Renaissance in Italy Volume I Part 17

The hoa.r.s.e rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone of pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin declamations of the Capitol and the tw.a.n.g of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with wide, astonished, woeful eyes--disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in a scabbard, lay sheathed the sword of the Spirit, ready to flash forth and smite.

[1] See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, book xiv. ch. 3.

[2] 'Relazione di Marino Giorgi,' March 17, 1517. Alberi, series ii. vol. iii. p. 51.

A more complete conception may be formed of Leo by comparing him with Julius. Julius disturbed the peace of Italy with a view to establis.h.i.+ng the temporal power of his see. Leo returned to the old nepotism of the previous Popes, and fomented discord for the sake of the Medici. It was at one time his project to secure the kingdom of Naples for his brother Giuliano, and a Milanese sovereignty for his nephew Lorenzo. On the latter he succeeded in conferring the Duchy of Urbino, to the prejudice of its rightful owners.[1] With Florence in their hands and the Papacy under their control, the Medici might have swayed all Italy. Such plans, however, in the days of Francis I. and Charles V. had become impracticable; nor had any of the Medicean family stuff to undertake more than the subjugation of their native city. Julius was violent in temper, but observant of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. He lured Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe-conduct, and then had him imprisoned and beheaded in the Castle of S. Angelo. Julius delighted in war and was never happier than when the cannons roared around him at Mirandola. Leo vexed the soul of his master of the ceremonies because he would ride out a-hunting in topboots. Julius designed S. Peter's and comprehended Michael Angelo. Leo had the wit to patronize the poets, artists and historians who added l.u.s.ter to his Court; but he brought no new great man of genius to the front. The portraits of the two Popes, both from the hand of Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius, bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a pa.s.sionate and energetic temperament; though the brand is h.o.a.r with ashes and more than half burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coa.r.s.er fiber of a sensualist.

[1] He would have given it to Giuliano, but Giuliano was an honest man and remembered what he owed to the della Rovere family. See the 'Relazione' of Marino Giorgi (_Rel. Ven._ ser.

ii. vol. iii. p. 51).

It has often been remarked that both Julius and Leo raised money by the sale of indulgences with a view to the building of S. Peter's, thus aggravating one of the chief scandals which provoked the Reformation.

In that age of maladjusted impulses the desire to execute a great work of art, combined with the cynical resolve to turn the superst.i.tions of the people to account, forced rebellion to a head. Leo was unconscious of the magnitude of Luther's movement. If he thought at all seriously of the phenomenon, it stirred his wonder. Nor did he feel the necessity of reformation in the Church of Italy. The rich and many-sided life of Rome and the diplomatic interests of Italian despotism absorbed his whole attention. It was but a small matter what barbarians thought or did.

The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College into great perplexity. To choose the new Pope without reference to political interests was impossible; and these were divided between Charles V. and Francis I.

After twelve days spent by the Cardinals in conclave, the result of their innumerable schemes and counter-schemes was the election of the Cardinal of Tortosa. No one knew him; and his elevation to the Papacy, due to the influence of Charles, was almost as great a surprise to the electors as to the Romans. In their rage and horror at having chosen this barbarian, the College began to talk about the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, seeking the most improbable of all excuses for the mistake to which intrigue had driven them. 'The courtiers of the Vatican and chief officers of the Church,' says an eyewitness, 'wept and screamed and cursed and gave themselves up to despair.' Along the blank walls of the city was scrawled: 'Rome to let.' Sonnets fell in showers, accusing the cardinals of having delivered over 'the fair Vatican to a German's fury.'[1] Adrian VI. came to Rome for the first time as Pope.[2] He knew no Italian, and talked Latin with an accent unfamiliar to southern ears.

His studies had been confined to scholastic philosophy and theology.

With courts he had no commerce; and he was so ignorant of the state a Pope should keep in Rome, that he wrote beforehand requesting that a modest house and garden might be hired for his abode. When he saw the Vatican, he exclaimed that here the successors, not of Peter, but of Constantine should dwell. Leo kept one hundred grooms for the service of his stable; Adrian retained but four. Two Flemish valets sufficed for his personal attendance, and to these he gave each evening one ducat for the expenses of the next day's living. A Flemish serving woman cooked his food, made his bed and washed his linen. Rome, with its splendid immorality, its cla.s.sic art and pagan culture, made the same impression on him that it made on Luther. When his courtiers pointed to the Laoc.o.o.n as the most ill.u.s.trious monument of ancient sculpture, he turned away with horror, murmuring: 'Idols of the Pagans!' The Belvedere, which was fast becoming the first statue-gallery in Europe, he walled up and never entered. At the same time he set himself with earnest purpose, so far as his tied hands and limited ability would go, to reform the more patent abuses of the Church. Leo had raised about three million ducats by the sale of offices, which represented an income of 348,000 ducats to the purchasers, and provided places for 2,550 persons. By a stroke of his pen Adrian canceled these contracts and threw upon the world a crowd of angry and defrauded officials. It was but poor justice to remind them that their bargain with his predecessor had been illegal. Such attempts, however, at a reformation of ecclesiastical society were as ineffectual as pin-p.r.i.c.ks in the cure of a fever which demands blood-letting. The real corruption of Rome, deeply seated in high places, remained untouched. Luther meanwhile had carried all before him in the North, and accurate observers in Rome itself dreaded some awful catastrophe for the guilty city. 'This state is set upon the razor-edge of peril; G.o.d grant we have not soon to take flight to Avignon or to the ends of the ocean.

I see the downfall of this spiritual monarchy at hand. Unless G.o.d help, it is all over with us.'[3] Adrian met the emergency, and took up arms against the sea of troubles by expressing his horror of simony, sensuality, thievery and so forth. The result was that he was simply laughed at. Pasquin made so merry with his name that Adrian vowed he would throw the statue into the Tiber; whereupon the Duke of Sessa wittily replied: 'Throw him to the bottom, and, like a frog, he'll go on croaking.' Berni, again, wrote one of his cleverest Capitoli upon the dunce who could not comprehend his age; and when he died, his doctor's door was ornamented with this inscription: _Liberatori patriae Senatus Populusque Roma.n.u.s_.

[1] See Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp. 382, 383. The details about Adriano are chiefly taken from the _Relazioni_ of the Venetian emba.s.sadors, series ii. vol. iii. pp. 75-120.

[2] His father's name was Florus or Flerentius, of the Flemish family, it is supposed, of Dedel. Berni calls him a carpet-maker. Other accounts represent him as a s.h.i.+p's carpenter. The Pope's baptismal name was Adrian.

[3] See the pa.s.sage quoted from the _Lettere de Principi_, Rome, March 17, 1523, by Burckhardt, p. 99, note.

Great was the rejoicing when another Medici was made Pope in 1523.

People hoped that the merry days of Leo would return. But things had gone too far toward dissolution. Clement VII. failed to give satisfaction to the courtiers whom his more genial cousin had delighted: even the scholars and the poets grumbled.[1] His rule was weak and vacillating, so that the Colonna faction raised its head again and drove him to the Castle of S. Angelo. The political horizon of Italy grew darker and more sullen daily, as before some dreadful storm. Over Rome itself impended ruin--

as when G.o.d Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison In the sick air.[2]

At last the crash came. Clement by a series of treaties, treacheries, and tergiversations had deprived himself of every friend and exasperated every foe. Italy was so worn out with warfare, so accustomed to the anarchy of aimless revolutions and to the trampling to and fro of stranger squadrons on her sh.o.r.es, that the news of a Lutheran troop, levied with the express object of pillaging Rome, and reinforced with Spanish ruffians and the sc.u.m of every nation, scarcely roused her apathy. The so-called army of Frundsberg--a horde of robbers held together by the hope of plunder--marched without difficulty to the gates of Rome. So low had the honor of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of Ferrara, by direct aid given, and the Duke of Urbino, by counter-force withheld, opened the pa.s.ses of the Po and of the Apennines to these marauders. They lost their general in Lombardy. The Constable Bourbon, who succeeded him, died in the a.s.sault of the city. Then Rome for nine months was abandoned to the l.u.s.t, rapacity, and cruelty of some 30,000 brigands without a leader. It was then discovered to what lengths of insult, violence, and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity the brutal barbarism of Germans and the avarice of Spaniards could be carried. Clement, beleaguered in the Castle of S. Angelo, saw day and night the smoke ascend from desolated palaces and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women and the groans of tortured men mingle with the jests of Lutheran drunkards and the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming its galleries and leaning from its windows he exclaimed with Job:[3] '_Quare de v.u.l.v.a eduxisti me? qui utinam consumptus essem, ne oculus me videret_.' What the Romans, emasculated by luxury and priest rule, what the Cardinals and prelates, lapped in sensuality and sloth, were made to suffer during this long agony, can scarcely be described. It is too horrible. When at last the barbarians, sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, glutted with gold, and decimated by pestilence, withdrew, Rome raised her head a widow.

From the shame and torment of that sack she never recovered, never became again the gay licentious lovely capital of arts and letters, the glittering gilded Rome of Leo. But the kings of the earth took pity on her desolation. The treaty of Amiens (August 18, 1527), concluded between Francis I. and Henry VIII. against Charles V., in whose name this insult had been offered to the Holy City of Christendom, together with Charles's own tardy willingness to make amends, restored the Papacy to the respect of Europe.

[1] See, for instance, Berni's sonnets. In one of these, Berni very powerfully describes the vacillation and irresolution of Clement's state-policy.

[2] See Varchi's picture of the state of Rome, _St. Fior._ ii.

[3] So Luigi Guicciardini in his account of the sack of Rome relates.

It is well known that at this crisis the Emperor seriously thought of putting an end to the State of the Church. His councilors advised him to restore the Pope to his original rank of Bishop, and to make Rome again the seat of Empire.[1] But to have done this would have been impossible under the political conditions of the sixteenth century, and in the face of Christendom still Catholic. His deliberations, therefore, cost Rome the miseries of the sack; but they were speedily superseded by the determination to strengthen the Papal by means of the Imperial authority in Italy. Florence was given as a make-peace offering to the contemptible Medici; and it remains the worst shame of Clement that he used the dregs of the army that had sacked Rome for the enslavement of his mother-city.

[1] See the authorities in Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp.

569, 575.

Internally, the Papal State had learned by its misfortunes the necessity of a reform. Sadoleto, writing in the September of that memorable year to Clement, reminds him that the sufferings of Rome have satisfied the wrath of G.o.d, and that the way was now open for an amelioration of manners and laws.[1] No force of arms could prevent the Holy City from returning to a better life, and proving that the Christian priesthood was not a mere mockery and sham.[2] In truth the Counter-Reformation may be said to date historically from 1527.

[1] It was universally recognized in Italy that the sack of Rome was a punishment inflicted by Providence upon the G.o.dless city. Without quoting great authorities like Sadoleto or the Bishop of Fos...o...b..one, one of whose letters gives a really awful picture of Roman profligacy (_Opere di M.G. Guidiccioni_, Barbera, vol. i. p. 193), we find abundant testimony to this persuasion regarding the intolerible vice of Rome, even in men devoid of moral conscience. Aretino (_La Cortegiana_, end of Act i. Sc. xxiii.) writes: 'Io mic redeva che il castigo, che l' ha dato Cristo per mano degli Spagnuoli, l'avesse fatta migliore, et e piu scellerata che mai.' Bandello (_Novelle_, Parte ii. x.x.xvii.) alluding to the sack, remarks in a parenthesis, 'benche i peccati di quella citta merita.s.sero esser castigati.' After adducing two such witnesses, it would weaken the case to cite Trissino or Vettori, both of whom expressed themselves with force upon the iniquities of Papal Rome.

[2] Compare _Lettere de' Princ._ ii. 77; Cardinal Cajeta.n.u.s, and other testimonies quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii.

pp. 568, 578.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CHURCH AND MORALITY.

Corruption of the Church--Degradation and Division of Italy--Opinions of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and King Ferdinand of Naples--Incapacity of the Italians for thorough Reformation--The Worldliness and Culture of the Renaissance--Witness of Italian Authors against the Papal Court and the Convents--Superst.i.tious Respect for Relics--Separation between Religion and Morality--Mixture of Contempt and Reverence for the Popes--Gianpaolo Baglioni--Religious Sentiments of the Tyrannicides--Pietro Paolo Boscoli--Tenacity of Religions--The direct Interest of the Italians in Rome--Reverence for the Sacraments of the Church--Opinions p.r.o.nounced by Englishmen on Italian Immorality--Bad Faith and Sensuality--The Element of the Fancy in Italian Vice--The Italians not Cruel, or Brutal, or Intemperate by Nature--Domestic Murders--Sense of Honor in Italy--Onore and Onesta--General Refinement--Good Qualities of the People--Religious Revivalism.

The corruption of the Papal Court involved a corresponding moral weakness throughout Italy. This makes the history of the Popes of the Renaissance important precisely in those details which formed the subject of the preceding chapter. Morality and religion suffered an almost complete separation in the fifteenth century. The chiefs of the Church with cynical effrontery violated every tradition of Christ and the Apostles, so that the example of Rome was in some sense the justification of fraud, violence, l.u.s.t, filthy living, and unG.o.dliness to the whole nation.

The contradiction between the spiritual pretensions of the Popes and their actual worldliness was not so glaring to the men of the Renaissance, accustomed by long habit to the spectacle of this anomaly, as it is to us. Nor would it be scientific to imagine that any Italian in that age judged by moral standards similar to ours. aesthetic propriety rather than strict conceptions of duty ruled the conduct even of the best, and it is wonderful to observe with what artless simplicity the worst sinners believed they might make peace in time of need with heaven. Yet there were not wanting profound thinkers who traced the national decay of the Italians to the corruption of the Church. Among these Machiavelli stands foremost. In a celebrated pa.s.sage of the _Discorsi_,[1] after treating the whole subject of the connection between good government and religion, he breaks forth into this fiery criticism of the Papacy: 'Had the religion of Christianity been preserved according to the ordinances of its founder, the states and commonwealths of Christendom would have been far more united and far happier than they are. Nor is it possible to form a better estimate of its decay than by observing that, in proportion as we approach nearer to the Roman Church, the head of this religion, we find less piety prevail among the nations. Considering the primitive const.i.tution of that Church, and noting how diverse are its present customs, we are forced to judge that without doubt either ruin or a scourge is now impending over it. And since some men are of opinion that the welfare of Italy depends upon the Church, I wish to put forth such arguments as occur to my mind to the contrary; and of these I will adduce two, which, as I think, are irrefutable. The first is this: that owing to the evil ensample of the Papal Court, Italy has lost all piety and all religion: whence follow infinite troubles and disorders; for as religion implies all good, so its absence implies the contrary. Consequently, to the Church and priests of Rome we Italians owe this obligation first--that we have become void of religion and corrupt. But we also owe them another, even greater, which is the cause of our ruin. I mean that the Church has maintained and still maintains Italy divided. Of a truth no province ever was united and prosperous, unless it were reduced beneath the sway of one republic or one monarch, as is the case with France and Spain.

And the reason why Italy is not in this condition, but has neither commonwealth nor monarch for her head, is none other than the Church: for the Church, established in our midst and exercising a temporal authority, has never had the force or vigor to extend its sway over the whole country and to become the ruling power in Italy. Nor on the other hand has it been so feeble as not to be able, when afraid of losing its temporalities, to call in a foreign potentate, as a counterpoise in its defense against those powers which threatened to become supreme. Of the truth of this, past history furnishes many instances; as when, by the help of Charlemagne, the Popes expelled the Lombards; and when in our own days they humbled Venice by the aid of France, and afterwards drove out the French by calling in the Swiss. So then the Church, being on the one hand too weak to grasp the whole of Italy, and at the same time too jealous to allow another power to do so, has prevented our union beneath one head, and has kept us under scattered lords and princes. These have caused so much discord and debility that Italy has become the prey not only of powerful barbarians, but also of every a.s.sailant. And this we owe solely and entirely to the Church. In order to learn by experience the truth of what I say, one ought to be able to send the Roman Court, armed with like authority to that it wields in Italy, to take up its abode among the Swiss, who at the present moment are the only nation living, as regards religion and military discipline, according to the antique fas.h.i.+on; he would then see that the evil habits of that Court would in no long s.p.a.ce of time create more disorders than any other misfortune that could arise there in any period whatever.' In this scientific and deliberate opinion p.r.o.nounced by the profoundest thinker of the sixteenth century, the Papacy is accused of having caused both the moral depravation and the political disunion of Italy. The second of these points, which belongs to the general history of the Italian nation, might be ill.u.s.trated abundantly: but one other sentence from the pen of Machiavelli exposes the ruinous and selfish policy of the Church more forcibly than could be done by copious examples:[2] 'In this way the Pontiffs at one time by love of their religion, at other times for the furtherance of their ambitious schemes, have never ceased to sow the seeds of disturbance and to call foreigners into Italy, spreading wars, making and unmaking princes, and preventing stronger potentates from holding the province they were too feeble to rule.'

[1] Lib. i. cap. 12.

[2] _Ist. Fior._ lib. i.

Guicciardini, commenting upon the _Discorsi_ of Machiavelli, begins his gloss upon the pa.s.sage I have just translated, with these emphatic words:[1] 'It would be impossible to speak so ill of the Roman Court but that more abuse would not be merited, seeing it is an infamy, an example of all the shames and scandals of the world.' He then proceeds to argue, like Machiavelli, that the greatness of the Church prevented Italy from becoming a nation under one head, showing, however, at the same time that the Italians had derived much benefit from their division into separate states.[2] To the concurrent testimony of these great philosophic writers may be added the evidence of a practical statesman, Ferdinand, king of Naples, who in 1493 wrote as follows:[3] 'From year to year up to this time we have seen the Popes seeking to hurt and hurting their neighbors, without having to act on the defensive or receiving any injury. Of this we are ourselves the witness, by reason of things they have done and attempted against us through their inborn ambition; and of the many misfortunes which have happened of late in Italy it is clear that the Popes are authors.' It is not so much however with the political as with the moral aspect of the Church that we are at present concerned: and on the latter point Guicciardini may once more be confronted with his ill.u.s.trious contemporary. In his aphorisms he says:[4] 'No man hates the ambition, avarice, and effeminacy of the priests more than I do; for these vices, odious in themselves, are most unseemly in men who make a profession of living in special dependence on the Deity. Besides, they are so contradictory that they cannot be combined except in a very extraordinary subject. My position under several Popes has compelled me to desire their aggrandizement for the sake of my own profit.[5] Otherwise, I should have loved Martin Luther like myself--not that I might break loose from the laws which Christianity, as it is usually interpreted and comprehended, imposes on us, but that I might see that horde of villains reduced within due limits, and forced to live either without vices or without power.'

[1] Guicc. _Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 27.

[2] In another place (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. p. 104) Guicciardini describes the rule of priests as founded on violence of two sorts; 'perche ci sforzano con le armi temporali e con le spirituali.' It may be well to collect the chief pa.s.sages in Machiavelli and Guicciardini, besides those already quoted, which criticise the Papacy in relation to Italian politics. The most famous is at the end of the fourth book of the _Istoria d'

Italia_ (Edn. Rosini, vol. ii. pp. 218-30). Next may be placed the sketch of Papal History in Machiavelli's _Istorie Fiorentine_ (lib. i. cap. 9-25). The eleventh chapter of the _Principe_ gives a short sketch of the growth of the temporal power, so framed as to be acceptable to the Medici, but steeped in the most acid irony. See, in particular, the sentence 'Costoro solo hanno stati e non li difendono, hanno sudditi e non li governano,' etc.

[3] See the dispatch quoted by Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol.

vii. p. 7, note.

[4] _Op. Ined. Ricordi_ No. 28. Compare Ariosto, Satire i.

208-27.

[5] Guicciardini had been secretary and vicegerent of the Medicean Popes. See back, p. 206.

These utterances are all the more remarkable because they do not proceed from the deep sense of holiness which animated reformers like Savonarola. Machiavelli was not zealous for the doctrines of Christianity so much as for the decencies of an established religion. In one pa.s.sage of the _Discorsi_ he even p.r.o.nounces his opinion that the Christian faith compared with the creeds of antiquity, had enfeebled national spirit.[1] Privately, moreover, he was himself stained with the moral corruption which he publicly condemned. Guicciardini, again, in the pa.s.sage before us, openly avows his egotism. Keen-sighted as they were in theory, these politicians suffered in their own lives from that gangrene which had penetrated the upper cla.s.ses of Italy to the marrow.

Their patriotism and their desire for righteousness were not strong enough to make them relinquish the pleasure and the profit they derived from the existing state of things. Nor had they the energy or the opportunity to inst.i.tute a thorough revolution. Italy, as Machiavelli pointed out in another pa.s.sage of the _Discorsi_, had become too prematurely decrepit for reinvigorating changes;[2] and the splendid appeal with which the _Principe_ is closed must even to its author have sounded like a flourish of rhetorical trumpets.

[1] _Discorsi_, ii. 2, iii. 1. These chapters breathe the bitterest contempt for Christianity, the most undisguised hatred for its historical development, the intensest rancor against Catholic ecclesiastics.

[2] _Discorsi_, i. 55.

Moreover, it seemed impossible for an Italian to rise above the conception of a merely formal reformation, or to reach that higher principle of life which consists in the enunciation of a new religious truth. The whole argument in the _Discorsi_ which precedes the chapter I have quoted, treats religion not in its essence as pure Christianity, but as a state engine for the maintenance of public order and national well-being.[1] That Milton and Cromwell may have so regarded religion is true: but they had, besides, a personal sense of the necessity of righteousness, the fear of G.o.d, at the root of their political convictions. While Machiavelli and Guicciardini wished to deprive the Popes of temporal sovereignty, in order that the worst scandals of their Court might be suppressed, and that the peace of Italy might be secured, Savonarola desired to purge the Church of sin, but to retain its hierarchy and its dogmas inviolate. Neither the politicians nor the prophet had discerned, what Luther and the nations of the North saw clearly, that a fresh element of spiritual vitality was necessary for the regeneration of society; or in other words, that good government presupposes living religion, and not that religion should be used as an engine for the consolidation of empire over the people.[2]

[1] Mach. _Disc._ i. 12, after exposing the shams on which, as he believed, the religious inst.i.tutions of Numa rested, a.s.serts that, however much governors may be persuaded of the falseness of religions, it is their duty to maintain them: 'e debbono ...

come che le giudica.s.sero false, favorirle e accrescerle.'

[2] Yet read the curious pa.s.sage (_Disc_. iii. 1) in which Machiavelli discusses the regeneration of religion by a return to its vital principle, and shows how S. Francis and S. Dominic had done this in the thirteenth century. It was precisely what Luther was designing while Machiavelli was writing.