Clement VII

“ He came to Rome (February, 1524) , and accompanied by a servant and an interpreter, rode on a white horse to the Vatican, and requested an interview with Cardinal Giulio, in the presence of other cardinals. Pope Clement also gave him audience, and accepted his credentials.
Clement VII (1523–1534) , one of the most excellent popes, an illegitimate scion of the Florentine Medicis, was sensible and kind, and earnestly desired to see Italy freed from the barbarians, that is, the Germans. But he reigned at a time when Europe had lost its balance. ”

“ It was agreed that, during the captivity of the pope, no bull or brief should be received in either country; that, with the consent of Henry, the cardinal of York should have control of all ecclesiastical affairs in England, and that Francis I. should take the like power in his dominions. Wolsey also proposed to ask Clement VII. to make him his vicar-general, as long as he was a prisoner, and to entrust him with supreme authority. ”

“ While Clement VII lived, of whom Sadolet said that he did not renounce his good intention of reforming society, but only postponed it, the idealists who aspired after a regenerated Catholicism never found their opportunity. In 1534 he was succeeded by Paul III, Farnese, a stronger if not a better man, and the change was quickly felt. The new pontiff offered a red hat to Erasmus, to Reginald Pole, who was admired by the Italians, and was supposed to have a future before him in England, being sprung from a royal stock; to Sadolet and Cortese, and to Contarini, the finest character of them all. ”

“ That king—a greater king perhaps than is ordinarily supposed—maintained that no prince, whether his name was Charles or Clement, had any business to meddle with his kingdom. The act of the 23rd March, by which the pope had condemned him, had terminated his long endurance: Clement VII. had declared war against him and Henry VIII. accepted it. A man, though he be ordinarily the slave of his passions, has sometimes impulses which belong to great characters. Henry determined to finish with the pope as the pope had finished with him. He will declare himself master in his own island ”

“ Always without money, and pressed by the avidity of their soldiers, they sought only to discover offenders, as a pretence to raise contributions, and to let their troops live at free quarters. The pope and the Venetians were at first disposed to join in a league for resisting these exactions; and they offered Louise of Savoy, regent of France, their aid to set her son Francis at liberty. But Clement VII had not sufficient courage to join this league; he preferred returning again to the alliance of the emperor and the duke of Milan, for which he paid a considerable sum. ”

“ The Cardinal's object was merely to injure the Emperor as much as he could without involving England in war; and by negotiations for Mary's marriage, first with Francis, and then with his second son, the Duke of Orléans, he was endeavouring to draw England and France into a closer alliance. For similar reasons he was extending his patronage to the Holy League, formed by Clement VII. between the princes of Italy to liberate that distressful country from the grip of the Spanish forces. ”

“ His successor Adrian was a man of good intentions but limited purview; the great issues at stake were beyond his grasp, and his attempts at disciplinary reforms were made nugatory by the stolid immobility of the hierarchy. After a brief reign he was succeeded by Clement VII., a man of considerable talent and inconsiderable ability: a man shifty and fearful, not fitted to cope with the stubborn wills of the reigning princes and their ministers, or with the moral and intellectual forces which were threatening the supremacy of the historic Church. ”

“ He attempted to exercise his functions, but the new Christians claimed their rights, which were to last for several years; a trial was the result of this opposition. Clement VII. died, and his successor, Paul III., granted to the New Christians a privilege which they could not obtain in Portugal; that they might confide, to persons chosen by themselves, their defence before the prince of the sense to be given to the dispositions of their privileges, which had been interpreted to their prejudice. In the same year, the Pope granted them a pardon for all that had passed. ”

“ His adulterous love for Anne Boleyn, the fair maid of honour to his queen, and Cranmer’s biblical opinion (Lev. xviii. 16; xx. 21) convinced him in A.D. 1527 of the sinfulness of his uncanonical marriage. Clement VII., at first not indisposed to grant his request for a divorce, refused after he had been reconciled to the emperor, Catharine’s nephew (§ 132, 2) . Thoroughly roused, the king now threw off the authority of the pope. ”

“ The adherents of the French party made a protest, and chose the Cardinal of Geneva, under the name of Clement VII. England, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Holland, and almost all Italy, acknowledged Urban. France, Spain, Scotland, Savoy, and Lorraine obeyed Clement. This great schism of the West created sorrow and alarm among well-disposed Christian people. ”

“ Meantime he sent his secretary, Sanga, to Paris to beg aid; and to Henry personally he made a passionate appeal, imploring him not to desert the Apostolic See in its hour of extreme need. He apologised for his importunacy, but he said he hoped that history would not have to record that Italy had been devastated in the time of Clement VII. to the dishonour of the King and of Wolsey. If France and England failed him, he would himself be ruined. The Emperor would be universal monarch. They would open their eyes at last, but they would open them too late. ”

“ During this period Clement was mainly occupied in urging Charles to arrest the progress of the Reformation in Germany and in efforts to elude the emperor’s demand for a general council, which Clement feared lest the question of the mode of his election and his legitimacy should be raised. It was due to his dependence on Charles V., rather than to any conscientious scruples, that Clement evaded Henry VIII.’s demand for the nullification of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, and so brought about the breach between England and Rome. ”

“ It is your duty to provide by common accord against unprecedented wants. Assemble the pious men of all nations, and let a free council deduce from the Word of God a scheme of doctrine such as may be received by every people." [326]
A thunderbolt would not have so greatly startled Clement VII. The offspring of an illegitimate union, and having obtained the Papacy by means far from honourable, and squandered the treasures of the Church in an unjust war, this Pontiff had a thousand personal motives for dreading an assembly of Christendom. ”

“ After the death of Adrian, Pope Clement VII. showed himself more favourable to the order of the Hospitallers. He received the grand-master with all the demonstrations of a paternal tenderness. When the chancellor of the order related, in the consistory, the exploits and the reverses of the knights, the sovereign pontiff and the Romish prelates shed tears, and promised to interest all the powers of the Christian world for such noble sufferers. Unfortunately for the order of St. John, the powers of Europe were more than ever divided among themselves. ”

“ Running behind, and crossing the back streets of the Borgo, is the covered passage intended for the escape of the popes to the castle. It was used by Alexander VI. when invaded by Charles VIII. in 1494, and twice by Clement VII. (Giulio di Medici) , who fled, in 1527, from Moncada, viceroy of Naples, and in May, 1527, during the terrible sack of Rome by the troops of the Constable de Bourbon.
"Pendant que l'on se battait, Clement VII. était en prières devant l'autel de sa chapelle au Vatican, détail singulier chez un homme qui avait commencé sa carrière par être militaire. ”

“ The election of another Medici as successor to Adrian was the signal for extraordinary rejoicings, and for the return to Rome of many who had abandoned it after the accession of Adrian. Clement VII. had all the personal grace and refined intellect of his family; he had less taste for pleasure, and more aptitude for business than Leo, and was a true lover of learned men. He induced Sadolet to resume his functions as secretary, and did his best to engage Erasmus to devote his genius to the earnest defence of the Church. ”

“ Such conceptions may remain ineradicable in the minds of individuals, without hindering the general progress of the age. It certainly makes on us a singular impression, when we meet them at a time when human nature in its deepest essence and in all its characteristic expressions was not only known by exact observation, but represented by an immortal poetry and art. It sounds almost ludicrous when an otherwise competent observer considers Clement VII. to be of a melancholy temperament, but defers his judgment to that of the physicians, who declare the pope of a sanguine-choleric nature ”

“ The swing of the pendulum so often noticed in politics was particularly marked in the elections to the papacy of the sixteenth century. In almost every instance the new pope was an opponent, and in some sort a contrast, to his predecessor. In no case was this more true than in the election of 1523. Deciding that if Adrian's methods were necessary to save the church the medicine was worse than the disease, the cardinals lost no time in raising another Medici to the throne. Like all of his race, Clement VII was a patron of art and literature, and tolerant of abuses. ”

“ And it is not to be doubted that if the said pope had lived out his natural life he would have sold the emperor well, and made him pay dear for that imprisonment, in order to aggrandize his niece and the kingdom to which she was joined. But Clement VII. died young, and all this profit came to nought.
So now our queen, having lost her mother, Magdelaine de Boulogne, and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, her father, in early life, was married by her good uncle the pope to France, whither she was brought by sea to Marseille in great triumph ”

“ They did not long survive their work: Margaret of Austria died on the 1st of December, 1530, and Louise of Savoy on the 22d of September, 1531. All the great political actors seemed hurrying away from the stage, as if the drama were approaching its end. Pope Clement VII. died on the 26th of September, 1534. He was a man of sense and moderation; he tried to restore to Italy her independence, but he forgot that a moderate policy is, above all, that which requires most energy and perseverance. ”

“ Go to! instead of killing him, I give him life and liberty: and in my will I’ll have it written that none shall demand of him the heavy debt for his expenses here which he would elsewise have to pay.” This the Pope heard, and took it very ill indeed.
Note 1. Fra Benedetto da Foiano had incurred the wrath of Pope Clement VII. by preaching against the Medici in Florence. He was sent to Rome and imprisoned in a noisome dungeon of S. Angelo in the year 1530, where Clement made him perish miserably by diminishing his food and water daily till he died. See Varchi’s 'Storia Fiorentina,' lib. xii. ”

“ The latter appear to be the most active and loquacious, and every fact and word in the original lives of Gregory XI. and Clement VII. are supported in the Notes of their editor Baluze.]
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[ The ordinal numbers of the popes seems to decide the question against Clement VII. and Benedict XIII., who are boldly stigmatized as antipopes by the Italians, while the French are content with authorities and reasons to plead the cause of doubt and toleration, (Baluz. in Præfat.) It is singular, or rather it is not singular, that saints, visions and miracles should be common to both parties.] ”

“ According to his own statement he quickly won over some sixteen thousand schismatics and neutrals, and the nature of his appeals to the passions of the hour may be guessed by his own report of a sermon in which he denounced Clement VII. as less than a man, as worse than the devil, whose portion was with Antichrist, while his followers were all condemned schismatics and heretics; neutrals, moreover, were the worst of men and were deprived of all sacraments. ”

“ Rymer, xvi. 573. This is explained by a passage in the memoirs of Sully (l. 15) . Clement VIII., though before Elizabeth's death he had abetted the project of placing Arabella on the throne, thought it expedient, after this design had failed, to pay some court to James, and had refused to accept the dedication of a work written against him, besides, probably, some other courtesies. There is a letter from the king addressed to the pope, and probably written in 1603, among the Cottonian MSS. Nero B. vi. ”

“ From his despatches during this period it appears that his diplomacy was chiefly directed to securing for Wolsey an enlargement of his powers as legate, in which he was partially successful. On the death of Adrian VI (14 Sept. 1523) he exerted himself actively in promoting the candidature of Giulio de' Medici, who ultimately succeeded to the papacy as Clement VII. On 24 May 1524 he was commissioned, jointly with Clerk and Pace, to treat for a peace or truce with France by the mediation of the pope. ”

“ Later on the agents report further attempts to obtain extended powers from Clement VII. The pope appeared willing, but said, "what a business other men made" about it. They conclude their communication by a significant hint to their master. It would be well, they think, for him to secure a pension out of the revenues of the bishopric of Worcester for one of the pope's officers who has been "good to him." [10] By this time, however, Wolsey had obtained the bull which enabled him to dissolve the monastery of St. Frideswide's at Oxford and apply its property to the foundation of his college. ”