I might illustrate this position by the relation of a fantastic attempt made against the life of Pope Urban VIII.[244]
Giacomo Centini, the nephew of Cardinal d'Ascoli, fostered a fixed idea, the motive of his madness being the promotion of his uncle to S. Peter's Chair. In 1633 he applied to a hermit, who professed profound science in the occult arts and close familiarity with demons. The man, in answer to Giacomo's inquiries, said that Urban had still many years to live, that the Cardinal d'Ascoli would certainly succeed him, and that he held it in his power to shorten the Pope's days. He added that a certain Fra Cherubino would be useful, if any matter of grave moment were resolved on; nor did he reject the assistance of other discreet persons. Giacomo, on his side, produced a Fra Domenico; and the four accomplices set at work to destroy the reigning Pope by means of sorcery. They caused a knife to be forged, after the model of the Key of Solomon, and had it inscribed with Cabalistic symbols. A clean virgin was employed to spin hemp into a thread. Then they resorted to a distant room in Giacomo's palace, where a circle was drawn with the mystic thread, a fire was lighted in the center, and upon it was placed an image of Pope Urban formed of purest wax. The devil was invoked to appear and answer whether Urban had deceased this life after the melting of the image. No infernal visitor responded to the call; and the hermit accounted for this failure by suggesting that some murder had been committed in the palace. As things went at that period, this excuse was by no means feeble, if only the audience, bent on unholy invocation of the power of evil, would accept it as sufficient. Probably more than one murder had taken place there, of which the owner was dimly conscious. The psychological curiosity to note is that avowed malefactors reckoned purity an essential element in their nefarious practice. They tried once more in a vineyard, under the open heavens at night. But no demon issued from the darkness, and the hermit laid this second mischance to the score of bad weather. Giacomo was incapable of holding his tongue. He talked about his undertaking to the neighbors, and promised to make them all Cardinals when he should become the Papal nephew. Meanwhile he pressed the hermit forward on the path of folly; and this man, driven to his wits' end for a device, said that they must find seven priests together, one of whom should be assassinated to enforce the spell. It was natural, while the countryside was being raked for seven convenient priests by such a tattler as Giacomo, that suspicions should be generated in the people. Information reached Rome, in consequence of which the persons implicated in this idiotic plot were conveyed thither and given over to the mercies of the Holy Office. The upshot of their trial was that Giacomo lost his head, while the hermit and Fra Cherubino were burned alive, and Fra Domenico went to the galleys for life. Several other men involved in the process received punishments of considerable severity. It must be added in conclusion that the whole story rests upon the testimony of Inquisitorial archives, and that the real method of Giacomo Centini's apparent madness yet remains to be investigated. The few facts that we know about him, from his behavior on the scaffold and a letter he wrote his wife, prejudice me in his favor.
Enough, and more than enough, perhaps, has been collected in this chapter, to throw light upon the manners of Italians during the Counter-Reformation. It would have been easy to repeat the story of the Countess of Cellant and her murdered lovers, or of the Duchess of Amalfi strangled by her brothers for a marriage below her station. The massacres committed by the Raspanti in Ravenna would furnish a whole series of illustrative crimes. From the deeds of Alfonso Piccolomini, Sciarra and Fabrizio Colonna details sufficient to fill a volume with records of atrocious savagery could be drawn. The single episode of Elena Campireali, who plighted her troth to a bandit, became Abbess of the Convent at Castro, intrigued with a bishop, and killed herself for shame on the return of her first lover, would epitomize in one drama all the principal features of this social discord. The dreadful tale of the Baron of Montebello might be told again, who assaulted the castle of the Marquis of Pratidattolo, and, by the connivance of a sister whom he subsequently married, murdered the Marquis with his mother, children, and relatives. The hunted life of Alessandro Antelminelli, pursued through all the States of Europe by assassins, could be used to exemplify the miseries of proscribed exiles. But what is the use of multiplying instances, when every pedigree in Litta, every chronicle of the time, every history of the most insignificant township, swarms with evidence to the same purpose? We need not adopt the opinion that society had greatly altered for the worse. We must rather decide that mediaeval ferocity survived throughout the whole of that period which witnessed the Catholic Revival, and that the piety which distinguished it was not influential in curbing vehement passions.
The conclusions to be drawn from the facts before us seem to be in general these. The link between government and governed in Italy had snapped. The social bond was broken, and the constituents that form a nation were pursuing divers aims. On the one hand stood Popes and princes, founding their claims to absolute authority upon titles that had slight rational or national validity. These potentates were ill-combined among themselves, and mutually jealous. On the other side were ranged disruptive forces of the most heterogeneous kinds—remnants from antique party-warfare, fragments of obsolete domestic feuds, new strivings after freer life in mentally down-trodden populations, blending with crime and misery and want and profligacy to compose an opposition which exasperated despotism. These anarchical conditions were due in large measure to the troubles caused by foreign campaigns of invasion. They were also due to the Spanish type of manners imposed upon the ruling classes, which the native genius accepted with fraudulent intelligence, and to which it adapted itself by artifice. We must further reckon the division between cultured and uncultured people, which humanism had effected, and which subsisted after the benefits conferred by humanism had been withdrawn from the race. The retirement of the commercial aristocracy from trade, and their assumption of princely indolence in this period of political stagnation, was another factor of importance. But the truest cause of Italian retrogression towards barbarism must finally be discerned in the sharp check given to intellectual evolution by the repressive forces of the Counter-Reformation.
[1] It is significant for the future of Italy that both the ladies who drew up this agreement were connected with Savoy. Louise, Duchess of Angoulême, was a daughter of the house. Margaret, daughter of Maximilian, was Duchess Dowager of Savoy.
[2] In what follows regarding Charles V. at Bologna I am greatly indebted to Giordani's laboriously compiled volume: Della Venuta e Dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pont. Clemente VII. etc. (Bologna, 1832).
[3] See Ren. in It., vol. v. p. 357.
[4] See Ranke, vol. i. p. 153, note.
[5] See Ren. in It. vol. v. p. 289.
[6] See, for instance, temp. Henri IV., Sarpi's Letters, vol. i. p. 233.
[7] I may here state that I intend to use this term Counter-Reformation to denote the reform of the Catholic Church, which was stimulated by the German Reformation, and which, when the Council of Trent had fixed the dogmas and discipline of Latin Christianity, enabled the Papacy to assume a militant policy in Europe, whereby it regained a large portion of the provinces, that had previously lapsed to Lutheran and Calvinistic dissent.
[8] With regard to Germany, see Mr. T. S. Perry's acute and philosophical study, entitled From Opitz to Lessing (Boston).
[9] These eight reigns cover a space of time from 1534 to 1605.
[10] See Berti's Vita di G. Bruno, pp. 105-108.
[11] This maxim is ascribed to the materialistic philosopher Cremonini.
[12] C. Calcagnini Opera, p. 195. I am indebted for the above version to McCrie's Reformation in Italy, p. 183.
[13] Though as many as 40,000 copies were published, this book was so successfully stamped out that it seemed to be irrecoverably lost. The library of St. John's College at Cambridge, however, contains two Italian copies and one French copy. That of Laibach possesses an Italian and a Croat version. Cantù, Gli Eretici, vol. i. p. 360.
[14] It should be observed, however, that Luther rejected the article on justification, and that Caraffa in Rome used his influence to prevent its acceptance by Paul III.
[15] See Bruno's Cena delle Ceneri, ed. Wagner, vol. i. p. 133, for a humorous story illustrative of the state of things ensuing among the lower Italian classes.
[16] Paul IV. as Pope was feeble compared with his predecessors, Julius II. and Leo X.; the Guises, on whom he relied for resuscitating the old French party in the South, were but half-successful adventurers, mere shadows of the Angevine invaders whom they professed to represent.
[17] The best account of the Councils will be found in Professor Creighton's admirable History of the Papacy during the Reformation, 2 vols. Longmans.
[18] See above, p. 2, for the special sense in which I apply the word federation to Italy before 1530, and to Europe at large in the modern period.
[19] The first official opening of the Council at Trent was in November 1542, by Cardinals Pole and Morone as Legates. It was adjourned in July, 1543, on account of insufficient attendance. When it again opened in 1545, Pole reappeared as Legate. With him were associated two future Popes, Giov. Maria del Monte (Julius III.), and Marcello Cervini (Marcellus II.) The first session of the Council took place in December, 1545, four Cardinals, four Archbishops, twenty-one Bishops, and five Generals of Orders attending. Among these were only five Spanish and two French prelates; no German, unless we count Cristoforo Madrazzo, the Cardinal Bishop of Trent, as one. No Protestants appeared; for Paul III. had successfully opposed their ultimatum, which demanded that final appeal on all debated points should be made to the sole authority of Holy Scripture.
[20] Throughout the sessions of the Council, Spanish, French, and German representatives, whether fathers or ambassadors, maintained the theory of Papal subjection to conciliar authority. The Spanish and French were unanimous in zeal for episcopal independence. The French and German were united in a wish to favor Protestants by reasonable concessions. Thus the Papal supremacy had to face serious antagonism, which it eventually conquered by the numerical preponderance of the Italian prelates, by the energy of the Jesuits, by diplomatic intrigues, and by manipulation of discords in the opposition. Though the Spanish fathers held with the French and German on the points of episcopal independence and conciliar authority, they disagreed whenever it became a question of compromise with Protestants upon details of dogma or ritual. The Papal Court persuaded the Catholic sovereigns of Spain and France, and the Emperor, that episcopal independence would be dangerous to their own prerogatives; and at every inconvenient turn in affairs, it was made clear that Catholic sovereigns, threatened by the Protestant revolution, could not afford to separate their cause from that of the Pope.
[21] See Sarpi, p. 249.
[22] Charles, at this juncture, was checkmated by Paul through his own inability to dispense with the Pope's co-operation as chief of the Catholic Church. So long as he opposed the Reformation, it was impossible for him to assume an attitude of violent hostility to Rome.
[23] During the brief and unimportant sessions at Bologna, Jesuit influences began to make themselves decidedly felt in the Council, where Lainez and Salmeron attended as Theologians of the Papal See. Up to this time the Dominicans had shaped decrees. Dogmatic orthodoxy was secured by their means. Now the Jesuits were to fight and win the battle of Papal Supremacy.
[24] Sarpi, quoted in his Life by Fra Fulgenzio, p. 83, says Paul called his Grisons mercenaries 'Angels sent from Heaven.'
[25] New men—and Popes were always novi homines—are compelled to take this course, and suffer when they take it. We might compare their difficulties with those which hampered Napoleon when he aspired to the Imperial tyranny over French conquests in Europe.
[26] Pallavicini, in his history of the Council of Trent (Lib. xiv. ix. 5), specially commends Paul's zeal for the Holy Office:—'Fra esse d'eterna lode lo fa degno il tribunal dell'inquisizione, che dal zelo di lui e prima in autorità di consigliero e poscia in podestà di principe riconosce il presente suo vigor nell'Italia, e dal quale riconosce l'Italia la sua conservata integrità della fede: e per quest' opera salutare egli rimane ora tanto più benemerito ed onorabile quantao più allora ne fu mal rimerilato e disonorato.'
[27] See Luigi Mocenigo in Rel. degli Amb. Veneti, vol. x. p. 25.
[28] 'Roma a paragone delli tempi degli altri pontefici si poteva riputar come un onesto monasterio di religiosi' (op. cit. p. 41).
[29] In my Sketches and Studies in Italy I have narrated the romantic history of this filibuster.
[30] Soranzo: Alberi, vol. x. p. 67. Pius IV. adopted the arms of the Florentine Medici, and spent 30,000 scudi on carving them about through Rome. See P. Tiepolo, Ib. p. 174.
[31] 'Veramente quasi in ogni parte si può chiamare il rovescio dell' altro' (op. cit. p. 50).
[32] Luigi Mocenigo says of him that Pius 'averlo per un angelo di paradiso, e adoperandolo per consiglio in tutte le sue cose importanti.' Alberi, vol. x. p. 40. The case made out against Morone during the pontificate of Paul IV. may be studied in Cantù, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 171-192, together with his defence in full. It turned mainly on these articles:—unsound opinions regarding justification by faith, salvation by Christ's blood, good works, invocation of saints, reliques; dissemination of the famous book on the Benefits of Christ's Death; practice with heretics. He was imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo from June, 1557 till August, 1559. Suspicions no doubt fell on him through his friendship with several of the moderate reformers, and from the fact that his diocese of Modena was a nest of liberal thinkers—the Grillenzoni, Castelvetro, Filippo Valentini, Faloppio, Camillo Molza, Francesco da Porto, Egidio Foscarari, and others, all of whom are described by Cantù, op. cit. Disc, xxviii. The charges brought against these persons prove at once the mainly speculative and innocuous character of Italian heresy, and the implacable enmity which a Pope of Caraffa's stamp exercised against the slightest shadow of heterodoxy.
[33] Soranzo, op. cit. p. 75, says: 'Con li principi tiene modo affatto contrario al suo predecessore; perchè mentre quello usava dire, il grado dei pontefici esser per mettersi sotto i piedi gl'imperatori e i re, questo dice che senza l'autorità dei principi non si può conservare quella dei pontefici.'
[34] Soranzo, op. cit. p. 74.
[35] Soranzo, op. cit. p. 71, says: 'II marchese suo fratello con la moglie gli diede il cappello, e con la morte il papato.'
[36] Mocenigo, op. cit. p. 52. Soranzo, op. cit. p. 93.
[37] Margherita Medici, sister of the Pope, had married Gilberto Borromeo.
[38] See Mocenigo, op. cit. p. 53. Soranzo, op. cit. p. 91.
[39] Gia. Soranzo (op. cit. p. 133) says of Carlo Borromeo, 'ch'egli solo faccia più profitto nella Corte di Roma che tutti i decreti del Concilio insieme.'
[40] See Sarpi, vol. ii. pp. 43, 44.
[41] Cardinal Puteo was soon replaced by a Papal nephew, the Cardinal d'Altemps (Mark of Hohen Embs).
[42] At the first session there were five Cardinals, one hundred and four prelates, including Patriarchs, Archbishops and Bishops, four Abbots, and four Generals of Orders. These were all Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese. And yet this Conciliabulum called itself a General Council, inspired by the Holy Ghost to legislate for the whole of Latin and Teutonic Christianity.
[43] See Sarpi, vol. ii. p. 87.
[44] He reached Trent, November 13, 1562, with eighteen Bishops, and three Abbots of France, charged by Charles IX. to demand purified ritual, reformed discipline of clergy, use of vernacular in church services, and finally, if possible, the marriage of the clergy.
[45] The confusion at Trent in the spring of 1563 is thus described by the Bishop of Alife: 'Methinks Antichrist has come, so greatly confounded are the perturbations of the holy Fathers here.' Phillipson, p. 525.
[46] When Morone set out, he told the Venetian envoy in Rome that he was going on a forlorn hope. 'L'illmo Morone, quando partì per il Concilio, mi disse che andava a cura disperata e che nulla speserat della religione Cattolica.' Soranzo, op. cit. p. 82. The Jesuit Canisius, by his influence with Ferdinand, secured the success of Morone's diplomacy.
[47] Sarpi says that Don Luigi resided in the lodgings of Count Federigo Borromeo, a deceased nephew of the Pope.
[48] Yet the Spanish bishops fought to the end, under the leadership of their chief Guerrero, for the principle of conciliar independence and the episcopal prerogatives. 'We had better not have come here, than be forced to stand by as witnesses,' says the Bishop of Orense. Phillipson, p. 577.
[49] The vague reference of all decrees passed by the Tridentine Council to the Pope for interpretation enabled him and his successors to manipulate them as they chose. It therefore happened, as Sarpi says ('Tratt. delle Mat. Ben.' Opere, vol. iv. p. 161), that no reform, with regard to the tenure of benefices, residence, pluralism, etc., which the Council had decided, was adopted without qualifying expedients which neutralized its spirit. If the continuance of benefices in commendam ceased, the device of pensions upon benefices was substituted; and a thousand pretexts put colossal fortunes extracted from Church property, now as before, into the hands of Papal nephews. Witness the contrivances whereby Cardinal Scipione Borghese enriched himself in the Papacy of Paul V. The Council had decreed the residence of bishops in their sees; but it had reserved to the Pope a power of dispensation; so that those whom he chose to exile from Rome were bound to reside, and those whom he desired to have about him were released from this obligation. On each and all delicate points the Papacy was more autocratic after than before the Council. One of Sarpi's letters (vol. i. p. 371) to Jacques Leschassier, dated December 22, 1609, should be studied by those who wish to penetrate the 'reserve ed altre arcane arti,' the 'renunzie', 'pensioni' and 'altri stratagemmi,' by means of which the Papal Curia, during the half-century after the Tridentine Council, managed to evade its decrees, and to get such control over Church property in Italy that 'out of 500 benefices not one is conferred legally.' Compare the passage in the 'Trattato delle Materie Beneficiarie,' p. 163. There Sarpi says that five-sixths of Italian benefices are at the Pope's disposal, and that there is good reason to suppose that he will acquire the remaining sixth.
[50] Lettere, vol. ii. p. 167.
[51] This does not mean that the Spanish crown had not a powerful voice in the elections. See the history of the conclaves which elected Urban VII., Gregory XIV., Innocent IX., Clement VIII., in Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 31-39. Yet it was noticed by those close observers, the Venetian envoys, that France and Spain had abandoned their former policy of subsidizing the Cardinals who adhered to their respective factions.
[52] See Mocenigo, op. cit. p. 35; Aretino's Dialogo della Corte di Roma; and the private history of the Farnesi.
[53] Giov. Carraro and Lor. Priuli, op. cit. pp. 275, 306.
[54] Alberi, vol. x. pp. 35, 83, 277.
[55] Mocenigo's computation, op. cit. p. 29.
[56] Ibid. p. 31.
[57] The true history of the Cenci, as written by Bertolotti, throws light upon these points.
[58] Mocenigo, op. cit. p. 38.
[59] Giac. Soranzo, op. cit. pp. 131-136
[60] Soranzo, op. cit. pp. 136-138.
[61] Op. cit. p. 171.
[62] Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, etc., vol. i. pp. 51-54.
[63] Assuming the population of Rome to have been about 90,000 at that date, this number appears incredible. Yet we have it on the best of all evidences, that of a resident Venetian envoy.
[64] Tiepolo, op. cit. p. 172.
[65] Paolo Tiepolo, op. cit. p. 312.
[66] Ibid. p. 214.
[67] The Venetians, when they inscribed his name upon the Libro d'Oro, called him 'a near relative of his Holiness.'
[68] This lady was a sister of the Count of Santa Fiora. For a detailed account of the wedding, see Mutinelli, Stor. arc. vol. i. p. 112.
[69] Tiepolo, op. cit. pp. 213, 219—221, 263, 266.
[70] Giov. Corraro, op. cit. p. 277.
[71] See Giov. Gritti, op. cit. p. 333.
[72] Giov. Gritti, op. cit. p. 337.
[73] History of the Popes, Book iv. section I.
[74] Giacomo Buoncompagno was born while Gregory XIII. was still a layman and a lawyer.
[75] Sarpi writes: 'In my times Pius V., during five years, accumulated 25,000 ducats for the Cardinal nephew; Gregory XIII., in thirteen years, 30,000 for one nephew, and 20,000 for another; Sixtus V., for his only nephew, 9,000; Clement VIII., in thirteen years, for one nephew, 8,000, and for the other, 3,000; and this Pope, Paul V., in four years, for one nephew alone, 40,000. To what depths are we destined to fall in the future?' (Lettere, vol. i. p. 281). This final question was justified by the event; for, after the Borghesi, came the Ludovisi and Barberini, whose accumulations equalled, if they did not surpass, those of any antecedent Papal families.
[76] The details may be examined in Ranke, vol. ii. pp. 303-311.
[77] Sarpi's Letters supply some details relating to Paul V.'s nepotism. He describes the pleasure which this Pope took on one day of each week in washing his hands in the gold of the Datatario and the Camera (vol. i. p. 281), and says of him, 'attende solo a far danari' (vol. ii. p. 237). When Paul gave his nephew Scipione the Abbey of Vangadizza, with 12,000 ducats a year, Sarpi computed that the Cardinal held about 100,000 ducats of ecclesiastical benefices (vol. i. p. 219). When the Archbishopric of Bologna, worth over 16,000 ducats a year, fell vacant in 1610, Paul gave this to Scipione, who held it a short time without residence, and then abandoned it to Alessandro Ludovisi retaining all its revenues, with the exception of 2,000 ducats, for himself as a pension (vol. ii. pp. 158, 300). In the year 1610 Sarpi notices the purchase of Sulmona and other fiefs by Paul for his family, at the expenditure of 160,000 ducats (vol. ii. p. 70). In another place he speaks of another sum of 100,000 spent upon the same object (vol. i. p. 249, note). Well might he exclaim, 'Il pontefice e attesa ad arrichir la sua casa' (vol. i. p. 294).
[78] See Cantù, Gli Eretici d'Italia, vol. i. Discorso 5, and the notes appended to it, for Frederick's edicts and letters to Gregory IX. upon this matter of heresy. The Emperor treats of Heretica Pravitas as a crime against society, and such, indeed, it then appeared according to the mediaeval ideal of Christendom united under Church and Empire. Yet Frederick himself, it will be remembered, died under the ban of the Church, and was placed by Dante among the heresiarchs in the tenth circle of Hell. We now regard him justly as one of the precursors of the Renaissance. But at the beginning of his reign, in his peculiar attitude of Holy Roman Emperor, he had to proceed with rigor against free-thinkers in religion. They were foes to the mediseval order, of which he was the secular head.
[79] Sarpi, 'Discorso dell'Origine,' etc. Opere, vol. iv. p. 6.
[80] See Christie's Etienne Dolet, chapter 21.
[81] Visitors to Milan must have been struck with the equestrian statue to the Podestà Oldrado da Trezzeno in the Piazza de'Mercanti. Underneath it runs an epitaph containing among the praises of this man: Catharos ut debuit uxit. An Archbishop of Milan of the same period (middle of the thirteenth century), Enrico di Settala, is also praised upon his epitaph because jugulavit haereses. See Cantù, Gli Eretici d Italia, vol. i. p. 108.
[82] Sarpi estimates the number of victims in the Netherlands during the reign of Charles V. at 50,000; Grotius at 100,000. In the reign of Philip II. perhaps another 25,000 were sacrificed. Motley (Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. ii. p. 155) tells how in February 1568 a sentence of the Holy Office, confirmed by royal proclamation, condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands, some three millions of souls, with a few specially excepted persons, to death. It was customary to burn the men and bury the women alive. In considering this institution as a whole, we must bear in mind that it was extended to Mexico, Lima, Carthagena, the Indies, Sicily, Sardinia, Oran, Malta. Of the working of the Holy Office in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies we possess but few authentic records. The Histoire des Inquisitions of Joseph Lavallée (Paris, 1809) may, however, be consulted. In vol. ii. pp. 5-9 of this work there is a brief account of the Inquisition at Goa written by one Pyrard; and pp. 45-157 extend the singularly detailed narrative of a Frenchman, Dellon, imprisoned in its dungeons. Some curious circumstances respecting delation, prison life, and autos da fé are here minutely recorded.
[83] See Lavallée, Histoire des Inquisitions, vol. ii. pp. 341-361, for the translation of a process instituted in 1570 against a Mauresque female slave. Suspected of being a disguised infidel, she was exposed to the temptations of a Moorish spy, and convicted mainly on the evidence furnished by certain Mussulman habits to which she adhered. Llorente reports a similar specimen case, vol. i. p. 442. The culprit was a tinker aged 71, accused in 1528 of abstaining from pork and wine, and using certain ablutions. He defended himself by pleading that, having been converted at the age of 45, it did not suit his taste to eat pork or drink wine, and that his trade obliged him to maintain cleanliness by frequent washing. He was finally condemned to carry a candle at an auto da fé in sign of penitence, and to pay four ducats, the costs of his trial. His detention lasted from September, 1529, till December 18, 1530.