The Power Of The Popes Part 16

"his relation is supported by the evidence of James "Piccolomini, cardinal bishop of Pavia, a respect- "able writer, who, both in his commentaries, in "the letter he wrote to Paul himself a short time "after his exaltation, and in that addressed to the "cardinals who had elected him, draws a very un- "favourable portrait of this pope."

Two nephews, invested the one with the duchy of Sora, the other with the county of Imola; an expedition fruitless against the Mahometans; alternate alliances and enmities with the Venetians; disturbances encouraged in Ferrara, Florence and Naples; arms, stratagems, and anathemas, in turn a.s.sayed against the enemies of the Holy See: these several details of the history of Sixtus IV. would possess greater interest if the conspiracy of the Pazzi did not absorb all the attention this pontificate can claim.

The Medici had offended Sixtus IV. by some shew of resistance to the elevation of his nephews, and to the nomination of the archbishop of Pisa, Salviati. Their power, so much the more imposing as it was then connected with the most honourable renown, restrained and wearied the pontiff, who aspired to become master of Florence and the North of Italy. One of the first cares of Sixtus was, to deprive the family of the Medicis of the situation of treasurer of the Holy See, in order to give it to that of the Pazzi. Till this period, no jealousy was manifested between these two ill.u.s.trious houses, united on the contrary by alliances and by mutual services. The Florentine authors exhaust in vain their investigations to discover motives or pretexts for the enmity of the Pazzi to the Medici. To represent the latter as tyrants, the conspirators as liberators, is at once to oppose sound morality and contemporary history. No, it is impossible to imagine any other causes here than the instigations of the court of Rome, and the hope presented to the Pazzi, of invading under the protection of the Holy See, the government of Florence, if they were willing to become, not the rivals of the Medicis, but their a.s.sa.s.sins. To the Pazzi were joined the Count Riacio, nephew of the pope, the cardinal Riacio, nephew of the Count, the archbishop of Pisa, a a brother of this prelate; one Bandini, known by the excess of his debaucheries; Montesecco, one of Sixtus's 'condottieri,' with other robbers and priests. It was arranged to poignard Lorenzo and Giulio de Medici, on Sunday, the 26th of April, in the church, in the middle of Ma.s.s, at the moment of the elevation of the host. These circ.u.mstances, which added to the crime the character of sacrilege, terrified the conscience of Montesecco,8? who had received, as the best skilled of them all at a.s.sa.s.sination, the commission to strike Lorenzo; two ecclesiastics took the office on them. But they acquitted themselves with less skill than zeal; and Lorenzo, only wounded, escaped from their hands, while Giulio expired under the blows of Bandini and Francisco Pazzi.

8? He said, his courage would never support him in commiting such a crime in a church, and adding to his treason sacrilege.-Machiavellii's History of Flortnce, 1. 8.

The death of Giulio was instantly revenged: the traitors were seized, and exterminated by the populace. The archbishop of Pisa was seen when hanged by the side of Francisco Pazzi, biting in his agony the carcase of his companion. Montesecco revealed at the foot of the scaffold the dark clues and sacred origin of the conspiracy. Bandini, after having fled to Constantinople, was sent back by Mahomet 11. to Florence, where he was executed: a sultan would not afford an asylum to an a.s.sa.s.sin that a pope did not blush to arm; and while Lorenzo, scarcely recovered from his wounds, endeavoured to repress the popular indignation, even while he saves the Cardinal Riario, what does Sixtus do? As if his being an accomplice was not sufficiently exposed by Montesecco, was not abundantly demonstrated by the circ.u.mstances themselves, he proclaims it himself by the excommunication of Lorenzo de Medicis and the Florentines. He terms Lorenzo and the magistrates, children of perdition, suckers of iniquity: he declares them and their successors born or to be born, incapable of receiving or transmitting any property by will or inheritance; he summons the Florentines to deliver Lorenzo up to him; and, when he can no longer hope for so unprincipled a treason, he raises troops against Florence; he arms some Neapolitans; at any price he is desirous to consummate the crime, of which the Pazzi succeeded in effecting but the half. In the mean time Italy, Germany, and France, interested themselves for the Medicis; Louis XI. himself declares that he will restore the 'pragmatic,' if the pope does not revoke his anathemas: but the descent of the Turks at Otranto was requisite, and that the fears and the forces of the courts of Naples and of Rome should have to turn their attention to this point, before the pontiff would pardon the victim who had escaped his thunders and his poignards.?

? Ang. Politian. De Hist, coryurat. Pactianae comment.- Don Bossi, chron. ann. 1478.-Machiav. Hist, of Flor. 1. 8.- Ammir. Hist.

Flor. vol. iii. p. 118, &c.-Valori, Vita Laurent. Med.-Fabr. Vit.

ejusdem.-Muratori's Annals of Italy, years 1478, 1479, &c.

Sixtus, to a.s.sociate the court of Naples in his vengeance, had abolished a quit rent which it paid to the Court of Rome. Innocent VIII. designed its re-establishment, as necessary to the undertakings he meditated against the Mussulmans. Upon the refusal of king Ferdinand, the pope encouraged the Neapolitan barons to revolt, partisans of the Duke of Calabria, and little attached to the house of Arragon. He promised, and sent them troops; he excommunicated the king, deposed him, and called the king of France, Charles VIII. into Italy: but, indolent and unskilful, Innocent merited no success; and the eight years of his pontificate have left behind but trifling mementos.

Of Alexander VI. the private life is well known; the nature of our subject will excuse us from pursuing the details which compose it, of, robbery, perjury, revelings, sacrilege, obscenity, incest, poisoning, and a.s.sa.s.sination. Our business is with his politics not his manners. He persuaded Charles VIII. to pa.s.s into Italy, for the purpose of conquering Naples; and, while Charles was preparing for it, Alexander entered into negociations with every court, even that of the Sultan, to raise up enemies to France. His writing to Bajazet II. that Charles menaced Naples but in order to fall on the Ottoman empire; his delivering Prince Zizim, the brother of Bajazet, to Charles, by order of the Sultan, but delivering him up poisoned, and receiving from the latter the price of his crime: such were, in his political career, the feats of Alexander VI. Yet this did not prevent his holiness from concluding a treaty of alliance with Charles, and almost immediately after leaguing with the Venetians and the Emperor Maximilian against the same Charles, whose greatest error was, opposing the designs of eighteen cardinals who, already wearied with the excesses of Alexander, resolved to depose him.

The pope had a daughter named Lucretia, and four sons, of whom one named Geoffrey remains almost unknown; another obtained from the King of Naples the t.i.tle of Squillace; another became celebrated under the name of Cesar Borgia; and the eldest was Duke of Gandia and Benevenlum. To advance Cesar, who was only a cardinal, Charles VIII. was promised support in a second expedition of the French into Italy: Charles died before it could be undertaken, and Frederick, king of Naples, was then resorted to. This prince was required to give his daughter in marriage to Cesar, who should be created prince of Tarentum: Frederick having rejected this proposal, it was necessary to recur a third time to the French, then governed by Louis XII.

Cesar arrived in France: he took with him a bull which authorised Louis to part with his first wife; and he instigated him to conquer Naples and Milan: Naples, which from the time of Charles of Anjou, had not ceased to belong to a French prince; Milan, where Louis was to recover the rights he derived from Valentine Visconti, his grandmother: and, to prevent his being over-ruled by wiser counsels, his minister, cardinal Amboise, was seduced with the hope of being one day the successor of Alexander VI. Behold here, how the best of kings, having become the ally of the most perfidious of pontiffs, engages in a dangerous war, in which the treacheries of Rome s.n.a.t.c.h from the French the fruits of their victories. But the Cardinal Cesar becomes Duke of Valentinois; the family of Borgia triumphs over its enemies, and enriches itself with their spoils; in fine, Alexander VI. became the first potentate in Europe, when a drug which he had prepared for others terminated, by a happy mistake, his abominable pontificate.

This pope and his predecessors, since Calixtus, have been much reproached with their nepotism, or zeal for the elevation of their nephews, their children, and their relations. Certainly we do not mean to justify this abuse of the apostolate, this triumph of the interests of individuals over those of the religion of Jesus Christ; but, in order to clear up as far we are able, by general observations, a history, the details of which we could not embrace here, we may say that Nepotism was a weakening, a degradation of the political ambition; that the papacy, regarded as a means of enriching and aggrandizing families, became, by these means alone, less formidable to sovereigns: and, that after the extinction of the schism from 1450 to 1500, the civil authority had suffered much more frequent attacks, if these domestic cares, these family interests, had not so often diverted the popes from the vast undertakings necessary to restore the importance of the Holy See.

Sedulous to humble kings, Innocent III. and Gregory VII. did not busy themselves in elevating particular families: they sought to exercise themselves, and transmit to their successors, a universal supremacy.

Many circ.u.mstances, which we have pointed out, would have favoured, at the middle of the fifteenth century, the re-establishment of this enormous power, if the popes had united the austere and disinterested enthusiasm of Hildebrand, to the knowledge which must have been possessed by the contemporaries of Politiano, and almost of Machiavel.

It was not that Pius II. wanted sense, nor Paul II. wickedness, nor Sixtus IV. perfidy, nor Borgia any vice; but it is not sufficient to be unprincipled, a pope must know also how to turn to account the errors of others and his own crimes.

CHAPTER IX. POLICY OF THE POPES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

OF all the periods of modern history, the sixteenth is the fullest of tempests, of revolutions, and of important events. It s.h.i.+nes with the bright l.u.s.tre of Italian literature; but, it is tinged with all the blood which fanaticism could shed in the lapse of an hundred years. Each of the eras which divides the duration of this age, is itself a memorable event; the league of Cambray in 1508; the concordat of Leo X.

and Francis I. in 1515: the conquest of Egypt by the Turks, new expeditions to the two Indies, the English schism, and the establishment of the Jesuits, in 1540; the abdication of Charles V. and the accession of Elizabeth in 1558; the council of Trent from 1545 to 1563, and, the increase of heresies, the Batavian confederation, the excesses of Philip II. and St. Bartholomew's-day in 1572; the league, the a.s.sa.s.sination of Henry III. by James Clement, in 1589; the victories of Henry IV. his recantation, and the edict of Nantz, in 1598. Fifteen popes during these tragical events governed the church, almost all of them of distinguished talents, and some of an energetic character: but the remembrance of the Avignon schism, the permanent scandal of nepotism, the invention of printing, the discovery of a new world, the general advancement of knowledge, the exertions of Luther and Calvin, the influence of their doctrines, and propagation of their errors; so many obstacles were opposed to the progress of the pontifical power, that it required extreme dexterity in the bishops of Rome to r.e.t.a.r.d its decline.

After the concessions made by the emperor, Charles IV. in 1355 the German Sovereigns had lost their ancient preponderance in Italy; and the French, in carrying their arms into it, had obtained a considerable influence, which was much less opposed by the popes than by the Venetians, the princes of Arragon, and the powerful families that ruled Florence and Milan. Pope Julius II. nephew of Sixtus IV. resolved to enfranchise Italy, that is, to subject it to the court of Rome, to expel foreigners, to sow divisions among the rivals of the Holy See, and to take advantage of them in order to re-a.s.sume in Europe that supremacy before aspired to by Gregory VII. and exercised by Innocent III. Gregory VII. Innocent III. and Julius II., among so many popes, are the three most violent enemies of kings.

After the death of Alexander VI, and during the twenty-seven days of the pontificate of Pius III. the Venetians had regained important places taken from their republic at the end of the fifteenth century: they occupied a part of Romagna; Cesar Borgia had secured the other, as well as many cities of the March of Ancona, and of the Duchy of Urbino; the Baglioni possessed Perugia; the Bentivoglio, Bologna: divers portions of the pontifical domains were then to be recovered. Julius succeeded in despoiling Borgia, the Bentivoglio, the Baglioni: but, to subdue the Venetians, he concluded against them with the king of France, the emperor, and the king of Arragon, the famous league of Cambray.-But, soon after, the advancement of Louis XII. rendered him uneasy: he feared to allow that of the emperor; he hastens to enter into a secret negociation with the Venetians, and promises them, provided they restore Faenza and Rimini, to join them in repelling the 'barbarians'; it is thus he calls the French, the Spaniards, and Germans. The Venetians, who rejected these offers, were excommunicated, defeated, and absolved by submitting to the pope. Then Julius leagued, in fact, with the Venetians against the French; he puts on the cuira.s.s, lays siege to, in person, and takes Mirandola. Vanquished by Trivulzio, general of the French, he excommunicates Louis XII. lays France under an interdict, and endeavours to arm England against her. Apostolic legates labour to corrupt the French soldiers: the t.i.tle of defenders of the Holy See rewards the ravages of the Swiss; the Genoese are excited to revolt; the states of John d'Albret, king of Navarre, the ally of Louis XII. are delivered over by the Roman court to the first occupier.?

? "About this time, 1512, says Flecher, pope Julius piqued against France and her allies, abusing the power which G.o.d had given him, and making religion subservient to his own particular pa.s.sions, went to such lengths as to excommunicate kings and strip them of their kingdoms. The greatness of Louis XII. secured him from these exactions, and France, supported by her internal force, feared neither the violence of the pope, nor the ambition of those who would have taken ad-vantage of it to attack this crown. The evil fell on John d'Albret, king of Navarre, who, not being sufficiently provident to secure himself from surprise, nor powerful enough to defend himself against an armed neighbour, watchful of every opportunity to aggrandize his kingdom, had been ex-communicated because he had united with the king of France, and was finally driven from his states, under the pretence that he had contributed to the convocation and continuance of the council held at Pisa against the Holy See. Ferdinand, in virtue of this bull of excommunication, which it is believed the pope had secretly conveyed to him before he had fulminated it, caused his troops to advance quietly, and put himself in a position to attack the king of Navarre, with whom he was living on good terms, and who suspected nothing. He knew in his conscience he was about committing " an injustice, and doubted not he would be reproached with his invasion: on this account he sent to desire Cardinal Ximenes might come to him in Logrogne, where he was, in order to sanction by his presence, at least in the eyes of his subjects, a war which in other respects had no just grounds." Life of Cardinal Ximenes, pa. 358, 359. Ed. of 1693.

To crush France, overthrow Florence, such were the designs of Julius when he died in 1513, the tenth year of his pontificate. Medals, struck by his order, represent him with the tiara on his head, a scourge in his hand, pursuing the French, and trampling under his feet the crown of France. Julius II. was so much of a temporal prince, that it would be hard to discover the bishop in him; he attended too little to even the forms of the Apostolat; this was the princ.i.p.al deficiency in his policy.? It was nevertheless in his pontificate that the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope was established. Julius II. according to Guicciardini,? did not merit the t.i.tle of a great man; and he obtains it from those only who, incapable of appreciating the value of words, imagine that a sovereign pontiff becomes less ill.u.s.trious by setting an example of the pacific virtues, than in extending the domains of the church by the effusion of Christian blood. He was detested even in Italy. Before his death, the inhabitants of Bologna, threw down his statue, the work of Michael Angelo.

? John Lemaire, a contemporary author, made upon the warlike disposition of Julius II. the following observation: "Still shall we declare another wonderful change it is, the Sultan's graciousness and tractability towards the Very Christian King, compared with the rigour and obstinacy of this modern pope, who, so martial and quarrelsome in his accoutrements, as if it was a duty of his to cause his terrible and warlike arms to be famous, like the great Tamerlane emperor and sultan of the Tartars, wishes always to be engaged in war, which is as becoming to him as for a dirty monk to dance. Unless he shall make some monstrous world to accord with his own ideas: for hogs will ever feed on acorns."-Preface to the Treatise on Schisms, p. 5. Julius II.

? History of Italy. 1. 11. ann. 1513.

Leo X. though he reigned but eight years, has given his name to the age in which he lived: the just and invariable effect of liberal protection extended to men of letters, when it is bestowed with equal judgment and generosity. This pontiff loved power still less for its own sake and the vast designs it facilitates, than for the magnificence and gratifications it procures. The son of Lorenzo de Medicis, he especially interested himself in ways of securing to his family a lasting ascendancy in Italy. He destined for his nephew the sovereignty of Tuscany, and to his own brother the kingdom of Naples. Louis XII.

absolved from the anathemas with which Julius had loaded him, was pledged to favour the ambition of the Medicis, who, on their part, were to support their pretensions to Milan. This alliance, secretly stipulated?4 not having sufficiently speedy effects, Leo purchased the state, of Modena from the emperor Maximilian, which he purposed uniting with those Of Reggio, of Parma, and of Placentia, and possibly Ferrara, to bestow on his brother, or enrich with them the court of Rome.

?4 Guicciardini's Hist, of Italy, 1. 12. The King of France promised to aid the pontiff in the acquisition of the kingdom, of Naples, either for the church or for Giuliano his brother.

After being leagued with the king of France, Francis I. to compel the emperor Charles V. to relinquish the kingdom of Naples, incompatible, he said, with the empire, the pope formed an alliance against the French with this same Charles, whose menaces terrified him to that degree, that he acceded in his favour to the re-union of the two crowns. Leo took into his pay a body of Swiss troops, and vowed thenceforward so violent a hatred to the French, that, when he had heard of their repulsion from the Milanese territory, he almost instantly expired, as is a.s.serted from joy. He was but forty-six years of age; and notwithstanding the errors into which pontifical policy led him, we must regret that he did not live to protect for a longer period the advancement of the fine arts. He encouraged them like a man worthy of cultivating them; he cherished them with a sincere and constant love, with which they never inspire bad princes. His interior administration merited the grat.i.tude of the Romans:?5 their grief when deprived of him was profound; and, a few years before, equally pure homage was rendered to him when he escaped a conspiracy similar to that of the Pazzi, and in which the same Cardinal Riario, one of the accomplices in the former with Sixtus IV. was concerned. Guicciardini and other writers have judged too hastily of Leo X. For what pope can obtain approbation, if it be not due to him, who has done more for Rome than any of his predecessors since Leo IV. and who did in Europe but a part of the mischief which tradition and example had bequeathed to him.

?5 They have erected a statue to him with this inscription: Optimo, principi. Leoni. X. Joan. Med. Pont. Max. ob. rest.i.tutam.

restauratamque. urbem. aucta. sacra, bonasq. artes. adscitos.

patres, sublatum, vectigal. datumq. congiarium. S.P.Q.R.P.

The expense which the building the church of St. Peter exacted, obliged Leo to have recourse to the sale of indulgences. The clamours of Luther against this traffic were the prelude of a great revolution in Christendom. Leo X. excommunicated Luther and his followers. Bossuet?6 thinks with reason, that the heresies and schisms of this century might have been prevented, if necessary reformations had not been neglected.

But, in the history of this pontificate, what most relates to the present subject is, the concordat concluded between Leo X. and Francis I. in 1516.

?6 Hist, of the Variat. 1. I, n. 1, 2, 3.

In vain Julius II. excommunicated Louis XII. and menaced transferring the t.i.tle of the Very Christian King to the king of England who was destined to merit it so badly, Henry VIII.; in vain the fifth council of the Lateran published a monitory against the parliament of Paris, and all the abettors of the pragmatic sanction, enjoining them to appear at Rome to give an account of their conduct: Julius died without shaking Louis. This excellent prince himself died at the moment in which Leo was preparing to deceive him and the crown of France devolved on Francis I.

of whom Louis had often said: 'This great b.o.o.by will spoil all.'-In fact, Francis I. in an interview with Leo at Bologna, consented to a concordat, and directed his chancellor Anthony Duprat to digest it in unison with two cardinals appointed for this purpose by the pope. The princ.i.p.al articles of this concordat are those which import, that for the future the chapters of the cathedral and metropolitan churches should not proceed in future to the election of bishops; that the king, within the term of six months from the date of a see becoming vacant, shall present to the pope a doctor or lieutenant of twenty-seven years of age at least, who shall be made by the pope inc.u.mbent of the vacant see; but, if the person proposed does not possess the requisite qualifications, the king shall be required to propose another within three months, reckoning from the day of the refusal; that moreover the pope, without the previous presentation of the king, shall nominate to the bishops and archbishops' sees, which shall become vacant whilst the inc.u.mbents are in attendance at the court of Rome. It is proper to remark that, in granting the nomination to the king, the pope reserved to himself the first fruits.?7

?7 On this subject observe the remark of Mezerai: "There never was seen go odd an exchange; the pope, who is a spiritual power, takes the temporal to himself, and bestows the spiritual on a temporal prince."

Francis I. went himself to the parliament to have the concordat registered, and the chancellor Duprat explained the reasons which dictated it. They refuse to register it; the king gets angry. The parliament places a protest in the hands of the bishop of Langres, that, if the registry take place, it will be by constraint, and that they will not act in consequence in less conformity with the pragmatic. It is at length registered, but in endorsing on the folds of the concordat, that it has been read and published at the express command of the king, many times reiterated.

The see of Alby became vacant in 1519: the chapter nominated agreeable to the pragmatic sanction, and the king according to the concordat; the parliament of Paris, deciding between the two candidates, p.r.o.nounced in favor of the one elected by the chapter of Alby. In 1521, a bishop of Condom, elected by the chapters of this church, was in the same manner supported against him whom the king had nominated. All the causes of this kind were similarly decided, until after the imprisonment of Francis I. and would have continued so to be, if a declaration of the 6th of September, 1529, had not referred to the grand council the cognizance of all proceedings relative to bishop.r.i.c.ks, abbeys, and other benefices, the nomination to which had been granted to the king by Leo X.

The president Henault?8 has collected all the reasons alleged in favor of the concordat, and which may be reduced to the two following: 1st, kings in founding benefices, and in receiving the church into the state, have succeeded to the right of election exercised by the early believers: 2dly, simony, intrigue, and ignorance, govern electors, and give to the dioceses unworthy pastors.??

?8 Ab. Chron. of Hist, of France: remark, particul.

?? The worst of it was, says Brantome, when they could not agree in their elections, they often came to blows, and cuffed each other with their fists, knocked each other down, wounded nay killed each other......They generally elected him who was the best companion, who loved the girls and was the greatest toper; in short he who was most debauched: others elected, from pity, some wretch of a monk who had been secretly plundering them, or kept his own private purse and starved his poor friars.....The bishops, elected and installed in these great dignities, G.o.d knows what lives they led...A dissolute life after dogs, birds, feasts, banquets, clubs, weddings and girls, of whom they kept seraglios...I would add more; but I do not wish to give offence.

But, at bottom, the royal nominations were not the thing which most excited the clamours of the parliament; it complained more particularly of the first fruits, and the bull of Leo against the pragmatic sanction; of the first fruits, which, from St. Louis to Charles VII. all the kings of France had prohibited, and which the early popes had declared improper and simoniacal, when they were enacted by the emperors; of the bull of Leo, which denounces as a public pest, as an impious const.i.tution, a pragmatic, founded on the decrees of general councils, cherished by the people and promulgated by the sovereign. This bull suspended, excommunicated, menaced with loss of temporal possessions, civil or ecclesiastic, the French prelates, and even lay lords, who should re-demand or regret the pragmatic sanction of Charles VII. In fine, they dared to cite in this same bull of Leo X. the bull of Boniface VIII. "Unam sanctam," in which the right of humbling thrones, of taking and bestowing crowns, is ascribed to the Roman pontiff. This is what provoked the opposition of the parliament; and we must admit, apparently, this was neither unreasonable nor contrary to the interests of the monarchy. If the question had only been to subst.i.tute to the right of confirming the elections, possessed for a long time by the monarch, that of making the choice himself, we have reason to think the registry would have experienced much less difficulty.

Velly's Hist, of France, vol. xxiii. p. 161, &c.-Gaillard's Hist, of Francis I. vol. vi. p. 1-120.

Such as it was concluded, in 1516, the concordat could not be pleasing to a people who had received with enthusiasm the pragmatic of 1439.

Under Francis I., under his successors Henry II., Francis II., Charles IX., Henry III., the universities and the parliaments seized every opportunity of remonstrating against this alteration of the fundamental laws of the Gallican church. The states of Orleans under Charles IX., those of Blois under Henry III. expressed the same regret: the clergy themselves have often demanded the restoration of the 'pragmatic;' they said in their remonstrance of 1585, that the king Francis I., when near death, had declared to his son, that there was nothing which weighed so heavily on his conscience as the concordat.

This mode of thinking on the pragmatic and concordat was so national, so constant, that in 1789 even the pet.i.tions prepared for the sessions of the States general unanimously demanded the abolition of the concordat and restoration of the pragmatic sanction.. Summary of the Pet.i.tions, vol. i. p. 33; vol. ii. p.

277; vol. iii. p. 409, 410.

After Leo X. Adrian VI. born of very obscure parents, occupied for but twenty months the chair of St. Peter. He had taught when a simple doctor of Louvain, that the pope was subject to err in matters of faith: far from retracting this doctrine when pope, he caused a work to be printed in which he professed it. On this head, some sophist of Louvain might have, after the example of an old Greek sophist, argued in this manner:

"If the pope be infalli- "ble, it follows that Adrian must have been so when "he a.s.serted he was not; therefore by this very in- "fallibility they prove it not to exist. Either Ad- "rian deceives himself, and therefore the pope is in- "fallible, or Adrian is right, and then we must ac- "knowledge with him the pope may be de- "ceived."

Bossnet. Def. Cler. Gall. Diss. prria. n. 38. p. 23... The text of Adrian is as follows: "Dico quod, si per Romanam ecclesiam intelligatur caput illius, puta pontifex, certum est quod possit erare, etiam in is quae tangunt fidem, heraesim per suam determinationem aut decretalem docendo: plures enim fuerunt pontifices Romani haeretici. Idem et novissime fertur de Joanne XXII." &c. In lib. 4, Sententiae.

The Italians had no love for this pope: Pallavicini, in his Hist, of the Council of Trent, 1. 2, c. 9, n. 1, says, that Adrian VI.

was indeed a very good priest, but a very indifferent pope.

The natural and posthumous son of Giulio de Medicis, a.s.sa.s.sinated in 1478 by the Pazzi, Clement VII. was elected pope, infallible or not, in 1223 (?? Ed.).-The successes and genius of Charles V. restored at this time to the imperial dignity its ancient splendour and its preponderance in the affairs of Italy. Clement wished to place difficulties in the way of it; he formed against the emperor a league, which was called holy, because the pope was its head, and into which the king of France, the king of England, the Venetians, and other Italian governments, entered: but the constable of Bourbon, quitting Francis I. for Charles V. led a German, and, in great part, Lutheran army against Rome, took this city, sacked it, and compelled the people to retire to the castle of Saint Angelo. Clement did not leave it, but by pledging himself to deliver it up to the officers of the emperor, and to pay three hundred and fifty thousand gold ducats. He bound himself, to deliver up to the Imperialists Ostia, Civita-Vechia, Citta di Castello, and, to cause to be restored to them Parma and Placentia. Not being able to fulfil his engagements, the pope escaped in the disguise of a merchant to Orvieto.