[72] Giov. Gritti, op. cit. p. 337.
[73] History of the Popes, Book iv. section I.
[74] Giacomo Buoncompagno was born while Gregory XIII. was still a layman and a lawyer.
[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.
[76] The details may be examined in Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 303-311.
[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).
[78] See Cantù, Gli Eretici d'Italia, vol. i. Discorso 5, and the notes appended to it, for Frederick's edicts and letters to Gregory IX. upon this matter of heresy. The Emperor treats of Heretica Pravitas as a crime against society, and such, indeed, it then appeared according to the mediaeval ideal of Christendom united under Church and Empire. Yet Frederick himself, it will be remembered, died under the ban of the Church, and was placed by Dante among the heresiarchs in the tenth circle of Hell. We now regard him justly as one of the precursors of the Renaissance. But at the beginning of his reign, in his peculiar attitude of Holy Roman Emperor, he had to proceed with rigor against free-thinkers in religion. They were foes to the mediseval order, of which he was the secular head.
[79] Sarpi, 'Discorso dell'Origine,' etc. Opere, vol. iv. p. 6.
[80] See Christie's Etienne Dolet, chapter 21.
[81] Visitors to Milan must have been struck with the equestrian statue to the Podestà Oldrado da Trezzeno in the Piazza de'Mercanti. Underneath it runs an epitaph containing among the praises of this man: Catharos ut debuit uxit. An Archbishop of Milan of the same period (middle of the thirteenth century), Enrico di Settala, is also praised upon his epitaph because jugulavit haereses. See Cantù, Gli Eretici d Italia, vol. i. p. 108.