ITALY AND THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL (1527-1563)
We have now come to the beginning of long centuries of national
degradation, and one has a general sense of passing from a glorious
garden into a series of gas-lit drawing-rooms, somewhat over-decorated,
where naughty princes amuse themselves with bagatelles. We must glance
at the political degradation first.
The struggle between the Barbarians of France and Spain for mastery in
Italy, of which we spoke in the last political chapter, was practically
decided by the battle of Pavia (1525), in which the French king lost all
but life and honour. France was most reluctant to acquiesce in defeat,
and from time to time marched her troops across the Alps into
unfortunate Piedmont, sometimes of her own notion, and sometimes at the
invitation of an Italian state; but the Spanish grip was too strong to
be shaken off. From this time on Italian politics were determined by the
pleasure of foreign kings. Two treaties between France and Spain, that
of Cambrai (1529) and that of Cateau-Cambresis (1559), embodied the
results of their bargains and their wars. The sum and substance of them
was a practical abandonment by France of her Italian claims, and the map
of Italy was drawn to suit Spain.
Milan was governed by Spanish governors, Naples and Sicily by Spanish
viceroys. The business of a Spanish viceroy, then as always, was to
raise money. Taxes were oppressive. It was said that in Sicily the royal
officials nibbled, in Naples they ate, and in Milan they devoured. In
addition to regular taxes, special imposts were laid on various
occasions,--when a new king succeeded to the throne, when a royal heir
was born, when war was waged against the Lutherans in Germany or the
pirates in Africa. In the south, where the people were less intelligent
and laborious, oppressive taxation and unwise government caused a
gradual increase of ignorance and poverty, and left as a legacy to the
present day the conditions from which spring the _Mafia_ of Sicily and
the _Camorra_ of Naples.
In Florence the sagacious Cosimo I (1537-74) ruled with prudence and
severity. He understood that his position depended on his fidelity to
Spain and the Papacy, and acted accordingly. He married a Spanish lady,
Eleanora of Toledo, daughter to the viceroy of Naples, took up his ducal
residence first in the Palazzo Vecchio, where there are many
remembrances of his duchess, and afterwards in the great palace, begun
by Luca Pitti, across the Arno. He reduced Siena, once Florence's
dangerous rival, to subjection, and crushed out the last traces of
republican sentiment in his duchy. He employed Vasari to design the
Uffizi, completed the edifice that holds the Laurentian library, and led
as magnificent a life as a due regard for his purse would allow. In
short, he was what one would expect an unrefined member of the _Casa
Medici_ to be; and when one recollects that his grandmother was a Sforza
of Milan, all expectations based on heredity are amply satisfied. Cosimo
I left a long line of descendants to sit upon his grand-ducal throne.
Their marble effigies at the head of the stairway in the Uffizi tell
their story. The brutal Sforza vigour and the elegant Medicean
astuteness could not save them from sharing in the general degeneracy
that spread like a blight over all Italy. However, one must remember
that they did collect the finest picture gallery in the world and housed
it in the Uffizi and Pitti palaces.
North of Tuscany the petty duchies of Ferrara, Urbino, Modena, Parma,
and Mantua formed a little ducal coterie, very characteristic of the
next two centuries. The Papacy indeed swallowed up Ferrara (1598) and
Urbino (1631), but the House of Este of Ferrara moved on to Modena, and
remained there till Napoleon's time. In Parma, Pope Paul III (1534-50),
our old acquaintance Alexander Farnese, a careful father as well as a
lucky brother, established his son as duke. This son was bad, and
believed to be worse, so the nobles of Parma murdered him; but his
descendants made good their title, and the little duchy of Parma, with
its palace, its custom-house, its barracks, and its pictures, stepped
forth as one of the petty states of the peninsula, and endured till the
Union of Italy. Genoa and Lucca were permitted to remain republics.
Up in the northwest we get our first definite notions of Savoy. This
duchy, built up piecemeal, was a composite state, which included a good
deal of Piedmont, and portions of what are now France and Switzerland,
and, unfortunately, lay directly in the way of the French armies on
their marches into Italy. During the wars of Francis I and Charles V,
the Duke of Savoy hopefully attempted to maintain neutrality, and, in
consequence, lost all. France deemed it more convenient to own her line
of march, and annexed Savoy; and for twenty years Piedmont was both
camping-ground and battleground for the contending nations. It looked as
if Savoy would be blotted from the map of Europe; but Duke Emanuele
Filiberto (1553-80), _Iron Head_, an accomplished soldier, had the sense
to take the winning side. He served in the Spanish army, and, in the
Peace of Cateau-Cambresis, as his share secured the restoration of his
duchy. That portion of this duke's policy which concerns us especially
is that he gave Piedmont precedence over his French and Swiss provinces,
established the seat of government at Turin, put the university there
and brought men of letters and science, substituted Italian for Latin in
public documents, and proclaimed himself an Italian prince and Savoy an
Italian state. He gave Savoy the general character which it has always
retained. He checked the priests, built up the army, reformed the law,
converted the old feudal dominion into an absolute autocracy, and
started his dukedom on the course which ultimately enabled it to play
its great part in the liberation of Italy in the nineteenth century.
Emanuele Filiberto is reputed one of Italy's national heroes.
Venice had already recovered most of the territories on the mainland of
Italy wrenched from her by the League of Cambrai, but in the East the
Turks steadily took away city, island, and province. After a long period
of war, one gallant exploit gilded the fortunes of the losing side. A
league against the Turks was effected between Spain, the Papacy, and
Venice, and the united fleets, under the supreme command of Don John of
Austria, won the renowned sea-fight off Lepanto (1571); but except for
chopping off a goodly number of infidel heads and limbs, little was
accomplished. In this battle a young Spanish soldier, Miguel de
Cervantes, lost an arm. Soon afterwards peace was made on terms hard for
the Venetians, but beneficent in that it was destined to last for
seventy years.
We now come to the Papacy, and there, in extraordinary contrast to the
degeneration and decay all around, we find militant vigour and energy.
This phenomenon is so remarkable that we must glance back at the perils
through which the Papacy had passed. Ever since the fall of the Empire
(when the political union of Italy and Germany broke in two) disruptive
forces had been at work to break the ecclesiastical union, until at
last, in the pontificate of Leo X, Martin Luther affixed his theses
concerning indulgences to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg,
burnt the papal bull, and threw off his allegiance. The North of Europe
followed him. The record of the Papacy had been utter failure and worse.
It had smeared itself from head to foot with simony, nepotism, and vice;
it had cast religion to the winds. No expression of indignation would
have been adequate without the sack of Rome. A statesman might well
have predicted that all Europe would dismember and suppress the Papacy
and adopt a system of national churches. Nevertheless, at the end of the
century the Papacy stood erect and vigorous, shorn indeed of universal
empire, but reestablished, the Order of Jesus at its right, the Holy
Inquisition at its left, draped in piety by the Council of Trent, and
hobnobbing on even terms with kings. The process which effected this
change is called the Counter-reformation, or the Catholic Reaction. That
process was a happy blending of virtue, bigotry, and policy. Borne
upward and onward by the forces of reform and conservatism, the Modern
Papacy rose triumphant on the ruins of the Papacy of the Renaissance.
The same spirit that caused the Reformation in the North started the
Catholic Revival in the South. A wave, comparable to the old movement
for Church reform in Hildebrand's time, swept over the Catholic Church,
and lifted the reformers within the Church into power. The South
emulated the North. Catholic zeal rivalled Protestant ardour. Bigotry
followed zeal. Moreover, a reformed Papacy found ready allies. The
logical consequence of Protestantism was personal independence in
religion, and the next logical step was personal independence in
politics. Protestant subjects, more especially where their rulers were
Catholics, tended to become disobedient; and monarchs, who stood for
absolutism and conservatism, found themselves drawn close to an absolute
and conservative Pope. The kings of Spain and the Popes of Rome became
friends and allies.
Within three years after the sack of Rome, Clement crowned Charles V
with the Imperial crown in Bologna, where, for the last time in Italy,
proclamation was made of a "Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus, Mundi
totius Dominus;" and the Papacy, strengthened at once by its league with
Spain, lifted its head. Further strength came from other sources. The
brilliant young Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola, founded the Order of Jesus,
which vowed itself to poverty, chastity, and obedience to the Papacy
(1534). Spain, too, by the moral effect of example, procured the
Inquisition for Italy. From the time of Innocent III, the Dominican
monks had had charge of preserving the purity of the faith and of
punishing heretics, and they had performed this function with what might
appear to a sceptic sufficient zeal, but during the great racial and
religious struggle in Spain which ended in the capture of Granada, more
zeal was deemed necessary and the Spanish Inquisition was established.
Its fame spread far and wide. The Spanish viceroys introduced it in a
modified form in Naples, and Cardinal Caraffa, a zealous reformer, urged
the need of such an institution in Rome. The Holy Office of Rome was
established, and Caraffa put at its head (1542). Heretics were
frightened into conformity or punished; some were driven out of the
country, a few were burned to death. Freedom of thought was vigorously
attacked; and the _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_ was decreed. The great
and growing power of the reformers may be measured by the fact that the
Pope who sanctioned these great bulwarks of the papal system was the
once gay Alexander Farnese, Paul III, whom we otherwise know as a
brother and a father. The culminating exhibition of the power of the
reformers, however, was in the Council of Trent (1545-63).
Europe had been too long accustomed to the idea of ecclesiastical unity
to sit still without some attempt at reconciliation between the
Catholics and Protestants. It was hoped that a Council would heal all
wounds, smooth all difficulties, and bring back the irrevocable past.
The Popes, however, had come to regard Councils as inimical bodies with
dangerous tendencies towards investigation and with hostile canons, and
were inclined to take the risk of losing the tainted parts of
Christendom altogether, rather than make use of so perilous an
instrument to recover them. But the Emperor, Charles V, was insistent;
his Empire, as well as the Church, was cracked, and in great danger of
breaking in two. The Council was convoked, and met at Trent. The primary
object was reconciliation; but everybody knew that no reconciliation was
possible without radical reforms in the Church, so the papal party
played its cards with exceeding wariness. The Lutherans did not attend,
and the papal party, in order to forestall practical reforms, plunged
into the comparatively safe matter of defining dogma, and defined it in
such a way as to fence out all the Lutheran schismatics. The reformers,
nevertheless, managed to sandwich in between the definitions of dogma
various decrees for the reform of Church discipline. In Catholic theory
an Ecumenical Council acts under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; but
looking at this Council from a purely secular point of view, it is hard
to find other guidance than the quarrelling interests of Pope, bishops,
Emperor, Spaniards, French, and Italians. In fact, the Council was twice
broken up. The first time the Pope, having taken alarm, declared the
Council adjourned to Bologna. The second time the Lutherans, then at war
with the Emperor, swooped down near Trent and frightened the Council
away. It met again, for the third time. All hope of reconciliation with
the Protestants had then passed away, and the Council set to work as a
purely Roman Catholic partisan body. A striking change of attitude
within the Council showed that since the early sessions the reforming
party had won complete control. Paul IV (1555-59), a man of high
character, formerly Cardinal Caraffa, head of the Roman Inquisition, had
promulgated many edicts concerning reforms; and his successor Pius IV,
Giovanni Angelo Medici of Milan (not of the Florentine family)
(1559-66), who was Pope during the final sessions of the Council,
followed his lead. Pius, a clever man who had received a legal training,
instead of wasting efforts in persuading disputatious bishops, first
made diplomatic arrangements with the Catholic sovereigns of Spain,
France, and Austria, and then secured the embodiment of those
arrangements in decrees by the Council. Nothing, however, could have
been accomplished without the reforming spirit within the Church; Pius
removed obstacles in its way and let it have full play. Stern rules were
made against the corrupt practices, which had given Luther his
strength. Canons regulated the conduct of the clergy, the duties of
bishops, the affairs of monasteries and nunneries, and all matters
connected with the great organization of the Roman Church. These reforms
came too late to affect Protestant opinion, but they rallied the
doubting, confirmed the faithful, and gave the Papacy wide-reaching
moral support. The dogmas of the Church were cast in adamant, and
secured the immense advantage of definiteness and fixity. The Council of
Trent remains the principal monument of the Catholic Revival, and that
Revival is certainly the most important event for Italy in the period
immediately following the Renaissance. Pius IV, the clever lawyer, had a
great share in the work of the Council, but his most skilful achievement
was to maintain and confirm the doctrine of the subordination of
Councils to the Papacy. This great stroke, as well as his share in the
reforms, has won for him the title of founder of the Modern Papacy.
In this manner the Papacy prospered during the very generations in which
the greatness of Italy dwindled away. The fortunes of the two had wholly
parted company. The Papacy, indeed, had made itself an Italian
institution,--never again would it seat a foreigner on the chair of St.
Peter,--but in all other ways it had ceased to have any national
affections. Italy, her genius faded, her vigour faint, not only deprived
of what might have been a great support, but even pushed down and held
under by the help of her own greatest creation, the Church, ceased to be
a country. She had become, in Metternich's famous phrase, a mere
geographical expression, an aggregate of little states, with no tie
between them except that of juxtaposition and of common subservience to
foreigners. If we look at a map drawn at the close of the sixteenth
century, we shall find the following political divisions:--
The Duchy of Savoy,
The Spanish province of Lombardy,
The Republic of Venice,
The little Duchy of Parma, under the Farnesi,
The little Duchy of Mantua, under the Gonzaga,
The little Duchy of Modena, under the Este family,
The little Duchy of Urbino, under the della Rovere who had succeeded
to the Montefeltri,
The Republic of Genoa,
The Republic of Lucca,
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, under the Medici,
The Papal States,
The Spanish province of Naples,
The Spanish province of Sicily.
Over them all, Spanish provinces, independent republics, Italian
duchies, and Papal States, falls the shadow cast by the royal standard
of Spain. Next to our consciousness of that dreaded banner, the most
vivid impression which we take away is the contrast between the vigour
of the Papacy and the weakness of Italy, and we draw the necessary
inference that the fortunes of the two not only have wholly parted
company, but also are wholly irreconcilable.