Julius pursued the twofold policy of the Papacy with greater zeal and greater success than any of his predecessors. His furious energy completed the work of making the incohesive states of the Church into a compact principality; and he is the real founder of the absolute Papal State, the first real Pope-king. He achieved equal success in the other branch of the policy, and revelled in the kindred spirit of the High Renaissance. Julius exalted Rome to the place of first city in the world; and if the world had asked for art from the Papacy instead of asking for religion, it would have been abundantly satisfied. But Germany was thinking of sin, of vice, of simony, of taxation, and was becoming conscious of an extreme national antipathy to Italian rule; and when a young German monk, like Martin Luther, went to Rome, instead of taking pleasure in the architecture, painting, and sculpture that adorned the city, he was horrified at the lack of religion.
Julius, however, was entitled to a sense of accomplishment at his death. He left to his successors a little kingdom in the middle of Italy, and he had made Rome the centre of the arts. Not till the days of his successors did the failure of that policy appear. By a kind of poetic justice the utter failure of art to satisfy the demand for reform, for purity, for religion, was proved during the pontificates of the two Medici, Leo X and Clement VII. The Medici had patronized the arts, both in Florence and in Rome, and the arts repaid the Medici with enjoyment and renown. But the Medici had done nothing for the spirit of reform; on the contrary, they had helped crush Savonarola, and the spirit of reform turned upon them. Germany hoisted the standard of secession during the pontificate of Leo, and an army of the unfaithful sacked Rome during that of Clement.
Leo X was a fat, clever, cultivated man, with no great virtues and no real vices. "Let us enjoy the Papacy since God has given it to us," is the sentiment put into his mouth, and serves to characterize his reign. Bred in his father's intellectual circle, and a member of the luxurious Roman society, Leo shared the tastes of both. He was a connoisseur of works of art, and derived genuine æsthetic pleasure from them; he was also fond of agreeable company, good cookery, the chase, and most forms of social amusement. His political conduct was not of much real consequence, as matters had gone too far. In the interminable struggle between Charles V and Francis I, the Papacy tried to hold a balance of power, and bargained with both sides; but, as the Spaniards, in possession of both Milan and Naples, were the stronger, the Papacy generally found its advantage on that side. As to the larger matter of the ecclesiastical unity of Christendom there was practically nothing to be done. The causes which split the Teutonic world from the Latin were already matured. It was too late to stop the Reformation. Luther might have been dealt with more shrewdly, but the forces behind him could not have been kept in check. Leo excommunicated Luther (1520), and the Imperial Diet at Worms condemned him and his doctrine, but the unity of the Church was doomed.
To Leo succeeded his cousin Clement VII, after a brief pontificate by the last foreign Pope. Clement was incompetent, and failed to realize the gravity of his situation; neither he nor Rome understood the crisis they had reached. The prevailing state of mind may be inferred from this extract from the diary of a young Roman burgher: "I saw this Pope the first day of May, 1525, come in the morning of the Feast of SS. Philip and James to the Church of the Holy Apostles, and after celebrating high mass, remain all day and night in the palace of the Colonna.... That day it was an old and foolish custom in the Colonna palace (which connects with the church and has windows looking in it), to throw various kinds of fowls and animals into the church to the people who were there, all of the lowest sort. They also put a pig in the middle of the church up high, and whoever was able to climb up and take it, won it; and on top of the roof were kegs and pots of water, which they poured on the persons who climbed up. The amusement of those gentlemen, and of the rest who looked on, was to see the crowd in a mess, battling, shrieking, pushing, shoving, like beasts,—a merrymaking not becoming in a church or any sacred edifice." The diary adds: "Now let people learn to know the souls of the great and especially of priests, how wicked, deceitful, and false they are, how full of fraud and knavery."[20] There were plenty of other facts to prove this conclusion. The merrymaking was doomed to cease.
The incompetent Pope was totally at a loss what policy to follow, not knowing whether it was better to incline towards the Empire or to France. He shifted at the wrong time, joined a league against the Empire, then wriggled and shuffled, and so drew upon himself and the devoted city the punishment due to a long course of wickedness. The Imperial army, a ruffian host of Germans (many of them Lutherans), Spaniards, and Italians, under the command of the traitor Bourbon, was encamped in the north; the unpaid soldiers clamoured for plunder, and Bourbon led them to Rome, carried the neglected walls by assault, and put the city to sack. Rome was a little city, with perhaps 90,000 inhabitants, but rich in the oblations and tribute money of Christendom; the churches were decked with gold and silver, the palaces stuffed with precious paintings, tapestries, and ornaments of every kind. Popes, cardinals, and princes had rivalled one another in accumulations of works of art and articles of luxury. Though license, profligacy, and crime had then shut out Rome from the sympathy of the world, it is impossible to read to-day of the horrors of the sack—men murdered, mothers, daughters, nuns outraged, old men and priests brutally insulted, churches and sacred relics defiled—without the sharpest pity. For eight days the devilish work went on, and but 30,000 inhabitants were left, so many had fled, or been killed, or made prisoners (1527).
Terrible was the punishment that Clement witnessed,—Rome sacked, the liberty of Italy taken away, the Roman Catholic Church rent in two.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The Roman Curia is not looking for a sheep without wool.
[20] The Papacy during the Reformation, vol. v, Appendix (translated). M. Creighton.