the schism. It deposed two Popes, who still continued to assert their titles; it elected a third, Alexander V., who had no real authority. For the rest, it effected no reform, and cannot be said to have done much more than to give effect to those aspirations after Church-government by means of Councils which had been slowly forming during the continuance of the schism.

The second Council, opened at Constance in 1414, was a Council not convened by Cardinals, but by the universal demand of Europe that the advances of the Papacy toward tyranny should be checked, and that the innumerable abuses of the Church and Papal Curia should be reformed. It received a different complexion from that of Pisa, through the presidency of the Emperor and the attendance of representatives from the chief nations. At Constance the Papacy and the Roman Curia stood together, exposed to the hostile criticism of Europe. The authority of a General Council was, after a sharp conflict, decreed superior to that of the Bishop of Rome. Three Popes were forced to abdicate; and a fourth, Martin V., was elected.

[Footnote 17: The best account of the Councils will be found in Professor Creighton's admirable History of the Papacy during the Reformation, 2 vols. Longmans.]

The Council further undertook to deal with heresy and with the reform of the Church. It discharged the first of these offices by condemning Hus and Jerome of Prague to the stake. It left the second practically untouched. Yet the question of reform had been gravely raised, largely discussed, and fundamentally examined. Two methods were posed at Constance for the future consideration of earnest thinkers throughout Europe. One was the way suggested by John Hus; that the Church should be reconstituted, after a searching analysis of the real bases of Christian conduct, an appeal to Scripture as the final authority, and a loyal endeavor to satisfy the spiritual requirements of individual souls and consciences. The second plan was that of inquiry into the existing order of the Church and detailed amendment of its flagrant faults, with preservation of the main system. The Council adopted satisfactory measures of reform on neither of these methods. It contented itself with stipulations and concordats, guaranteeing special privileges to the Churches of the several nations. But in the following century it became manifest that the Teutonic races had declared for the method suggested by Hus; while the Latin races, in the Council of Trent, undertook a purgation of the Church upon the second of the two plans. The Reformation was the visible outcome of the one, the Counter-Reformation of the other method.

The Council of Constance was thus important in causing the recognition of a single Pope, and in ventilating the divergent theories upon which the question of reform was afterwards to be disputed. But perhaps the most significant fact it brought into relief was the new phase of political existence into which the European races had entered. Nationality, as the main principle of modern history, was now established; and the diplomatic relations of sovereigns as the representatives of peoples were shown to be of overwhelming weight. The visionary mediaeval polity of Emperor and Pope faded away before the vivid actuality of full-formed individual nations, federally connected, controlled by common but reciprocally hostile interests.[18]

The Council of Basel, opened in 1431, was in appearance a continuation of the Council of Constance. But its method of procedure ran counter to the new direction which had been communicated to European federacy by the action of the Constance congress. There the votes had been taken by nations. At Basel they were taken by men, after the questions to be decided had been previously discussed by special congregations and committees deputed for preliminary deliberations. It soon appeared that the fathers of the Basel Council aimed at opposing a lawfully-elected Pope, and sought to assume the, administration of the Church into their own hands.

[Footnote 18: See above, p. 2, for the special sense in which I apply the word federation to Italy before 1530, and to Europe at large in the modern period.]

Their struggle with Eugenius IV., their election of an antipope, Felix V., and their manifest tendency to substitute oligarchical for Papal tyranny in the Church, had the effect of bringing the conciliar principle itself into disfavor with the European powers. The first symptom of this repudiation of the Council by Europe was shown in the neutrality proclaimed by Germany. The attitude of other Courts and nations proved that the Western races were for the moment prepared to leave the Papal question open on the basis supplied by the Council of Constance.

The result of this failure of the conciliar principle at Basel was that Nicholas V. inaugurated a new age for the Papacy in Rome. I have already described the chief features of the Papal government from his election to the death of Clement VII. It was a period of unexampled splendor for the Holy See, and of substantial temporal conquests. The second Council of Pisa, which began its sittings, in 1511 under French sanction and support, exercised no disastrous influence over the restored powers and prestige of the Papacy. On the contrary, it gave occasion for a counter-council, held at the Lateran under the auspices of Julius II. and Leo X., in which the Popes established several points of ecclesiastical discipline that were not without value to their successors. But the leaven which had been scattered by Wyclif and Hus, of which the Council of Constance had taken cognizance, but which had not been extirpated, was spreading in Germany throughout this period. The Popes themselves were doing all in their power to propagate dissent and discontent. Well aware of the fierce light cast by the new learning they had helped to disseminate, upon the dark places of their own ecclesiastical administration, they still continued to raise money by the sale of pardons and indulgences, to bleed their Christian flocks by monstrous engines of taxation, and to offend the conscience of an intelligent generation by their example of ungodly living. The Reformation ran like wild-fire through the North. It grew daily more obvious that a new Council must be summoned for carrying out measures of internal reform, and for coping with the forces of belligerent Protestantism. When things had reached this point, Charles V. declared his earnest desire that the Pope should summon a General Council. Paul III. now showed in how true a sense he was the man of a transitional epoch. So long as possible he resisted, remembering to what straits his predecessors had been reduced by previous Councils, and being deeply conscious of scandals in his own domestic affairs which might expose him to the fate of a John XXIII. Reviewing the whole series of events which have next to be recorded, we are aware that Paul had no great cause for agitation. The Council he so much dreaded was destined to exalt his office, and to recombine the forces of Catholic Christendom under the absolute supremacy of his successors. The Inquisition and the Company of Jesus, both of which he sanctioned at this juncture, were to guard, extend, and corroborate that supreme authority. But this was by no means apparent in 1540. It is a character of all transitional periods that in them the cautious men regard past precedents of peril rather than sanguine expectations based on present chances. A hero, in such passes, goes to meet the danger armed with his own cause and courage. A genius divines the future, and interprets it, and through interpretation tries to govern it. Paul was neither a hero nor a man of genius. Yet he did as much as either could have done; and he did it in a temper which perhaps the hero and the genius could not have commanded. He sent Legates to publish the opening of a Council at Trent in the spring of 1545; and he resolved to work this Council on the principles of diplomatical conservatism, reserving for himself the power of watching events and of enlarging or restricting its efficiency as might seem best to him.[19]

[Footnote 19: The first official opening of the Council at Trent was in November 1542, by Cardinals Pole and Morone as Legates. It was adjourned in July, 1543, on account of insufficient attendance. When it again opened in 1545, Pole reappeared as Legate. With him were associated two future Popes, Giov. Maria del Monte (Julius III.), and Marcello Cervini (Marcellus II.) The first session of the Council took place in December, 1545, four Cardinals, four Archbishops, twenty-one Bishops, and five Generals of Orders attending. Among these were only five Spanish and two French prelates; no German, unless we count Cristoforo Madrazzo, the Cardinal Bishop of Trent, as one. No Protestants appeared; for Paul III. had successfully opposed their ultimatum, which demanded that final appeal on all debated points should be made to the sole authority of Holy Scripture.]

It is singular that the Council thus reluctantly conceded by Paul III. should, during its first sessions and while he yet reigned, have confirmed the dogmatic foundations of modern Catholicism, made reconciliation with the Teutonic Reformers impossible, and committed the secular powers which held with Rome to a policy that rendered the Papal supremacy incontestable.[20] Face to face with the burning question of the Protestant rebellion, the Tridentine fathers hastened to confirm the following articles. First, they declared that divine revelation was continuous in the Church of which the Pope was head; and that the chief written depository of this revelation--namely, the Scriptures--had no authority except in the version of the Vulgate.

[Footnote 20: Throughout the sessions of the Council, Spanish, French, and German representatives, whether fathers or ambassadors, maintained the theory of Papal subjection to conciliar authority. The Spanish and French were unanimous in zeal for episcopal independence. The French and German were united in a wish to favor Protestants by reasonable concessions. Thus the Papal supremacy had to face serious antagonism, which it eventually conquered by the numerical preponderance of the Italian prelates, by the energy of the Jesuits, by diplomatic intrigues, and by manipulation of discords in the opposition. Though the Spanish fathers held with the French and German on the points of episcopal independence and conciliar authority, they disagreed whenever it became a question of compromise with Protestants upon details of dogma or ritual. The Papal Court persuaded the Catholic sovereigns of Spain and France, and the Emperor, that episcopal independence would be dangerous to their own prerogatives; and at every inconvenient turn in affairs, it was made clear that Catholic sovereigns, threatened by the Protestant revolution, could not afford to separate their cause from that of the Pope.]

Secondly, they condemned the doctrine of Justification by Faith, adding such theological qualifications and reservations as need not, at this distance of time, and on a point devoid of present actuality, be scrupulously entertained. Thirdly, they confirmed the efficacy and the binding authority of the Seven Sacraments. It is thus clear that, on points of dogma, the Council convened by Pope and Emperor committed Latin Christianity to a definite repudiation of the main articles for which Luther had contended. Each of these points they successively traversed, foreclosing every loophole for escape into accommodation. It was in large measure due to Caraffa's energy and ability that these results were attained.

The method of procedure adopted by the Council, and the temper in which its business was conducted, were no less favorable to the Papacy than the authoritative sanction which it gave to dogmas. From the first, the presidency and right of initiative in its sessions were conceded to the Papal Legates; and it soon became customary to refer decrees, before they were promulgated, to his Holiness in Rome for approval. The decrees themselves were elaborated in three congregations, one appointed for theological questions, the second for reforms, the third for supervision and ratification. They were then proposed for discussion and acceptance in general sessions of the Council. Here each vote told; and as there was a standing majority of Italian prelates, it required but little dexterity to secure the passing of any measure upon which the Court of Rome insisted. The most formidable opposition to the Papal prerogatives during these manoeuvres proceeded from the Spanish bishops, who urged the introduction of reforms securing the independence of the episcopacy.

We find a remarkable demonstration of Paul III.'s difficulties as Pope of the transition, in the fact that while the Council of Trent was waging this uncompromising war against Reformers, his dread of Charles V. compelled him to suspend its sessions, transfer it to Bologna, and declare himself the political ally of German Protestants. This transference took place in 1547. His Legates received orders to invent some decent excuse for a step which would certainly be resisted, since Bologna was a city altogether subject to the Holy See. The Legates, by the connivance of the physicians in Trent, managed to create a panic of contagious epidemic.[21] Charles had won victories which seemed to place Germany at his discretion. His preponderance in Italy was thereby dangerously augmented. Paul, following the precedents of policy in which he had been bred, thought it at this crisis necessary to subordinate ecclesiastical to temporal interests. He interrupted the proceedings of the Council in order to hamper the Emperor in Germany. He encouraged the Northern Protestants in order that he might maintain an open issue in the loins of his Spanish rival. Nothing could more delicately illustrate the complications of European politics than the inverted attitude assumed by the Roman Pontiff in his dealings with a Catholic Emperor at this moment of time.[22]

[Footnote 21: See Sarpi, p. 249.]

[Footnote 22: Charles, at this juncture, was checkmated by Paul through his own inability to dispense with the Pope's co-operation as chief of the Catholic Church. So long as he opposed the Reformation, it was impossible for him to assume an attitude of violent hostility to Rome.]

The opposition of the Farnesi to Paul's scheme for restoring Parma to the Holy See in 1549, broke Paul III.'s health and spirits. He died on November 10, and was succeeded by the Cardinal Giovanni Maria del Monte, of whose reign little need be said. Julius III. removed the Council from Bologna to Trent in 1551, where it made some progress in questions touching the Eucharist and the administration of episcopal sees; but in the next year its sessions were suspended, owing to the disturbed state of Southern Germany and the presence of a Protestant army under Maurice of Saxony in the Tyrol.[23] This Pope passed his time agreeably and innocently enough in the villa which he built near the Porta del Popolo. His relatives were invested with several petty fiefs--that of their birthplace, Monte Sansovino, by Cosimo de'Medici; that of Novara by the Emperor, and that of Camerino by the Church. The old methods of Papal nepotism were not as yet abandoned. His successor, Marcello II., survived his elevation only three weeks; and in May 1555, Giovanni Pietro Caraffa was elected, with the title of Paul IV. We have already made the acquaintance of this Pope as a member of the Oratory of Divine Love, as a co-founder of the Theatines, as the organizer of the Roman Inquisition, and as a leader in the first sessions of the Tridentine Council. Paul IV. sprang from a high and puissant family of Naples. He was a man of fierce, impulsive and uncompromising temper, animated by two ruling passions--burning hatred for the Spaniards who were trampling on his native land, and ecclesiastical ambition intensified by rigid Catholic orthodoxy. The first act of his reign was a vain effort to expel the Spaniards from Italy by resorting to the old device of French assistance. The abdication of Charles V. had placed Philip II. on the throne of Spain, and the settlement whereby the Imperial crown passed to his brother Ferdinand had substituted a feeble for a powerful Emperor. But Philip's disengagement from the cares of Germany left him more at liberty to maintain his preponderance in Southern Europe. It was fortunate for Paul IV. that Philip was a bigoted Catholic and a superstitiously obedient son of the Church. These two potentates, who began to reign in the same year, were destined, after the settlement of their early quarrel, to lead and organize the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The Duke of Guise at the Pope's request marched a French army into Italy. Paul raised a body of mercenaries, who were chiefly German Protestants[24]; and opened negotiations with Soliman, entreating the Turk to make a descent on Sicily by sea. Into such a fantastically false position was the Chief of the Church, the most Catholic of all her Pontiffs, driven by his jealous patriotism. We seem to be transported back into the times of a Sixtus IV. or an Alexander VI. And in truth, Paul's reversion to the antiquated Guelf policy of his predecessors was an anachronism. That policy ceased to be efficient when Francis I. signed the Treaty of Cambray; the Church, too, had gradually assumed such a position that armed interference in the affairs of secular sovereigns was suicidal. This became so manifest that Paul's futile attack on Philip in 1556 may be reckoned the last war raised by a Pope. From it we date the commencement of a new system of Papal co-operation with Catholic powers.

[Footnote 23: During the brief and unimportant sessions at Bologna, Jesuit influences began to make themselves decidedly felt in the Council, where Lainez and Salmeron attended as Theologians of the Papal See. Up to this time the Dominicans had shaped decrees. Dogmatic orthodoxy was secured by their means. Now the Jesuits were to fight and win the battle of Papal Supremacy.]

[Footnote 24: Sarpi, quoted in his Life by Fra Fulgenzio, p. 83, says Paul called his Grisons mercenaries 'Angels sent from Heaven.']

The Duke of Alva put the forces at his disposal in the Two Sicilies into motion, and advanced to meet the Duke of Guise. But while the campaign dragged on, Philip won the decisive battle of S. Quentin. The Guise hurried back to France, and Alva marched unresisted upon Rome. There was no reason why the Eternal City should not have been subjected to another siege and sack. The will was certainly not wanting in Alva to humiliate the Pope, who never spoke of Spaniards but as renegade Jews, Marrani, heretics, and personifications of pride. Philip, however, wrote reminding his general that the date of his birth (1527) was that of Rome's calamity, and vowing that he would not signalize the first year of his reign by inflicting fresh miseries upon the capital of Christendom. Alva was ordered to make peace on terms both honorable and advantageous to his Holiness; since the King of Spain preferred to lose the rights of his own crown rather than to impair those of the Holy See in the least particular. Consequently, when Alva entered Rome in peaceful pomp, he did homage for his master to the Pope, who was generously willing to absolve him for his past offences. Paul IV. publicly exulted in the abasement of his conquerors, declaring that it would teach kings in future the obedience they owed to the Chief of the Church. But Alva did not conceal his discontent. It would have been better, he said, to have sent the Pope to sue for peace and pardon at Brussels, than to allow him to obtain the one and grant the other on these terms.

Paul's ambition to expel the Spaniards from Italy exposed him to the worst abuses of that Papal nepotism which he had denounced in others. He judged it necessary to surround himself with trusty and powerful agents of his own kindred.[25]

[Footnote 25: New men--and Popes were always _novi homines_--are compelled to take this course, and suffer when they take it. We might compare their difficulties with those which hampered Napoleon when he aspired to the Imperial tyranny over French conquests in Europe.]

With that view he raised one of his nephews, Carlo, to the Cardinalate, and bestowed on two others the principal fiefs of the Colonna family. The Colonnas were by tradition Ghibelline. This sufficed for depriving them of Palliano and Montebello. Carlo Caraffa, who obtained the scarlet, had lived a disreputable life which notoriously unfitted him for any ecclesiastical dignity. In the days of Sixtus and Alexander this would have been no bar to his promotion. But the Church was rapidly undergoing a change; and Carlo, complying with the hypocritical spirit of his age, found it convenient to affect a thorough reformation, and to make open show of penitence. Rome now presented the singular spectacle of an inquisitorial Pope, unimpeachable in moral conduct and zealous for Church reform, surrounded by nephews who were little better than Borgias. The Caraffas began to dream of principalities and scepters. It was their ambition to lay hold on Florence, where Cosimo de'Medici, as a pronounced ally of Spain, had gained the bitter hatred of their uncle. But their various misdoings, acts of violence and oppression, avarice and sensuality, gradually reached the ears of the Pope. In an assembly of the Inquisition, held in January 1559, he cried aloud, 'Reform! reform! reform!' Cardinal Pacheco, a determined foe of the Caraffeschi, raised his voice, and said, 'Holy Father! reform must first begin with us.' Pallavicini adds the remark that Paul understood well who was meant by us. He immediately retired to his apartments, instituted a searching inquiry into the conduct of his nephews, and, before the month was out, deprived them of all their offices and honors, and banished them from Rome. He would not hear a word in their defence; and when Cardinal Farnese endeavored to procure a mitigation of their sentence, he brutally replied, 'If Paul III. had shown the same justice, your father would not have been murdered and mutilated in the streets of Piacenza.' In open consistory, before the Cardinals and high officials of his realm, with tears streaming from his eyes, he exposed the evil life of his relatives, declared his abhorrence of them, and protested that he had dwelt in perfect ignorance of their crimes until that time. This scene recalls a similar occasion, when Alexander VI. bewailed himself aloud before his Cardinals after the murder of the Duke of Gandia by Cesare. But Alexander's repentance was momentary; his grief was that of a father for Absalom; his indignation gave way to paternal weakness for the fratricide. Paul, though his love for his relatives seems to have been fervent, never relaxed his first severity against them. They were buried in oblivion; no one uttered their names in the Pope's presence. The whole secular administration of the Papal States was changed; not an official kept his place. For the first time Rome was governed by ministers in no way related to the Holy Father.

Paul now turned his attention, with the fiery passion that distinguished him, to the reformation of ecclesiastical abuses. On his accession he had published a Bull declaring that this would be a principal object of his reign. Nor had he in the midst of other occupations forgotten his engagement. A Congregation specially appointed for examining, classifying, and remedying such abuses had been established. It was divided into three committees, consisting of eight Cardinals, fifteen prelates, and fifty men of learning. At the same time the Inquisition was rigorously maintained. Paul extended its jurisdiction, empowered it to use torture, and was constant in his attendance on its meetings and _autos da fé_.[26] But now that his plans for the expulsion of the Spaniards had failed, and his nephews had been hurled from their high station into the dust, there remained no other interest to distract his mind. Every day witnessed the promulgation of some new edict touching monastic discipline, simony, sale of offices, collation to benefices, church ritual, performance of clerical duties, and appointment to ecclesiastical dignities. It was his favorite boast that there would be no need of a Council to restore the Church to purity, since he was doing it.[27]

[Footnote 26: Pallavicini, in his history of the Council of Trent (Lib. xiv. ix. 5), specially commends Paul's zeal for the Holy Office:--'Fra esse d'eterna lode lo fa degno il tribunal dell'inquisizione, che dal zelo di lui e prima in autorità di consigliero e poscia in podestà di principe riconosce il presente suo vigor nell'Italia, e dal quale riconosce l'Italia la sua conservata integrità della fede: e per quest' opera salutare egli rimane ora tanto più benemerito ed onorabile quantao più allora ne fu mal rimerilato e disonorato.']

[Footnote 27: See Luigi Mocenigo in _Rel. degli Amb. Veneti_, vol. x. p. 25.] And indeed his measures formed the nucleus of the Tridentine decrees upon this topic in the final sessions of the Council. Under this government Rome assumed an air of exemplary behavior which struck foreigners with mute astonishment. Cardinals were compelled to preach in their basilicas. The Pope himself, who was vain of his eloquence, preached. Gravity of manners, external signs of piety, a composed and contrite face, ostentation of orthodoxy by frequent confession and attendance at the Mass, became fashionable; and the Court adopted for its motto the Si non caste tamen caute of the Counter-Reformation.[28] Aretino, with his usual blackguardly pointedness of expression, has given a hint of what the new _régime_ implied in the following satiric lines:--

Carafla, ipocrita infingardo, Che tien per coscienza spirituale Quando si mette del pepe in sul cardo.

Paul IV. brought the first period of the transition to an end. There were no attempts at dislodging the Spaniard, no Papal wars, no tyranny of Papal nephews converted into feudal princes, after his days. He stamped Roman society with his own austere and bigoted religion. That he was in any sense a hypocrite is wholly out of the question. But he made Rome hypocritical, and by establishing the Inquisition on a firm basis, he introduced a reign of spiritual terror into Italy.

[Footnote 28: 'Roma a paragone delli tempi degli altri pontefici si poteva riputar come un onesto monasterio di religiosi' (_op. cit._ p. 41).]

At his death the people rose in revolt, broke into the dungeons of the Inquisition, released the prisoners, and destroyed the archives. The Holy Office was restored, however; and its higher posts of trust soon came to be regarded as stepping-stones to the Pontifical dignity.

The successor of Paul IV. was a man of very different quality and antecedents. Giovanni Angelo Medici sprang, not from the Florentine house of Medici, but from an obscure Lombard stem. His father acquired some wealth by farming the customs in Milan; and his eldest brother, Gian Giacomo, pushed his way to fame, fortune, and a title by piracy upon the lake of Como.[29] Gian Giacomo established himself so securely in his robber fortress of Musso that he soon became a power to reckon with. He then entered the imperial service, was created Marquis of Marignano by the Duke of Milan, and married a lady of the Orsini house, the sister of the Duchess of Parma. At a subsequent period he succeeded in subduing Siena to the rule of Cosimo de'Medici, who then acknowledged a pretended consanguinity between the two families.[30] The younger brother, Giovanni Angelo, had meanwhile been studying law, practising as a jurist, and following the Court at Rome in the place of prothonotary which, as the custom then was, he purchased in 1527. Paul III. observed him, took him early into favor, and on the marriage of Gian Giacomo, advanced him to the Cardinalate. This was the man who assumed the title of Pius IV. on his election to the Papacy in 1559.

[Footnote 29: In my Sketches and Studies in Italy I have narrated the romantic history of this filibuster.]

[Footnote 30: Soranzo: Alberi, vol. x. p. 67. Pius IV. adopted the arms of the Florentine Medici, and spent 30,000 scudi on carving them about through Rome. See P. Tiepolo, _Ib._ p. 174.]

Paul IV. hated Cardinal Medici, and drove him away from Rome. It is probable that this antipathy contributed something to Giovanni Angelo's elevation. Of humble Lombard blood, a jurist and a worldling, pacific in his policy, devoted to Spanish interests, cautious and conciliatory in the conduct of affairs, ignorant of theology and indifferent to niceties of discipline, Pius IV. was at all points the exact opposite of the fiery Neapolitan noble, the Inquisitor and fanatic, the haughty trampler upon kings, the armed antagonist of Alva, the brusque, impulsive autocrat, the purist of orthodoxy, who preceded him upon the Papal throne.[31] His trusted counselor was Cardinal Morone, whom Paul had thrown into the dungeons of the Inquisition on a charge of favoring Lutheran opinions, and who was liberated by the rabble in their fury.[32]

[Footnote 31: 'Veramente quasi in ogni parte si può chiamare il rovescio dell' altro' (_op. cit._ p. 50).]

[Footnote 32: Luigi Mocenigo says of him that Pius 'averlo per un angelo di paradiso, e adoperandolo per consiglio in tutte le sue cose importanti.' Alberi, vol. x. p. 40. The case made out against Morone during the pontificate of Paul IV. may be studied in Cantù, _op. cit._ vol. ii. pp. 171-192, together with his defence in full. It turned mainly on these articles:--unsound opinions regarding justification by faith, salvation by Christ's blood, good works, invocation of saints, reliques; dissemination of the famous book on the _Benefits of Christ's Death_; practice with heretics. He was imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo from June, 1557 till August, 1559. Suspicions no doubt fell on him through his friendship with several of the moderate reformers, and from the fact that his diocese of Modena was a nest of liberal thinkers--the Grillenzoni, Castelvetro, Filippo Valentini, Faloppio, Camillo Molza, Francesco da Porto, Egidio Foscarari, and others, all of whom are described by Cantù, _op. cit._ Disc, xxviii. The charges brought against these persons prove at once the mainly speculative and innocuous character of Italian heresy, and the implacable enmity which a Pope of Caraffa's stamp exercised against the slightest shadow of heterodoxy.]

This in itself was significant of the new _régime_ which now began in Rome. Morone, like his master, understood that the Church could best be guided by diplomacy and arts of peace. The two together brought the Council of Trent to that conclusion which left an undisputed sovereignty in theological and ecclesiastical affairs to the Papacy. It would have been impossible for a man of Caraffa's stamp to achieve what these sagacious temporizers and adroit managers effected.

Without advancing the same arrogant claims to spiritual supremacy as Paul had made, Pius was by no means a feeble Pontiff. He knew that the temper of the times demanded wise concessions; but he also knew how to win through these concessions the reality of power. It was he who initiated and firmly followed the policy of alliance between the Papacy and the Catholic sovereigns.[33] Instead of asserting the interests of the Church in antagonism to secular potentates, he undertook to prove that their interests were identical. Militant Protestantism threatened the civil no less than the ecclesiastical order. The episcopacy attempted to liberate itself from monarchical and pontifical authority alike. Pius proposed to the autocrats of Europe a compact for mutual defence, divesting the Holy See of some of its privileges, but requiring in return the recognition of its ecclesiastical absolutism. In all difficult negotiations he was wont to depend upon himself; treating his counselors as agents rather than as peers, and holding the threads of diplomacy in his own hands. Thus he was able to transact business as a sovereign with sovereigns, and came to terms with them by means of personal correspondence. The reconstruction of Catholic Christendom, which took visible shape in the decrees of the Tridentine Council, was actually settled in the Courts of Spain, Austria, France and Rome. The Fathers of the Council were the mouthpieces of royal and Papal cabinets. The Holy Ghost, to quote a profane satire of the time, reached Trent in the despatch-bags of couriers, in the sealed instructions issued to ambassadors and legates.

[Footnote 33: Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 75, says: 'Con li principi tiene modo affatto contrario al suo predecessore; perchè mentre quello usava dire, il grado dei pontefici esser per mettersi sotto i piedi gl'imperatori e i re, questo dice che senza l'autorità dei principi non si può conservare quella dei pontefici.']

We observe throughout the negotiations which crowned the policy of this Pope with success, the operation not only of a pacific and far-seeing character, but also of the temper of a lawyer. Pius drew up the Tridentine decrees as an able conveyancer draws up a complicated deed, involving many trusts, recognizing conflicting rights, providing for distant contingencies. It was in fact the marriage contract of ecclesiastical and secular absolutism, by which the estates of Catholic Christendom were put in trust and settlement for posterity. In formulating its terms the Pope granted points to which an obstinate or warlike predecessor, a Julius II. or a Paul IV., would never have subscribed his signature. In purely theological matters, such as the concession of the chalice to the laity and the marriage of the clergy, he was even willing to yield more for the sake of peace than his Court and clergy would agree to. But for each point he gave, he demanded a substantial equivalent, and showed such address in bargaining, that Rome gained far more than it relinquished. When the contract had been drafted, he ratified it by a full and ready recognition, and lawyer-like was punctual in executing all the terms to which he pledged himself.

We must credit Pius IV. with keen insight into the new conditions of Catholic Europe, and recognize him as the real founder of the modern as distinguished from the mediaeval Papacy. That transition which I have been describing in the present chapter remained uncertain in its issue up to his pontificate. Before his death the salvation of Catholicism, the integrity of the Catholic Church, the solidity of the Roman hierarchy, and the possibility of a vigorous Counter-Reformation were placed beyond all doubt.

It is noticeable that these substantial successes were achieved, not by a religious fanatic, but by a jurist; not by a saint, but by a genial man of the world; not by force of intellect and will, but by adroitness; not by masterful authority, but by pliant diplomacy; not by forcing but by following the current of events. Since Gregory VII., no Pope had done so much as Pius IV. for bracing the ancient fabric of the Church and confirming the Papal prerogative. But what a difference there is between a Hildebrand and a Giovanni Angelo Medici! How Europe had changed, when a man of the latter's stamp was the right instrument of destiny for starting the weather-beaten ship of the Church upon a new and prosperous voyage.

Pius IV. was greatly assisted in his work by circumstances, of which he knew how to avail himself. Had it not been for the renewed spiritual activity of Catholicism to which I have alluded in this chapter, he might not have been able to carry that work through. He took no interest in theology, and felt no sympathy for the Inquisition.[34] But he prudently left that institution alone to pursue its function of policing the ecclesiastical realm. The Jesuits rendered him important assistance by propagating their doctrine of passive obedience to Rome. Spain supported him with the massive strength of a nation Catholic to the core; and when the Spanish prelates gave him trouble, he could rely for aid upon the Spanish crown. His own independence, as a prudent man of business, uninfluenced by bigoted prejudices or partialities for any sect, enabled him to manipulate all resources at his disposal for the main object of uniting Catholicism and securing Papal supremacy. He was also fortunate in his family relations, having no occasion to complicate his policy by nepotism. One of the first acts of his reign had been to condemn four of the Caraffeschi--Cardinal Caraffa, the Duke of Palliano, Count Aliffe and Leonardo di Cardine--to death; and this act of justice ended forever the old forms of domestic ambition which had hampered the Popes of the Renaissance in their ecclesiastical designs. His brother, the Marquis of Marignano, died in 1555; and this event opened for him the path to the Papacy, which he would never have attained in the lifetime of so grasping and ambitious a man.[35] With his next brother, Augusto, who succeeded to the marquisate, he felt no sympathy.[36] His nephew Federigo Borromeo died in youth. His other nephew, Carlo Borromeo, the sainted Archbishop of Milan, remained close to his person in Rome.[37] But Carlo Borromeo was a man who personified the new spirit of Catholicism. Sincerely pious, zealous for the faith, immaculate in conduct, unwearied in the discharge of diocesan duties, charitable to the poor, devoted to the sick, he summed up all the virtues of the Counter-Reformation. Nor had he any of the virtues of the Renaissance. A Venetian Ambassador described him as cold of political temperament, little versed in worldly affairs, and perplexed when he attempted to handle matters of grave moment.[38] His presence at the Papal Court, so far from being perilous, as that of an ambitious Cardinal Nipote would have been, or scandalous as that of former Riarios, Borgias, and Caraffas had undoubtedly been, was a source of strength to Pius. It imported into his immediate surroundings just what he himself lacked, and saved him from imputations of worldliness which in the altered temper of the Church might have proved inconvenient.[39] Truly, among all Pontiffs who have occupied St. Peter's Chair, Pius IV. deserved in the close of his life to be called fortunate. He had risen from obscurity, had entered Rome in humble office at the moment of Rome's deepest degradation. He had lived through troubled times, and for some years had felt the whole weight of Catholic concerns upon his shoulders. At the last, he was conscious of having opened a new era for the Church, and of being able to transmit a scepter of undisputed authority to his successors. His death-bed was troubled with no remorse, with no ingratitude of relatives, with no political complications produced by family ambition or by the sacrifice of his official duties to personal aggrandizement.

[Footnote 34: Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 74.]

[Footnote 35: Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 71, says: 'II marchese suo fratello con la moglie gli diede il cappello, e con la morte il papato.']

[Footnote 36: Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 52. Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 93.]

[Footnote 37: Margherita Medici, sister of the Pope, had married Gilberto Borromeo.]

[Footnote 38: See Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 53. Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 91.]

[Footnote 39: Gia. Soranzo (_op. cit._ p. 133) says of Carlo Borromeo, 'ch'egli solo faccia più profitto nella Corte di Roma che tutti i decreti del Concilio insieme.']

Soon after the election of Pope Pius IV. the state of Europe made the calling of a General Council indispensable. Paul's impolitic pretensions had finally alienated England from the Roman Church. Scotland was upon the point of declaring herself Protestant. The Huguenots were growing stronger every year in France, the Queen Mother, Catherine de'Medici, being at that time inclined to favor them. The Confession of Augsburg had long been recognized in Germany. The whole of Scandinavia, with Denmark, was lost to Catholicism. The Low Countries, in spite of Philip, Alva, and the Inquisition, remained intractable. Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland were alienated, ripe for open schism. The tenets of Zwingli had taken root in German Switzerland. Calvin was gaining ground in the French cantons. Geneva had become a stationary fortress, the stronghold of belligerent reformers, whence heresy sent forth its missionaries and promulgated subversive doctrines through the medium of an ever-active press. Transformed by Calvin from its earlier condition of a pleasure-loving and commercial city, it was now what Deceleia under Spartan discipline had been to Athens in the Peloponnesian war--a permanent epiteichismos, perpetually garrisoned and on guard to harry the flanks of Catholics. Faithful to the Roman See in a strict sense of the term, there remained only Spain, Portugal, and Italy. As the events of the next century proved, the disaffected nations still offered rallying-points for the Catholic cause, from which the tide of conquest was rolled back upon the Reformation. But in 1559 the outlook for the Church was very gloomy; no one could predict whether a General Council might not increase her difficulties by weakening the Papal power and sowing further seeds of discord among her few faithful adherents. Yet Pius, after an attempt to combine the Catholic nations in a crusade against Geneva, which was frustrated by the jealousy of Spain, the internal weakness of France and the respect inspired by Switzerland,[40] determined to cast his fortunes on the Council. He had several strong points in his favor. The reigning Emperor, Ferdinand, wielded a power insignificant when compared with that of Charles V. The Protestants, though formally invited, were certain not to attend a Council which had already condemned the articles of their Confession. The cardinal dogmas of Catholicism had been confirmed in the sessions of 1545-1552. It was to be hoped that, with skillful management, existing differences of opinion with regard to doctrine, church-management, and reformation of abuses, might be settled to the satisfaction of the Catholic powers.

[Footnote 40: See Sarpi, vol. ii. pp. 43, 44.]

The Pope accordingly sent four Legates, the Cardinals Gonzaga, Seripando, Simoneta, Hosius, and Puteo, to Trent, who opened the Council on January 15, 1562.[41] As had been anticipated, the Protestants showed strong disinclination to attend. The French prelates were unable to appear, pending negotiations with the Huguenots at Poissy and Pontoise. The German prelates intimated their reluctance to take part in the proceedings. The Court of France demanded that the chalice for the laity and the use of the vulgar tongue in religious services should be conceded. The Emperor also insisted on these points, making a further demand for the marriage of the clergy. Circumstances both in France and Germany seemed to render these conditions imperative, if the rapid spread of Protestant dissent were to be checked and the remnant of the Catholic population to be kept in obedience. Of ecclesiastics, only Spaniards and Italians, the latter in a large majority, appeared at Trent. The Courts of other nations were represented by ambassadors, who took no part in the deliberations of the Council.[42]

[Footnote 41: Cardinal Puteo was soon replaced by a Papal nephew, the Cardinal d'Altemps (Mark of Hohen Embs).]

[Footnote 42: At the first session there were five Cardinals, one hundred and four prelates, including Patriarchs, Archbishops and Bishops, four Abbots, and four Generals of Orders. These were all Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese. And yet this Conciliabulum called itself a General Council, inspired by the Holy Ghost to legislate for the whole of Latin and Teutonic Christianity.]

In spite of this inauspicious commencement, Pius declared the Council a General Council, and further decreed that it should be recognized as a continuation of that Council which had begun at Trent in 1545. This rendered co-operation of the Protestants impossible, since they would have been compelled to accept the earlier dogmatic resolutions of the Fathers. It was decided that no proxies should be allowed to absentees; that the questions of doctrine and reform should be prepared for discussion in two separate congregations, and should be taken into consideration in full sessions simultaneously; finally that the Papal Legates should alone have the privilege of proposing resolutions to the fathers. This last point, by which the Court of Rome reserved to itself the control of all proceedings in the Council, was carried by a clever ruse. Until too late the Spanish prelates do not seem to have been aware of the immense power they had conferred on Rome by passing the words Legatis proponentibus.[43] The principle involved in this phrase continued to be hotly disputed all through the sessions of the Council. But Pius knew that so long as he stuck fast to it he always held the ace of trumps, and nothing would induce him to relinquish it.

[Footnote 43: See Sarpi, vol. ii. p. 87.]

Fortified in this position of superiority, Pius now proceeded to organize his forces and display his tactics. All through the sessions of the Council they remained the same; and as the method resulted in his final victory, it deserves to be briefly described. At any cost he determined to secure a numerical majority in the Synod. This was effected by drafting Italian prelates, as occasion required, to Trent. Many of the poorer sort were subsidized, and placed under the supervision of Cardinal Simoneta, who gave them orders how to vote. A small squadron of witty bishops was told off to throw ridicule on inconvenient speakers by satirical interpolations, or to hamper them by sophistical arguments. Spies were introduced into the opposite camps, who kept the Legates informed of what the French or Spaniards deliberated in their private meetings. The Legates meanwhile established a daily post of couriers, who carried the minutest details of the Council to the Vatican. When the resolutions of the congregations on which decrees were to be framed had been drawn up, they referred them to his Holiness. Without his sanction they did not propose them in a general session. In this fashion, by means of his standing majority, the exclusive right of his Legates to propose resolutions, and the previous reference of these resolutions to himself, Pius was enabled to direct the affairs of the Council. It soon became manifest that while the fathers were talking at Trent their final decisions were arranged in Rome. This not unnaturally caused much discontent. It began to be murmured that the Holy Ghost was sent from Rome to Trent in carpet-bags. A man of more imperious nature than Pius might, by straining his prerogatives, have produced an irreconcilable rupture. But he was aware that the very existence of the Papacy depended on circumspection. He therefore used all his advantages with caution, and resolved to win the day by diplomacy. With this object in view he introduced the further system of negotiating with the Catholic Courts through special agents. Instead of framing the decrees upon the information furnished by his Legates, he in his turn submitted them to Philip, Catherine de'Medici, and Ferdinand, agreed on terms of mutual concession, persuaded the princes that their interests were identical with his own, and then returned such measures to the Council as could be safely passed. In course of time the Holy Ghost was not packed up at Rome for Trent in carpet-bags before he had gone round of Europe and made his bow in all cabinets.

It must not, however, be thought that matters went smoothly for the Pope at first, or that so novel a method as that which I have described, whereby the faith and discipline of Christendom were settled by negotiations between sovereigns, came suddenly into existence. In its first sessions the Council, to quote the Pope's own words, resembled the Tower of Babel rather than a Synod of Fathers. The Spanish prelates contended fiercely for two principles touching the episcopacy: one was that the residence of bishops in their dioceses had been divinely commanded; the other, that their authority is derived from Christ immediately. The first struck at the Pope's power to dispense from the duty of residence; and if it had been established, it would have ruined his capital. The second would have rendered the episcopacy independent of Rome, and have made the Holy Father one of a numerous oligarchy instead of the absolute chief of a hierarchy. Pius was able to show Philip that the independence of the bishops must inflict deep injuries on the crown of Spain. Philip therefore wrote to forbid insistance on this point. But the Spanish prelates, though coerced, were not silenced, and the storm which they had raised went grumbling on.

Difficulties of a no less serious nature arose when the French and Imperial ambassadors arrived at Trent in the spring. They demanded, as I have already stated, that the chalice should be conceded to the laity; nor is it easy to understand why this point might not have been granted. Pius himself was ready to make the concession; and the only valid argument against it was that it imperiled the uniformity of ritual throughout all Catholic countries. The Germans further stipulated for the marriage of the clergy, which the Pope was also disposed to entertain, until he reflected that celibacy alone retained the clergy faithful to his interests and regardless of those of their own nations. At this juncture of affairs, the Roman Court, which was strongly opposed to both concessions, received material aid from the dissensions of the Council. The Spaniards would hear nothing of the Eucharist under both forms. The marriage of the clergy was opposed by French and Spaniards alike. On the point of episcopal independence, the French supported the Spaniards; but Pius used the same arguments in France which he had used in Spain, with similar success. Thus there was no agreement on any of the disputed questions between Spaniards, Frenchmen and Germans; and since the ambassadors could neither propose nor vote, and the Italian prelates were in a permanent majority, Pius was able to defer and temporize at leisure.

Nevertheless, he began to feel the gravity of the situation. He saw that the embassies constituted dangerous centers of intrigue and national organization at Trent. He was not entirely satisfied with his own Legate, the Cardinal Gonzaga, who supported the divine right of the episcopacy, and quarreled with his colleagues. The Spaniards, infuriated at having sacrificed the right of proposing measures, began to talk openly about the reform of the Papacy. Disagreeable messages reached Rome from France, and Spain, and Germany, complaining of the Pope's absolutism in Council, and demanding that the reform of the Church should be taken into serious and instant consideration. His devoted adherent, Lainez, General of the Jesuits, embittered opposition by passionately preaching the doctrine of passive obedience. Two dangers lay before him. One was that the Council should break up in confusion, with discredit to Rome, and anarchy for the Catholic Church. The other was that it should be prolonged in its dissensions by the princes, with a view of depressing and enfeebling the Papal authority. Other perils of an incalculable kind threatened him in the announced approach of the mighty Cardinal of Lorraine, brother to the Duke of Guise, with a retinue of French bishops released from the Conference at Poissy. Though he kept on packing the Council with fresh relays of Italians, it was much to be apprehended that they might be unable to oppose a coalition between French and Spanish prelates, should that be now effected.

Pius, at this crisis, resolved on two important lines of policy, the energetic pursuit of which speedily brought the Council of Trent to a peaceful termination. The first was to meet the demand for a searching reformation of the Church with cheerful acquiescence; but to oppose a counter-demand that the secular States in all their ecclesiastical relations should at the same time be reformed. This implied a threat of alienating patronage and revenue from the princes; it also indicated plainly that the tiara and the crowns had interests in common. The second was to develop the diplomatic system upon which he had already tentatively entered.

The events of the spring, 1563, hastened the adoption of these measures by the Pope. Cardinal Lorraine had arrived with his French bishops[44]; and the Papal Legates found themselves involved at once in intricate disputes on questions touching the Huguenots and the interests of the Gallican Church. The Italians were driven in despair to epigrams: Dalla scabie Spagnuola siamo caduti nel mal Francese. Somewhat later, the Emperor dispatched a bulky and verbose letter, announcing his intention to play the part which Sigismund had assumed at the Council of Constance. He complained roundly of the evils caused by the reference of all resolutions to Rome, by the exclusive rights of the Legates to propose decrees, and by the intrigues of the Italian majority in the Synod. He wound up by declaring that the reformation of the Church must be accomplished in Trent, not left to the judgment of the Papal Curia; and threatened to arrive from Innsbruck by the Brenner. Though Ferdinand was in a position of ecclesiastical and political weakness, such an Imperial rescript could not be altogether contemned; especially as Cardinal Lorraine, soon after his arrival, had made the journey to Innsbruck on purpose to confer with the Emperor. It therefore behoved the Pope to act with decision; and an important event happened in the first days of March, which materially assisted him in doing so. This was the death of Cardinal Gonzaga, whom Pius determined to replace by the moderate and circumspect Morone.[45]

[Footnote 44: He reached Trent, November 13, 1562, with eighteen Bishops, and three Abbots of France, charged by Charles IX. to demand purified ritual, reformed discipline of clergy, use of vernacular in church services, and finally, if possible, the marriage of the clergy.]

[Footnote 45: The confusion at Trent in the spring of 1563 is thus described by the Bishop of Alife: 'Methinks Antichrist has come, so greatly confounded are the perturbations of the holy Fathers here.' Phillipson, p. 525.]

Through Ippolito d'Este, Cardinal of Ferrara, he opened negotiations with the French Court, showing that the wishes of the prelates in the Council on the question of episcopacy were no less opposed to the crown than to his own interests. Cardinal Simoneta urged the same point on the Marquis of Pescara, who governed Milan for Philip, and was well inclined to the Papal party. Cardinal Morone was sent on a special embassy to the Emperor.[46] By wise concessions, in which the prerogatives of the Imperial ambassadors at Trent were considerably enlarged, and a searching reformation of the Church was promised, Morone succeeded in establishing a good working basis for the future. It came to be understood that while the Pope would allow no further freedom to the bishops, he was well disposed to let his Legates admit the envoys of the Catholic powers into their counsels. From this time forward the Synod may be said to have existed only as a mouthpiece for uttering the terms agreed on by the Pope and potentates. Morone returned to Trent, and the Emperor withdrew from Innsbruck toward the north.

[Footnote 46: When Morone set out, he told the Venetian envoy in Rome that he was going on a forlorn hope. 'L'illmo Morone, quando partì per il Concilio, mi disse che andava a cura disperata e che nulla speserat della religione Cattolica.' Soranzo, _op. cit._ p. 82. The Jesuit Canisius, by his influence with Ferdinand, secured the success of Morone's diplomacy.]

The difficulty with regard to France and Germany consisted in this, that politics forced both King and Emperor to consider the attitude of their Protestant subjects. Yet both alike were unable to maintain their position as Catholic sovereigns, if they came to open rupture with the Papacy. Ferdinand, as we have just seen, had expressed himself contented with the situation of affairs at Trent. But the French prelates still remained in opposition, and the French Court was undecided. Cardinal Morone, upon his arrival at Trent, began to flatter the Cardinal of Lorraine, affecting to take no measures of importance without consulting him. This conduct, together with timely compliments to several Frenchmen of importance, smoothed the way for future agreement; while the couriers who arrived from France, brought the assurance that Ippolito d'Este's representations had not been fruitless. Pius, meanwhile, was playing the same conciliatory game in Rome, where Don Luigi d'Avila arrived as a special envoy from Philip. The ambassador obtained a lodging in the Vatican, and was seen in daily social intercourse with his Holiness.[47] But the climax of this policy was reached when Lorraine accepted the Pope's invitation, and undertook a journey to Rome. This happened in September. The French Cardinal was pompously received, entertained in the palace, and honored with personal visits in his lodgings by the Pope. Weary of Trent and the tiresome intrigues of the Council, this unscrupulous prelate was still further inclined to negotiation after the murder of his brother, Duke of Guise. It must be remembered that the Guises in France were after all but a potent faction of semi-royal adventurers, who had risen to eminence by an alliance with Diane de Poitiers. The murder of the duke shook the foundations of their power; and the Cardinal was naturally anxious to be back again in France. For the moment he basked in the indolent atmosphere of Rome, surrounded by those treasures of antique and Renaissance luxury which still remained after the Sack of 1527. Pius held out flattering visions of succession to the Papacy, and proved convincingly that nothing could sustain the House of Guise or base the Catholic faith in France except alliance with the Papal See. Lorraine, who had probably seen enough of episcopal canaillerie in the Council, and felt his inner self expand in the rich climate of pontifical Rome, allowed his ambition to be caressed, confessed himself convinced, and returned to Trent intoxicated with his visit, the devoted friend of Rome.

[Footnote 47: Sarpi says that Don Luigi resided in the lodgings of Count Federigo Borromeo, a deceased nephew of the Pope.]

Menaces, meanwhile, had been astutely mingled with cajoleries. The French and the Imperial Courts were growing anxious on the subject of reform in secular establishments. Pius had threatened to raise the whole question of national Churches and the monarch's right of interfering in their administration. This was tantamount to flinging a burning torch into the powder-magazine of Huguenot and Lutheran grievances. In order to save themselves from the disaster of explosion, they urged harmonious action with the Papacy upon their envoys. The Spanish Court, through Pescara, De Luna, and D'Avalos, wrote dispatches of like tenor. It was now debated whether a congress of Crowned heads should not be held to terminate the Council in accordance with the Papal programme. This would have suited Pius. It was the point to which his policy had led. Yet no such measure could be lightly hazarded. A congress while the Council was yet sitting, would have been too palpable and cynical a declaration of the Papal game. As events showed, it was not even necessary. When Lorraine returned to Trent, the French opposition came to an end. The Spanish had been already neutralized by the firm persistent exhibition of Philip's will to work for Roman absolutism.[48] There was nothing left but to settle details, to formulate the terms of ecclesiastical reform, and to close the Council of Trent with a unanimous vote of confidence in his Holiness. The main outlines of dogma and discipline were quickly drawn. Numerous details were referred to the Pope for definition. The Council terminated in December with an act of submission, which placed all its decrees at the pleasure of the Papal sanction. Pius was wise enough to pass and ratify the decrees of the Tridentine fathers by a Bull dated on December 26, 1563, reserving to the Papal sovereign the sole right of interpreting them in doubtful or disputed cases. This he could well afford to do; for not an article had been penned without his concurrence, and not a stipulation had been made without a previous understanding with the Catholic powers. The very terms, moreover, by which his ratification was conveyed, secured his supremacy, and conferred upon his successors and himself the privileges of a court of ultimate appeal. At no previous period in the history of the Church had so wide, so undefined, and so unlimited an authority been accorded to the See of Rome. Thus Pius IV. was triumphant in obtaining conciliar sanction for Pontifical absolutism, and in maintaining the fabric of the Roman hierarchy unimpaired, the cardinal dogmas of Latin Christianity unimpeached and after formal inquisition reasserted in precise definitions. A formidable armory had been placed at the disposal of the Popes, who were fully empowered to use it, and who had two mighty engines for its application ready in the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus.[49]

[Footnote 48: Yet the Spanish bishops fought to the end, under the leadership of their chief Guerrero, for the principle of conciliar independence and the episcopal prerogatives. 'We had better not have come here, than be forced to stand by as witnesses,' says the Bishop of Orense. Phillipson, p. 577.]

[Footnote 49: The vague reference of all decrees passed by the Tridentine Council to the Pope for interpretation enabled him and his successors to manipulate them as they chose. It therefore happened, as Sarpi says ('Tratt. delle Mat. Ben.' Opere, vol. iv. p. 161), that no reform, with regard to the tenure of benefices, residence, pluralism, etc., which the Council had decided, was adopted without qualifying expedients which neutralized its spirit. If the continuance of benefices in commendam ceased, the device of pensions upon benefices was substituted; and a thousand pretexts put colossal fortunes extracted from Church property, now as before, into the hands of Papal nephews. Witness the contrivances whereby Cardinal Scipione Borghese enriched himself in the Papacy of Paul V. The Council had decreed the residence of bishops in their sees; but it had reserved to the Pope a power of dispensation; so that those whom he chose to exile from Rome were bound to reside, and those whom he desired to have about him were released from this obligation. On each and all delicate points the Papacy was more autocratic after than before the Council. One of Sarpi's letters (vol. i. p. 371) to Jacques Leschassier, dated December 22, 1609, should be studied by those who wish to penetrate the 'reserve ed altre arcane arti,' the '_renunzie_', '_pensioni_' and 'altri stratagemmi,' by means of which the Papal Curia, during the half-century after the Tridentine Council, managed to evade its decrees, and to get such control over Church property in Italy that 'out of 500 benefices not one is conferred legally.' Compare the passage in the 'Trattato delle Materie Beneficiarie,' p. 163. There Sarpi says that five-sixths of Italian benefices are at the Pope's disposal, and that there is good reason to suppose that he will acquire the remaining sixth.]

After the termination of the Council there was nothing left for Pius but to die. He stood upon a pinnacle which might well have made him nervous--lest haply the Solonian maxim, 'Call no man fortunate until his death,' should be verified in his person. During the two years of peace and retirement which he had still to pass, the unsuccessful conspiracy of Benedetto Accolti and Antonio Canossa against his life gave point to this warning. But otherwise, withdrawn from cares of state, which he committed to his nephew, Carlo Borromeo, he enjoyed the tranquillity that follows successful labor, and sank with undiminished prestige into his grave at the end of 1565. Those who believe in masterful and potent leaders of humanity may be puzzled to account for the triumph achieved by this common-place arbiter of destiny. Not by strength but by pliancy of character he accomplished the transition from the mediaeval to the modern epoch of Catholicism. He was no Cromwell, Frederick the Great, or Bismarck; only a politic old man, contriving by adroit avoidance to steer the ship of the Church clear through innumerable perils. This scion of the Italian middle class, this moral mediocrity, placed his successors in S. Peter's chair upon a throne of such supremacy that they began immediately to claim jurisdiction over kings and nations. Thirty-eight years before his death, when Clement VII. was shut up in S. Angelo, it seemed as though the Papal power might be abolished. Forty-five years after his death, Sarpi, writing to a friend in 1610, expressed his firm opinion that the one, the burning question for Europe was the Papal power.[50] Through him, poor product as he was of ordinary Italian circumstances, elected to be Pope because of his easy-going mildness by prelates worn to death in fiery Caraffa's reign, it happened that the flood of Catholic reaction was rolled over Europe. In a certain sense we may therefore regard him as a veritable Flagellum Dei, wielded by inscrutable fate. It seems that at momentous epochs of world-history no hero is needed to effect the purpose of the Time-Spirit. A Gian Angelo Medici, agreeable, diplomatic, benevolent, and pleasure-loving, sufficed to initiate a series of events which kept the Occidental races in perturbation through two centuries.

[Footnote 50: Lettere, vol. ii. p. 167.]

A great step had been taken in the pontificate of Pius IV. That reform of the Church, which the success of Protestantism rendered necessary, and which the Catholic powers demanded, had been decreed by the Council of Trent. Pius showed no unwillingness to give effect to the Council's regulations; and the task was facilitated for him by his nephew, Carlo Borromeo, and the Jesuits. It still remained, however, to be seen whether a new Pope might not reverse the policy on which the Counter-Reformation had been founded, and impede the beneficial inner movement which was leading the Roman hierarchy into paths of sobriety. Should this have happened, it would have been impossible for Romanism to assume a warlike attitude of resistance toward the Protestants in Europe, or to have rallied its own spiritual forces. The next election was therefore a matter of grave import.

Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the Papacy at this epoch than the singular contrast offered by each Pontiff in succession to his predecessor. The conclave was practically uncontrolled in its choice by any external force of the first magnitude. Though a Duke of Florence might now, by intrigue, determine the nomination of a Pius IV., no commanding Emperor or King of France, as in the times of Otto the Great or Philip le Bel, could designate his own candidate. There was no strife, so open as in the Renaissance period, between Cardinals subsidized by Spain or Austria or France.[51] The result was that the deliberations of the conclave were determined by motives of petty interests, personal jealousies, and local considerations, to such an extent that the election seemed finally to be the result of chance or inspiration. We find the most unlikely candidates, Caraffa and Peretti, attributing their elevation to the direct influence of the Holy Ghost, in the consciousness that they had slipped into S. Peter's Chair by the maladroitness of conflicting factions. The upshot, however, of these uninfluenced elections generally was to promote a man antagonistic to his predecessor. The clash of parties and the numerical majority of independent Cardinals excluded the creatures of the last reign, and selected for advancement one who owed his position to the favor of an antecedent Pontiff. This result was further secured by the natural desire of all concerned in the election to nominate an old man, since it was for the general advantage that a pontificate should, if possible, not exceed five years.

[Footnote 51: This does not mean that the Spanish crown had not a powerful voice in the elections. See the history of the conclaves which elected Urban VII., Gregory XIV., Innocent IX., Clement VIII., in Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 31-39. Yet it was noticed by those close observers, the Venetian envoys, that France and Spain had abandoned their former policy of subsidizing the Cardinals who adhered to their respective factions.]

The personal qualities of Carlo Borromeo were of grave importance in the election of a successor to his uncle. He had ruled the Church during the last years of Pius IV.; and the newly-appointed Cardinals were his dependents. Had he attempted to exert his power for his own election, he might have met with opposition. He chose to use it for what he considered the deepest Catholic interests. This unselfishness led to the selection of a man, Michele Ghislieri, whose antecedents rendered him formidable to the still corrupt members of the Roman hierarchy, but whose character was precisely of the stamp required for giving solidity to the new phase on which the Church had entered. As Pius IV. had been the exact opposite to Paul IV., so Pius V. was a complete contrast to Pius IV. He had passed the best years of his life as chief of the Inquisition. Devoted to theology and to religious exercises, he lacked the legal and mundane faculties of his predecessor. But these were no longer necessary. They had done their duty in bringing the Council to a favorable close, and in establishing the Catholic concordat. What was now required was a Pope who should, by personal example and rigid discipline, impress Rome with the principles of orthodoxy and reform. Carlo Borromeo, self-conscious, perhaps, of the political incapacity which others noticed in him, and fervently zealous for the Catholic Revival, devolved this duty on Michele Ghislieri, who completed the work of his two predecessors.

Paul IV. had laid a basis for the modern Roman Church by strengthening the Inquisition and setting internal reforms on foot. Pius IV., externally, by his settlement of the Tridentine Council, and by the establishment of the Catholic concordat, built upon this basis an edifice which was not as yet massive. Carlo Borromeo and the Jesuits during the last pontificate prepared the way for a Pope who should cement and gird that building, so that it should be capable of resisting the inroads of time and should serve as a fortress of attack on heresy. That Pope was Michele Ghislieri, who assumed the title of Pius V. in 1566.

Before entering on the matter of his reign, it will be necessary to review the state of Rome at this moment in the epoch of transition, when the mediaeval and Renaissance phases were fast merging into the phase of the Counter-Reformation. Old abuses which have once struck a deep root in any institution, die slowly. It is therefore desirable to survey the position in which the Papal Sovereign of the Holy City, as constituted by the Council of Trent, held sway there.

The population of Rome was singularly fluctuating. Being principally composed of ecclesiastics with their households and dependents; foreigners resident in the city as suitors or ambassadors; merchants, tradespeople and artists attracted by the hope of gain; it rose or fell according to the qualities of the reigning Pope, and the greater or less train of life which happened to be fashionable. Noble families were rather conspicuous by their absence than by their presence; for those of the first rank, Colonna and Orsini, dwelt upon their fiefs, and visited the capital only as occasion served. The minor aristocracy which gave solidity to social relations in towns like Florence and Bologna, never attained the rank of a substantial oligarchy in Rome. Nor was there an established dynasty round which a circle of peers might gather in permanent alliance with the Court. On the other hand, the frequent succession of Pontiffs chosen from various districts encouraged the growth of an ephemeral nobility, who battened for a while upon the favor of their Papal kinsmen, flooded the city with retainers from their province, and disappeared upon the election of a new Pope, to make room for another flying squadron. Instead of a group of ancient Houses, intermarrying and transmitting hereditary rights and honors to their posterity, Rome presented the spectacle of numerous celibate establishments, displaying great pomp, it is true, but dispersing and disappearing upon the decease of the patrons who assembled them. The households of wealthy Cardinals were formed upon the scale of princely Courts. Yet no one, whether he depended on the mightiest or the feeblest prelate, could reckon on the tenure of his place beyond the lifetime of his master. Many reasons, again--among which may be reckoned the hostility of reigning Pontiffs to the creatures of their predecessors or to their old rivals in the conclave--caused the residence of the chief ecclesiastics in Rome to be precarious. Thus the upper stratum of society was always in a state of flux, its elements shifting according to laws of chronic uncertainty. Beneath it spread a rabble of inferior and dubious gentlefolk, living in idleness upon the favor of the Court, serving the Cardinals and Bishops in immoral and dishonest offices, selling their wives, their daughters and themselves, all eager to rise by indirect means to places of emolument.[52] Lower down, existed the bourgeoisie of artists, bankers, builders, shopkeepers, and artisans; and at the bottom of the scale came hordes of beggars. Rome, like all Holy Cities, entertained multitudes of eleemosynary paupers. Gregory XIII. is praised for having spent more than 200,000 crowns a year on works of charity, and for having assigned the district of San Sisto (in the neighborhood of Trinità del Monte, one of the best quarters of the present city) to the beggars.[53]

[Footnote 52: See Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 35; Aretino's _Dialogo della Corte di Roma_; and the private history of the Farnesi.]

[Footnote 53: Giov. Carraro and Lor. Priuli, _op. cit._ pp. 275, 306.]

Such being the social conditions of Rome, it is not surprising to learn that during the reign of so harsh a Pontiff as Paul IV., the population sank to a number estimated at between 40,000 and 50,000. It rose rapidly to 70,000, and touched 80,000 in the reign of Pius IV. Afterwards it gradually ascended to 90,000, and during the popular pontificate of Gregory XIII. it is said to have reached the high figure of 140,000. These calculations are based upon the reports of the Venetian ambassadors, and can be considered as impartial, although they may not be statistically exact.[54]

What rendered Roman society rotten to the core was universal pecuniary corruption. In Rome nothing could be had without payment; but men with money in their purse obtained whatever they desired. The office of the Datatario alone brought from ten to fourteen thousand crowns a month into the Papal treasury in 1560.[55] This large sum accrued from the composition of benefices and the sale of vacant offices. The Camera Apostolica, or Chamber of Justice, was no less venal. A price was set on every crime, for which its punishment could be commuted into cash-payment. Even so severe a Pope as Paul IV. committed to his nephew, by published and printed edict, the privilege of compounding with criminals by fines.[56] One consequence of this vile system, rightly called by the Venetian envoy 'the very strangest that could be witnessed or heard of in such matters,' was that wealthy sinners indulged their appetites at the expense of their families, and that innocent people became the prey of sharpers and informers.[57] Rome had organized a vast system of chantage.

[Footnote 54: Alberi, vol. x. pp. 35, 83, 277.]

[Footnote 55: Mocenigo's computation, _op. cit._ p. 29.]

[Footnote 56: _Ibid._ p. 31.]

[Footnote 57: The true history of the Cenci, as written by Bertolotti, throws light upon these points.] Another consequence was that acts of violence were frightfully common. Men could be hired to commit murders at sums varying from ten to four scudi; and on the death of Paul IV., when anarchy prevailed for a short while in Rome, an eye-witness asserts that several hundred assassinations were committed within the walls in a few days.[58]

[Footnote 58: Mocenigo, _op. cit._ p. 38.]

It was not to be expected that a population so corrupt, accustomed for generations to fatten upon the venality and vices of the hierarchy, should welcome those radical reforms which were the best fruits of the Tridentine Council. They specially disliked the decrees which enforced the residence of prelates and the limitation of benefices held by a single ecclesiastic. These regulations implied the withdrawal of wealthy patrons from Rome, together with an incalculable reduction in the amount of foreign money spent there. Nor were the measures for abolishing a simoniacal sale of offices, and the growing demand for decency in the administration of justice, less unpopular. The one struck at the root of private speculation in lucrative posts, and deprived the Court of revenues which had to be replaced by taxes. The other destroyed the arts of informers, checked lawlessness and license in the rich, and had the same lamentable effect of impoverishing the Papal treasury. In proportion as the Curia ceased to subsist upon the profits of simony, superstition, and sin, it was forced to maintain itself by imposts on the people, and by resuming, as Gregory XIII. attempted to do, its obsolete rights over fiefs and lands accorded on easy terms or held by doubtful titles. Meanwhile the retrenchment rendered necessary in all households of the hierarchy, and the introduction of severer manners, threatened many minor branches of industry with extinction.

These changes began to manifest themselves during the pontificate of Pius IV. The Pope himself was inclined to a liberal and joyous scale of living. But he was not remarkable for generosity; and the new severity of manners made itself felt by the example of his nephew Carlo Borromeo--a man who, while living in the purple, practiced austerities that were apparent in his emaciated countenance. The Jesuits ruled him; and, through him, their influence was felt in every quarter of the city.[59] 'The Court of Rome,' says the Venetian envoy in the year 1565, 'is no longer what it used to be either in the quality or the numbers of the courtiers. This is principally due to the poverty of the Cardinals and the parsimony of the Popes. In the old days, when they gave away more liberally, men of ability flocked from all quarters. This reduction of the Court dates from the Council; for the bishops and beneficed clergy being now obliged to retire to their residences, the larger portion of the Court has left Rome. To the same cause may be ascribed a diminution in the numbers of those who serve the Pontiff, seeing that since only one benefice can now be given, and that involves residence, there are few who care to follow the Court at their own expense and inconvenience without hope of greater reward. The poverty of the Cardinals springs from two causes. The first is that they cannot now obtain benefices of the first class, as was the case when England, Germany, and other provinces were subject to the Holy See, and when moreover they could hold three or four bishoprics apiece together with other places of emolument, whereas they now can only have one apiece. The second cause is that the number of the Cardinals has been increased to seventy-five, and that the foreign powers have ceased to compliment them with large presents and Benefices, as was the wont of Charles V. and the French crown.' In the last of these clauses we find clearly indicated one of the main results of the concordat established between the Papacy and the Catholic sovereigns by the policy of Pius IV. It secured Papal absolutism at the expense of the college. Soranzo proceeds to describe the changes visible in Roman society. 'The train of life at Court is therefore mean, partly through poverty, but also owing to the good example of Cardinal Borromeo, seeing that people are wont to follow the manners of their princes. The Cardinal holds in his hands all the threads of the administration; and living religiously in the retirement I have noticed, indulging in liberalities to none but persons of his own stamp, there is neither Cardinal nor courtier who can expect any favor from him unless he conform in fact or in appearance to his mode of life. Consequently one observes that they have altogether withdrawn, in public at any rate, from every sort of pleasures. One sees no longer Cardinals in masquerade or on horseback, nor driving with women about Rome for pastime, as the custom was of late; but the utmost they do is to go alone in close coaches. Banquets, diversions, hunting parties, splendid liveries and all the other signs of outward luxury have been abolished; the more so that now there is at Court no layman of high quality, as formerly when the Pope had many of his relatives or dependents around him. The clergy always wear their robes, so that the reform of the Church is manifested in their appearance. This state of things, on the other hand, has been the ruin of the artisans and merchants, since no money circulates. And while all offices and magistracies are in the hands of Milanese, grasping and illiberal persons, very few indeed can be still called satisfied with the present reign.'[60]

[Footnote 59: Giac. Soranzo, _op. cit._ pp. 131-136]

[Footnote 60: Soranzo, _op. cit._ pp. 136-138.]

One chief defect of Pius IV., judged by the standard of the new party in the Church, had been his coldness in religious exercises. Paolo Tiepolo remarks that during the last seven months of his life he never once attended service in his chapel.[61]

[Footnote 61: _Op. cit._ p. 171.]

This indifference was combined with lukewarmness in the prosecution of reforms. The Datatario still enriched itself by the composition of benefices, and the Camera by the composition of crimes. Pius V., on the contrary, embodied in himself those ascetic virtues which Carlo Borromeo and the Jesuits were determined to propagate throughout the Catholic world. He never missed a day's attendance on the prescribed services of the Church, said frequent Masses, fasted at regular intervals, and continued to wear the coarse woolen shirt which formed a part of his friar's costume. In his piety there was no hypocrisy. The people saw streams of tears pouring from the eyes of the Pontiff bowed in ecstacy before the Host. A rigid reformation of the churches, monasteries, and clergy was immediately set on foot throughout the Papal States. Monks and nuns complained, not without cause, that austerities were expected from them which were not included in the rules to which they vowed obedience. The severity of the Inquisition was augmented, and the Index Expurgatorius began to exercise a stricter jurisdiction over books. The Pope spent half his time at the Holy Office, inquiring into cases of heresy of ten or twenty years' standing. From Florence he caused Carnesecchi to be dragged to Rome and burned; from Venice the refugee Guido Zanetti of Fano was delivered over to his tender mercies; and the excellent Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo, was sent from Spain to be condemned to death before the Roman tribunal. Criminal justice, meanwhile, was administered with greater purity, and the composition of crimes for money, if not wholly abolished, was moderated. In the collation to bishoprics and other benefices the same spirit of equity appeared; for Pius inquired scrupulously into the character and fitness of aspirants after office.

The zeal manifested by Pius V. for a thorough-going reform of manners may be illustrated by a curious circumstance related by the Venetian ambassador in the first year of the pontificate.[62] On July 26, 1566, an edict was issued, compelling all prostitutes to leave Rome within six days, and to evacuate the States of the Church within twelve days. The exodus began. But it was estimated that about 25,000 persons, counting the women themselves with their hangers-on and dependents, would have to quit the city if the edict were enforced.[63] The farmers of the customs calculated that they would lose some 20,000 ducats a year in consequence, and prayed the Pope for compensation. Meanwhile the roads across the Campagna began to be thronged by caravans, which were exposed to the attacks of robbers. The confusion became so great, and the public discontent was so openly expressed, that on August 17 Pius repealed his edict and permitted the prostitutes to reside in certain quarters of the city.

[Footnote 62: Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, etc., vol. i. pp. 51-54.]

[Footnote 63: Assuming the population of Rome to have been about 90,000 at that date, this number appears incredible. Yet we have it on the best of all evidences, that of a resident Venetian envoy.]

Pius IV. had wasted the greater part of his later life in bed, neglecting business, entertaining his leisure with buffoons and good companions, eating much and drinking more. Pius V., on the contrary, carried the habits of the convent with him into the Vatican, and bestowed the time he spared from devotion upon the transaction of affairs. He was of choleric complexion, adust, lean, wasted, with sunken eyes and snow-white hair, looking ten years older than he really was.

Such a Pope changed the face of Rome, or rather stereotyped the change which had been instituted by Cardinal Borromeo. 'People, even if they are not really better, seem at least to be so,' says the Venetian envoy, who has supplied me with the details I have condensed.[64] Retrenchments in the Papal establishment were introduced; money was scarce; the Court grew meaner in appearance; and nepotism may be said to have been extinct in the days of Pius V. He did indeed advance one nephew, Michele Bonelli, to the Cardinalate; but he showed no inclination to enrich or favor him beyond due measure. A worn man, without ears, marked by the bastinado, frequented the palace, and stood near the person of the Pope, as Captain of the Guard. This was Paolo Ghislieri, a somewhat distant relative of Pius, who had passed his life in servitude to Barbary corsairs and had been ransomed by a merchant upon the election of his kinsman. No other members of the Papal family were invited to Rome.

[Footnote 64: Tiepolo, _op. cit._ p. 172.]

Pius V., while living this exemplary monastic life upon the Papal throne, ruled Catholic Christendom more absolutely than any of his predecessors. As the Papacy recognized its dependence on the sovereigns, so the sovereigns in their turn perceived that religious conformity was the best safeguard of their secular authority. Therefore the Catholic States subscribed, one after the other, to the Tridentive Profession of Faith, and adopted one system in matters of Church discipline. A new Breviary and a new Missal were published with the Papal sanction. Seminaries were established for the education of ecclesiastics, and the Jesuits labored in their propaganda. The Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index redoubled their efforts to stamp out heresy by fire and iron, and by the suppression or mutilation of books. A rigid uniformity was impressed on Catholicism. The Pope, to whom such power had been committed by the Council, stood at the head of each section and department of the new organization. To his approval every measure in the Church was referred, and the Jesuits executed his instructions with punctual exactness.

It is not, therefore, to be wondered that Pius V. should have opened the era of active hostilities against Protestantism. Firmly allied with Philip II., he advocated attacks upon the Huguenots in France, the Protestants in Flanders, and the English crown. There is no evidence that he was active in promoting the Massacre of S. Bartholomew, which took place three months after his death; and the expedition of the Invincible Armada against England was not equipped until another period of fifteen years had elapsed. Yet the negotiations in which he was engaged with Spain, involving enterprises to the detriment of the English realm and the French Reformation, leave no doubt that both S. Bartholomew and the Armada would have met with his hearty approval. One glorious victory gave luster to the reign of Pius V. In 1571 the navies of Spain, Venice and Rome inflicted a paralyzing blow upon the Turkish power at Lepanto; and this success was potent in fanning the flame of Catholic enthusiasm.

The pontificates of Paul IV., Pius IV., and Pius V., differing as they did in very important details, had achieved a solid triumph for reformed Catholicism, of which both the diplomatical and the ascetic parties in the Church, Jesuits and Theatines, were eager to take advantage. A new spirit in the Roman polity prevailed, upon the reality of which its future force depended; and the men who embodied this spirit had no mind to relax their hold on its administration. After the death of Pius V. they had to deal with a Pope who resembled his penultimate predecessor, Pius IV., more than the last Pontiff. Ugo Buoncompagno, the scion of a bourgeois family settled in Bologna, began his career as a jurist. He took orders in middle life, was promoted to the Cardinalate, and attained the supreme honor of the Holy See in 1572. The man responded to his name. He was a good companion, easy of access, genial in manners, remarkable for the facility with which he cast off care and gave himself to sanguine expectations.[65] In an earlier period of Church history he might have reproduced the Papacy of Paul II. or Innocent VIII. As it was, Gregory XIII. fell at once under the potent influence of Jesuit directors. His confessor, the Spanish Francesco da Toledo, impressed upon him the necessity of following the footsteps of Paul IV. and Pius V. It was made plain that he must conform to the new tendencies of the Catholic Church; and in his neophyte's zeal he determined to outdo his predecessors. The example of Pius V. was not only imitated, but surpassed. Gregory XIII. celebrated three Masses a week, built churches, and enforced parochial obedience throughout his capital. The Jesuits in his reign attained to the maximum of their wealth and influence. Rome, 'abandoning her ancient license, displayed a moderate and Christian mode of living: and in so far as the external observance of religion was concerned, she showed herself not far removed from such perfection as human frailties allow.'[66]

[Footnote 65: Paolo Tiepolo, _op. cit._ p. 312.]

[Footnote 66: _Ibid._ p. 214.]

While he was yet a layman, Gregory became the father of one son, Giacomo. Born out of wedlock, he was yet acknowledged as a member of the Buoncompagno family, and admitted under this name into the Venetian nobility.[67] The Pope manifested paternal weakness in favor of his offspring. He brought the young man to Rome, and made him Governatore di Santa Chiesa with a salary of 10,000 ducats. The Jesuits and other spiritual persons scented danger. They persuaded the Holy Father that conscience and honor required the alienation of his bastard from the sacred city. Giacomo was relegated to honorable exile in Ancona. But he suffered so severely from this rebuff, that terms of accommodation were agreed on. Giacomo received a lady of the Sforza family in marriage, and was established at the Papal Court with a revenue amounting to about 25,000 crowns.[68] The ecclesiastical party now predominant in Rome, took care that he should not acquire more than honorary importance in the government. Two of the Pope's nephews were promoted to the Cardinalate with provisions of about 10,000 crowns apiece. His old brother abode in retirement at Bologna under strict orders not to seek fortune or to perplex the Papal purity of rule in Rome.[69]

[Footnote 67: The Venetians, when they inscribed his name upon the Libro d'Oro, called him 'a near relative of his Holiness.']

[Footnote 68: This lady was a sister of the Count of Santa Fiora. For a detailed account of the wedding, see Mutinelli, _Stor. arc._ vol. i. p. 112.]

[Footnote 69: Tiepolo, _op. cit._ pp. 213, 219--221, 263, 266.]

I have introduced this sketch of Gregory's relations in order to show how a Pope of his previous habits and personal proclivities was now obliged to follow the new order of the Church. It was noticed that the mode of life in Rome during his reign struck a just balance between license and austerity, and that general satisfaction pervaded society.[70] Outside the city this contentment did not prevail. Gregory threw his States into disorder by reviving obsolete rights of the Church over lands mortgaged or granted with obscure titles. The petty barons rose in revolt, armed their peasants, fomented factions in the country towns, and filled the land with brigands. Under the leadership of men like Alfonso Piccolomini and Roberto Malatesta, these marauding bands assumed the proportion of armies. The neighboring Italian States--Tuscany, Venice, Naples, Parma, all of whom had found the Pope arbitrary and aggressive in his dealings with them--encouraged the bandits by offering them an asylum and refusing to co-operate with Gregory for their reduction.

[Footnote 70: Giov. Corraro, op. cit. p. 277.]

His successor, Sixtus V., found the whole Papal dominion in confusion. It was impossible to collect the taxes. Life and property were nowhere safe. By a series of savage enactments and stern acts of justice, Sixtus swept the brigands from his States. He then applied his powerful will to the collection of money and the improvement of his provinces. In the four years which followed his election he succeeded in accumulating a round sum of four million crowns, which he stored up in the Castle of S. Angelo. The total revenues of the Papacy at this epoch were roughly estimated at 750,000 crowns, which in former reigns had been absorbed in current costs and the pontifical establishment. By rigorous economy and retrenchments of all kinds Sixtus reduced these annual expenses to a sum of 250,000, thus making a clear profit of 500,000 crowns.[71] At the same time he had already spent about a million and a half on works of public utility, including the famous Acqua Felice, which brought excellent water into Rome. Roads and bridges throughout the States of the Church were repaired, The Chiana of Orvieto and the Pontine Marsh were drained. Encouragement was extended, not only to agriculture, but also to industries and manufactures. The country towns obtained wise financial concessions, and the unpopular resumption of lapsed lands and fiefs was discontinued. Rome meanwhile began to assume her present aspect as a city, by the extensive architectural undertakings which Sixtus set on foot. He loved building; but he was no lover of antiquity. For pagan monuments of art he showed a monastic animosity, dispersing or mutilating the statues of the Vatican and Capitol; turning a Minerva into an image of the Faith by putting a cross in her hand; surmounting the columns of Trajan and Antonine with figures of Peter and Paul; destroying the Septizonium of Severus, and wishing to lay sacrilegious hands on Caecilia Metella's tomb. To mediaeval relics he was hardly less indifferent. The old buildings of the Lateran were thrown down to make room for the heavy modern palace. But, to atone in some measure for these acts of vandalism, Sixtus placed the cupola upon S. Peter's and raised the obelisk in the great piazza which was destined to be circled with Bernini's colonnades. This obelisk he tapped with a cross. Christian inscriptions, signalizing the triumph of the Pontiff over infidel emperors, the victory of Calvary over Olympus, the superiority of Rome's saints and martyrs to Rome's old deities and heroes, left no doubt that what remained of the imperial city had been subdued to Christ and purged of paganism. Wandering through Rome at the present time, we feel in every part the spirit of the Catholic Revival, and murmur to ourselves those lines of Clough:

O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas! Are ye Christian too? To convert and redeem and renew you, Will the brief form have sufficed, that a Pope has sat up on the apex Of the Egyptian stone that o'ertops you, the Christian symbol? And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble, Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers, Are ye also baptized; are ye of the Kingdom of Heaven? Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern.

[Footnote 71: See Giov. Gritti, _op. cit._ p. 333.]

Nothing was more absent from the mind of Sixtus than any attempt to reconcile Ancient and Modern. He was bent on proclaiming the ultimate triumph of Catholicism, not only over antiquity, but also over the Renaissance. His inscriptions, crosses, and images of saints are the enduring badges of serfdom set upon the monuments of ancient and renascent Italy, bearing which they were permitted by the now absolute Pontiff to remain as testimonies to his power.

Retrenchment alone could not have sufficed for the accumulation of so much idle capital, and for so extensive an expenditure on works of public utility. Sixtus therefore had recourse to new taxation, new loans, and the creation of new offices for sale. The Venetian envoy mentions eighteen imposts levied in his reign; a sum of 600,000 crowns accruing to the Camera by the sale of places; and extensive loans, or Monti, which were principally financed by the Genoese.[72] It was necessary for the Papacy, now that it had relinquished the larger part of its revenues derived from Europe, to live upon the proceeds of the Papal States. The complicated financial expedients on which successive Popes relied for developing their exchequer, have been elaborately explained by Ranke.[73] They were materially assisted in their efforts to support the Papal dignity upon the resources of their realm, by the new system of nepotism which now began to prevail. Since the Council of Trent, it was impossible for a Pope to acknowledge his sons, and few, if any, of the Popes after Pius IV. had sons to acknowledge.[74]

[Footnote 72: Giov. Gritti, _op. cit._ p. 337.]

[Footnote 73: History of the Popes, Book iv. section I.]

[Footnote 74: Giacomo Buoncompagno was born while Gregory XIII. was still a layman and a lawyer.]

The tendencies of the Church rendered it also incompatible with the Papal position that near relatives of the Pontiff should be advanced, as formerly, to the dignity of independent princes. The custom was to create one nephew Cardinal, with such wealth derived from office as should enable him to benefit the Papal family at large. Another nephew was usually ennobled, endowed with capital in the public funds for the purchase of lands, and provided with lucrative places in the secular administration. He then married into a Roman family of wealth and founded one of the aristocratic houses of the Roman State. We possess some details respecting the incomes of the Papal nephews at this period, which may be of interest.[75] Carlo Borromeo was reasonably believed to enjoy revenues amounting to 50,000 scudi. Giacomo Buoncompagno's whole estate was estimated at 120,000 scudi; while the two Cardinal nephews of Gregory XIII. had each about 10,000 a year. At the same epoch Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, enjoyed an income of some 25,000, his estate being worth 60,000, but being heavily encumbered. These figures are taken from the Reports of the Venetian envoys. If we may trust them as accurate, it will appear by a comparison of them with the details furnished by Ranke, that Gregory's successors treated their relatives with greater generosity.[76] Sixtus V. enriched the Cardinal Montalto with an ecclesiastical income of 100,000 scudi. Clement VIII. bestowed on two nephews--one Cardinal, the other layman--revenues of about 60,000 apiece in 1599. He is computed to have hoarded altogether for his family a round sum of 1,000,000 scudi. Paul V. was believed to have given to his Borghese relatives nearly 700,000 scudi in cash, 24,600 scudi in funds, and 268,000 in the worth of offices.[77] The Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, nephew of Gregory XV., had a reputed income of 200,000 scudi; and the Ludovisi family obtained 800,000 in luoghi di monte or funds. Three nephews of Urban VIII., the brothers Barberini, were said to have enjoyed joint revenues amounting to half a million scudi, and their total gains from the pontificate touched the enormous sum of 105,000,000. These are the families, sprung from obscurity or mediocre station, whose palaces and villas adorn Rome, and who now rank, though of such recent origin, with the aristocracy of Europe.

Sixtus V. died in 1590. To follow the history of his successors would be superfluous for the purpose of this book. The change in the Church which began in the reign of Paul III. was completed in his pontificate. About half a century, embracing seven tenures of the Holy Chair, had sufficed to develop the new phase of the Papacy as an absolute sovereignty, representing the modern European principle of absolutism, both as the acknowledged Head of Catholic Christendom and also as a petty Italian power.

[Footnote 75: Sarpi writes: 'In my times Pius V., during five years, accumulated 25,000 ducats for the Cardinal nephew; Gregory XIII., in thirteen years, 30,000 for one nephew, and 20,000 for another; Sixtus V., for his only nephew, 9,000; Clement VIII., in thirteen years, for one nephew, 8,000, and for the other, 3,000; and this Pope, Paul V., in four years, for one nephew alone, 40,000. To what depths are we destined to fall in the future?' (Lettere, vol. i. p. 281). This final question was justified by the event; for, after the Borghesi, came the Ludovisi and Barberini, whose accumulations equalled, if they did not surpass, those of any antecedent Papal families.]

[Footnote 76: The details may be examined in Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 303-311.]

[Footnote 77: Sarpi's Letters supply some details relating to Paul V.'s nepotism. He describes the pleasure which this Pope took on one day of each week in washing his hands in the gold of the Datatario and the Camera (vol. i. p. 281), and says of him, 'attende solo a far danari' (vol. ii. p. 237). When Paul gave his nephew Scipione the Abbey of Vangadizza, with 12,000 ducats a year, Sarpi computed that the Cardinal held about 100,000 ducats of ecclesiastical benefices (vol. i. p. 219). When the Archbishopric of Bologna, worth over 16,000 ducats a year, fell vacant in 1610, Paul gave this to Scipione, who held it a short time without residence, and then abandoned it to Alessandro Ludovisi retaining all its revenues, with the exception of 2,000 ducats, for himself as a pension (vol. ii. pp. 158, 300). In the year 1610 Sarpi notices the purchase of Sulmona and other fiefs by Paul for his family, at the expenditure of 160,000 ducats (vol. ii. p. 70). In another place he speaks of another sum of 100,000 spent upon the same object (vol. i. p. 249, note). Well might he exclaim, 'Il pontefice e attesa ad arrichir la sua casa' (vol. i. p. 294).]