Pope Clement VII

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spain and France were warring for the north o Italy; and in the East the Crescent was moving onward. The Papacy, as a spiritual and temporal power, was involved in all the movements of the intellect and in all the passages at arms. The earthly strength of a giant and the heavenly strength of an angel would both have been needed in Rome to keep the Church as it was intact, for it was now an empire of compromise between Christ and Belial. Clement VII (15231534) , another Medici Pope and a son of the Renaissance as well as its destroyer, hoped to serve both masters. He lost in every engagement. ”

“ In 1529 he signed an instrument approving the reasonableness of the king's scruples concerning his marriage with Catherine of Arragon, and advising recourse to the pope for a speedy decision of the cause (Rymer, Fœdera, xiv. 301, 405, 406) . On 13 July 1530 he was one of the four bishops who, with Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop Warham, and the whole peerage of England, signed the bold letter to Pope Clement VII demanding the king's divorce. He signed the renunciation of the pope's supremacy on 15 Feb. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ When urged by Clement VII to publish his works, he is said, by the Augustinian Thomas de Herrera, to have replied that he feared to contradict famous and holy men by his exposition of Scripture. The Pope replied that human respect should not deter him ”

“ In 1494 Giulio went with them into exile; but, on Giovanni’s restoration to power, returned to Florence, of which he was made archbishop by his cousin Pope Leo X., a special dispensation being granted on account of his illegitimate birth, followed by a formal declaration of the fact that his parents had been secretly married and that he was therefore legitimate. On the 23rd of September 1513 the pope conferred on him the title of cardinal and made him legate at Bologna. ”

“ Shocked by the low state of morals then prevalent in so many Italian cities, these holy men gathered around them a body of zealous young priests, who aimed at inducing the people by means of sermons and instructions to take advantage of the sacrament of Penance. The order was approved by Clement VII. in 1533, and received many important privileges from his successors. Its members worked in complete harmony with the secular clergy and in obedience to the commands of the bishops. They bound themselves not to seek or accept any preferment or dignity unless at the express direction of the Pope. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The new Pope, Paul III, who had succeeded Clement VII in 1534, began his pontificate by creating a number of reforming Cardinals, and sent Vergerio to Germany to investigate the possibilities of a concordat with the heretics and to ascertain the terms upon which they would support a General Council. In all the Scandinavian kingdoms the triumph of the new faith was complete, and the Protestant seemed to be the winning cause in Europe. Now, when Charles was threatened with a joint attack by Turks and French, it was no time to throw the Lutheran Princes into the enemy's arms. ”

“ The Emperor Charles V and Pope {219} Clement VII became open enemies. The pontiff, fearing the increasing power of Charles, had formed an alliance with Francis I, king of France, against him. This so incensed Charles that he abolished the authority of the pope in Spain, made war upon him in Italy, captured the cities of Rome, besieged the pontiff in his castle of St. ”

“ On the other hand it is so much simpler to turn Pope Clement into a loving shepherd who wasted the last remnants of his declining strength trying to prevent his flocks from following false leaders, than to depict him as a typical prince of the house of Medici who regarded the Reformation as an unseemly brawl of drunken German monks and used the power of the Church to further the interests of his own Italian fatherland, that we need feel no surprise if such a fabulous figure smiles at us from the pages of most Catholic text-books. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The suppression of the Jesuits bulks so large in the pontificate of Clement that he has scarcely been given due credit for his praiseworthy attempt to reduce the burdens of taxation and to reform the financial administration, nor for his liberal encouragement of art and learning, of which the museum Pio-Clementino is a lasting monument.
No pope has been the subject of more diverse judgments than Clement XIV. Zealous defenders credit him with all virtues, and bless him as the instrument divinely ordained to restore the peace of the Church ”

“ Sardinia and Sicily, Parma and Piacenza, were disposed of without regard to papal claims. When he quarrelled with the duke of Savoy, and revoked his investiture rights in Sicily (1715) , his interdict was treated with contempt. The prestige of the papacy had hardly been lower within two centuries. About 1702 the Jansenist controversy broke out afresh. Clement reaffirmed the infallibility of the pope, in matters of fact (1705) , and, in 1713, issued the bull Unigenitus, condemning 101 Jansenistic propositions extracted from the Moral Reflections of Pasquier Quesnel. ”

“ It certainly implied no independence of Rome, for negotiations were still being carried on with the papal court. But it told Clement plainly that in any strife that might come between himself and Henry the clergy were in the King's hand, and that he must look for no aid from them in any struggle with the Crown. The warning was backed by an address to the Pope from the lords and some of the commons who assembled after a fresh prorogation of the houses in the spring.
"The cause of his majesty," the peers were made to say, "is the cause of each of ourselves." ”

“ The Church of Rome has since advanced the most extravagant pretensions, and has appealed in support of them to ecclesiastical tradition; but here, an elder of her own—one who had conversed with, the apostles—and one whom she delights to honour [503:1] —deliberately comes forward and ignores her assumptions! She fondly believes that Clement was an early Pope, but the good man himself admits that he was only one of the presbyters. Had there then been a bishop of Corinth, this letter would unquestionably have exhorted the malcontents to submit to his jurisdiction ”

“ At the next election (1724) he was himself proposed for the papal chair, and secured ten votes at the Conclave which elected Benedict XIII. Benedict’s successor, Clement XII. (elected 1730) , named him legate of Ravenna, in which capacity he incurred the pope’s displeasure by the strong and unwarrantable measures he adopted to reduce the little republic of San Marino to subjection to Rome. ”

“ Clement VIII. (Ippolito Aldobrandini) , pope from 1592 to 1605, was born at Fano, in 1535. He became a jurist and filled several important offices. In 1585 he was made a cardinal, and subsequently discharged a delicate mission to Poland with skill. His moderation and experience commended him to his fellow cardinals, and on the 30th of January 1592 he was elected pope, to succeed Innocent IX. While not hostile to Philip II., Clement desired to emancipate the papacy from undue Spanish influence, and to that end cultivated closer relations with France. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clement VI. (Pierre Roger) , pope from the 7th of May 1342 to the 6th of December 1352, was born at Maumont in Limousin in 1291, the son of the wealthy lord of Rosières, entered the Benedictine order as a boy, studied at Paris, and became successively prior of St Baudil, abbot of Fécamp, bishop of Arras, chancellor of France, archbishop of Sens and archbishop of Rouen. He was made cardinal-priest of Sti Nereo ed Achilleo and administrator of the bishopric of Avignon by Benedict XII. in 1338, and four years later succeeded him as pope. ”