- For the antipope (1378–1394) see
antipope Clement VII.
Pope Clement VII (26 May 1478 – 25 September
1534), born
Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, was a
cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was
Pope from 1523 to 1534.
Early life
He was
born in Florence
one month
after his father, Giuliano
de' Medici, was assassinated in the Pazzi Conspiracy. Although his
parents had not had a formal marriage, a canon law loophole
allowing for the parents to have been betrothed
per sponsalia
de presenti meant that Giulio was considered legitimate. He
was thus the nephew of
Lorenzo the
Magnificent, who educated him in his youth. Clement's mother
also died leaving him an orphan.
Giulio was made a
Knight of Rhodes
and Grand Prior of Capua, and, upon the election of his cousin
Giovanni de' Medici to the pontificate as
Pope Leo X (1513–21), he soon became a powerful
figure in Rome.
Upon his cousin's accession to the papacy, Giulio became his principal minister and
confidant, especially in the maintenance of the Medici interest at Florence as
archbishop of that city. On 23 September 1513, he was made
cardinal and he was
consecrated on 29 September. He had the credit of being the main
director of papal policy during the whole of Leo X's pontificate,
especially as
cardinal
protector of England.
Election
At Leo X's death in 1521, Cardinal Medici was considered especially
papabile in the protracted conclave.
Although unable to gain the Papacy for himself or his ally
Alessandro Farnese (both preferred candidates
of Emperor
Charles V
(1519–58)), he took a leading part in determining the unexpected
election of the short-lived
Pope Adrian
VI (1522–23), with whom he also wielded formidable influence.
Following Adrian VI's death on 14 September, 1523, Medici finally
succeeded in being elected Pope Clement VII in the next
conclave (19 November 1523).
He brought to the Papal throne a high reputation for political
ability, and possessed in fact all the accomplishments of a wily
diplomat. However, he was considered worldly and indifferent to
what went on around him, including the ongoing
Protestant reformation.
Papacy
At his
accession, Clement VII sent the Archbishop of Capua, Nikolaus Cardinal von
Schönberg, to the Kings of France
, Spain
and England
, in order to
bring the war then raging in Europe to a peace. But his
attempt failed.
Continental and Medici politics
Francis I of France's conquest of
Milan
in 1524 prompted the Pope to quit the Imperial-Spanish side and to ally himself
with other Italian princes, including the Republic of
Venice
, and France in the January of 1525.
This
treaty granted the definitive acquisition of Parma
and Piacenza
for the
Papal
States
, the rule of Medici over Florence and the free
passage of the French troops to Naples. This policy in
itself was sound and patriotic, but Clement VII's zeal soon cooled;
by his want of foresight and unseasonable economy he laid himself
open to an attack from the turbulent Roman barons, which obliged
him to invoke the mediation of the Emperor. One month later,
however, Francis I was crushed and imprisoned in the
Battle of Pavia, and Clement VII veered back
to his former engagements with Charles V, signing an alliance with
the viceroy of Naples.
But he was
to change sides again when Francis I was freed after the Peace of Madrid (January 1526): the Pope
entered in the League of Cognac
together with France, Venice
and Francesco Sforza of Milan.
Clement VII issued an invective against Charles V, who in reply
defined him a "wolf" instead of a "shepherd", menacing the
summoning of a council about the
Lutheran
question.
Evangelization
In his bull "Intra Arcana" he advocated a militaristic means of
evangelizing "by force and arms, if needful" which Stogre (1992)
contrasts with the more peaceful admonitions of his successor Paul
III in his bull "Sublimus Dei".(Stogre, p. 116)
Sack of Rome
The Pope's
wavering politics also caused the rise of the Imperial party inside
the Curia: Cardinal Pompeo Colonna's
soldiers pillaged the Vatican City
and gained control of the whole of Rome in his
name. The humiliated Pope promised therefore to bring the
Papal States to the Imperial side again. But soon after, Colonna
left the siege and went to Naples, not keeping his promises and
dismissing the Cardinal from his charge. From this point on,
Clement VII could do nothing but follow the fate of the French
party to the end.
Soon he
found himself alone in Italy too, as the duke of Ferrara
had sided
with the Imperial army, allowing the horde of Landsknechts led by Charles III, Duke of Bourbon,
and Georg von Frundsberg, to
reach Rome
without
harm.
Castel Sant'Angelo.
of Bourbon died during the long siege, and his troops, unpaid and
left without a guide, felt free to
ravage Rome from 6 May 1527. The many
incidents of murder, rape and vandalism that followed ended the
splendours of Renaissance Rome forever.
Clement VII, who had
displayed no more resolution in his military than in his political
conduct, was shortly afterwards (June 6)
obliged to surrender himself together with the castle of Sant'Angelo
, where he had taken refuge. He agreed to pay a
ransom of 400,000 ducati in exchange
for his life; conditions included the cession of Parma, Piacenza, Civitavecchia
and Modena
to the Holy
Roman Empire. (Only the last could be occupied in fact.)
At the same time, Venice took advantage of his situation to capture
Cervia
and Ravenna
while Sigismondo
Malatesta returned in Rimini
.
Clement was kept as a prisoner in Castel Sant'Angelo for six
months.
After having bought off some Imperial
officers, he escaped disguised as a peddler, and took shelter in
Orvieto
, and then in Viterbo
. He came back to a depopulated and
devastated Rome only in October 1528.
Meanwhile, in Florence, Republican enemies of the Medici took advantage of
the chaos to again expel the Pope's family from the
city.
In June of the next year the warring parties signed the
Peace of Barcelona. The Papal States
regained some cities and Charles V agreed to restore the Medici to
power in Florence. In 1530, after an eleven-month
siege, the
Tuscan city
capitulated, and Clement VII installed his illegitimate son
Alessandro as Duke.
Subsequently the Pope followed a policy of
subservience to the Emperor, endeavouring on the one hand to induce
him to act with severity against the Lutherans in Germany
, and on the other to avoid his demands for a
general council.
English Reformation
Clement's dependence on Charles V led indirectly to the break
between the
Kingdom of England
and the
Catholic Church. By the late
1520s, King
Henry VIII wanted to have his
marriage to
Catherine of Aragon
annulled. She had not
produced a male heir who survived into adulthood and Henry wanted a
son to secure the
Tudor dynasty. Henry
claimed that this lack of a male heir was because his marriage was
"blighted in the eyes of God". Catherine had been his
late brother's wife, and it was
therefore against
Biblical teachings for
Henry to have married her.. Indeed, a special dispensation from
Pope
Julius II had been needed to
allow the wedding in the first place. Henry argued that this had
been wrong and that his marriage had never been valid. In 1527
Henry asked Pope Clement to annul the marriage, but the Pope
refused. According to
Canon
Law the Pope cannot annul a marriage on the basis of a
canonical impediment previously
dispensed. Clement
also feared the wrath of Catherine's nephew, Charles V, whose own
troops were responsible for the episode earlier that year that
included the sack of Rome. In the matter of the annulment, no
progress seemed possible: the Pope seemed more afraid of Emperor
Charles V than of Henry. Many people close to Henry VIII wished
simply to ignore the Pope; but in October 1530 a meeting of clergy
and lawyers advised that the English Parliament could not empower
the Archbishop of Canterbury to act against the Pope's prohibition.
In Parliament, Bishop
John Fisher was
the Pope's champion.
Henry was married to
Anne Boleyn at some
debated point between the end of
1532 and the
beginning of
1533.
One 16th century
chronicler put the wedding service on the feast of Saint Erkenwald in Dover Castle
, around November 14th. Whilst others have
suggested a second or perhaps sole Nuptial Mass at the Palace of
Whitehall
in London
on January
25th, 1533. The name of the celebrant is
unknown, although various sources suggest it was Father
Rowland Lee, future
bishop of Lichfield or Prior George
Brown, future
Archbishop of
Dublin. The marriage was made easier by the death of Archbishop
William Warham, a stalwart friend of
the Pope, after which Henry persuaded Clement to appoint Father
Thomas Cranmer, a friend of the
Boleyn family, as his successor as
Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope
granted the
papal bulls necessary for
Cranmer’s promotion to Canterbury as Henry had personally financed
them. Cranmer was prepared to grant the annulment of the marriage
to Catherine as Henry required.
Anne gave birth to a daughter, Princess Elizabeth, three months
after her public coronation as Queen in Westminster
Abbey
. The Pope responded to the marriage by
excommunicating both
Henry and Cranmer from the Roman Catholic Church. For some time,
the news was kept from the new Queen for fear it would bring about
a miscarriage.
Consequently in England, in the same year, the Act of First Fruits
and Tenths transferred the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the
Pope to the English Crown. The
Peter's Pence
Act outlawed the annual payment by landowners of
one penny to the Pope. This act also
reiterated that England had "no superior under God, but only your
Grace" and that Henry's "imperial crown"
had been diminished by "the unreasonable and uncharitable
usurpations and exactions" of the Pope. Clement had been unable to
handle the issue and ultimately his errors resulted in the English
Parliament passing the
Act of
Supremacy (1534) that established the independent
Church of England.
Appearance
The Younger Clement VII
During his half-year imprisonment in 1527, Clement VII grew a full
beard as a sign of mourning for the
sack of Rome. This was a violation of
Catholic
canon law, which required priests
to be clean-shaven; however, it had the precedent of the beard
which
Pope Julius II had worn for
nine months in 1511-1512 as a similar sign of mourning for the loss
of the Papal city of Bologna.
Unlike Julius II, however, Clement VII kept his beard until his
death in 1534. His example in wearing a beard was followed by his
successor,
Pope Paul III, and indeed
by twenty-four popes who followed him, down to
Pope Innocent XII, who died in 1700.
Clement VII was thus the unintentional originator of a fashion that
lasted well over a century.
Death and character
The 1533, Johann Widmanstetter (alternately spelled John
Widmanstad), a secretary of Pope Clement VII, explained the
Copernican system to the Pope and two cardinals. The Pope was so
pleased that he gave Widmanstetter a valuable gift.
Towards the end of his life Clement VII once more gave indications
of a leaning towards a French alliance, which was averted by his
death in September 1534 in Rome after consuming the "
Death Cap"
mushroom.
He was
buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva
.
As for
the arts, Pope Clement VII is remembered for having ordered, just a
few days before his death, Michelangelo's painting of The Last
Judgment
in the Sistine Chapel
.
References
- "That the world may believe: the development of Papal
social thought on aboriginal rights", Michael Stogre S.J,
Médiaspaul, 1992, ISBN 2890395499
Notes
See also
Further reading
- Wilkie, William E. 1974. The cardinal protectors of
England. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521203325.
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