Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

domestic storms. Equipped with all the learning of his time, he

regularly resorted to astrologers to determine the most favorable hour

for a journey, a decision, even an audience. `06394 A man of strong

feeling, and given now and then to bursts of anger, he was noted for

his self-control. Cellini, whom he had to imprison, described him

"as one who had no faith in God or aught beside"; `06395 this seems

extreme; and certainly Paul had faith in himself until, in his final

years, the behavior of his progeny weakened his will to live. He was

punished where he had sinned; he restored the nepotism that had marked

the Renaissance papacy, gave Piacenza and Parma to his son Pierluigi

and Camerino to his grandson Ottavio, bestowed the red hat on his

nephews, fourteen and seventeen years old, and promoted them despite

their notorious immorality. He had character without morals, and

intellect without wisdom.

He recognized the justice of the criticisms directed by the

Reformers at the administration of the Church, and if ecclesiastical

amendment had been the only obstacle to reconciliation he might have

ended the Reformation. In 1535 he sent Pierpaolo Vergerio to sound out

Protestant leaders about attending a general council, but he would not

promise to allow any substantial change in the defined faith or in the

authority of the popes. Vergerio returned from Germany worse than

empty-handed, for he reported that Catholics there joined

Protestants in doubting the Pope's sincerity in proposing a

council, `06396 and that Archduke Ferdinand complained that he could

find no confessor who was not a fornicator, a drunkard, or an

ignoramus. `06397 Paul tried again in 1536; he commissioned Peter

van der Vorst to arrange terms with the Lutherans for a council, but

Peter was rebuffed by the Elector of Saxony, and achieved nothing.

Finally Paul made the culminating effort of the Church to reach an

understanding with her critics: he sent to a conference at Ratisbon

Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, a man of unquestioned sincerity in the

Catholic movement for reform.

We cannot withhold sympathy from the old cardinal who braved the

snows of Apennines and Alps in February and March 1541, eager to crown

his life with the organization of religious peace. Everyone at

Ratisbon was impressed by his modesty, simplicity, and good will. He

mediated with saintly patience between the Catholic Eck, Pflug, and

Gropper, and the Protestant Melanchthon, Bucer, and Pistorius.

Agreement was reached on original sin, free will, baptism,

confirmation, and holy orders, and on May 3 Contarini wrote joyfully

to Cardinal Farnese: "God be praised! Yesterday the Catholic and

Protestant theologians came to an agreement on the doctrine of

justification." But on the Eucharist no acceptable compromise could be

found. The Protestants would not admit that a priest could transform

bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ; and the Catholics

felt that to surrender transubstantiation would be to give up the very

heart of the Mass and the Roman ritual. Contarini returned to Rome

exhausted with failure and grief, only to be branded as a Lutheran

by the rigidly orthodox followers of Cardinal Caraffa. Paul himself

was not clear that he could accept the formulas that Contarini had

signed; however, he gave him a friendly welcome, and appointed him

papal legate at Bologna. There, five months after his arrival,

Contarini died.

The politics of religion became ever more cloudy and confused.

Paul wondered if reconciliation of the Protestants with the Church

would give Charles V so united and peaceful a Germany that the Emperor

would be free to turn south and connect his north and south Italian

realms by appropriating the Papal States and ending the temporal power

of the popes. Francis I, likewise dreading the pacification of

Germany, charged Contarini with having shamefully surrendered to

heretics, and he pledged his full support to Paul if the Pope would

firmly reject peace with the Lutherans- `06398 with whom Francis

sought alliance. Paul seems to have decided that a religious

understanding would be politically ruinous. In 1538, by brilliant

diplomacy, he brought Charles and Francis to sign a truce at Nice;

then, having made Charles secure in the west, he urged him to fall

upon the Lutherans. When Charles neared victory (1546) Paul withdrew

the papal contingent that he had sent to him, for again he trembled

lest an Emperor with no Protestant problem in his rear would be

tempted to subdue all Italy. The Pope became a pro-tempore Protestant,

and viewed Lutheranism as a protector of the papacy- much as

Suleiman had been a protector of Lutheranism. Meanwhile his other

shield against Charles- Francis I- was allying himself with Turks

who repeatedly threatened to invade Italy and attack Rome. Some

vacillation may be forgiven to a pope so harassed and beset, armed

with a handful of troops, and defended by a faith that only the weak

seemed to cherish. We perceive how small a role religion played in

these struggles for power when we hear the comment of Charles to the

papal nuncio on learning that Paul was turning to France: the Pope,

said the Emperor, had caught in old age an infection usually

acquired in youth, the morbus gallicus, the French disease. `06399

Paul neither stopped Protestantism nor effected any substantial

reforms, but he revitalized the papacy and restored it to grandeur and

influence. He remained to the end a Renaissance pope. He encouraged

and financed the work of Michelangelo and other artists, beautified

Rome with new buildings, embellished the Vatican with the Sala Regia

and the Cappella Paolina, took part in brilliant receptions,

welcomed fair women to his table, received musicians, buffoons, female

singers and dancers, at his court; `063910 even in his eighties this

Farnese was no spoil-sport. Titian transmitted him to us in a series

of powerful portraits. The best (in the Naples Museum) shows the

seventy-five-year-old Pontiff still strong, his face furrowed with

problems of state and family, but his head not yet bowed to time.

Three years later Titian painted an almost prophetic picture (also

in Naples) of Paul and his nephews Ottavio and Alessandro; the Pope,

now bent and weary, seems to question Ottavio suspiciously. In 1547

Paul's son Pierluigi was assassinated: in 1548 Ottavio rebelled

against his father, and entered into an agreement with Paul's

enemies to make Parma an Imperial fief. The old Pope, defeated even by

his children, surrendered himself to death (1549).

Julius III (1550-55) misnamed himself; there was nothing in him of

the virility and power and grandiose aims of Julius II; rather, he

resumed the easy ways of Leo X, and enjoyed the papacy with amiable

prodigality, as if the Reformation had died with Luther. He hunted,

kept court jesters, gambled for large sums, patronized bullfights,

made a cardinal out of a page who took care of his monkey, and, all in

all, gave Rome its last taste of Renaissance paganism in morals and

art. `063911 Outside the Porta del Popolo he had Vignola and others

build for him the pretty Villa di Papa Giulio (1553), and made it a

center of artists, poets, and festivities. He accommodated himself

peacefully to the policies of Charles V. He suffered inopportunely

from gout, and tried to cure it by fasting; this papal epicurean seems

to have died of abstemiousness, `063912 or, said others, `063913 of

dissipation.

Pope Marcellus II was almost a saint. His moral life was

blameless, his piety was profound, his appointments were exemplary,

his efforts for Church reform were sincere; but he died on the

twenty-second day of his pontificate (May 5, 1555).

As if to make clear that the Counter Reformation had reached the

papacy, the cardinals now raised to power the soul and voice of the

reform movement in the Church, the ascetic Giovanni Pietro Caraffa,

who took the name of Paul IV (1555-59). Already seventy-nine, he was

immovably fixed in his views, and dedicated himself to their

implementation with a firmness of will and an intensity of passion

hardly becoming a man of his years. "The Pope," wrote the Florentine

ambassador, "is a man of iron, and the very stones over which he walks

emit sparks." `063914 Born near Benevento, he carried the heat of

southern Italy in his blood, and fire seemed ever burning in his

deepsunken eyes. His temper was volcanic, and only the Spanish

ambassador, backed by Alva's legions, dared to cross him. Paul IV

hated Spain for having mastered Italy; and as Julius II and Leo X

had dreamed of expelling the French, so the first goal of this

energetic octogenarian was to liberate Italy and the papacy from

Spanish-Imperial domination. He denounced Charles V as a secret

atheist, `063915 a lunatic son of a lunatic mother, a "cripple in body

and soul"; `063916 he branded the Spanish people as Semitic

scum, `063917 and vowed never to recognize Philip as Viceroy of Milan.

In December 1555, he concluded a treaty with Henry II of France and

Ercole II of Ferrara to drive all Spanish or Imperial forces from

Italy. If victorious, the papacy was to acquire Siena, the French were

to get Milan, and to hold Naples as a papal fief; and both Charles and

Ferdinand were to be deposed for having accepted the Protestant

terms at Augsburg. `063918

By one of those comedies that can be seen, from a safe distance,

in the tragedies of history, Philip II, the most zealous supporter

of the Church, found himself at war with the papacy. Reluctantly he

ordered the Duke of Alva to lead his Neapolitan army into the Papal

States. In a few weeks the Duke, with 10,000 seasoned troops,

overwhelmed the weak forces of the Pope, took town after town,

sacked Anagni, seized Ostia, and threatened Rome (November 1556). Paul

sanctioned a treaty between France and Turkey, and his secretary of

state, Cardinal Carlo Caraffa, appealed to Suleiman to attack Naples

and Sicily. `063919 Henry II sent an army into Italy under Francis,

Duke of Guise; it recaptured Ostia, and the Pope rejoiced; but the

defeat of the French at Saint-Quentin compelled Guise to rush back

to France with his men, and Alva, unresisted, advanced to the gates of

Rome. The Romans moaned with terror, and wished their reckless Pontiff

in his grave. `063920 Paul saw that further hostilities might repeat

the terrible Sack of Rome, and might even drive Spain to secession

from the Roman Church. On September 12, 1557, he signed a peace with

Alva, who offered lenient terms, apologized for his victory, and

kissed the foot of the conquered Pope. `063921 All captured papal

territory was restored, but the Spanish domination of Naples, Milan,

and the papacy was confirmed. So complete was this victory of the

state over the Church that when Ferdinand took over the Imperial title

from Charles V (1558), he was crowned by the electors, and no

representative of the Pope was allowed any part in the ceremony.

Thus ended the papal coronation of the Holy Roman Emperors;

Charlemagne at last won his argument with Leo III.

Freed willy-nilly from the burdens of war, Paul IV gave the

remainder of his pontificate to the ecclesiastical and moral reforms

already recorded. He crowned them by tardily dismissing his licentious

secretary, Cardinal Carlo Caraffa, and banishing from Rome two other

nephews who had disgraced his pontificate. Nepotism, which for a

century had flourished there, was at last evicted from the Vatican.

II. CENSORSHIP AND INQUISITION

-

It was under this iron Pope that censorship of publications

reached its greatest severity and scope, and the Inquisition became

a terror almost as inhuman in Rome as in Spain. Probably Paul IV

felt that censorship of literature and suppression of heresy were

unavoidable duties of a Church which- in Protestant as well as

Catholic opinion- had been founded by the Son of God. For if the

Church was divine, her opponents must be agents of Satan, and

against these devils perpetual war was a religious obligation to an

insulted God.

Censorship was almost as old as the Church herself. The Christians

of Ephesus, in the age of the Apostles, burned books of "curious arts"

to the alleged value of "50,000 pieces of silver," `063922 and the

Council of Ephesus (150) forbade the circulation of the uncanonical

Acta Pauli. `063923 At various times the popes ordered the burning

of the Talmud or other Jewish books. Wyclifite and later Protestant

translations of the Bible were forbidden, as containing anti-Catholic

prefaces, notes, and emendations. Printing heightened the anxiety of

the Church to keep her members uncorrupted by false doctrines. The

Fifth Council of the Lateran (1516) ordered that henceforth no books

should be printed without ecclesiastical examination and consent.

Secular authorities issued their own prohibitions of unlicensed

publications: the Venetian Senate in 1508, the Diet of Worms and the

edicts of Charles V and Francis I in 1521, the Parlement of Paris in

1542; and in 1543. Charles extended the ecclesiastical control of

publications to Spanish America. The first general index of condemned

books was issued by the Sorbonne in 1544; the first Italian list by

the Inquisition in 1545.

In 1559 Paul IV published the first papal Index auctorum et

librorum prohibitorum. It named forty-eight heretical editions of the

Bible, and put sixty-one printers and publishers under the

ban. `063924 No book that had been published since 1519 without

bearing the names of the author and the printer and the place and date

of publication was to be read by any Catholic; and hereafter no book

was to be read that had not obtained an ecclesiastical imprimatur -

"let it be printed." Booksellers and scholars complained that these

measures would handicap or ruin them, but Paul insisted on full

obedience. In Rome, Bologna, Naples, Milan, Florence, and Venice

thousands of books were burned- 10,000 in Venice in a day. `063925

After Paul's death leading churchmen criticized his measures as too

drastic and indiscriminate. The Council of Trent rejected his Index,

and issued a more orderly proscription, the "Tridentine Index" of

1564. A special Congregation of the Index was formed in 1571 to revise

and republish the list periodically.

It is hard to judge the effect of this censorship. Paolo Sarpi,

ex-monk and anticlerical, thought the Index "the finest secret ever

discovered for... making men idiotic." `063926 It probably shared in

causing the intellectual decline of Italy after 1600, of Spain after

1700, but economic and political factors were more important. Free

thought, according to its most virile English historian, survived

better in Catholic than in Protestant countries; the absolutism of the

Scriptures, enforced by Protestant divines, proved, till 1750, more

damaging to independent investigation and speculation than the Indexes

and Inquisition of the Church. `063927 In any case the humanist

movement faded out, in Catholic and Protestant countries alike. The

accent on life subsided in literature; the study of Greek and the love

of the pagan classics declined; and the triumphant theologians

denounced the Italian humanists (not without reason) as arrogant and

dissolute infidels.

The censorship of books was laxly enforced until Paul IV entrusted

it to the Inquisition (1555). That institution, first established in

1217, had lapsed in power and repute under the lenience of the

Renaissance popes. But when the final attempt at reconciliation with

the Protestants had failed at Ratisbon, and Protestant doctrines

appeared in Italy itself, even among the clergy, and entire towns like

Lucca and Modena threatened to go Protestant, `063928 Cardinal

Giovanni Caraffa, Ignatius Loyola, and Charles V joined in urging

the restoration of the Inquisition. Paul III yielded (1542), appointed

Caraffa and five other cardinals to reorganize the institution, and

empowered them to delegate their authority to specific ecclesiastics

throughout Christendom. Caraffa proceeded with his accustomed

severity, set up headquarters and a prison, and laid down rules for

his subordinates:

-

1. When the faith is in question, there must be no delay, but on the

slightest suspicion rigorous measures must be taken with all speed.

2. No consideration is to be shown to any prince or prelate, however

high his station.

3. Extreme severity is rather to be exercised against those who

attempt to shield themselves under the protection of any potentate.

Only he who makes plenary confession should be treated with gentleness

and fatherly compassion.

4. No man must debase himself by showing toleration toward

heretics of any kind, above all toward Calvinists. `063929

-

Paul III and Marcellus II restrained Caraffa's ardor, and reserved

the right of pardon on appeal. Julius III was too lackadaisical to

interfere with Caraffa, and several heretics were burned in Rome

during his pontificate. In 1550 the new Inquisition ordered the

trial of any Catholic clergyman who did not preach against

Protestantism. When Caraffa himself became Paul IV, the institution

was set in full motion, and under his "superhuman rigor," said

Cardinal Seripando, "the Inquisition acquired such a reputation that

from no other judgment seat on earth were more horrible and fearful

sentences to be expected." `063930 The jurisdiction of the inquisitors

was extended to cover blasphemy, simony, sodomy, polygamy, rape,

procuring, violation of the Church regulations for fasting, and many

other offenses that had nothing to do with heresy. To quote again a

great Catholic historian:

-

The hasty and credulous Pope lent a willing ear to every

denunciation, even the most absurd.... The inquisitors, constantly

urged on by the Pope, scented heresy in numerous cases where a calm

and circumspect observer would not have discovered a trace of it....

The envious and the calumniator were kept hard at work snapping up

suspicious words fallen from the lips of men who had been firm pillars

of the Church against the innovators, and in bringing groundless

accusations of heresy against them.... An actual reign of terror

began, which filled all Rome with fear. `063931

-

At the height of this fury (May 31, 1557) Paul ordered the arrest of

Cardinal Giovanni Morone, Bishop of Modena, and on June 14 he

commanded Cardinal Pole to surrender his legatine power in England and

come to Rome to face trial for heresy; the College of Cardinals,

said the Pope, was itself infected with heresy. Pole was protected

by Queen Mary, who prevented the papal summons from being delivered to

him. Morone was charged with having signed the Ratisbon agreement on

justification by faith, with having been too lenient with heretics

under his jurisdiction, and with having been friendly with Pole,

Vittoria Colonna, Flaminio, and other dangerous characters. After

eighteen days as a prisoner in the Castel Sant' Angelo, he was

pronounced guiltless by the inquisitors, and was ordered released, but

he refused to leave his cell until Paul acknowledged his innocence.

Paul would not, and Morone remained a prisoner until the Pope's

death freed him. Flaminio cheated the Inquisition by dying, but,

said Paul, "we have had his brother Cesare burned in the piazza before

the church of the Minerva." `063932 With impartial resolution the

mad Pontiff pursued his own relatives with suspicions of heresy. "Even

if my own father were a heretic," he said, "I would gather the wood to

burn him." `063933

Fortunately, Paul was mortal, and went to his reward after four

years of rule. Rome celebrated his death with four days of joyful

rioting, during which the crowd tore down his statue, dragged it

through the streets, sank it in the Tiber, burned the buildings of the

Inquisition, freed its prisoners, and destroyed its documents. `063934

The Pope would have retorted that only a man of his inflexible

austerity and courage could have reformed the morals of Rome and the

abuses of the Church, and that he had succeeded in that enterprise

where his predecessors had failed. It was a pity that in reforming the

Church he had remembered Torquemada and forgotten Christ.

-

All Western Europe was relieved when the conclave of 1559 chose

Giovanni Angelo de' Medici to be Pope Pius IV. He was no Medici

millionaire, but the son of a Milanese taxgatherer. He practiced law

for a living, won the admiration and confidence of Paul III, was

made a cardinal, and gained a reputation for intelligence and

benevolence. As pontiff he kept clear of war, and reproved those who

counseled aggressive policies. He did not end the Inquisition, but

he let the inquisitors know that they "would better please him were

they to proceed with gentlemanly courtesy than with monkish

harshness." `063935 A fanatic who thought him too lenient set out to

assassinate him, but was palsied with awe when the Pope passed by

tranquil and defenseless. Pius enforced with polite firmness the

ecclesiastical reforms established by his predecessor. He proved his

conciliatory spirit by allowing the Catholic bishops of Germany to

administer the Eucharist in both bread and wine. He reconvened the

Council of Trent, and guided it to an orderly conclusion. In 1565,

after a pontificate that had peaceably consolidated the Counter

Reformation, he passed away.

III. THE COUNCIL OF TRENT: 1545-63

-

A thousand voices, long before Luther, had called for a council to

reform the Church. Luther appealed from the pope to a free and general

council; Charles V demanded such a synod in the hope of getting the

Protestant problem off his hands, and perhaps of disciplining

Clement VII. That harried Pope could find a hundred reasons for

postponing a council until he should be beyond its reach. He

recalled what had happened to the papal power at the councils of

Constance and Basel; and he could not afford to have hostile

bishops, or Imperial delegates, pry into his policies, his domestic

difficulties, or his birth. Besides, how could a council help the

situation? Had not Luther repudiated councils as well as popes? If the

Protestants were admitted to a council and were allowed freedom of

speech, the consequent dispute would widen and embitter the schism and

would disturb all Europe; and if they were excluded they would raise a

rebellious furor. Charles wanted the council held on German soil,

but Francis I refused to let the French clergy attend a gathering

subject to Imperial domination; moreover, Francis wanted to keep the

Protestant fires burning in the Imperial rear. It was a witches' brew.

Paul III had all of Clement's fears, but more courage. In 1536 he

issued a call for a general council to meet at Mantua on May 23, 1537,

and he invited the Protestants to attend. He assumed that all

parties in attendance would accept the conclusions of the

conference; but the Protestants, who would be in a minority there,

could hardly accept such an obligation. Luther advised against

attending, and the congress of Protestants at Schmalkalden returned

the Pope's invitation unopened. The Emperor still insisted that the

council should meet on German soil; on Italian soil, he argued, it

would be crowded with Italian bishops and become a puppet of the Pope.

After many negotiations and delays Paul agreed to have the council

meet at Trent, which, though predominantly Italian, was in Imperial

territory and subject to Charles. The council was summoned to meet

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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