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.
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 sacri legious 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.
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 serf dom 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]
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.
CHAPTER III
THE INQUISITION AND THE INDEX
Different Spirit in the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus—Both needed by the Counter-Reformation—Heresy in the Early Church—First Origins of the Inquisition in 1203—S. Dominic—The Holy Office becomes a Dominican Institution—Recognized by the Empire—Its early Organization—The Spanish Inquisition—Founded in 1484—How it differed from the earlier Apostolical Inquisition—Jews, Moors, New Christians—Organization and History of the Holy Office in Spain—Torquemada and his Successors—The Spanish Inquisition never introduced into Italy—How the Roman Inquisition organized by Caraffa differed from it—Autos da fé in Rome—Proscription of suspected Lutherans—The Calabrian Waldenses—Protestants at Locarno and Venice—Digression on the Venetian Holy Office—Persecution of Free Thought in Literature—Growth of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum—Sanction given to it by the Council of Trent—The Roman Congregation of the Index—Final Form of the Censorship of Books under Clement VIII.—Analysis of its Regulations—Proscription of Heretical Books—Correction of Texts—Purgation and Castration—Inquisitorial and Episcopal Licenses—Working of the System of this Censorship in Italy—Its long Delays—Hostility to Sound Learning—Ignorance of the Censors—Interference with Scholars in their Work—Terrorism of Booksellers—Vatican Scheme for the Restoration of Christian Erudition—Frustrated by the Tyranny of the Index—Dishonesty of the Vatican Scholars—Biblical Studies rendered nugatory by the Tridentine Decree on the Vulgate—Decline of Learning in Universities—Miserable Servitude of Professors—Greek dies out—Muretus and Manutius in Rome—The Index and its Treatment of Political Works—Machiavelli—Ratio Status—Encouragement of Literature on Papal Absolutism—Sarpi's Attitude—Comparative Indifference of Rome to Books of Obscene or Immoral Tendency—Bandello and Boccaccio—Papal attempts to Control Intercourse of Italians with Heretics.