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The Flowering of the Renaissance. Vincent Cronin
Читать онлайн.Название The Flowering of the Renaissance
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008106171
Автор произведения Vincent Cronin
Издательство HarperCollins
They were, to start with, victims of the false antithesis Papacy-Council, given new life by the recent Council of Pisa. They could not rid themselves of the fear that the rulers of Europe, acting through their bishops, would destroy the Pope’s independence by whittling away his financial and temporal power. That is why the mere rumour of the summons of a Council caused a sudden fall in the price of all saleable offices. Secondly, and perhaps even more important, they realized that Rome was insufficiently prepared to enter the arena against the new, well-trained, well-armed German gladiators, and that tactical defeat before the assembled prelates of Europe might still further rend Christ’s seamless robe. Twenty-five frustrated years were to pass before a Council would meet.
A third course presented itself: so thorough a Reform in Rome that the Lutherans’ catchword would ring hollow. Here there were hopeful signs. As early as 1515, two years before Luther’s 95 theses, a group of Roman priests and laymen had formed the Oratory of Divine Love in order to sanctify themselves by the sacraments and prayer, and so bring a reforming influence on others. Members set special value on humility: Gaetano di Thiene dwells in his letters on his unworthiness to offer Mass, wherein he, ‘a poor worm of earth, mere dust and ashes, passes, as it were, into heaven and the presence of the Blessed Trinity.’ The Oratory soon numbered more than fifty influential Romans, and from it in 1524 were to issue the Theatines, a new Order of regular clergy vowed to stringent poverty.
To members of the Oratory it seemed nothing less than a direct intervention by the Holy Spirit when the conclave held in 1523 to elect a successor to Leo chose in absentia Adrian Dedal of Utrecht, the son of a poor shipwright who had made his way by intellectual brilliance to become tutor to the Emperor and later his viceroy in Spain. ‘His face is long and pale,’ wrote the Venetian envoy of Adrian VI, ‘his body is lean, his hands are snow-white. His whole bearing impresses one with reverence; even his smile has a tinge of seriousness.’ The new Pope arrived in Rome bent on reform. When told that Leo had employed 100 grooms, he made the sign of the cross and said that four would suffice for his needs, but as it was unseemly that he should have fewer than a cardinal, he would appoint twelve. When Cardinal Trivulzio asked for a bishopric to relieve his poverty, Adrian asked, ‘What is your annual income?’ ‘4000 ducats.’ ‘Mine was 3000, yet I lived on it and even saved.’ It was not meant as a boast. ‘All of us, prelates and clergy, have gone astray, and for long there is none that has done good; no, not one.’
Adrian celebrated Mass daily—and this for a Pope was an innovation. His meals, which he ate alone, were Spartan: a dish of veal or beef, sometimes a soup. When the Laocoön was proudly shown him, he observed dryly—and inexactly: ‘They are only the effigies of heathen idols,’ and ordered all the entrances to the Belvedere walled up save one, the key to which he kept himself. Leo’s poets and painters he would not even see, far less employ. All his time he gave to economies and the appointment of holy, hard-working bishops, who might do something to improve the Italian clergy, only two per cent of whom understood their Latin breviary.
But Adrian lacked warmth and a knowledge of the Italian mind. A Venetian applied to him Cicero’s remark on Cato: ‘He acts as though he were living in some republic of Plato’s, not among the dregs of Romulus.’ The ‘dregs’ hated Adrian. Starved of the pomp which filled their pockets and made their eyes brighten, they jeered at the Pope as a barbarian and mocked at the tongue-twisting names of his advisers: Enkevoirt, Dietrich von Heeze, Johann Ingenwinkel. They composed bitter pasquinades:
Caduto è a terra il gran nome romano
a dato in preda al barbero furore
The great name of Rome has tumbled
And become a prey to the furious barbarian
—little knowing that the lines held a tragic prophecy. At every turn the Romans opposed reform, the whole idea of which they ridiculed. As a result Adrian lived a lonely, wretched life, taking stringent precautions against poison. Then, only thirteen months after entering Rome, he fell ill of a kidney disease induced by the climate—it too was hostile. After asking that no more than 25 ducats be spent on his funeral, this would-be reformer left a world he could not reform. While the Romans facetiously gave thanks to his doctor, an epitaph was cut for his tomb: ‘Alas! how much do the efforts [virtus], even of the best of men, depend upon time and opportunity.’
It now remained to be seen whether Adrian’s successor could achieve the reform for which all Christendom waited. Giulio de’ Medici, who took the name Clement VII, was the son of Giuliano de’ Medici, stabbed to death in Florence Cathedral, and a first cousin of Leo X. Blameless in his personal life, the new Pope possessed a long handsome face, cultivated tastes and the Medici intelligence, without, however, the Medici drive. He had been born an orphan and illegitimate, and all his life he remained to an extreme degree timid and vacillating. He seemed to lack a core.
Clement was, however, full of good intentions and decided to cut the ‘spiritual’ taxes so hated abroad. This was less easy than it sounds. The taxes were payment for legal and secretarial work involved in issuing briefs, dispensations and so on, performed by more than 2000 Curia officials who had bought or inherited their jobs; that is, they or their fathers had put up capital on which they were entitled to a 10% return. If Clement reduced taxes, he would reduce the return, and would have to make good the difference from some other source. But there was no other source: in fact, as certain German princes embraced Lutheranism, income fell sharply. But Clement did make one useful discovery. He saw that the remuneration of Curia officials was being confused with what was in effect the Papacy’s public debt and, banker’s nephew that he was, began to clear up the confusion. When he had to raise money in 1526, he did so not with the creation of new offices but by issuing under the name Monte della Fede
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