Before the death of Calixtus important events had taken place in Naples. Alfonso V., after the prolonged war which secured him the throne, had enjoyed a singularly peaceful reign. The personal charm which had enabled him to gain over Filippo Maria Visconti also served to win the affection of his subjects; and his court was rendered famous not only by its magnificence, but also by the eminence of the scholars who were attracted to Naples by royal patronage. But Alfonso’s death, in June 1458, threatened a revival of dynastic struggles in southern Italy. As he had no lawful issue, his hereditary kingdoms of Aragon and Sicily passed to his brother, John II. But Alfonso claimed the right to dispose of Naples as a private acquisition of his own, and bequeathed the kingdom to his illegitimate son, Ferrante. The Neapolitans themselves were not at first inclined to resent an arrangement which freed them from a connection with Aragon and Sicily which might be regarded as subjection. But it was obvious that the accession of a bastard would encourage the house of Anjou to revive its claim, while the legitimate line in Aragon could always assert the same right to Naples which had been vindicated by Alfonso himself. It was therefore of great importance to Ferrante to obtain recognition from the Pope, who claimed to be suzerain of Naples, and he had some right to demand it with confidence from Calixtus, who was born a subject of Aragon. But the Pope, whether he remembered the traditional Angevin alliance of the papacy, or whether he sought in the spoils of Naples for new means of advancing his nephews, refused to recognise Ferrante, and claimed to dispose of the kingdom as a vacant papal fief. Before, however, he could make any efficient opposition to the new king, he was removed by death on August 6, 1458.
The choice of the cardinals now fell upon the most remarkable Pope of the century, Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who adopted the Virgilian epithet of Pius as his papal |Pius II., 1458-64.| name. In his youth Æneas Sylvius had lived a gay and not too decorous life. The author of the novel of Euryalus and Lucretia, and the confidant of the amours of princes, he had first achieved political distinction at the Council of Basel. There his literary and oratorical ability had given him a position of recognised eminence; but when the cause of the Council began to decline, he had entered the service of Frederick III., and had played by far the most prominent part in effecting a reconciliation between Germany and the papacy. For these services he had been rewarded by Nicolas V. with the bishopric of Siena, his native city, and by Calixtus III. with the cardinal’s hat. Raised to the papacy, he set himself to destroy the last traces of conciliar opposition to Roman supremacy, and with this object in view he strained every nerve to put himself at the head of a great crusading movement against the Turks. His career is full of strange contradictions, and the contrast has often been drawn between his unscrupulous youth and early manhood and the austere enthusiasm which he displayed as Pope. He himself was fully sensible of the incongruity, and in his famous recantation he urged his hearers to cast away Æneas and take Pius in his place: Æneam rejicite, Pium accipite.
As peace was absolutely necessary for any action against the Turks, the first act of Pius was to reverse the policy of his predecessor, and to recognise Ferrante as de facto king of Naples, though he was careful to avoid any formal decision on the question of legal right. In 1459 he summoned a congress of Western princes to meet at |Congress of Mantua.| Mantua, in the confident hope that his eloquence would prove as effective as that of Peter the Hermit in the eleventh century. On the appointed date the Pope and his personal followers found themselves alone in Mantua. After a month’s anxious delay, some ambassadors and a few German and Italian princes appeared, and the Congress was declared open. But the Pope soon discovered that his hopes had been far too sanguine; and after much eloquence had been expended in invectives against the Turks, the Congress broke up without achieving anything. There is no need to seek far for the causes of the failure of the Mantuan Congress. The growth of nations, with separate and often conflicting interests of their own, had destroyed all the conditions which had rendered possible the crusades of the Middle Ages. There were also special causes at the time which rendered it difficult for Pius II. to gain any real support for his schemes. The French were angry with the Pope for having prejudiced the Angevin claims to Naples by his recognition of Ferrante. Pius replied to the remonstrances of the French envoys by attacking the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges; and though he might claim a dialectical victory, such discussions were not conducive to a good understanding with France. Even Frederick III., the old patron of Æneas Sylvius, was at this time dissatisfied with the Pope for refusing to support his claims to the Hungarian crown, which had gone to the son of John Hunyadi, Mathias Corvinus. In Germany there were still traces of that spirit of opposition to the papacy which had been both a cause and a result of the conciliar movement; and Pius II. chose this moment to exasperate the German princes who shared these opinions by issuing from Mantua the bull Execrabilis, by which he condemned as detestable heresy any future appeal from the bishop of Rome to a general council.
Just at this very time there broke out the war in Naples, which the Pope had endeavoured to avert. The Neapolitan |War in Naples.| barons revolted against the harsh rule of Ferrante, and appealed for aid to the house of Anjou. Réné le Bon was unwilling to quit his luxurious life in Provence; but his son John, titular duke of Calabria, was at once more capable and more ambitious. From Genoa, which was at this time under French suzerainty, John sailed to the Neapolitan coast, and was speedily joined by a large number of partisans. Hostilities in Naples were fatal to the crusading schemes of Pius II. In spite of his desire to avoid a quarrel with France, he could not withdraw his support from Ferrante, and he was further attached to the Aragonese cause by the influence of Francesco Sforza, who feared that an Angevin triumph in the south might encourage the duke of Orleans to advance a claim to Milan. But in spite of the aid of the Pope and of Sforza, the cause of Ferrante did not at first prosper. John gained an important victory at Sarno on July 7, 1460; and his general, Jacopo Piccinino, also succeeded in defeating the Aragonese forces. But in the next year there was a very decided turn of fortune. The death of Charles VII. gave the French throne to Louis XI., who was ill disposed towards his Angevin relatives, while he was a warm admirer of Francesco Sforza. Genoa had already repudiated the French control, and before long Louis agreed to transfer his claims over Genoa to the duke of Milan. Thus John of Calabria, who had brought with him few men and little money, was deprived of the prospect of aid from France. His Neapolitan supporters began to desert him after his first reverse in 1462, and in 1464 John was compelled to abandon the enterprise as hopeless and return to France. His brief but adventurous career is full of incident. He sought to punish Louis XI. for his desertion by joining the League of the Public Weal. When that war was over, he carried on his quarrel with the house of Aragon by joining the Catalans in their revolt against John II. In that quarrel he met his death in 1469. Four years later his only son, Nicolas, also died, and the male descendants of Réné of Provence came to an end. The house of Anjou was now represented only by Réné himself; by his daughters, Yolande and Margaret, who had married respectively Frederick of Vaudemont and Henry VI. of England; and by his brother’s son, Charles of Maine. Of the two daughters, Margaret had lost her only son, Edward, at Tewkesbury in 1471; but Yolande had a son, called Réné after his grandfather, who was engaged in defending the duchy of Lorraine against the attacks of Charles the Bold of Burgundy. When the old Réné died in 1480, he disinherited this grandson, who was then his only descendant, in favour of his nephew Charles of Maine, with the further provision that on the extinction of the latter’s line the inheritance should pass to the French crown. In the next year Charles of Maine died without children, and by virtue of this will Provence and Bar were seized by Louis XI. At a later date Charles VIII. was induced to found upon his succession to the house of Anjou a claim to the crown of Naples, which inaugurated a new epoch, not only in the relations between France and Italy, but also in the international politics of Europe.
During the war in Naples Pius II. had despaired of a crusade, and with characteristic ingenuity and self-confidence he devised a new scheme for securing the victory of the cross over the crescent. The eloquence which had failed to arouse the princes of Europe might prove more successful with their heathen opponent. He drew up and despatched a lengthy epistle to Mohammed II., urging him to become a Christian, and promising on that condition to confirm him in possession of the eastern empire, as his predecessors had given the empire of the west to Charles the Great. As far as we know the Sultan returned no answer to this unique proposal. But the pacification of Naples by the victory of Ferrante, and the growing uneasiness of Venice at the continuance of Turkish aggression in Greece and the Archipelago, encouraged the Pope to resume his more warlike plans. In 1463 he concluded an alliance with the Venetians and Mathias Corvinus of Hungary. He renewed his exhortations to a general crusade, and declared his intention of leading it in person. In 1464 he went to Ancona, which had been fixed for the meeting of the crusading forces. Again the aged Pope met with a bitter disappointment. The only crusaders at Ancona were a few adventurers who had nothing to lose, and hoped to make their profit out of the papal treasures. At last, on August 12, the Venetian fleet approached the harbour, and Pius was carried to the window to witness its entry. This effort was |Death of Pius II. at Ancona.| his last, and two days later he died, straining his eyes eastward, and with his last breath urging the prosecution of the crusade. The poignant contrasts of his career were conspicuous to the last. Æneas Sylvius, careless, light-hearted, and untroubled by moral scruples, had faithfully represented the new epoch in which he lived. Pius II., enthusiastic, gloomy, and passionate, seems to be the ghost risen from the Middle Ages, which were dead.
The pontificate of Paul II. was short and comparatively uneventful. He belonged to the Venetian family of the |Paul II., 1464-71.| Barbi, and his election seemed likely to cement that alliance between the papacy and the maritime republic on which Pius II. had ultimately relied for resistance to the Turkish advance. But Paul acquiesced without much protest in the failure of his predecessor’s plans; and by urging Hungary into war with the heretical George Podiebrad of Bohemia, he rendered impossible even a league of eastern princes against the infidel. Paul’s name is also associated with a so-called persecution of the humanists, because he imprisoned some members of the Roman academy who had talked vaguely and irresponsibly of a restoration of the republic. But it is absurd to treat a simple measure of internal police as evidence of a definite and far-reaching policy, or as marking a reaction from the patronage of letters by Nicolas V. The whole episode has attracted more attention than it deserves through the interested emphasis of the chronicler, Platina, who has exaggerated both his own sufferings and his own importance. Paul II. was a true Pope of the Renaissance, looking at affairs from an intellectual rather than from a spiritual point of view, and exulting both in his own handsome figure, which led him to desire the name of Formosus, and in the beauty of the jewels and carvings of which he was an industrious and intelligent collector. But he was free from the grosser vices and crimes which have given notoriety to his successors.
The name of Sixtus IV. might well have been handed down to posterity as typifying the extreme degradation in which the |Nepotism of Sixtus IV.| papacy was involved in this century by its absorption in temporal interests, but that the bolder and more picturesque crimes of Cæsar Borgia have secured that pre-eminence for the pontificate of Alexander VI. The aims and actions of Sixtus were those of a secular prince, and display that cynical disregard of moral considerations which has been portrayed as the characteristic of the age in the pages of Machiavelli. No previous Pope had ventured to show so reckless a determination to use his office for the advancement of his relatives, and to employ his relatives as a means of strengthening the temporal power of the papacy. Three of his nephews were the sons of his brother, Raffaelle della Rovere. The eldest, Lionardo, was made prefect of Rome, and was married to a natural daughter of Ferrante of Naples. Giuliano della Rovere, the most capable and vigorous of the family, was raised by his uncle to be cardinal of San Pietro ad Vincula. After playing a prominent part as the opponent of the two succeeding popes, he gained the tiara himself as Julius II. The third son, Giovanni, succeeded Lionardo as prefect of Rome, and Sixtus obtained for him the hand of Joanna, daughter of Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, a marriage which in the next generation gave the duchy to a della Rovere dynasty. But the Pope’s most lavish favours were conferred upon the two sons of a sister, Piero and Girolamo Riario. Piero was made a cardinal at the age of twenty-five, and received so many preferments, including the archbishopric of Florence, that he drew a princely revenue from the Church. He only lived three years after his uncle’s accession, but during that time he succeeded in startling Europe by the stories of the extraordinary pomp and debauchery on which he squandered his wealth. The promotion of Girolamo Riario, a layman, was effected within the papal states, and had more lasting results. The papal treasure was employed to purchase for him the lordship of Imola; he was married to Caterina, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and on the extinction of the Ordelaffi in 1480 his uncle’s support gained for him the city of Forli with the title of duke. The whole policy of the Pope was directed for years to the aggrandisement of a youth who proved no more worthy of his elevation than his brother had been. In 1488 the people of Forli rose and murdered him, and only the heroism of his widow secured for a time the continuance of his dynasty.
The obvious intention of the Pope to extend his temporal power and to abuse it for the aggrandisement of his nephew excited the misgivings of the neighbouring states, and especially of Florence, which was at this time under the guidance of Lorenzo de’ Medici. In order to remove this obstacle from their way, Sixtus and Riario organised the famous conspiracy of the Pazzi for the overthrow of the Medici rule. The Pope asserted his ignorance of any scheme of assassination, but he must have known that success could hardly be achieved without bloodshed, and his denial of complicity was a merely formal attempt to save the credit of the holy see. The plot very narrowly missed its aim: Giuliano de’ Medici was killed in the cathedral of Florence, but Lorenzo escaped with a severe wound, and the chief conspirators, including the archbishop of Pisa, fell victims to the popular fury. Enraged at the failure of his scheme, Sixtus excommunicated the Florentines for laying violent hands upon a dignitary of the Church, and formed a league with Ferrante of Naples for the overthrow of the republic. The disorder in Milan following the death of |War with Florence.| Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and the fact that Venice was still engaged in the Turkish war, deprived Florence of her natural allies, and in 1479 the city was exposed to serious peril. Lorenzo de’ Medici, however, not only averted the danger, but dexterously employed it to strengthen his authority. At considerable personal risk, he undertook a journey to Naples, and succeeded in negotiating a peace with Ferrante. Sixtus was at first inclined to continue the war; but the occupation of Otranto by a Turkish force in 1480 constituted such a serious menace to Italy, that the obstinate Pope was forced to come to terms with his opponents and to withdraw the bull of excommunication against Florence.
The Turkish invasion compelled Ferrante of Naples and his son Alfonso to withdraw their troops from Tuscany, and |Relations with Ferrara and Venice, 1482-84.| to concentrate their attention on the recovery of Otranto. Fortunately for Italy, the death of Mohammed II. on May 3, 1481, and a dispute as to the Turkish succession, led to the withdrawal of the invaders, and enabled the Neapolitan rulers to claim a military triumph which they had done little or nothing to bring about. But the alliance between Naples and the papacy had been completely annulled, and Sixtus, as restless as ever, did not scruple to form a new coalition, which was destined to have momentous results to Italy. Venice had concluded the treaty of Constantinople with the Turks in 1479, and was eager to obtain upon Italian soil compensation for its losses in the east. Hence arose in 1482 an unscrupulous and unprecedented alliance between the papacy and Venice for the spoliation of Ercole d’Este of Ferrara. The danger to the balance of power in Italy led to the formation of a hostile coalition between Naples, Florence, and Milan. Sixtus IV. soon discovered that he had gained nothing by his change of allies. Venice had seized the district of Rovigo from Ferrara, but had obviously no intention of handing over any share of the spoils to Girolamo Riario. At the same time, Neapolitan troops entered the papal states and threatened Rome, and there was a risk that the misdeeds of the papacy might result in the meeting of another general council. The Pope, whose policy was entirely selfish, did not hesitate to avert the danger by a sudden and complete change of front. In 1483 he made peace with Naples and Ferrara, excommunicated the Venetians for disturbing the peace of Italy, and prepared to seize the cities which Venice had acquired within the papal dominions. But his restless greed was again doomed to disappointment. Venice adroitly ended the war by the treaty of Bagnolo, in which the only loser was the unfortunate duke of Ferrara, and Sixtus was chagrined to find that he had gained absolutely nothing by his ill-faith. Soon afterwards he died on August 12, 1484, and contemporary lampoons declared that he died of peace.
‘Nulla vis potuit sævum extinguere Sixtum: