The Court of Paul the Fourth

 

During the sitting of the diet [April 9], Marcellus Cervino, cardinal of St. Croce, was elected pope in the room of Julius.

He, in imitation of Adrian, did not change his name on being exalted to the papal chair. As he equaled that pontiff in purity of intention, while he excelled him much in the arts of government, and still more in knowledge of the state and genius of the papal court; as he had capacity to discern what reformation it needed, as well as what it could bear; such regulations were expected from his virtue and wisdom, as would have removed many of its grossest and most flagrant corruptions, and have contributed towards reconciling to the church such as, from indignation at these enormities, had abandoned its communion. But this excellent pontiff was only shown to the church, and immediately snatched away. The confinement in the conclave had impaired his health, and the fatigue of tedious ceremonies upon his accession, together with too intense and anxious application of mind to the schemes of improvement which he meditated, exhausted so entirely the vigour of his feeble constitution, that he sickened on the twelfth, and died on the twentieth day after his election.

All the refinements in artifice and intrigue, peculiar to conclaves, were displayed in that which was held for electing a successor to Marcellus; the cardinals of the Imperial and French factions laboring, with equal ardor, to gain the necessary number of suffrages for one of their own party. But, after a struggle of no long duration, though conducted with all the warmth and eagerness natural to men contending for so great an object, they united in choosing John Peter Caraffa [May 23], the eldest member of the sacred college, and the son of count Montorio, a nobleman of an illustrious family in the kingdom of Naples. The address and influence of cardinal Farnese, who favored his pretensions, Caraffa's own merit, and perhaps his great age, which soothed all the disappointed candidates with the near prospect of a new vacancy, concurred in bringing about this speedy union of suffrages. In order to testify his respect for the memory of Paul III by whom he had been created cardinal, as well as his gratitude to the family of Farnese, he assumed the name of Paul the Fourth.

The choice of a prelate of such a singular character, and who had long held a course extremely different from that which usually led to the dignity now conferred upon him, filled the Italians, who had nearest access to observe his manners and deportment, with astonishment, and kept them in suspense and solicitude with regard to his future conduct. Paul, though born in a rank of life which, without any other merit, might have secured to him the highest ecclesiastical preferments, had, from his early years, applied to study with all the assiduity of a man who had nothing but his personal attainments to render him conspicuous. By means of this, he not only acquired profound skill in scholastic theology, but added to that a considerable knowledge of the learned languages and of polite literature, the study of which had been lately revived in Italy, and was pursued at this time with great ardor. His mind, however, naturally gloomy and severe, was more formed to imbibe the sour spirit of the former, than to receive any tincture of elegance or liberality of sentiment from the latter; so that he acquired rather the qualities and passions of a recluse ecclesiastic, than the talents necessary for the conduct of great affairs. Accordingly, when he entered into orders, although several rich benefices were bestowed upon him, and he was early employed as nuncio in different courts, he soon became disgusted with that course of life, and languished to be in a situation more suited to his taste and temper. With this view, he resigned at once all his ecclesiastical preferments; and having instituted an order of regular priests, whom he denominated Theatines, from the name of the archbishopric which he had held, he associated himself as a member of their fraternity, conformed to all the rigorous rules to which he had subjected them, and preferred the solitude of a monastic life, with the honor of being the founder-of a new order, to all the great objects which the court of Rome presented to his ambition.

In this retreat he remained for many years, until Paul III, induced by the fame of his sanctity and knowledge, called him to Rome, in order to consult with him concerning the measures which might be most proper and effectual for suppressing heresy, and re-establishing the ancient authority of the church. Having thus allured him from his solitude, the pope, partly by his entreaties, and partly by his authority, prevailed on him to accept of a cardinal's hat, to reassume the benefices which he had resigned, and to return again into the usual path of ecclesiastical ambition which he seemed to have relinquished. But, during two successive pontificates, under the first of which the court of Rome was the most artful and interested, and under the second the most dissolute of any in Europe, Caraffa retained his monastic austerity. He was an avowed and bitter enemy not only of all innovation in opinion, but of every irregularity in practice; he was the chief instrument in establishing the formidable and odious tribunal of the inquisition in the papal territories; he appeared a violent advocate on all occasions for the jurisdiction and discipline of the church, and a severe censurer of every measure which seemed to flow from motives of policy or interest, rather than from zeal for the honor of the ecclesiastical order, and the dignity of the holy see. Under a prelate of such a character, the Roman courtiers expected a severe and violent pontificate, during which the principles of sound policy would be sacrificed to the narrow prejudices of priestly zeal; while the people of Rome were apprehensive of seeing the sordid and forbidding rigor of monastic manners substituted in place of the gayety or magnificence to which they had long been accustomed in the papal court. These apprehensions Paul was extremely solicitous to remove. At his first entrance upon the administration, he laid aside that austerity which had hitherto distinguished his person and family, and when the master of his household inquired in what manner he would choose to live, he haughtily replied, "As becomes a great prince". He ordered the ceremony of his coronation to he conducted with more than usual pomp; and endeavored to render himself popular by several acts of liberality and indulgence towards the inhabitants of Rome.

His natural severity of temper, however, would have soon returned upon him, and would have justified the conjectures of the courtiers, as well as the fears of the people, if he had not, immediately after his election, called to Rome two of his nephews, the sons of his brother the count of Montorio. The eldest he promoted to be governor of Rome. The youngest, who had hitherto served as a soldier of fortune in the armies of Spain or France, and whose disposition as well as manners were still more foreign from the clerical character than his profession, he created a cardinal, and appointed him legate of Bologna, the second office in power and dignity which a pope can bestow. These marks of favor, no less sudden than extravagant, he accompanied with the most unbounded confidence and attachment, and forgetting all his former severe maxims, he seemed to have no other object than the aggrandizement of his nephews. Their ambition, unfortunately for Paul, was too aspiring to be satisfied with any moderate acquisition. They had seen the family of Medici raised by the interest of the popes of that house to supreme power in Tuscany; Paul III had, by his abilities and address, secured the duchies of Parma and Placentia to the family of Farnese.

They aimed at some establishment for themselves, no less considerable and independent; and as they could not expect that the pope would carry his indulgence towards them so far as to secularize any part of the patrimony of the church, they had no prospect of attaining what they wished, but by dismembering the Imperial dominions in Italy, in hopes of seizing some portion of them. This alone they would have deemed a sufficient reason for sowing the seeds of discord between their uncle and the emperor.

But cardinal Caraffa had, besides, private reasons which filled him with hatred and enmity to the emperor. While he served in the Spanish troops be had not received such marks of honor and distinction as he thought due to his birth and merit. Disgusted with this ill usage, he had abruptly quitted the Imperial service; and entering into that of France, he had not only met with such a reception as soothed his vanity, and attached him to the French interest, but by contracting an intimate friendship with Strozzi, who commanded the French army in Tuscany, he had imbibed a mortal antipathy to the emperor as the great enemy to the liberty and independence of the Italian states. Nor was the pope himself indisposed to receive impressions unfavorable to the emperor. The opposition given to his election by the cardinals of the Imperial faction, left in his mind deep resentment, which was heightened by the remembrance of ancient injuries from Charles or his ministers.

Of this his nephews took advantage, and employed various devices, in order to exasperate him beyond a possibility of reconciliation. They aggravated every circumstance which could be deemed any indication of the emperor's dissatisfaction with his promotion; they read to him an intercepted letter, in which Charles taxed the cardinals of his party with negligence or incapacity in not having defeated Paul's election: they pretended, at one time, to have discovered a conspiracy formed by the Imperial minister and Cosmo di Medici against the pope's life; they alarmed him, at another, with accounts of a plot for assassinating themselves. By these artifices, they kept his mind, which was naturally violent, and become suspicious from old age, in such perpetual agitation, as precipitated him into measures which otherwise he would have been the first person to condemn. He seized some of the cardinals who were most attached to the emperor, and confined them in the castle of St. Angelo; he persecuted the Colonnas and other Roman barons, the ancient retainers to the Imperial faction, with the utmost severity; and discovering on all occasions, his distrust, fear, or hatred of the emperor, he began at last to court the friendship of the French king, and seemed willing to throw himself absolutely upon him for support and protection.

This was the very point to which his nephews wished to bring him, as most favorable to their ambitious schemes; and as the accomplishment of these depended on their uncle's life, whose advanced age did not admit of losing a moment unnecessarily in negotiations, instead of treating at second­hand with the French ambassador at Rome, they prevailed on the pope to dispatch a person of confidence directly to the court of France, with such overtures on his part as they hoped would not be rejected. He proposed an alliance offensive and defensive between Henry and the pope; that they should attack the duchy of Tuscany and the kingdom of Naples with their united forces; and if their arms should prove successful, that the ancient republican form of government should be re-established in the former, and the investiture of the latter should be granted to one of the French king's sons, after reserving a certain territory which should be annexed to the patrimony of the church, together with an independent and princely establishment for each of the pope's nephews.

The king, allured by these specious projects, gave a most favorable audience to the envoy. But when the matter was proposed in council, the constable Montmorency, whose natural caution and aversion to daring enterprises increased with age and experience, remonstrated with great vehemence against the alliance. He put Henry in mind how fatal to France every expedition into Italy had been during three successive reigns, and if such an enterprise had proved too great for the nation even when its strength and finances were entire, there was no reason to hope for success, if it should be attempted now, when both were exhausted by extraordinary efforts during wars, which had lasted, with little interruption, almost half a century.

He represented the manifest imprudence of entering into engagements with a pope of fourscore, as any system which rested on no better foundation than his life, must be extremely precarious, and upon the event of his death, which could not be distant, the face of things, together with the inclination of the Italian states, must instantly change, and the whole weight of the war be left upon the king alone. To these considerations he added the near prospect which they now bad of a final accommodation with the emperor, who, having taken the resolution of retiring from the world, wished to transmit his kingdoms in peace to his son; and he concluded with representing the absolute certainty of drawing the arms of England upon France, if it should appear that the re-establishment of tranquility in Europe was prevented by the ambition of its monarch.

These arguments, weighty in themselves, and urged by a minister of great authority, would probably have determined the king to decline any connection with the pope. But the duke of Guise, and his brother the cardinal of Lorrain, who delighted no less in bold and dangerous undertakings than Montmorency shunned them, declared warmly for an alliance with the pope. The cardinal expected to be entrusted with the conduct of the negotiations in the court of Rome to which this alliance would give rise; the duke hoped to obtain the command of the army which would he appointed to invade Naples; and considering themselves as already in these stations, vast projects opened to their aspiring and unbounded ambition. Their credit, together with the influence of the king's mistress, the famous Diana of Poitiers, who was, at that time, entirely devoted to the interest of the family of Guise, more than counterbalanced all Montmorency's prudent remonstrances, and prevailed on an inconsiderate prince to listen to the overtures of the pope's envoy.

The cardinal of Lorrain, as he had expected, was immediately sent to Rome with full powers to conclude the treaty, and to concert measures for carrying it into execution. Before he could reach that city, the pope, either from reflecting on the danger and uncertain issue of all military operations, or through the address of the Imperial ambassador, who had been at great pains to soothe him, had not only begun to lose much of the ardor with which he had commenced the negotiation with France, but even discovered great unwillingness to continue it. In order to rouse him from this fit of despondency, and to rekindle his former rage, his nephews had recourse to the arts which they had already practised with so much success. They alarmed him with new representations of the emperor's hostile intentions, with fresh accounts which they had received of threats uttered against him by the Imperial ministers, and with new discoveries which they pretended to have made of conspiracies formed, and just ready to take effect against his life.

But these artifices, having been formerly tried, would not have operated a second time with the same force, nor have made the impression which they wished, if Paul had not been excited by an offence of that kind which he was least able to bear. He received advice of the recess of the diet of Augsburg, and of the toleration which was thereby granted to the protestants; and this threw him at once into such transports of passion against the emperor and the king of the Romans, as carried him headlong into all the violent measures of his nephews. Full of high ideas with respect to the papal prerogative, and animated with the fiercest zeal against heresy, he considered the liberty of deciding concerning religious matters, which had been assumed by an assembly composed chiefly of laymen, as a presumptuous and unpardonable encroachment on that jurisdiction which belonged to him alone; and regarded the indulgence which had been given to the protestants as an impious act of that power which the diet had usurped. He complained loudly of both to the Imperial ambassador.

He insisted that the recess of the diet should immediately be declared illegal and void. He threatened the emperor and king of the Romans, in case they should either refuse or delay to gratify him in this particular, with the severest effects of his vengeance. He talked in a tone of authority and command which might have suited a pontiff of the twelfth century, when a papal decree was sufficient to have shaken, or to have overturned, the throne of the greatest monarch in Europe; which was altogether improper in that age, especially when addressed to the minister of a prince who had so often made pontiffs more formidable than Paul feel the weight of his power. The ambassador, however, heard all his extravagant propositions and menaces with much patience, and endeavored to soothe him, by putting him in mind of the extreme distress to which the emperor had been reduced at Innsbruck, of the engagements which he had come tinder to the protestants, in order to extricate himself, of the necessity of fulfilling these, and of accommodating his conduct to the situation of his affairs.

But weighty as these considerations were, they made no impression on the mind of the haughty and bigoted pontiff, who instantly replied that he would absolve him by his apostolic authority from those impious engagements, and even command him not to perform them; that in carrying on the cause of God and of the church, no regard ought to be had to the maxims of worldly prudence and policy; and that the ill success of the emperor's schemes in Germany might justly be deemed a mark of the divine displeasure against him, on account of his having paid little attention to the former, while he regulated his conduct entirely by the latter. Having said this, he turned from the ambassador abruptly without waiting for a reply.

His nephews took care to applaud and cherish these sentiments, and easily wrought up his arrogant mind, fraught with all the monkish ideas concerning the extent of the papal supremacy, to such a pitch of resentment against the house of Austria, and to such a high opinion of his own power, that he talked continually of his being the successor of those who had deposed kings and emperors; that he was exalted as head over them all, and would trample such as opposed him under his feet. In this disposition the cardinal of Lorrain found the pope, and easily persuaded him to sign a treaty [Dec. 15], which had for its object the ruin of a prince, against whom be was so highly exasperated. The stipulations in this treaty were much the same as had been proposed by the pope's envoy at Paris; and it was agreed to keep the whole transaction secret until their united forces should be ready to take the field.