The more minute inquirer will find the documents transcribed from the Vatican archives, relating to these children, in Pastor.[303] His mistress died at an early age in 1513, and Alessandro (now forty-five years old) is described as moderating his irregularities and as devoting some attention to his bishopric of Parma. Papal historians observe with pride that his irregularities entirely ceased in 1519, when he was ordained priest. The friend of his youth, Leo X., cordially included him in his generous patronage, and he was able to build the Farnese palace and to cultivate ambition. In 1523, he made an effort to secure the tiara, but at the Conclave the cardinals had not the courage to present to the Reformers as Pontiff the father of four children. He stifled his lament that Clement VII. had "robbed him of ten years of the Papacy," and became as amiable a friend of that Pope as he had been of his five predecessors; and amidst the fierce clash of political passion he retained a diplomatic neutrality. He shared Clement's bitter days in Sant' Angelo, yet did not quarrel with the Imperialists.
These characteristics marked Alessandro for the throne; and they at the same time ensured that his struggle with Protestantism would be entirely futile. He was now sixty-seven years old, and we easily picture him from Titian's wonderful portrait; frail and worn in flesh and stooping with age; yet his penetrating eyes and large bald dome of a forehead indicated a great energy of will and force of intellect. He was essentially a diplomat, and the cardinals, absorbed for the most part in the political troubles, did not reflect that the rapier of diplomacy was the last weapon with which to meet the stout staves of the northerners. He was an excellent listener, a sparing and deliberate talker, a most skilful postponer of crucial decisions; a "vas dilationis," the Roman wits said, parodying the description of a greater Paul.
Dr. Pastor thinks that the reforming cardinals—of whom there were now many—had much confidence in his disposition to reform. If they had, their trust is in the main another tribute to his diplomatic skill. He had no idea of reforming the Curia and the Church further than might be exacted of him by unpleasant circumstances.
Shrewd observers must quickly have observed that Paul III. remained at heart a Farnese. His son, Pier Luigi, visited him in Rome soon after his election. Pier Luigi had become a military adventurer, a feeble emulator of Cæsar Borgia, and by taking arms in the Imperialist service, had incurred excommunication under Clement. Paul is said to have received his son in secret and directed him to keep away from Rome. There was to be no open nepotism. But in a few weeks Pier Luigi was back in Rome and was observed to have plenty of money. Paul was crowned on November 3d (1534) and announced his intention to reform the Church. On, December 18th he bestowed the cardinalate on two of his nephews, Guido Sforza and Alessandro Farnese. Sforza was a youth of seventeen; Alessandro was a fourteen-year old pupil at Bologna, yet he received, besides the red hat, the governorship of Spoleto and such a number of profitable benefices that he was soon able to outshine some of the more ostentatious cardinals; and in the next year he was made Vice-Chancellor. Both he and Sforza were notoriously immoral. Pier Luigi was made Gonfaloniere, Commander of the Papal troops, and Duke of Castro; and proportionate benefits were showered on all friends and connexions of the Farnese family.
It would not be history to dwell on the "obstinacy" of the Reformers and to fail to emphasize these very pertinent and entirely undisputed facts; but I will dismiss in few words this aspect of Paul's character. Nepotism was one of his most persistent traits, and we shall repeatedly find his direction of Papal policy perverted by a care for the worldly advancement of his family. He was equally unable and unwilling to break with the gayer tradition of the Borgia-Medici court. He loved pageantry and comedy, encouraged the merry riot of the carnival, favoured astrologers, buffoons, and pseudo-classical poets, and liked to dine with fair women. It is, perhaps, not much to say that his private life—at the age of seventy—was irreproachable; but it is not immaterial to observe that he gave an indulgent eye to the conduct of the looser cardinals. Instead of sternly attempting to crush that large body of loose and luxurious cardinals to whom, in the first place, we may trace the catastrophe of the Church, he added, at each promotion, a few to their number. Of the seventy-one cardinals he promoted during his Pontificate the great majority were good men; but a few were of such a character that their election was, in the actual situation of the Church, unpardonable.
These little personal details must be considered first if we are to understand aright the attitude of Paul III. toward reform and the reforming council. From the first he assured his visitors that he intended to reform the Church. Before the end of 1534, he appointed two reform commissions—one on morals and the other on Church offices; though he chilled the zeal of the more ardent cardinals by enjoining them to take into account the circumstances. In the spring of 1535, he prosecuted Cardinal Accolti for grave abuse of his position of legate, but compromised for a fine of 59,000 scudi. The Reformers of Germany had from the first appealed to a council, and Paul declared himself in favour of a council; but he insisted that it must be summoned by him, presided over by his legates, and held in Italy; and this not only the princes of the Schmalkaldic League but the three monarchs concerned emphatically refused. Charles V. saw that such a council would be—as Paul III. well knew—utterly useless as an instrument of reconciliation; Francis I. did not want reconciliation at all, since it would give to Charles command of a united Germany; and Henry VIII., who accepted the title of Head of the English Church in 1534, and in the following year initiated his policy of bloody persecution, had done with Rome. In fact, instead of giving all the negotiations about a council, I would point out that there never was the slightest hope by such a means of ending the schism. Each side was absolutely convinced of the truth of its formulas, and very few, least of all the Pope, thought that compromise was possible or desirable. Luther was quite willing to attend a council, even in Italy; but merely in order to convince the Church of its errors and abominations. The Pope wanted a council merely in order to formulate Catholic doctrine in clear official terms and thus to provide a standard for the condemnation and extermination of the heretics. No Pope could think otherwise.
Paul at length ventured to announce "to the city and the world" that a general council would be held at Mantua on the 23d of May, 1537; but when the Duke of Mantua directed the Pope to send an army to protect his council, the design was abandoned. A Bull next announced that the council would meet at Vicenza on May 1, 1538; but as only five prelates had arrived there when, on May 12th, the three Papal Legates made their imposing entry—after waiting in nervous hope some distance away—that project, also, was abandoned. I would not agree that Paul did not sincerely want a council, but during the first ten years the council he wanted was an impossibility.
Meantime, the idea of reform by commissions was sustaining the half-desperate hopes of the better cardinals at Rome. In February, 1537, the commission drew up so sound and true and large a scheme of reform that the anti-reformers successfully pleaded that it would injure the Church to publish it, and it remains "a scrap of paper" in the Vatican Archives. After much discussion, Paul decided to begin with the reform of the Dataria (an office of the Court which yielded more than 50,000 ducats a year, nearly half the entire income, to the Papal exchequer in connexion with the issue of graces, privileges, dispensations, etc.), and a further long discussion ensued. The discussion lasted some three years, without practical issue, and it was not until the end of 1540 that a few obvious reforms could be carried in some of the departments of the Curia. Characteristic is the story of one of these reforms. Pressed by the sterner cardinals, who wrote grave letters to each other on the Pope's conduct, to put an end to the scandal of non-resident prelates (absentee landlords), Paul summoned eighty of them, who were living in comfort at Rome, to return to their dioceses. There was terrible alarm. But they successfully pleaded that they could not live on the mere incomes of their sees, and they remained in Rome. Paul had to be content with discharging a few officials, directing the clergy to reform their lives and their sermons, and encouraging the new religious congregations: among which was a certain very small community, calling itself the "Company of Jesus," which seemed to him, when it first appeared in Rome, eccentric and of very doubtful value to the Church.
In the meantime, Paul had successfully maintained the political neutrality which he had from the first contemplated. Francis and Charles both sought alliance with him, and he tried instead to reconcile them and avert war. It is to his credit that when Charles, perceiving his weakness, offered, as the price of alliance, the marquisate of Novara to Pier Luigi and a principality in Naples to Pier's son Ottavio, Paul still refused. But the fact that in 1536 he received Charles with great pomp at Rome irritated Francis, and war broke out.[304] In view of the advances of the Turks, Paul went in person to Nice, in the spring of 1538, and reconciled the two monarchs, but his nepotism again mars the merit of this work. He arranged that his grandson Ottavio, a boy of thirteen, should marry the Emperor's natural daughter, Margaret of Austria, a girl-widow of sixteen, who hated the boy; and their connubial arrangements added, for many years, to the scandal or the gaiety of Rome. Paul was also severely blamed for the unscrupulous way in which he wrested the duchy of Camerino from the Varani and gave it to Ottavio. When Francis violently objected to this virtual alliance, Paul married his granddaughter Vittoria to a French prince. Nor were the Reformers pleased when they learned that, in return for the Emperor's natural daughter, the Pope had granted to Charles the right to publish indulgences in Spain, and had given him other privileges which would yield him a million ducats a year of Church money; and that neither Francis nor Charles would help Italy to face the Turks.
The unchecked advance of the Turk had, indirectly, another grave disadvantage for the Papacy. Charles needed the united forces of his dominions to meet the Turks, and the Protestants profited by his need. Whatever may be said about the amiable intentions of Paul III., at an earlier date, he now plainly designed to crush the followers of the Reformers in the field. He sent his grandson, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, to the courts of Francis and of Charles, and the instructions which he gave him, as well as the letters of the Cardinal himself, show that he sought, not only their support of his Italian council, but the co-operation of the monarchs against the Turks and the Protestants.[305] Both refused, and Charles, in spite of the Pope's vehement objections, consented to the holding of another conference or discussion with the representatives of the Protestants. The conference took place at Hagenau on June 12th, and had, of course, no result, but a fresh attempt was made at Worms in January 1541, and Paul sent Bishop Campeggio and four theologians to meet the Protestant divines. It is needless to discuss the Colloquy in detail, since such experiments never had the least prospect of success, but the next conference is of some interest.