Clement, surrounded by a troop of prelates, was seated to receive him on a platform raised before the church of San Petronio in the great piazza. The king dismounted opposite the Papal throne, ascended the steps beneath his canopy of gold and crimson, and knelt to kiss the Pontiff's feet. When their eyes first met, it was observed that both turned pale; for the memory of outraged Rome was in the minds of both; and Caesar, while he paid this homage to Christ's Vicar, had the load of those long months of suffering and insult on his conscience. Clement bent down, and with streaming eyes saluted him upon the cheek. Then, when Charles was still upon his knees, they exchanged a few set words referring to the purpose of their meeting and their common desire for the pacification of Christendom. After this the Emperor elect rose, seated himself for a while beside the Pope, and next, at his invitation, escorted him to the great portal of the church. On the way, he inquired after Clement's health; to which the Pope replied somewhat significantly that, after leaving Rome, it had steadily improved. He tempered this allusion to his captivity, however, by adding that his eagerness to greet his Majesty had inspired him with more than wonted strength and courage. At the doorway they parted; and the Emperor, having paid his devotions to the Sacrament and kissed the altar, was conducted to the apartments prepared for him in the Palazzo Pubblico. These were adjacent to the Pope's lodgings in the same palace, and were so arranged that the two potentates could confer in private at all times. It is worthy of remark that the negotiations for the settlement of Italy which took place during the next six months in those rooms, were conducted personally by the high contracting parties, and that none of their deliberations transpired until the result of each was made public.
The whole of November 5 had been occupied in these ceremonies. It was late evening when the Emperor gained his lodgings. The few next days were ostensibly occupied in receiving visitors. Among the first of these was the unfortunate ex-queen of Naples, Isabella, widow of Frederick of Aragon, the last king of the bastard dynasty founded by Alfonso. She was living in poverty at Ferrara, under the protection of her relatives, the Este family, On the 13th came the Prince of Orange and Don Ferrante Gonzaga, from the camp before Florence. The siege had begun, but had not yet been prosecuted with the strictest vigor. During the whole time of Charles's residence at Bologna, it must be borne in mind that the siege of Florence was being pressed. Superfluous troops detached from garrison duty in the Lombard towns were drafted across the hills to Tuscany. Whatever else the Emperor might decide for his Italian subjects, this at least was certain: Florence should be restored to the Medicean tyrants, as compensation to the Pope for Roman sufferings. The Prince of Orange came to explain the state of things at Florence, where government and people seemed prepared to resist to the death. Gonzaga had private business of his own to conduct, touching his engagement to the Pope's ward, Isabella, daughter and heiress of the wealthy Vespasiano Colonna.
Meanwhile, ambassadors from all the States and lordships of Italy flocked to Bologna. Great nobles from the South—Ascanio Colonna, Grand Constable of Naples; Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto; Giovanni Luigi Caraffa, Prince of Stigliano—took up their quarters in adjacent houses, or in the upper story of the Public Palace. The Marquis of Vasto arrests our graze for a moment. He was nephew to the Marquis of Pescara (husband of Vittoria Colonna), who had the glory of taking Francis prisoner at Pavia, and afterwards the infamy of betraying the unfortunate Girolamo Morone and his master the Duke of Milan to the resentment of the Spanish monarch. What part Pescara actually played in that dark passage of plot and counterplot remains obscure. But there is no doubt that he employed treachery, single if not double, for his own advantage. His arrogance and avowed hostility to the Italians caused his very name to be execrated; nor did his nephew, the Marquis of Vasto, differ in these respects from the more famous chief of his house. This man was also destined to obtain an evil reputation when he succeeded in 1532 to the government of Milan. Here too may be noticed the presence at Bologna of Girolamo Morone's son, who had been created Bishop of Modena in 1529. For him a remarkable fate was waiting. Condemned to the dungeons of the Inquisition as a heretic by Paul IV., rescued by Pius IV., and taken into highest favor at that Pontiff's Court, he successfully manipulated the closing of the Tridentine Council to the profit of the Papal See.
Negotiations for the settlement of Italian affairs were proceeding without noise, but with continual progress, through this month. The lodgings of ambassadors and lords were so arranged in the Palazzo Pubblico that they, like their Imperial and Papal masters, could confer at all times and seasons. Every day brought some new illustrious visitor. On the 22nd arrived Federigo Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, who took up his quarters in immediate proximity to Charles and Clement. His business required but little management. The house of Gonzaga was already well affected to the Spanish cause, and counted several captains in the imperial army. Charles showed his favor by raising Mantua to the rank of a Duchy. It was different with the Republic of Venice and the Duke of Milan. The Emperor elect had reasons to be strongly prejudiced against them both—against Venice as the most formidable of the French allies in the last war; against Francesco Maria Sforza, as having been implicated, though obscurely, in Morone's conspiracy to drive the Spaniards from Italy and place the crown of Naples on Pescara's head. Clement took both under his protection. He had sufficient reasons to believe that the Venetians would purchase peace by the cession of their recent acquisitions on the Adriatic coast, and he knew that the pacification of Italy could not be accomplished without their aid. In effect, the Republic agreed to relinquish Cervia and Ravenna to the Pope, and their Apulian ports to Charles, engaging at the same time to pay a sum of 300,000 ducats and stipulating for an amnesty to all their agents and dependents. It is not so clear why Clement warmly espoused the cause of Sforza. That he did so is certain. He obtained a safe-conduct for the duke, and made it a point of personal favor that he should be received into the Emperor's grace. This stipulation appears to have been taken into account when the affairs of Fer rara were decided at a later date against the Papal interests.
Francesco Maria Sforza appeared in Bologna on the 22nd. This unfortunate bearer of one of the most coveted titles in Europe had lately lived a prisoner in his own Castello, while the city at his doors and the fertile country round it were being subjected to cruelest outrage and oppression from Spanish, French, Swiss, and German mercenaries. He was a man ruined in health as well as fortune. Six years before this date, one of his chamberlains, Bonifazio Visconti, had given him a slight wound in the shoulder with a poisoned dagger. From this wound he never recovered; and it was pitiable to behold the broken man, unable to move or stand without support, dragging himself upon his knees to Caesar's footstool. Charles appears to have discerned that he had nothing to fear and much to gain, if he showed clemency to so powerless a suitor. Franceso was the last of his line. His health rendered it impossible that he should expect heirs; and although he subsequently married a princess of the House of Denmark, he died childless in the autumn of 1535. It was therefore determined, in compliance with the Pope's request, that Sforza should be confirmed in the Duchy of Milan. Pavia, however, was detached and given to the terrible Antonio de Leyva for his lifetime. The garrisons of Milan and Como were left in Spanish hands; and the duke promised to wring 400,000 ducats as the price of his investiture, with an additional sum of 500,000 ducats to be paid in ten yearly instalments, from his already blood-sucked people. It will be observed that money figured largely in all these high political transactions. Charles, though lord of many lands, was, even at this early stage of his career, distressed for want of cash. He rarely paid his troops, but commissioned the captains in his service to levy contributions on the provinces they occupied. The funds thus raised did not always reach the pockets of the soldiers, who subsisted as best they could by marauding. Having made these terms, Francesco Maria Sforza was received into the Imperial favor. He returned to Milan, in no sense less a prisoner than he had previously been, and with the heart-rending necessity of extorting money from his subjects at the point of Spanish swords. In exchange for the ducal title, he thus had made himself a tax-collector for his natural enemies. Secluded in the dreary chambers of his castle, assailed by the execrations of the Milanese, he may well have groaned, like Marlowe's Edward—
But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?
My foemen rule; I bear the name of King;
I wear the crown; but am controlled by them.
When he died he bequeathed his duchy to the crown of Spain. It was detached from the Empire, and became the private property of Charles and of his son, Philip II.
During the month of December negotiations for the terms of peace in Italy went briskly forward. On the part of Venice, two men of the highest distinction arrived as orators. These were Pietro Bembo and Gasparo Contarini, both of whom received the honors of the Cardinalate from Paul III. on his accession. Of Bembo's place in Italian society, as the dictator of literature at this epoch, I have already sufficiently spoken in another part of my work on the Renaissance. Contarini will more than once arrest our notice in the course of this volume. Of all the Italians of the time, he was perhaps the greatest, wisest, and most sympathetic. Had it been possible to avert the breach between Catholicism and Protestantism, to curb the intolerance of Inquisitors and the ambition of Jesuits, and to guide the reform of the Church by principles of moderation and liberal piety, Contarini was the man who might have restored unity to the Church in Europe. Once, indeed, at Regensburg in 1541, he seemed upon the very point of effecting a reconciliation between the parties that were tearing Christendom asunder. But his failure was even more conspicuous than his momentary semblance of success. It was not in the temper of the times to accept a Concordat founded on however philosophical, however politic, considerations. Contarini will be remembered as a 'beautiful soul,' born out of the due moment, and by no means adequate to cope with the fierce passions that raged round him. Among Protestants he was a Catholic, and they regarded his half measures with contempt. Among Catholics he passed for a suspected Lutheran, and his writings were only tolerated after they had been subjected to rigorous castration at the hands of Papal Inquisitors.[4]
On Christmas eve the ambassadors and representatives of the Italian powers met together in the chambers of Cardinal Gattinara, Grand Chancellor of the Empire, to subscribe the terms of a confederation and perpetual league for the maintenance of peace. From this important document the Florentines were excluded, as open rebels to the will of Charles and Clement. There was no justice in the rigor with which Florence was now treated. Her republican independence had hitherto been recognized, although her own internal discords exposed her to a virtual despotism. But Clement stipulated and Charles conceded, as a sine qua non in the project of pacification, that Florence should be converted into a Medicean duchy. For the Duke of Ferrara, whom the Pope regarded as a contumacious vassal, and whose affairs were still the subject of debate, a place was specially reserved in the treaty. He, as I have already observed, had been taken under the Imperial protection; and a satisfactory settlement of his claims was now a mere question of time. On the evening of the same day, the Pope bestowed on Charles the Sword of the Spirit, which it was the wont of Rome to confer on the best-beloved of her secular sons at this festival. The peace was publicly proclaimed, amid universal plaudits, on the last day of the year 1529.
The chief affairs to be decided in the new year were the reduction of Florence to submission and the coronation of the Emperor. The month of January was passed in jousts and pastimes; ceremonial privileges were conferred on the University of Bologna; magnificent embassies from the Republic of S. Mark, glowing in senatorial robes of crimson silk, were entertained; and a singular deputation from the African court of Prester John obtained audience of the Roman Pontiff. Amid these festivities there arrived, on January 16, three delegates from Florence, who spent some weeks in fruitless efforts to obtain a hearing from the arbiters of Italy. Clement refused to deal with them, because their commonwealth was still refractory. Charles repelled them, because he wished to gratify the Pope, and knew that Florence remained staunch in her devotion to the French crown. The old proverb, 'Lilies with lilies,' the white lily of Florence united with the golden fleur-de-lys of France, had still political significance in this day of Italian degradation. Meanwhile Francis I. treated his faithful allies with lukewarm tolerance. The smaller fry of Italian potentates, worshipers of the rising sun of Spain, curried favor with their masters by insulting the republic's representatives. On their return to Florence, the ambassadors had to report a total diplomatic failure. But this, far from breaking the untamable spirit of the Signory and people, prompted them in February to new efforts of resistance and to edicts of outlawry against citizens whom they regarded as traitors to the State. Among the proscribed were Francesco Guicciardini, Roberto Acciaiuoli, Francesco Vettori, and Baccio Valori. Of these men Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori, and Baccio Valori were attendant at Bologna upon the Pope. They all adhered with fidelity to the Medicean party at this crisis of their country's fate, and all paid dearly for their loyalty. When Cosimo I., by their efforts, was established in the duchy, he made it one of his first cares to rid himself of these too faithful servants. Baccio Valori was beheaded after the battle of Montemurlo in 1537 for practice with the exiles of Filippo Strozzi's party. Francesco Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori, and Roberto Acciaiuoli died in disgrace before the year 1543—their only crime being that they had made themselves the ladder whereby a Medici had climbed into his throne, and which it was his business to upset when firmly seated. For the heroism of Florence at this moment it would be difficult to find fit words of panegyric. The republic stood alone, abandoned by France to the hot rage of Clement and the cold contempt of Charles, deserted by the powers of Italy, betrayed by lying captains, deluged on all sides with the scum of armies pouring into Tuscany from the Lombard pandemonium of war. The situation was one of impracticable difficulty. Florence could not but fall. Yet every generous heart will throb with sympathy while reading the story of that final stand for independence, in which a handful of burghers persisted, though congregated princes licked the dust from feet of Emperor and Pontiff.
Charles had come to assume the iron and the golden crowns in Italy. He ought to have journeyed to Monza or to S. Ambrogio at Milan for the first, and to the Lateran in Rome for the second of these investitures. An Emperor of the Swabian House would have been compelled by precedent and superstition to observe this form. It is true that the coronation of a German prince as the successor of Lombard kings and Roman Augusti, had always been a symbolic ceremony rather than a rite which ratified genuine Imperial authority. Still the ceremony connoted many mediaeval aspirations. It was the outward sign of theories that had once exerted an ideal influence. To dissociate the two-fold sacrament from Milan and from Rome was the same as robbing it of its main virtue, the virtue of a mystical conception. It was tantamount to a demonstration that the belief in Universal Monarchy had passed away. By breaking the old rules of his investiture, Charles notified the disappearance of the mediaeval order, and proclaimed new political ideals to the world. When asked whether he would not follow custom and seek the Lombard crown in Monza, he brutally replied that he was not wont to run after crowns, but to have crowns running after him. He trampled no less on that still more venerable religio loci which attached imperial rights to Rome. Together with this ancient piety, he swept the Holy Roman Empire into the dust-heap of archaic curiosities. By declaring his will to be crowned where he chose, he emphasized the modern state motto of L'état, c'est moi, and prepared the way for a Pope's closing of a General Council by the word L'Eglise, c'est moi. Charles had sufficient reasons for acting as he did. The Holy Roman Empire ever since the first event of Charles the Great's coronation, when it justified itself as a diplomatical expedient for unifying Western Christendom, had existed more or less as a shadow. Charles violated the duties which alone gave the semblance of a substance to that shadow. As King of Italy, he had desolated the Lombard realm of which he sought the title. As Emperor elect, he had ravished his bride, the Eternal City. As suitor to the Pope for both of his expected crowns, he stood responsible for the multiplied insults to which Clement had been so recently exposed. No Emperor had been more powerful since Charles the Great than this Charles V., the last who took his crowns in Italy. It was significant that he man in whose name Rome had suffered outrage, and who was about to detach Lombardy from the Empire, was by his own will invested at Bologna. The citizens of Monza were accordingly bidden to send the iron crown to Bologna. It arrived on February 20, and on the 22nd Charles received it from the hands of Clement in the chapel of the palace. The Cardinal who performed the ceremony of unction was a Fleming, William Hencheneor, who in the Sack of Rome had bought his freedom for the large sum of 40,000 crowns. On this auspicious occasion he cut off half the beard which he still wore in sign of mourning!
The Duke and Duchess of Urbino made their entrance into Bologna on the same day. Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, Prefect of Rome, and Captain General of the armies of the Church, was one of the most noted warriors of that time. Yet victory had rarely crowned his brows with laurels. Imitating the cautious tactics of Braccio, and emulating the fame of Fabius Cunctator, he reduced the art of war to a system of manoeuvres, and rarely risked his fortune in the field. It was chiefly due to his dilatory movements that the disaster of the Sack of Rome was not averted. He had been expelled by Leo X. from his duchy to make room for Lorenzo de'Medici, and report ran that a secret desire to witness the humiliation of a Medicean Pontiff caused him to withhold his forces from attacking the tumultuary troops of Bourbon. Francesco Maria was a man of violent temper; nineteen years before, he had murdered the Pope's Legate, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi, with his dagger, in the open streets of Bologna. His wife, Eleanora Ippolita Gonzaga, presided with grace over that brilliant and cultivated Court which Castiglione made famous by his Cortegiano. The Duke and Duchess survive to posterity in two masterpieces of portraiture by the hand of Titian which now adorn the Gallery of the Uffizzi.
February 24, which was the anniversary of Charles's birthday, had been fixed for his coronation as Emperor in San Petronio. This church is one of the largest Gothic buildings in Italy. Its façade occupies the southern side of the piazza. The western side, on the left of the church, is taken up by the Palazzo Pubblico. In order to facilitate the passage of the Pope and Emperor with their Courts and train of princes from the palace to the cathedral, a wooden bridge wide enough to take six men abreast was constructed from an opening in the Hall of the Ancients. The bridge descended by a gradual line to the piazza, broadened out into a platform before the front of San Petronio, and then again ascended through the nave to the high altar. It was covered with blue draperies, and so arranged that the vast multitudes assembled in the square and church to see the ceremony had free access to it on all sides. On the morning of the 24th, the solemn procession issued from the palace, and defiled in order down the gangway. Clement was borne aloft by Pontifical grooms in their red liveries. He wore the tiara and a cope of state fastened by Cellini's famous stud, in which blazed the Burgundian diamond of Charles the Bold. Charles walked in royal robes attended by the Count of Nassau and Don Pietro di Toledo, the Viceroy of Naples, who afterwards gave his name to the chief street in that city. Before him went the Marquis of Montferrat, bearing the scepter; Philip, Duke of Bavaria, carrying the golden orb; the Duke of Urbino, with the sword; and the Duke of Savoy, holding the imperial diadem. This Duke of Savoy was uncle to Francis I. and brother-in-law to Charles—- his wife, Beatrice, being a sister of the Empress, and his sister, Louise, mother of the French king. This double relationship made his position during the late wars a difficult one. Yet his territory had been regarded as neutral, and in the pacification of Italy he judged it wise to adhere without reserve to the victorious King of Spain. It was noticed that Ferrante di Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, though known to be in Bologna, occupied no post of distinction in the imperial train. He was closely related to the Emperor by his mother, Maria of Aragon, and had done good service in the recent campaigns against Lautrec. The reason for this neglect does not appear. But it may be mentioned that some years later he espoused the French cause, and was deprived of his vast hereditary fiefs. In his ruin the poet Bernardo, father of Torquato Tasso, was involved.
To enumerate all the nobles of Spain, Italy and Germany, with the ambassadors from England, France, Scotland, Hungary, Bohemia and Portugal; who swelled the Imperial cortège; to describe the series of ceremonies by which Charles was first consecrated as a deacon, anointed, dressed and undressed, and finally conducted to the Pope for coronation; to narrate the breaking of the bridge at one point, and the squabbles between the Genoese and Sienese delegates for precedence, would be superfluously tedious. The day was well-nigh over when at length Charles received the Imperial insignia from the Pope's hands. Accipe gladium sanctum, Accipe virgam, Accipe pomum, Accipe signum gloriae! As Clement pronounced these sentences, he gave the sword, the scepter, the globe, and the diadem in succession to the Emperor, who knelt before him. Charles bent and kissed the Papal feet. He then rose and took his throne beside the Pope. It was placed two steps lower than that of Clement. The ceremony of coronation and enthronization being now complete, Charles was proclaimed: Romanorum Imperator semper augustus, mundi totius Dominus, universis Dominis, universis Principibus et Populis semper venerandus. When Mass was over, Pope and Emperor shook hands. At the church-door, Charles held Clement's stirrup, and when the Pope had mounted, he led his palfrey for some paces, in sign of filial submission.
The month of March was distinguished by the arrival of illustrious visitors. The Duchess of Savoy, with an escort of eighteen lovely maids of honor, made her pompous entry on the 4th, and took up her quarters in the Palazzo Pepoli. On the 6th came the Duke of Ferrara, for whom Charles had procured a safe-conduct from the Pope. During the Emperor's stay at Bologna, Alfonso d'Este had been assiduous in paying him and his Court small attentions, sending excellent provisions for the household and furnishing the royal table with game and every kind of delicacy. The settlement of his dispute with the Holy See was the only important business that remained to be transacted. Charles prevailed upon both Clement and Alfonso to state their cases in writing and to place them in the hands of jurisconsults, to report upon. There is little doubt that his own mind was already made up in favor of the duke; but he did not pass sentence until the following December, nor was the decision published before April in the year 1531. The substance of the final agreement was as follows. Modena, Reggio and Rubbiera were declared fiefs of the Empire, seeing that they had not been included in Pepin's gift of the Exarchate. Charles confirmed their investiture to Alfonso, in return for a considerable payment to the Imperial Chancery. He had previously conferred the town of Carpi, forfeited by Alberto Pio as a French adherent, on the Duke. Ferrara remained a fief of the Church, and Clement consented to acknowledge Alfonso's tenure, upon his disbursement of 100,000 ducats. This decision saved Modena to the bastard line of Este, when Pope Clement VIII. seized Ferrara as a lapsed fief in 1598. In the sixty-seven years which passed between the date of Charles's coronation and the extinction of the duchy, Ferrara enjoyed the fame of the most brilliant Court in Italy, and shone with the luster conferred on it by men like Tasso and Guarini.
The few weeks which now remained before Charles left Bologna were spent for the most part in jousts and tournaments, visits to churches, and social entertainments. Veronica Gambara threw her apartments open to the numerous men of letters who crowded from all parts of Italy to witness the ceremony, of Charles's coronation. This lady was widow to the late lord of Correggio, and one of the two most illustrious women of her time.[5] She dwelt with princely state in a palace of the Marsili; and here might be seen the poets Bembo, Mauro, and Molza in conversation with witty Berni, learned Vida, stately Trissino, and noble-hearted Marcantonio Flaminio. Paolo Giovio and Francesco Guicciardini, the chief historians of their time, were also to be found there, together with a host of literary and diplomatic worthies attached to the Courts of Urbino and Ferrara or attendant on the train of cardinals, who, like Ippolito de'Medici, made a display of culture. Meanwhile the Dowager-Marchioness of Mantua and the Duchess of Savoy entertained Italian and Spanish nobles with masqued balls and carnival processions in the Manzoli and Pepoli palaces. Frequent quarrels between hot-blooded youths of the rival nations added a spice of chivalrous romance to love-adventures in which the ladies of these Courts played a too conspicuous part. What still remained to Italy of Renaissance splendor, wit, and fashion, after the Sack of Rome and the prostration of her wealthiest cities, was concentrated in this sunset blaze of sumptuous festivity at Bologna. Nor were the arts without illustrious representatives. Francesco Mazzola, surnamed Il Parmigianino, before whose altar-piece in his Roman studio the rough soldiers of Bourbon's army were said to have lately knelt in adoration, commemorated the hero of the day by painting Charles attended by Fame who crowned his forehead, and an infant Hercules who handed him the globe. Titian, too, was there, and received the honor of several sittings from the Emperor. His life-sized portrait of Charles in full armor, seated on a white war-horse, has perished. But it gave such satisfaction at the moment that the fortunate master was created knight and count palatine, and appointed painter to the Emperor with a fixed pension. Titian also painted portraits of Antonio de Leyva and Alfonso d'Avalos, but whether upon this occasion or in 1532, when he was again summoned to the Imperial Court at Bologna, is not certain. From this assemblage of eminent personages we notice the absence of Pietro Aretino. He was at the moment out of favor with Clement VII. But independently of this obstacle, he may well have thought it imprudent to quit his Venetian retreat and expose himself to the resentment of so many princes whom he had alternately loaded with false praises and bemired with loathsome libels.
People observed that the Emperor in his excursions through the streets of Bologna usually wore the Spanish habit. He was dressed in black velvet, with black silk stockings, black shoes, and a black velvet cap adorned with black feathers. This somber costume received some relief from jewels used for buttons; and the collar of the Golden Fleece shone upon the monarch's breast. So slight a circumstance would scarcely deserve attention, were it not that in a short space of time it became the fashion throughout Italy to adopt the subdued tone of Spanish clothing. The upper classes consented to exchange the varied and brilliant dresses which gave gayety to the earlier Renaissance for the dismal severity conspicuous in Morone's masterpieces, in the magnificent gloom of the Genoese Brignoli, and in the portraits of Roman inquisitors. It is as though the whole race had put on mourning for its loss of liberty, its servitude to foreign tyrants and ecclesiastical hypocrites. Nor is it fanciful to detect a note of moral sadness and mental depression corresponding to these black garments in the faces of that later generation. How different is Tasso's melancholy grace from Ariosto's gentle joyousness; the dried-up precision of Baroccio's Francesco Maria della Rovere from the sanguine joviality of Titian's first duke of that name! One of the most acutely critical of contemporary poets felt the change which I have indicated, and ascribed it to the same cause. Campanella wrote as follows:
Next many-hued; now dark as Afric's Moor,
Night-black, infernal, traitorous, obscure,
Horrid with ignorance and sick with fright.
For very shame we shun all colors bright,
Who mourn our end—the tyrants we endure,
The chains, the noose, the lead, the snares, the lure—
Our dismal heroes, our souls sunk in night.
In the midst of this mirth-making there arrived on March 20 an embassy from England, announcing Henry VIII.'s resolve to divorce himself at any cost from Katharine of Aragon. This may well have recalled both Pope and Emperor to a sense of the gravity of European affairs. The schism of England was now imminent. Germany was distracted by Protestant revolution. The armies of Caesar were largely composed of mutinous Lutherans. Some of these soldiers had even dared to overthrow a colossal statue of Clement VII. and grind it into powder at Bologna; and this outrage, as it appears, went unpunished. The very troops employed in reducing rebellious Florence were commanded by a Lutheran general; and Clement began to fear that, after Charles's departure, the Prince of Orange might cross the Apennines and expose the Papal person to the insults of another captivity in Bologna. Nor were the gathering forces of revolutionary Protestants alone ominous. Though Soliman had been repulsed before Vienna, the Turks were still advancing on the eastern borders of the Empire. Their fleets swept the Levantine waters, while the pirate dynasties of Tunis and Algiers threatened the whole Mediterranean coast with ruin. Charles, still uncertain what part he should take in the disputes of Germany, left Bologna for the Tyrol on March 23. Clement, on the last day of the month, took his journey by Loreto to Rome.
It will be useful, at this point, to recapitulate the net results of Charles's administration of Italian affairs in 1530. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with the Island of Sardinia and the Duchy of Milan, became Spanish provinces, and were ruled henceforth by viceroys. The House of Este was confirmed in the Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio. The Duchies of Savoy and Mantua and the Marquisate of Montferrat, which had espoused the Spanish cause, were undisturbed. Genoa and Siena, both of them avowed allies of Spain, the former under Spanish protection, the latter subject to Spanish coercion, remained with the name and empty privileges of republics. Venice had made her peace with Spain, and though she was still strong enough to pursue an independent policy, she showed as yet no inclination, and had, indeed, no power, to stir up enemies against the Spanish autocrat. The Duchy of Urbino, recog nized by Rome and subservient to Spanish influence, was permitted to exist. The Papacy once more assumed a haughty tone, relying on the firm alliance struck with Spain. This league, as years went by, was destined to grow still closer, still more fruitful of results.
Florence alone had been excepted from the articles of peace. It was still enduring the horrors of the memorable siege when Clement left Bologna at the end of May. The last hero of the republic, Francesco Ferrucci, fell fighting at Gavignana on August 2. Their general, Malatesta Baglioni, broke his faith with the citizens. Finally, on August 12, the town capitulated. Alessandro de'Medici, who had received the title of Duke of Florence from Charles at Bologna, took up his residence there in July, 1531, and held the State by help of Spanish mercenaries under the command of Alessandro Vitelli. When he was murdered by his cousin in 1537, Cosimo de'Medici, the scion of another branch of the ruling family, was appointed Duke. Charles V. recognized his title, and Cosimo soon showed that he was determined to be master in his own duchy. He crushed the exiled party of Filippo Strozzi, who attempted a revolution of the State, exterminated its leaders, and contrived to rid himself of the powerful adherents who had placed him on the throne. But he remained a subservient though not very willing ally of Spain; and when he expelled Alessandro Vitelli from the fortress that commanded Florence, he admitted a Spaniard, Don Juan de Luna, in his stead. During the petty wars of 1552-56 which Henri II. carried on with Charles V. in Italy, Siena attempted to shake off the yoke of a Spanish garrison established there in 1547 under the command of Don Hurtado de Mendoza. The citizens appealed to France, who sent them the great Marshal, Piero Strozzi, brother of Cosimo's vanquished enemy Filippo. Cosimo through these years supported the Spanish cause with troops and money, hoping to guide events in his own interest. At length, by the aid of Gian Giacomo Medici, sprung from an obscure Milanese family, who had been trained in the Spanish methods of warfare, he succeeded in subduing Siena. He now reaped the fruits of his Spanish policy. In 1557 Philip II. conceded the Sienese territory, reserving only its forts, to the Duke of Florence, who in 1569 obtained the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from Pope Pius V. This title was confirmed by the Empire in 1575 to his son Francesco.
Thus the republics of Florence and Siena were extinguished. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was created. It became an Italian power of the first magnitude, devoted to the absolutist principles of Spanish and Papal sovereignty. The further changes which took place in Italy after the year 1530, turned equally to the profit of Spain and Rome. These were principally the creation of the Duchy of Parma for the Farnesi (1545-1559), of which I shall have to speak in the next chapter; the resumption of Ferrara by the Papacy in 1597, which reduced the House of Este to the smaller fiefs of Modena and Reggio; the acquisition of Montferrat by Mantua in 1536; the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy in 1598, and the absorption of Urbino into the Papal domains in 1631.
It was hoped when Charles and Clement proclaimed the pacification of Italy at Bologna on the last day of 1529, that the peninsula would no longer be the theater of wars for supremacy between the French and Spaniards. This expectation proved delusive; for the struggle soon broke out again. The people, however, suffered less extensively than in former years; because the Spanish party, supported by Papal authority, was decidedly predominant. The Italian princes, whether they liked it or not, were compelled to follow in the main a Spanish policy. At length, in 1559, by the Peace of Cateau Cambresis signed between Henri II. and Philip II., the French claims were finally abandoned, and the Spanish hegemony was formally acknowledged. The later treaty of Vervins, in 1598, ceded Saluzzo to the Duchy of Savoy, and shut the gates of Italy to French interference.
Though the people endured far less misery from foreign armies in the period between 1630 and 1600 than they had done in the period from 1494 to 1527, yet the state of the country grew ever more and more deplorable. This was due in the first instance to the insane methods of taxation adopted by the Spanish viceroys, who held monopolies of corn and other necessary commodities in their hands and who invented imposts for the meanest articles of consumption. Their example was followed by the Pope and petty princes. Alfonso II. of Ferrara, for instance, levied a tenth on all produce which passed his city gates, and on the capital engaged in every contract. He monopolized the sale of salt, flour, bread; and imposed a heavy tax on oil. Sixtus V. by exactions of a like description and by the sale of numberless offices, accumulated a vast sum of money, much of which bore heavy interest. He was so ignorant of the first principle of political economy as to lock up the accruing treasure in the Castle of S. Angelo. The rising of Masaniello in Naples was simply due to the exasperation of the common folk at having even fruit and vegetables taxed. In addition to such financial blunders, we must take into account the policy pursued by all princes at this epoch, of discouraging commerce and manufactures. Thus Cosimo I. of Tuscany induced the old Florentine families to withdraw their capital from trade, sink it in land, create entails in perpetuity on eldest sons, and array themselves with gimcrack titles which he liberally supplied. Even Venice showed at this epoch a contempt for the commerce which had brought her into a position of unrivaled splendor. This wilful depression of industry was partly the result of Spanish aristocratic habits, which now invaded Italian society. But it was also deliberately chosen as a means of extinguishing freedom. Finally, if war proved now less burdensome, the exhaustion of Italy and the decay of military spirit rendered the people liable to the scourge of piracy. The whole sea-coast was systematically plundered by the navies of Barbarossa and Dragut. The inhabitants of the ports and inland villages were carried off into slavery, and many of the Italians themselves drove a brisk trade in the sale of their compatriots. Brigandage, following in the wake of agricultural depression and excessive taxation, depopulated the central provinces. All these miseries were exacerbated by frequent recurrences of plagues and famines.
It is characteristic of the whole tenor of Italian history that, in spite of the virtual hegemony which the Spaniards now exercised in the peninsula, the nation continued to exist in separate parcels, each of which retained a certain individuality. That Italy could not have been treated as a single province by the Spanish autocrat will be manifest, when we consider the European jealousy to which so summary an exhibition of force would have given rise. It is also certain that the Papacy, which had to be respected, would have resisted an openly declared Spanish despotism. But more powerful, I think, than all these considerations together, was the past prestige of the Italian States. Europe was not pre pared to regard that brilliant and hitherto respected constellation of commonwealths, from which all intellectual culture, arts of life, methods of commerce, and theories of political existence had been diffused, as a single province of the Spanish monarchy. The Spaniards themselves were scarcely in a position to entertain the thought of reducing the peninsula to bondage vi et armis. And if they had attempted any measure tending to this result, they would undoubtedly have been resisted by an alliance of the European powers. What they sought, and what they gained, was preponderating influence in each of the parcels which they recognized as nominally independent.
The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though much reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in cities marked by distinct local qualities, and boastful of their ancient glories. The Courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and artistic coteries. Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers uttered their thoughts with tolerable freedom, and libertines indulged their tastes unhindered. Rome early assumed novel airs of piety, and external conformity to austere patterns became the fashion here. Yet the Papal capital did not wholly cease to be the resort of students and of artists. The universities maintained themselves in a respectable position—- far different, indeed, from that which they had held in the last century, yet not ignoble. Much was being learned on many lines of study divergent from those prescribed by earlier humanists. Padua, in particular, distinguished itself for medical researches. This was the flourishing time, moreover, of Academies, in which, notwithstanding nonsense talked and foolish tastes indulged, some solid work was done for literature and science. The names of the Cimento, Delia Crusca, and Palazzo Vernio at Florence, remind us of not unimportant labors in physics, in the analysis of language, and in the formation of a new dramatic style of music. At the same time the resurgence of popular literature and the creation of popular theatrical types deserve to be particularly noticed. It is as though the Italian nation at this epoch, suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by Jesuitical hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of open air, indulging in dialectical niceties and immortalizing street-jokes by the genius of masqued comedy.
This most ancient and intensely vital race had given Europe the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the system of Roman law, the Romance languages, Latin Christianity, the Papacy, and, lastly, all that is included in the art and culture of the Renaissance. It was time, perhaps, that it should go to rest a century or so, and watch uprising nations—the Spanish, English, French, and so forth—stir their stalwart limbs in common strife and novel paths of pioneering industry.
After such fashion let us, then, if we can contrive to do so, regard the Italians during their subjection to the Church and Austria. Were it not for these consolatory reflections, and for the present reappearance of the nation in a new and previously unapprehended form of unity, the history of the Counter-Reformation period would be almost too painful for investigation. What the Italians actually accomplished during this period in art, learning, science, and literature, was indeed more than enough to have conferred undying luster on such races as the Dutch or Germans at the same epoch. But it would be ridiculous to compare Italians with either Dutchmen or Germans at a time when Italy was still so incalculably superior. Compared with their own standard, compared with what they might have achieved under more favorable conditions of national independence, the products of this age are saddening. The tragic elements of my present theme are summed up in the fact that Italy during the Counter-Reformation was inferior to Italy during the Renaissance, and that this inferiority was due to the interruption of vital and organic processes by reactionary forces.
It would not be just to condemn Spain and the Papacy because, being reactionary powers, they quenched for three centuries the genial light of Italy. We must rather bear in mind that both Spain and the Papacy were at that time cosmopolitan factors of the first magnitude, with perplexing world-problems confronting them. Charles bore upon his shoulders the concerns of the Empire, the burden of the German revolution, and the distracting anxiety of a duel with Islam. When his son bowed to the yoke of government, he had to meet the same perplexities, complicated with Netherlands in revolt, England in antagonism, and France in dubious ferment. A succession of Popes were hampered by painful European questions, which the instinct of self-preservation taught them to regard as paramount. They were fighting for existence; for the Catholic creed; for their own theocratic sovereignty. They held strong cards. But against them were drawn up the battalions of heresy, free thought, political insurgence in the modern world. The Zeitgeist that has made us what we are, had begun to organize stern opposition to the Church. It was natural enough that both the Spanish autocrat and the successor of S. Peter should at this crisis have regarded Italian affairs as subordinate in importance to wider matters which demanded their attention. Yet if we shift our point of view from this high vantage-ground of Imperial and Papal anxieties, and place ourselves in the center of Italy as our post of observation, it will be apparent that nothing more ruinous for the prosperity of the Italian people could have been devised than the joint autocracy accorded at Bologna to two cosmopolitan but non-national forces in their midst. An alien monarchy greedy for gold, a panic-stricken hierarchy in terror for its life, warped the tendencies and throttled the energies of the most artistically sensitive, the most heroically innovating of the existing races. However we may judge the merits of the Spaniards, they were assuredly not those which had brought Italy into the first rank of European nations. The events of a single century proved that, far from being able to govern other peoples, Spain was incapable of self-government on any rational principle. Whatever may have been the policy thrust upon the chief of Latin Christianity in the desperate struggle with militant rationalism, the repressive measures which it felt bound to adopt were eminently pernicious to a race like the Italians, who showed no disposition for religious regeneration, and who were yet submitted to the tyranny of ecclesiastical discipline and intellectual intolerance at every point.
The settlement made by Charles V. in 1530, and the various changes which took place in the duchies between that date and the end of the century, had then the effect of rendering the Papacy and Spain omnipotent in Italy. These kindred autocrats were joined in firm alliance, except during the brief period of Paul IV.'s French policy, which ended in the Pope's complete discomfiture by Alva in 1557. They used their aggregated forces for the riveting of spiritual, political, and social chains upon the modern world. What they only partially effected in Europe at large, by means of S. Bartholomew massacres, exterminations of Jews in Toledo and of Mussulmans in Granada, holocausts of victims in the Low Countries, wars against French Huguenots and German Lutherans, naval expeditions and plots against the state of England, assassinations of heretic princes, and occasional burning of free thinkers, they achieved with plenary success in Italy. The center of the peninsula, from Ferrara to Terracina, lay at the discretion of the Pope. The Two Sicilies, Sardinia and the Duchy of Milan, were absolute dependencies of the Spanish crown. Tuscany was linked by ties of interest, and by the stronger bonds of terrorism, to Spain. The insignificant principalities of Mantua, Modena, Parma could not do otherwise than submit to the same predominant authority. It is not worth while to take into account the tiny republics of Genoa and Lucca. Their history through this period, though not so uneventful, is scarcely less insignificant than that of San Marino. Venice alone stood independent, still powerful enough to extinguish Bedmar's Spanish conspiracy in silence, still proud enough to resist the encroachments of Paul V. with spirit, yet sensible of her decline and spending her last energies on warfare with the Turk.
At the close of the century, by the Peace of Vervins in 1598 and two subsequent treaties, Spain and France settled their long dispute. France was finally excluded from Italy by the cession of Saluzzo to Savoy, while Savoy at the same moment, through the loss of its Burgundian provinces, became an Italian power. The old antagonism which, dating from the Guelf and Ghibelline contentions of the thirteenth century, had taken a new form after the Papal investiture of Charles of Anjou with the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, now ceased. That antique antagonism of parties, alien to the home interests of Italy, had been exasperated by the rivalry of Angevine and Aragonese princes; had assumed formidable intensity after the invasion of Charles VIII. in 1494; and had expanded under the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I. into an open struggle between France and Spain for the supremacy of Italy. It now was finally terminated by the exclusion of the French and the acknowledged overlordship of the Spaniard. But though peace seemed to be secured to a nation tortured by so many desolating wars of foreign armies, the Italians regarded the cession of Saluzzo with despondency. The partisans of national independence and political freedom had become, however illogically, accustomed to consider France as their ally.[6] They now beheld the gates of Italy closed against the French; they saw the extinction of their ancient Guelf policy of calling French arms into Italy. They felt that rest from strife was dearly bought at the price of prostrate servitude beneath Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs, Spanish Bourbons, and mongrel princelings bred by crossing these stocks with decaying scions of Italian nobility. As a matter of fact, this was the destiny which lay before them for nearly two centuries after the signing of the Peace of Vervins.
Yet the cession of Saluzzo was really the first dawn of hope for Italy. It determined the House of Savoy as an Italian dynasty, and brought for the first time into the sphere of purely Italian interests that province from which the future salvation of the nation was to come. From 1598 until 1870 the destinies of Italy were bound up with the advance of Savoy from a duchy to a kingdom, with its growth in wealth, military resources and political self-consciousness, and with its ultimate acceptance of the task, accomplished in our days, of freeing Italy from foreign tyranny and forming a single nation out of many component elements. Those component elements by their diversity had conferred luster on the race in the Middle Ages, by their jealousies had wrecked its independence in the Renaissance, and by their weakness had left it at the period of the Counter-Reformation a helpless prey to Papal and Spanish despotism.
The leveling down of the component elements of the Italian race beneath a common despotism, which began in the period I have chosen for this work, was necessary perhaps before Italy could take her place as a united nation gifted with constitutional self-government and independence. Except, therefore, for the sufferings and the humiliations inflicted on her people; except for their servitude beneath the most degrading forms of ecclesiastical and temporal tyranny; except for the annihilation of their beautiful Renaissance culture; except for the depression of arts, learning, science, and literature, together with the enfeeblement of political energy and domestic morality; except for the loathsome domination of hypocrites and persecutors and informers; except for the Jesuitical encouragement of every secret vice and every servile superstition which might emasculate the race and render it subservient to authority;—except for these appalling evils, we have no right perhaps to deplore the settlement of Italy by Charles V. in 1530, or the course of subsequent events. For it is tolerably certain that some such leveling down as then commenced was needed to bring the constituent States of Italy into accord; and it is indubitable, as I have had occasion to point out, that the political force which eventually introduced Italy into the European system of federated nations, was determined in its character, if not created, then. None the less, the history of this period (1530-1600) in Italy is a prolonged, a solemn, an inexpressibly heart-rending tragedy.
It is the tragic history of the eldest and most beautiful, the noblest and most venerable, the freest and most gifted of Europe's daughters, delivered over to the devilry that issued from the most incompetent and arrogantly stupid of the European sisterhood, and to the cruelty, inspired by panic, of an impious theocracy. When we use these terms to designate the Papacy of the Counter-Reformation, it is not that we forget how many of those Popes were men of blameless private life and serious views for Catholic Christendom. When we use these terms to designate the Spanish race in the sixteenth century, it is not that we are ignorant of Spanish chivalry and colonizing enterprise, of Spanish romance, or of the fact that Spain produced great painters, great dramatists, and one great novelist in the brief period of her glory. We use them deliberately, however, in both cases; because the Papacy at this period committed itself to a policy of immoral, retrograde, and cowardly repression of the most generous of human impulses under the pressure of selfish terror; because the Spaniards abandoned themselves to a dark fiend of religious fanaticism; because they were merciless in their conquests and unintelligent in their administration of subjugated provinces; because they glutted their lusts of avarice and hatred on industrious folk of other creeds within their borders; because they cultivated barren pride and self-conceit in social life; because at the great epoch of Europe's reawakening they chose the wrong side and adhered to it with fatal obstinacy. This obstinacy was disastrous to their neighbors and ruinous to themselves. During the short period of three reigns (between 1598 and 1700) they sank from the first to the third grade in Europe, and saw the scepter passing in the New World from their hands to those of more normally constituted races. That the self-abandonment to sterilizing passions and ignoble persecutions which marked Spain out for decay in the second half of the sixteenth century, and rendered her the curse of her dependencies, can in part be ascribed to the enthusiasm aroused in previous generations by the heroic conflict with advancing Islam, is a thesis capable of demonstration. Yet none the less is it true that her action at that period was calamitous to herself and little short of destructive to Italy.
After the year 1530 seven Spanish devils entered Italy. These were the devil of the Inquisition, with stake and torture-room, and war declared against the will and soul and heart and intellect of man; the devil of Jesuitry, with its sham learning, shameless lying, and casuistical economy of sins; the devil of vice-royal rule, with its life-draining monopolies and gross incapacity for government; the devil of an insolent soldiery, quartered on the people, clamorous for pay, outrageous in their lusts and violences; the devil of fantastical taxation, levying tolls upon the bare necessities of life, and drying up the founts of national well-being at their sources; the devil of petty-princedom, wallowing in sloth and cruelty upon a pinchbeck throne; the devil of effeminate hidalgoism, ruinous in expenditure, mean and grasping, corrupt in private life, in public ostentatious, vain of titles, cringing to its masters, arrogant to its inferiors. In their train these brought with them seven other devils, their pernicious offspring: idleness, disease, brigandage, destitution, ignorance, superstition, hypocritically sanctioned vice. These fourteen devils were welcomed, entertained, and voluptuously lodged in all the fairest provinces of Italy. The Popes opened wide for them the gates of outraged and depopulated Rome. Dukes and marquises fell down and worshiped the golden image of the Spanish Belial-Moloch—that hideous idol whose face was blackened with soot from burning human flesh, and whose skirts were dabbled with the blood of thousands slain in wars of persecution. After a tranquil sojourn of some years in Italy, these devils had everywhere spread desolation and corruption. Broad regions, like the Patrimony of S. Peter and Calabria, were given over to marauding bandits; wide tracks of fertile country, like the Sienese Maremma, were abandoned to malaria; wolves prowled through empty villages round Milan; in every city the pestilence swept off its hundreds daily; manufactures, commerce, agriculture, the industries of town and rural district, ceased; the Courts swarmed with petty nobles, who vaunted paltry titles; and resigned their wives to cicisbei and their sons to sloth: art and learning languished; there was not a man who ventured to speak out his thought or write the truth; and over the Dead Sea of social putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy.