Clement VIII

“ 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. ”

“ Clement VIII. (Aegidius Muñoz) , antipope from 1425 to the 26th of July 1429, was a canon at Barcelona until elected at Peñiscola by three cardinals whom the stubborn antipope Benedict XIII. had named on his death-bed. ”

“ The two French negotiators rejected these attempts, and steadily maintained the complete independence of the king’s temporal sovereignty, as well as the power of intervention of the French episcopate in his absolution. Clement VIII. was a judicious and prudent pope; and he did not persist. The absolution was solemnly pronounced on the 17th of September, 1595, by the pope himself, from a balcony erected in St. Peter’s Square, and in presence of the population. The gates of the church were thrown open and a Te Deum was sung. ”

“ He died of "Spanish poison," said Envoy Umton, as coolly as if speaking of gout, or typhus, or any other recognised disorder. Clement VIII. (Aldobrandini) was elected 30th January, 1592. He was no lover of Henry, and lived in mortal fear of Philip, while it must be conceded that the Spanish ambassador at Rome was much given to brow-beating his Holiness. Should he dare to grant that absolution which was the secret object of the Bearnese, there was no vengeance, hinted the envoy, that Philip would not wreak on the holy father. ”

“ Andrea Cesalpino's philosophy is essentially obscure, because he would not allow himself to speak openly, being the body-physician of Clement VIII. Yet his love of freedom induces him to speak with sufficient clearness to enable us to understand his standpoint.
He was born 1519. Studied medicine. He took up Aristotle with a view to interpreting him correctly and thus to fight scholastic interpretations. Professed medical philosophy in the University of Pisa. From there was called to the Collegio di Sapienza in Rome by Clement VIII, who made him his body-physician. ”

“ Mention has already been made of the formal refusal the king had met with from Pope Clement VIII. in January, 1594, when he had demanded of him, by the embassy extraordinary of the Duke of Nevers, confirmation of the absolution granted him by the French bishops after his conversation at St. Denis and his anointment at Chartres. The pope, in spite of his refusal, had indirectly given the royal agents to understand that they were not to be discouraged; and the ablest of them, Arnold d’Ossat, had remained at Rome to conduct this delicate and dark commission. ”

“ No other proof is necessary than the conduct of Aldobrandini, Clement VIII., to the great Henry IV., when it was deemed necessary to give him an absolution that he had no occasion for, on account of his being already absolved by the bishops of his own kingdom, and also on account of his being victorious. ”

“ But, before leaving, Francesco Cenci had taken precautions; every person about the pope was in his pay, or hoped to be. The petition never reached His Holiness, and the two poor women, remembering that Clement VIII had on a farmer occasion driven Giacomo, Cristaforo, and Rocco from his presence, thought they were included in the same proscription, and looked upon themselves as abandoned to their fate. ”

“ By the decree of Sixtus IV., in 1477, the office for the feast was finally prescribed for the diocese of Rome as a duplex, but not for other dioceses; these were free as before to adopt it or not. Clement VIII. raised it to a duplex majus. Clement IX., added an octave, and Clement XI., by a decree of 6th December 1708, prescribed it for the whole Church. [565] It had already been observed in Spain as a regular holy day of obligation, for Philip IV. petitioned Innocent X. for it and the pope had granted his request in a constitution of 10th November 1644. ”

“ He is careful to indicate to Jeanne, and consequently to God, what reply would be suitable. He lays stress on the fact that Martin V, who had recently excommunicated him, was elected at Constance by the consent of all Christian nations, that he dwells at Rome and that he is obeyed by all Christian kings. He points out on the other hand the circumstances which invalidate the election of Clement VIII by only three cardinals, and the still more ridiculous election of that Benedict, who was chosen by a conclave consisting of only one cardinal. ”

“ These suggestions were indignantly repelled by Rudolph, whose anger was greatly increased by a letter of Pope Clement VIII. The pope in a forcible though formally courteous manner pointed out to him the evil results which his neglect of his royal duties would entail on his subjects, and called on him to appoint one of the Habsburg princes his successor both to the imperial crown and to the thrones of Bohemia and Hungary. ”

“ He gave his chief attention to sending many good religious to the Philippinas, and for this purpose went on to Roma clad in the same lowly fashion as in his poor province. [37] He was very small of stature, and went clothed in a habit of serge which was short and patched. In spite of his unfavorable appearance, he made a great impression, not only upon the general of the order, but upon the supreme pontiff, who at that time was Clement VIII. The pope desired to retain father Fray Diego with him in Roma, in order to put into execution the reformation of all the religious orders ”

“ 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 ”

“ Ambrose, St. Paulinus of Aquileia and Rabanus Maurus and to desire to remodel them after the pattern of Horace's Odes.... It is only fair to give them the credit, that out of respect for the wishes of Urban VIII. they treated these compositions with extreme reserve, and while they made some expressions clearer they maintained the primitive unction in a large number of passages" (Baudot, The Roman Breviary, part iii., chap. ii.) .
The commission appointed by Clement VIII. in his work of revision and reform included Baronius, Bellarmine and Gavantus. ”

“ PERCY B. SHELLEY. Rome, May 29, 1819.
THE CENCI. PREFACE. A manuscript was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city during the Pontificate of Clement VIII, in the year 1599. The story is, that an old man having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his children ”

“ He desired to obtain a working arrangement with Rome, which should ensure the loyalty of the Catholics, in return for the inestimable benefit of toleration. Pope Clement VIII., Aldobrandini, was not satisfied, and sent instructions that James should not be acknowledged unless he pledged himself to much larger concessions. He feared, he said, to go too far in favour of a heretic. His briefs were not made public, but they came to the knowledge of Catesby, to whom they were very welcome. A king who might not be acknowledged was a king who might be deposed. ”

“ Shortly before the death of Queen Elizabeth, Pope Clement VIII offered, on condition that James would transfer the education of the prince 'to his appointment,' to assist him with such sums of money as would secure his establishment on the English throne, but James declined the proposal. On the death of Elizabeth James wrote to the prince, who now became Duke of Cornwall, a letter advising him not to let the news make him 'proud or insolent ”

“ Soon after reaching Dungannon he had the gratification of receiving a most gracious letter from Pope Clement VIII., together with a crown of phoenix feathers, symbolical of the consideration with which he was regarded by the Sovereign Pontiff. ”

“ From the very day of Clement’s coronation the king had charged the Templars with heresy, immorality and abuses, and the scruples of the weak pope were at length overcome by apprehension lest the State should not wait for the Church, but should proceed independently against the alleged heretics, as well as by the royal threats of pressing the accusation of heresy against the late Boniface VIII. In pursuance of the king’s wishes Clement summoned the council of Vienne (see Vienne, Council of) , which was unable to conclude that the Templars were guilty of heresy. ”

“ Henry VIII., once an obedient son and defender of the Church, conceived in an evil hour, a criminal attachment for Anne Boleyn, a lady of the queen's household, whom he desired to marry after being divorced from his lawful consort, Catherine of Arragon. But Pope Clement VII., whose sanction he solicited, sternly refused to ratify the separation, though the Pontiff could have easily forseen that his determined action would involve the Church in persecution, and a whole nation in the unhappy schism of its ruler. ”

“ Under Henry VIII he was a prominent courtier, taking part in the ceremonial attending the reception of Wolsey's cardinal's hat in 1515. On 13 July 1530 he signed the petition to Clement VII, praying him to hasten his decision as to the divorce. ”

“ Anne Boleyn thereupon urged that the Duke of Norfolk's youthful heir, afterwards famous as the Earl of Surrey, would be a desirable suitor. Clement VIII fully approved this suggestion, but the turn of events soon rendered it nugatory [see Howard, Henry, 1517 P-1554 ; Bapst, Deux Gentilshommcs poetes de la cour de Henry VIII, 1891] . For the three years (1529-32) , during which the divorce was proceeding to its tragic close, Mary was chiefly with her mother, although a separate household was maintained for her at Newhall, Essex. ”

“ King Henry VIII was, both on political and on religious grounds, firm on the papal side. England and Rome were drawn to a close alliance by the identity of their political position. [Pg 138] Each was hard pressed between the same great powers; Rome had to hold its own between the masters of Southern and the masters of Northern Italy, as England had to hold her own between the rulers of France and of the Netherlands. From the outset of his reign to the actual break with Clement VII the policy of Henry is always at one with that of the papacy. ”

“ It was impossible for these poor folk to abandon completely the superstitious practices of their ancestors, and any relapse into these, however trifling, was visited with the rigor with which were treated similar lapses by the Conversos of the Peninsula. Even Philip II recognized the impolicy of this and, in 1599, he procured from Clement VIII a brief empowering the inquisitors to commute the penalties of relaxation and confiscation for relapse, up to a third relapse but no further, and the faculty was limited to the term of five years. ”

“ In 1575, the Logroño tribunal was informed that it could not prosecute such cases as it had no faculty and, about 1580, the tribunal of Peru was told not to meddle with it in any way, except in cases of solicitation. [794] The Consulta Magna of 1696 states that Philip II, towards the close of his reign, applied to Clement VIII for a brief conferring the power on the Castilian Inquisition, but the pope declined for the reason that the whole attention of the inquisitors should be concentrated on matters of faith. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Isabella Losa died; a native of Cordova in Spain, so illustrious for her acquirements that she was honored with the degree of D. D.
1605. Clement VIII (Hippolitus Aldobrandi) , pope of Rome, died. He was a liberal minded and benevolent pontiff.
1660. Monk's parliament ordered the printing and setting up in churches the solemn league and covenant.
1686. James II forbade the bishops to preach on controverted points.
1695. Henry Wharton died; an English divine and historian of uncommon abilities. ”

“ In his interview with Clement at Poitiers, in the spring of 1307, he vainly demanded the condemnation of the memory of Boniface VIII., and, failing in this, he brought forward the charges against the Templars, while temporarily dropping the other matter, but with equal lack of immediate result. Clement sent for de Molay, who came to him with Raimbaud de Caron, Preceptor of Cyprus, Geoffroi de Gonneville, Preceptor of Aquitaine and Poitou, and Hugues de Peraud, Visitor of France, the principal officers of the Order then in the kingdom. ”