Being an adept in copying and reckless of consequences, she rewrote the list, counterfeiting the Pope’s handwriting, and placed the name of her brother first on the roll. On the morrow, she put on all her seducing charms and detained her paramour in his bed until messengers came to inform him that the concistory was assembled and only waited his presence. Clara had foreseen that, if he were called in haste, he would have no time to look over his papers. In fact, he entered the concistory and gave the list to the secretaries without looking it over. His surprise was great when the name of Farnese was read out; but he preferred silence to the exposure of his senile debaucheries.
It is not our purpose to go over the long career of Farnese. While yet a youth he had been imprisoned in Sant Angelo for counterfeiting a brief, and Alexander VI. would have beheaded him if he had not contrived to escape from prison. We shall not repeat the errors of his contemporary historians, that he united the black act to his astronomical learning, and that he thus, through intercourse with demons, learned many secrets and became skilled in political intrigues. It is enough to say that, on arriving at the pontifical throne, he devoted all his efforts to the aggrandizement of his family; and, not content with obtaining the duchy of Camerino for his bastard son Pierluigi, intrigued to elevate him to the government of Parma and Piacenza, and even raised his eyes to that of Milan.
It was not then a reproach, says Segni,[37] that a Pope had illegitimate children and sought by every means to confer upon them wealth and dignities; on the contrary, the Pontiff who aspired to temporal grandeur was in repute as a man of prudence and sagacity. Paul III. intrigued for a long time with the emperor to acquire the duchy of Milan for Pierluigi, though he well knew that Charles, in occupying Lombardy, had protested that he did not wish to hold it for his own advantage but for that of Italy. In these intentions he was confirmed by the influence of the Venitians, the marquis Vasto and the king of France. The Spanish monarch had already disappointed the ambition of the duke of Orleans, who aspired to the duchy, and he also refused it to Pierluigi. But the Pope, after long intrigues to overcome the scruples of the cardinals, gave his son the investiture of Parma and Piacenza, making them tributary to the church in the sum of nine thousand ducats.
This act created enmity between the Farnesi and the emperor, though Paul III. had furnished the latter with men and money for his war against the Duke of Saxony, sending twelve thousand horse under the command of Ottavio Farnese and Alessandro Vitelli. But the increasing greatness of Charles, throwing into the shade the prerogatives and power of the Papal See, the disappointed hope of a principality and the league of the emperor with England the enemy of the Papacy, rendered Paul a bitter foe of Spain and awakened in him the ambition to crush the imperial power.
Andrea Doria hated the Farnese not less cordially than Charles. He had opposed the advancement of this family for ten years, and had frustrated a proposed league between the Papal See and the empire. He had influenced Charles to refuse the duchy of Milan to Pierluigi, and subsequently to deny Ottavio, son of Pierluigi, the government of Tuscany according to a promise the emperor had made when Ottavio married his illegitimate daughter Margaret, of Austria. Doria urged against the last scheme that if the Farnese were made masters of Tuscany they would become powerful enough to lay hands on the Lombard provinces.
There were still other motives for Andrea’s jealousy of the power of the Farnese family. A member of the Doria house named Imperiale being reduced to extreme poverty had obtained an appointment in the army of Andrea. He distinguished himself in many actions and rose to the highest honours and wealth. But having satisfied his military ambition he became a priest, in which character he was first abbott of San Fruttuoso and afterwards, through the influence of Andrea, bishop of Sagona in Corsica. Wishing, however, to advance his worldly interests he retired into Apulia where he acquired many estates, and was elevated by Andrea to the government of Melfi, in which he largely increased his wealth.
Before his death, remembering the kindness of Doria, he bequeathed to him all his possessions. The Papal nuncio seized upon and sequestrated the estates of the bishop, claiming that they belonged by right to the church. Andrea protested against this insult before the Papal court, but Rome, being at once a party to the cause and the judge of it, decided in its own favour and issued a decree despoiling the admiral of all his rights in the property of his relative. Paul III. fearing the vengeance of the admiral of the empire, deputed his nephew Alexander Farnese to offer, as a compensation for the outrage, the power of nominating a successor to the bishop. Doria disdained to render a vassal’s homage to a Farnese and ordered Gianettino to assail and capture the Papal galleys in the port of Genoa. This capture inflamed the wrath of the pontiff, and as an act of reprisal he arrested some Genoese who were in Rome, threatening to confiscate their goods unless his ships were immediately released. The Senate laid the matter before Andrea, who answered that Gianettino had captured the Papal vessels solely because he was stronger at sea than his adversary. Afterwards, in order to avoid complicating the Republic with his private quarrel, he released the galleys of the pontiff, after having satisfied the Farnese that he did not lack the power but the will to revenge himself.
The Pope was induced by Charles V. to restore to Andrea his defrauded rights; but the Farnese was deeply chagrined and, not being able to strike openly at the emperor’s favourite, sought secret ways of venting his displeasure.