Front matter (continued 6)

It is impossible here to discuss all the causes of the Reformation, and a few considerations will suffice for my purpose. Printing had been invented and printed sheets were being circulated. Men were now reading—which provokes independent reflection—rather than sitting at the feet of oracular schoolmen. Among the books which poured out from the press, moreover, the Bible—in spite of a popular fallacy on that subject—occupied an important place, even in the vernacular. Further—and this was most important of all—the last great extension of the Papal fiscal system, the granting of indulgences for money, was in one important respect based on a novel speculation of the schoolmen and was not supported by Biblical Christianity. The realization of this stimulated men to get behind the fences of Decretals and scholastic speculations, and to claim a reform which should be something more than the substitution of a good Pope for a bad Pope. Finally the renewed corruption of the Papal Court under Leo X. set this psychological machinery in conscious motion.

Twenty-five cardinals were enclosed in the Sistine Chapel on March 4th for the election of the new Pope. Wealth was now of no direct avail, for all accepted the Bull of Julius condemning bribery. Some of the poorer cardinals, knowing that their votes were not marketable, had tried to secure the treasure (about 300,000 ducats) left by Julius, but the keeper of Sant' Angelo had been incorruptible. Yet we must not emphasize the absence of bribery: there is such a thing as gratitude for favours to come. For nearly a week the enclosed cardinals discussed and negotiated. It is confidently stated that, while the older cardinals were, as usual, divided in allegiance to several of their body, the younger cardinals stood aloof and were secretly resolved to elect Giovanni de' Medici. Cardinal Giovanni lay abed in his little cell—imagine the Sistine Chapel containing thirty-one bedrooms—suffering from fistula. A surgeon was with him in the Conclave, and his condition was unpleasantly felt in the sealed room. A close friend of his, Bernardo Dovizo, or Bibbiena as he was commonly called, canvassed for him, and assured the cardinals of his liberal and grateful disposition, his high origin, and his peaceful intentions. He was only thirty-seven years of age, but the older cardinals may have concluded that his malady compensated for his youth. At the first scrutiny, on March 10th, he was elected, and he took the name of Leo X.

The earlier life of Leo X. has been told in the previous chapters. The second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, born on December 11, 1475, he was thrust into the ranks of the clergy at the age of seven, he received the title of cardinal at the age of fourteen, and he was openly admitted to the Sacred College two years later. He had received a stimulating education from the Humanist scholars of Florence, and amidst the dissipations of Rome he remained a sober and diligent scholar. He retired to Florence under Alexander VI., and, when his family were driven from power and repeatedly failed to recover it, he travelled in Germany, the Netherlands, and France. Under Julius II., he found some favour and became Legate for Bologna and Romagna. He was captured by the French at the fatal battle of Ravenna, but he made his escape on their retreat from Italy, and soon afterwards became the chief representative of his house on their restoration to Florence. His public record was, therefore, slight, and his time had been mainly devoted to the cultivation of letters and the enjoyment of art, especially music. His interests were so well known that on one of the triumphal arches erected for his coronation it was boldly announced that Venus (Alexander) and Mars (Julius) had now made way for Minerva; which a more discerning neighbour had modified by erecting an assurance that Venus lived for ever. It was, and is, believed that his life before he became Pope was free from irregularity. In spite of three fasts a week and a strenuous devotion to the chase, he was an abnormally fat man, and his pale, puffy face was not improved by his large myopic eyes, which saw little without the aid of a glass. But his unfailing smile, his charming manners, his ready wit, his prodigal generosity, and his unalterable love of peace and sunshine promised a genial contrast to the reign of his predecessor, and Rome gave him a princely welcome.

There are three chief aspects of the Pontificate of Leo X. which it is material to consider, and, although it is difficult entirely to separate them, it is convenient to attempt this. There is his political—or more correctly his diplomatic—action, which, though, in that Machiavellian age, it seemed only a degree worse than was customary, impresses the modern mind as almost revolting in its studied duplicity. There is his personal life, which inspired the reformers with volumes of vituperation, while modern writers seem able to regard it without much sentiment. And there is the Pontifical activity which culminates in the struggle with Luther. His relation to mediæval art is less important than is commonly supposed.

Mediæval Italy was no place for a prince of peace, and Leo soon found that, if he were to avoid the sword, he must follow a crooked course. He sincerely loathed the clash of swords. He loved jewels and music and comedies and books; he wanted to spend the Papal treasury in surrounding himself with pretty things and flashes of wit—and he thus spent the whole of Julius's 300,000 ducats in two years. But France and Venice thirsted for revenge and sought his support; while the envoys of Milan, Spain, England, and the Empire claimed his blessing, and his ducats, for the opposite side. While, however, in the actual condition of Italy, the Papal States were safe, a victory of France and Venice would bring perils. Leo secretly joined the Holy League against France, and secretly paid for the service of 45,000 Swiss mercenaries. The policy turned out well. France was driven back, and the leaders of the schismatical cardinals, Carvajal and Sanseverino, came to Rome, and humbly accepted Leo's obedience. France repudiated the schism, and Venice, after a desultory struggle, was pacified.

Leo found some time for domestic matters, of which two may be noted here. On September 23d (1513) he created four cardinals, of whom three were relatives and one a literary friend. Bernardo Bibbiena (or Dovizo) had, as I said, promoted his interest in the Conclave, and at earlier times, and was an accomplished literary man; he was also entirely devoid of moral sentiment, composed the most indecent comedy that was enacted at the Vatican, and was a genius at organizing festivities. Innocenzo Cibò, son of Innocent VIII.'s natural son Franceschetto and Leo's sister Maddalena, was a youth who seemed eager to emulate the scandalous repute of his father. Giulio de' Medici, cousin of the Pope, had already received a Papal dispensation from illegitimacy, and the quiet and delicate youth was advanced a little nearer to the Papacy. Lorenzo Pucci, lastly, was quite a distinguished canonist, and a relative of Leo; he was also expert in pushing the sale of indulgences and very solicitous about his own commission.

Leo then regarded the fortunes of the chief lay members of his family. His brother Giuliano, a highly cultivated man of thirty-four, was too much softened by vice and indulgence to carry out the Medici policy at Florence. This policy, embodied in a paper of instructions which there is good reason to ascribe to Leo himself, was entrusted to the Pope's nephew Lorenzo, a vigorous young sportsman. Giuliano was made a Baron of Rome and commander of the Papal army—Leo remarking that he trusted there would be no demand upon his military talent—and it was so confidently rumoured that the Pope proposed to make him King of Naples that Ferdinand was alarmed and had to be reassured. It is still disputed whether Leo really had this intention, or whether he merely proposed to make a small principality in central Italy for his worthless brother; nor, in view of the secrecy and duplicity of the Pope's methods, is the point ever likely to be settled on a documentary basis. It seems consistent both with the course of events and with Leo's character to suppose that he kept both alternatives in mind, but that nepotism was not the first principle of his policy: his fundamental idea was the maintenance of his own luxurious security.[294]

In this pleasant promotion of his friends and relatives and their innumerable followers, in the prodigal encouragement of the artists, musicians, poets, and jewellers who flocked to Rome from all parts, Leo spent two years which were only slightly clouded by the rapid exhaustion of the Papal treasury. Meantime, however, the political situation had once more claimed his impatient attention, and we may for the moment confine ourselves to that interesting aspect of his work. Louis, disgusted with the Papacy, approached Ferdinand of Spain and was prepared to abandon to him his claims on Milan, Genoa, and Naples. This prospect of the enclosure of Papal territory in a Spanish vice threw the Pope into a fit of diplomatic activity. He secretly negotiated with Venice and Florence and Ferrara, and sent a legate to England to help to reconcile Henry VIII with Louis. He trusted to induce these Powers to form a league with him for the purpose of driving the Spaniards out of Italy, and aimed at securing Naples for his brother.[295] In October the French King married Mary Tudor, and the Spanish spectre was laid. But, with the unvarying logic of Papal politics, the fear of Spain was succeeded by a fear of France, and the Pope had recourse to the kind of diplomacy which is characteristic of him, and in which, we are assured, he took great pleasure. He made a secret treaty with Spain for the defence of Italy, and a secret treaty of alliance with Louis against Spain.[296] He encouraged Louis, who held out to him the prospect of Naples, to attack Italy, and secretly promised to assist Milan and the Emperor against the French if Louis did attack Italy, which he thought improbable. He thus, he thought, secured a principality for Giuliano, whichever side won. "When you have made a league with one man," he used to say, "there is no reason why you should cease to negotiate with his opponent."

This policy, it is recorded, cost Leo sleepless nights, though not on account of moral scruples. Louis pressed him for a definite alliance against Milan, and he tried to evade it by pleading that it was not meet for Christian princes to engage in warfare while the Turk threatened Europe. The death of Louis in January (1515) made matters worse, as his successor, Francis I., determined with all the vigour and ambition of youth to press the French claims. Leo kept a legate negotiating with Francis, and we learn from the Legate's letters that he offered an alliance on condition that Naples should be surrendered to Giuliano. In the meantime (February 1st), he secretly approved of the league of Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Milan, and Genoa against France, and stipulated that he should have Parma, Piacenza, Modena, and Reggio; he would pay 60,000 ducats a month to the league, and would induce Henry VIII.—partly by making Wolsey a cardinal—to join it. In July he secretly signed the league, yet continued his deceptive correspondence with France. We have still the document in which Leo, after joining the league, offered an alliance to Francis on condition that he renounced his claim to Parma and Piacenza, made peace with Spain with a view to meeting the Turks, and surrendered his claim to Naples "in favour of the Holy See or of a third person approved by the Holy See."[297]

During the campaign which followed, Leo wavered according to the news he received. When the French took Milan, he made peace with them; they were to respect the position of the Medici at Florence, and Leo was to renounce the Papal claim to Parma and Piacenza. He had, however, a more creditable object in view than the interest of his family. He met Francis at Bologna, and there can be no doubt that they then agreed to substitute a Concordat for the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438. For the promise of a tithe on his clergy, Francis surrendered their Gallican privileges, and became, as he thought, the real ally of the Pope. Leo ordered the Swiss to refrain from attacking the French in Milan, and listened approvingly to the King's designs on Naples. Within three months, however, the Emperor Maximilian led a body of Swiss troops, in the pay of Henry VIII., to an attack on Milan, and Leo was summoned by Francis to dispatch troops in accordance with their agreement. Carefully retarding the levy of his troops so that they should not arrive in time, and keeping a legate by the side of Maximilian, Leo awaited the result. The expedition failed, and he sought favour with the exasperated Francis by revealing to him that Henry VIII. had secretly paid the Swiss, and by sending once more an insincere command that the Swiss must not dare to attack an ally of the Papacy. He sought to retain the favour of Maximilian by reminding him that he had sent him two hundred Papal horse under Mark Antonio Colonna; and to Francis he protested that Colonna had acted without permission. He then assured Francis that he had sent a legate to induce Maximilian to make peace with France, and he gave secret instructions to the legate that such a peace would not be to the interest of the Papacy.

This is the admitted framework of that diplomacy which Roscoe contrives to dress in such opulent phrases, and it was a policy that Leo never altered. His next step was to seize the duchy of Urbino for his nephew Lorenzo: a step which, after all his apologies, Dr. Pastor admits to have "something repulsive about it." The Duke of Urbino (nephew of Julius II.) had, in spite of his feudal obligations, refused to attack the French at the command of the Pope, and seems to have discussed with Francis the duplicity of the Pope's procedure. Yet his liberality to the Medici in the days of misfortune had been such that Giuliano earnestly joined with Francis I. in imploring Leo to overlook his conduct. Leo harshly refused, and, to the disgust of many, the duchy was subdued and given to Lorenzo. I may conclude this matter by recounting that in 1517 the exiled Duke recovered his territory, and the long struggle for his ejection cost the Papal treasury, according to Guicciardini, 800,000 ducats.

A fresh anxiety clouded the Pope's pleasures when he heard that France, Spain, Germany, and Switzerland had formed an alliance, and that Francis I. and Charles V. (who succeeded Ferdinand on January 23d) were virtually to divide northern and central Italy between them. This project was abandoned, but in the following year an even more serious event alarmed the Pope. The younger cardinals who had pressed his election were generally aggrieved. Fast and luxurious as most of them were, they had expected a larger pecuniary gratitude on Leo's part, and they observed with annoyance that his relatives and his literary admirers secured the greater part of his lavish gifts. In 1517, one of these worldly young cardinals, Petrucci, conceived a particular animosity against Leo, on account of some injustice done to his brother, and there is little room for doubt that he spoke and thought of having the Pope assassinated. Whether or no we trust the romantic story told by Guicciardini and Giovio, that the surgeon who attended the Pope was to poison his wound, we can hardly accept the opposite rumour, that the whole conspiracy was invented by the Pope or his brother in order to secure money. Petrucci was not offered the option of a fine; and Cardinals Riario and Sauli confessed that they knew of the plot. After a dramatic period of inquiry and incrimination Petrucci was, in spite of the protests of cardinals and ambassadors, strangled in his prison, and the flesh of his guilty servants was torn from their bones with red-hot pincers. Cardinal Riario paid 150,000 ducats for his release, and the less wealthy Cardinal Sauli 25,000. Cardinals Soderini and Castellesi fled, when they were impeached, and their property and that of Cardinal Petrucci was seized.

These events caused the gravest scandal throughout Christendom. Cardinal Riario was the Dean of the Sacred College, and many preferred to think that the plot was an invention for the purpose of securing funds rather than that the cardinals had sunk so low. The dilemma was painful, but we can have little doubt that Leo, at least, was convinced of the reality of the plot. Instead of proceeding with greater caution, however, he went on to give a fresh ground of criticism. In a Consistory which he held on June 26th, he told the cardinals that he was going to add no less than twenty-seven members to their college. Their stormy protests increased his determination, and on July 1st he promoted thirty-one cardinals. The rumour at once spread through Christendom, and is in substance undoubted, that most of the new cardinals paid large sums of money for the dignity; Sanuto makes individual payments rise as high as 30,000 ducats. Some of them were men of low character, and others were either related to, or had lent money to, the Pope.

We may, however, conclude the political consideration before we discuss these domestic matters. Maximilian induced the Diet of Augsburg to elect his grandson Charles as his successor to the imperial title, and, as a Bull of Julius II. enacted that the investiture of the kingdom of Naples reverted to the Papacy if its holder became King of Rome, the Pope was pressed to give a dispensation from this Bull. Leo pleaded that his "honour" was at stake; but he secretly negotiated with Francis (who bitterly opposed the dispensation) and with Charles, and bargained shamelessly for his refusal or consent. In the end Francis (out of funds raised in the name of a crusade) gave Lorenzo de' Medici 100,000 ducats "for services rendered," and promised a further sum of 100,000 to the Pope. It is an equally undisputed fact that on January 20, 1519, Leo, Lorenzo, and Francis entered into an alliance; the Pope and his nephew were to promote the interests of Francis, and the French King was to protect the Papal States and the estates of the Medici family, and to admit the claims of the Church at Milan. It is, perhaps, the choicest example of Leo's diplomacy—"unparalleled double-dealing," Dr. Pastor calls it—that he secretly drew up a similar treaty with Spain and signed it a fortnight after he had signed the preceding (February 6th).

In the meantime Leo heard that Maximilian had died on January 12th, and he confronted, or evaded, the situation in his distinctive way. He informed his German legate that Charles was already too powerful, and that either Frederic of Saxony (whom he wished to induce to surrender Luther) or Joachim of Brandenburg (a docile noble) ought to have the imperial title. Hearing, however, that these candidates had no prospect, he adopted Francis I. and urged him to defeat Charles. His policy at this stage is not wholly clear, and it is possible that at first he pitted Francis against Charles in the hope of making profit from one or the other. In time he seems seriously to have adopted Francis. He, on March 12th, offered the red hat to the Electors of Trèves and Cologne, and proposed (on the 14th) to make the Archbishop of Mayence (a disreputable prelate) permanent legate for Germany; and he then, on May 4th, issued a Brief to the effect that if three Electors agreed in their choice the election should be valid. His schemes were shaken for a moment by the premature death of Lorenzo, which moved him, in a nervous hour, to exclaim that henceforward he belonged, "not to the house of Medici, but to the house of God." But his associates were not kept long in suspense. He attempted to incorporate Urbino in the Papal States, and, when Francis objected that Urbino belonged to Lorenzo's surviving child (and her French mother), the Pope began to abandon France. He was just in time to approve Charles and promise a dispensation in regard to Naples before that prince was elected to be Emperor.

But the consciousness of his long opposition to Charles weighed upon him, and in September he again made a secret treaty with Francis I.; he would refuse the crown of Naples to Charles and would promote French interests by secular and spiritual weapons in return for the French King's aid against Charles and against "insubordinate vassals." Vassals of Leo X. cannot easily have kept pace with the remarkable policy of their feudal lord, but we are hardly reconciled to the Pope's mingled greed and nepotism. He secured Perugia and some of the smaller places in Ancona and Umbria, and made an unsuccessful attempt to get Ferrara. During all this time, he listened amiably to German proposals for an alliance, and in the first months of 1521 he again duped the two monarchs. In January—and it was repeated in March and April—he gave the representatives of Charles a written assurance that he had no engagements to the disadvantage of that monarch and would not incur any within three months; in the same month (January) he agreed to secure for Francis, for the purpose of an attack on Naples, a free passage through the Swiss lines, and to receive in return Ferrara and a strip of Neapolitan territory.

By this time, however, the shadow of Luther had fallen on the Papal Court. The magnitude of the danger in Germany was by no means appreciated, but Leo was eager to get Luther to Rome and must conciliate the Emperor. In May, hearing that the French were approaching the Swiss and the Duke of Ferrara, he formed an alliance with Charles and prepared to use all his forces to drive his former ally out of Italy. The campaign opened successfully, but Leo did not live to see the issue and profit by it. He caught a chill as he sat at an open window in November watching the popular rejoicing, and died on December 1st, at the age of forty-two. Both the leading authorities, Giovio and Guicciardini, accept the current belief that either the Duke of Ferrara or the late Duke of Urbino had had him poisoned, but it is now generally recognized that the recorded symptoms of his seven days' illness point rather to malaria.

This admitted career of duplicity will not dispose us to expect a domestic atmosphere of virtue and piety at the Vatican, and it is singular that any historian has affected to find such. That Leo heard or said mass daily, and was attentive to his ceremonious obligations, is not, in that age, inconsistent with impropriety of conduct. His lavish charity was a becoming part of his habitual liberality, and his weekly fasts were rather intended to reduce the flesh than to subdue it. On the other hand, some of the frivolous remarks attributed to him have not the least authority. When the Venetian ambassador ascribes to him the saying, "Let us enjoy the Papacy now that God has given it to us," we may or may not have a mere popular rumour, though the phrase is at least a correct expression of Leo's ideal; but that the Pope ever mockingly attributed his good fortune to "the fable about Jesus Christ" is not stated until long after his death, and then only by an English controversialist, the ex-Carmelite Bale. Whether Leo was or was not addicted to sins of the flesh is not a grave matter of historical inquiry, but the evidence seems to me conclusive that, at least in his Pontifical days, he was irregular.[298]

The character of life at the Vatican and in Rome under Leo X. was, indeed, such as to prevent us from imputing any moral scruples to the Pope. Leo spent, on the lowest estimate, five million ducats in eight years, and left debts which are variously estimated at from half a million to a million ducats. He must have spent nearly £300,000 per year, and in order to make his official income of about 400,000 ducats meet this strain he created and sold superfluous offices—they were estimated at 2150 at this death,—pressed the sale of indulgences and the exaction of fees and first-fruits, and borrowed large sums at exorbitant rates of usury; several of his bankers and friends were ruined at his death. A very large proportion of this money went in gifts to literary men and scholars. Leo was a royal spendthrift of the most benevolent and thoughtless nature. All the scribblers of Italy flocked to Rome, and money was poured out without discrimination as long as it lasted. Yet letters and scholarship actually decayed owing to the recklessness of the payments. "The splendour of the Leonine age, so often and so much belauded, is in many respects more apparent than real," says Dr. Pastor, who has several valuable chapters on Leo's relation to letters and art. The Roman University, which the Pope at first supported with great liberality, was suffered to decay, and great artists were not always encouraged. Ariosto was treated harshly, and, while Rafael and his pupils were richly employed, Michael Angelo was little used. Leo did not adequately appreciate sculpture or architecture, and even the building of St. Peter's made very little progress during his Pontificate. It is true that the state of the Papal finances was the chief reason for the neglect of the great architectural and educational plans of his predecessors. The check to the sale of indulgences—brought about by Cardinal Ximenes in Spain as well as by Luther in Germany—was felt severely at Rome.[299] But we read that to the end Leo spent prodigious sums on musicians, decorators, goldsmiths, and jewellers. An inventory in the Vatican archives values at 204,655 ducats the jewels he left behind.

It was, in fact, not so much the discriminating promotion of art and culture as a princely luxuriousness that absorbed Leo's funds. He was temperate at table. The cardinals and wealthier Romans continued to enjoy the senselessly rich banquets which they seem to have copied from the most decadent pages of Roman history. Cardinal Cornaro is noted as giving a dinner of sixty-five courses on silver dishes. Banker Chigi, a useful friend of Leo, had his valuable plate thrown into the river after one choice banquet; and on the occasion of his marriage with his mistress (whose finger was held by Leo to receive the ring) he brought luxuries, even live fish, from the ends of Europe. Banker Strozzi gave rival banquets, at which cardinals fraternized with courtesans. Leo approved, and sometimes attended, these banquets (at Chigi's palace), but was personally temperate. He had only one meal each day, and fasting fare on three days in each week, but he spent immense sums on musicians and trinket-makers, and many of his pleasures were in the grossest taste of the time. Men of prodigious appetite—one of them a Dominican friar—were brought to his table to amuse him and his guests by their incredible gluttony. The Pope bandied verses with half-drunken poetasters and patronized the coarsest buffoons as well as the keenest wits. When he went to his country house at Magliana for a few weeks' hunting—in which he displayed extraordinary vigour—he took a troop of his poets, buffoons, musicians, and other parasites. At Carnival time he entered into the wild gaiety of Rome; and comedies of the most licentious character were staged before him. Ariosto's Suppositi (in which Cardinal Cibò took a part), Machiavelli's Mandragola, and Bibbiena's Calandria alternated with Terence and Plautus. The Calandria, written by Cardinal Bibbiena, Leo's chief favourite, the frescoes of whose bathroom seem to have been like those on certain rooms in Pompeii today, is a comedy of thin wit and unrestrained license; the Pope had it presented in the Vatican for the entertainment of Isabella d'Este.

Such was the Pope who presided over the Lateran Council for the reform of the Church, and the historian will hardly be expected to enlarge at any length on its labours. Julius had initiated the council in order to checkmate France and the schismatical cardinals, and it continued its thinly attended sittings, at wide intervals, for four years. Some seventy or eighty Italian bishops attended, and they issued some admirable counsels to the clergy to improve their lives, condemned heretical writings, and voiced the sincere wish that some Christian prince would arrest the advance of the Turks. A committee of the council drew up a stringent and comprehensive scheme for the reform of Church-abuses, but this was lost amid the vehement wrangles of monks, bishops, and cardinals. In the end (1514) a very slender reform-bill was issued; nor were the clergy disposed to comply with this when they noticed that, in the following year, Leo himself bestowed a bishopric, and soon afterwards the cardinalate, upon the boy-son of Emmanuel of Portugal, and granted to the father a large share of the proceeds of the issue of indulgences. The council also forbade the printing of books without approbation, and encouraged the spread of banks or pawn-shops (Monti di Pietà) for the poor. On March 16, 1517, Leo, in spite of the murmurs of the reformers and the revolt in Germany, brought to a close his almost futile council. He had no desire whatever for reform, and even the measures which were passed were not enforced. The reforming prelates were deeply saddened by his levity, and, before the close of the council, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola drew up in their name an appalling indictment of the state of the Church and predicted that the refusal to remedy it would bring on them a heavy judgment.

The one work of the Council in which the Pope took a lively interest was the granting of a Concordat to France. The Gallican sentiments of the French prelates and doctors had been embodied in the Pragmatic Sanction (1438), and Rome had not ceased to protest against this cession to local councils of the powers it claimed. By the Concordat of 1516 the King and the Pope virtually divided these powers between them; the King had the right of nomination to bishoprics and abbeys, the Pope received the "first-fruits" (Annates). The Concordat was signed by Leo on September 16, 1516, but was not published until 1518, when it caused fierce indignation at the universities and among the clergy.

Leo had dismissed the reformers of the Lateran Council, and in the spring of 1517, the very year in which Martin Luther nailed his challenge on the door of the castle-church at Wittenberg, turned with relief to his corrupt court. There had, as we saw, long been an outcry in Germany against the corruption of a very large proportion of the clergy and against the Papal fiscal system, yet Leo had light-heartedly maintained the disorders. In 1514 he had, in order to secure the votes of two Electors, conferred the Archbishopric of Mayence upon a young and worldly noble, Albert of Brandenburg, and had (for a payment of 24,000 ducats) permitted him still to retain the sees of Magdeburg and Halberstadt. In order to recover the 24,000 ducats, which he had borrowed on the security of a share in the sale of indulgences, the unscrupulous prelate pressed the traffic eagerly, and some of the more enlightened German clergy protested. There were already princes, such as the Elector of Saxony, who refused to allow the Papal envoys in their dominions, and there were writers, like Ulrich von Hutten, who violently assailed their procedure. Leo, however, failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation and proposed to raise large sums, ostensibly for the building of St. Peter's, by granting indulgences.

I have already explained that, though John XXIII. undoubtedly sold absolution "from guilt and from penalty," as the Council of Constance established, the indulgence was, properly speaking, a remission of the punishment due to sins which had been duly confessed. In earlier Papal practice, the indulgence was the commutation into a money-payment of the penance for sin imposed by the Church, but, as the doctrine of Purgatory developed, the indulgence came to be regarded as a remission of the punishment due in Purgatory. Two questions had then arisen on which the schoolmen had exercised their ingenuity: on what ground could the Church claim to remit this punishment, and whether the indulgence could be extended to the dead who were actually suffering in Purgatory? The schoolmen found a satisfactory answer to both questions. Then Boniface IX. decreed that an indulgence might be earned by a payment of money to the Church (the price of a voyage to Rome), and the way was opened for the later abuse. In their commercial zeal the Papal envoys and preachers undoubtedly represented that souls were delivered from the fire of Purgatory when the coin rang in their collecting boxes.

The Dominican monk Tetzel, who in 1517 was sent to preach the indulgence as Albert of Brandenburg's sub-commissary, was more zealous than scrupulous in his representations, and people of Wittenberg, who had crossed the frontier in order to profit by the indulgence, came home with unedifying reports of his sermons. Martin Luther, then a professor at the Wittenberg University, heard these reports with disdain. There was no defined doctrine of the Church on the subject, and more than one divine had felt, like Luther, that this apparent traffic was as enervating to real piety as it was in itself distasteful. A man of intense and stormy spiritual experience, he sternly combated all that seemed to encourage "sloth" in religious life; his was the more arduous religion of St. Paul and St. Augustine. Conscious, therefore, that the whole practice was based on comparatively recent speculations of the schoolmen, which he had a right to dispute, he challenged Tetzel to justify his "lying fables and empty promises." A war of pamphlets ensued, and, as his opponents naturally appealed to the language in which the Popes had announced indulgences, Luther was compelled to slight the words of the Popes and appeal to the declarations of Councils and the teaching of Scripture. He was still orthodox; the language he used had been heard in the Church for two centuries, and in that age one would as soon have thought of claiming impeccability as infallibility for the Popes.

At the beginning of 1518 it was reported to Rome that the agitation raised by the robust professor was seriously interfering with the indulgences, and Leo, encouraged by the angry Dominicans, directed his superiors to restrain him. When they failed, he summoned Luther to Rome. The monk, knowing how such trials ended at Rome, appealed to the Elector of Saxony and to Maximilian. The appeal to the Emperor, however, fell at a time when the Papal favour was sought for Charles, and Maximilian encouraged the Pope to take action. Leo ordered Luther to present himself at once before the Papal Legate and prepare for trial at Rome. On the other hand Frederic of Saxony insisted that Luther should be examined in Germany, and the Pope dreaded to irritate an Elector on the eve of an imperial election. Legate Cajetan was therefore empowered to see the rebel at Augsburg, and a series of futile conferences took place on October 12th-14th. Luther wished to argue and justify his thesis: Cajetan was instructed merely to demand his submission. Luther insisted that he should be tried by the learned doctors of Basle, Freiburg, Louvain, and Paris: the legate was charged to assert the Papal authority. On October 18th Luther departed in disgust for Wittenberg; and his temper was not improved by the discovery that Leo had, on August 23d, directed the legate, in case of obstinacy, to declare him heretical. He appealed to a General Council.

Luther was still within the limits of orthodox sentiment and practice, and the protection of the Elector embarrassed the Pope. A more diplomatic envoy, Karl von Militz, a Papal chamberlain, was sent to Germany, and some months were spent in amiable correspondence. Luther promised to be silent if his opponents would keep silence, and wrote a respectful letter to the Pope; to which Leo made a gracious reply. But the truce was little more than a diplomatic regard for Papal interests during the period of the imperial election, and the policy of silence soon proved impossible for both sides. Ulrich von Hutten and other critics encouraged Luther to assail the Papal authority, and the exaggerations of his opponents reacted on the growth of his mind. By the end of 1519 he seems to have concluded, with some firmness, that the Papal system was an unwarranted addition to primitive Christianity, and a formidable movement supported his ideas.

In January (1520) Luther's case was submitted to a commission of theologians at Rome, and the Elector was summoned to compel him to retract. Frederic refused, and in June Leo signed the Bull Exsurge Domine; Luther was to be excommunicated if he did not submit within sixty days, and the secular authorities would incur an interdict if they did not surrender him. It is not of material interest to quarrel with the Pope's procedure: to point out that the disappointed Cajetan was one of the heads of the commission of inquiry, and that Luther's vehement opponent Eck was one of the two legates entrusted with the publication of the Bull. Rome demanded submission; and, if Luther had submitted, some other German would before long have instituted the Reformation. Europe was ripe for schism, and it may be doubted whether even a reform of the Church would have long prevented the growth of a body of men holding the Reformers' view of the bases of Papal authority. On December 10th (1520) Luther publicly burned the Bull. Even this act was not without orthodox precedent, but Luther was constantly advancing. He was summoned before the Diet of Worms in April (1521), and he then stated that the word of neither Popes nor Councils would condemn him; he must be judged by reason and Scripture. But the political situation, which casts its shadow throughout on the development, was now modified. Charles obtained his wish of an alliance with the Papacy against France. This alliance was signed on May 8th: on the 12th the Diet issued the Edict of Worms. Luther was, in accordance with the Pope's second Bull,[300] declared a heretic. He retreated to the Wartburg under the protection of Frederic, and the gravest phase of the struggle opened.[301]

Leo died in December, as I have stated, leaving to his successor the terrible legacy of his frivolity in face of a grave calamity. In his last two years he apprehended, to some extent, the magnitude of the German trouble, but he plainly proposed to answer the just demand of reform only by the burning of a few heretics. His entirely dishonourable diplomacy and his costly indulgence of tastes which ill befitted a successor of Leo I. imposed the last unendurable burden on the patience of Europe. For him the Papacy was a principality, and the religious nature of its financial sources makes more contemptible the use to which he put his wealth. Even that artistic splendour which casts a glow over the Papacy before the breaking of the great storm owed to him comparatively little. The middle or secular phase of the development of the Papacy came to an end in the tawdry luxuries and unscrupulous measures of a Pope who has been treated with singular favour at the bar of Catholic history.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XV

PAUL III. AND THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

The period immediately following the death of Leo X. is known as that of the Counter-Reformation. The name which has clung to the great religious schism of the sixteenth century still indicates how essentially it was, in its origin, a protest against the corruption of the mediæval Church. The reform of dogma was an afterthought; and the Reformation would probably have proved one more futile and academic criticism of the mediæval growth of doctrine if it had not primarily appealed to the very general resentment against the practices of the Curia and contempt for the unworthy lives of so large a proportion of the clergy and regulars. The situation, indeed, offers a romantic aspect to the historian. If a strong and entirely religious man, like Cardinal Carafa, had succeeded Leo X., it might have been possible, by a notable improvement in practice, to disarm a very effective proportion of the followers of the Reformers and thus to put back for a century or two the doctrinal revision. Unhappily for the Papacy, Leo X. had filled the Sacred College with men of his own disposition, and thirty years were wasted in fruitless efforts at compromise. In those thirty years, the hesitating criticisms of Luther crystallized into a settled creed which no persuasion could dissolve and no persecution could obliterate.

Hadrian VI., who followed Leo, spent two unhappy years (1521-3) in a pitiable and wholly vain attempt to save the authority of the Popes in northern Europe. Sprung from a pious working-class family of the Low-lands, and retaining his simple tastes and stern religious idealism in the evil atmosphere of the higher clergy, he sincerely resented the vices and frivolity of the cardinals. Rome itself now ridiculed so fiercely the contrast between their pretensions and their lives that the worldly cardinals were unable to put into power a man like Leo X., and the learned, venerable, and more or less disdained Hadrian VI. shuddered to find himself at the helm on so stormy a sea. He was not the type of man to save the Church. With simple fidelity, he at once made it clear that the debased policy of his predecessor was abandoned; but he had not the strength to control the crowd of discontented cardinals and prelates, or to frame and carry through a consistent scheme of reform. He was concerned, too, about the financial loss which would be caused by a thorough reform, and the traffic in benefices and indulgences was merely moderated instead of being abolished. The curtailment was in itself a confession that the system was corrupt, and the Reformers scoffed at Hadrian's invitation to return on such a basis, while orthodox Catholics deplored the candour of the admission. Between these antagonistic and weighty forces the slender energy of the well meaning Pontiff was exhausted in two years.

The Pontificate of Clement VII. (1523-34) was a compromise; he was a Medicean Pope (Giulio de' Medici), a patron of art and letters, but a man of sober taste and regular life. It was a compromise, too, between a keen intelligence and a flabby will—a sagacious perception of the danger and a complete lack of the virility needed to avert it—and eleven further years of impotence permitted the Reformation to take deep and indestructible root in Germany. Clement VII. was, in fact, largely absorbed in the unending political struggle. After some vacillation he allied himself with France against Charles V., and Charles won. Rome had to endure one of the most cruel and most prolonged pillages in its history, and the Pope was for seven months imprisoned in Sant' Angelo. He made peace with Charles, but he had little satisfaction in contemplating the imperial shadow which lay over fallen Italy, while the Turks came ever nearer and no Christian monarch would advance against them. In these circumstances, Protestantism became a creed and spread over the north. Henry VIII. married Anne Boleyn and became the "defender" of a new faith; and the revolt spread to Switzerland and Scandinavia. The scanty measures of reform passed by Clement were regarded with disdain by the dissenters, and the artistic Renaissance itself never recovered from the sack of Rome and the overrunning of Italy. It was left to the founders of new religious congregations, especially the Oratorians, Theatines, and Barnabites, and to the reformers of the older orders, to lay the foundations of the Counter-Reformation.

Clement died on September 25, 1534, and the College of Cardinals, which had almost become the curse of the Church, met to elect a successor. Few of these cardinals, even now, grasped with any intelligence the grave situation of their Church. It was, indeed, feared that, while the reform was spreading rapidly in the north, the Conclave would be wrecked by the conflict of the French and Imperialist partisans. The struggle was so menacing that a politically neutral cardinal was forced upon the College, and the graver need of the Church—the need of a Pontiff of the most sincere and spontaneous religion, as well as of large mind and inflexible will—was almost unnoticed.

Alessandro Farnese, who now became Paul III.,[302] was a man of high intelligence, fine culture, and great will-power; but he had neither the immaculate record and deep piety which were needed to impress the Reformers nor the political decision which might have compensated for these defects. However much the historian may appreciate the difficulties of the Papacy, he cannot but recognize that the idea of compromising with the Reformers had at least since 1520 been futile. Paul III. had, it is true, no idea of compromise: the dissenters were to surrender every doctrinal and disciplinary claim, or to be extinguished. The great European schism could now have been remedied by no man. But a reform of the Church on other than doctrinal matters might have done much to arrest the spread of Protestantism, and on this Paul compromised. His policy was a reflection of his personality; he was a son of the Renaissance Church, and feebly—in spite of his admitted strength of will—he endeavoured to retain certain pleasant features of the vicious ancien régime with which to soften the asperity of the new ideal which was forced upon him. He was in a sense a Papal Louis XVIII.

We remember Paul as the brother of Alexander VI's doll-like mistress, Giulia Farnese. Born on February 29, 1468, he had received early instruction in the new culture from Pomponio Leto at Rome, and had spent his youth in that seminary of the Humanists, the splendid palace of Lorenzo de' Medici at Florence, and then at Pisa University. His wealth was far inferior to the nobility of his descent, and it was not until his young sister had attracted the eye of the voluptuous Pope that he was promoted to the cardinalate (September 20, 1493). In 1502, he was appointed legate for the March of Ancona, and the more comfortable establishment he could now afford to maintain included a mistress. Four children—Pier Luigi, Paolo, Costanza, and Ranuccio—were born in his palace between 1502 and 1509; and the eldest son and Costanza were familiar figures in Roman society during his later Pontificate.

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.

Some of the German princes, like the Duke of Bavaria, had no wish to see a religious reconciliation, since their ambition had a larger chance of success in a disunited Empire; and Francis I. was only too eager to support these princes.[306] Other vassals of the Emperor were irreconcilable Protestants. But there were on both sides a few men of a moderate disposition, who believed that a round-table conference might still secure religious peace, if not the old unity. Charles V. was of this opinion, and he made it a test of the Pope's sincerity that he should co-operate in a last attempt. Cardinal Contarini, a man of impressive character and considerable ability, was sent as legate, and for some time before the opening of the Diet of Ratisbon, he zealously endeavoured to find the dogmatic formulæ which had some prospect of common acceptance. Charles had begged the Pope to confer large powers of concession on his legate, but we now know that Paul gave him but slender authority, couched in the vaguest of language.[307] If any attempt were made to settle important points of doctrine, he was to protest and leave the Diet. In a later instruction, he warned Contarini not to allow the Emperor to suspect that Rome favoured the use of force rather than persuasion, and to say, in regard to the proposal that the Papacy should send 50,000 scudi for the purpose of bribing influential Protestants, that such a design seemed neither decent nor safe, but that the 50,000 scudi would be sent "for distribution," if, and when, a reconciliation was effected.[308] It is plain that Paul foresaw the complete failure of the Colloquy—we must remember that success depended entirely on concession and no Pope could make a concession on doctrine—and intended to make the failure a ground for an appeal to arms.

The Diet opened on April 27, 1541, and in a few weeks Contarini and his friends announced with sincere joy that they had reached a common formula on so delicate a topic as justification. This agreement had been reached by the Papal Legate accepting a semi-heretical formula, which Rome afterwards rejected. But the futility of the proceedings soon became apparent. When they went on to discuss transubstantiation and penance, priestly celibacy and monastic vows, the antagonism became acute, and the Colloquy ended in disorder. The Pope rejected all the formulas approved by his Legate, and wrote him, on June 10th, that he was sending the 50,000 scudi, and would send a larger sum if the Catholics found it necessary to draw the sword against the heretics. Some of the stricter cardinals at Rome, such as Carafa and Toledo, were now convinced that force was necessary.

In September (1541) the Pope met the Emperor at Lucca. Charles insisted that the council, whatever form it took, must be held in Germany, but Paul pleaded that he wished to preside in person and that his age forbade so lengthy a journey. We shall hardly be unjust if we regard these pleas as pretexts. The forthcoming council was, in the Pope's view,—an inevitable view,—to be a canonical gathering for the stricter definition of the doctrines already rejected by the Reformers; when that council had formulated the faith, the secular powers must deal with any who dissented from it. Paul still fought for the holding of the council in Italy, where he could overwhelm the Protestant envoys, but as it became entirely certain that not a single Protestant would come to Italy, he spoke of Cambrai, Metz, and other alternatives, and at length consented to Trent. Still there was much friction, and many were not yet convinced that the Pope sincerely desired a reform-council. Francis I. angrily exclaimed that this council seemed to be an imperial concern, and he refused to publish the Bull of Convocation. Charles, on the other side, was annoyed to find that in the Bull he was put on a level with that perfidious ally of the infidel, Francis I., and he threatened to keep his German prelates from going to Trent. But the Pope energetically overbore all opposition, and the historic Council of Trent was announced for November 1st. In the meantime (July, 1542), the Pope reconstituted the Inquisition in Italy and put it under the control of the more fanatical cardinals like Carafa. It was empowered to imprison heretics, confiscate their goods, and (with the use of the secular arm) to put them to death. Dr. Pastor deplores that the Vatican authorities still refuse to allow access to the records of the Roman Inquisition, so that we are very imperfectly acquainted with its work.

The Papal Legates arrived at Trent with great pomp, on November 22d, three weeks after the appointed date, yet not a single bishop had appeared. Six weeks later the arrival of two bishops gave them a slender satisfaction, but by the end of March not more than a dozen bishops—and these mostly Italians—had reached the seat of the council. Neither Germans nor French would come, and the Italians thought it prudent not to arrive in a body so as to give to the council a national complexion. In the summer, Paul went to confer with Charles at Parma, but the issue of their conference was a bitter disappointment for the Catholic reformers. Paul proposed to suspend the opening of the council and to transfer it from Trent, and begged the Emperor to bring about a compromise with France, by yielding Milan to the Pope's nephew, Ottavio. Charles refused to assent, and Paul, on his own account, suspended the council and began to look to Francis I. for the aggrandizement of his family.

The events which followed make the historian wonder that any have attempted to clear the character of Paul III. of disgraceful nepotism and insincerity. Charles V. sought alliance with Henry VIII., and Paul sent his nephew, Cardinal Farnese, to the Court of Francis I. In that grave crisis of the Church's fortunes, we have the Catholic Emperor in alliance with Henry VIII., the most Catholic King in alliance with the Turks, and the Pope seeking, with a notoriety which gave great scandal, the enrichment of his illegitimate children and other relatives. Vittoria Farnese, the Pope's granddaughter, was betrothed to the Duke of Orleans, and the Pope promised her, from the patrimony of St. Peter, the duchies of Parma and Piacenza as her dowry. Charles angrily threatened to invade Rome, and the Spanish and German envoys at the Vatican used language which had rarely been heard in the Papal chambers. It is put to the credit of the Pope only that he refused still to disown or condemn Charles, as Francis demanded, and that he earnestly sought to reconcile the monarchs. In September, his efforts bore fruit in the Peace of Crespy. Yet we must recall that, as all acknowledge, Paul was in part concerned for the security of his family in refusing to incur the hostility of Charles; and we know that a secret clause of the Treaty of Crespy compelled Francis and Charles to unite for the purpose of destroying the Protestants as well as the Turks.

It was also stipulated at Crespy that the council should at last begin its labours, and Paul announced that it would open at Trent on March 25, 1545. But the attempt was again abortive, and only two bishops greeted the Papal Legates on the appointed date. The Catholic monarchs did not believe that the Pope was sincere, and the Protestants were violently opposed to a council on the orthodox Catholic lines. Cardinal Farnese was sent to induce the Emperor to send his German bishops, and we now find Charles leaning more decidedly to the plan of coercion and war. Cardinal Farnese writes in high spirits to his uncle that Charles is, in alliance with the Papacy, about to make war on the Protestants; and it is unhappily characteristic that he adds that this alliance may turn to the great profit of the Farnese family.[309] In fact, the Cardinal returned to Rome with all speed, in disguise, and Paul promised 100,000 ducats and 12,000 men for the war, besides granting Charles a half-year's income of the Spanish Church and permission to raise 500,000 ducats by the sale of monastic property. The eagerness of the Pope at this adoption of a design he had so long cherished may be judged from the fact that his courier to Charles left Rome on June 16th and reached Worms by the 23d. Charles, however, had begun to waver in his brave resolution, and the war was postponed; but the advancement of the Farnesi was not forgotten. The duchies of Parma and Piacenza were now given to Pier Luigi, and the Pope met the violent protests of the cardinals with a statistical "proof" that the duchies were of less value than a few small places which his son surrendered to the Holy See. The annoyance of the reforming prelates was complete when the Pope issued a medal representing a naked Ganymede leaning on an eagle and watering the lily which was the emblem of the Farnese family.[310]

Charles would not consent to the removal of the council to Bologna, and it was at length opened at Trent on December 13, 1545, with an attendance of four archbishops and twenty-one bishops. The first session was purely formal, and the second session (January 7th) was occupied by a violent discussion on procedure. The Emperor feared that a formulation of Catholic doctrines would close the door of the Church definitively against the Germans, and he insisted that the reform of morals and discipline must come first. Paul feared that, if the question of reform came first, the council would almost resolve itself into a trial of the Papacy; and there is good ground to think that, on the other hand, he wanted the doctrines in dispute formulated as a preliminary step to the more drastic condemnation of the Reformers. The conflict ended in compromise: each sitting of the council was to consider both doctrine and reform. The correspondence of the legates with the Pope[311] shows how vehemently Paul fought for his plan, and it was only at their very grave and emphatic assurance that reform must proceed—that deeds, not Bulls, were wanted, as they put it—that he agreed to the compromise.

The fathers of the council, who, at the end of June, had risen in number to about sixty, had held two further sessions, and had discussed only a few dogmas and measures of reform when their labours were again suspended by the outbreak of the religious war. The Protestants had naturally refused to attend the Papal council, and had continued to spread their faith in the north. Paul, therefore, urged Charles to carry out his design of repressing them by arms, and in June (1546) a secret treaty was signed by Charles V., the Duke of Bavaria, Ferdinand I., and the Pope uniting their forces for an attack upon the Schmalkaldic dissenters. In order to prevent Charles from again losing his resolution, the Pope dishonourably communicated this treaty to the Protestants, nor was Charles less angry with Paul for representing to France, Poland, and Venice that the impending struggle was a religious crusade in which any Catholic people might assist. It was the policy of Charles to place his enterprise on purely secular grounds. There was again grave friction between Charles and the Pope, and the Farnesi mingled with the graver issues a petulant complaint that Charles had done so little for them.

The Protestants, however, were badly organized and were soon defeated. Paul bitterly complained that Charles would not follow up his victory by initiating a policy of persecution in south Germany, and would not, when Henry VIII. died (1547), join forces with Francis I. for the invasion of England; and another fiery quarrel ensued. The prelates at Trent conceived that they were menaced by the distant and subdued Protestants, and Paul quickly availed himself of the apprehension to demand a removal to Italy. Charles went so far as to threaten to confiscate the whole of the property of the Church in Germany, but a convenient epidemic broke out at Trent and Paul removed the council to Bologna. Another year was spent in discussion as to the validity of the transfer, and the rumour that the Pope secretly desired to frustrate the work of reform once more gained ground. This is, as I explained, a half-truth. But so little reform was actually achieved during the life of Paul that I need not deal further here with the Council of Trent.

The year 1648 was filled with the acrid conflict of Pope and Emperor. Paul drew nearer to France, and Rome, believing that at length the Pope was about to abandon his policy of neutrality, prepared once more for invasion. Charles made no descent on Italy, but he now took a step which seemed to the Pope almost as scandalous an outrage. He issued his famous Interrim: a document which enacted that, until the points in dispute were settled by a council, priests might marry, the laity might communicate from the chalice, and vague and conciliatory interpretations might be put on the doctrines of the Church. In spite of the intrigues of France, Paul wearily maintained his negotiations with Charles, and, to the last, pressed the ambitions of his family. In October (1549), however, his favourite grandson rebelled against his decision in regard to Parma, and the aged Pope abandoned the unhappy struggle. He died on November 10th of that year.

In spite of the efforts of some recent historians, the character of Paul does not stand out with distinction in the Papal chronicle. His lamentable nepotism mars his whole career, and his real reluctance to press the work of reform did grave injury to his Church. He belonged essentially to the earlier phase of the Papacy, and it is apparent that, if he could have extirpated Protestantism by the sword, the Papacy would have returned to the more decent levities of the days of Leo X. As it was, he did comparatively little for either culture or religion. He very cordially employed Michael Angelo and Sangallo, and showed a concern for the antiquities and the monuments of Rome. He had ability, power, and taste; but he had not that fiery will for reform and that deep religious faith which were needed in that hour of danger.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XVI

SIXTUS V. AND THE NEW CHURCH

The Council of Trent, which had been convoked with the formal aim of healing the great schism of Christendom, hardened that schism and made it irremediable. I have already observed how natural it was that the Papacy should refuse to make open confession of its decay, and in some degree surrender its authority, by permitting the Church to reform, not only its members, but its head. The inevitable conception of the Popes was to retain the work of reform in their own hands and to use the council, if council there must be,—we have seen that Popes had reason to look with suspicion on councils,—to secure an agreement on doctrinal standards by which the Inquisitors might judge, and secular princes might exterminate, heretics. They miscalculated the power of the northern rebels and the chances of an unselfish cohesion of the Catholic princes against them. Nearly half of Europe adopted a new version of the Christian faith, and, when the Thirty Years' War finally proved the indestructibility of that creed, the task of the Papacy was narrowed to the ruling and reforming of southern Europe and the spiritual conquest of the new worlds which had appeared beyond the seas. For this fourth phase of Papal development—the period from the consolidation of the Reformation to the first outbreak of Modernism in the French Revolution—the Pontificates of Sixtus V. and Benedict XIV. are the most illuminating and significant.

Even the failure of Paul III. did not entirely banish from the Vatican the levity which had been the immediate cause of its disaster. Julius III. (1550-1555) at first resumed, somewhat reluctantly, the sittings of the Council of Trent, but he again suspended its work in 1552 and entered upon a period of luxurious ease and frivolous enjoyment which deeply shocked the graver cardinals. At his death the fiery Neapolitan reformer, Cardinal Carafa, who had dictated the more severe decisions of Paul III., received the tiara, and he spent four energetic years (1555-1559) in a relentless attack upon heresy in Catholic lands. He made vigorous use of the Inquisition, which Paul III. had (largely at the instigation of St. Ignatius) set up in Rome, and he published a complete Index of Prohibited Books.[312] But his reforms, his heresy-hunts, and his hostility to Spain were enforced with such harshness that the Romans almost cursed his memory when his short Pontificate came to an end. It is a singular illustration of the tenacity of abuses at Rome that even the austere Carafa was a nepotist, and the nephews he favoured were of so unworthy a character that they were executed—though one of them was a cardinal—by his successor.

Pius IV. (1559-65) was a more persuasive reformer: a Milanese of lowly origin but of some distinction in canonical scholarship. He guided to their close the labours of the Council of Trent,[313] and on January 26, 1564, put the Papal seal on the precise formulation of the Roman creed. Pius V. (1565-72) brought to the Papal throne the austere ideals of a sincere Dominican monk. He was not content with persecuting the Italians who criticized the Papacy; he did much to reform the Papal Court and the city. Gregory XIII. (1572-85), a scholarly Pope, mingled in strange proportion the virtues and vices of his predecessors. His name survives honourably in the Gregorian Calendar, and he did more than any other Pope to encourage the spread of that network of Jesuit colleges throughout southern Europe which proved so effective a hindrance to the advance of Protestantism; but the Te Deum he sang over the foul "St. Bartholomew Massacre" (1572) and the condition of infuriated rebellion in which he left the Papal States at his death betray his defects. The Papal income had fallen considerably since the loss of England and north Germany and Scandinavia, yet Gregory wished to pay heavy subsidies to the militant Catholic princes. He imposed such taxes, and aroused such fierce anger by seizing estates after disputing the title-deeds of the owners, that Italy almost slew him with its hatred.

In these circumstances the famous Sixtus V. mounted the Papal throne. Felice Peretti had been born at Grottamare, in the March of Ancona, on December 13, 1521. The unwonted vigour of his character is traced by some to the Dalmatian blood of his ancestors, who, in the preceding century, had fled before the Turks to Italy. They had preserved their robust health, and attained no fortune, by work on the soil, and there is not the least improbability in the tradition—which some recent writers resent—that Felice at one time tended his father's swine.[314] But at the age of nine he was sent to the friary at Montalto, where he had an uncle, and he proved a good student. He became so excellent a preacher that he was summoned to give the Lenten Sermons at Rome in 1552, and he attracted the notice of St. Ignatius and St. Philip Neri, and of some of the graver cardinals. After presiding over one or two convents of his Order, he was put in charge of the friary at Venice in 1556, and was in the next year made Counsellor to the Inquisition. His ardent nature and strict ideals caused him to use his powers with such harshness that both his brethren and the Venetian government attacked him. He was forced several times to retire, and in 1560 Rome was definitively compelled to withdraw him.

The fact that he had been thwarted by lax brethren and by an (from the Roman point of view) irreligious government commended the fiery monk still further to his reformer-friends. He received a chair at the Sapienza (Roman University) and was made Counsellor to the Holy Office. In 1565 Cardinal Buoncompagni was sent on a mission to Spain, and, apparently to the Cardinal's disgust, the learned friar was included in his train. The sincerely religious temper of Sixtus V. makes it difficult for some of his biographers to understand his very original character. In spite of his virtue he was quite clearly ambitious,—one must live in the ecclesiastical world to realize how the ambition of power and the ambition to do good fuse with each other in the clerical mind,—he had an atrocious temper, and he retained what higher-born prelates would call the rudeness of a peasant. He quarrelled with Buoncompagni, and, as the mission was never really discharged, he had no opportunity to distinguish himself. However, the new Pope (for whose election Buoncompagni returned prematurely to Rome) was the friendly Dominican colleague, Pius V. Padre Montalto was made Vicar Apostolic over the Franciscan Order—the General having died—and he made a drastic effort to reform the reluctant friars and nuns (1566-1568). For this he received the red hat (1570) and was entrusted with the task of editing the works of St. Ambrose.

Unhappily for the ambitious cardinal-monk, Pius V. died in 1572, and Cardinal Buoncompagni ascended the throne and took the name of Gregory XIII. He withdrew the pension which Pius had assigned to Felice, and for the next thirteen years the Cardinal had to live in retirement and comparative poverty. In this again the very original character of Peretti reveals itself. One might expect that so stern a monastic reformer would retire to a friary when the Papal Court no longer required his presence, but he retired, instead, to his very comfortable palace and garden on the Esquiline. He had brought his sister Camilla and her son Francesco to live in this palace, and even romance and tragedy entered the friar's home. Francesco had married a beautiful and light-minded Roman girl, and her brother, Paolo Orsini, murdered Francesco in order to set her free for a nobler lover. The uncle could get no redress under Gregory XIII. He curbed his anger, quietly bent over his books, and watched the rising storm in Italy which was to close Gregory's reign.

Gregory died on April 10, 1585, and Cardinal Montalto was enclosed with his colleagues in the Sistine Chapel on April 21st for the making of a new Pope. He was in his sixty-fourth year, and his more malicious biographer would have us believe that he disguised his robustness under a pretence of decrepit age in order to deceive the cardinals. The fact seems to be that he waited quietly, and without taking sides, in his cell until the factions had worn themselves out and the hour had come for choosing a man who had not been regarded as papabile. Most assuredly he deceived the cardinals, though not by any dishonest artifice. For three days the Medici and Colonna and Farnese, and the French and Spanish factions, fought their traditional battle, and not one of the aspirants could get a majority. Then one or two cardinals bethought themselves of this quiet Cardinal Montalto, who had lived away on the Esquiline with his rustic sister for so many years, and who would surely be grateful to any for elevating him to the throne. They visited Montalto and found him humbly and gratefully disposed: they intrigued nervously and rapidly in the little colony: and presently cardinals rushed to do homage to the former swineherd and applaud the Pontificate of Sixtus V. He was duly grateful, for a few days. Lucrative appointments were at once divided amongst his friends and supporters; though some fear seized men when one of the cardinals ventured to bring before the new Pope the murderer of his nephew, and Sixtus, in sombre and terrible accents, bade the Orsini go and rid himself of his cut-throats. He was crowned on May 1st, and he lost little time in applying himself to the drastic schemes of reform which he had, apparently, matured in his peaceful garden on the Esquiline.

Yet the first act of the reformer betrays a defect and compels us to deal at once with the chief irregularity of his conduct. After the unhappy nepotism of Paul IV., that ancient and disreputable practice had been severely condemned, yet we find it flagrantly and immediately revived by Sixtus himself. It was, as we shall see, an essential part of his scheme to reform the College of Cardinals, and he would presently enact that no one should be raised to the cardinalate under the age of twenty-one, and no man with a son or grandson should attain the dignity. Yet within a fortnight of his coronation he announced that his grand-nephew, Alexander Peretti, a boy of thirteen, would be raised to the Sacred College, and another young grand-nephew was appointed Governor of the Borgo of St. Peter's and Captain of the Papal Guard. Their sisters were similarly enriched by noble alliances in later years. This grave impropriety is not excused by references to the ambition and determination of the Pope's sister Camilla; indeed, the wealth which that lady now obtained, and the notoriety with which she invested it in Rome, rather increased the Pope's guilt. He was assuredly not less strong of will than she. The defect shows how deeply rooted the evil was at Rome, when so resolute a reformer yields to it within a few years of the Protestant convulsion of Europe.

With this single concession to the older traditions, however, Sixtus turned energetically to the work of reform. The condition of the Papal States under Gregory XIII. had become scandalous. The leading officials sold the lesser offices to corrupt men, and these in turn recovered their money by receiving bribes to overlook crime. Brigandage of the most licentious character spread over Italy, and even Roman nobles supported bands of swordsmen who would with impunity rid them of an inconvenient husband, force the doors of a virtuous woman's house, or relieve the pilgrim of his money. A law prohibiting the use of firearms had been passed, but it had become the fashion to ignore law and police. The picture which Sixtus himself gives us in his early Bulls is amazing when we recall that, only a few years before, the future of the Church had depended in no small measure on the morals of Rome and Italy.

Sixtus had no cause to spare the memory of his predecessor, and he turned with truculence to the remedy of this disorder. Before the end of April he had four young men belonging to high Roman families hanged on gibbets, like common murderers, for carrying firearms in spite of the decree. At the Carnival he erected two gibbets, one at each end of the Corso, to intimidate roysterers from the use of the knife. On April 30th he, in his Bull Hoc Nostri, enacted the most drastic punishment for brigands and all who should support or tolerate them; and on June 1st he caused the Roman government to put a price on their heads. The nobles of Rome, who had included these picturesque criminals in their suites, were ordered, under the direst penalties, to yield or dismiss them, and even cardinals were threatened with imprisonment if they retained servants of that character. Such was the amazement of Rome that the wits are said to have dressed the statue of St. Peter for a journey and put into its mouth the reply, when St. Paul was supposed to ask the meaning of his travelling costume, that he feared that Sixtus was about to prosecute him for cutting off the ear of the high-priest's servant. From Rome the terror spread throughout the Papal States. Thousands—including renegade monks and mothers who prostituted their daughters—were executed or slain, and the bands fled to neutral territory. Thither the merciless hand of the Pope pursued them, and a few liberal concessions to the other Italian Powers induced them to fling back the banditti upon the arms of the Papal troops or the knives of those who sought blood-money.

That Sixtus pursued this very necessary campaign with absolute truculence and a disdain of delicacy in the use of means cannot be questioned, but, though the fact does not adorn his character, we know too well the licentious condition of Italy to waste our sympathy on his victims. The most stubborn and audacious outlaws fell in a few years before his attack. At Bologna, for instance, the Pepoli and the Malvezzi had for years sustained one of those terrible feuds which had so long disgraced the central State of Christendom. They laughed at Papal injunctions. Sixtus had Count Pepoli treacherously seized, tried (in his absence) at Rome, and decapitated. His followers, and those of the Malvezzi, scattered in alarm, and Bologna was not merely relieved of oppressive criminals, but was adorned with new buildings and enriched with educational institutions by the triumphant Pope. Later, in order to extinguish the embers of animosity, he promoted one of the Pepoli to the cardinalate. The feuds of the Gaetani, the Colonna, and other old families were similarly trodden out, or healed by marriages with grand-nieces of the Pope, and Italy became more sober and more prosperous than it had been for ages. Unhappily, the reform died with Sixtus and anarchy returned.

This campaign occupied a few years, but it had no sooner been launched than Sixtus produced other of the plans he had prepared in his secluded palace. I have shown how deeply the corruption of the College of Cardinals affected the religious history of Europe, and Sixtus began very quickly to reform it. It was, perhaps, not his misunderstood promise of gratitude to the cardinals who had elected him, but some feeling of incongruity with his own conduct in promoting his boy-nephews, which restrained him for a time. However that may be, he turned to the problem in the second year of his Pontificate, and his Bull Postquam Verus[315] laid down severe rules for the sustained improvement of the College. The number of cardinals was restricted to seventy (as is still the rule); illegitimates, and men who had sons and grandsons to favour, were excluded; and a cleric must have attained an age of at least twenty-two years before he could be promoted. In order to distribute and expedite the work of administration, he further divided the cardinals into fifteen "congregations" (some of which already existed), such as those of the Inquisition, of Public Works, of the Vatican Press, and so on.

We can hardly doubt that in this division he had an ulterior aim. The earlier procedure had been for the Pope to lay a question before the whole body of the cardinals and discuss it with them. Sixtus continued to do this, but the cardinals soon found that, although he desired discussion, he turned fiery eyes, and even showered rough and offensive epithets, on any who opposed his plans. He was essentially an autocrat, and the impetuosity which was inseparable from so robust a character made him an unpleasant autocrat. The advantage to him of splitting the cardinals into small groups was that, on any grave question, he had merely to take account of the consultative opinion of a few cardinals. His more admiring biographers record that he rarely dissented from the conclusions of his congregations; in point of fact, he decided grave issues before consulting them, or made his will unmistakably clear to them. His own promotions were generally sound, though he at times strained his regulations in favour of a friend. But he greatly improved the College of Cardinals, and made an admirable effort to exclude from it nationalist influences.

We must not, on the other hand, suppose that these congregations of cardinals count in any degree—except as the mere executive of his will—in the great work of his Pontificate. His own teeming brain and iron will are the sole sources of the mighty achievements of those five years. He had studied the Papal problem on all sides and was prepared at once to remedy a disorder or design a new structure. Agriculture and industry were feeble and unprosperous throughout the Papal States. Ruinous taxation, lawless oppression, and the ease with which one obtained one's bread at the innumerable monasteries, had demoralized the country and ruined the Papal treasury. Sixtus had some of the qualities of an economist—we still possess the careful account book he kept in his days of monastic authority—and he was especially concerned to nurse the Papal income in view of certain grandiose plans which he seems to have held in reserve, so that he applied himself zealously to this problem. It is generally agreed that his work here is a singular compound of shrewdness and blundering. By his restoration of public security he lifted a burden from agriculture, and he made special efforts to encourage the woollen industry and the silk industry.[316] He, at great cost, brought a good supply of water, from an estate twenty miles away, to Rome, and by this means and by the cutting of new roads re-established some population on the hills, which had long been almost deserted. We find Camilla speculating profitably in this extension of the city, but the more important point is that the population of Rome rose in five years from 70,000 to 100,000; still, however, only one tenth of the population of Imperial Rome. The Pope also gave a water-supply to Civita Vecchia and drained its marshes; and he spent—with very little result in this case—200,000 ducats in draining the marshes at Terracina, which he personally inspected in 1588.

Yet the admiration which his biographers bestow on his finance is misplaced. It seems to have been chiefly in his native March of Ancona that he granted relief from the heavy taxes and imposts of his predecessor; the Papal States generally were still ruinously taxed, even in the necessaries of life. His hoarding of specie, partly for excellent but partly for visionary purposes, injured commerce; and such measures as his prohibition of the sale of landed property to foreigners were short-sighted. The rise of the Papal income, which enabled him to store 4,500,000 scudi (about 8,000,000 dollars) in five years, besides spending large sums on public works, was chiefly due to deplorable methods. The income from the issue of indulgences had now fallen very low—it had not wholly ceased, as some say, since they are still issued in Spain—and little money came from Spain or France. The fixed Papal income had fallen to 200,000 scudi a year, and in the expenditure of this the friar-pope made an economy of 140,000 scudi a year by reducing table-charges, dismissing superfluous servants, and (as is often forgotten) giving to other servants church-benefices so that they needed no salary. The result was still far too small for the creation of a fund, and Sixtus sold honours and offices as flagrantly as any Pope had done since Boniface IX. He sold positions which had never been sold before, and he created new marketable titles. He debased the coinage and imposed a tax on money-lenders. He carried to a remarkable extent the new Papal system of Monti.[317] He withdrew offices which Gregory XIII. had sold, and transferred them to higher bidders; and he must have known how the officials would recoup themselves.

By these means he raised his hoard, which seems to have been gathered for some visionary grand campaign against the Protestants and the Turks. We at once recall Julius II., but it is a comparison which the work of Sixtus V. cannot sustain; he was not so great a ruler as Julius, and he fell on less prosperous times. I must add, however, that part of his reserve fund was destined for practical uses. In 1586 famine and Turks and pirates caused grave distress in Italy. Sixtus did not even then abolish his heavy taxes on the necessaries of life and the means of distributing them, but he bought 100,000 crowns' worth of corn in Sicily, fixed the price of flour and punished unjust dealers, and set about collecting a fund of a million scudi to meet such emergencies. He was not economist enough to see the roots of the evil, and fair, fertile Italy continued to suffer under the unhappy Papal system.