Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

Bourbon, perhaps hoping to satisfy his men with the enlarged sum,

sent to Clement a demand for 240,000 ducats; Clement replied that he

could not possibly raise such a ransom. The horde marched to Florence;

but the Duke of Urbino, Guicciardini, and the Marquis of Saluzzo had

brought in enough troops to man its fortifications effectively; the

horde turned away baffled, and took the road to Rome. Clement, finding

no salvation in truce, rejoined the League of Cognac against

Charles, and implored the help of France. He appealed to the rich

men of Rome to contribute to a fund for defense; they responded

gingerly, and suggested that a better plan would be to sell red

hats. Clement had not hitherto sold appointments to the college of

cardinals, but when Bourbon's army reached Viterbo, only forty-two

miles from Rome, he yielded, and sold six nominations. Before the

nominees could pay, the Pope could see, from the windows of the

Vatican, the hungry swarm advancing across the Neronian Fields. He had

now some 4000 soldiers to protect Rome from an attacking host of

20,000 men.

On May 6 Bourbon's multitude approached the walls under cover of

fog. They were repelled by a fusillade; Bourbon himself was hit, and

died almost instantly. But the assailants could not be deterred from

repeated attack; their alternatives were to capture Rome or starve.

They found a weakly defended position; they broke through it, and

poured into the city. The Roman militia and the Swiss Guards fought

bravely, but were annihilated. Clement, most of the resident

cardinals, and hundreds of officials fled to Sant' Angelo, whence

Cellini and others tried to stop the invasion with artillery fire. But

the swarm entered from a confusing variety of directions; some were

hidden by the fog; others so mingled with fugitives that the Castle

cannon could not strike them without killing the demoralized populace.

Soon the invaders had the city at their mercy.

As they rushed on through the streets they killed indiscriminately

any man, woman, or child that crossed their path. Their bloodthirst

aroused, they entered the hospital and orphanage of Santo Spirito, and

slaughtered nearly all the patients. They marched into St. Peter's and

slew the people who had sought sanctuary there. They pillaged every

church and monastery they could find, and turned some into stables;

hundreds of priests, monks, bishops, and archbishops were killed.

St. Peter's and the Vatican were rifled from top to bottom, and horses

were tethered in Raphael's stanze. `052136 Every dwelling in Rome

was plundered, and many were burned, with two exceptions: the

Cancelleria, occupied by Cardinal Colonna, and the Palazzo Colonna, in

which Isabella d' Este and some rich merchants had sought asylum;

these paid 50,000 ducats to leaders of the mob for freedom from

attack, and then took two thousand refugees within their walls.

Every palace paid ransoms for protection, only to face later attacks

from other packs, and pay ransom again. In most houses all the

occupants were required to ransom their lives at a stated price; if

they did not pay they were tortured; thousands were killed; children

were flung from high windows to pry parental savings from secrecy;

some streets were littered with dead. The millionaire Domenico Massimi

saw his sons slain, his daughter raped, his house burned, and then was

himself murdered. "In the whole city," says one account, "there was

not a soul above three years of age who had not to purchase his

safety." `052137

Of the victorious mob half were Germans, of whom most had been

convinced that the popes and cardinals were thieves, and that the

wealth of the Church in Rome was a theft from the nations, and a

scandal to the world. To reduce this scandal they seized all movable

ecclesiastical valuables, including sacred vessels and works of art,

and carried them off for melting or ransom or sale; relics, however,

they left scattered on the floor. One soldier dressed himself as a

pope; others put on cardinals' hats and kissed his feet; a crowd at

the Vatican proclaimed Luther pope. The Lutherans among the invaders

took especial delight in robbing cardinals, exacting high ransoms from

them as the price of their lives, and teaching them new rituals.

Some cardinals, says Guicciardini, "were set upon scrubby beasts,

riding with their faces backward, in the habits and ensigns of their

dignity, and were led about all Rome with the greatest derision and

contempt. Some, unable to raise all the ransom demanded, were so

tortured that they died there and then, or within a few days." `052138

One cardinal was lowered into a grave and was told that he would be

buried alive unless ransom were brought within a stated time; it

came at the last moment. `052139 Spanish and German cardinals, who

thought themselves safe from their own countrymen, were treated like

the rest. Nuns and respectable women were violated in situ, or

were carried off to promiscuous brutality in the various shelters of

the horde. `052140 Women were assaulted before the eyes of their

husbands or fathers. Many young women, despondent after being raped,

drowned themselves in the Tiber. `052141

The destruction of books, archives, and art was immense.

Philibert, Prince of Orange, who had succeeded to the quasi command of

the undisciplined horde, saved the Vatican Library by making it his

headquarters, but many monastic and private libraries went up in

flames, and many precious manuscripts disappeared. The University of

Rome was ransacked, and its staff was scattered. The scholar Colocci

saw his house burned to the ground with his collections of manuscripts

and art. Baldus, a professor, saw his newly written commentary on

Pliny used to light a camp fire for the pillagers. The poet Marone

lost his poems, but was comparatively fortunate; the poet Paolo

Bombasi was killed. The scholar Cristoforo Marcello was tortured by

having one fingernail after another pulled out; the scholars Francesco

Fortuno and Juan Valdes slew themselves in despair. `052142 The

artists Perino del Vaga, Marcantonio Raimondi, and many others were

tortured and robbed of all that they had. The school of Raphael was

finally dispersed.

The number of deaths cannot be calculated. Two thousand corpses were

thrown into the Tiber from the Vatican side of Rome; 9800 dead were

buried; there were unquestionably many more fatalities. A low estimate

places the thefts at over a million ducats, the ransoms at three

million; Clement judged the total loss at ten million

($125,000,000?). `052143

The sack lasted eight days, while Clement looked on from the

towers of Sant' Angelo. He cried out to God like tortured Job:

Quare de vulva eduxisti me? qui utinam consumptus essem, ne oculus

videret - "Why didst Thou take me out of the womb? Would that I had

been consumed, that no eye had seen me!" `052144 He ceased to shave,

and never shaved again. He remained a prisoner in the Castle from

May 6 to December 7, 1527, hoping that rescue would come from the army

of the Duke of Urbino, or from Francis I, or Henry VIII. Charles,

still in Spain, was glad to hear that Rome had been taken, but was

shocked when he heard of the savagery of the sack; he disclaimed

responsibility for the excesses, but took full advantage of the Pope's

helplessness. On June 6 his representatives, possibly without his

knowledge, compelled Clement to sign a humiliating peace. The Pope

agreed to pay over to them and the imperialist army 400,000 ducats; to

surrender to Charles the cities of Piacenza, Parma, and Modena, and

the castles of Ostia, Civita Vecchia, Civita Castellana, and Sant'

Angelo itself; he was to remain a prisoner there until the first

150,000 ducats had been delivered, and was then to be removed to Gaeta

or Naples until Charles should determine what to do with him. All

those in Sant' Angelo were allowed to depart except Clement and the

thirteen cardinals who had accompanied him. Spanish and German

soldiers were put in charge of the Castle, and kept the Pope nearly

always confined in a narrow apartment. "They have not left him ten

scudi worth of property," wrote Guicciardini on June 21. `052145 All

the silver and gold that he had salvaged in his flight was surrendered

to his captors, to make up 100,000 ducats of his ransom.

In the meantime Alfonso of Ferrara seized Reggio and Modena (to

which Ferrara had age-long rights), and Venice took Ravenna.

Florence expelled the Medici a third time, and proclaimed Jesus Christ

king of the new republic. The whole edifice of the papacy, material

and spiritual, seemed to be collapsing into a tragic ruin that awoke

the pity even of those who felt that some punishment was deserved by

the infidelities of Clement, the sins of the papacy, the greed and

corruption of the Curia, the luxury of the hierarchy, and the iniquity

of Rome. Sadoleto, peaceful in Carpentras, heard with horror of Rome's

fall, and mourned the passing of those halcyon days when Bembo and

Castiglione and Isabella and a hundred scholars and poets and

patrons had made the wicked city the home and summit of the thought

and art of the age. And Erasmus wrote to Sadoleto: "Rome was not alone

the shrine of the Christian faith, the nurse of noble souls, and the

abode of the Muses, but the mother of nations. To how many was she not

dearer and sweeter and more precious than their own land!... In

truth this is not the ruin of one city, but of the whole

world." `052146

VIII. CHARLES TRIUMPHANT: 1527-30

-

Plague had visited Rome in 1522, and had reduced its population to

55,000; murder, suicide, and flight must have reduced it below

40,000 in 1527; now, in July of that year, plague came back in the

full heat of summer, and joined with famine and the continued presence

of the ravaging horde to make Rome a city of horror, terror, and

desolation. Churches and streets were littered anew with corpses; many

of these were left to rot in the sun; the stench was so strong that

the jailers and prisoners fled from the castle parapets to their

rooms; even there many died of the infection, among them some servants

of the Pope. The impartial plague struck the invaders too; 2500

Germans in Rome died by July 22, 1527; and malaria, syphilis, and

malnutrition cut the horde in half.

The opponents of Charles began seriously to think of rescuing the

Pope. Henry VIII, fearing that an imprisoned pontiff might not grant

him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, sent Cardinal Wolsey to France

to confer with Francis on measures to liberate Clement. Early in

August the two kings offered Charles peace and 2,000,000 ducats on

condition that the Pope and the French princes should be freed, and

that the Papal States should be restored to the Church. Charles

refused. By the treaty of Amiens (August 18) Henry and Francis pledged

themselves to war against Charles; soon Venice and Florence joined

this new league. French forces captured Genoa and Pavia, and sacked

the latter city almost as thoroughly as the imperialist army had

sacked Rome. Mantua and Ferrara, dreading the present French more than

the distant Charles, now joined the league. Nevertheless Lautrec,

the French commander, unable to pay his troops, dared not march upon

Rome.

The Emperor, hoping to restore his grace in Catholic Christendom,

and to cool the ardor of the growing league, agreed to release the

Pope, on condition that Clement should give no aid to the league,

should at once pay the imperialist army in Rome 112,000 ducats, and

should give hostages for his good behavior. Clement raised the money

by selling red hats, and by granting the Emperor a tenth of

ecclesiastical revenues in the Kingdom of Naples. On December 7, after

seven months of confinement, Clement left Sant' Angelo, and, disguised

as a servant, made his way humbly out of Rome to Orvieto, apparently a

broken man.

At Orvieto he was lodged in a dilapidated palace whose roof had

caved in, whose walls were bare and cracked, whose floors admitted a

hundred draughts. English ambassadors visiting him to get Henry a

divorce found him huddled in bed, his pale emaciated face half lost in

a long and unkempt beard. He spent the winter there, and then moved to

Viterbo. On February 17 the imperialist horde, having received from

Clement all that he could pay, and fearing further decimation by

disease, evacuated Rome and moved south to Naples. Lautrec now brought

his army down with the hope of besieging Naples; but his own troops

were thinned out by malaria, he himself died, and his disordered

forces retreated to the north (August 29, 1528). Losing all hope of

aid from the league, Clement offered his full surrender to Charles;

and on October 6 he was allowed to re-enter Rome. Four fifths of the

houses had been abandoned, thousands of buildings were in ruins; men

were amazed to see what nine months of invasion had done to the

capital of Christendom.

Charles seems to have thought for a while of deposing Clement,

annexing the Papal States to the Kingdom of Naples, making Rome the

seat of his empire, and reducing the pope to his primeval role as

bishop of Rome and subject to the emperor. `052147 But this would

drive Charles into the arms of the Lutherans in Germany, would court

civil war in Spain, and would arouse France, England, Poland, and

Hungary to resist him with their full and united power. He abandoned

the scheme, and turned to the idea of making the papacy his

dependent ally and spiritual aid in dividing Italy between them. By

the treaty of Barcelona (June 29, 1529) he made substantial

concessions to the Pope: the principalities taken from the Church were

to be restored; the Medici relatives of the Pope were to be

re-established in Florence by diplomacy or force; even Ferrara was now

promised to the Pope. In return the Pope agreed to give Charles the

formal investiture of Naples, to allow the imperial armies free

passage through the Papal States, and to meet the Emperor at Bologna

in the following year to settle between them the peace and

organization of Italy.

Shortly thereafter Margaret, aunt of Charles and Regent of the

Netherlands, met with Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis, and, with

the aid of various ambassadors and legates, formulated the treaty of

Cambrai (August 3, 1529) between Emperor and King. Charles released

the French princes for a ransom of 1,200,000 ducats; Francis renounced

for France all claims to Italy, Flanders, Artois, Arras, and

Tournai. `052148 The allies of France in Italy were left to the

mercy of the Emperor.

Charles and Clement met at Bologna on November 5, 1529, each now

convinced that he needed the other. Strange to say, this was Charles's

first visit to Italy; he had conquered it before seeing it. When he

knelt before the Pope at Bologna, and kissed the foot of the man

whom he had dragged in the dust, it was the first time that these

two figures- the one representing the Church in decline, the other the

rising and here victorious modern state- had ever seen each other.

Clement swallowed all pride, forgave all offenses; he had to. He could

no longer look to France; Charles had irresistible armies in both

southern and northern Italy; Florence could not be recovered for the

Medici without imperial troops; the aid of the Empire was needed

against Luther in Germany, against Suleiman in the East. Charles was

generous and prudent: he kept essentially to the terms of the

Barcelona agreement made when he was not so unchallengeably strong. He

forced Venice to restore all that she had taken from the Papal States.

He allowed Francesco Maria Sforza, on paying a large indemnity, to

keep ruined Milan under imperial watching; and he persuaded Clement to

allow the cowardly or faithless Francesco Maria della Rovere to keep

Urbino. He forgave Alfonso his recent association with France, and

rewarded him for aiding the march on Rome by letting him retain his

duchy as a papal fief, and giving him Modena and Reggio as imperial

fiefs; in return Alfonso paid the Pope 100,000 badly needed ducats. To

consolidate these settlements Charles summoned all the

principalities to join in a union of Italy for common defense

against foreign attack- except by Charles; that unity for which

Dante had pled to the Emperor Henry VII, and Petrarch to the Emperor

Charles IV, was now achieved through united subjection to a foreign

power. Clement blessed it all, and crowned Charles Emperor with the

iron crown of Lombardy and the imperial-papal crown of the Holy

Roman Empire (February 22-24, 1530).

The alliance of Pope and Emperor was sealed with Florentine blood.

Resolved to restore his family to power, Clement paid 70,000 ducats to

Philibert, Prince of Orange (who had kept him prisoner), to organize

an army and overturn the republic of rich men that had been set up

there in 1527. Philibert sent on this mission 20,000 German and

Spanish troops, many of whom had shared in the sack of Rome. `052149

In December, 1529, this force occupied Pistoia and Prato, and laid

siege to Florence. To expose the assailants to Florentine artillery

the resolute burghers destroyed every house, garden, and wall for a

mile around the city fortifications; and Michelangelo left his

sculpture of the Medici tombs to build or rebuild the ramparts and

forts. The siege continued mercilessly for eight months; food became

so scarce in Florence that cats and rats brought some $12.50

apiece. `052150 Churches surrendered their vessels, citizens their

plate, women their jewelry, to be transformed into money for

provisions or arms. Patriotic monks like Fra Benedetto da Foiano

kept up the spirit of the people with fiery sermons. A courageous

Florentine, Francesco Ferrucci, escaped from the city, organized a

force of three thousand men, and attacked the besiegers. He was

defeated with the loss of two thousand of his soldiers. He himself was

captured and brought before Fabrizio Maramaldi, a Calabrian who

commanded the imperial cavalry. Maramaldi had Ferrucci held helpless

before him while he repeatedly drove a poignard into him until the

hero died. `052151 Meanwhile the general whom Florence had hired to

lead its defense, Malatesta Baglioni, entered into a treacherous

agreement with the besiegers; he let them into the city, and turned

his guns upon the Florentines. Starving and disorganized, the republic

surrendered (August 12, 1530).

Alessandro de' Medici became Duke of Florence, and disgraced his

family by his rapacity and cruelty. Hundreds of those who had fought

for the Republic were tortured, exiled, or slain. Fra Benedetto was

sent to Clement, who ordered him imprisoned in Sant' Angelo; there,

said an uncertain report, the monk was starved to death. `052152 The

Signory was disbanded; the Palazzo della Signoria now began to be

called Palazzo Vecchio; and the great eleven-ton bell, La Vacca- the

Cow- that had from the lovely tower called so many generations to

parlamento, was taken down and broken to pieces, "in order," said a

contemporary diarist, "that we should no more hear the sweet sound

of liberty." `052153

IX. CLEMENT VII AND THE ARTS

-

The Pope's treatment of Florence confirmed the degeneration of the

Medici; his efforts to restore Rome revealed a spark of the

administrative genius and esthetic appreciation that had made the

family great. Sebastiano del Piombo, who had portrayed him in

maturity, painted him now as an old man, somber, deep-eyed,

white-bearded, giving benediction; apparently suffering had

chastened and in some measure strengthened him. He took vigorous

action to protect Italy from the Turkish fleets that now commanded the

Eastern Mediterranean; he fortified Ancona, Ascoli, and Fano, and paid

the costs by persuading the consistory of June 21, 1532- over the

opposition of the cardinals- to impose a levy of fifty per cent upon

the incomes of the Italian clergy, including the cardinals. `052154

Partly by selling ecclesiastical offices, he raised funds to rebuild

the property of the Church, to restore the University of Rome, and

to resume the patronage of scholarship and art. He took measures to

ensure a proper supply of grain despite the raids of Barbary pirates

upon shipping near Sicily. In a remarkably short time Rome was

functioning again as the capital of the Western world.

The city was still rich in artists. Caradosso had come from Milan,

Cellini from Florence, to raise the art of the goldsmith to its

Renaissance zenith; they and many more were kept busy making gold

roses and swords of honor as papal gifts, vessels for the altars,

silver staffs for Church authorities and processions, seals for

cardinals, tiaras and rings for the popes. Valerio Belli of Vicenza

made for Clement a magnificent casket of rock crystal, engraved with

scenes from the life of Christ. This, now one of the most precious

objects in the Pitti Palace, was presented to Francis I at the

marriage of his son to Catherine de' Medici.

The decoration of the Vatican stanze had been resumed in 1526. The

greatest painting of Clement's pontificate was done in the Hall of

Constantine: there Giulio Romano pictured The Apparition of the

Cross and The Battle of the Milvian Bridge; Francesco Penni painted

The Baptism of Constantine, and Raffaello del Colle portrayed

Rome Presented to Pope Sylvester by Constantine.

After Michelangelo- and now that Giulio Romano had migrated to

Mantua- the ablest painter in Rome was Sebastiano Luciano, who

acquired his sobriquet del Piombo when he was appointed keeper and

designer of the papal seals (1531). Born in Venice (c. 1485), he had

the luck to be taught by Gian Bellini, Giorgione, and Cima. One of his

earliest and finest pictures- The Three Ages of Man - shows him as

a delectable youth between two famous foreign composers then in

Venice- Jacob Obrecht and Philippe Verdelot. For the church of San

Giovanni Crisostomo he painted- or finished for Giorgione- a vivid

representation of that saint in the fever of composition; and about

the same time (1510) he copied Giorgione's most voluptuous manner in a

Venus and Adonis whose generous women seem to belong to a golden age

before the birth of sin. Probably in Venice also Sebastiano painted

his renowned Portrait of a Lady, long ascribed to Raphael as La

Fornarina.

In 1511 Agostino Chigi invited Sebastiano to come to Rome and help

adorn the Villa Chigi. There the young artist met Raphael, and for a

time imitated his style of pagan ornament; in return he taught Raphael

the Venetian secrets of warm coloring. Soon Sebastian became a devoted

friend of Michelangelo, imbibed the Titan's muscular conception of

man, and announced the aim of wedding Venetian color to

Michelangelesque design. He had a chance to do this when Cardinal

Giulio de' Medici asked him for a picture. Sebastiano chose as his

subject The Raising of Lazarus, in deliberate competition with the

Transfiguration that Raphael was painting at the time (1518).

Critics did not unanimously contradict his judgment that he had

equaled Leo's favorite.

He might have progressed further had he not been too readily content

with his excellence. A passion for leisure kept him this side of

genius. He was a jovial fellow who could not see why one should wear

himself out either for superfluous gold or for such a will-o'-the-wisp

as posthumous fame. After he had received his sinecure in the

Vatican from his patron made pope, he confined himself for the most

part to portraits, in which few painters have surpassed him.

Baldassare Peruzzi was more ambitious, and made his sonorous name

ring for a generation across the mountains of Italy. He was the son of

a weaver. (Artists are mostly of lowly stock: the middle classes

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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