AN EPISODE.
The caption “episode” is advisedly adopted, inasmuch as we are going to transcribe only one short chapter from a large manuscript of several hundred pages containing “The Life of Sixtus V.”
However, it is to be regretted that such a life is not published. For it would reveal unto us the man, whereas Ranke and Hübner describe only the prince.
Sixtus V. fell into that mistake, which has proved disastrous to many popes, and has afforded a weapon, however silly and easily broken, yet a real weapon to the enemies of the Papacy—nepotism. The charge is exaggerated of course: in fact, what our enemies assert to have been the universal failing of all the popes, the true historian avers to have been the mistake of a few, whereas the examples of heroic detachment from kindred given by the vast majority of the Pontiffs are wonderful. S. Gregory the Great says, “better there should be a scandal than the truth were suppressed”; and surely the church needs no better defence than the truth. For the present purpose, suffice it to quote the Protestant Ranke, who, after a thorough investigation of the subject, gave it as his honest opinion that only three or four popes are really liable to the charge of nepotism. It is pleasant to be able to quote such an opinion of an eminent non-Catholic writer against scores of wilful men, who sharpen their weapons and discharge their shafts, not after honest study and investigation, but merely on the promptings of blind hatred.
Pope Sixtus V. was the second son of Piergentile Peretti of Montalto.
His eldest brother was Prospero, who married Girolama of Tullio Mignucci, and died A.D. 1560, without issue.
Camilla was his only sister. She was led to the altar by Gianbattista Mignucci, brother to Girolama. To an exquisite correctness of judgment, and great generosity of heart, she joined a quick apprehension of the importance of circumstances by which she might find herself suddenly encompassed. The Anonimo of the Capitoline Memoirs says that when Camilla was unexpectedly raised from the obscure life of a contadino’s wife to the rank of a Roman lady, she was not stunned, but felt perfectly at ease, whilst her society was coveted by the choicest circles of the nobility. Cardinal d’Ossat, in his Letters, informs us that she was greatly esteemed and dearly beloved by Louise de Lorraine, queen-dowager of the gifted but perverse Henry III. of France. The works of her munificence and public charity in her native Grottamare are many, and enduring to our day.
Father Felix Peretti had already mounted all the rounds but one of ecclesiastical preferment—the cardinal’s hat was almost within his reach. He was a bishop, and occupied some of the highest offices in the Curia Romana. He thought the time had come to satisfy a long-felt desire—the ennoblement of his family. Hence, in 1562, he called his sister to Rome, having obtained a sovereign’s rescript by which his brother was allowed to change his name, Mignucci, into that of Peretti. On the 17th day of May, 1570, Pius V. raised Mgr. Felix Peretti to the dignity of cardinal. Thenceforward he is more generally known in history as Cardinal Montalto, from the place of his nativity.
Thus, even previous to his brother-in-law’s elevation, Gianbattista Mignucci enters Rome transformed into Peretti, to join his wife and their two children Francis and Mary.
O fallaces cogitationes nostras! The friar hopes his name, made illustrious by himself, will not become extinct; but he is mistaken; if recorded on the tablets of time it will not surely be by a worldly alliance, which is doomed to a dishonored extinction. The church will inscribe the Peretti name and fame on the adamantine records of her immortality.