Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 6 and 7 (of 7) / The Catholic Reaction

by John Addington Symonds

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 poli tical 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.

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]

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 Chris tendom 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.