The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture [Reprint ed.] 0754606805, 9780754606802

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The Pontificate of Clement VII

Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of Pope Clement Vll, ca. 1525, Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte.

The Pontificate of Clement VII History, Politics, Culture

Edited by

KENNETH GOUWENS AND SHERYL E. REISS

O Routledge

§^^ Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss 2005 The editors have asserted their moral rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data The pontificate of Clement VII : history, politics, culture. - (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700) 1. Clement, VII, Pope 2. Papacy - History - 1447-1565 3. Art patronage - Italy - Rome - History - 16th century 4. Art patrons - Italy - Rome - History - 16th century 5. Rome (Italy) - History - 1420-1798 6. Rome (Italy) - Intellectual life - 16th century I. Gouwens, Kenneth II. Reiss, Sheryl E. 262. T3'092 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The pontificate of Clement VII : history, politics, culture / edited by Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss. p. cm. - (Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7546-0680-5 (alk. paper) 1. Clement VII, Pope, 1478-1534. I. Gouwens, Kenneth, II. Reiss, Sheryl E. III. Series. BX1317.P662005 282'.092-dc22 ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0680-2 (hbk)

2004047681

For John W. O 'Malley, S. J. and in memory of John Shearman

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Contents Series Editor's Preface List of Abbreviations List of Illustrations List of Contributors Acknowledgments

xi xiii xvi i xxi xxv

INTRODUCTION 1

Clement and Calamity: The Case for Re-evaluation Kenneth Gouwens

3

PART ONE: HISTORY, POLITICS, AND HUMANISM Character, Politics, and Family 2

Guicciardini, Giovio, and the Character of Clement VII T. C. Price Zimmermann

3

The "Disastrous" Pontificate of Clement VII: Disastrous for Giulio de'Medici? Barbara McClung Mailman

4

All in the Family: The Medici Women and Pope Clement VII Natalie Tomas

5

The Conspirary of 1522 against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici: Machiavelli and "gli esempli delli antiqur Patricia J. Osmond

19

29 41

55

The Sack of Rome and its Aftermath 6

Clement VII and Francesco Maria Delia Rovere, Duke of Urbino Cecil H. Clough

1

Clement VII and the Sack of Rome as Represented in the Ephemerides Historicae of Cornelius de Fine IvanaAit

109

Rome During the Sack: Chronicles and Testimonies from an Occupied City Anna Esposito and Manuel Vaquero Pineiro

125

8

9

The Papal Court in Exile: Clement VII in Orvieto, 1527-28 Anne Reynolds

75

143

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

Resynthesis 10

The Place of Clement VII and Clementine Rome in Renaissance History Charles L. Stinger

165

PART TWO: PATRONAGE, CULTURAL PRODUCTION, AND REFORM Clement VII as Patron 11

Clement VII and Michelangelo: An Anatomy of Patronage William E. Wallace

189

12

Michelangelo and the Clementine Architectural Style Caroline Elam

199

13

Clement VII and the Golden Age of the Papal Choir Richard Sherr

227

Artists, Musicians, and Literati in Clementine Rome 14

15

16

Competition, Collaboration, and Specialization in the Roman Art World, 1520-27 Linda Wo Ik-Simon

253

Papal Tastes and Musical Genres: Francesco da Milano "II Divino" (1497-1543) and the Clementine Aesthetic Victor Anand Coelho

277

Seeking Patronage under the Medici Popes: A Tale of Two Humanists Julia Haig Gaisser

293

Antiquity Revived and Renovatio in Religion and Art 17

Augustan Mediterranean Iconography and Renaissance Hieroglyphics at the Court of Clement VII: Sebastiano del Piombo' s Portrait of Andrea Doria George L Gorse (Appendix 2 by Naomi Saw els on)

18

Adrian VI, Clement VII, and Art Sheryl E. Reiss

19

Humanism and Confession in Northern Europe in the Age of Clement VII W. David Myers

313 339

363

Contents 20

Index

Experiments in Art and Reform in Italy in the Early Sixteenth Century Alexander Nagel

ix

3 85 411

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Series Editor's Preface The still-usual emphasis on medieval (or Catholic) and reformation (or Protestant) religious history has meant neglect of the middle ground, both chronological and ideological. As a result, continuities between the middle ages and early modern Europe have been overlooked in favor of emphasis on radical discontinuities. Further, especially in the later period, the identification of 'reformation' with various k i n d s of Protestantism means that the vitality and creativity of the established church, whether in its Roman or local manifestations, has been left out of account. In the last few years, an upsurge of interest in the history of traditional (or catholic) religion makes these inadequacies in received scholarship even more glaring and in need of systematic correction. The series will attempt this by covering all varieties of religious behavior, broadly interpreted, not just (or even especially) traditional institutional and doctrinal church history. It will to the maximum degree possible be interdisciplinary, comparative and global, as well as non-confessional. The goal is to understand religion, primarily of the 'Catholic' variety, as a broadly human phenomenon, rather than as a privileged mode of access to superhuman realms, even implicitly. The period covered, 1300-1700, embraces the moment which saw an almost complete transformation of the place of religion in the life of Europeans, whether considered as a system of beliefs, as an institution, or as a set of social and cultural practices. In 1300, vast numbers of Europeans, from the pope down, fully expected Jesus's return and the beginning of His reign on earth. By 1700, very few Europeans, of whatever level of education, would have subscribed to such chiliastic beliefs. Pierre Bayle's notorious sarcasms about signs and portents are not idiosyncratic. Likewise, in 1300 the vast majority of Europeans probably regarded the pope as their spiritual head; the institution he headed was probably the most tightly integrated and effective bureaucracy in Europe. Most Europeans were at least nominally Christian, and the pope had at least nominal knowledge of that fact. The papacy, as an institution, played a central role in high politics, and the clergy in general formed an integral part of most governments, whether central or local. By 1700, Europe was divided into a myriad of different religious allegiances, and even those areas officially subordinate to the pope were both more nominally Catholic in belief (despite colossal efforts at imposing uniformity) and also in allegiance than they had been four hundred years earlier. The pope had become only one political factor, and not one of the first rank. The clergy, for its part, had virtually disappeared from secular governments as well as losing much of its local authority. The stage was set for the Enlightenment. Thomas F. Mayer, Augustana College

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List of Abbreviations Frequently Cited Sources AB = Art Bulletin AHP = Archivum historiae pontificiae AHR = American Historical Review ARC = Archivjur Reformationsgeschichte ASRSP = Archivio del la Societa Romano di Storia P atria AS! = Archivio storico italiano BM = The Burlington Magazine Carteggio = II Carteggio di Michelangelo, ed. P Barocchi and R. Ristori, 5 vols. (Florence: S.P.E.S., 1965-83) CHR = Catholic Historical Review DBI- Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 63 vols. to date (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, I960-) Erasmus, CWE = D. Erasmus, The Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. A. H. T. Levi et al., 47 vols. to date (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974-) Erasmus, EE = D. Erasmus, Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P S. Allen et al., 12 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906-58) ER = The Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. P. F. Grendler et al., 6 vols. (New York: Scribner's, 1999) Giovio, Opera = P. Giovio, Pauli lovii opera, 8 vols. to date (Rome: Societa Storica Comense and Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1956- ) GSAT= Giornale storico degli archivi toscani GSLI = Giornale storico della letteratura italiana Guicciardini, History = F. Guicciardini, The History of Italy, trans, and abr. S. Alexander (New York: Macmillan, 1969)

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Guicciardini, Storia = F. Guicciardini, Storia d'Italia, ed. S. Seidel Menchi, 3 vols. (Turin: Einaudi, 1971) Hochrenaissance = Hochrenaissance im Vatikan: Kunst und Kultur im Rom der Pdpste 11503-1534, exh. cat. (Bonn: Kunst-und-Ausstellungshalle, 1999) IMU = Italia medioevale e umanistica her = P. O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, 6 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1963-92) JMRS = The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies JSAH = Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians JWCI = Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Lettere di principi = Lettere di principi: le quali 6 si scrivano da principi, o a principi o ragionan di principi, ed. G. Ruscelli, 3 vols. (Venice: G. Ziletti, 1570-77) MAHEFR = Melanges d'archeologie et d'histoire de I'Ecole Franc,aise de Rome MKIF = Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz Pastor = L. von Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and Other Original Sources, ed. F. I. Antrobus et al., 40 vols., 3d ed. (London: KeganPaul, 1901-33) Pieraccini = G. Pieraccini, La stripe de' Medici di Caffagiolo, 2d ed., 3 vols. in 4 (Florence: Valecchi, 1947) QFIAB ~ Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken RACAR = RACAR: Revue d'art canadienne/Canadian Art Review RQ - Renaissance Quarterly RS = Renaissance Studies RSCI = Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia Sanuto = M. Sanudo, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, 58 vols. (Venice: Visentini, 1879-1902) (N.B.: for Sanuto, numbers in citations refer to columns)

List of A bbreviations SCJ = The Sixteenth Century Journal TNG = The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music, 1980) Vasari-BB = G. Vasari, Le vite de'piu eccellentipittori, scultori, e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, ed. R. Bettarini, with comments by P. Barrocchi, 6 vols. in 9 (Florence: S.P.E.S., 1966-87) Vasari-Milanesi = G. Vasari, Le vite de' piu eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori... (1568), ed. G. Milanesi, 9 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1878-85) Other Abbreviations In dates, "ca." is used for "circa" Abbreviations for the citation of archival and manuscript sources: c.: carta doc.: document f.:filza fasc.:fascicolo

fol.: folio ins.: inserto r: recto v: verso Names of some collections, if located in museums or cited infrequently, appear unabbreviated. Names of frequently cited archives, libraries, and manuscript collections, arranged alphabetically by location, have been abbreviated as follows: FLORENCE ACSL = Archivio Capitolino di San Lorenzo ASF = Archivio di Stato Cart. Strozz. = Carte Strozziane Corp. Rel. Soppr. = Corporazioni Religiose soppresse dal Governo Francese MaP = Mediceo avanti il Principato MdelP = Mediceo del Principato BMLF = Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana BNCF = Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale BRF = Biblioteca Riccardiana

*v

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MANTUA ASM = Archivio di Stato AG = Archivio Gonzaga BCMan = Biblioteca Comunale MILAN ASMil = Archivio di Stato Ambrosiana = Biblioteca Ambrosiana MODENA ASMod = Archivio di Stato BEMod = Biblioteca Estense ORVIETO AODO = Archivio dell' Opera del Duomo ASO = Archivio di Stato ROME ASR = Archivio di Stato BNR = Biblioteca Nazionale VATICAN CITY ASV = Archivio Segreto Vaticano BAV = Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana VENICE ASVen = Archivio di Stato Marciana = Biblioteca Marciana

List of Illustrations Frontispiece: Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of Pope Clement Vll, ca. 1525, Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY) 6.1

Titian, Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere, 1536-38, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY)

6.2

Raphael, Portrait of Pope Leo X and Two Cardinals, ca. 1518, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY)

6.3

Medal of Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere, reverse with motto INCLINATA RESVRGIT devised by Paolo Giovio, silver, ca. 1522, London, British Museum (photo: © The British Museum)

6.4

Obverse of Figure 6.3 with portrait of Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere (photo: © The British Museum)

6.5

Nicholas Hogenberg, Procession of Pope Clement VII and the Emperor Charles Vat Bologna (detail, Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere as Prefect of Rome, bearing the sword of state), etching, ca. 1530-31, Urbania, Biblioteca Comunale (photo: Courtesy Biblioteca Comunale, Urbania)

6.6

Workshop of Girolamo Genga?, Coronation Procession of Charles V in Bologna (with Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere holding the sword of state), mural painting, ca. 1530, Pesaro, Villa Imperiale, Sala dei Semibusti (photo: author)

9.1

Benvenuto Cellini, Moses Striking the Rock (reverse of portrait medal of Pope Clement VII), silver gilt, 1534, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello (photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY)

11.1

View of Laurentian Library, San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: author)

11.2

Michelangelo, Sketch for the Laurentian Library, Archivio Buonarroti, Florence, 1, 160, fol. 286 recto (photo: author)

11.3 Stefano di Tommaso?, Design for the Coffering of the Cupola of the Medici Chapel, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 127A (photo: Courtesy Casa Buonarroti, Florence) 11.4 Michelangelo, Design for the Entrance Portal of the Laurentian Library, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 98A (photo: Courtesy Casa Buonarroti, Florence) 11.5

Michelangelo, Plan for the Laurentian Library Rare Book Room, Casa Buonarroti 80A (photo: Courtesy Casa Buonarroti, Florence)

12.1

Fa9ade of the Chapter House, cloister, San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Courtesy Charles Davis)

12.2

Detail of the Chapter House windows, San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Courtesy Charles Davis)

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

12.3 Interior of the New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence, looking towards the Magnifici tomb (photo: author) 12.4 Tabernacle window, attic level, New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY) 12.5 Michelangelo, Design for a "fmestra alia Veneziana" red chalk, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 58A (photo: Courtesy Casa Buonarroti, Florence) 12.6 Detail of the Lunette zone, New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence, with "perspectival" window (photo: author) 12.7 Door giving access to the Reliquary Tribune, upper level of cloister, San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Courtesy Charles Davis) 12.8 Detail of the moldings of door in Figure 12.7 (photo: Courtesy Charles Davis) 12.9 Tabernacle, vestibule, Laurentian Library, San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Courtesy Ralph Lieberman) 12.10 View of the north wall, vestibule, Laurentian Library, San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: author) 12.11 "Mixed" Doric door, after Baldassare Peruzzi, from Sebastiano Serlio's Book IV, Regole generali, first published 1537 (after S. Serlio, / Sette Libri dell'Architettura [Venice: Franceschi, 1584]) 12.12 Unidentified sixteenth-century draftsman, Drawing of a ground-floor window in Peruzzi's Palazzo Fusconi da Norcia, Rome, pen and ink, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, 2732A 14.1 Giovanni da Udine, Raphael's Workshop, stucco, Vatican, Loggia of Pope Leo X, ca. 1517 (photo: Musei e Gallerie Pontificie Vaticani) 15.1 Anonymous, Portrait of the Lutenist Francesco Canova da Milano, seventeenth-century copy (?) of a sixteenth-century original, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana (photo: Courtesy Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan) 15.2 Giovanni Antonio Casteliono, Intabolatura de Leuto de diversi autori (Milan, 1536), fol. 3 (photo: Reprinted by kind permission of Editions Minkoff) 15.3 Giovanni Antonio Casteliono, Intabolatura de Leuto de diversi autori (Milan, 1536), frontispiece (photo: Reprinted by kind permission of Editions Minkoff) 17.1 Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of Andrea Doria Pointing Down to an Antique Naval Relief, 1526, Genoa, Villa Doria (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY) 17.2 San Lorenzo Ritual Naval Reliefs, second century B.C.E., Rome, Museo Capitolino (photo: Courtesy Deutsches Archaologisches Institut im Rom, negative nos. DAI 3157, 31.658, 3160, and 3163) 17.3 Interior of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, Rome, ca. 330, with twelfth/thirteenthcentury cosmatesque amboes and remains ofschola cantorum (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY)

List of Illustrations

xix

17.4 Martin van Heemskerck, Roman Sketchbook 1, fol. 21 r, ca. 1535. View of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura and sacrificial naval reliefs, Berlin, Kupferstichkabinert (photo: © Kupferstichkabinett-Sammlung der Zeichnungen und Druckgraphik Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz) 17.5 Roman silver denarius of Octavian Commemorating his Naval Victory at Actium in 31 B.C.E., ca. 29-27 B.C.E., London, British Museum (photo: © Copyright, The British Museum) 18. la Coins of Pope Adrian VI with coronation scenes, ca. 1522-23 (photo: and after F. Bonnani, Numismata Pontificum Romanorum quae a tempore IS.lb Martini V usque ad annum M,DC.XCIX, 2 vols. [Rome: Typographia Dominici Antonii Herculis, 1699], 1:182, nos. II and III) 18.2 Coin of Pope Adrian VI with Saints Peter and Paul, ca. 1522-23 (photo: after F. Bonnani, Numismata Pontificum Romanorum quae a tempore Martini V usque ad annum M.DC.XCIX, 2 vols. [Rome: Typographia Dominici Antonii Herculis, 1699], 1:182, no. V) 18.3 Coin of Pope Adrian VI with "SPIRITVS SAPIENTIAE," ca. 1522-23 (photo: after F. Bonnani, Numismata Pontificum Romanorum quae a tempore Martini V usque ad annum M.DC.XCIX, 2 vols. [Rome: Typographia Dominici Antonii Herculis, 1699], 1:182, no. IV) 18.4 Medal with Portrait of Pope Adrian VI, Netherlandish, ca. 1522-23, Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art (photo: © Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) 18.5 Jan van Scorel, Presentation in the Temple, ca. 1528-30, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY) 18.6 Copy after Jan van Scorel, Portrait of Pope Adrian VI, seventeenth century, Utrecht, Centraal Museum (photo: Courtesy Centraal Musem, Utrecht) 18.7 Anonymous, Portrait of Pope Adrian VI, late sixteenth century, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY) 18.8 Attributed to Jorg Breu, Portrait of Pope Adrian VI, \ 523, Hannover, Niedersachsisches Landesmuseum (photo: Foto Marburg/Art Resource, NY) 18.9 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Design for a Fireplace, 1522-23, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, 170A (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY) 18.10 Michael Coxcie, Presentation of Cardinal Willem van Enckevoirt to the Trinity, ca. 1531-32, Rome, Cappella di Santa Barbara, Sta. Maria dell' Anima (photo: author) 18.11 Baldassare Peruzzi, Michelangelo da Siena, and Niccolo Tribolo, Tomb of Pope Adrian VI, 1523-29, Rome, Sta. Maria dell' Anima (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY)

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18.12 Attributed to Niccolo Tribolo, The Entry of Pope Adrian VI into Rome, Tomb of Pope Adrian VI, Rome, Sta. Maria dell' Anima (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY) 18.13 Giovanni Magnone da Caravaggio, Tomb of Cardinal Willem van Enckevoirt, ca. 1536—40, Rome, Sta. Maria dell' Anima (photo: author) 18.14 Bouts workshop?, Triptych with the Virgin and Man of Sorrows, late fifteenth/ early sixteenth century, Cagliari, Duomo and Palazzo Arcivescovile (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY) 20.1 Correggio, Nymph and Satyr, ca. 1524-25, Paris, Louvre (photo: Reunion des Musees/Art Resource, NY) 20.2 Parmigianino, Madonna of the Rose, ca. 1530, Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Alte Meister (photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY) 20.3

Titian, Mary Magdalen, ca. 1531, Florence, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY)

20.4

Rosso Fiorentino, Dead Christ, 1527, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts (photo: © 2003, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

20.5 Titian, Averoldi Altarpiece, 1519-22, Brescia, SS. Nazaro e Celso (photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY) 20.6

Baldassare Peruzzi, Two Projects for a Chapel, ca. 1530?, London, British Museum (photo: © Copyright, The British Museum)

20.7

Fra Bartolommeo, Salvator Mundi, 1516, Florence, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti (Scala/Art Resource, NY)

20.8 Michelangelo, Risen Christ, 1519-21, Rome, Sta. Maria sopra Minerva (Alinari/Art Resource, NY) 20.9

Giovanni da Porlezza and Girolamo Pittoni, possibly on design by Jacopo Sansovino, high altar (detail), 1530s, Vicenza, Cathedral (photo: Courtesy Fabio Barry)

20.10 Verona Cathedral, view oftornacoro and high altar, 1530s (photo: Alinari/ Art Resource, NY)

List of Contributors IVANA AIT is ricercatore in the Dipartimento di Studi sulle Societa e le Culture del Medioevo, of the Facolta di Lettere of the Universita di Roma, "La Sapienza." She has published extensively on the economy of fifteenth and sixteenth-century Rome, including Tra scienza e mercato. Gli speziali a Roma nel tardomedioevo (1996) and (with Manuel Vaquero Pineiro) Dai casali alia Fabbrica di S. Pietro. I Leni uomini d 'affari dal Medioevo al Rinascimento (2000). CECIL H. CLOUGH was Reader in Renaissance Studies at the University of Liverpool until his retirement in 1997. He has been Norman Fund Fellow in the Humanities, Columbia University; Guggenheim Fellow; I Tatti Fellow; and Senior Research Fellow in Italian, University of Birmingham. He has published extensively on numerous aspects of the Renaissance, notably the duchy of Urbino. He was awarded the honor of Commendatore nelP Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by President Saragat in 1976. VICTOR ANAND COELHO holds the chair of University Professor of Music at the University of Calgary, and has been both a Fellow and a Visiting Professor at Villa I Tatti. His books include Music and Science in the Age of Galileo (1992), The Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Italian Lute Music (1995), Performance on Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela (1998), and The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar (2003). As a lutenist he has recorded and performed widely, and his CD (with Alan Curtis), La Notte d'Amore: Musica per le nozze di Cosimo II Medici e Maria Maddalena d'Austria, won a 2004 Prelude Classical Award for best Baroque vocal ensemble recording. CAROLINE ELAM was from 1987 to 2002 Editor of The Burlington Magazine, and from 2002 to 2004 Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Her publications have focused on architecture and urbanism in Renaissance Florence, Medici patronage, and the architecture of Michelangelo. She is currently writing a book on Roger Fry and Italian art. ANNA ESPOSITO is Associate Professor of Medieval History in the Dipartimento di Studi sulle Societa e le Culture del Medioevo of the Universita di Roma, "La Sapienza." Her special area of interest is the social and urban history of the late medieval period and the Renaissance, particularly in Rome and the Papal State. This context frames her studies on minorities (particularly Jews), on confraternities and hospitals, on marital relations, and on civic cultural institutions. She has published widely in Europe and the United States and is the author of Un 'altra Roma. Minoranze nazionali e comunita ebraiche tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (1995). JULIA HAIG GAISSER is Professor of Latin and Eugenia Chase Guild Professor in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of Catullus and his

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

Renaissance Readers (1993), Pierio Valeriano on the III Fortune of Learned Men (1999), and Catullus in English (2001). Her current projects include a book on the reception of Apuleius for the Martin Classical Lectures Series and a translation of Pontano's Dialogues for the I Tatti Renaissance Library. GEORGE L. GORSE is Viola Horton Professor of Art History at Pomona College, Claremont, California. A Fellow of Villa I Tatti and of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., he writes on the artistic patronage of Andrea Doria, the Villa Doria in Genoa, Genoese Renaissance villas, urban planning, triumphal entries and ceremonial rituals, and the Strada Nuova in Renaissance and Baroque Genoa. KENNETH GOUWENS is Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. A Fellow of Villa 1 Tatti and of the American Academy in Rome, he recently edited for Blackwell The Italian Renaissance: Essential Sources (2004). His monograph Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome was chosen by the American Library Association's Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of 1998. At present he is writing a biography of Pope Clement VII. BARBARA McCLUNG HALLMAN is Professor of History Emerita at California State University, San Luis Obispo. She has written extensively on sixteenth-century diplomacy and on the social and political worlds of Renaissance cardinals. Her publications include articles in The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, and a book entitled Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property (1985). W. DAVID MYERS is Associate Professor of History at Fordham University, where he specializes in religion during the Catholic Reformation, and the social, intellectual, and legal history of women in early modern Germany. Myers is currently finishing a book entitled, Death and a Maiden: The Tragical History of Margarethe Schmidt, Infanticide. He is the author of "Poor, Sinning Folk": Confession and Conscience in Counter-Reformation Germany (1996) and has written extensively on the religious history of early modern Europe and the United States. ALEXANDER NAGEL holds a Canada Research Chair in the Graduate Department of the History of Art at the University of Toronto. His first book, Michelangelo and the Reform of Art, which was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2000, was awarded the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize by the Renaissance Society of America. From 2004 to 2006 he will serve as Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. PATRICIA J. OSMOND is Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Design, Iowa State University, and Resident Director of the ISU Rome Program. She specializes in the history of the classical tradition. Her publications include articles on the Ancient Roman historian Sallust, among them (with R. W. Ulery, Jr.) "C. Sallustius Crispus" for volume 8 (2003) of the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum.

List of Contributors

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Her current projects include an edition (with R. W. Ulery, Jr.) of an unpublished English manuscript on Tacitus from the early Stuart period; a study of the work of a humanist bookseller, editor, and publisher, Antonio Moretto, of Venice (with Ennio Sandal); and the history of Villa Gamberaia and its gardens in Settignano (Florence). MANUEL VAQUERO PINEIRO is Reader in the Dipartimento di Studi Geoeconomici Statistici, Storici per Tanalisi regionale of the Universita di Roma, "La Sapienza." His research primarily concerns relationships between Italy and Spain in the Renaissance and the history of commercial exchange in the Mediterranean. For some years he has been working on the organization of building sites in the modern era and on pre-industrial manufacturing systems. His publications include La renta y las casas. El patrimonio inmobilario de la iglesia de Santiago de los Espanoles de Roma entre los siglos XVy XVII (1999) and, in collaboration with Ivana Ait, Dai casali alia Fabbrica di S. Pietro. ILeni uomini d'affari dalMedioevo al Rinascimento (2000). SHERYL E. REISS is Senior Research Associate in the Office of the Vice-Provost for Research at Cornell University. Her research concerns Italian Renaissance art and art patronage, particularly that of the Medici family. With David Wilkins she coedited Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy (2001). She has held fellowships and awards from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Renaissance Society of America, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She is currently working on a book entitled The Making of a Medici Maecenas: Giulio de' Medici (Pope Clement VII) as Patron of Art. ANNE REYNOLDS taught from 1971 to 2003 in the Italian Studies program at the University of Sydney. She has previously published in the fields of literary and intellectual history, with emphases on Renaissance humanism, the satirical tradition, and sixteenth-century literary criticism. Her Renaissance Humanism at the Court of Clement VII: Francesco Berni's Dialogue against Poets in Context was published by Garland in 1997. NAOMI SAWELSON, an independent scholar, writes on Euro-American modern and avant-garde art and architecture. Editor of the anthology Women in Dada: Essays on Sex, Gender, and Identity (1998), she is currently editing a series of interviews done in the early 1970s by Moira Roth entitled Beyond Duchamp. RICHARD SHERR has taught since 1975 at Smith College, where he is now Caroline L. Wall '27 Professor and Chair of the Department of Music. He is the author of Papal Music Manuscripts in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries (1996) and Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts (1999). He is the editor of The Josquin Companion (2002), and has contributed articles to many scholarly journals and encyclopedias. CHARLES L. STINGER is Professor of History and Senior Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Buffalo, The State University

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

of New York. He is the author of Humanism and the Church Fathers: Ambrogio Traversari and Christian Antiquity in the Italian Renaissance (1977) and The Renaissance in Rome (1985; 2d ed., 1998), which won the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian History from the American Historical Association. NATALIE TOMAS is an Honorary Research Associate in the School of Historical Studies, Monash University, Australia, where she completed her Ph.D. in 1997. In 2003, Ashgate published her book, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. She published an article on Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici in Renaissance Studies (2000) and is the author of 'A Positive Novelty': Women and Public Life in Renaissance Florence (1992). She is currently working on a study of the memorialization of Maria Salviati at Duke Cosimo I's court. WILLIAM E. WALLACE is professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art History of Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He has lectured and published extensively on Michelangelo and his contemporaries. In addition to publishing over 50 articles and essays, he is the author and editor of three books on Michelangelo, including Michelangelo at San Lorenzo: The Genius as Entrepreneur (1994) and Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting and Architecture (1998). LINDA WOLK-SIMON is an Associate Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she has worked since 1986. She is a specialist in the field of sixteenth-century Italian art, and has published extensively on Raphael and members of his circle, particularly Perino del Vaga. She is the author of Domenico Tiepolo: Drawings, Prints and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1997) and is the co-author (with William M. Griswold) of the exhibition catalogue Sixteenth-Century Italian Drawings in New York Collections (1994). Her forthcoming publications include essays on naturalism in Lombard drawing and on the history of the study of Raphael's drawings. T. C. PRICE ZIMMERMANN is Charles A. Dana Professor of History Emeritus at Davidson College. His biography of Paolo Giovio, entitled Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy, published by Princeton University Press (1985), received the American Historical Association's Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian History. He has in addition, published a number of articles relating to Renaissance biography, autobiography, historiography, and art criticism.

Acknowledgments This book originated in nine sessions on the pontificate of Clement VII that the editors co-organized for the 46th annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, held in Florence, Italy, in March, 2000. Early versions of the essays (excepting those of Gouwens, Wolk-Simon, and Reiss) were presented as papers in those sessions. We are grateful to the Renaissance Society of America—and in particular to its executive director, John Monfasani—for making the Florence sessions possible, and for providing space for them in the Tribuna d'Elci of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Laura Schwartz of the RSA office and Angela Dillon Bussi of the Laurenziana provided critical logistical assistance. We would like to thank Denise Allen, Douglas Dow, Paul Flemer, Elisabeth Gleason, Peter Lynch, Maria Saffiotti-Dale, Bonner Mitchell, and Ingrid Rowland, whose papers contributed much to the sessions but do not appear in this collection. We are also grateful to Melissa Bullard, Rebecca Edwards, Konrad Eisenbichler, John O'Malley, John Paoletti, Randolph Starn, and Bette Talvacchia, who served as chairs for some of the sessions. We also wish to acknowledge the encouragement, enthusiasm, and good counsel of the late Phyllis Pray Bober and the late John Shearman, who were unable to attend the Florence meeting. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the institutions and the many individuals to whom we are indebted for their help in making this book possible. The University of Connecticut and Cornell University are to be thanked for financial and practical support. The American Academy in Rome and the Center for Advanced study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., provided congenial homes for us as the volume took shape. Along with our contributors, we have relied upon the collections and professional staffs of myriad libraries and archives in Europe and the United States. The editors wish to single out for special thanks the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, the Homer Babbidge Library of the University of Connecticut, the Cornell University Library, and the National Gallery of Art Library, the resources of which were critical to the book's completion. We are deeply indebted to a number of people at Ashgate. Erika Gaffney first expressed interest in the project and proposed it to the editorial board in 2001. Our warmest thanks are due to Ashgate editors Tom Gray and Celia Hoare, who have seen the manuscript through production with forbearance and dedication. We must also express our appreciation to Anne Keirby, Ann Newell, and Nicole Norman, who have assisted in various ways. For his energetic support and sage advice, we wish to thank Thomas F. Mayer, the editor of Ashgate's new series "Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700." We are also grateful to the anonymous reader whose thoughtful comments have strengthened the volume in many ways. We wish to thank Ronald A. Davies for his work on the formatting of the manuscript and Antonia Reiner for her expert translations from the Italian of chapters 7 and 8. Robert C. Richardson, Vice Provost for Research at Cornell University, and the Research Foundation of the University of Connecticut are to be thanked for providing funding for these translations.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

A number of friends and colleagues have provided constructive criticism, practical assistance, and moral support at various stages of this project. For muchappreciated aid with photographs and permissions, we are indebted to John Benicewicz, Gerhard Gruitrooy, Leslie Kuo, and Elizabeth Safford at Art Resource in New York, as well as to Fabio Barry, Frederick Ilchman, Manfred Leithe-Jasper, and Arnold Nesselrath. Special thanks are due to Karen-edis Barzman, Caroline Elam, Paola Farenga, David Franklin, Julia Gaisser, Nelson Minnich, David Myers, Alexander Nagel, Patricia Osmond, David Posner, Eike Schmidt, Father William Sheehan, Cinzia Sicca, Larry Silver, David Wilkins, Linda Wolk-Simon, and Price Zimmermann. Our spouses, Joan E. Meznar and Paul F. Goldsmith, have provided unflagging support and have braved the genesis of the book with remarkable patience and good humor. No doubt they will be at least as delighted as we to see it in print. This volume is dedicated to Father John W. O'Malley, SJ. and to the memory of John Shearman—two extraordinary scholars whose work has provided constant inspiration for our own, and from whose humane example we have benefited immeasurably.

INTRODUCTION

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Chapter 1

Clement and Calamity: The Case for Re-evaluation Kenneth Gouwens

... he endured a great labor to become, from a great and respected cardinal, a small and little-esteemed pope. —Francesco Vettori1 When Cardinal Giulio de' Medici was elevated as Pope Clement VII in November of 1523, the event occasioned rejoicing both in Florence and in Rome. The pontificate of his predecessor, Adrian VI (1522-23), had been marked by fiscal retrenchment and perceived cultural austerity. Now, people hoped for a return to the policies and values championed by Pope Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici, Giulio's cousin), whom Giulio had served as vice-chancellor of the Church from 1517 until Leo's death in 1521 (Figure 1.1). While Clement's elevation promised a politically strong and successful papacy, artists and literati alike hailed the new pontiff as the one destined to usher in a new Golden Age. In a letter to his quarry superintendent, Michelangelo expressed uncharacteristic optimism: "You will have heard that Medici has been made pope, to the joy of the whole world it seems to me; and around here it looks as if there will be a lot of art to be made."2 Many humanists were similarly hopeful: Pietro Bembo, the famous Ciceronian Latinist and papal secretary, predicted, "Clement will be the greatest and the wisest pope whom the Church has seen for centuries."3 Bembo could scarcely have been more wrong. Spectacular political and ecclesiastical disasters ensued, including the spread of the Lutheran heresy, the Sack of Rome, and the loss of Henry VIII's England from the Catholic fold. In the later 1520s, as Charles V came to dominate Italian politics, the pursuit of the libertd d'ltalia (i.e., Italian autonomy in the face of foreign threats)—the cause that so agitated Machiavelli, and that had helped shape the policies of Pope Julius II—was no longer an option. Instead, Clement strove above all to reassert Medicean control of Florence, and in 1529-30 he countenanced an imperial siege of that city to return his family to power there. Meanwhile, humanists and artists had become dispersed from 1

2 3

"[DJuro una gran fatica per diventare, di grande e riputato cardinale, piccolo e poco stimato papa." F. Vettori, Sommario della storia d'ltalia, as cited and translated by T. C. P. Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 60. Carteggio, 3:1, tetter of 25 November 1523. The translation is that by Alex Nagel, below. Pastor, 9:247. See also Lettere di Principi, l:101r (G. Negri to M. Michiel, 18 November 1523): "Le buone lettere, gia quasi fugate dalla Barbaric preterita, sperano d'esser restituite. Est enim genuinum Mediceae familiae decus, fovere Musas."

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The Pontificate of Clement Vll: History, Politics, Culture

Rome, which no longer offered such exceptional opportunities. Indeed, it has become commonplace to assert that the Sack of the city in 1527—and therefore the period of Clement's pontificate—caused, or at least signaled, the end of the Renaissance. Such claims have seldom received the scrutiny they ought to require. 5 Indeed, the 1520s and 1530s in Rome are a neglected period, lacking the extensive scholarly literature that marks both earlier and later decades of the century. This curious omission is not owed to a lack of primary sources.6 Instead, it appears to be a historiographical artifact, the inadvertent consequence of a scholarly emphasis upon the "High Renaissance** of the early sixteenth century giving way thereafter to a focus upon the Protestant Reformation. Only with the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545 does Italy or the papal court receive substantial treatment in most European history surveys. In the history of art, meanwhile, a longstanding tendency to idealize the cultural production of Julian and Leonine Rome has led to the undervaluation of the art that followed. A quarter-century ago, Andre Chastel challenged this longdominant narrative: he argued that a Tuscan-influenced "Clementine style" had flourished in the mid-1520s, only to be ruined by the Sack in 1527.7 By no means universally accepted, Chastel's thesis has had a salutary effect in that it has redirected scholarly attention to papal Rome in the 1520s—both to cultural production and to the character and politics of the "piccolo e poco stimato" pope himself. The present collection, the first on its subject in any language, aims to consolidate and advance current research on Clement VII's pontificate. It comprises original essays by distinguished scholars from five countries—Italy, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and the United States—whose specialties range from the history of art and architecture, to literature, musicology, and history. Drawing upon neglected sources, they employ an array of methodologies and interpretive strategies including archival research, the analysis of images and buildings, and the close read4

5

6 7

On the topos of the Sack as watershed, see K. Gouwens, Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome (Leiden: Brill, 1998), chaps. 1 and 6. The assertion is made, e.g., in J. F. D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), e.g., 11-12: "His [Clement's] disastrous foreign policy ... culminated in the sack of Rome and marked the end of High Renaissance Roman culture." In his History of the Popes, Ludwig von Pastor had similarly concluded that the Sack "marked, in fact, the end of the Renaissance, the end of the Rome of Julius II and Leo X." Pastor, 10:443. Many influential monographs on Renaissance Rome have explicitly ended their coverage on the eve of the Reformation. Others that extend beyond 1521 have drawn little evidence from the period of Clement's pontificate. The former group includes D'Amico (1983); J. W. O'Mai ley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c 1450-1521 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1979). The latter includes P. Partner, Renaissance Rome, 1500-1559: A Portrait of a Society (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976); 1. D. Rowland, The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); C. L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985). Cf. Stinger's essay below. The most detailed (if dated) account of Clement's pontificate, that of Pastor, 9:231-509 and vol. 10, lists copious sources. See also A. Prospen, "Clemente VII," OBI, 26:237-59. A. Chastel, The Sack of Rome. 1527, trans. B. Archer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).

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ing of literary texts. Taken together, these essays demonstrate the vital importance of Clement V I I , and of cultural production during his pontificate, to our grasp of the history not only of Renaissance Rome, but also of the papacy, Italy, and Europe. The chapters that follow are grouped topically. Part One, entitled History, Politics, and Humanism, comprises three subsections: Character, Politics, and Family; The Sack of Rome and its Aftermath; and Resynthesis. Part Two, on Patronage, Cultural Production, and Reform, adds three more: Clement VII as Patron; Artists, Musicians, and Literati in Clementine Rome; and Antiquity Revived and Renovatio in Religion and Art.

Character, Politics, and Family Any attempt to reconsider the character and political acumen of Clement VII must confront first of all the highly influential appraisals of him by contemporaries in a position to speak with authority. In particular, subsequent interpretations have relied substantially upon the views expressed by two figures close to the pope in the 1520s: the humanist physician and historian Paolo Giovio, a confidant of Pope Clement for 15 years; and Francesco Guicciardini, the Lieutenant General of the papal troops in the army of the League of Cognac, whose monumental Storia d'/talia has perhaps done the most to shape posterity's image of Clement VII. In his essay for this collection, Price Zimmermann shows how Giovio and Guicciardini assigned similar character flaws to the pontiff, yet deployed them to different purposes. While attentive to concerns of genre, Zimmermann highlights the ways that frustrations and personal disappointments help to shape the narratives. Whereas Guicciardini finds Clement a convenient scapegoat for the failure of policies that he himself had encouraged and sought to implement, Giovio, disappointed with his rewards for faithful service to the pope, emphasizes Clement's avarice, coldness, and inadequate support or promotion of those loyal to him. Above all, Zimmermann demonstrates that we need to situate these influential narratives in their personal, literary, and historical contexts. To be sure, Giovio and Guicciardini were not alone in attributing indecision and weakness to Pope Clement: ambassadors to his court expressed similar views. But they reported other things, too. In a close reading of dispatches from the period 1527-34, particularly those preserved in Marin Sanudo's Diarii, Barbara Hallman argues that Clement was in fact remarkably consistent in his pursuit of five goals: (1) to protect his parenti, Catherine, Alessandro, and Ippolito de' Medici; (2) to ensure his family's control over Florence; (3) to keep the Papal States intact; (4) to maintain the integrity of Western Christendom under the aegis of Rome; and (5) to preserve the dignity and prerogatives of the papacy. Conspicuously absent from this list of priorities is the liberta d'Italia. Initially, Clement VII strove to keep Charles V from gaining decisive hegemony on the Italian peninsula; but upon being inadequately supported by his allies, including the Venetians—who meanwhile sought to regain properties that had been absorbed into the Papal States, and to usurp the pope's control over ecclesiastical appointments within their territories—he ultimately concluded that his central goals did not accord with theirs. Viewed in light of Clement's own objectives, Hallman asserts, the terms of his agreements with Charles V in 1529-30

6

The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

were perhaps as much a triumph for the pope as they were for the emperor, in whom the pontiff had found "the one man who had the power to help him realize his goals.'* In short, the conventional reading of Clement VIFs political "failure" must be modified by an awareness that he has been judged by a standard other than his own: with respect to what mattered most to him, especially but not exclusively the advancement of family interests, he was strikingly consistent and, given the challenges he faced, surprisingly successful. The fourth essay, by Natalie Tomas, further articulates the importance of family in Clementine politics. Long overlooked in the scholarly literature, women with ties to the Medici popes exercised significant influence in the papal Curia, where they served as unofficial advocates for their husbands, sons, and other kinsmen. Their intrusion into a traditionally male domain evoked resentment, as well as a fear that it would bring on financial disaster or ruin; yet so long as they justified their actions in terms of their duties as wives or mothers, they had substantial scope for influence. Tomas focuses upon Lucrezia Medici-Salviati (Clement VH's cousin) and her daughter, Maria Salviati-Medici. Lucrezia, a sister of Leo X, came to serve as de facto "boss" of the palace of her son, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati. Beyond seeking Clement's support for him, she fielded requests from friends and clients of the Medici and the Salviati for the cardinal's patronage. Her daughter, Maria, who married Giovanni de' Medici "delle Bande Nere," advocated the advancement of their son, Cosimo, who would become duke of Florence in 1537. Although Maria's own fortunes declined with the accession of Pope Paul III (1534), the favor that she had helped to obtain for her son thus had lasting historical consequences. Patricia Osmond's essay analyzes sixteenth-century accounts of the Conspiracy of 1522 against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, reading them in the context of assessments of Machiavelli, whose chapter in the Discourses on conspiracies may have influenced the plotters. They and Machiavelli, respectively, had used ancient examples in distinct ways: whereas they tried to imitate the deeds of heroes of the ancient Roman Republic, Machiavelli in discorso 3.6 had expressed no special preference for republican government, being more concerned with the derivation of concrete lessons to guide pragmatic behavior. In the mid-cinquecento, the historian Filippo de' Nerli noted the gap between the failed attempt of the conspirators in 1522 and Machiavelli's advice. Yet in the following years, especially after Machiavelli's books were placed on the Index in 1559, a growing distrust tainted him as an instigator of revolution, and in addition (through guilt by association) the ancient authorities Sallust and Tacitus, whom he had cited in discorso 3.6. Thus, ways of reading and appropriating ancient models shaped interpretations of contemporary politics, and vice-versa. Osmond also notes the characterizations of Giulio de' Medici in these accounts. Nerli described the cardinal's effectiveness both in extirpating the conspiracy, and in using the episode to strengthen his political hold on Florence. Other cinquecento historians emphasized Cardinal Giulio's practice of deception: for example, Benedetto Varchi described the newly-elected Clement VII as "di sua natura simulatore, e dissimulatore grandissimo" a phrase recalling Sallusf s description of the conspirator Catiline as "simulator ac dissimulator" In short, by reading politics and history-writing against the backdrop of ancient exempla, Osmond enriches our understanding of cinquecento historians 1 accounts of the protean persona of the second Medici pope.

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The Sack of Rome and its Aftermath The following four essays help us to move beyond the standard generalizations about the Sack of Rome to analyze concrete details that improve our grasp of its causes and consequences. In addition, they further elucidate Clement's character and his aspirations for the Medici. Cecil Clough provides the most thorough assessment to date of the motivations and military decisions of the commander of the army of the League of Cognac, Francesco Maria Delia Rovere, whose failure to engage or to block the advance of the imperial troops under the command of Charles de Bourbon the Sack of Rome possible. Delia Rovere's recalcitrance makes sense when viewed in the context of his mistreatment by the Medici. He had become duke of Urbino during the pontificate of his kinsman Julius II (Giuliano Delia Rovere), but was deposed by Leo X in 1515-16 so that the duchy could be conferred upon the pope's nephew, Lorenzo de' Medici. Following Lorenzo's death in 1519 and Adrian VI's reinstatement of Delia Rovere in his ducal title in 1523, Giulio de' Medici—now as Pope Clement VII—still hoped to make Urbino a hereditary possession of his family, and so refused to invest the duke. The struggles between these two further evidence the importance of individual character and family aspirations to the course of politics. Neither forgiving nor pliable, Delia Rovere responded vindictively to being abused, yet he did so not least because he, like Pope Clement, sought to bequeath political power and territory to those of his own lineage. Ivana Ait examines a comparative outsider's perspective on Pope Clement and Rome in the time of the Sack. Her key source is the Ephemerides historicae written by a Netherlander, Cornelius de Fine, about his experiences in Rome, 1511-44. Until now, this work has been underutilized, essentially being mined for discrete pieces of information—for descriptions of ceremonies, anecdotes about well-known artists or Churchmen, and details on politics. Ait situates De Fine's detailed account of the Sack of Rome in the context of his larger narrative. She highlights the meanings that De Fine attaches to events that he, as an employee of Bishop Mario Maffei (a close friend of Giulio de' Medici), often witnessed firsthand. Yet in his telling, the Romans are not passive victims, but fight valiantly to defend both the city and the pope, despite their resentment of his administration. De Fine notes Clement's fiscal missteps, including the imposition of burdensome new taxes on the clergy, that ultimately turned the Romans against him. Using previously unstudied registers of Roman notaries from the time of imperial occupation (6 May 1527-16/17 February 1528) Anna Esposito and Manuel Vaquero Pineiro further elucidate the condition of Rome and of its citizens after the Sack. Conventionally, historians have drawn upon letters, diplomatic dispatches, and literary accounts of the Sack and occupation which, while useful, have too often been taken as transparent and reliable representations of reality. Attentive to the city's symbolic significance, literary sources describing the Sack have tended to exaggerate its disruptive force, and to treat the event as marking a historical watershed. In so doing, they have obscured with a powerful rhetoric of difference the continuities between pre- and post-Sack Rome. In contrast, Esposito and Vaquero-Pineiro demonstrate that Roman notaries continued to be of service not only to their fellow citizens but also to the Spanish soldiers occupying the city. More generally, the authors

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The Pontificate of Clement Vll: History, Politics, Culture

point to longer-term demographic, economic, and social changes that were underway years before the Sack, and that therefore cannot be attributed entirely to its impact. While not dismissing the event's historical significance, this essay demythologizes it, allowing us to glimpse the pragmatic actions of individuals who directly experienced it and sought to rebuild their houses—and their lives—in its aftermath. Anne Reynolds's essay returns the focus to papal policy, especially with respect to Orvieto, where Clement VII and his court resided from early December 1527 until the end of May 1528. Already in mid-November 1527, while negotiating for his release from Castel Sant' Angelo, the pontiff had to fend off strong imperial pressure to relinquish Orvieto into their control: clearly, all parties recognized its strategic importance. When he fled to the h i l l town on 6 December, he found it prepared to receive him. In fact, in accordance with his wishes, construction had begun long before in an effort to enhance the town's fortifications and to remedy its chronic water shortage. Drawing upon archival records, Reynolds details the financial burdens of these projects upon the city, yet also notes the resilience of the citizens in accepting them and supporting the pope. From his makeshift court in the bishop's palace, Clement worked to remedy his financial and political deficits, repealing concessions that he had made under duress while in Castel Sant' Angelo, and soon receiving foreign ambassadors. Reynolds's account makes clear the difficulties confronting the refugee pope, but also attributes to him a clarity of goals and a systematic pursuit of them that reinforces Hallman's thesis in Chapter 3. To be sure, Clement frequently temporized; yet at least in the case of his connection with Orvieto, he was capable of advance planning, endurance of hardship, and realistic appraisal and successful negotiation of the unpleasant political alternatives that he confronted.

Resynthesis Part One ends with Charles Stinger's essay, which situates Clement VII and Clementine Rome in the longer-term contexts of papal politics and of the distinct outlook that characterized Renaissance Roman culture. Stinger defines the "Renaissance Papacy*1 as encompassing a range of political and institutional assumptions, including the assertion of temporal power in central Italy as the key to sustaining papal independence, and the pursuit of dynastic ambitions, whether through careers in the Church or through the establishment of territorial states in central Italy. According to Stinger, Clement differs from his predecessors less in his intentions than in the constraints upon his actions. The pope's political options were severely circumscribed, above all by the sparring of Charles V and Francis I on the peninsula, but also by the incursions of the Turks into eastern Europe and by the Protestant Reformation. Rome was becoming less central, and the pope's political choices mattered less to Europe as a whole than they had in the time of Julius II. Even as the meaning of being pope was changing dramatically, however, there persisted in attenuated forms the image and mystique of the papacy and of its ties to Rome's special destiny. In the myth of Rome, an emphasis on "the extra-temporal and perennial characteristics of the city" dignified events and personages in ways that to some extent removed them from "the arena of ambiguity and contingency." So, in

Clement and Calamity

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this particular sense, Renaissance Rome outlived the Renaissance papacy: although Clement VII's achievements were constrained by changes beyond his control, the cultural outlook that he and previous Renaissance popes had fostered, lived on. Clement VII as Patron Scholars of patronage have traditionally portrayed Clement VII as having accomplished little, but a generation ago, Andre Chastel challenged this assumption with his thesis of a distinctive "Clementine style" that developed in mid-1520s. More recently, Sheryl Reiss established convincingly that Giulio de' Medici's patronage has heretofore been vastly underrated.8 The following essays further the re-evaluation by showing a range of ways that Clement VII personally influenced artistic and musical developments during his pontificate. Through a close reading of Michelangelo's carteggio, William Wallace highlights the special relationship between the artist and Giulio de' Medici, who had known each other since youth and who had already worked together extensively during the Leo X's pontificate. Correspondence sent between Florence and Rome reveals the inner dynamics of this patronage relationship, which often worked through the agency of intermediaries such as Giovan Francesco Fattucci. In the Church of San Lorenzo in Florence, especially in the Laurentian Library and the New Sacristy, Michelangelo would produce some of his finest works of architecture and sculpture. Wallace shows how actively Pope Clement participated in the design and progress of these commissions through intervention, advice, and enthusiastic support. Although Clement gave Michelangelo a free hand in many decisions, he kept himself constantly informed of the progress, and through a "complicated interplay of friendship and favor" he participated meaningfully in the process of artistic creation. Caroline Elam's contribution further enhances our understanding of Clement's role in Michelangelo's architectural work in the New Sacristy. The pope's participation in production and innovation, she argues, can be taken to bolster Chastel's thesis of a distinctive "Clementine style," in this case in Florence and in the realm of architecture. Since Vasari's Lives, Michelangelo's work in San Lorenzo has been viewed as critical to his development of a new architectural language. Drawing upon new archival evidence concerning the design of windows in the lunette zone of the New Sacristy, Elam analyzes a key moment in this development. Importantly, she points to Clement's encouragement, support, and preference for novel and unorthodox solutions—all of which continued after the Sack of Rome—as integral to this breakthrough in architectural language. In effect, the dialogic relationship between artist and patron was the crucible of artistic creativity and innovation. Here, Clement emerges as a patron at once inventive and enthusiastic, with a taste for bizzarie, but also a sense of decorum about what would be appropriate in a Florentine context. In sum, Clement VII was actively involved in pushing forward creative artistic change. See the influential work of S. E. Reiss, especially her "Cardinal Giulio de' Medici as a Patron of Art 1513-1523," 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1992). I am grateful to Sheryl Reiss for her careful readings of several drafts of this introductory essay.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

Richard Sherr turns our focus to Clement's patronage of music, and in particular the management of the papal choir. By 1565, the Clementine period was looked upon as a golden age of sorts for the choir, when it had been "illustrious and adorned with a sufficient number both of voice types and of singers.'1 Drawing upon published and unpublished sources, Sherr demonstrates that, in large part, this assessment was accurate. Arguably the most competent musically of sixteenth-century popes, who himself enjoyed listening to music and had a good singing voice, Clement also strove to form a choir of 24 members who were good singers. He quickly replenished the choir (which had lost members under Adrian VI) and, following the disruptions of the Sack of Rome, he dispatched Jean Conseil as his representative to France and Flanders to recruit new singers. Clement also sought to ensure that those admitted to the choir were competent. He does not stand out as a patron of sacred polyphony—indeed, he is not known to have commissioned any particular piece of music—but he did seek to maintain a high standard of music in the papal choir. As in art, so too in music his subtle tastes helped to shape cultural developments during his pontificate.

Artists, Musicians, and Literati in Clementine Rome Linda Wolk-Simon, Victor Anand Coelho, and Julia Haig Gaisser focus, in turn, upon the artists, musicians, and humanists who sought patronage in Medicean Rome. Wolk-Simon traces the fortunes of the erstwhile members of Raphael's workshop following the master's death in 1520. She describes a shift in Rome from what she calls the "universal artist-impresario" to "artist-specialists." Initially, Giulio Romano and Gianfrancesco Penni inherited the reins of Raphael's workshop, but it never had the centrality and monopoly enjoyed before 1520. Its artists reconfigured in various combinations (e.g., Perino del Vaga and Polidoro da Caravaggio working together) under different patrons, but fragmentation and dispersion took their toll. The intense patronage relationship between Clement and Michelangelo was an exception rather than the rule. In a period of diminished economic resources and enhanced competition for preferment, artists not only looked to fill more specialized niches but also sought better fortune in other locations. Thus, while artistic patronage in Clementine Rome continued in attenuated form, it lacked the focus and hierarchical organization of the Raphael workshop under Leo, or of Perino's a decade after the Sack. Under Clement, any artist wishing to be an artist-impresario like Raphael would have to go elsewhere, to create his own "Rome" in a provincial locale—a model that many, including Giulio Romano and Perino del Vaga, chose to follow. Coelho focuses upon Francesco da Milano "II Divino" (1497-1543), who entered papal service around 1514, remaining there until 1527, and later accompanying Clement to Bologna for his meeting with Charles V in 1533. An exceptionally esteemed musician, he performed privately for popes, as well as at public functions where diplomatic honor was paramount. The publication of three books of his lute music in 1536 was a landmark in the literature. Coelho applies to music Chastel's notion of a Clementine style, as well as what Sebastiano Serlio called a "stile mescolato" Placing Francesco's innovations in the context of the Florentine-Roman cultural nexus under the Medici popes, Coelho argues that what some have taken to be

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autonomous compositional choices of the lutenist may in part evidence their broader cultural context. Francesco's fantasias display an elegance, refinement, creativity, and rhetorical sophistication in imitating their models that Coelho likens to the literary innovations of Pietro Bembo in the 1520s. In Francesco's hands, the fantasia was no longer just functional, complementary music: he made of it an autonomous artistic creation, rhetorically conceived. Coelho thus situates Francesco's compositions squarely within what might be called the "Clementine moment," as a musical analogue of artistic and literary innovation. Gaisser traces the career paths of two humanists who, in seeking patronage from the Medici popes, met with different fortunes: Pierio Valeriano and Giulio Simone the Sicilian. While neither grew rich in Rome, Valeriano—his way paved by family connections—did move from marginality to a position of somewhat consistent support. Simone, by contrast, remained obscure, his compositions for the elevation of each of the two Medici popes eliciting the ridicule of those humanists already entrenched in Roman sodalities, who (not coincidentally) were competing for a limited stock of papal favors. The evidence of Valeriano's and Simone's writings and careers suggests that for many humanists, the quest for Clement VII's patronage cannot have been satisfying. Unlike artists whom the pontiff favored, the literati received at best modest remuneration, and they faced insecurity commensurate with that of papal politics in the 1520s. If the initial promise of Clementine support, particularly in the years before the Sack of Rome, may have been borne out for some artists, the humanists—less talented, perhaps, but also viewed as dispensable—fared conspicuously less well. Consequently, the unflattering images of Clement that some humanists have left us may reflect something of the disappointments that they experienced.

Antiquity Revived and Renovatio in Religion and Art At least from the time of Petrarch, humanists' revival and appropriation of the forms, genres, and ideals of classical antiquity had been in tension with the theological and ethical assumptions of Christianity in their own day. While this tension might cause anxiety, it could also spur innovation, as ancient models had on occasion to be presented and interpreted so as to be edifying to Christian readers.9 By the late quattrocento, Renaissance Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino had developed sophisticated syntheses of the classical and the Christian. 10 But the harmonizing of the two traditions reached its point of greatest articulation in early cinquecento Rome, where humanists and artists dignified the Renaissance papacy as rightful heir both to the imperium of classical Rome and to the traditional powers and prerogatives of the Vicars of Christ. It was precisely the commingling of classical and Christian in 9

On Petrarch's redirection of humanism toward Christian concerns, see R. G. Witt, "In the Footsteps of the Ancients": The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden: Brill, 2000), esp. chaps. 6 and 11. See also the exemplary work of J. Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1990), on the range of strategies employed to make Plato "safe" reading for Renaissance Christians. 10 See esp. Hankins (1990); cf. A. Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy in Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

Renaissance Roman humanism, art, and culture that would open them in the Reformation to charges of paganizing. In this matter, as in many others, the pontificate of Clement VII proved liminal, a period of creative adaptation before the need for doctrinal and ecclesiastical unity became so urgent as to dictate more disciplined approaches to cultural production for religious contexts. The remaining four chapters all speak to the integration of the classical with the Christian in the Clementine era. George Gorse focuses upon Sebastiano del Piombo's Portrait of Andrea Doria, commissioned by Clement VII and begun in late May of 1526, the very moment when the League of Cognac was formed. This imposing portrait documents Doria's appointment as the Church's Captain of the Sea, responsible for dominating the Mediterranean and for defending Italian coastlines. Beyond celebrating the admiral's military contract, it expresses an "Augustan" conception of the Roman pontiff as heir to the imperium that the ancient Romans had exercised over the Mediterranean. The significance of that imperium, Gorse argues, was articulated in erudite rebuses in the naval relief painted beneath the image of Doria. Perhaps aided by Paolo Giovio and Pierio Valeriano, Sebastiano drew upon classical models and humanist Hermeticism to fashion this harmonious image at a moment of confidence about the papacy's historic role and political future. (A detailed appendix by Naomi Sawelson traces the later history of the portrait.) The alliance between admiral and pope was short-lived: in Summer 1528, disappointed by Francis Fs inadequate support, Doria accepted an offer of employment from Charles V. In early 1529 the pope, too, formed an alliance with the emperor, which was consummated in the Coronation in Bologna in February 1530. Meanwhile, the auspicious beginnings and brief efflorescence of Clement's pontificate gave way to lessened patronage and to an attenuation of humanists' and artists' claims on behalf of the papacy. Sheryl Reiss's essay revises conventional assumptions about Clement VII's immediate predecessor, Adrian VI, whom humanists derided as an enemy of the muses. Vasari influentially characterized Adrian's pontificate as culturally retrograde, a period when the arts in Rome were nearly extinguished by barbarism, only to be revived following the election of Clement VII. Thus, in Vasari's narrative, the Dutch pontiff serves as a foil for the second Medici pope, Adrian's shortcomings setting Clement's cultural achievements in sharper relief. To be sure, Adrian's aversion to some classical works (especially the Laocoon) is well-documented, and at no point did he show promise of being a patron on the scale of Julius II or Leo X. Nonetheless, despite severe financial constraints, Adrian did commission works by both Italian and Northern artists, notably the painter Jan van Scorel (1495-1562), who was much influenced by Michelangelo and Raphael. Reiss speculates that, had Adrian lived longer, his friend and datary, Cardinal Willem van Enckevoirt, might significantly have influenced the pope's attitudes toward the visual arts and spurred his further support for them. Reiss also identifies in the attitudes of both Adrian and Clement a sense of visual decorum, an understanding of the appropriateness of works of art to their surroundings and intended Functions (as, for example, in the case of objects used either in sacred rites, or to enhance the maiestas papalis). The 1520s and 1530s have long been seen as a lost opportunity for reform, but according to W. David Myers, in Rome and Italy but especially in Northern Europe, those decades encompassed a range of creative approaches to penance, the sacra-

Clement and Calamity

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mental status of which Luther had challenged. Focusing upon the Exomologesis, sive modus confitendi of Erasmus (1524; expanded, 1530), Myers explicates its conception of penance as a pastoral domain for consolation, mercy, and reconciliation, rather than as primarily an occasion for judging and disciplining. He also notes the pastoral concerns evident in two localized efforts to reform penance in the 1530s: (1) the Reform Constitutions produced in 1536 by the Synod of Cologne, and (2) Gian Matteo Giberti's innovations in his capacity as bishop of Verona. These experimental approaches were short-lived: soon, penance was overwhelmingly conceived as a function of God's law rather than His mercy, and the confessor more as a judge of souls than as their medic. But while Clement did not initiate major reform, his pontificate encompassed creative, experimental approaches to the theory and the practice of sacramental penance and confession. As in other aspects of culture, so too in theology and religious practice this was a period of creative flexibility. Alexander Nagel, finally, connects artistic changes with religious debates in the early cinquecento. Controversy over the decorum of images in religious settings, he argues, helped spur the development of art criticism and of art history. By the 1520s, efforts to unify beauty and piety in religious art were becoming problematic and would soon be too controversial to imitate; but in the Clementine "moment," such experiments were still possible. Nagel shows how artists such as Titian and Rosso Fiorentino used erotic or sumptuous elements not as ends in themselves, but as means to help communicate profound theological truths about divine love and about Christ's incarnation. On the other hand, Giberti's aniconic sacrament table for the high altar of the Duomo in Verona (1530s) was part of a radical staging of the incarnation that replaced artistic representation with a focused presentation of the Eucharistic body itself. Nagel's contribution is important above all for its restoration of religious motivations and concerns to the reading of early cinquecento art. As Christology became central to contemporary discourse, the issue of whether ancient forms were ideologically neutral, or instead irredeemably tainted with paganism, came to be of paramount importance both to humanists and to artists. Viewed in this light, the art and literature of Clement's pontificate do not appear aberrant. Instead, they can be seen to participate creatively in the more generalized reconfiguration of religious and cultural assumptions and forms that characterized the early sixteenth century. The Way Forward: Clementine Studies in the New Millennium Taken as a whole, the present collection demonstrates the usefulness of interdisciplinary approaches, the vitality of current scholarship on Clement VII's pontificate, and the importance of that period for our understanding of the Renaissance in Rome, Florence, and beyond." For centuries, scholars were dismissive of Giulio de' Medici, Numerous important studies appeared too late for consultation for the essays in this volume. Especially noteworthy is J. Shearman, Raphael in Early Modern Sources (14831602), 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). M. Gattoni, Clemente Vll e la geo-politica dello Stato Pontificio (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2002), offers a compelling interpretation of early cinquecento political and diplomatic history that complements the essays below by Barbara Hallman and Cecil Clough. See too

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

but current research evidences growing appreciation for the scope and sophistication of his patronage of the arts, and even for his political acumen—at least, if one takes into account the constrained resources and limited options available to him as pope. A quarter-century ago, John Hale succinctly summarized Clement VII's predicament: Merely to list the problems that confronted Clement in the eleven years of his pontificate ... is to suggest that the enormity of his task precluded success, especially for a ruler working from an impoverished treasury and on inadequate or faulty information.... On those eleven years pressed the fiill weight of what were becoming the most pervasive spiritual and political crises Europe had experienced; one was linked to the other, and Clement was harnessed to both.12 Perhaps the impossibility of dealing adequately with unprecedented challenges helps to explain the indecision for which Clement VII was infamous. In any case, we ought not to overlook the perceived promise of Clement's election and the accomplishments of the early years of his pontificate as we strive to understand the disasters that ensued: in particular, we should recall his efforts not just to assert the political autonomy of the papacy, but also to create a distinct and lasting reputation by embellishing the papal image with the grandeur of humanist rhetoric and with the lasting beauty of exceptional works of art. Above all in light of these cultural contributions, Clement VII and his pontificate are long overdue for precisely the type of interdisciplinary inquiry and revision that the present collection seeks to provide. M. Gattoni, Leone X e la geo-politica dello Stato Pontificio (1513-1521) (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2000); P. Farenga, "'Nuovi tormenti e nuovi tormentati.' L 'Historia del sacco di Roma di Luigi Guicciardini," in Sylva: Studi in onore di Nino Borsellino, ed. G. Patrizi (Rome: Bulzoni, 2002), 281-305; G. Signorotto and M. A. Visceglia, eds., Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); A. Spotti, "'Uno caso notabille e intravenuto [...]'. Lettera inedita sul saccheggio del Vaticano nel 1526," in Segni per Armando Petrucci, ed. L. Miglio and P Supino (Rome: Bagatto Libri, 2002), 243-9; A. M. Cummings, "Three gig//: Medici Musical Patronage in the Early Cmquecento," Recercare 15 (2003): 39-72; P. Flemer, "Clement VII and the Crisis of the Sack of Rome," in Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. W. J. Connell (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), 409-33. A classic political narrative of the Sack has recently been reissued: J. Hook, The Sack of Rome: 1527, 2d ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). For further bibliography, see the indispensable annual review of scholarly literature, RR: Roma nel Rinascimento: Bibliografia e note. Other noteworthy recent publications that bear upon subjects addressed in the present volume include A. R. Ascoli, "Ariosto and the Tier Pastor': Form and History in Orlando Furioso" RQ 54 (2001): 487-522; N. Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); T. J. Dandelet, Spanish Rome, 1500-1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); U. R. D'Elia, The Poetics of Titian's Religious Paintings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); R. Goffen, Renaissance Rivals: Michelangelo. Leonardo, Raphael. Titian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); L. Pon, Raphael. Durer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004); M. Simonetta, Rinascimento segreto: il mondo del segretario da Petrarch a Machiavelli (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2004); and R. B. Waddington, Aretino 's Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 12 J. R. Hale, Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 111. Cf. Gattoni (2002), cited above in note 11.

PART ONE: HISTORY, POLITICS, AND HUMANISM

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Character, Politics, and Family

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Chapter 2

Guicciardini, Giovio, and the Character of Clement VII T. C. Price Zimmermann

Francesco Guicciardini's famous contrast of the natures of Clement VII and Leo X, introduced in the Storia d'halia during the account of the formation of the League of Cognac, is a rhetorical set piece worthy of Plutarch's parallel lives. Trenchant, incisive, persuasive, it epitomizes the second Medici pope as weak and vacillating, unable to hold to a decision or cope with its consequences: And although he had a most capable intelligence and marvelous knowledge of world affairs, yet he lacked the corresponding resolution and execution. For he was impeded not only by his timidity of spirit, which was by no means small, and by a strong reluctance to spend, but also by a certain innate irresolution and perplexity, so that he remained almost always in suspension ... whence ... any slight impediment ... was sufficient to make him fall back into that confusion wherein he languished before he had come to a decision; since it always seemed to him, once he had decided, that the counsel which he had rejected was the better one. For summoning up in his mind only those reasons that he had discounted, he did not recall those reasons that had motivated his choice. Thus as a result of his complicated nature and confused way of proceeding, he often permitted himself to be led by his ministers and seemed directed rather than counseled by them. 1 Guicciardini's assessment of Clement's indecisiveness was shared by numerous contemporaries, including the datary Gian Matteo Giberti, Guicciardini's ally in the Curia and the minister most responsible for promoting the League of Cognac of 1526, a decisive link in the chain of events leading to the cataclysmic Sack of Rome in 1527. 2 While protesting that the league had been the pope's own desire, Giberti 1

2

"E ancora che avesse lo intelletto capacissimo e notizia maravigliosa di tutte le cose del mondo, nondimeno non corrispondeva nella risoluzione ed esecuzione; perche, impedito non solamente dalla timidita dell'animo, che in lui non era piccola, e dalla cupidita di non spendere ma eziandio da una certa irresoluzione e perplessita che gli era naturale. stesse quasi sempre sospeso e ambiguo ... [d]onde ... ogni leggiero impedimento ... pareva bastante a farlo ritornare in quella confusione nella quale era stato innanzi deliberasse; parendogli sempre, poi che aveva deliberate, che il consiglio stato rifiutato da lui fusse il migliore: perche, rappresentandosegli allora innanzi solamente quell e ragioni che erano state neglette da lui, non rivocava nel suo discorso le ragioni che 1'avevano mosso a eleggere.... Nella quale natura implicata e modo confuso di procedere, lasciandosi spesso trasportare da 1 ministri, pareva piu presto menato da loro che consigliato." Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1668-9 (bk. 16, chap. 12). Translation after Sidney Alexander, in Guicciardini, History, 363. Cf. A. Turchini, "Giberti, Gian Matteo," in D£/, 54:623-9. See also A. Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma: G M. Giberti (1495-1543) (Rome: Edizioni di storia e

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History. Politics, Culture

nonetheless seemed to have been of the same opinion as Guicciardini when he lamented that the pope: was of such a nature that I endured an extreme labor to put him on this road, but an even greater one to maintain him there, and it was impossible to put him on his feet again after so many slips—now the accord with the Colonna, now the treaty with Don Ugo Moncada, now the one with the viceroy—and so, with the many disasters bad fortune brought us, in the end we fell.3 Paolo Giovio's analysis of Clement's character, given principally in a retrospect following the pope's death, was similar to Guicciardini's, although with a different emphasis.4 In regard to Clement's good qualities—his intelligence, dignity, and selfcontrol—the assessments of the two historians were much the same. So, too, with the roster of his defects—particularly his parsimony and indecisiveness, of which Giovio gave a vivid depiction in his narration of the weeks preceding the Sack of Rome.5 Giovio differed from Guicciardini, rather, in probing more deeply into the wellsprings of these weaknesses, outlining a structure of personality whereby Clement's indecisiveness was grounded in avarice and, paradoxically, in ambition. As a fellow Florentine, Guicciardini was perhaps somewhat more forgiving of Clement's parsimony, although he commented emphatically in his Ricordi that success in war depended on large and timely expenditures, certainly a reflection of the disasters of 1527.6 But while Guicciardini acknowledged the pope's "eagerness to save" and alluded to his reputation for avarice, he subordinated avarice to indecisiveness, whereas Giovio saw it as a controlling character trait, a moral flaw. Lacking the liberality and vigor of mind of his cousin Leo X, Giovio charged, Clement VII "was of a nature to delight in parsimony and dissimulation."7

3

4 5 6 7

letteratura, 1969); A. Reynolds, Renaissance Humanism at the Court of Clement VII. Francesco Berni 's Dialogue Against Poets in Context. Studies, with an edition and translation by Anne Reynolds (New York: Garland, 1997), esp. 59-85; and the essays below by W. David Myers and Alexander Nagel. "[E]ra di narura sifatta, che durai una fatica estrema a metterlo su questo camino, ma molto piQ a mantenervelo, et non si pote mai rimetterlo in piede in tante volte, ora col fare accordo coi Sig.ri Colonnesi, ora con la triegua di D. Ugo, ora con quella del Vice Re, tanti disordini porto la mala fortuna, si che alia fina noi non cadessimo." G. M. Giberti, "Giustificazione," in G. B. Pighi, Gianmatteo Giberti vescovo di Verona (Verona: Marchiori, 1900), viii. Clement VII's role in the events leading to the Sack of Rome, which is the principal basis for the judgments of Guicciardini and, to a large extent, of Giovio, can be followed in the narrative of Ludwig von Pastor or that of Judith Hook. See Pastor, 9; J. Hook, The Sack of Rome, 1527 (London: Macmillan, 1972). For Guicciardini's relationship to Clement VII a good starting point would be R. Ridolfi, The Life of Francesco Guicciardini (New York: Knopf, 1968). For Giovio's relationship to Clement see T. C. P. Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Historiarum tomi secundi pars prior, bk. 32, in Giovio, Opera, 4:265-6. Pompei Columnae cardinalis vita, in Giovio, Opera, 6:175-8, Ricordo C 146, in F. Guicciardini, Ricordi, ed. R. Spongano (Florence: Sansoni, 1951), 161. "[P]arsimonia et dissimulatione gaudentis," Giovio, Opera, 4:265. Guicciardini's paradoxical expression "la cupidita di non spendere" is also suggestive of a character trait.

+--Guicciardini. Giovio, and the Character of Clement Vll He had the Medici talent for knowledge and singular judgment in almost everything, including the fine arts ... but his nature was so bent to minor arts and to account books that he spent his time investigating the secrets of craftsmen and their works with excessive and almost depraved shrewdness. And certainly he was a person who was never deceived in small matters; whereas, not surprisingly, in great matters touching the welfare of everyone, he was very often deceived. For in affairs of moment the whole force of his great prudence was completely undermined by a fatal avarice, he being one of those persons who, when faced by the need for making an expenditure, dither and delay, tormented by compulsive indecision until the opportune moment for action is lost.8 Thus while acknowledging the play of both qualities in the pope, Giovio ultimately attributed to avarice what Guicciardini attributed to timidity: "in his actions Pope Clement was very grave, very circumspect, very much in control of himself, and with the greatest capacity if his timidity had not often corrupted his power of judgment." 9 Giovio knew of the pope's financial constraints in 1527 as well as Guicciardini did, but in the final analysis he weighted avarice over poverty or timidity. And not only avarice. In the Life of the marquis of Pescara, Giovio linked the pontiffs wavering to a baleful desire for self-aggrandizement and to his hope that by favoring now one, now the other, he could keep the two most powerful monarchs in Christendom, Charles V and Francis I, in mutual check and hence dependent on his favor. That Clement VII should have been following the practice of countless popes, including his cousin Leo X, was not in itself exceptional. Leo had wavered long before breaking with Francis I in 1521 and allying with Charles V But Giovio's accusation went beyond policy and into the realm of character. He specifically rebutted the belief endorsed by Guicciardini that Clement was controlled by his ministers. His own policy was the source of the wavering, Giovio affirmed, not his

8

9

"In eo quoque enitebat, quod certe familiae proprium fuit, rerum prope omnium praecellentiumque artium notitia atque censura singularis ... verum ingenio ad infimas artes sumptuariasque rationes adeo demisso haerentique ut opificum arcane subtilitatesque operum nimia et prope turpi solertia scrutaretur. Et certe is fuit quem nemo unquam in parvis rebus fefellerit; ut obiter non sit mirum si in magnis demum, quae publicam salutem respicerent, saepissime fuent deceptus. In graviore etenim consilio omnem vim summae eius prudentiae fatalis avantia pemtus elidebat utpote qui in proferenda pecunia, quum opus foret, adeo suspensus et anceps tristi cunctatione torqueretur ut in perlevi momento gerendarum rerum occasio facile deperiret." Giovio, Opera, 4:266. "E nondimeno nelle sue azioni molto grave molto circospetto e molto vincitore di se medesimo, e di grandissima capacita se la timidita non gli avesse spesso corrotto il giudicio." 20.7, in Guicciardini, Storia, 3:2070; trans. Alexander, in Guicciardini, History, 442. In a memorandum of March 1526 that Paolo Guicciardini thought underlay the portrait in book 16 of the Storia d'Italia, Guicciardini engaged in a detailed analysis of Clement's character, addressing himself to the question of how someone with the pope's intellectual acumen and previous reputation could have brought himself to be so despised. He finds him irresolute by nature and timid, imagining dangers where none exist, but he also attributes to his nature an indisposition to offending or displeasing anyone, the ill result of which is that people who would have accepted a firm denial at the beginning are kept in limbo until they feel themselves deluded and injured. Scritti inediti di Francesco Guicciardini sopra la politica di Clemente Vll dopo la battaglia di Pavia, ed. P Guicciardini (Florence: Olschki, 1940), 105-13.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

falling under the influence of now one, now the other minister. 10 Weak as he was, the pope retained final authority throughout the critical years leading up to the Sack, alternating between the recommendations of Nikolaus von Schonberg and Giberti as a means of balancing Charles V with Francis I to augment his own authority. And not only in 1526-27 but also two years later in the crisis of Henry VIITs divorce Giovio was far from describing the pope as caught between the English king and the Holy Roman Emperor. Rather, he accused Clement of actually "nourishing" the controversy in order to maintain a hold on the obedience of the two monarchs. Giovio thus gives us a portrait of a pope whose wavering stemmed from a variety of factors, some political, some personal; an individual who although weak was nonetheless ambitious; a leader who reserved to himself the decision-making power even though he did not wield it decisively and who attempted on occasion to profit from his very weakness; a statesman with insight, experience, and many admirable qualities, including moderation and self-control, one who was sincerely pious and sought to be moral in his actions and yet whose indecision coupled with ambition amounted at times to dishonesty. It is a more complex portrait than Guicciardini's and takes more account of the aspiring side of Giulio de' Medici's character, the side invoked ironically in Francesco Vettori's famous epigram, "He endured an enormous labor to become, from a great and respected cardinal, a small and little-esteemed pope."12 The differences between Guicciardini and Giovio with respect to the character of Clement VII broach interesting considerations relating on the one hand to personal bias, and on the other to methodology. Neither historian was an impartial observer. Both suffered the frustration of serving a weak master in turbulent times. Both blamed the pope for the disasters of 1527 from which each suffered personally and which each saw as the end of the libertas Italiae. The genesis of Guicciardini's great history, as Roberto Ridolfl showed some years ago, was the statesman's premura to justify his own role in the League of Cognac and the cataclysmic events it unleashed, a justification in which he demonstrated the degree to which he was prevented by the

10 La vita del marchese di Pescara, ed. C. Panigada (Ban: Laterza, 1931), 377. Cf. Giberti, "Quando il Padrone era Imperiale, io era Imperialissimo; el e contra," in his "Giustificazione," in Pighi (1900), viii. 11 T. C. P Zimmermann, "A Note on Clement VII and the Divorce of Henry VIII," English Historical Review 82 (1967): 548-52, at 551. In respect of avarice and duplicitous policy Giovio's analysis was supported by his friend Luis Fernandez de Cordoba, duke of Sessa and imperial ambassador from 1523 to 1526, who observed in a long relation to his master, "El Papa es una persona cerrada, harto irresolute y que si se determina en pocas cosas; ama el dinero, y, trata mas con quien sabe buscallo, que con ninguno otro de negociantes; ahunque quiere monstrarse libre, todavia en el exito de los negooos muestra que es governado, predice grande fe con Vuestra Majestad, mas no se deshace de franceses, antes los tiene confiados, debaxo de una forma de neutralidad...." G. DiMeglio, Carlo Ve Clemente VII (Milan: Martello, 1970), 27. 12 Sommario della istoria d'Italia 1511-1527, in F Vetton, Scritti storici e politici, ed. E. Niccolmi (Ban: Laterza, 1972), 207. It should be noted that in his determination to repossess Florence, Clement VII was steadfast and unwavering. See also note 9 above, and Barbara Hallman's contribution below.

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Guicciardini, Giovio, and the Character of Clement Vll 13

weakness and indecision of others from achieving goals in themselves realistic. But while Guicciardini relieved his frustrations by writing, Giovio took refuge in silence. His despair as an intimate but powerless observer was so great, he lamented, that he could not bring himself to narrate in his histories the entire decade 1517-27, leaving us to reconstruct his analyses of the events of these years from his biographies. 14 Each of our two historians knew Giulio de' Medici well, although in different capacities, Guicciardini as a high-ranking official and at times an advisor, Giovio as a physician and constant attendant for over fifteen years, a companion rather than a counselor. Guicciardini's relationship was by way of official, Giovio's by way of personal service. To some extent this difference is detectable in their respective analyses. While Guicciardini expressed the frustration of the subordinate in matters of policy, Giovio added a courtier's disappointment at failing to receive the support he felt he deserved for writing his Histories. To men of letters, he complained, the pope "gave the blandishments of words to hold them in the appearance of grace, but in secret he hated them like his creditors.*' 15 In Giovio's vignette, the pope emerges as impartial, but inscrutable and cold. "Just as he plainly hated no one, so he never loved anyone, except those who were dear to him for some secret reason, and these he shamelessly and immoderately endowed with the highest honors, with positions of the greatest authority, and with enduring riches."16 Giovio was probably Guicciardini's source for their mutual observation that of the more than thirty cardinals created by Clement (an aspiration of Giovio's although not of Guicciardini's), almost none were chosen for the pope's own satisfaction; but whereas to Guicciardini this was a sign of the pope's control by others, to Giovio it was an indication of his innate parsimony, that he would not reward loyal service or merit. Apart from personal perspective, however, the differences between Guicciardini and Giovio in their analyses of Clement VII yield interesting methodological insights into early modern historiography. Both historians were well aware of the conventions of classical and humanist historiography. 17 For all his interest in motive, however, far exceeding classical historians in this regard, Guicciardini nonetheless confined his precis of Clement's character to clarifying his actions, whereas Giovio, although well-aware of the classical distinctions between history and biography, when writing in his Histories of his former patron allowed his instincts as a biographer to override his practice as a historian in the humanist tradition. Whether Clement's wavering in 13 R. Ridolfi, "Genesi della Storia d'Italia" in his Studi guicciardiniani (Florence: Olschki, 1978), 79-130. 14 Histories, dedication to vol. 2, in Giovio, Opera, 4:1-2. 15 "Hos quidem perblande appellabat ut imagine gratiae detineret, sed occulte oderat tanquam creditores." Histories, bk. 32, in Giovio, Opera, 4:265. 16 "Neminem enim plane oderat quum neminem adamaret, praeterquam ab occultiore causa conciliates; his certe unis adeo intemperanter favit ut ad summos honores aut ad summum authoritatis locum stabilesque divitias nullo pudore proveheret; multorum vero constanter oblivisceretur qui ab optimis literarum studiis vetereque obsequio commendationem et praemia meruissent." Histories* bk. 32, in Giovio, Opera, 4:265. 17 For an introduction to Guicciardini's historiography see M. Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian's Craft (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977); for an introduction to Giovio's see Zimmermann (1995), and the concise account in T. C. P. Zimmermann, "Giovio, Paolo," in DBI, 56:430-^0, esp. 435-6.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

1526 and 1527 between French and imperial alliances was entirely owing to a weak and indecisive character, or whether that seeming weakness and indecision was owing at least in part to avarice and ambition is more appropriately a question for the biographer than for the historian. In practical terms the result was the same. Here we see Guicciardini at the birth of modern historiography focusing on the nexus of character and conduct; Giovio at the birth of modem biography intrigued by the deeper structure of personality. Biography explores the structure and byways of individual personality, the whole spectrum of individuality irrespective of its links to action. History, on the other hand, focuses on the public arena, on action. The historian seeks not so much deep psychological truth as a reasonable explanation for conduct. 18 One might even go so far as to describe Guicciardini's explorations of character as essentially heuristic in nature. Although Guicciardini was constantly probing to understand the motives for actions, his object was to explain the actions, not the person, to give a rational account of irrational behavior as a means of understanding the historical process and the seemingly capricious. If he could determine that Clement VII were irresolute by nature, then the pope's vacillating policies would require no further explanation. The deeper causes of irresolution would lie beyond the historian's scope. For Giovio, whose Lives were more successful than his Histories (at least posterity has been more apt to read the biographies), the locus of interest was the individual in all his or her complexity; his Elogia delighted in the inconsistencies and quirks of individual character. Guicciardini's Ricordi, on the other hand, show how consistently he was striving to construct a framework of analysis for understanding human behavior, but a framework oriented toward generalization for diplomatic and historiographical purposes. It was Giovio who commented on the similarity of the Florentines to their putative ancestors, the Greeks; and in his quest to generalize his analysis of human conduct, Guicciardini indeed resembled Thucyd.des.19 In reading Guicciardini, one sometimes wonders how he can state motives with such peremptory assurance. In declaring, for example, that Lodovico Sforza was motivated by greed for power, had he induced the duke's confessor to break the seal of the confessional? 20 And would he truly have known even then? Can motives ever be known with such assurance? Always the realist, Guicciardini probably did not believe he had unlocked the ultimate secrets of the psyche. Rather, we see him at the inception of modem historiography confronting the historian's problem of explanation by devising what might be called "working models" of personality in order to gain a consistent basis for understanding a person's actions. The Ricordi are full of 18 For a brief survey of the extensive literature on Renaissance biography, see the editors' introduction to The Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe: Forms of Biography from Cassandra Fedele to Louis XIV, ed. T. F. Mayer and D. R. Woolf (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 1-37. For Italian Renaissance historiography, the best introduction is E. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 19 For Giovio's comparison of the Florentines to the ancient Greeks, see Zimmermann (1995), 257. 20 For example, see Guicciardini, Storia, 1:!. On Guicciardini's handling of motives and the limits he observed see Phillips (1977), 138^0.

Guicciardini. Giovio, and the Character of Clement VII

25

such "working models." (Indeed, Giovio also devised them. His phrase cited in regard to Clement, "He was one of those persons who ...," is only one of many indications that he too was formulating working models of human personality.) Whether the models ultimately turn out to be mere heurisms or true depictions of deeper personality is less important to the historian than their power to explain a sequence of actions, whereas to the biographer inner truth is the goal. Whether Clement VII was indecisive because he was so by nature or because he was rendered so by avarice and ambition does not matter to history so much as the fact that he kept switching sides. Having been a diplomat, Guicciardini was used to formulating a hypothesis regarding his antagonist's motives as a means to deciphering his actions, and to revising this hypothetical model from day to day—indeed, as Pandolfo Petrucci once instructed the bewildered Machiavelli, from hour to hour. 21 When writing history Guicciardini continued the same practice. As in the natural sciences, so to some extent in the social sciences, our explanatory structures belong to us, rather than to the reality we are describing. And, as in science, when our hypotheses cease to explain phenomena they must be revised. What Guicciardini did systematically in his great history is what we all do on some level to understand and to deal with the conduct of other people: we categorize them. When they act contrarily to our categorizations we are surprised, even angry. ''He's always out for number one/' "You can't trust her." "He'll always do what his wife wants.*' These are primitive models for understanding and dealing with individual conduct. When we cannot form a satisfactory model we fall back on expressions of systematic irrationality. "It's just Bozo being Bozo." In this sense we all function as historians. It is the biographer's role to find out precisely what makes Bozo tick, or the psychiatrist's—not ours, not the historian's. The constructs of personality and motive used by Guicciardini and Giovio in developing a rational framework to analyze the frequently irrational historical process merit systematic reconstruction, for they should reveal much about ideas of human nature in the Renaissance. As is clear from the exordium of Guicciardini's history, the emotion of greed will certainly have a central place in the constructs, but so will a host of other assumptions about human nature." 21 J. R. Hale, Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy (London: English Universities Press, 1964), 88. 22 The historian's analysis of human motives has been extensively discussed (and with much greater sophistication) by philosophers of history. In modern times David Hume was the first to argue the essential uniformity and deducibility of human emotions and their effects. Wilhelm Dilthey explored the application of generalizations to observed behavior, a process which he termed Verstehen and which has been expanded by recent philosophers of history to form part of a process termed "analytical colligation" whereby the historian moves "from the description of an event to the discovery of its authors, from the discovery of its authors to the discovery of their purposes, desires, and beliefs, and from the discovery of their purposes, desires, and beliefs to the causes of those purposes and the etiology of those desires and beliefs." C. Roberts, The Logic of Historical Explanation (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 167; see esp. chaps. 6 and 8. I would like to acknowledge my immense debt in discussions of history and philosophy to my distinguished colleagues at Reed College, the philosopher of history Marvin Levich and the historian of Renaissance English historiography Smith Fussner.

26

The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

Yet even the aloof and magisterial Guicciardini did not write in a wholly detached and rational hyperspace. His Ricordi reveal not only his approach to the historical process but his personal involvement in it. More than mere observations on how the world worked, they were his reminders on how he himself should behave in order to be successful in it. Which brings us back to his analysis of Clement VII. In ricordo C 155, Guicciardini observed that whereas the common wisdom holds that to make a decision one should be familiar with all the details, he himself had generally found that someone of weak judgment would judge better, and with less confusion, if spared knowledge of all the details. It already sounds as if he were thinking of his experiences with Clement. But consider the very next ricordo: I have always been very resolute and firm in my actions. And yet, as soon as I make an important decision, I am often a little bit sorry for the stand I have taken. Not that I believe I would decide differently if I had it to do over again. The reason is, rather, that before the decision, I had present before my mind's eye the difficulties either choice would present; whereas having taken a stand and no longer fearing the difficulties inherent in the course I did not take, I become conscious only of those with which I must now deal. And those, considered by themselves, seem larger than they did when they were being compared with the others. To free yourself from this torment, you must diligently revive in your mind all those other difficulties you left behind. Do we not hear the echo of Guicciardini's analysis of Clement VII? "... since it always seemed to him, once he had decided, that the counsel which he had rejected was the better one. For summoning up in his mind only those reasons which he had discounted, he did not recall those reasons which had motivated his choice." The Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume held, in effect, that to understand the feelings of another person at a given juncture one need only consult what one's own feelings would have been on such an occasion.24 However abstract and rational our framework of analysis, its roots with regard to motive will be inescapably human and to some degree personal. All of which suggests that we should take with caution the analyses even of contemporaries as close to the pope as Guicciardini and Giovio, if we are to achieve a balanced and fair interpretation of a complex individual placed in circumstances requiring a strength of character he may or may not have possessed. Magistrates virum ostendit, the proverb with which Guicciardini closes the Storia

23 Ricordo C 156: ulo sono stato di natura molto resolute e fermo nelle azioni mie. E nondimeno, come ho fatto una resoluzione importante, mi accade spesso una certa quasi penitenza del partite che ho preso: il che precede non perche io creda che, se io avessi di nuovo a deliberare, io deliberassi altrimenti, ma perch£ innanzi alia deliberazione avevo piu presente agli ocelli le difficulta dell'una e 1'altra parte, dove, preso el partito, ne temendo piu quelle che col deliberare ho fuggite, mi si apresentono solamente quelle con chi mi resta a combattere; le quali, considerate per se stesse, paiono maggiore che non parevano quando erano paragonate con 1'altre. Donde seguita che a liberarsi da questo tormento bisogna con diligenza rimettersi innanzi agli occhi anche le altri difficulta che avevi poste da canto." Guicciardini (1951), 168-9. The English follows F. Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections of a Renaissance Statesman, trans. M. Domandi (New York: Harper, 1965), 81. 24 "[W]e never remark any passion or principle in others in which, in some degree or other, we may not find a parallel in ourselves." Cited Roberts (1996), 167.

Guicciardini. Giovio, and the Character of Clement Vll

27

d'ltalia, is undoubtedly valid, but exactly what kind of man the magistracy of Clement VII displays is still far from clear. 25

25

For Guicciardim's endorsement of the proverb see ricordo C 163, in Guicciardini (1951), 176. Most of the observations regarding the character of Clement VII made by Guicciardini and Giovio were made by other contemporaries as well. The irresolution, for example, was recorded not only by Giberti in the passage cited above in the text, but by his protege the poet Francesco Berni in one of his well-known verses, "Un papato composto di nspetti." On Giberti and Berni regarding Clement's indecision see Reynolds (1997), 70-73. The historian Benedetto Varchi, alienated by Clement's reconquest of Florence of 1529-30, called him "the sort of person who throws a rock, as the saying goes, and conceals his hand" ("ma arebbe voluto secondo il costume suo, il quale era di gittare il sasso, come si dice, e nascondere la rnano...."). Bk. 12 of B. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 5 vols. (Milan: Classici Italiani, 1803-04), 4:367-8. Avarice was noted not only by the duke of Sessa in the passage cited above in note 11, but also by Jakob Ziegler (who was acquainted with Clement and well-informed by sources close to the pope) in his Historia dementis Vll Pont. Rom., in Amoenitates historiae ecclesiae et litterariae, ed. J. G. Schelhorn, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Bartholomeus, 1737-8), 2:210-380. A good starting point for a review of contemporary opinion is Pietro Balan, who discusses, inter alia, the views of Giovio and Guicciardini in his Clemente Vll e I'ltalia dei suoi tempi (Milan: Ghezzi, 1887). What varies from observer to observer and from historian to historian is the way in which qualities and behaviors observed in the pope by contemporaries have been integrated into a global judgment. Vettori, for example, felt that Giulio's ambition led him to seek a position whose difficulties exceeded his resources of character and intellect. Vettori (1972), 207. Among modern historians, Pastor stressed Clement's irresolution (10:331). Ranke, more charitably, emphasized his chagrin at being treated as the emperor's chaplain, a view certainly supported by the duke of Sessa's assertion after the conclave that the pope was "entirely Your Majesty's creature" (Pastor, 9:253). L. von Ranke, History of the Popes, trans. E. Fowler, 3 vols. (New York: Ungar, 1966), 1:72-4. The physician and historian Gaetano Pieraccini, following Vettori, felt that circumstances overwhelmed energies depleted by Giulio's long struggle to emerge from the stigma of illegitimacy and to achieve the papacy. Pieraccini also emphasized the effect on the pope's personality of serious illnesses beginning in 1529. Pieraccini, 1:309-43. Judith Hook stressed the pope's entirely Florentine proclivity to "enjoy the benefit of time." Hook (1972), 27. And so forth. Scholars of Renaissance Italian history eagerly await the fresh interpretations of Clement's life and pontificate being prepared by Kenneth Gouwens in his forthcoming biography.

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Chapter 3

The "Disastrous" Pontificate of Clement VII: Disastrous for Giulio de' Medici? Barbara McClung Hallman

Historians have disagreed over a multitude of issues arising from the sixteenth century, but there has been virtually universal consensus that Clement VH's pontificate from 1523 to 1534 was disastrous—a disaster for the pope, for the Catholic Church, for Italy. Further, contemporary observers as well as historians through the centuries have placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the pontiff himself. Contemporaries voiced strikingly similar criticisms of the pope's character, to which they attributed most of the calamities of the pontificate. Francesco Guicciardini tells us that Clement's fatal flaws were pusillanimita and avaritia—fear and greed.1 Paolo Giovio accused the pope of being weak, of putting his own private interests above those of the general welfare, and of possessing a "fatal parsimony."2 The famous Venetian patrician and ambassador, Gasparo Contarini, reported to his government that the pope was "by nature extremely timid and cowardly."3 In the end, wrote Guicciardini, the pope died reputed to be avaricious, untrustworthy, and by nature alien to the welfare of humankind. 4 Harsh judgments indeed; but were they fair? Ought we still to consider them valid? It seems to me that Giulio de' Medici himself might have seen his years as pontiff in a different light. Caught in the midst of the relentless rivalry between Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, and Francis I of France, Pope Clement VII faced continuing crises from the day of his election. Yet throughout his pontificate, I would argue, he held fast to several goals: first, to protect his immediate heirs, Catherine, Alessandro, and Ippolito de' Medici; second, to preserve the family dominance over the city of Florence, which he considered his patrimony; third, to keep the Papal State intact; fourth, to keep Catholic Europe together under the aegis of Rome; and fifth, to preserve the dignity and prerogatives of the papacy. A close reading of documents from the latter half of Clement's pontificate—especially of the

1

2 3 4

Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1598. T. C. P. Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 69,72, 82, 106, 135. E. G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 46. Guicciardini, Storia, 3:2070: "essendo riputato avaro, di poca fede e alieno di natura da benificare gli uomini." See also Price Zimmermann's essay above.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

diplomatic correspondence preserved in the Diarii of the Venetian patrician Marin Sanudo—portray a pontiff who behaved far more rationally and consistently than we have been led to expect.5 Weak, vacillating, and timorous he may have been, but when the crucial moments arrived, Clement VII responded with some firmness. The Pope Besieged and Imprisoned If ever there was a set of circumstances certain to try a pope's mettle—to put to the test his resolve, tenacity, and courage—it was the Sack of Rome. After months of uncertainty and inaction on the part of the armies of the League of Cognac, Clement's allies since 1526, the worst happened: on 6 May 1527 Rome was overrun by German and Spanish imperial troops.6 Clement found himself, his court, and as many as could crowd in, shut up under siege in the Castel Sant' Angelo. How, then, did our reputedly weak and cowardly pontiff react? The first report received by the Venetians, sent from Deruta on 11 May from the military headquarters of the pope's allies, indicates that Clement had not lost his head. A "messer Piero Chiavelucio, ... sent to these Signori by His Holiness," asked that they send immediate military aid.7 The pope, he said, "would rather remain in danger of losing his life than come to any agreement with the imperialists."8 On 20 May another report, from a monk who had fled Rome on the 12th, repeated the demands of the imperialists—principally, a payment of 300,000 ducats in ransom and the removal of the pope and his court to Spain. Clement, expecting succor from his allies at any moment, resisted these demands, refusing to move to Gaeta, Naples, or Spain, and pleading poverty in response to hearing the price set for the ransom.9 The pope was not entirely idle while waiting for his rescuers. Shortly before the attack upon Rome, urgently in need of money, he had already agreed to a device that, according to Guicciardini, he had sworn never to use: the naming of cardinals.10 Thus on 3 May the pope created the first six cardinals of his pontificate. 1 ' This was not the 5

On this key collection of documents, see D. S. Chambers, "The Diaries of Marin Sanudo: Personal and Public Crises," essay 9 in his collection entitled Individuals and Institutions in Renaissance Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), with further bibliography. 6 On the role of Francesco Maria I della Rovere, duke of Urbino, as ineffectual leader of the League's armies, see R. Finlay, "Fabius Maximus in Venice: Doge Andrea Gritti, the War of Cambrai, and the Rise of Habsburg Hegemony, 1509-1530," RQ 53 (2000): 9881031; and Cecil Clough's essay below. 7 Sanuto,45:142. 8 Sanuto, 45:142-3: "vuole piii presto stare in pericolo di perdere la vita che di venire ad accordo alcuno con imperiali." 9 Sanuto, 45:143, 164-6. Hook (1972), 208-10, details the negotiations concerning the terms of capitulation and the amount of the ransom, on which the parties did not reach agreement until 5 June (see below). 10 Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1819. 11 C. Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii et Recentioris Aevi, 6 vols. (Regensburg: Monastarii, Sumptibus Librariae Regensbergianae, 1913), 3:19; Pastor, 9:384-5. The six nominees were Benedetto Accolti, Niccolo Gaddi, Agostino Spinola, Ercole Gonzaga, Marino Grimaldi, and Antoine Bohier du Prat, the chancellor of France (on whose nomination cf. Pastor, 9:465, n. 1).

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most efficient method of money-raising, to be sure. Although Isabella d'Este had brought cash to Rome for her son, the new cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, and although Luigi Gaddi paid 40,000 ducats for his brother Niccolo's red hat, Benedetto Accolti left for the Marches of Ancona to raise his share and did not return, and Marino Grimani did not pay his promised 30,000 ducats before February 1528.12 Clement also gathered all the ready money he could find in the Castel Sant' Angelo during these first weeks, and late in May he enlisted Benvenuto Cellini to melt down all the gold and silver settings for the papal tiaras and regalia, hiding the jewels. 13 (Cellini's account, incidentally, does not portray the pope as a man paralyzed by fear.) Earlier, in the middle of May, the pope had also decided to send Cardinal Alessandro Famese on a mission to Spain to treat with Charles V. Farnese did not leave Rome, however, until July, and, as it turned out, he never left Italy. By that time the situation had changed.14 Clement had been waiting for the armies of the allies to appear, but on 24 May the commanders, after a long and bitter debate, had agreed with their Captain General, Francesco Maria della Rovere, that aid was impossible.15 Clement still looked to the league's armies for relief as late as the end of May, but he was probably beginning to lose hope. 16 Plague had broken out in Rome and was beginning to invade the Castel Sant' Angelo; supplies were meager; something had to be done. Clement then invited his old enemy, Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, for an audience on 1 June, and they somehow cleared the way for the first agreement of 5 June. The imperialists signed the next day, and on 7 June 1527 most of the inhabitants of the papal fortress exited, leaving Clement, along with his retinue of cardinals and prelates, at the mercies of the Spanish soldiers who now occupied the Castel Sant' Angelo. 17 The imperial captains again insisted that the pope, accompanied by the 13 cardinals, go to Gaeta, but Clement, "with much diligence, with prayers, and with guile, achieved the contrary," wrote Guicciardini. 18 This treaty was probably one of the pope's delaying actions, because its terms could not be fulfilled. Clement had agreed to the stupefying ransom of 400,000 ducats, most of which he could not raise, and the surrender to the imperialists of Parma, Piacenza, Modena, Ostia, Civitavecchia, and the Castel Sant' Angelo, most of which he did not control.19 As security, he was to give over six hostages, including his closest advisors, Gian Matteo Giberti and Jacopo Salviati.20 The next six months were 12 B. M. Mailman, Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 137; Sanuto, 46:508, 580. 13 B. Cellini, Life of Benvenuto Cellini, Written by Himself, trans. J. A. Symonds (New York: Brentano's, 1906), 179-82. 14 Pastor, 9:432^. 15 Sanuto, 45:209-10. For further context, see the sources cited in note 6 above. 16 Sanuto, 45:310. 17 J. Hook, The Sack of Rome, 1527 (London: Macmillan, 1972), 209-10. 18 Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1874: "ma egli, con molta diligenza con prieghi e con arte, procurava il contrario." 19 Sanuto, 45:317. The amount proposed for the ransom had fluctuated significantly before reaching this figure. See note 9 above. 20 Pastor, 9:459-60; Sanuto, 45:319. Pope Clement particularly resisted giving over as a hostage his datary, Giberti (ibid., 45:323): "Et per fino lui [consegna] hostaggi 7 tra quali

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therefore increasingly difficult and dangerous. Still under close guard in the papal fortress, Clement and the remaining prelates endured interminable negotiations, escalating ransom demands, and delays while their captors waited for new instruction from the emperor in Spain. By early July, the League of Cognac finally sent a French army to Italy under the command of Odet de Foix, sieur de Lautrec. Perhaps there would be a military liberation after all. 21 As with Clement's hopes for aid from the forces of Delia Rovere, however, such dreams proved futile. Lautrec maneuvered about in Lombardy, seized and sacked the city of Pavia on 5 October, and then determined to go to Naples via the Adriatic route. Cardinals Innocenzo Cibo and Niccolo Ridolfi visited the camp to try to persuade Lautrec to come to Rome, but without success.22 As it turned out, no army ever appeared at the walls of Rome to rescue the pope. During these months, all of the pope's major goals seemed lost.23 On 17 May, shortly after hearing news of the Sack, Florence expelled Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici, along with their guardian, Cardinal Silvio Passerini; the rebellious Florentines kept the eight-year-old Catherine in the Dominican convent of Sta. Lucia as a hostage, and subsequently inaugurated the last Florentine Republic.24 In June, Venice seized control of the cities of Ravenna and Cervia (both of which had asked for Venetian aid); Alfonso d'Este, duke of Ferrara, took Modena, Reggio, and Rubiera; Sigismondo Malatesta was back in Rimini; and Orazio Baglioni had returned to Perugia. The Papal State was crumbling.25 There was also the ominous hint of schism. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey of England crossed the channel to France in late July and met extensively with Francis I and the French cardinals. They concluded a new Anglo-French anti-imperial treaty on 18 August at Amiens, and sent out a call for all cardinals at liberty to proceed at once to Avignon and assume the government of the Church.26 Clement strongly opposed any such move, but cautioned the cardinals still at liberty to move gently so as to avoid irritating the French and English who were, after all, proposing to liberate him. 27 Italian cardinals agreed with him, and their definitive refusal to proceed to Avignon arrived in France and England only at the beginning of December.28 Meanwhile,

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

vi e Jacopo Salviati, li episcopi Sepontino et di Pistoia, et un Redolphi et il Datario, avenga che Nostro Signore resistesse forte per non darlo, zoe lo episcopo di Verona, pur loro mai non vi hanno voluto ad cgni modo forsi per imparare 1'oficio da lui." In fact, not until September was the pope finally compelled to turn over the six men as hostages. On Giberti's treatment while a hostage, see A. Prosperi, Tra evangelismo e controriforma: G.M. Giberti (1495-1543) (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1969), 81-4. On Jacopo Salviati, see P. Hurtubise, Une famille-temoin: Les Salviati (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1985), with further bibliography. Hook (1972), 197; Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1897. Sanuto,46:170, 172, 188. For my definition of these goals, see above, 29-30. R. Roeder, Catherine de' Medici and the Lost Revolution, 2nd ed., abridged (New York: Vintage, 1964), 22; C. Roth, The Last Florentine Republic (London: Methuen, 1925), 46, 87-8; Hook (1972), 201-2. Hook (1972), 192-200. Sanuto, 45:631-2, 650; ibid, 46:14; Pastor, 9:437-8. Sanuto, 46:208. Sanuto, 46:450-51.

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Wolsey went to Compiegne with the French prelates. There, over the objections of the papal legate, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, he usurped a papal prerogative by conferring the cardinal's insignia on the French Chancellor, Antoine du Prat (who had been nominated by the pope in the consistory of 3 May).29 On 16 September, the three French cardinals and Wolsey sent a document to Clement and the world, declaring that they would not accept any new cardinals or alienation of property while the pope was a prisoner. Further, they declared their determination, in the event of the pope's death in captivity, to hold their own conclave to elect a successor.30 Cardinal Salviati signed this document, but privately explained that he had only done so in order "not to make a greater mistake, and to gain time," an old Florentine tactic and one frequently used by the pope.31 Salviati wrote that he feared a schism and the emergence of separate Churches of France and England.32 Catholic Europe was in danger of disintegrating. Furthermore, while still incarcerated, Clement found himself in serious dispute with his ally, the Republic of Venice, over the conferral of benefices, and, free or not, the pope protested with vigor. As early as 10 June, the Venetians decided to take control over the distribution of all ecclesiastical benefices in their territory during the pope's captivity.33 The bishopric of Treviso fell vacant on 28 June 1527.34 On 17 August, its disposition came up before the Venetian Signoria when Girolamo Querini announced that his brother Vincenzo, a canon of that church, had been elected bishop by the cathedral chapters. Querini then launched into a lengthy argument about the historic right of Venice to nominate prelates to all benefices in its territory with subsequent papal confirmation; this practice had only ceased with the treaty with Pope Julius II in 1510 that ended the war of the League of Cambrai; now, because of Venice's efforts to liberate the imprisoned pope, he thought it certain that Clement would agree to a return to the "laudable custom'* (laudabile consuetudine)\ and finally, no one could possess more than one bishopric. This last point alluded to another candidate, one who already held two bishoprics, and who had earlier been named by Clement VII. Cardinal Francesco Pisani, the pope's nominee and fellow prisoner in the papal fortress, was thereupon defended by his brother, Giovanni, who made a spirited rebuttal before the Signoria. Papal wishes notwithstanding, the Signoria granted Treviso to Vincenzo Querini.35 A few days later, the doge of Venice received a letter from the cardinal of Trani, Giandomenico de Cupis, asking that he not do anything about Treviso. He had heard, 29 Pastor, 9:441; Eubel (1913), 3:20. 30 Pastor, 9:441-2. 31 Pastor, 9:443, details Salviati's private explanation, made in a letter to Castiglione (18 Sept. 1527). A copy of the letter is preserved in ASV, Nunziatura di Francia, 1, fols. 38v-41r (mech. num.), at 39v: "per non incorrer[e] in maggior[e] error[e], et per metter[e] tempo in mezzo il piu che io posso...." On the policy of delay, see F. Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 33^; Hook (1972), 27; cf. Finlay (2000), and Cecil Gouges essay below. 32 Pastor, 9:443. 33 Sanuto, 45:294. 34 Eubel (1913), 3:309. 35 Sanuto, 45:623-^4.

34

The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

he wrote, that Venice intended to confer the diocese, and he warned that His Holiness would resent such a move. The doge refused to accept the letter and had it passed to Alvise Mocenigo, who threw it on the floor.36 Vincenzo and his family finally appeared before the Signoria on 27 August to offer thanks for his bishopric, promising "to do things pleasing to the Lord God and to this Excellentissimo Stado"*1 Two days later the papal legate to Venice, Altobello Averoldi, bishop of Pola, and the French ambassador, Lodovico Canossa, archbishop of Bayeux, filed a protest about Ravenna, and Canossa particularly upbraided the Signoria for conferring bishoprics in Pregadi in disobedience to the pope, "con altre parole, etc"™ Almost a year thereafter, Clement VII himself complained bitterly about this to Gasparo Contarini in a conversation at Viterbo in June 1528: "You wish to provide bishoprics, which you cannot do,*' said the pope. "We gave Treviso to Pisani."39 There the matter rested, with Querini in possession of the diocese, until June 1529, when Cardinal Pisani's return after months as a hostage in Naples revived the debate.40 The Signoria still failed to give possession to Pisani despite repeated attempts through the month of October; indeed, when the cardinal's brother offered to give Querini 300 ducats a year for life from the income of Treviso in return for the possession of the bishopric, Querini's brother declared that he would never accept such a gift—that would be simony!41 Only the peace treaty of 22 December 1529, signed by the pope, the emperor, and Venice, settled the case. The Serene Republic agreed not to usurp ecclesiastical authority, and Cardinal Pisani went on to preside over Treviso until he resigned in favor of a nephew in 1538.42 If the story of Cardinal Pisani and the bishopric of Treviso shows that Clement was not willing to relinquish papal prerogatives even during his imprisonment, it also points to a particularly painful aspect of the negotiations between Clement and the imperialists during the fall of 1527: the matter of hostages. We have already seen that Clement was forced to give up the six men—four bishops (Giovanni Maria del Monte, Onofrio Bartolini, Gian Matteo Giberti, and Antonio Pucci) and two bankers (Lorenzo Ridolfi and Jacopo Salviati)—at the end of September. They were held under the control of furious German Landsknechte, and two weeks later, shouting for their pay, the Germans hauled the unfortunate hostages to the Campo dei Fiori with chains around their necks, threatening to hang them on the scaffolds already prepared.43 Cooler heads convinced the soldiers that the hostages were useless to them dead, and they all returned to the Palazzo Colonna. Three weeks earlier, on 23 September, the viceroy of Naples, Charles de Lannoy, had died. His replacement was Don Ugo de Moncada, a pupil of Cesare Borgia, wrote Guicciardini, and a man of "evil talents and wicked habits" (uomo di pravo

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Sanuto, 45:650. Gleason (1993), 44, characterizes Mocenigo as "irascible." Sanuto, 45:668. Sanuto, 45:680-81. Sanuto, 48:128. Sanuto, 50:326, 340-41,461. Sanuto, 51:239, 463, 540-41; ibid, 52:79-80. Eubel (1913), 3:309. Sanuto, 46:231 (report of 15 October 1527), 241.

The "Disastrous " Pontificate of Clement Vll

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44

ingegno e di pessimi costumi)—very bad news for the pope. Although Charles V's emissary, Francisco Quinones, General of the Franciscans, arrived in Rome on 12 October determined to liberate the pope at once, Moncada was another matter.45 He immediately demanded that the pope give up as hostages his own nipoti, Alessandro and Ippolito de' Medici. Cardinal Pisani's letters to his father of 21, 24, and 26 October from the Castel Sant' Angelo outline the bitter discussions. Clement offered two cardinals in place of Alessandro and Ippolito, "but the pope does not trust them, and the enemies do not trust the pope."46 Pisani thought that the pontiff and cardinals would all be taken off in the end.47 In a dramatic scene of 3 November, he reported that the Spanish, "hearing that Cardinals Trivulzio, Pisani, and [Gaddi?] were opposed to them, came into the castello to drag them away, but the pope would not allow it."48 On 26 November Clement finally agreed to terms that included giving over Alessandro and Ippolito as hostages, but, as Cardinal Pisani wrote to his father, he, Pisani, and Cardinal Agostino Trivulzio would substitute for them until they appeared.49 The two cardinals were not happy about this. Pisani wrote that he himself went "for the love of his country, with other words very lachrymose," while Trivulzio disguised himself and tried, unsuccessfully, to escape.50 The pope had promised them, Pisani added, that he would send the nipoti "soon," even "immediately" ("presto" and again, "subito").^ Then on 30 November, with the help of Pompeo Colonna, the hostages in the Palazzo Colonna got the guards drunk and made an adventurous escape, riding through Rome dressed as German soldiers.52 To the imperialists, of course, this meant that more hostages must be surrendered, and they had to be cardinals this time, not just bishops. So Cardinals Franciotto Orsini and Paolo Emilio Cesi were remanded into the custody of Pompeo Colonna; Pisani, Trivulzio, and Niccolo Gaddi, given over to the Spanish commander Fernando de AIar£on, headed for Naples.53

44 Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1553; Sanuto, 46:186. 45 Pastor, 9:451; Sanuto, 46:226. 46 Sanuto, 46:279-80: "il Papa voleva dar per obstasi in locho di do soi nepoti do cardinali, non sa a chi tochera: tamen il Papa non si fida di loro, et inimici non si fida dil Papa." 47 Sanuto, 46:279-80. 48 "Item, che spagnoli, intendendo i cardinali Triulzi, Pixani et [Gaddi?] ... erano contrarii, vene in castello per menar via essi cardinali, ma il Papa non volse." Sanuto, 46:290. 49 Sanuto, 46:347. 50 "[Pisani] scrive va per amor de la sua patria, con alcune parole molto lacrimose, ut in litteris. E 1'altro cardinal Triulzi volse fUzer et fuzite, et vene a la prima et seconda porta et fo lassato passar; a la terza fo conosuto uno fameio era con lui, et non fo lassato passar." Sanuto, 46:347. 51 Sanuto, 46:348. Pisani repeats this twice in the letter, evidently to reassure his father. 52 Sanuto, 46:354. 53 Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1896; Sanuto, 46:359, 389; Hook (1972), 219; Pastor, 9:466. Alar9on, the leader of the imperial garrison that occupied the Castel Sant' Angelo following the treaty of 5 June 1527, had earlier served as the jailer of King Francis I in the months after the French defeat at the battle of Pavia (24 February 1525). See R. J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 226-7, 243, 248.

36

The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

On 6 December the guards left the Castel Sant' Angelo at last. Although the imperialists strongly suggested that Clement wait a few days before leaving because of the chaotic conditions in the city, the pope, understandably not trusting Ugo de Moncada, slipped away from his prison during the small hours of 7 December, wearing borrowed clothes. He met an escort led by Luigi Gonzaga and proceeded to the comparative freedom of Orvieto.54 What qualms he may have felt for leaving the five cardinals hostage, we cannot know. It seems to me that we can be sure that he had no intention of handing over Ippolito and Alessandro, safe in Parma at that time, and one wonders how long it was before Pisani, Trivulzio, and Gaddi realized that "presto" and "subito" did not mean a great deal when it came to the Medici nipoti. In any case, Clement tried to compensate the five prelates, all of whom survived, with the sort of largess still available to him—in this case, bishoprics.55 The pope also worked for their release. By the end of February 1528, he had secured the liberty of Cesi and Orsini by somehow finding another 20,000 ducats, but the cardinals in the Castel Nuovo in Naples would have to wait for some months while the military drama played itself out.56

The Period of Exile In Orvieto, meanwhile, Clement was almost completely bereft of resources.57 What he did have, and insisted upon, was his authority as the Vicar of Christ. Accordingly, he set about aggressively trying to reassert papal control of the Patrimony of Peter. He ordered the Marchese of Mantua, Federico Gonzaga, to occupy Parma and Piacenza and sent Uberto Gambara as governor of Bologna. Clement was particularly angry at Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara and at the Venetians. His suggestion in late December, that Lautrec use military force to regain lands belonging to the Patrimony of Peter, was badly received: Lautrec declared that he had come to Italy to liberate the pope from the Spanish, and not to make war against his allies.58 Clement therefore began a sort of moral and diplomatic war, principally against Venice, because there was no rational way to deal with the duke of Ferrara. On the morning of 5 January 1528, the Archbishop of Manfredonia, Giovanni Maria del Monte, appeared before the Venetian Signoria accompanied by the legate and eight gentlemen of the Pregadi. He presented his credentials from the pope and then conferred alone with the heads of the Council of Ten. After dinner, the doge revealed the message to the Signoria: the pope is sure that our Signoria wishes to 54 Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1896-7; Hook (1972), 219-20; Pastor, 9:463-7; Sanuto, 46:375, 390. 55 Pisani and the bishopric of Treviso we have outlined above; Gaddi received the bishopric of Cosenza on 31 January 1528; Orsini received the bishopric of Rimini on 23 March 1528, and during the same consistory, Cesi resigned his bishopric of Cervia to a nephew; Trivulzio received the bishopric of Asri on 25 September 1528, See Eubel (1913), 3:183, 163, 118, 121. 56 Pastor, 10:12-13, n. 6; Sanuto, 47:13. 57 See Anne Reynolds's essay below. 58 Sanuto, 46:450.

The ''Disastrous " Pontificate of Clement Vll

37

restore the lands of the Church at once; the pope has also commanded the nuncio, Del Monte, to take possession of Ravenna and Cervia and serve as governor of Ravenna.59 Two days later, the Signona held a lively debate over the advisability of sending an ambassador to Clement to explain the republic's position and to persuade the pope to rejoin the military alliance; they voted to postpone action at that time.60 On the eleventh, Del Monte and the legate were once again put off, and on the thirteenth the Venetians held another vigorous debate. Finally on the fifteenth the doge informed Del Monte and the legate that Venice had determined to send an embassy to the pope, and that therefore he had no reply at that time. Del Monte, clearly angry, presented a written protest the following day. The doge refused to accept it, but Del Monte at least read it aloud to the assembly. The nuncio left on 19 January, most unhappy with the Serene Republic.61 Now came unexpected help in the person of the king of England. English ambassadors had already arrived in Orvieto to pursue Henry VIII's quest for the annulment of his marriage. In order to please the pope, English diplomacy from early 1528 put increasing pressure on Venice to relinquish Ravenna and Cervia. Venetian ambassador Marco Antonio Venier reported from London on 8 February that the king demanded the return of Ravenna and Cervia to the pope, and that Ferrara return Reggio and Modena.62 In May, Sebastiano Giustiniani, the ambassador to France, described to the Signoria a conference with the chancellor of France that included two emissaries from the pope and one from England. Papal nuncio Antonio Pucci, the bishop of Pistoia, had "made evil offices against our Signoria," accusing Venice of bad faith, of causing the ruin of the pope, of holding Ravenna and Cervia contrary to its duty, and of promising one thing and doing another.63 The English ambassador agreed, and urged Giustiniani to make his government's wishes known. The French, by contrast, were still tepid in this matter, saying that first, we must deal with the enemy.64 The English, however, grew increasingly insistent. From early 1528 to the conclusion of the Peace of Barcelona the following year, English diplomacy kept up a steady barrage of demands and even threats over Ravenna and Cervia.65 The French joined in by summer and finally tried a bribe. On 13 September 1528, the French ambassador announced to the Signoria that his king offered compensation in Apulia for the return of Ravenna and Cervia to Clement, "and he promises to do everything [he can] to see that the Signoria gets these towns after the death of this pope/'66 It is no wonder, then, that when the Venetian ambassador Gasparo Contarini arrived at last in Viterbo, he experienced some very awkward interviews with Clement. Elisabeth Gleason has thoroughly analyzed Contarini's mission, which lasted from 59 60 61 62 63

Sanuto, 46:459-60. Sanuto, 46:462-3; Gleason (1993), 42-59. Sanuto, 46:468, 487, 489-90, 502. Sanuto, 46:652-3. Sanuto, 47:474: "lo episcopo di Pistoia nontio del Papa facesse mal oficio contra la Signoria nostra, dicendo le manca di fede, causa di la ruina del Papa, che tien Ravena et Zervia al Papa tra il dover, che promette una cosa et fa 1'altra." 64 Sanuto, 47:474. 65 Sanuto, 48:32,410,413; ibid, 49:325-36. 66 Sanuto, 48:473.

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May 1528 to February 1530.67 "[T]o his surprise and even frustration," she writes, "Contarini came to realize that the pope's indecisiveness did not extend to the subject of the Papal State and that Clement was unwilling to engage in any negotiations regarding the two cities."68 Ravenna and Cervia aside, Venice, England, and France all had a common dip* lomatic goal during the summer of 1528: to persuade Clement to join their new league and declare against the emperor. All of these goals became moot during July as typhus and fever beset Lautrec's forces besieging Naples. In July also, Francis I's failure to satisfy his admiral Andrea Doria led to Doria's turning to Charles V as a more reliable employer, and the French army lost its supply line. 69 Illness had reduced French forces by half by August, and on the 16th, Lautrec himself died. A bungled retreat and surrender to the imperialists followed.70 Although the allies continued efforts to enlist the pope in their fading military enterprise, their hopes from him were unrealistic by now.71 Charles V had won.

Returning to Rome Clement moved back to Rome at last on 6 October 1528. He had now to attempt to salvage what he could. Refusing a reconciliation with the emperor for the time being, he insisted upon his neutrality and continued to demand the restoration of the alienated papal lands, now including Civitavecchia and Ostia. At the end of November, welcome news of the release of the hostages in Naples from confinement in the Castel Nuovo arrived in Rome, but they were finally set completely at liberty only in January 1529.72 Then Clement suddenly fell ill with a high fever; by 9 January the doctors despaired of his life. 73 Calling the cardinals to his sickbed on the evening of 10 January, "oppressed by his dangerous infirmity, [fearful of] leaving his heirs beggared and deprived of any defense," wrote Guicciardini, the pope elevated his nipote Ippolito to the cardinalate—his sole nepotistic creation.74 Clement VII's recovery was slow and fitful with repeated relapses, and, although he continued to proclaim neutrality, he began inevitably to turn to the one man who had the power to help him realize his goals: Charles V. On 9 May 1529, the pope sent a new ambassador, Girolamo da Schio, his maestro di casa and bishop of Vaison, to the emperor at Barcelona with full diplomatic powers. The parties quickly settled matters and the emperor publicly adhered to the terms of the Treaty of Barcelona (29 June 1529).75 Clement must have been satisfied. The emperor agreed to restore 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Gleason( 1993), 43-59. Gleason(1993),47. Pastor, 10:24. Pastor, 10:23-6; Sanuto, 48:382,410. Sanuto, 49:10 (15 November). Sanuto, 49:188, 344, 360. Pastor, 10:39. Sanuto, 49:218: "il quale, oppresso allora da pericolosa infermita, e in tempo che morendo lasciava i suoi mendichi e destituti di ogni presidio...." Guicciardini, Storia, 3:2070. Ippolito had been in Rome since 28 November. 75 Pastor, 10:55-7.

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Modena, Reggio, Rubiera, Ravenna, and Cervia to the Papal State and to deprive Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara; to dispose of the city of Florence at the will of the pope; to give his illegitimate daughter Margaret to Alessandro de' Medici in marriage; and to have the question of Francesco Sforza and the duchy of Milan adjudged fairly. The pope agreed to a league of mutual defense; to grant Charles the tribute (censo) from the Kingdom of Naples, keeping only the symbolic chinea (white horse) as a sign of sovereignty; to grant the nomination of 24 bishoprics in Naples in perpetuity to Charles and his heirs; and to grant Charles a cruciata (a tax on church property for crusades) for three years.76 Charles and Clement also agreed to implement the terms of the treaty and to meet in Italy for Charles's coronation as Holy Roman Emperor. While pope and emperor were making preparations for their meeting, Francis I's mother (Louise of Savoy) and Charles V's aunt (Archduchess Margaret, regent of the Netherlands) were hammering out a peace treaty in Cambrai.77 It was signed on 5 August 1529 and published in Rome on 19 September. The Italian wars were over. Pope and emperor met in Bologna in November amid scenes of unbridled pomp and conspicuous consumption display.78 Before the actual coronation, which took place on 24 February 1530, the two men settled the outstanding questions. Peace with Venice was published on 1 January; Charles invested Francesco Sforza as duke of Milan on 3 January; and Charles postponed a decision about the duke of Ferrara.79 The emperor's new captain, the prince of Orange, had already begun the conquest of Florence in September, and, although the pope still hoped for a peaceful transfer of the city, it was not to be. The Florentines held out against a painful siege until 12 August 1530. On 5 July 1531, Alessandro de' Medici rode into the city as hereditary duke.80 The coronation of Charles V is usually referred to as a triumph for the emperor; it was also a triumph for Clement VII. For Clement, there was one problem yet to be solved: what to do with young Catherine de' Medici? She was now 11 years old and thus approaching marriageable age. As early as the fall of 1530 the French ambassador, Cardinal Gabriel de Gramont, proposed a match between Catherine and Henri, second son of Francis I and future king, with, perhaps, Parma and Piacenza as a dowry—an offer that Clement did not take seriously at the time.81 The emperor, for his part, wanted her to marry Francesco Sforza of Milan. However, when, on 3 April 1531, Charles angered the pope mightily by investing Alfonso d'Este with Modena and Reggio, Clement began to consider the French match in earnest. He was also disturbed by reports from France that any further agreements between Charles and Clement could result in the separation of the French Church from Rome—schism again!82 During 1532, therefore, the pope determined to meet with Francis in person in the interests of international peace (and of Catherine). Clement explained this to Charles when they met again at Bologna during the winter of 1532-33 to discuss the problem of the Turks 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Hook (1972), 248; Sanuto, 51:252; Pastor, 10:56^7. Pastor, 10:59; Hook (1972), 249-50. Sanuto, 52:180-81. Sanuto, 52:380, 382,435, 447, 463^, 466. Sanuto, 51:602; Hook (1972), 276^8. Pastor, 10:211. Sanuto, 57:295-6.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History. Politics, Culture

and Councils, but Charles was, in turn, angry at the pope. Nevertheless, Clement sent Catherine off to France in September and sailed for Marseilles in October. Although he "strove to persuade everyone that he went there principally to establish the peace and to pursue an enterprise against the infidels, to reduce the king of England to a favorable course, and finally only for the universal welfare," wrote Guicciardini, the real reason was the marriage. Clement performed the nuptial ceremony himself on 28 October 1533 amid rumors that he wanted to witness the consummation of the marriage "with his own eyes" (propriis oculis), not trusting Francis I. 84 Conclusion Clement VII died less than a year later, on 25 September 1534. How well had he accomplished his goals? First, Clement had upheld the prerogatives and dignity of the papacy throughout the ordeal. There was no whining or groveling, but instead consistent objection and protest against violations of papal authority. Second, the firm rejection of a removal to Avignon and the treaty with France in 1533 meant that most of Catholic Europe remained part of the Roman discipline. Third, with the exceptions of Modena and Reggio, the Papal State was once again intact. Fourth, Florence was now a duchy with a Medici as hereditary ruler. And finally, Ippolito was a cardinal, vice-chancellor of the Church, and endowed with rich benefices; Alessandro was duke of Florence and betrothed to a Habsburg princess; and Catherine was the wife of the second-born son of the king of France. What about the flaws in Clement's character? Perhaps the judgments of Guicciardini, Giovio, and Contarini were overly harsh. The pope was not avaricious; he simply had no money. Guicciardini remarked that at the pope's death, "he left in the Castel Sant' Angelo many jewels and in the pontifical chamber many offices, but, despite the universal belief, only a tiny quantity of money."85 Nor do his actions portray timidity and cowardice. The pope displayed considerable moral courage in repeatedly refusing to comply with his captors' demands, and, when required—as on the day the soldiers invaded the papal fortress to remove Pisani and his colleagues— he showed physical courage as well. In June of 1532, one of Clement's aides reported from Rome that the French were accusing the pope of being an imperialist, and the imperialists were complaining that the pope was French, so tha* it was almost impossible to keep one and the other happy, and "we find ourselves between the rocks and the wall."86 For a pope who found himself between a rock and a hard place throughout his pontificate, Clement VII did very well. 83 "E sforzavasi il pontefice di persuadere a ciascuno di andare la principalmente per praticare la pace e trattare la impresa contro agli infedeli, ridurre a buona via il re di Inghilterra, e finalmente solo per gli interessi comuni...." Guicciardini, 3:2066. 84 Sanuto, 58:441, 503. 85 Guicciardini, Storia, 3:2069: "lasciate in Castello Santo Angelo molte gioie e nella camera pontificale moltissimi offici ma, contro alia opinione universale, quantita piccolissima di danari." 86 Pastor, 10:209, n. 2: "ce ritroviamo fra li calci et I'muro."

Chapter 4

All in the Family: The Medici Women and Pope Clement VII* Natalie Tomas

During the pontificates of the two Medici popes, Leo X (1513-1521) and Clement VII (1523-1534), the frequenting of the Curia by the pope's female relatives was commonplace. As a direct result of their familial relationships with these two pontiffs and other influential men of their circle, the Medici women wielded significant (if seldom recognized) power and influence at the papal court. Such connections, of course, were of great importance. Political power was lost or won generally throughout Europe at the time because of familial connection, so this type of power held by the Medici women—that is, power through the family—should not be underestimated or trivialized. However, women had to be cautious in exercising this power, since contemporaries believed that even in the domestic arena—and certainly beyond it—men best exercised formal authority and power. They could, by right, engage in a number of activities in the public arena, such as holding political, clerical, or military office, while the comparatively few women who wielded public power were generally vilified unless they were perceived to be engaging in such activity to benefit the male members of their family rather than themselves and/or because there were no other men available to undertake the task at hand.1 The Medici women's power and influence therefore had to be exercised with care at the papal court. Even though they had the same familial surname—whether obtained at birth or through marriage—as the pontiff, they could not take their familial connections for granted because as females their activities in the public sphere were always open to question and censure. It could be argued that any discussion of the activities of women at the papal court in the sixteenth century is an oxymoron. After all, unlike other Italian courts, where women of the ruling family could exercise significant power and influence, the papal court's exclusively clerical character had rendered it a "male-only" preserve. In reality of course women did frequent the papal court, either as courtesans, visiting dignitaries, or, occasionally, as relatives of the incumbent pope.2 As such their presence

1 2

The themes in this chapter are further elaborated in N. R. Tomas, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), chap. 5. This issue is more fully discussed in N. Tomas, "Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici and the 'Problem' of a Female Ruler in Early Sixteenth Century Florence," RS 14 (2000): 70-90. On courtesans in papal Rome, see Lettere di cortigiane del Rinascimento, ed. A. Romano (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1990), with earlier bibliography. One female dignitary who visited the papal court was Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua, whom Pope Leo X

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

might be tolerated if they did not involve themselves in the workings of the court or try to influence the decisions of its members in any way. Pope Julius II's daughter Felice, for example, lived near the papal court but had no formal role there.3 And Julius disliked his sister-in-law Giovanna da Montefeltro, precisely because she paid formal visits to cardinals, and thus transgressed the unwritten rules regarding women's behavior in papal Rome. 4 Her conduct threatened the court's celibate, all-male clerical character, and Giovanna's actions also supposedly undermined the allegiance and loyalty owed to the Catholic Church by those in the Curia (including the pontiff himself) whom she enjoined to advance the "private" interests of their natal families, which were sometimes in opposition to the interests of the Church. I will begin with a brief account of the activities of the women of the Medici at the court of Pope Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici) but the focus of this essay will be on the relationship between Pope Clement VII and the women of the Medici family, particularly his cousin, Lucrezia Medici-Salviati (1470-1553), and her daughter, Maria Salviati-Medici (1499-1543), the mother of Duke Cosimo I. Both women consciously reminded the pope and other men of the Medici, in a variety of ways, that they were all from the same family, as they strove to gain the benefits of papal patronage for their male relatives. This is particularly important because their access to power and influence was contingent upon the justification of their actions in this male sphere in terms of their duties as wives and mothers. Indeed, their traditional responsibility to protect and advance the interests of their male kin, rather than any interests of their own, provided both women with the opportunity to act with authority in an arena which was theoretically closed to them because they were female. The financial crises of Leo X's pontificate did not escape public notice. His sister-in-law, Alfonsina Orsini, wrote to her son Lorenzo in January 1514 that "people are gossiping that here he [Leo] has been pope for less than a year, and even though he fell heir to a rich papacy, he still has to borrow against his future incomes to get enough money to spend a mere fifteen days away from Rome."5 Pope Julius II had left his successor a healthy treasury. But Leo, who had a reputation as a spendthrift and an extravagant person who enjoyed himself too much and was overgenerous to relatives and friends, exhausted his predecessor's savings within two years.6 The expenses of the

3 4 5

6

entertained by staging a magnificent hunt in her honor in January 1515. See J. Kruse, "Hunting, Magnificence and the Court of Leo X," RS 7 (1993): 243-57, at 252. C. Shaw, Julius II: The Warrior Pope (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 168, 182-3. Shaw (1993), 168. This English translation is from M. M. Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth Century Florence and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 121, who cites the archival source, ASF, MaP, 114, 41, letter of 18 January 1514. Pastor, 8:91, citing Sanuto, 20:341. Cf. Pastor, 8:99, citing Francesco Vettori's Sommario delta storia d'Italia dal 151J al 1527: "a stone could more easily fly up into the air of itself than Leo could keep possession of a thousand ducats." See also Bullard (1980), 121. Kruse (1993) argues compellingly that Leo was not overgenerous, but instead acted magnificently, as befitted his elevated position.

The Medici Women and Pope Clement Vll

43

pope's family and his court were so great, Francesco Vettori informed his brother Piero, that the papacy could not provide for more than the most basic of these costs. Leo X had a huge household and Curia to maintain. In an official list of the papal court and household, compiled by the pope's Florentine major-domo Alessandro Neroni, dated 1 May 1514, there was a household staff (famiglia) of 683, namely 244 men holding high offices, 174 special officials, and 265 servants.8 This list does not include the artists, humanists, military and diplomatic officials—and even a court jester— on Leo X's payroll. The total cost per annum was 26,500 ducats.10 Therefore, the pope was always short of funds and relied heavily on money lent to him by the various banks in Rome, some 30 of which were Florentine." In addition, he raised money by the sale of two thousand venal offices, many of which were held in plurality, and also by selling cardinals 1 hats. 12 Prior to one such lucrative sale, a Medici chancellor, Goro Gheri, informed Alfonsina in January 1517: "it is said that His Holiness wishes to create cardinals."13 Like his predecessors, Leo X also relied on income derived from the Papal States. Despite the fact that the pope's financial problems were largely of his own making, it was the women of the Medici family who were at the papal court during LeoX's pontificate—namely, his sisters Lucrezia Salviati, Maddalena Cibo, and Contessina Ridolfi as well as his sister-in-law Alfonsina Orsini—who were blamed, at least in part, for his dire financial straits because of their requests of him on behalf of male relatives. According to BartolommeoCerretam: There were [the Pope's] three sisters with their children there, and his sister-in-law, that is the mother of Lorenzo [Alfonsina Orsini], and all were waiting to ask for and to procure the incomes of benefices and cardinals' hats. There were many friends and relatives at court to provide for appropriately, which ... has made a rich papacy into a poor one. In fact, all of the women of the Medici family were lobbying Leo not for their own benefit but rather on behalf of their sons or other male members of their families in

7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

Cited in O. Tommasini, La vita e gli scritti di Niccolo Machiavelli, 2 vols. (Rome: Ermanno Loescher, 1883-1911) 2, pt. 1:80, n. 1. See A. Ferrajoli, // ruolo della corte di Leone X: (1514-1516), ed. V. De Caprio (Rome: Bulzoni, 1984), 5-33, which contains a list of all those at Leo X's court. Pastor, 8:105-7. On Alessandro Neroni, see Ferrajoli (1984), 181-206. Ferrajoli (1984), 189. On the Florentine banking community under the Medici popes, see M. M. Bullard, "Mercatores Florentini Romanam Curiam Sequentes in the Early Sixteenth Century," JMRS 6 (1976): 51-71. See also Bullard (1980), passim. P. Partner, The Pope's Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 38, 212. ASF, Copialettere di Goro Gheri, 2, fol. 43r, 22/23 January 1516/17: "si parla che Nostro Santita vuole fare cardinali." Bullard (1980), 125 cites Sanuto, 24.451-3, which also refers to Leo's sale of cardinals' hats. Also mentioned is Jacopo Salviati's payment of an undisclosed amount of money for the elevation of his son Giovanni. See Bullard (1976); Bullard (1980), 121-7; Partner (1990), 209-13. B. Cerretam, Ricordi, ed. G. Berti (Florence: Olshcki, 1993), 320. "Eravi tre sorelle co' figl[i]oli e la chognata, c[i]oe la madre di Lorenzo, [Alfonsina Orsini], e tutti atendevano a chiedere e prochurare a entrate 'benifitii et capelli. Era in chorte molti amici e parentti a provisione in modo che ... d'un papato richcho [sic] Pavevano fatto povero."

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

order to protect and further the interests of those men. 16 Despite the fact that such actions were the duty of all "good" wives and mothers, Cerretani implicitly linked all of the Medici women, in this instance, with the vices of ambition and avarice.17 A contemporary observer later represented Alfonsma's daughter, Clarice, as being disruptive, disorderly and a financial burden for Clement, in January 1527, Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga described, in a very negative manner, her efforts to get Pope Clement VII to provide the ransom for her husband (and Clement's close friend) Filippo Strozzi, who was being held captive by Spanish troops in Naples. 18 He complained that Clarice was pestering the pontiff and "with tears, sighs and laments is in the ear of His Holiness in order to procure ... the liberation of her husband, so that the poor pontiff is assailed on every side not unlike a ship in the midst of the sea buffeted by contrary winds." 19 Yet she was criticized by Gonzaga for doing exactly what was expected of every loyal and dutiful wife: that is, trying to assist her husband in any way she could at a time of crisis. Clarice's tears and pleas were condemned because in the eyes of male contemporaries the presence of women in this quintessentially male domain was disruptive and annoying as well as an inversion of the accepted social order, which consequently brought with it financial disorder and ruin for those associated with them. 20 Despite contemporary disquiet, both Medici popes accepted the presence of their female relatives at court. Giulio de' Medici's relationship with Clarice was fraught with tension because he had tried to defraud her of her inheritance from her mother. 21 Giulio, however, had earlier had a long-term friendship with Alfonsina, and he enjoyed a far more positive relationship with other women from the Medici family during his pontificate, namely, Lucrezia and Maria Salviati.

16 At all times these women advanced the interests of either their marital or natal families and were focused on the interests of patrilineage. For Florence, see T. Kuehn, "Understanding Gender Inequality in Renaissance Florence: Personhood and Gifts of Maternal Inheritance by Women," Journal of Women 's History 8 (1996): 58-80. For Venice, where women sometimes had interests that transcended just favoring male relatives, see the introduction to S. Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). 17 On this theme see Tomas (2000). See also S. E. Reiss, "Widow, Mother, Patron of Art: Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici," in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. S. E. Reiss and D. G. Wilkins (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2001), 125-57. 18 Pastor, 9:502. Cf. J. Nardi, Istorie della cittd di Firenze, ed. A. Gelli, 2 vols. (Florence: Le Monnier, 1858), 2:124; B. Segni, Istorie fiorentine dall'anno MDXXVIl al MDLV, ed. G. Gargani (Florence: Barbera Bianchi ecomp., 1857), 7, 14. 19 Pastor, 9:502: "con lacnme, suspiri et lamenti sta alle horecchie di S. Sta procurando ... la liberatione del marito, de modo che il povero pontifice e combattuto da ogni canto non altramente che una nave in mezzo il mare agitata da contrarii venti." 20 For the belief that women's presence in the male domain brought ruin, see Tomas (2000) and the references cited there. 21 See R. Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori, Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant (London: Athlone Press, 1972), 147; S. E. Reiss, "Cardinal Giulio de' Medici as a Patron of Art 1513-1523" (Ph. D. diss., Princeton University, 1992), 501, n. 177; and Reiss (2001), 156,n. 149.

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45

Lucrezia Salviati: The "Real Boss of the Palace" Lucrezia Salviati's primary sphere of influence within the Medici regime was at the papal court in Rome. For example, she, as Leo X's only surviving sibling, was among those at his deathbed in December 1521. 22 The Salviati family's relationship with the Medici regime in Florence during the 1520s and 1530s was at best strained, mainly because of Jacopo and Lucrezia's opposition to its increasingly seigneurial style. 23 The importance of the papal connection to the Salviati is highlighted by the fact that during the brief pontificate of Leo's successor, the Dutchman Adrian VI (pope, 1522-23), the Salviati bank in Rome incurred heavy financial losses, as did many other Italian banks in the city, because of a loss of patronage.24 The election of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici as Pope Clement VII in November 1523 saw an immediate upturn in the Salviati's fortunes in Rome. Jacopo Salviati was a member of the pontiffs immediate circle, and he was soon appointed papal legate to Modena and Reggio.25 In a letter of December 1524, to the eldest of her sons. Cardinal Giovanni, Lucrezia emphasized the pope's close relationship with her husband, especially Jacopo's own loyalty to the pontiff. She warned Giovanni that her husband's sense of duty to Clement VII could even override parental feeling: "But I remind you well, to be cautious in writing because he [Jacopo] shows everything to His Holiness without exception."26 Jacopo's status as a close advisor of Clement, however, did not imply his, or indeed Lucrezia's, unquestioning agreement with the pope on all matters. Both opposed him in 1533 with regard to the decision to marry Catherine de' Medici, daughter of the late Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, to Henri, duke of Orleans. The grounds for their opposition were that such a union went against the Medicean tradition of marrying at least their eldest daughters to Florentines, which had occurred in the case of Jacopo and Lucrezia's own marriage. Clement trusted Jacopo enough, however, to give him responsibility for making arrangements for Catherine's journey to France.27 In this instance, the interests of the Medici family, and the wishes of a pope, would be put ahead of Jacopo's (and Lucrezia's) own personal beliefs. Lucrezia Salviati's main preoccupation during this period, however, was the management of Cardinal Giovanni's extensive household, especially during his absence as papal legate to Bologna in 1524 and 1525. Lucrezia's position in her son's household was a highly unusual one (similarly, as we have noted, women generally were absent from the papal court, and the presence of the Medici women there was an exception to this rule). But it became common during the course of the sixteenth 22 Sanuto, 32:235. 23 On the Salviati relationship to the Medici regime, see P Hurtubise, Unefamille temoin: Les Salviati (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1985), passim; L. Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence. 1494-1545 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), chap. 6 and passim. 24 Hurtubise (1985), 155. 25 Hurtubise (1985), 161, citing Sanuto, 35:320. The details of the mission are not specified. 26 ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 152, fol. 413,20 December 1524. "Ma ben gli ricordo a esser cauta nello scrivere perche lui [Jacopo] mostra tutto alia Santita di Nostro Signore sanza rispetto alcuno." 27 Hurtubise (1985), 165.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

century for families connected to the papal Curia to be headed by the ecclesiastic, who, as Irene Fosi and Maria Antonietta Visceglia have most recently observed: exercised his control [of the family] through the more subtle instruments of persuasion rather than the more rigid ones of formality and authority, establishing within the group ... a collaborative relationship with the women, and in particular with the first lady of the house, to the disadvantage of the married male brothers.28 Lucrezia's important management role in Giovanni's household followed this general pattern and indicates its extreme significance to the Salviati, given the importance of a cardinal's court and Giovanni's own influence with the pope. As Cardinal Giovanni's modern biographer Pierre Hurtubise suggests, she acted as "the real boss of the Palace."29 Given the absence of female rivals at a cardinal's court, Lucrezia could use traditional domestic functions as a tool for the exercise of power and influence in an all-male highly political arena with full authority to do so. Her management ability was considerable, although it did not escape criticism. In November of 1524, for example, Giovanni's major-domo, Juan Hortigosa, informed the cardinal that household matters were going well—despite, it seems, some complaints against an unspecified reform that Lucrezia had made. Lucrezia's duties and sphere of influence extended even further. She was responsible for the administration of her son's benefices. Filippo Nerli, Giovanni's brother-in-law, advised him in February 1525 that he should first ascertain his mother's wishes regarding a matter to do with an abbey that was one of his benefices, so that he could then decide what he wanted to do.31 The acquisition and effective management of benefices was a major source of a cardinal's wealth and prestige, and thus this task was crucial to Giovanni's success.32 This fact makes the undertaking of such a duty by Lucrezia in her son's absence even more significant, given that, by definition, a woman could not hold an ecclesiastical benefice. It highlights again her position of influence in an arena that was the almost exclusive preserve of male clerics and a few select laymen. His mother made it clear to Giovanni shortly before he left for Spain in May 1525 that she would ensure that the details regarding his acquisition of a bishopric in Ferrara would be finalized. In a letter of 22 May 1525 Lucrezia wrote: "Concerning the Bishopric of Ferrara, Your Lordship should leave the matter to me.... I am satisfied to rent it for over 4000 ducats a year and it is well secured...." 33 She then asked Giovanni to 28 29 30 31 32 33

I. Fosi and M. A. Visceglia, "Marriage and Politics in the Papal Court in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in Marriage in Italy. 1300-1650, ed. T. Dean and K. J. P Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 197-224, at 210. P. Hurtubise, "La 'familia' del Cardmale Giovanni Salviati, 1517-1553" in 'Familia ' del principe e famiglia aristocratica, ed. C. Mozzarelli, 2 vols. (Rome: Bulzoni, 1988), 2:589-609, at 590: "si presenta come la vera padrona del Palazzo/' ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 151, fol. 35v, 24 November 1524: "Le cose di casa passano bene." ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 154, fol. 8v, 1 February 1525, B. M. Hallman, Italian Cardinals. Reform, and the Church as Property (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), 43, 55. ASF. Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 157, fol. 231 v: "Del Vescovado di Ferrara, Vostra Signoria ne lasci il pensier a me ... me basta Tanimo d'affitarlo sopra quattromila ducati Tanno et ben siguri...." This text is published in Hurtubise (1985), 342.

47

The Medici Women and Pope Clement Vll 34

arrange for a procurator and, with Jacopo's consent, noted, "I will do the rest." As a Florentine woman, she could not legally sign a contract, and Jacopo, as her spouse and head of the family, always had to be consulted; but Lucrezia was in charge.35 A few weeks later, she was not slow to use her position and her authority over Giovanni—both as his mother and as the administrator of his benefices—to make him relinquish two of his own benefices in favor of her younger son, Jacopino.36 Lucrezia also was involved in negotiations regarding the acquisition of a benefice that she felt should be ceded to another man, a certain Cesare: I have succeeded in the task of having Messer Pagolo d'Arezzo, assign his father's benefices to Cesare, as is his duty.... I know of nothing else that I can do to benefit Cesare in this matter except to press him. 37 Her management responsibilities also included trying to ensure that an order of Giovanni's that had been ignored would soon be obeyed.38 Lucrezia was also asked to do favors by her eldest son, such as assisting a Salviati client, Bernardo di Maestro Giorgio. She wrote: "Concerning Bernardo, I will not fail to do what he needs when the time comes...."39 She told Giovanni in June 1525: 'Tomorrow morning, I will speak to His Holiness [Clement] concerning the two abbeys that he wished to unite into one to give to Bernardo." 40 Lucrezia's access to the pope further underlines her own significant influence as "boss" of Giovanni's palace. More often, however, the situation was reversed, and Lucrezia was a conduit and a source of recommendation for those seeking assistance from Giovanni to acquire benefices or other clerical offices. As always, those who were relatives, friends, and dutiful clients of the Medici or Salviati families would be the ones most likely to be recommended: Messer Donate de1 Bardi, of those from Berrua [Vemio], has told me several times that he wishes to stay with Your Most Reverend Lordship, and although I replied that you are overloaded with servants for now, still he seems young to me, qualified and ... I thought to recommend him to Your Most Reverend Lordship.41 34 ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 157, fol.23lv: "io faro el restante.1' 35 See T. Kuehn, "'Cum Consensu Mundualdi': Legal Guardianship of Women in Quattrocento Florence," Viator 13 (1982): 309-33; T. Kuehn, Law, Family and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), esp. 212-37. 36 Hurtubise (1985), 148, n. 49. The source is ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 158, fol. 148v, 9 June 1525. 37 ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. 1, 158, fol. 149, 9 June 1525: "lo ho fatto 1'offitio efficacemente con Messer Pagolo d'Arezzo perche facci parte a Cesare delli benefitii di suo padre, come gli e debito.... Ne altro so che mi poter fare a benefitio di Cesare in questo caso se non di solecitarlo." 38 ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 153, fol. 8, 1 January 1525. 39 ASF. Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 155, fol. 123, 8 March 1525: "A Bernardo, non manchero del quello li fiadel bisognio quando sara tempo...." 40 ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 158, fol. 148, 9 June 1525. "Parlero domatina ... con Nostro Signore." 41 ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 152, fol. 497, 28 December 1524. "Messer Donato de' Bardi di quei da Bernia [sic] [Vemio], me ha detto piu volte che desideraria stare con Vostra Signoria

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This Bardi youth, a distant relative, was someone she would have felt obligated to assist. A servant of the pope was highly recommended to Giovanni by his mother, simply because he was "a familiar of His Holiness."42 In March 1525 Lucrezia wrote to Giovanni, saying: "I understand that there are certain vacant benefices here in Rome ... and that these said benefices are to be reserved for you"; she wished him to give them to Claudio and Gagliardino, two loyal servants of the Salviati for several years.43 Lucrezia emphasized that in addition they deserved them and were destitute.44 On another occasion, she supported the request of "Zacharia, servant of Messer Jacopo ... [who] is a good and much loved servant," and who wished to be granted a vacant benefice of Giovanni's.45 Another Salviati client wished to become one of the cardinal's protonotaries, and was recommended by Lucrezia to Giovanni. 46 In the course of an audience with Clement VII, she asked her son to support her own client, the abbess of S. Quintino in Parma, whose nuns (contrary to the pope's belief) did not wish to remain separated from her.47 This is a further indicator of how far afield Lucrezia's patronage and influence could spread, and how important her relationship to the pontiff was to those in need. In her letters to her elder son, Lucrezia's position as a mother enabled her even to advise and educate a cardinal. She told him, for example, to do the pope's bidding and always to interpret his actions in a positive manner. 48 Lucrezia was concerned that Giovanni maintain his honor as papal legate to Bologna and she suggested that he take someone with him to Spain as an aide: "However, it is necessary that Your Lordship think about [taking with you] a qualified man of good family who will do you honor."49 Some two weeks later, Lucrezia told him not to take too large an entourage with him when he traveled, as "it would not bring you honor or any good at all, but [would] sooner [cause] great disorder and bother."50 Some months earlier, in December 1524, she became concerned that as a result of the lack of diligence of one of their employees, two men had escaped from prison, which did not please the pope.51 Lucrezia further warned her son that he must take charge and put an end to these escapes.52 A week later she was still anxious about the issue as there had been further

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Reverendissima, et benche io li habbi resposto, che Lei, per hora e assai gravata de famiglia, pure parendomi giovene, [sic] qualficato et ... me e parso raccomandarlo a Vostra Signoria Reverendissima." ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 153, fol. i^5,12 January 1525: "familiar[e] del Nostro Signore." ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 155, fol. 66, 8 March 1525. "Intendo esser vacati certi benefitioli qui in Roma ... et per esser detti benefitii riservati a Lei." ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 155, fol. 66, 8 March 1525. ASF, Cart Strozz., ser. I, 157, fol. 333, 29 May 1525. "Zaccharia, servitor di m. Jacopo ... [who] e buon et amorevole servitore." The benefice was the abbey of Rodon. ASF, Carte Strozz,. ser. 1, 156, fol. 81,5 April 1525. ASF, Carte Strozz,. ser. I, 158, fols. 135r-v, 9 June 1525. ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 155, fol. 123, 8 March 1525. ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 157, fol. 23Iv, 22 May 1525: "Perd e necessario che Vostra Signoria pensi ad un huomo da bene et qualificato che li faccia honore." ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 158, fol. 59, 5 June 1525: "non puo causargli honore ne bene alcuno, ma piii presto disordine et fastidio grande." ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 152, fol. 497, 28 December 1524. ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. 1,152, fol. 497, 28 December 1524.

The Medici Women and Pope Clement VII

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escapes, and consequently both Lucrezia and Jacopo were concerned for his "honor and interest.'*53 Broader familial concerns also occupied Lucrezia's correspondence with Giovanni. The issues discussed in these letters, such as the problem of recovering the dowry of Giovanni's recently widowed sister, Elena, from the noble Pallavicino family so that it could be given to her new husband, Jacopo d'Appiano, was more than simply a private family matter because of the political import of such alliances to the Medici and Salviati families, including the pope.54 Lucrezia makes clear the significance of Clement's role in these matters and the importance of acceding to his wishes. "Every time one cannot do other than be content and accommodate oneself to that which God and His Holiness order and dispose."55 Her shrewd advice to Giovanni on how to handle his brother Lorenzo's inflated feelings of self-importance, as well as her directives to her youngest son, Alamanno, concerning his wayward behavior, reveal something of how Lucrezia was able to act so decisively as the "boss" in the male environment of a cardinal's court, while still working within the acceptable bounds of the maternal sphere of responsibility. 56 By February 1520, as a consequence of the earlier deaths of her two younger sisters and more recently of Alfonsina Orsini, Lucrezia, who now lacked female rivals at the papal court, was effectively acting within a familial arena which, thanks to the increasingly seigneurial character of the Medici regime, had significantly augmented its power and field of endeavor, thus enabling her to exercise authority in a cardinal's court and the Curia with impunity. 57

Maria Salviati: For the Good of Cosimo Jacopo and Lucrezia's decision in January 1513 to betroth their fourteen-year-old daughter, Maria, to their distant relative, Giovanni de' Medici—known as Giovanni "delle Bande Nere" on account of the black armbands he wore throughout his career as a famed mercenary soldier—was considered by at least one patrician letter-writer of the day to have created a marriage alliance "of great quality."58 Giovanni was the

53 ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 153, fol. 133, 7 January 1525: "per 1'honore et per 1'utile suo." 54 On the discussions regarding this marriage, see ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 157, fol. 1, 1 May 1525; fol. 18, 3 May 1525; fol. 23, 3 May 1525; fol. 231,22 May 1525. 55 ASF, Cart. Strozz., ser. I, 157, fol. Iv, 1 May 1525. "Tutta volta non si puo far altro se non contentarsi et accornodarsi a quel che Dio et la Santita di Nostra Signore ordina et dispone." 56 For Lorenzo's self-importance, see Hurtubise, (1985), 235, n. 9. The source is ASF, Cart. Strozz, ser. 1, 151, fol. 68, 11 November 1524. For Alamanno, see ibid., fols. 335, 206, 11 November 1525, and fol. 216, 19 April 1526. 57 On the increasingly seigneurial character of the Medici regime see, for example, H. C. Butters, Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence 1502-1519 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), and the sources cited in note 23 above. 58 F. Guicciardini, Le lettere, ed. P. Jodogne, 7 vols. to date (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per L'eta Moderna e Contemporanea, 1986-[1999]), 1: 324, (lett. 87, 8 January 1513). The letter, to Francesco Guicciardini from his brother Jacopo, notes that the alliance was "di molta qualita."

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son of Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de' Medici—a descendant of Cosimo "The Elder's" younger brother, Lorenzo—and Caterina Sforza, the famous ruler of Imola. Like her mother, Maria also had strong relationships with the Medici pontiffs and their courts, and after her marriage in 1516, she used her connections to assist her spouse. In March 1520 Giovanni Salviati wrote to his sister: "Rest assured that your affairs and Giovanni's are as close to my heart as are my own, and as many times as I see the opportunity, I will recommend you to His Holiness [Leo] as I have always done until now."59 In December 1523, shortly after the election of Clement VII, she appealed to the new pontiff to relieve her consort of his debts: Most blessed father ... with most humble reverence I remind you it would not be hard for you to relieve my lord consort from all the interest and deposits which burden him ... because if it [the assistance] does not arrive from Your Holiness, here there is no way to be able to free him from it.60 A few months later, in March 1524, after two visits with the pope, Maria was able to report to her husband Giovanni that: "Concerning the debits and deposits ... (which, according to His Beatitude, exceed the sum of six thousand ducats) he says he is happy at present to relieve you of the burden." 61 After she was widowed in December 1526, Maria directed her energies toward maximizing opportunities for her son, Cosimo, who had been born in June 1519. However, while the focus of her activity changed, the strategies she employed were substantially the same. Maria utilized her ties with the papal court to aid her son, much as she had done for his father. All decisions Maria made regarding Cosimo were geared toward ensuring his future as a member of the Medici regime. Her commitment to Cosimo's well-being was so all encompassing that it even superseded other familial loyalties. In May 1531, she even refused requests by Clement and her family to remarry. She wrote to her brother, Cardinal Giovanni, giving her reasons for the refusal: As soon as that blessed soul of my lord consort had gone, in that instant, I decided to live always with my son for many reasons.... [A]nd for one very special [reason], I considered that my son, having been born of such especially fortunate lineage, was not going to be abandoned by me. I would be able to be of much greater use to him by staying with him than by leaving him.

59 ASF, MaP, 85, 406, 6 March 1520. "Siate certa che le cose vostre et di Giovanni sono al c[u]ore quanto le rrua proprie, et tante volte quante vedro la [sic] occasione le raccomandero alia Santita di Nostro Signore come sempre ho facto insino a hora. 60 Printed in G. Milanesi, "Lettere inedite e testamento di Giovanni de1 Medici detto delle Bande Nere con altri di Maria e lacopo Salviati," AS! 9 (1859): 3-29, at 18 (5 December 1523). "Beatissime Pater... con ogni humile reverentia le ricordo, non le sia grave levare el mio signer consorte da tanti interessi et depositi quanti si trova adosso ... perche se da Vostra Santita non viene, qui non e modo alchuno da potersene liberare." 61 Published in Milanesi (1859), 26 (9 March 1524): "Circa e' debiti et depositi ... (quali, secondo dixe Sua Beatitudine, passano la somma de sei mila ducati), dixe essere contenta di presente levarvevi da dosso." 62 Published in C. Guasti, "Alcuni fatti delle prima giovinezza di Cosimo I de1 Medici," GSAT2 (1858): 3-64, 295-320, at 28 (3 May 1531): "subito che quella benedecta anima

The Medici Women and Pope Clement VII

51

In this instance, Maria's maternal duty to remain with her son and to assist him as he grew up, outweighed familial responsibilities. Maria wrote to the pope and to her parents, as well as to Giovanni regarding her decision not to remarry. She asked her brother to ensure that they all saw her two preceding letters on this matter, and, most importantly, Maria requested that he support her and Cosimo in his discussions with Clement V I I on this issue.63 Both Medici popes were vitally interested in Cosimo and his upbringing, possibly seeing his birth in June 1519 as vital to the legitimate continuation (and perhaps revitalization) of the Medici family's lineage. 64 Leo X had named the baby in memory of his celebrated ancestor Cosimo de' Medici 'The Elder," and Maria began the process of bringing her young son to the attention of Clement VII almost immediately after his election. 65 In December 1523, in a postscript (probably written in her own hand) to the letter mentioned above concerning Giovanni's financial woes, she asked the new pope to provide her infant son with a gold chain worth four to five ducats, as well as a medal for him "when you have the money."66 Some two months later, she informed Giovanni joyfully of the obvious affection the pope held for their son.67 Maria also, it seems, managed to convince Clement to allow her to move Cosimo to Rome in 1524, with the intention of enabling him to remain in the public eye.68 She continued to recommend Cosimo to the pope when widowed. In a letter of 1527, written after the Sack of Rome in May, Maria commiserated with Clement VII on his misfortunes. Although she acknowledged that his situation was much worse than hers, she concluded by saying that he should not forget "this our poor son...." 69 In 1533, she again wrote to Clement on her son's behalf because she saw it as her maternal duty to try to advance his interests with the Medici pope: "Holy Father. Although I know that Cosmo [sic], my son, has remembered himself to Your Holiness; also for my satisfaction and maternal duty ... reverently J recommend him to you.... 1 place myself at the mercy [dementia} of Your Holiness/'70 Maria's requests for favors brought with them an obligation to fulfill the pope's wishes. She was reminded of this in January 1533 after expressing reluctance at the idea of accompanying the young Catherine de 1 Medici to France for her wedding to

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

del signer mio consorte venne mancho, in quell'instante io mi proposi vivere sempre col mio figliolo per moke cause.... (E]t per una molto speciale, considerate che '1 mio figliolo per essere nato maximamente di quelle felice ossa, non era da essere abbandonato da me. [MJolto piu possendogli giovare 10 stando con lui, che lasciandolo." Published in Guasti (1858), 28-9. Cf. J. Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and the Two Cosimos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pt. 3 and passim. G. Langdon, "Pontormo and Medici Lineages: Maria Salviati, Alessandro, Giulia and Giuho de' Medici," RACAR 19 (1992): 20-40, at 35, n. 40. ASF, MaP, 106, 55, 5 December 1523: "quando voii a[v]utedinan [sic]." Milanesi, (1859), 25 (lett. 131, 28 February 1524). Langdon, (1992), 34, n. 34, citing P. Gauthiez, Jean des Bandes Noires, 2nd ed. (Pans: Societe d'editions literaries et artistiques, 1901), 324-6. ASF, MaP, 137, 950, (n.m./1527): "questo nostropovero figliuolo...." Published in Guasti (1858), 64 (lett. 29, 16 January 1532/3). "Padre sancto. Bench' io sappia che Cosmo mio figliolo per se stesso si ncorda alia Santita Vostra; pur per mia sodisfactione, et debito materno ... reverentemente glelo recomando ... rimectendomi alia dementia Vostra Santita" (italics mine).

52

The Pontificate of Clement Vll: History, Politics, Culture

the Duke of Orleans, because of the costs she and her son would incur. Maria was advised by Cosimo's tutor, Pierfrancesco Riccio, and also by her father, to accede to Clement's wishes because of all that the pope had done for her and equally, Jacopo stressed: "because this is necessary for Cosimo."71 Maria knew only too well that belonging to the papal family could be both a blessing and a burden. Conclusions Indeed, being part of the pope's family was what legitimated Lucrezia's and Maria's activities at the court of Clement VII. Lucrezia Salviati discovered to her cost that a change of pontiff could in fact be very dangerous for even the female members of the previous incumbent's family. In 1538, Pope Paul III ordered Lucrezia Salviati to vacate the Medici Palace (now Palazzo Madama) in Rome, where she had been living for several years, and when she refused, according to Benedetto Varchi, the pope had her forcibly removed. 72 Varchi recorded in his Storia fiorentina (written some years later under the aegis of Lucrezia's grandson, Duke Cosimo I) that the effect of this incident "was displeasing to everyone, and contradicted by no one." The pope ordered Lucrezia's removal ostensibly because of a dispute between himself and Duke Cosimo over the right of Margaret of Austria, then married to his nephew, Ottavio Farnese, to inherit Medici property, which was itself part of an attempt to reclaim her dowry after the assassination of her previous husband, Duke Alessandro de' Medici, in early 1537.74 (Relations between Pope Paul and Duke Cosimo were also strained because of the duke's treatment of Florentine exiles.) 75 Lucrezia initiated an intensive legal battle with Margaret of Austria in an attempt to regain possession of the palace, but was unsuccessful, remaining in Rome, sometimes living in her son Cardinal Giovanni's palace (Palazzo della Rovere) where she died in November 1553, some two weeks after her eldest son's own death.76 71

Guasti (1858), 59 (letter 22, 3 December 1532/3) for Riccio's advice. Jacopo's letter is published in full in G. Pieraccini, La Stirpe de' Medici di Cafaggiolo, 3 vols. (Florence: Nardini, 1924; reprint, Florence: Vallechi, 1986), 1:474: "perche cosi e il bisogno di Cosimo." Maria appears as a spectator at the wedding in a Vasari fresco of 1556-59 in the Sala di Clemente VII in the Palazzo Vecchio. See Langdon (1992), 32, n. 3. 72 B. Varcru, Storia fiorentina, 2 vols. (Florence: Salani, 1963), 2:647 (bk. 16, pt. 12). 73 Varchi, (1963), 2:647 (bk. 16, pt. 12): "increscendone a ognuno, e non contraddicendo persona." For the whole incident, see ibid., 646-7. 74 On the dispute over Margarita's rights of ownership of certain Medici properties, see R. Lefevre, "Madama" Margarita d' Austria (1522-1586) (Rome: Newton Compton, 1986), 70, 105-6, 151-1,320. 75 Pastor, 11:318-9. 76 P. Hurtubise, "L'implantation d'une famille Florentine a Rome au debut du XVle siecle: Les Salviati," in Roma capitale (1447-1527), ed. S. Genisi (Pisa: Pacini, 1994), 253-71, at 258, with reference to Lucrezia's forced removal to Cardinal Giovanni's abode. Cf. Pisa, Archivio Salviati, Tomo II: Salviati di Roma, b. 58, fasc. 23, which contains several legal documents from notaries on behalf of both Lucrezia and Margarita, dating from 1538 onwards and relating to this matter. They are all in Latin and include witness statements supporting Lucrezia, correspondence from the pope to both women, and legal correspondence between Lucrezia and Margarita, via the notaries concerned.

The Medici Women and Pope Clement VII

53

This incident underscores the importance of familial connection as the primary means of Lucrezia SalviatTs access to power. This influence derived primarily from Salviati connections with the Medici and the Curia in Rome. During the pontificates of the two Medici popes, Leo X and Clement V I I , she, her husband Jacopo, Cardinal Giovanni, Maria, arid the Salviati family in general, enjoyed a high degree of power, prestige, and influence with the papacy. But the election of Pope Paul III of the noble Farnese family in 1534 left both Lucrezia and her family vulnerable to the machinations of an anti-Medicean pontiff. Any discussion of Clement VII's pontificate, his court and his relationship with other Medici is incomplete without an examination of how the women of the family—particularly his female Salviati relatives—managed so successfully to negotiate a space for themselves in an arena where contemporaries so often declared that women were not welcome. Both Lucrezia and Maria Salviati were successful at the papal court because they adapted their familial roles and responsibilities in the domestic arena to the demands and protocols of the papal court. Both emphasized their authority to do so because of their familial responsibilities, thereby legitimating their presence in an all-male arena and creating an opportunity for themselves to act. Lucrezia Salviati's activities were integral to the successful operation of her son's court. And Maria's promotion of Cosimo's interests at the papal court and later in Florence after Duke Alessandro's assassination in 1537 ultimately ensured the future of the Medici family's rule of Florence as dukes and after 1569 as grand dukes of Tuscany until the male line's extinction in 1737. In a sense, the women of the Medici family paved the way for women from later papal families who, at least by the seventeenth century, were acting as crucial mediators between the various members of their own papal families. 77 Whether Lucrezia and Maria Salviati were consciously aware of how far they were pushing the boundaries of the traditional female sphere is unclear. Regardless, they were acting strategically (as we would say in modern parlance) with the effect that they succeeded in redefining to their advantage how they, and possibly women from other elite families that followed in their footsteps, could exercise power and influence in a traditionally male arena without pre-emptive criticism.

77

R. Ago, Carriere e clientele nella Roma barocca (Rome: Laterza, 1990), 60-71. See also Fosi and Visceglia( 1998).

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Chapter 5

The Conspiracy of 1522 against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici: Machiavelli •te and "gli esempli delli antiqui •9V

Patricia J. Osmond

In the early months of 1522, as Filippo de' Nerli reported in his Commentary the entire citizen body of Florence had taken sides over the question of reforming the government of the city. On the one hand were those who supported a governo stretto and refused even to discuss reform; on the other were those who hoped for a return to a governo largo and urged Cardinal Giulio de' Medici to open the public offices to a larger number of citizens. The latter proposals were enthusiastically supported, Nerli states, by the majority of the citizens, and especially by "a certain kind of young men, principally those who had frequented the Rucellai Gardens/' 1 Several of the latter, including Zanobi Buondelmonti, had presented the cardinal with memoranda containing recommendations for the new constitution; so too had Niccolo Machiavelli. 2 At this point, however, the cardinal, who had at first seemed well disposed to the idea of reform and had openly invited discussion on the question, began to have second thoughts. Admittedly, it was no easy matter to extricate himself from the situation, as Nerli explains, for he had let things take their course for some time and now found it difficult to arrest the growing pressures. What allowed him, nevertheless, to terminate once and for all the public debate—and to end any hopes for reviving the Republic—was the plot to assassinate him.

1 2

3

! thank Kenneth Gouwens for his important contributions to this essay, as well as Paul F. Grendler, Mikael Hornqvist, and Sheryl Reiss for many helpful suggestions. "[U]na certa sorta di giovani e massimamente di quelli, che gia concorrevano all'orto de' Rucellai." F. de' Nerli, Commentari deifatti civili occorsi dentro la citta di Firenze dall' anno 1215 al 1537, 2 vols. (Trieste: Colombo Coen Tip. Editore, 1859), 2:11-12. Nerli refers in his Commentari to Machiavelli's recommendations, i.e., either his Discursus florentinarum rerum post mortem iunioris Laurentti Medices (1520-21) or the more recent Minuta di provvisione, prepared for the cardinal after the latter's return to Florence in 1522. On these writings, see N. Machiavelli, Opere, ed. C. Vivanti, 2 vols. to date (Turin: Einaudi-Gallimard, 1997- ), 1:1182-3. Rosemary Devonshire Jones summarizes the issues of constitutional reform during Cardinal Giulio's administration of Florence in the years 1519-23 in her Francesco Vettori: Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant (London: Athlone Press, 1972), 143-61, esp. 144 5 and 156-7. The editions of the principal published sources for the Conspiracy of 1522 cited in this paper are as follows: Nerli (1859), 2:10-23 (bk. 7); J. Nardi, Istorie della citta di Firenze. ed. L. Arbib, 2 vols. (Florence: Societa editrice delle Storie del Nardi e del Varchi, 1838-41), 2:74 81 (bk. 7); S. Ammirato, Istorie fiorentine, ed. L. Scarabelli,

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

The conspiracy took shape in the circle of Florentine intellectuals who had recently participated in the gatherings at the Orti Oricellari, founded by the Florentine aristocrat and man of letters Bernardo Rucellai in the early years of the century and afterwards presided over, until his death in 1519, by his grandson Cosimo. Topics of conversation had ranged from philosophy to language and poetry, but there seems to have been a strong interest in history and politics. 4 It had been at the request of this group that Machiavelli, a frequent and distinguished guest, had begun composing his Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio> which he had dedicated to Cosimo Rucellai and Zanobi Buondelmonti and from which he had often read aloud to his friends. 5 Now, in the winter of 1522, discouraged and angry at the cardinal's (apparently) abrupt change of mind, and eager to emulate the ancients by carrying out some great and illustrious enterprise of their own, two of the young "letterati" Zanobi Buondelmonti himself and the poet Luigi Alamanni, made plans to overthrow the Medici and to restore the government of Florence to its pre-1512 constitution. In February Battista della Palla was dispatched to Rome to meet with Cardinal Francesco Soderini, who was preparing a broad anti-Medici campaign in central Italy with the aim of bringing Tuscany back into alliance with France and overthrowing the pro-Medici regime of the Petrucci in Siena. From later accounts, we learn that the condottiere Renzo da Ceri was to attack Siena, while French troops were to lead an assault on Florence. At the same time, within the city, the conspirators would arrange for the assassination of Cardinal Giulio, to be carried out, if circumstances permitted, in the church of Sta. Maria del Fiore.6 This was the same church (the Duomo) in which

4

5

6

7 vols. (Turin: Cugini Pomba and Comp. Editori, 1853), 6:344-6; G. Capponi, Storia della Repubblica di Firenze, 2 vols. (Florence: G. Barbera, 1930), 1:335~48 (bk. 6, chap. 6); C. Guasti, "Document! della congiura fatta contro il cardinale Giulio de' Medici nel 1522," GSAT3 (1859): 121-50, 185-213, 239^67; and P. Villari, Niccolo Machiavelli e i suoi tempi, illustrati con nuovi document!, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (Milan: Hoepli, 1895-97), 3:47-52, 133-9. F. Gilbert, "Bernardo Rucellai and the Orti Oricellari," JWCl 12 (1949): 101-31. On the political discussions at the Gardens, see also D. Cantimori, "Rhetoric and Politics in Italian Humanism," JWCl 1 (1937-38): 83-102. Additional studies on the Orti include: L. M. Bartoli and G. Contorni, Gli Orti Oricellari a Firenze: Un giardino, una citta (Florence: EDIFIR, 1991); R. M. Comanducci, Gli Orti Oricellari (Rome: Salerno, 1997); G. Lucarelli, Gli Orti Oricellari: epilogo della politico fiorentina del quattrocento e inizio delpensiero politico moderno (Lucca: M. Pacini Fazzi, 1979). The Italian and English editions of Machiavelli's Discourses cited in this paper are as follows: N. Machiavelli, Le grandi opere politiche, If. Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, ed. G. M. Anselmi and C. Varotti (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1993), henceforth "Discorsi", N. Machiavelli, Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, trans. C. E. Detmold, in The Prince and The Discourses (New York: Random House, 1950), henceforth "Discourses" In 1517 Machiavelli had begun reading from his Discorsi at the Orti Oncellan. The Vita di Castruccio Castracani, dedicated to Buondelmonti and Alamanni, and his Arte della guerra, in which Buondelmonti appeared as one of the interlocutors, date to the period 1519-21. J. M. Najemy reviews the question of the dating of the Discorsi in his Between Friends: Discourses of Power and Desire in the Machiavelli- Vettori Letters of 1513-1515 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), Epilogue, 335-7. On the individual members of the conspiracy, and for more details regarding the events of these years, as well as the plot against Cardinal de' Medici, see the articles in the DBI on Diacceto and on Zanobi Buondelmonti, cited below in notes 10 and 14, respectively; and

The Conspiracy of 1522

57

the cardinal's father, Giuliano de' Medici, had been murdered during the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, and the choice of site was probably intended to evoke the earlier attack on Medici "tyrants.'*7 The elaborate scheme, however, never got that far. In March of the same year, Renzo da Ceri's expedition against Siena failed, and in May a French courier carrying messages from the Florentine fuorusciti in Siena to friends in Florence was intercepted, inducing Jacopo da Diacceto, who was soon arrested and interrogated, to make a full confession. While other members of the conspiracy, including Buondelmonti and Alamanni, managed to escape just in time, the young Diacceto and another Luigi Alamanni were executed on the seventh of June. Reflecting upon the outcome of the plot in his Commentari, Filippo de' Nerli observes that the conspirators had not paid sufficient attention to what Machiavelli had written in his Discorsi on that very subject: "for if they had considered it carefully, either they would not have undertaken it or, if they had indeed done so, they would at least have proceeded more cautiously."8 It is a remark that not only sums up what Nerli saw as the practical spirit of Machiavelli's counsel but also brings us to the main purpose of this paper: an intertextual analysis of reports and responses, an inquiry into the multiple levels of associations and references, as mid-sixteenth century commentators engaged with the texts of Machiavelli and with the ancient authorities upon which they drew. The anti-Medici plot of 1522 provided an actual test-case for discorso 3.6, a veritable "manual" on conspiracies, while the connections that were afterwards drawn between this particular chapter and the attempted coup came to influence both the reactions to Machiavelli's work and the reappraisal of his ancient sources and "esempli" The efforts of contemporaries to assess the conspiracy in terms of Machiavelli's writings also shaped the judgments of Giulio de' Medici's character and policy. We do not know if the cardinal himself was familiar with the discorso on conspiracies, but Florentine historians from Nerli on were quick to

7

8

Devonshire Jones (see above, note 3). K. J. P. Lowe examines the circumstances of Cardinal Soderini's involvement in the 1522 conspiracy as well as in the 1523 conspiracy in Rome in her Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy: The Life and Career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini (1453-1524) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and in her "The Political Crime of Conspiracy in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Rome," in Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy, ed. T. Dean and K. J. P. Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 184^203. According to John Najemy, Machiavelli took a very skeptical view of the attempt of the Pazzi to invoke the name of liberty. See J. M. Najemy, "Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of Florentine History," RQ 35 (1982): 551-76, at 574. Paolo Giovio reports that after the conspiracy of 1522, Giulio de' Medici adopted the striking impresa with the motto CANDOR ILLAESVS, devised by his treasurer Domenico Buoninsegni, to demonstrate that the candor of his soul could not be offended either by malice or by force. P. Giovio, Dialogo dell'imprese militari et amorose di Monsignor Giovio, Vescovo di Nocera (Lyons, 1559), 45. For discussions of the impresa, see esp. M. Perry, "Candor Illaesvs: the 'Impresa' of Clement VII and other Medici Devices in the Vatican Stanze," BM 119 (1977): 676-86; and Cecil Clough's essay below. On the conspiracy and the cardinal's reaction to it, see S. E. Reiss, "Cardinal Giulio de' Medici as a Patron of Art, 1513-1523," 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1992), 1:6, 541-5. Nerli (1859), 2:12: "che se bene lo avessero considerate, o non 1'avrebbero fatto, o se pure fatto 1'avessero, almeno piii cautamente proceduti sarebbono."

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

interpret his reaction to the plot in a Machiavellian framework of meaning and to delineate, in their portraits of the future pope, the features of a Machiavellian prince. 9 Machiavelli's Reading of his Sources As Nerli declares, the young Florentine humanists who were plotting to assassinate the cardinal were not reading Machiavelli attentively. Rather, he suggests, they were carried away by a naive passion for the ideals of virtus and gloria and the desire to emulate the deeds of Roman heroes—especially, we may assume, such celebrated opponents of tyranny as L. Junius Brutus (the Liberator) and Marcus Brutus, the assassin of Caesar, prominent figures in Renaissance literature. 10 We hear from Nerli (and other writers) about the Latin orations on liberty that were circulating in Florence at the time, one of which was presented to Cardinal Giulio by Alessandro de' Pazzi. 11 Although we no longer have the memorandum on constitutional reform prepared for the cardinal by Zanobi Buondelmonti, we may discern something of his views from Machiavelli's Arte delta guerra, in which Buondelmonti is one of the interlocutors, and we may be able to sense the fervor with which he and other members of the Rucellai circle embraced the ancient models of the republican militia and buoni capitanin In his lectures at the Florentine Studio in the years preceding the conspiracy, Marcello Virgilio, successor to Poliziano as professor of studia humanitatis, defended the ideals of an oligarchic, not a popular, republic. But here, too, Florentine students, including Buondelmonti and Guicciardini, were taught the utility of classical history as preparation for the vita activa and were educated in the traditional values of public service and civic virtues.13 9

10

11 12 13

Cf. P. Godman, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 249: "At Florence, between 1519 and 1522, the cardinal practiced his own version of the policy advocated by // principe with dexterity and guile." See also his remarks, ibid., 285-6. Jacopo da Diacceto, whom Nerli calls a "giovane nobile e molto letterato," and who was well-versed in Latin and Greek, held a lectureship in the humanities at the University or Studio. The editor of his only surviving writings (verses that he wrote on the eve of his execution) has described him as a serious young man, whose desire for liberty was kindled by reading the classics: "testa calda ed appassionata, questo giovane 'letteratissimo' ... alimentava collo studio dei classici il fuoco per le idee di liberta." P. Piccolomini, "Ultimi versi di Jacopo da Diacceto," GSLI39 (1902): 327-34, at 329. For a brief biography and bibliography, see P. Malanima, "Cattani da Diacceto, lacopo (il Diaccetino)," in DBf, 22:511-12. Nerli (1859), 2:12. N. Machiavelli, Dell'arte della gweraz, in N. Machiavelli, Le grandi opere politiche, ed. G. M. Anselmi and C. Varotti, vol. 1 (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1992). See, for example, the words of the interlocutor "Buondelmonti" at the start of bk. 6 (ibid., 273). Marcello Virgilio was also First Chancellor of the Florentine Republic and thus the colleague of Machiavelli in the Chancery until the latter's dismissal in 1512. See Godman (1998), esp. on Virgilio's early defense of the utilitas of learning (162-7); his later adherence to the idea of an aristocratic polity (262-79), which Godman contrasts with uthe alleged 'program' of the Orti Oricellari" (245); and his "imaginary realm of ethics" (2789).

The Conspiracy of 1522

59

Some indication of the classical themes and images that inspired the conspirators may also be found in the works published by members of the circle later in the decade. The Orazione al popol fiorentino sopra la militar disciplina, delivered by Luigi Alamanni during his brief return to Florence in 1528, invokes the austere morals and discipline of the ancient city-states, the selfless patriotism of citizens and their devotion to the common good.14 In his Dialogi delta morale filosofia, Antonio Brucioli celebrates, in the tradition of Livy and Petrarch, the great heroes of Rome, from Camillus, the Fabii, and Scipio Africanus to Cato the Younger, aiming to revive a model of public life founded on principles of honor, justice, and public spirit. 15 Despite the professed intention of relating topics to political realities, discussions at the Orti Oricellari, as well as the lectures at the Studio, seem to have been infused with a strong dose of ethical and educational enthusiasm, or what Delio Cantimori described as "moral optimism."16 This is not to say, of course, that Machiavelli did not exert some degree of influence, personally or through his writings, on the decision of these young republicans to form a conspiracy, or on their actual plans. They may well have been familiar with the historical examples he cited in his Discorsi, especially if he had read from this particular chapter (3.6) at one of the gatherings in the Rucellai Gardens. Perhaps, too, they believed that they were following his advice. According to a conversation reported in one of the surviving documents, Zanobi Buondelmonti noted the importance of obtaining foreign support and military aid, thus alluding, it would seem, to Machiavelli's own comments on this subject17 He may also have thought of enlisting the former Second Chancellor of the Republic among the conspirators or confidants, for he included his name on the list of persons he was intending to contact.18 If he subsequently decided against doing this, it was not because Machiavelli was deemed 14 In his entry on Luigi Alamanni in DBI, \ :568-71, R. Weiss points out the wide variety of classical models that he employed in his poetry. On Buondelmonti, see G. De Caro's biography of him in DBI, 15:226-30. Alamanni's "Orazione al Popol Fiorentino sopra la militar disciplina," delivered on 6 November 1528 in the Church of Sta. Croce in Florence, is found in his Versi e prose di Luigi Alamanni, ed. P. Raffaelli, 2 vols. (Florence: Felice Le Monnier, 1859), 2:447-55. See also Raffaelli's introduction, vol. 1, esp. v-vii, which mentions other factors that may have led to the conspiracy. 15 The first edition, containing only one book, was published in Venice in 1526. A second edition of book one, along with four new books of dialogues, appeared in 1537-38. 16 Cantimori (1937-38) describes the Dialogues of Antonio Brucioli and the idealistic character of discussions at the Orti Oricellari. See also Godman (1998), 279-80, on Marcello Virgilio and images of ideal rulers. 17 De Caro, in his entry on Zanobi Buondelmonti for the DEI, writes: "in questo almeno 1'insegnamento del Machiavelli era servito: al Martelli che gli proponeva di awelenare Giulio de' Medici, somministrandogli il tossico in 'un piatto di huova ripiene,' il B. replicava 'che non era il proposito, et che a voler mutar lo stato di Firenze non bisognava solo la morte del cardinale de' Medici, ma etiam era oportuno gli aiuti d'un pocho di exercito et favor del re, per poter obstare alle forze della casa de' Medici.'" DBI, 15:228. The passage quoted by De Caro is taken from the deposition of Niccolo Martelli, published in Guasti (1859), 242. Cf. Machiavelli, Discorsi, 409 (Discourses, 432), on the use of foreign troops in conspiracies against one's country. He had also warned, however, against the dangers of calling in foreign armies whether to obtain a principality or to defend a state (e.g. Principe, chap. 7, and Discorsi 2.20). 18 Guasti (1859), 244.

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unfriendly to their cause (or so it was inferred), but because the conspirators feared that his reputation as an opponent of the Medici might arouse suspicion. Whatever they had learned, or thought they had learned, from (vlachiavelli, however, they had not, in Nerli's opinion, grasped the real message of his discorso on conspiracies or appreciated the practical value of his warnings—or, for that matter, his own political ambitions. In the first place, I would argue, Machiavelli was not expressing in discorso 3.6 any decided preference for republican government. In the opening statements, he quoted the celebrated lines from Tacitus (Historiae 4.8): "And certainly that is a golden sentence of Cornelius Tacitus, where he says 'that men should honor the past and obey the present; and whilst they should desire good princes, they should bear with those they have, such as they are.'" 19 The words, borrowed from the historian of the Roman Empire, underscored Machiavelli's concern for maintaining unity and stability in the state, a preoccupation that runs throughout his writings. Moreover, such words could be taken as a profession of loyalty to the Medici, shielding their author from possible suspicion of lese-majeste. Machiavelli had been implicated, as we know, in Pier Paolo Boscoli's conspiracy of 1513, and it is unlikely that he would have taken any further risks. Besides, his own relations with the Medici seem to have taken a turn for the better: in 1520 he had composed his Discursus florentinarum rerum for Leo X at the urging of Cardinal Giulio, and he was preparing to write the history of Florence (Istoriefiorentine), which had been commissioned by the cardinal through the agency of the Studio. 20 Whatever sympathies he might personally feel for a governo popolare, and however much he might praise the strengths and advantages of a popular constitution—in a state that wished to grow and expand and for a people who still possessed a minimum of virtu—he was far from appealing, in any unqualified terms, for the re-establishment of a popular government, or even an aristocratic republic. As he stated in Discorsi 1.17-18, the form of a constitution had to be adapted to the character of the people and the times. In the second place, Machiavelli was concerned with the pragmatic purpose of his work, or what has sometimes been called its "technical'* character. He was writing, he says, so that princes might learn to guard against the danger of conspiracies and, at the same time, so that subjects might less rashly engage in them. 21 As a form of natural political struggle, conspiracies merited a careful, dispassionate analysis. 22 19 Discourses, 410. "E veramente, quella sentenzia di Comelio Tacito e aurea, che dice: che gli uomini hanno ad onorare le cose passate, ed ubbidire alle presenti; e debbono desiderare i buoni principi, e, comunque ei si sieno fatti tollerargli" (Discorsi, 387-8). 20 Najemy (1982) sees Machiavelli's relationship to the Medici as essentially negative, but shows how he came to view their roles in the wider context of Florentine social and political history. On Machiavelli's treatment of conspiracies, see note 2 above; and E. Fasano Guarini, "Congiure 'contro alia patria' e congiure 'contro ad uno pnncipe' nell' opera di Niccolo Machiavelli," in Complots et conjurations dans I'Europe moderne, ed. Y - M . Berce and E. Fasano Guarini (Rome: L'Ecole francaise, 1996), 9-53, at 14-15. 21 Cf. the Proem, in which Machiavelli stresses the pragmatic value of history (Discorsi, 21; Discourses, 105). 22 On the conspiracy as "una forma particolare di lotta politica," see Fasano Guarini (1996), 9, and on Machiavelli as "virtuoso," ibid., 18-19, where she writes: "A partire dal materiale antico e moderno raccolto, Machiaveili ... delle congiure antipnncipesche analizza

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The examples drawn from ancient or modern history were meant not to praise or condemn, but to clarify the motives, explain the means of organizing, executing, or foiling a plot, and above all to illustrate the reasons for its success or failure. 23 The chapter is a long one—long enough, and clearly important enough in the context of contemporary events, to have been published separately in the sixteenth century—and the examples from ancient history are drawn from a wide variety of Greek and Latin authors, including Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, Herodotus and Thucydides, Plutarch, Herodian and Justinus. 24 There are a few warnings, however, that would have been particularly germane to the events of 1522, especially those emphasizing the need for secrecy: "One should never open himself on the subject of a conspiracy except under the most pressing necessity, and only at the moment of its execution." 25 Above all, he advised, one should take care not to leave any traces in writing: "One should guard most carefully against writing, as against a dangerous rock, for nothing will convict you quicker than your own handwriting." 26 In fact, it was generally the lack of caution orprudenza that led to failure. From Livy's account of the early Republic, Machiavelli drew the example of Brutus' sons, who were plotting to restore the monarchy of Tarquinius and were denounced by a slave who overheard their conversation with the messengers of the king (Livy, 2.4). From Tacitus' Annales he took the example of Scaevinus, who was involved in the Pisonian

23

24

25 26

tipologie, modalita ed aspetti ricorrenti. Di esse discorre in modo pragmatico e quasi tecnico, con un tono che non e abusive definite 'pedagogico,' ma in primo luogo richiama la figura ed il ruolo del 'virtuoso/ nel senso in cui il termine e stato recentemente usato da H. G. Koenigsberger, dell'esperto della politica, che trasfonde la propria passione in rigore d'analisi ed attento esercizio della propria 'arte.'" See also the bibliography she gives, ibid., 19, n. 32. Conspiracy forms the subject of the longest chapter in De principatibus (chap. 19, "De contemptu et odio fugiendo"). Mikael Hornqvist is presently preparing a study of Machiavelli's rhetorical strategies in this chapter and in Discorsi 3.6. In the Discorsi, Machiavelli still affirms the exemplary value of ancient history. Exemplar history, as Timothy Hampton describes it, "links the study of the past and the imitation of models to public action." T. Hampton, Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 3; on Machiavelli, see ibid., chap. 2, esp. 63-78. In contrast to Hampton, I would emphasize the shift from ideal moral ends, characteristic of much traditional humanist history, to practical political ends in appropriating and judging the effectiveness of past action. Other scholars have pointed out the elements of ambivalence in Machiavelli's attitude toward the study of antiquity and in the debate over the intelligibility of politics and history. See, for instance, Najemy (1993), Epilogue, 339^8; A. R. Ascoli and V. Kahn, eds., Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), Introduction, 6-9; Godman (1998), 267-72. See also the references in note 20 above and note 34 below. Jerome de Chomedey attached to his translation of Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, L 'Histoire de la coniuration de Catilin (Paris: Abel L'Angelier, 1575), dedicated to King Henry III, a French version of Machiavelli's "traicte des coniurations, extraict du troisieme livre des discours de Machiavel." See P. J. Osmond, "Jacopo Corbinelli and the Reading of Sallust in Late Renaissance France," Medievalia el Humanistica, n.s. 21 (1994): 85-110, esp. 89 and n. 28. Discourses, 421. "Debbesi, adunque, non comunicare mai la cosa se non necessitate ed in sul fatto" (Discorsi, 398). Discourses, 421. "[D]allo scrivere ciascuno debbe guardarsi come da uno scoglio, perche non e cosa che piu facilmente ti convinca, che lo scritto di tua mano'' (Discorsi, 398).

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conspiracy against Nero and behaved so thoughtlessly that he aroused a slave's suspicion (Annales 15.54-6). Some of the closest parallels between ancient and contemporary events, however, came from the story of Catiline in Sallusfs Bellum Cafilinae: episodes that also illustrate Machiavelli's new approach to the familiar form of exemplar history—of history, that is, teaching from the moral and political examples of the past.27 Sallust must have been a particularly congenial author for Machiavelli during his exile from politics. Forced to abandon his political career after the assassination of his patron Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E., the Roman senator (like the Florentine civil servant) had turned reluctantly from active participation in the events of his time to writing about them; moreover, his monograph on the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 B.C.E. was widely known to Renaissance readers, from school children to statesmen. As Machiavelli remarked in discorso 3.6, "everyone" had read the account. 28 Previous writers, however, had generally treated conspiracies as a moral and dramatic process, using Sallust's work as a means for exalting the established powers and condemning any attempt at rebellion. This approach is evident, for example, in Leon Battista Alberti's De coniuratione Porcaria commentarius, dedicated to Pope Nicholas V (1453), and in Angelo Poliziano's account of the Pazzi conspiracy, Coniurationis commentarium, written for Lorenzo de' Medici (1478).29 The leaders of these conspiracies and their accomplices were portrayed as so many Catilines: vicious and depraved enemies of the state, criminal perpetrators of revolution, destined to certain failure and, as was only "to be expected," a cruel and ignominious death. For Machiavelli, on the other hand, the story of Catiline supplied a number of concrete, practical lessons. First, it illustrated his thesis that it was easier to attempt a conspiracy in a republic (at least if it were already partially corrupted) than in a principality, since the governments of republics were generally less suspicious, and thus less cautious, than those of princes, and the citizens, particularly the "greater citizens," far more daring. Second, the story confirmed the danger, and folly, of communicating plans to a large number of persons, and especially of committing one's plans to writing. Nothing, indeed, could condemn more easily the accused than a letter or other handwritten document passed on to others. It was on the basis of this very kind of evidence that Lentulus and other accomplices of Catiline had been arrested and convicted. Finally, Sallust's account illustrated the problems of relying on foreign assistance—particularly, one might say, from France, or such at least was the case in both 63 B.C.E. and in 1522. A pragmatic approach to the ancient sources did not necessarily lead to a careful, critical reading of the text any more, of course, than did the rhetorical-moralistic interpretations that most humanist historians favored, and Machiavelli had made no 27 On exemplar history, see note 23 above. 28 "Ciascuno ha letto la congiura di Catilina scritta da Sallustio." Discorsi, 408^09. On Sallust and Machiavelli, see P J. Osmond, "Sallust and Machiavelli: From Civic Humanism to Political Prudence,'' JMRS 23 (1993): 407-38, at 26; reprinted with some additions and corrections in Machiavelli, ed. J. Dunn and I Hams, 2 vols (Cheltenham Elgar 1997), 2:587-618. 29 A. La Penna, "Appendice Seconda. Brevi note sul tema della congiura nella storiografia moderna," in his Sallustio e la "rivoluzione " romana (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1968), 432-52.

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attempt to check the accuracy of his quotations or to place his exempla and sententiae in context. In recent studies of the Discourses, Ronald T. Ridley and Mario Martelli have indeed pointed out a large number of errors, distortions and incongruities throughout the work. 30 Names and facts are misrepresented, passages misquoted, and meanings misconstrued—whether this was due to mistakes in the transmission of the texts, poor translations, lapses of memory, the contamination of different sources, or in particular, as Martelli believes, the use of intermediate sources such as epitomes or compendia. Tacitus' lt golden sentence" ("that men should honor the past and obey the present"), for instance, was not pronounced by Tacitus himself or intended to formulate a universal precept.31 The words had been spoken by a certain senator Marcellus Eprius, known, and despised, as an informer, responsible (inter alia) for the condemnation of Paetus Thraesa. When he appended this remark to a speech in the Senate, he was simply describing his own conduct—no better, no worse, he implied, than that of a servile Senate. In the episode of Catiline recounted in Discorsi 3.6, Machiavelli declares that the deference shown by republics to their great citizens made those very men "more daring and audacious in conspiring against them." 32 Yet the Catiline of Sallust's monograph is by very nature (ingenium) a man of insatiable ambition and lust for power, spurred on by the mores of a corrupt society, as well as by mounting debts, and by his defeats in the consular elections. As for the discovery of the conspiracy, Machiavelli seems to contradict himself. Was the plot exposed before Catiline went to the Senate and said insulting things to the Senate and Consul (as he states in the first lines)? Or was it at the rendezvous of the conspirators with the Allobroges, when letters of Lentulus were seized (as he suggests later on)? In the latter case, moreover, it was not the actual handwriting of Lentulus that proved his guilt, but rather his seal. In many instances, nevertheless, the mistakes are of little consequence, and perhaps of interest only to the "grammarians" (as Machiavelli would have referred to the philologists of his own day) who busied themselves with such inaccuracies or inconsistencies. 33 After all, if Catiline did not strictly belong among "great citizens," he could still count on support in powerful circles, and Cicero, a homo novus, perceived the real dangers of taking action against him. It could also be argued that the conspiracy was discovered before the confrontation between Cicero and Catiline in the Senate, though the proof came only with the arrest of the conspirators at the Milvian bridge. In any event, we have to keep in mind that, whatever the reason for specific (mis)readings, Machiavelli was seeking to attain what he called a true knowledge of 30 R. T. Ridley, "Machiavelli's Edition of Livy," Rinascimento, 2nd ser, 27(1987): 327-41; M. Martelli, Machiavelli e gli storici antichi (Rome: Salerno, 1998). 31 Martelli (1998), 123-5 (on Discorsi, 3.6). 32 Discourses, 431. 33 As Martelli observes in his notes on Discorsi, 3.6.168-9, "e tipico del Machiavelli dei Discorsi non guardare troppo, se cosi posso esprimersi, per tl sottile, ne star li a valutare troppo fiscalmente se un fatto sia andato o no in una certa maniera, se un esempio sia o no calzante, se Targomentazione sia o no corretta." Martelli (1998), 143-4. Godman notes that Marcello Virgiho, in the early phase of his teaching at the Studio, had also criticized the pedantry of Poliziano and the "pure, literary humanism" of Lorenzo's era, but later turned to just such a systematic philological method in his study of classical texts. See Godman (1998), 176-7, 273-4.

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histories ("vera cognizione delle stone") that could move beyond conventional explanations, superficial interest in the variety of events, or the minute problems of textual exegesis, to draw out the real essence or spirit of the matter. Only through sharp insight, and penetrating analysis of historical accounts, could the past become intelligible and the lessons of history be recovered, re-examined in the light of ancient and modern experience, and once again made useful and applicable to the present.34

Florentine Accounts of the Conspiracy and Later Readings of Machiavelli It was the same "true sense" of history that Filippo de' Nerli was trying to distill from the past as he reflected upon the conspiracy of 1522 in light of Machiavelli's discorso. Nerli, who began his Commentari dei fatti civili with a review of that year's events, could share Machiavelli's sharp, critical insights and observe the difference between what the author of the Discorsi had counseled and what in fact the conspirators had done (or not done).35 His account is short and succinct, summarizing their initial plans; the failure of Battista della Palla's embassy; the capture of a certain cavallaro carrying messages from Battista to the conspirators (the event that alerted the cardinal to the plot); the arrest, interrogation, and execution of the young Jacopo da Diacceto (who revealed the names of all the conspirators); and the escape of Zanobi Buondelmonti, Luigi Alamanni, Battista della Palla, Antonio Brucioli, and others. His own comments are also brief and terse. But he singles out the dangers to which the leaders had imprudently exposed themselves by discussing their plans with a large number of persons and by naively entrusting incriminating letters to a courier—setting in relief, in other words, the warnings of Machiavelli that the conspirators had disregarded. 34

If princes and statesmen do not benefit from the "esempli delli antiqui," it is because they do not have "vera cognizione delle storie, per non trarne, leggendole, quel senso ne gustare di loro quel sapore che le hanno in se." Discorsi, "Proemio," 20. Godman (1998), 251-69, esp. 267-8, while noting the ambivalence in Machiavelli's approach to the exemplar theory of history, refers here to his "corrected" view of imitation. For other discussions of the problems of intelligibility and imitation in Machiavelli's writings, see Hampton (1990), 62-80; J. D. Lyons, Exernplum: The Rhetoric of Example in Early Modern France and Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 35-71; and the editors' introduction in Ascoli and Kahn (1993), 6-9. Najemy (1993), 338^1, emphasizes the paradox of the Discourses, that is, that Machiavelli desires to recover and apply to the present the "esempli" of antiquity, even as he recognizes the difficulty or even impossibility of imitation due to the fragmentary and corrupt nature of texts, the subjectivity of the historian, and the biases of readers. See also note 23 above. 35 See note 8 above. Nerli began writing the Commentari in the 1540s and finished before 1553. See esp. his preface, and 241-6 on Lorenzino. On Nerli as historian, see also E. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 278-82; and esp. E. Lugnani Scarano, 'Storiografia e pubblicistica minori', in La Letteratura italiana. 4:2. II Gnquecento, 2nd ed. (Ban: Laterza, 1973), 329-76, at 342-9. Lugnani Scarano points to the influence of Machiavelli's Istorie fiorentine, with its account of the Florentine political parties and their struggles, as the model for Nerli's own history, and emphasizes Nerli's analytic approach

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The introductory and concluding remarks of the account also reveal Nerli's "Machiavellian" propensities. At the beginning of the story he had observed how the discovery of the conspiracy had given Cardinal Giulio an opportunity to suppress the growing pressures for constitutional reforms. Describing the aftermath of the conspiracy, Nerli reiterated this point: "with such an opportunity the cardinal assured himself both the state and his own life and silenced all those vain schemes and assemblies spoken of above."36 What interested Nerli (like Machiavelli) was the outcome, the results: in this case, how the cardinal had not only found a "remedy" that allowed him to extirpate the conspiracy but had shrewdly taken advantage of the threat so as to consolidate his position in Florence.37 The account of the anti-Medici conspiracy in Jacopo Nardi's Istorie delta citta di Firenze is, by contrast, more discursive and anecdotal, and his references to Machiavelli somewhat oblique. 38 With greater detail than Nerli, Nardi relates the circumstances in which Jacopo da Diacceto was apprehended and interrogated; he describes the frantic escapes of Luigi Alamanni and Zanobi Buondelmonti and the ruse excogitated by the magistrates to discover the letter carried by the French courier. Thus Nardi appeals, as it were, to the reader's curiosity and heightens the personal drama of the events. When he pauses to offer any considerations of his own, it is rather to remark on the vicissitudes of fortune and the strange coincidences or paradoxes of events, or to express a word of praise or censure at the comportment of certain persons: the dissimulation of Cardinal Giulio, who had only feigned an interest in restoring liberty to the city as long as he had felt the threat of France; the lack of prudence shown by Luigi Alamanni who, in his haste to flee, failed to warn his cousin Luigi di Tommaso Alamanni, with the result that the latter was caught and executed; the courage and determination of Zanobi's wife, who forced her husband to abandon their house and escape from the city while there was still time; and the weakness of Jacopo Diacceto, who—had he been able just a little longer to resist the threats or endure the torture to which he was subjected—might not have brought ruin upon all of his fellow conspirators, whose only aim, Nardi reminds us, was to free their city. Nardi's republican loyalties also colored his attitude toward Machiavelli. He does not refer to the discorso on conspiracies, but he does mention its author on two occasions, each time with what seems to be a touch of irony or hint of disapproval. In the first instance, he included the Florentine secretary among the persons who, persuaded of Cardinal Giulio's sympathy for the republican cause, composed some to political events or "scientifica spregiudicatezza," evident, for example, in his analysis of the errors committed by Lorenzino after his murder of Alessandro (cf. note 37 below). See also Ammirato (1853), 6:345. 36 Nerli (1859), 2:14: "con tale occasione s'assicuro il Cardinale dello stato e della vita, e si pose allora silenzio a tutti quelli vani disegni e parlamenti di sopra discorsi." 37 Nerli's critical detachment is evident also in his account of the assassination of Duke Alessandro in 1537. Here too he analyzed the tactical errors of Lorenzino (the assassin and would-be Brutus), omitting any moralizing judgment. See Nerli (1859), 2:241-6. 38 The Istorie, written by Nardi during his self-exile in Venice, were begun in 1553. See Cochrane (1981), 283-4. Lugnani Scarano (1973), 341-2, emphasizes Nardi's moralistic attitude and the evidence of the continuing Savonarolan influence within the late Florentine republican tradition. On the latter, see also L. Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494-1545 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

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"formule" or suggested models, of republican government, and some orations in praise of the cardinal. Machiavelli, he added, afterwards wrote the Istorie fiorentine at the request of the very same cardinal, who had since become pope under the name Clement VII, "for which effort it was not known if the said Niccolo had received any distinction or reward." 9 Further on, Nardi mentions Machiavelli again in connection with the young people who frequented the orti, or gardens, of Cosimo Rucellai, to whom (along with Zanobi Buondelmonti) he had dedicated the Discorsi, Nardi remarks that on account of this work, which was certainly on a new subject, Niccolo was greatly loved by this group and also assisted, as he had learned, with some emolument. They all delighted in his conversation, holding his work in the highest esteem, to the extent that, as regards the thinking and actions of these young persons, allegations even fell upon Niccolo.40 During his lifetime Machiavelli was never implicated in the conspiracy, and as pointed out above, he had good reason to keep his distance from the rash schemes of Buondelmonti and Alamanni. But his position as companion and mentor to the young humanists, as well as his lengthy analysis of conspiracies in book three, chapter six of the Discorsi, understandably provoked suspicion about his role in the events of 1522—suspicion that Nardi did not attempt to dispel. Furthermore, in the following decades, this (alleged) role was considerably magnified. 41 According to Paolo Giovio, who included a vita of Machiavelli in his Elogia virorum literis illustrium, the former Florentine secretary was held to be the mastermind behind the entire scheme. Although, as Giovio says, Machiavelli had been compensated by the Medici with an annual stipend and a commission to write a history, "it was suspected, since he continued to praise Brutus and Cassius in his conversations and writings, that he had been the architect of the anti-Medici plot.'*42 In the latter part of the sixteenth century, certain writers still spoke admiringly of the discorso on conspiracies, and north of the Alps, Jerome de Chomedey attached a French version of the chapter to his translation of Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, in an 39 Nardi (1838-41), 2:75: "della quale impresa non si seppe che il detto Niccolo ne avesse grado o premio alcuno." 40 Nardi (1838—41), 2:77: "in tanto che de' pensamenti e azioni di questi giovani anche Niccolo non fu senza imputazione." 41 O. Tommasini, La vita e gli scritti di Niccolo Machiavelli nella loro relazione col macchiavellismo, 2 vols. (Rome: Loescher, 1883-1911; reprint, Naples: II Mulino, 1994-99). As the author writes (2:192), "il famoso capo sulle congiure, che non basto mai ne ad assicurar tiranni, ne a scoraggiare cospiratori, che per nulla rattenne neppure i giovani generosi che frequentavano i ritrovi de' Rucellai dall'entrare in nuove e fatali cospirazioni, ma che rimase modello insuperabile a chi voile toccare, trattare, diluire 1'argomento medesimo." 42 "Tuttavia, poiche nei suoi scritti egli aveva continuato a esaltare Bruto e Cassio, si era sospettato che egli fosse stato architetto della congiura antimedicea in cui avevano trovato la morte Alamanni e il Diacceto." P Giovio, Elogia virorum literis illustrium (Basel, 1577), quoted by G. Procacci in his Studi sulla fortuna del Machiavelli (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per 1'eta moderna e contemporanea, 1965), 266. The Latin text is found in Giovio, Opera, 8:111-12. On Giovio and his friends and acquaintances at the Orti Oricellari, see T. C. P. Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 45, who quotes Giovio's words of rejoicing at the failure of the conspiracy.

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effort to shore up the nation's wavering obedience to Henry III. But after Machiavelli's works had been placed on the Index of Prohibited Books (1559), historians, especially in Italy, became increasingly cautious about how they used, or referred to, his writings. 44 Camillo Porzio, for example, did not hesitate to borrow precepts from Discorsi 3.6 in relating the conspiracies and uprisings of the year 1547 in Genoa, Parma-Piacenza, and Naples in his Storia d'Italia, but he carefully avoided mentioning the author of the chapter by name. 45 Commenting on the animosity that Gianluigi Fieschi of Genoa had felt toward Andrea Doria despite the latter's generosity toward him, Porzio remarked: "But benefits do not generate gratitude in every man," echoing MachiavellTs own words on conspiracies that had been prompted not by injuries but by an "excess of benefits."46 In another passage, Porzio observed the danger of altering any part of one's plans once the details and timing of the plot had been decided and communicated to the accomplices—a point Machiavelli had illustrated with reference to the Pazzi conspiracy.47 43 Among Italian writers, see for example Cosimo Bartoli (1503-1572), author of Discorsi historici universal! (Venice: Francesco de Franceschi, 1569), who remarked that Machiavelli had written "non meno dottamente che con giudicio." R. de Mattei, Dalpremachiavellismo airantimachiavellismo (Florence: Sansoni, 1969), 34. Bartoli's work was translated into French by Gabriel Chappuys under the title Conseils militaires fort utiles ... (Paris, 1586). In fact, the French seem to have had a particular predilection for this chapter. On Chomedey's work (1575), see note 24 above. 44 See P. F. Grendler, "The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press 1540-1605," essay 9 in his collection Culture and Censorship in Late Renaissance Italy and France (London: Variorum, 1981), 48-65, at 54. Grendler also cites instances of the continued availability and uses of Machiavelli's works in this article and in his The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). Attempts to produce expurgated editions of Machiavelli's writings are discussed in Godman (1998), Appendix, 303-33. On Machiavelli"sfortuna, see also G. Procacci, Machiavelli nella cultura europea dell'eta moderna (Ban: Laterza, 1995); R. Bireley, "Machiavelli's Influence," in "Machiavelli, Niccolo" [Pt. 4], £"/?, 4:11-15, with bibliography; R. Bireley, The Counter-Reformation Prince. Anti-Machiavellianism or Catholic Statecraft in Early Modern Europe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); V. Kahn, Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 45 C. Porzio, L'Istoria d'Italia nell'anno MDXLVII e la descrizione del Regno di Napoli (Naples: Stamperia Tramater, 1839), written between 1547 and 1580. Here, especially in recounting the congiura of Gianluigi Fieschi against the Doria, Porzio tends to focus on individual motives and moral character, private intrigue and personal struggles for power. Sallustian influence is evident chiefly in the portraits and speeches (ibid., 58-70). Francesco Sansovino also drew upon Machiavelli for maxims in his Concetti politici of 1578, but mentioned only an "anonymous" history of Florence as his source. See P. F. Grendler, "Francesco Sansovino and Italian Popular History 1560-1600," essay 1 in Grendler (1981), 139-80, at 163^. 46 Porzio (1839), 59: "Ma non in ogni uomo il beneficio genera gratitudine"; cf. Machiavelli, Discorsi, 392-3: "molti hanno congiurato, mossi cosi da' troppi beneficii, come dalle troppe ingiurie.... Debbe adunque uno principe che si vuole guardare dalle congiure, temere piii coloro a chi elli ha fatto troppi piaceri, che quegli a chi egli avesse fatte troppe ingiurie." Cf Principe, chap. 17. 47 "Sono il vero veleno delle congiurie le mutazioni de' proponimenti de' congiurati." Porzio (1839), 66. Cf. Machiavelli, Discorsi, 400^401: "Dico, adunque come e' non e cosa alcuna che faccia tanto sturbo o impedimento a tutte le azioni degli uomini, quanto e in

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In the meantime, the growing distrust of Machiavelli began to affect even the reading of certain classical authors whom he had cited in his discorso, particularly Tacitus and Sal lust. Although Sallusfs monographs were read in the schools (as they had been for centuries) as sources of moral wisdom and good Latinity, and although Tacitus' histories were being studied at this time chiefly as sources of Roman history and law, the connection of both these authors with Machiavelli soon placed them in the same general category of "evil advisors," subversive teachers and instigators of revolution. 48 Jacopo Bonfadio, author of the Annales genuenses, listed Sallust's Catilina and (Tacitus') account of Nero, along with Machiavelli's Prince, among the books that had instructed the young Gianluigi Fieschi in crime and cruelty: And when [Fieschi] was alone during his hours of leisure, as was learned from those who were close to him, he often read the life of Nero, the conspiracy of Catiline, and the book by Machiavelli called The Prince, in order that from the reading and teaching of such things, detestable even in the midst of barbarity, he might learn to be more cruel. 9

uno instante, sanza avere tempo, avere a variare un ordine e a pervertirlo da quello che si era ordinato prima." Porzio was analyzing the organization of conspiracies from Machiavellfs own point of view of success or failure, but he avoided mentioning his source, and chose to emphasize the "providential" punishment that awaited all rebels. 48 Cf. many of the late sixteenth-century treatises on ars historica and the concern with decorum in history and art. In general, nevertheless, the writers of such treatises could argue that, by exposing the errors of conspirators, they could teach princes how to take precautions (an argument that after all was what Machiavelli himself had used in introducing his discorso). By dramatizing the dangers of conspiracies and the dire consequences awaiting the rebels—as Camillo Porzio had done—they also underscored the moralizing character of their work, blending humanist precepts of rhetorical history with the new demands of the Catholic Reform. On ihefortuna of Tacitus, see R. W. Ulery, Jr., "Cornelius Tacitus," in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, vol. 6, ed. F E. Cranz et al. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 87-174, especially 93-8, with bibliography, and A. La Penna, "Vivere sotto i tiranni: un tema tacitiano da Guicciardini a Diderot," in Classical Influences on European Culture, 1500-1700, ed. R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 295-304. On ihefortuna of Sallust, see P. J. Osmond and R. W. Ulery, Jr., "Sallustius Crispus, Gaius," in Catalogus translationum et commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, vol. 8, ed. V. Brown et al. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 183-326. 49 "E quando [Fieschi] era solo nelle ore oziose, come poi si e inteso da quelli che seco famigliarmente trattavano, leggeva spesso la vita di Nerone, la congiura di Catilina e il libro di Machiavelli, detto il Principe, affmche dalla lezione e disciplina di cosi fatte cose detestabili anco in mezzo della barbaric, imparasse a divenir piu crudele." The passage is quoted from the Italian translation of Bonfadio's Annales genuenses (written before 1550): J. Bonfadio, Annali delle cose de' Genovesi dall'anno MDXXVIII sino all'anno MDL, trans. B. Paschetti (Genoa: G. Bartoli, 1597; repnnt, Capologo: Tip. Elvetica, 1836), 146. Like other historians, Bonfadio emphasized the "divine judgment" that had intervened to punish Fieschi and save Genoa.

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Conclusions The Conspiracy of 1522, as an attempt to liberate Florence from the Medici and restore the republic, was undoubtedly a failure. One might venture to conclude that it even had few political consequences outside the city of Florence; after all, Guicciardini did not even mention it in his Storia d'Italia. Its association with Machiavelli's discorso on conspiracies, however, expanded its significance, or range of meanings, well beyond the immediate world of Italian politics and war, of individual egoisms and party intrigues. A study of the episode in the context of mid-sixteenth-century historiography brings to light, in fact, new texts and interpretations, whether in the reading of Machiavelli and his sources or in the understanding of major figures involved in the events—notably, of course, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici. At the center of this discourse we thus find Machiavelli's own discorso, written before the events of 1522 but read by (or described to) both the agents of the conspiracy and the authors of later literary accounts, in an attempt to render the past intelligible and, in turn, to profit from its lessons.50 As mentioned at the outset of this essay, the conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio provided a test-case for Machiavelli's analysis of congiure in book three, chapter six of his Discorsi. a means of observing and verifying his precepts regarding the organization, execution, and success or (in this case) failure of a conspiracy. It offered, indeed, the first important occasion, since the writing of the Discorsi, for judging the contemporary relevance of the new science of politics—a science combining the study of history with personal experience, and concerned above all with the outcome (effetto) of events. 51 Filippo de' Nerli recognized the connections between Machiavelli's discorso and the recent events in Florence; he understood and shared the author's point of view; and he applied Machiavelli's lessons to the situation at hand. While Discorsi 3.6 offered a framework of reference for investigating and assessing the Conspiracy of 1522, the experience of that Conspiracy—or more precisely the earliest written accounts of it by both Nerli and Nardi—also informed the reading of the Discorsi and, in turn, both the reading of Machiavelli's political work in general and the reception of his ancient sources in particular. The events in Florence called attention to Machiavelli's friendship with the conspirators and raised the question of what responsibility he might have had in the plot, either personally or through the influence of his writings. The way was thus opened, or additional arguments assembled, for anti-Machiavellian criticism. Moreover, although Nerli had deliberately singled out the practical lessons that the discorso offered to conspirators, other writers perceived the dangers inherent in such a method. Concerned with the didactic purpose of history from a conventional moral point of view, and apprehensive lest any discussion of crimes and conspiracies should actually incite readers to try their hand at these, the more conservative writers condemned Machiavelli, and even censured certain of his Roman authorities, for propagating such knowledge. The "esempli delli antiqui" used to illustrate the lessons of the Discorsi (and the Principe) 50 On the question of the intelligibility of history, see note 23 above. 51 Godman (1998), esp. 261-2, stresses the new importance of esperienza alongside the study of the past.

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were deemed guilty by association: potentially dangerous material that could lead astray young, impressionable minds. 52 Finally, in regard to the intended target of the plot, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, the Conspiracy of 1522 provided one of the first major occasions to consider, and to speculate upon, his aims and interests, at what may well have been a formative moment in the development of his political ambitions and public image. Nerli observed the way in which the cardinal had taken advantage of the conspiracy to suppress the republican opposition. Nardi depicted him as calculating and hypocritical, deliberately deceiving people into thinking that he favored reform in order to force his opponents into the open. It was, in fact, this habit of deception that Benedetto Varchi later emphasized in his portrait of the newly-elected Clement VII: "[Besides] being by nature a master of pretense and dissembling [di sua natura simulatore, e dissimulatore grandissimo], [he] still liked to cover with artistry the things that he did, however dishonorable they were, under the most honorable veils."53 The words "simulatore e dissimulator-e" with which Varchi described Giulio de' Medici in this passage of his Storia fiorentina recalled Machiavelli's "gran simulatore e dissimulatore" in chapter 18 of De principatibus, where he commented on the infidelity of princes and the necessity of deception. In turn, the phrase recalled Sallust's famous portrait of Catiline in Bellum Catilinae 5, and must have suggested to humanist readers a striking comparison with the Roman conspirator: Lucius Catiline, scion of a noble family, had great vigour both of mind and of body, but an evil and depraved nature. From youth up he revelled in civil wars, murder, pillage, and political dissension, and amid these he spent his early manhood. His body could endure hunger, cold and want of sleep to an incredible degree; his mind was reckless, cunning, treacherous, capable of any form of pretence or concealment [simulator ac dissimulator]. Covetous of others' possessions, he was prodigal of his own; he was violent in his passions. He possessed a certain amount of eloquence, but little discretion. His disordered mind ever craved the monstrous, incredible, gigantic. 54 52

In Traiano Boccalini's Ragguali di Parnaso (pub. 1605), a parody of the conformist ideals and prudential ethics of the late sixteenth century, Machiavelli is condemned to death for having tried to fit the teeth of dogs into the mouths of sheep—thus enabling the (generally obedient) flock to attack their masters. Tacitus himself is condemned for having fashioned eyeglasses that enabled subjects to penetrate the workings of government and the secrets of power. For a modern edition, see T. Boccalini, Ragguali di Parnaso e scritti minori, ed. G. Rua and L. Firpo, 3 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1910-48). 53 "[O]ltre all'essere di sua natura simulatore, e dissimulatore grandissimo, [egli] aveva in costume di volere ancora artatamente tutte le cose che faceva, quantunque disoneste fussero, sotto velami onestissimi coprire." B. Varchi, Sioria fiorentina, ed. L. Arbib, 3 vols. (Turin: Tip. economica—Lampato, Barieri, et al., 1852), 1:49. Lorenzino de' Medici, the assassin of Duke Alessandro of Florence, is similarly represented with the traits of Catiline: "un anirno irrequieto, insaziabile e desideroso di veder male, [che comincio] a farsi beffe apertamente di tutte le cose, cosi divine come umane ... [e che] appetiva stranamente la gloria." Ibid., 3:191. 54 "L. Catilina, nobili genere natus, fuit magna vi et animi et corpons, sed ingenio malo pravoque. Huic ab adulescentia bella intestina, caedes, rapinae, discordia civilis grata fuere, ibique iuventutem suam exercuit. Corpus patiens mediae, algoris, vigiliae supra quam cuiquam credibile est. Animus audax, subdolus, varius, cuius rei lubet simulator ac dissimulator, alieni appetens, sui profusus, ardens in cupiditatibus; satis eloquentiae, sapi-

The Conspiracy of 1522

1\

The ritratto paradossale, which set in relief the antithetical aspects of a personality, was well suited to character studies of Renaissance popes—especially at a time when the very notion of ambiguity might express the moral dilemmas and conflicting attitudes of a society in rapid transition. It has already been noted by Antonio La Penna that Guicciardini's celebrated profile of Alexander VI was itself modeled on the Sallustian portrait of Catiline—despite the Florentine historian's supposed reluctance to rely upon ancient authorities as his guides. 55 We can also discern elements of antithesis in the character sketch of Pope Clement VII, whom Guicciardini contrasts with his predecessor and cousin Leo X, especially in the synkrisis of book 16, chapter 12 of his Storia d'Italia56 On the one hand, Clement is depicted at the time of his election as reputedly "a very serious person, constant in his judgments"; on the other, "full of ambition, lofty-minded, restless, and most eager for innovations" (pieno di ambizione, di animo grande e inquieto e desiderosissimo di cose nitove), words that again echo phrases in the Sallustian portrait of Catiline in Bellum Catilinae 5.5: "Vastus animus irnmoderata. incredibilia, nimis alia semper cup ie bat"51 Later, what Guicciardini initially praised as consiglio prudente, he criticized as cowardice and vacillation. The indecisiveness of the pope, which was well known to contemporaries, provoked different interpretations, as T. C. Price Zimmermann explains in his essay earlier in this collection. While Guicciardini tended to ascribe Clement's hesitancy and vacillation to an innate weakness of character, others represented it, at least at times, as a deliberate pose or studied ambiguity: what Kenneth Gouwens has called "a entiae parum. Vastus animus immoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper cupiebat." Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, trans. J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 2nd ed., 1931; reprint, 1985), 9-11. The passage in Machiavelli's De principatibus, chap. 18, reads: "Ma e necessario questa natura [della volpe] saperla bene colonre, ed essere gran simulatore e dissimulatore: e sono tanto semplici gli uomini, e tamo obediscano alia necessita presenti, che colui che inganna, troverra sempre chi si lascera ingannare." Citing the example of the Borgia pope, Machiavelli continues: "Alessandro VI non fece mai altro. non penso mai ad altro, che a ingannare uomini: e sempre trovo subietto da poterlo fare."N. Machiavelli, De principatibus, 103. 55 A. La Penna, "II ntratto 'paradossale' da Silla a Petronio," in his Aspetti del pensiero storico latino, 2nd ed. (Turin: Einaudi, 1978; 2nd ed., 1983), 193-221, at 220; see also the supplement to this, "Ancora sul ritratto 'paradossale'. Aggiunte e correzioni," ibid., 223-30, for additional Renaissance examples, including the "Petronian" portrait of Lorenzo de' Medici at the end of bk. 8 of Machiavelli's Istoriefiorentine. On Guicciardini's scepticism toward the usefulness of exemplar history, see M. Phillips, Francesco Guicciardini: The Historian's Craft (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), chap. 3: "The Ricordi: The Rules of Prudence and the Limits of Prediction." 56 For the comparison of Leo and Clement in Storia d'ltalia 16.12, see Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1668, and Pnce Zimmermann's essay above. 57 Guicciardini, Storia d'ltalia, bk. 15 (the Italian follows Guicciardini, Storia, 3:1533; the English follows Guicciardini, History, 338). There are also verbal reminiscences of Sallust's Bellum Catilinae 2.1 and 5.4-5 in Guicciardini's portrait of Julius II (11:8). In summing up their judgments of Clement VII, Guicciardini and Nerli might well have agreed with the words quoted from Tacitus in the portrait of another pope (albeit an imaginary one), Hadrian VII: "a man worthy of empire, had he never ruled" (capax imperil, nisi imperdsset). F. Rolfe (Frederick Baron Corvo), Hadrian the Seventh (Hertfordshire, U.K.: Wordsworth Classics, 1993), 368.

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strategy of indecision." 58 If we now look at the question from the point of view of the Conspiracy of 1522 and the accounts that we have reviewed, we can see that it is, in fact, this latter image of the pope that stands out in the work of Nerli and Nardi, and of Ammirato as well. Influenced by the reading of Machiavelli, these authors perceived in the cardinal the traits of a Machiavellian ruler: the art of masking his real interests and political intentions, the ability to temporize (as long as his own position in Florence remained at risk), and then—once the external threats (e.g., of a French invasion) had receded—the will to act quickly and ruthlessly in suppressing his opponents. The failure of the plot had also reinforced the Medici regime in Florence and strengthened the chances for another Medici victory in the next papal conclave— especially after the future Clement VII had won over, by an act of "clemency," his old enemy Cardinal Francesco Soderini.59 Reading the events of 1522 through the eyes of Machiavelli, his ancient sources, and his mid-sixteenth-century interpreters, one might conclude that the real protagonist of the congiura—the person who most effectively manipulated it to his own advantage—was not one of its perpetrators but its target himself, Giulio de' Medici. Although the young humanists of the Orti Oricellari had evidently not learned their lessons from Machiavelli's Discorsi, the future Pope Clement VII had clearly benefited from its counsel—or so, at least, it appeared. In a curious reversal of roles, it was the intended victim of the conspiracy who emerged, in the final analysis, as the one truly astute and successful "conspirator."

58

I thank Kenneth Gouwens for kindly sharing with me a copy of the paper he delivered at RSA 2000 in Florence, "The Ethics of Ambiguity," from which I draw this phrase. 59 See Lowe (1993), 140-41.

The Sack of Rome and its Aftermath

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Chapter 6

Clement VII and Francesco Maria Delia Rovere, Duke of Urbino Cecil H. Clough

Given the modest resources of Francesco Maria Delia Rovere (1490-1538), duke of Urbino (Figure 6.1), it may appear somewhat surprising that he was to prove more than a match for Pope Clement VII. In late April 1527, as an imperial army led by Charles de Bourbon advanced toward Florence and Rome, Clement VII addressed three briefs to the duke, pleading for help from him as commander of the army of the League of Cognac. 1 In the light of the scarring humiliations suffered from the two Medici popes, these requests presumably gave the duke satisfaction, especially as he could turn them to his advantage. Delia Rovere's self-esteem and sense of family pride were highly developed, and he was consistently vindictive in repaying a slight. Three contemporaries well-informed on the politics of the day, whose views are most familiar—Francesco Guicciardini, Gian Matteo Giberti, and Luigi Guicciardmi— held him to blame for permitting Bourbon's army access to Rome. 2 Francesco Guicciardini, who as Lieutenant General of papal troops was under Delia Rovere's supreme command, accompanied the army which early in 1527 shadowed the enemy force as it progressed down the Italian peninsula toward Florence and Rome. At a council of war in September 1526, Guicciardini's pretensions of precedence to command by virtue of being in the pope's service had so angered Delia Rovere that he struck him to the ground, then ordered him to leave his presence before worse befell him. 3 Writing his History of Italy a decade or so later, probably after the duke's death, Guicciardini repaid the insult, attributing the duke's

1

2

3

The three briefs to Francesco Maria (dated 20, 22, and 30 April 1527) are in ASF, Archivio diplomatico (see Guida generate degli Archivi di Stato italiani, 4 vols. to date [Rome: Ministero per i Beni Cultural! e Ambientali, Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistici, 1981- ], 2: 39, under "Urbino"); being those despatched, they originated in the family papers of the Delia Rovere and were taken to Florence by Vittoria in 1631. They are mentioned, with another of 16 March, by J. Dennistoun, Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Illustrating the Arms, Arts, and Literature of Italy, from 1440 to 7(530, 3 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851), 3:407-8 (Appendix 1). As Captain General of Venice, Delia Rovere commanded the Republic's contingent—the major one—to the army of the League of Cognac. A fourth contemporary, Paolo Giovio, assigned the blame entirely to the pope (see the text at note 6 below, and that note). Be it remarked that all verdicts were much influenced by personal considerations. J. Hook, The Sack of Rome, 1527 (London: Macmillan, 1972), provides useful historical context, though Delia Rovere's part is barely mentioned. For Giberti's view, see the text at note 4 below. Later, seemingly, there was a similar incident. See note 16 below.

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unwillingness to engage the imperial force in 1527 to cowardice—a characterization not substantiated by Delia Rovere's earlier military campaigns, which revealed him as bold and resolute, if also inclined to be hasty and intemperate. Earlier in his History, Guicciardini had offered a more balanced appraisal in another context— when the duke retreated from Milan in July 1526—there allowing for the possibility that the duke's withdrawal was motivated by his hatred of the Medici. Gian Marteo Giberti, the papal datary, was of like mind, while also maintaining that actually Delia Rovere was collaborating with the enemy. 4 Luigi Guicciardini, Francesco's brother, in his Sack of Rome likewise stressed that the duke consistently failed to engage the enemy, and attributed this to his detestation of the Medici. However, he held Clement VII ultimately responsible for his own misfortunes because he trusted Delia Rovere, so harshly maltreated by his family, and also failed to pay for an adequate force to support the League of Cognac.5 Paolo Giovio did not cover the background to the Sack, or provide information regarding it, in the Histories of his Times: a lacuna for which he furnished various explanations over the years. In his "Ischian" dialogue, certainly written by early February 1530, the interlocutor "D'Avalos" (named after a leading military commander of the day, Alfonso d'Avalos, marquis of Vasto) provides a reasonable explanation for Delia Rovere's seeming cowardice in 1527: Giovio's "D'Avalos" justified Francesco Maria's reluctance to engage a determined enemy with a numerically inferior and less well trained force, concluding like Luigi Guicciardini that it was the pope's folly that brought about the Sack, inasmuch as he had promoted the League of Cognac without subsidizing sufficient troops, and had put his trust in Delia Rovere, greatly wronged and consistently both by Leo X (Clement's cousin) and by the pope himself. 6 As will emerge from what follows, the duke certainly had no cause whatso4

5

6

For the claim regarding Delia Rovere's cowardice during the advance toward Rome, see F. Guicciardini, Storia d'Italia, ed. C. Panigada, 5 vols. (Ban: G. Laterza, 1929), 5:144 (bk. 18, chap. 9). For the date of composition of the Storia d'Italia, see E. Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 298. Guicciardini's alternative explanation, which he attributed to others ("altri dubitassino") as against what he himself believed, was that Delia Rovere's reluctance to engage the enemy stemmed from antipathy to furthering Medici interests. Guicciardini (1929), 5:39 (bk. 17, chap. 6). For Giberti's view, see T. C. P. Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 314, n. 102; see also A. Turchini, "Giberti, Gian Matteo," in DBJ, 54:623-9. For the various printings, see Cochrane (1981), 541, n. 88. Luigi witnessed many of the major events of Florence (where he was Gonfaloniere di giustizia in March-April of 1527), though not those in Rome. His verdicts on motives were elaborated for presentation of his account to Duke Cosimo de' Medici, and as known may not have been written before 1537: see M. Bardini, "Luigi Guicciardini e Cosimo de' Medici. II racconto esemplare del Sacco di Roma," Italianistica 18 (1989): 121-40; cf. Cochrane (1981), 190. In this essay McGregor's translation is used, despite its flaws, on which see the review by N. Minnich, CHR 20 (1994): 354-5. For the lacuna in Giovio's Histories, see Zimmermann (1995), 68-9, 287. P. Giovio, Dialogus de viris et foeminis aetate nostra florentibus, ed. E. Travi, in Giovio, Opera, 9:167-321, at 205 and 217. For its date of composition, see Travi's introduction in Giovio, Opera, 9:149-51. Giovio's assigning to the marquis the views expressed perhaps was

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ever to trust either Medici pope, rather to suspect and abhor them, and take revenge on them. Some present-day scholars have minimized Delia Rovere's conscious precipitation of the Sack of Rome, emphasizing instead his outdated concept of warfare. Andre Chastel's book on the Sack mentions the duke only briefly; in opposing Bourbon, Chastel explains, the duke followed an "Italian strategy" that had been "based for more than a century on cunning and temporizing. ... It failed." 7 Most recently, Robert Finlay advances at length the case for the duke's strategy deriving consciously from the perceived policy of Fabius Maximus, adopted in his capacity as Venetian Captain General and as required by his employer, the Republic of Venice, and in particular by Doge Andrea Gritti. According to Finlay, in failing to block the advance of Bourbon's army, or engage it, Francesco Maria was simply doing his duty to Venice as required, and in any event was conforming to the long-established Italian concept of warfare in which, supposedly, he had been trained. 8 Such an interpretation errs in absolving Duke Francesco Maria of any responsibility. Certainly the Venetian authorities were anxious not to suffer defeat or serious losses, but even so, the wrongs the duke had suffered from the Medici should not be forgotten, nor should his character and previous military experience be disregarded. I would suggest that Venice's constraints provided a useful pretext for the duke's inaction. Furthermore, the Chastel-Finlay interpretation ignores Clement VII's part in the events that led to the Sack and his own mortification. The present paper, condensed from a detailed analysis of the struggles between Francesco Maria Delia Rovere and the Medici, focuses upon the duke in relation to Giulio de 1 Medici (first as cardinal, then as Pope Clement VII), stressing the impact of their mutual antipathy upon the course of events. It traces the origins of their antagonism to 1515, in the circumstances that led to Leo X depriving the duke of papal offices and then dispossessing him of his duchy and ducal title in 1516. In May 1517 the pope had secret correspondence with the Spanish captain Maldonato in the duke's service, offering him the cardinal's hat for his son and 10,000 ducats upon delivery of the duke dead or alive. 9 Understandably, the duke's hatred of the Medici went very deep. Giulio de' Medici as cardinal (Figure 6.2) was closely and consistently involved in Leo X's machinations against the duke. Immediately on his election as Clement VII, he was faced with the duke's investiture by Adrian with the lands and honors from which the Medici had deposed him in 1515-16, and which he now held by military force. Clement VIPs consistent refusal to confer the duchy and papal titles on Delia Rovere was a determining factor in the Sack of Rome. Only late in 1529 did the pope invest

7 8 9

a literary fiction to disguise his own sentiments; cf. Zimmermann (1995), 69. For Alfonso D'Avalos, see G. De Caro, "Avalos, Alfonso d'," inDBI, 4:612-16. A. Chastel, The Sack of Rome, 7527, trans. B. Archer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 30. R. Finlay, "Fabius Maximus in Venice: Doge Andrea Gritti, the War of Cambrai, and the Rise of Habsburg Hegemony, 1509-1530," RQ 53 (2000): 988-1026, esp. 1022-3. See Cristoforo Centelle of Sassoferrato, "De bello urbmatensi," BAV, Urb. Lat. 907, a near-contemporary account (cf. C. Stornajolo, Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae ... Codices Urbinates Latini, 3 vols. [Rome: "Typis Vaticanis," 1902-21], 2:629-30). Dennistoun (1851), 2:377-9, cites the work (wrongly as "Centenelle") and dates the treasonable conduct of the Spanish captain and associates to May 1517.

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the duke, thereby marking the watershed in the latter's career. Shortly after, in his newly confirmed capacity as prefect of Rome, Delia Rovere participated at the coronation of Charles V in Bologna.

Francesco Maria: A New Prince In Machiavelli's terminology Francesco Maria was a new prince, with a "mixed state" acquired by Fortune. 10 His father, Giovanni Delia Rovere (1457-1501), was a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, who on his betrothal in 1474 was granted by the pope three contiguous vicariates in the Marche: Senigallia, Mondavio, and Mondolfo. The following year Giovanni was invested with the duchy of Sora in the kingdom of Naples, and the pope had him elected prefect of Rome. 11 His wife, Giovanna (Francesco Maria's mother), was the second-born legitimate daughter of Federico da Montefeltro, whose duchy comprised various vicariates clustered around Urbino. 12 In 1504 Pope Julius II, a nephew of Sixtus IV and created by him cardinal, insisted that the then-duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo (1472-1508), Federico's only legitimate son, being impotent and childless, should adopt as his heir their common nephew, Francesco Maria. While Francesco Maria was Federico's eldest male descendant, his inheritance of the Montefeltro vicariates and title was excluded by canon law and by the Montefeltro privileges, since his succession was through the female line, and only that by the legitimate male line was permitted. The pope believed that an exception could be made if the nephew's adoption was to be sanctioned by him with the approval of Consistory; thereby would be avoided devolution of the duchy of Urbino to the Holy See on Duke Guidobaldo's death. 13 In the event, in April 1508, Francesco Maria inherited the duchy of Urbino and the title as its duke, and that autumn he received the baton of command as Captain General of the Church. He already held the vicariates inherited from his father, his office as prefect of Rome, and the duchy of Sora. In May 1510 the pope invested him with the vicariates of San Lorenzo in Campo and Montafogli. Finally, he received the vicariate of Pesaro, the bull of investiture being dated 16 February 1513, a few days before the death of Julius II. 14 10 N. Machiavelli, // Principe ... [and other works] (Rome: A. Blado, 1532), fols. chap. 3: "De principal! misti." 11 For specific dates and further details, see C. H. Clough, "Federico da Montefeltro and the Kings of Naples: a Study in Fifteenth-Century Survival," RS 6 (1992): 113-72, at 134^6. 12 For Giovanna, see Clough (1992): 134-6. The duke's eldest legitimate daughter, Elisabetta, had no son as heir (ibid., 127). 13 C. H. Clough, "La successione dei Delia Rovere nel Ducato di Urbino," in / Delia Rovere nell'/talia delle corti (Atti del Convegno, Urbania, 16-19 Sept. 1999), ed. B. Cleri, S. Eiche, J. E. Law, and F. Paoli, 4 vols. (Urbino: QuattroVenti, 2002), 1 ("Storia del ducato"):46-54. 14 Clough (2002), 1:30, 44, n. 100, 54, 57; Dennistoun (1851), 2:311; J. Cartwright, Baldassare Castiglione: The Perfect Courtier, 2 vols. (London: J. Murray, 1908), 1:260. After Delia Rovere's murder of Alidosi in 1511, the pope by a bull of 21 July deprived him of his vicariates and titles (ibid., 1:299); cf. B. Cerretani, Ricordi, ed. G. Berti (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 244. Having lost his supreme command, he refused to serve in the papal army under the duke of Termini, Raimondo da Cardona, the viceroy of Naples (Cartwright [1908], 1:308). He kept Sora, inasmuch as it was a fief of the kingdom of Naples.

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These fortuitous circumstances encouraged Francesco Maria's belief in his destiny. He was hasty-tempered and violent—family traits, which passing years accentuated. Aged 17, he stabbed to death a favorite of his adoptive father Guidobaldo, who had seduced his sister Maria, and he had her manservant assassinated for carrying messages between the couple. At 21, he stabbed to death Cardinal Francesco Alidosi for presumed treasonable contact with the French.15 The duke's striking of Guicciardini has been mentioned; the antipathy between the two commanders was to become such that in a letter of 28 February 1527, Guicciardini quipped that he approached the duke with astrolabe at the ready to judge how choleric he was likely to be.16 Early in the 1530s, the duke ordered the hanging of a maid-of-honor of his wife, Eleonora Gonzaga, for acting as go-between on behalf of his son, Guidobaldo (1514-1574), and a young woman (probably Clarice Orsini) with whom the son was infatuated. Certainly Guidobaldo sought his father's permission to marry her, to his father's fury. This action of hanging his wife's servant was deemed particularly pitiless by Marguerite de Navarre in her Heptameron, where she condemned the duke as knowing no joy other than in taking revenge on those he hated.17 From his youth Francesco Maria suffered from dropsy, inherited through his mother from the Montefeltro line. There was another medical reason for the duke's violent bursts of anger, periods of inactivity, and irrational behavior. Sexually licentious from youth, presumably with prostitutes, the duke had contracted venereal disease; he infected his wife with what her doctor defined as gonorrhea, and by November 1530 it was feared that in consequence she would go blind. 18 Given the duke's violent character over decades, it appears hardly surprising that eventually, in 1538, he was assassinated by poison, or so contemporaries believed. 19

15 16

17

18 19

Julius II restored him to all papal honors in May 1512 (ibid., 1:310). He received Pesaro as a vicariate on the excuse that it was in lieu of back pay (ibid, 1:317; Clough [2002], 1:54). He was absolved of the crime by his uncle, Julius II, on the grounds of insupportable provocation. Clough (2002), 1:61; Dennistoun (1851), 2:328-9; See also G. De Caro, "Alidosi, Francesco," inDBI, 2:373-6. Dennistoun (1851), 2:423, indicates two separate occasions and two sources (ibid., 2:418n.): B. Baldi, ["Discorso intomo il narrative di Francesco Guicciardini su Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere"], in his "Miscellanea/' in BAY, Urb. Lat. 900, fols. 18-56 (see Stornajolo [1902-21], 2:626); A. Leonardi, ["Res gestae Francisci Mariae I, Urbinis ducis"], written ca. 1565-81, in BAY, Urb. Lat. 1023, being item VIII (at fols. 86-110) (see Stornajolo [1902-21], 3:13). For Guicciardini's military post and responsibilities, see R. Ridolfi, Vita di Francesco Guicciardini (Rome: A. Belardetti, 1960), 235, 243; for the gibe about the astrolabe, see ibid., 265,478, n. 19. Clough (2002), 1:61. For Guidobaldo's interest in Clarice Orsini (daughter of Giangiordano Orsini and Felice Delia Rovere), see A. Vernarecci, Fossombrone dai tempi antichissimi ai nostri, 2 vols. (Fossombrone: F. Monacelli, 1907-14), 2:289-90, 295-6. For the duke's menacing letter to his son regarding her, see B. Feliciangeli, Notizie e documenti sulla vita di Caterina Cibo Varano. duchessa di Camerino (Camerino: Libreria Editrice Favorino, 1891), 142-3. Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron, journee 6, nouvelle 51. For the duke's dropsy, see Clough (2002), 1:51, n. 146. For the duchess's gonorrhea, see A. Luzio and R. Renier, Mantova e Urbino (1471-1539) (Turin-Rome: L. Roux and Co., 1893), 280, n. 2. For the duke's mysterious death attributed to poison, dropped into his ear by his barber, who confessed to the deed, see Clough (2002), 1:61, n. 146; cf. H. E. Wethey, The

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When Julius II died in February 1513, Francesco Maria doubtless appreciated that a future pope might query his adoption by Duke Guidobaldo in 1504—at the time it had been controversial, as too had been his absolution for the murder of Cardinal Alidosi. Nonetheless, with the election in March of Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici as Leo X, the duke could suppose that all would be well. Appointed as Leo's Master of the Household was Count Lodovico Canossa, who had loyally served Duke Guidobaldo for some ten years from 1496, and who in 1505 had negotiated Francesco Maria's betrothal to Eleonora Gonzaga. In 1507 the count appears to have entered the service of Julius II, but he continued to represent the interests of the duchy at the papal court, and Delia Rovere could anticipate he would still do so under Leo X. One of the pope's two secretaries of the briefs, Pietro Bembo, had spent long periods of time at the ducal court between 1505 and 1511 and could be expected to be supportive.20 Above all, the pope's youngest brother, Giuliano, had enjoyed hospitality at the Urbino court for months at a time following the exile of the Medici from Florence in 1494.21 Leo X's Ambitions for Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici Such hopes as Delia Rovere had in Leo X proved illusory, and presumably the shock of what followed was the greater and the duke's bitterness the deeper. Initially, however, the new pope appeared cordial toward him. On 9 April 1513, Leo X received the duke in audience at the Vatican, verbally confirming him as both prefect of Rome and Captain General of the Church. Two days later, in the new pontiffs formal procession to the Lateran, the duke took his place, as prefect, behind the Senator of Rome. A bull of 17 April invested him with all his ecclesiastical vicariates, and another (4 August) renewed his appointment on the usual annual basis as Captain General.22

Paintings of Titian, 3 vols. (London: Phaidon, 1969-75), 2: "The Portraits," 135: "but modern medicine might diagnose a virus infection." 20 C. H. Clough, "Canossa, Lodovico," in DB1, 18:186-92 (hereafter, Clough, "Canossa"), at 186-7; C. H. Clough, "Pietro Bembo, Luigi da Porto, and the Court of Urbino," essay 17 in C. H Clough, The Duchy of Urbino in the Renaissance (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981), 77-87. 21 C. H. Clough, "Francis I and the Courtiers of Castiglione's Courtier," essay 16 in Clough (1981), 23-70, at 35-6 (hereafter, Clough [1981a]). G. Fatini, "Cenni biografici," in G. de' Medici, Poesie, ed. G. Fatini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1939), xxxi-xxxiii. 22 Cartwright (1908), 1:346-9. For the procession to the Lateran, see the detailed eyewitness account of G. G. Penni (1513), repr. with supplementary notes in W. Roscoe, Vita e Pontificato di Leone X, trans, and ed. L. Bossi, 12 vols. (Milan: Sonzogno and Co., 1816-17), 5: Appendix, 189-231 (doc. LXX). The original papal briefs of Leo X sent to Delia Rovere are in ASF, Archivio diplomatico; see Vemarecci (1907-14), 2:266. Clearly. Roscoe's claim that at this time Delia Rovere was the pope's "formidable adversary" is unjustified (Roscoe [1846], 1:356). For Giulio de' Medici's role in the re-assertion of Medicean authoritarian control in Florence, see J. N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512-1530 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 58-69; for Giuliano, see ibid., 79-81; for Lorenzo, see ibid., 81-3.

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From the outset of his pontificate, Leo X's chief concern on the Italian peninsula was Florence, which had been restored to Medici control the previous September. His ambition then had been that his brother Giuliano should take charge of the city. But Giuliano, a licentious dilettante, soon wearied of the responsibilities associated with governing, and in the summer of 1513 he moved to Rome. As a stopgap measure for Florence, authority there was left in the hands of Giulio de' Medici (Pope Leo and Giuliano's cousin), who had been named archbishop of Florence in April 1513 (he would be elevated to the cardinalate at Leo X's first promotion on 23 September). The pope and archbishop soon settled upon Lorenzo as an apt replacement, and on 13 August he was declared Giuliano's "legitimate substitute" in Florence in all the latter's offices, dignities, and honors. Still, Florence remained vulnerable to political changes on a grand scale, as signified on the peninsula by the rivalry between the kings of France and Spain. By September 1513 the pope and archbishop appear to have determined on a new state on the Italian peninsula for Giuliano, believing such essential to ensure Medicean control of Florence and the security of its state. The ideal would be a territory bordering that of Florence: this proving impractical, one not too distant was the best option, and in the end this was to be the duchy of Urbino.23 Meanwhile, on 27 February 1515, Leo X issued a bull stating that Giuliano was to be governor in perpetuity of Parma and Piacenza (within the duchy of Milan, as claimed by its then Sforza duke and also by Francis I, but actually occupied by papal forces), and Modena and Reggio (cities and territory purchased by Leo X from the Holy Roman emperor elect Maximilian, and now held by papal troops).24 Obviously the pope was aware of the inherent difficulties in the longer term of holding these cities, particularly those claimed by the king of France as part of his duchy of Milan. Alfonso d'Este was an established ally of the king of France, to whom he looked for protection. Certainly Francis I showed no inclination to approve the transfer of the four cities to the Papal States as represented by Giuliano (who had been nominated merely as their governor, in a bid for such approval). In the summer of 1515, as Francis I prepared to recover by force of arms the duchy of Milan, papal-held Parma and Piacenza were under threat. Meanwhile, a league was formed between the duke of Ferrara and the Bentivoglio, seemingly with French secret support, to recover respectively Modena and Reggio, and Bologna. Cardinal Giulio, then papal legate in Bologna, urged the pope to make military preparations to preserve for the Papal States the four cities recently allocated to Giuliano, who appeared unconcerned.25 On 29 June in St. Peter's, Rome, the pope presented Giuliano with the baton of Captain General of the Church. Popes were 23 The facts and motives cannot be resolved with certainty; even what those close to the Medici reported may in reality have been mere speculations. The new state for Giuliano was of problematic location, which shifted according to the circumstances of power politics and the feasibility of its creation. Fatini (1939), lii-liii.

24 25

The papal bull granting Parma, Piacenza, Modena, and Reggio to Giuliano as governor is printed in C. Guasti, "I manoscritti Torrigiani donati aU'Archivio di Stato di Firenze," ASI, ser. 3, 19 (1874): 233. P. Balan, Roberto Boschetti e gli avvenimenti italiani del suoi tempi (1494-1529): Memorie e document!, 2 vols. (Modena: Societa tipografica, 1877), 1:88, 90-91.

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wont to concede such honors at personal whim, but there were constraints. Presumably Francesco Maria's annual contract for the post had expired and not been renewed. In such circumstances, while Delia Rovere probably anticipated replacement, its actuality, without just cause or any explanation, humiliated him. Doubtless, too, it made him feel increasingly vulnerable in view of the rumors of him being dispossessed of his vicariates for their re-allocation to Giuliano. 26 On 5 July Giuliano left Rome for Bologna, where the papal army was being assembled under Cardinal Giulio. 27 En route on 9 July Giuliano met the duke of Urbino at Gubbio, with the object of persuading him not to take up arms for France. The meeting appears to have been cordial, with Giuliano protesting convincingly that he esteemed Francesco Maria as a brother, and that he would never agree to the duke's deposition so that he himself could be invested with the duchy of Urbino. The duke was persuaded by him to raise a force against advance payment and, fearing assassination, he sought authority for a personal guard. The pope agreed to these terms and advanced a generous sum for the hire of troops.28 As Giuliano vigorously opposed Delia Rovere's deposition, reminding the pope of the kindnesses they had received while in exile, that matter was briefly deferred.29 Once Giuliano became seriously ill, the situation irrevocably deteriorated. On 8 August Lorenzo was appointed acting Captain General in Giuliano's place, which much concerned Delia Rovere, aware of Lorenzo's vaulting ambition and of his being a potential rival for the duchy. 30 By the end of July, the duke had not sent his promised troops to join the papal army and, seemingly fearing dispossession, was negotiating with Francis I for protection. On 30 July Leo X sent Castiglione, the duke's envoy in Rome, to Urbino to order the duke to march with his forces to Bologna. 31 Francesco Maria did not comply, even after the pope reasserted the order on 10 August and once more on 16 August. Thereupon the pope withdrew his concession for the duke to retain 1,000 infantry in his service.32 On 31 August 1515 a Venetian, who that day had spoken with Castiglione at the Vatican, reported to his home government: current opinion was that the duke was secretly allied to Francis I and that he was Leo X's bitter enemy. Apparently the duke had raised the body of troops required by the pope with the money received for that 26

27 28 29 30 31 32

Delia Rovere had been appointed Captain General of the Church on 4 October 1508; after he killed Cardinal Alidosi the pope excommunicated him, whereupon he lost his command with effect from 21 July 1511, being reinstated only in May 1512. On 17 April 1513 Leo X confirmed his appointment (presumably it was renewed in 1514). Delia Rovere was most likely aware of the pope's plans, circulating since February 1515, regarding the duchy of Urbino. The assumption that the duke's post as Captain General was not renewed following its annual expiration makes more explicable his behavior in June and July of 1515, as also that of Giuliano and the pope. For Giuliano's appointment as Captain General on 29 June 1515, see Fatini (1939), Ixxxi. Fatini (1939), Ixxxii-lxxxiii; Pastor, 7:112. Cartwrigrit (1908), 1:399-400; Dennistoun (1851), 2:346-7. Cardinal Bibbienajoined Giuliano in supporting Delia Rovere. Clough (198la), 30. Pastor, 7:111-12. On 12 August Lorenzo ceremoniously received the baton. Verdi (1905), 12; Fatini (1939), Ixxxvi. Cartwright(1908), 1:400. Carrwright(1908), 1:401; Balan (1877), 1:91-2; cf. Denmstoun (1851), 2:346, n. 1.

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purpose, but being unwilling to serve under Lorenzo, he had sent the force under his deputy; on reaching Cesena, the force had refused to go forward without the duke and had disbanded. By ignoring the pope's express orders to join the papal army, Delia Rovere, who held vicariates from the pope and had accepted money to raise a force, appeared knowingly to have placed himself in the wrong.33 One can suppose that the pope and Cardinal Giulio, having deprived Delia Rovere of the distinguished and lucrative post of Captain General of the Church without just cause, believed it most unlikely that he would serve under Lorenzo; presumably they calculated that his refusal to obey orders would help justify dispossessing him of his duchy in favor of Lorenzo. Delia Rovere, for his part, was aware of the pope's desire to bestow the duchy on a Medici and could reasonably suspect a trap: with him and his army absent from the duchy, papal troops could be sent to occupy it on a trumped-up charge. Moreover, he probably also feared assassination if in Lorenzo's power, and that very fear certainly was his excuse for not appearing in person before, the pope in Rome, when he petitioned that an agent should represent him; his supporters, including his adoptive mother, Elisabetta Gonzaga, echoed his concern.34 Leo X's Agreement with Francis I at Bologna The French monarch's overwhelming victory at Marignano on 14 September 1515 prompted the pope to offer him favorable terms, notably the surrender of Parma and Piacenza.35 Accepting the terms, Francis I undertook to protect the Papal States, Florence, and the Medici, while Giuliano and Lorenzo were each to receive a fief in France and a French pension.36 Following the king's triumphal entry into Milan as its duke on 11 October, the agreement was formally signed. In November royal letters patent conferred on Giuliano the rank of both prince and duke of France, with the duchy of Nemours.37 Although the duchy of Urbino had no place in the signed agreement, the surrender of Parma and Piacenza meant that it now figured more prominently in the ambitions of Alfonsina Orsini and her son, Lorenzo.38 Four days later, Cardinal Giulio could write from Rome: "As for Urbino, the pope's mind is made up. 33 Cartwright (1908), 1:401. The duke justified his personal inaction by a clause in his contract for raising the force, which entitled him to send a deputy in his place, should need arise, and this he had done. See note 54 below. 34 See A. Luzio, "Isabella d'Este e Leone X dal Congresso di Bologna alia presa di Milano (1515-1521)," pt. 1, ASIy ser. 5,40 (1907): 18-97, at 31. In the light of Giampaolo Baglioni's execution at Leo X's orders in 1520, despite a safe conduct and without trial, Delia Rovere's concern for his own safety in Rome evidently was not misplaced (see note 111 below). 35 Clough, "Canossa," 187-8; Cartwright (1908), 1:401; Pastor, 7:118; Verdi (1905), 14-17; Pastor, 7:123. 36 Balan (1877), 1:92-3. 37 Verdi (1905), 18-19; Pastor, 7:126-7; dough (198la), 36. 38 Thus she wrote to him on 3 November, "My aim is Urbino"; "per questo mezo noi habbiamo qualche stato, et la mira mia e in su Urbino." The letter (ASF, MAP, 105, 18) is published in full in I. Ciseri, L 'ingresso trionfale di Leone X in Firenze nel 1515 (Florence: Olschki, 1990), 246, doc. 24; cf. Verdi (1905), 20; Cartwright (1908), 1:402.

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He does not wish to hear the matter discussed, but it will be done without more words."39 On 2 December 1515 Leo X ordered Cardinal Giulio, by then back in Bologna, to prepare for his arrival and that of Francis I, which took place respectively on 8 and 11 December.40 Private discussions between pope and king extended over the mornings of some three days; there were no attendants, and what was said was secret, nothing regarding the political agreements being committed to paper and subsequently ratified.41 Significant (if wise after the event) is the testimony of Beltrando Costabili, writing on 3 June 1516 to his prince, Alfonso d'Este: And [the pope] said that the king asked if he would discuss the issue of the duke of Urbino, to which the pope replied that the subject was closed, as the duke was guilty of much wrong-doing, had broken faith, owed him money, and was a traitor. Among those concerned by the reports of the potential Bologna accord was Isabella d'Este, wife of Francesco Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua, and mother-in-law of Francesco Maria. Upon the duke appealing for Gonzaga intervention in his controversy with Leo X, Isabella, effectively then ruling the Mantuan state (since her husband was frequently incapacitated by syphilis), took the lead, and her agents at the papal court and elsewhere sent frequent reports, which describe events as they unfolded.43 Castiglione had been sent to Bologna by the duke of Urbino by way of Mantua, arriving shortly before his presentation to Francis I, most likely in the early evening of 14 December. Through Castiglione, Delia Rovere, who rightly anticipated dispossession, appealed to the French king as a knight of the Order of Saint Michael to its Sovereign Head. The archdeacon of Gabbioneta, agent of the marquis at the papal court, wrote on 14 December after Castiglione's audience with the monarch (presumably rehearsing what Castiglione told him, shortly after it) that while the king spoke warmly of Delia Rovere, the pope remained as antagonistic as ever. Francis I, 39 A. Giorgetti, "Lorenzo de' Medici Duca d'Urbino e lacopo V D'Appiano," ASI, ser. 4, 8 (1881): 222-38 and 305-25, at 308, n. 2, which reads: "El Signer Vitello mi fa intendere che il Papa si contenta della cosa di Siena, e d'Urbino e li pare che questa di Siena si debbe fare prima dell'altra, non perd essere in perdita di Siena. Lui non vole si li parli, ma che si facci, senza dirli altro...." cf F.Nitti, Leone X e la sua politico ... (Florence: G. Barbera, 1892), 75; Cartwright(1908), 1:402. 40 Pastor, 7:131-3, 135^6. 41 Pastor, 7:137-42. 42 "Et disse che S. M.ta ge fece adomandare se la volea la ge parlasse del Duca de Urbino et che ge haveva risposto non se ne curare, per mostrare che la ge sapea dir de no come 1'havea facto, dicendo che'l Pha voluto che S. M.ta non se impazzi de epso duca et per haverli facto molte iniurie et rotta la fede et manchatoli alii bisogni soi havendo havuto soi dinari, et appellandolo traditore et mostrando contra epso mal animo." Balan (1877), 2:72. This was written in a dispatch shortly after Lorenzo de' Medici had effectively taken possession of the duchy in the summer of 1516. Balan prints it in full (ibid., 2:71-2 [doc. XXVII]). Cf. ibid., 1:93-4. 43 For Della Rovere's formal request to Francesco Gonzaga, probably taken to Mantua by Castiglione, see G. Martinati, Notizie storicobiograflche intorno al conte Baldassare Castiglione (Florence: Le Monnier, 1890), 78 (doc. XXVII). For Castiglione going to Mantua on his way to Rome, see Cartwright (1908), 1:406. Reports from the Gonzaga agents are at the heart of Luzio (1907), 27-32.

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he said, promised to speak again to Leo X on the matter at an opportune moment, but Castiglione held out little hope of the pontiff changing his mind. 44 Whether the king fulfilled his promise remains uncertain, since he found the pope implacable, further support of Delia Rovere was not in his best interests.

Leo X's Legal Moves Against Delia Rovere and Attempts to Deflect Them Alerted to the pope's secret negotiations with Francis I in September 1515 and to Lorenzo's visit to the king in Milan the following month, Francesco Maria suspected that he could not depend on French protection, as Castiglione's subsequent encounter with the king in Bologna fully substantiated. By 21 October the duke had sent his wife, and his only son and heir, Guidobaldo, to the fortress of San Leo for greater security. 45 He began to strengthen the fortifications of his duchy, to recruit troops, and to take stringent precautions against assassination. 46 Leo X, for his part, traveled from Bologna back to Florence, where Giuliano was near death from consumption. 47 Isabella d'Este, sensing that time was short, sent her agent Carlo Agnello to seek an interview with Giuliano. On 23 January 1516 Giuliano was too ill to see him; Agnello could only pass on to Isabella Dovizi's report to him that the pope remained most determined to depose Delia Rovere, and in this had the constant backing of Alfonsina, Lorenzo's mother. Two days later Agnello wrote that a memorandum drawn up by Dovizi in Delia Rovere's favor, which had Giuliano's entire backing, had been rejected by the pope; indeed on the pontiffs orders Cardinal Pietro Accolti, Auditor of the Rota, was preparing the case against the duke. In late January, Isabella wrote to Delia Rovere urging him to come to an agreement with the pope, though should it come to war she promised him the support of her brother-in-law, Giovanni Gonzaga, a distinguished military captain; the marquis wrote in like vein. 48 While Isabella was solicitous for Delia Rovere, as her daughter and grandson were involved, she was also preoccupied not to prejudice Gonzaga interests with the pope, and particularly to ensure that members of the Gonzaga family were not put under the interdict in consequence of assisting the duke. Isabella's son, Federico, and her brother, Cardinal Ippolito, both with the French court, were urged to stimulate Francis I's backing for the duke of Urbino, though with no success. The king's 44 45 46 47 48

Luzio (1907), 31-2; dough (1981a), 24-5. Luzio and Renier (1893), 217. Balan(1877), 1:97. Pastor, 7:40. Luzio (1907), 32-4. For Dovizi's "memoriale" favorable to Delia Rovere, which had Giuliano's support, see ibid., 43. There is confusion and misinformation regarding Giuliano's support for the duke thereafter until his death on 17 March. Following Giovio's Vita di Leone X, bk. 3, many historians have stated that as late as two days before his death, Giuliano continued to plead Delia Rovere's cause: e.g., Verdi (1905), 21-2; Fatini (1939), Ixxxix; G. B. Leoni, Vita di Francesco Maria di Montefeltro della Rovere, Duca di Urbino (Venice: G. B. Ciotti, 1605), 171-2; cf. Pastor, 7:148. But Giuliano was so ill in the last six days of his life that he could not eat and could scarcely breathe, or, as Dovizi put it in his letter of 17 March, "ne pur vivere" (Luzio [1907], 38). Thus it seems highly improbable that he continued then to agitate on Della Rovere's behalf.

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objective was to ensure that Leo X honored the Bologna agreement in all its aspects, above all those ecclesiastical; Delia Rovere was seen as expendable for that end. Further, Canossa, at the court as the pope's legate to France, dampened any moves in favor of the duke, as he assured the queen that he himself had sought diligently but to no purpose to defend Delia Rovere to the pope, and he deemed any further remonstrances on his part would not merely be entirely ineffectual, but would ruin him personally in the pope's eyes.49 Probably at Isabella's instigation, Charles de Bourbon (Isabella's nephew, and governor of the duchy of Milan for Francis I) sought to intervene on Delia Rovere's behalf, but in a brief of 9 February the pope dismissed Bourbon's written intercession.50 The dowager duchess of Urbino, Elisabetta Gonzaga, together with her late husband, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, had afforded generous hospitality to Giuliano and others of the Medici during their exile from Florence between 1494 and 1512. Once Giuliano's illness rendered his support of Delia Rovere inconsequential, as a last resort (and at her adopted son's urging), Elisabetta went to Rome to intercede in person with the pope on Francesco Maria's behalf. Between 1 March and 8 April she was granted six audiences by Leo X, at which consistently she begged forgiveness for her adopted son; relentlessly, the pope replied that the duke was a traitor who must be punished, and who needed to present himself in person before the pope to plead for pardon. Almost certainly it was on 13 March that the duchess, aware that within five days the bull of excommunication would take effect, made a dramatic plea. She told of how at Urbino's court they had prayed for Medici restoration to Florence, concluding: "Surely, Holy Father, you who know what it means, will not drive us out of house and home, and force us to wander in exile and poverty."51 The pope's response was a shrug of his shoulders; neither he, nor the secretaries and cardinals present, spoke a word as she left the audience. 52 News of Giuliano's death reached Rome on 18 March, the very day that Francesco Maria was excommunicated. 53 On 23 March Elisabetta at her audience was told by the pope that should Francesco Maria and his son appear before him to seek pardon, he would invest the son with the duchy, adding that he did not desire the duchy for the Medici, or to increase the Church's wealth, his concern being the 49 50 51

52

53

Luzio (1907), 39^4. Pastor. 7:149; Luzio (1907), 39, 42-4. Bourbon was viceroy of Milan and also related to Delia Rovere, whose wife was Bourbon's cousin (Cartwright [1908], 1:417). The fullest account of this audience is that in a letter of 14 June 1516 from Ippolito Calandra to Federico Gonzaga, which details the duchess's account, apparently of 13 March: "Et Sua S.ria [the Duchess] andaseva pur racontando li suoi lamenti et la disc [when addressing the pope]: 'Non se arerorda ben la V. S.ta quanto facevamo far orazione perche la S.ta V. intrase in casa?'; et poi Sua S.ria diceva: 'Ah padre santo, la S.ta V. se doveria pur mover a compassione a volerne tuore il slato, che vole poi la S. ta V. che andiamo mendicando? Non sa bene la S.ta V. che cosa e esser caciati fora casa et andar mendici per il mondo?' Et mai Sua S.ta non li rispose pur una parola, et avea comandato a tuti gli suoi che non li parlase." The letter is printed in full in Luzio and Renier (1893), 228-9. Luzio (1907), 45-8. Elisabetta reached Rome in the evening of Friday, 29 February (1516 was a leap year). Her six audiences with Leo X in Rome were: ( 1 ) 1 March (ibid., 47-8); (2) 5 March (ibid., 50-51); (3) 10 March (ibid., 51); (4) 13 March (ibid., 52-3); (5) 23 March (ibid., 57); (6) 8 April (ibid., 64). See the text at note 61 below.

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Church's honor. Agnello, reporting this claim to Isabella, did not mince words, stating that the offer and contention were blatantly dishonest. On 8 April Elisabetta took up the challenge at her audience, anticipating that in two days she would be under the interdict. After repeating Francesco Maria's case, she accused the pope of flagrant duplicity, saying that should the duke come to Rome, as the pope insisted, he would be putting in jeopardy not only his state, but also his life and, if attended by his son, his dynasty. Already after her audience on 13 March the duchess appears to have concluded that the pope's mind was made up, and she had written to warn Francesco Maria that Leo X was in no way to be trusted. Over the seven-week period of her audiences, Elisabetta achieved nothing for her adopted son by her humiliations. 54 Meanwhile, the legal process against the duke had run its course, and the pope was fully authorized to take military action, as the duke remained recalcitrant. The process had begun on 28 February with the printing of a Monitorio making publicly known the duke's past wicked conduct. Its accusations were effectively three: (1) that the duke had murdered Cardinal Alidosi (which was so, though he had been absolved by Julius II, his uncle, as recommended by a commission of six cardinals, which had included Giovanni de' Medici); (2) that the duke, while vassal of his uncle, Julius II, and Captain of the Church, had been guilty of treachery (in 1510 and 1511), as he had not prosecuted war against the duke of Ferrara with vigor, and (subsequently in 1512) had been in treacherous contact with the French when they were the pope's enemies; and (3) that he had failed to respond as a vassal to Leo X's orders, namely: (a) to serve under Lorenzo de' Medici, though he had received pay for troops (in August 1515); and (b) to attend in person before the pope when summoned, or provide an adequate explanation of his conduct. Therefore the pope was justified in proceeding against a vassal who was not merely untrustworthy but a traitor.55 The reference back to Julius II was telling, since contemporaries knew that 54 Luzio (1907), 55. Alberto Pio, a former confidant of Elisabetta at the Urbino court, was at this time Maximilian's envoy at the papal Curia. Isabella could approach him as the overlord of Mantua with an appeal for help. Maximilian wrote from Trent requiring the pope to abstain from action against Delia Rovere on the grounds that the latter was a loyal vassal of Maximilian's grandson, Charles, who in January 1516 had become king of Spain and of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (one being Naples), inasmuch as Delia Rovere was duke of Sera in the kingdom of Naples. Cartwright (1908), 1:416-17; Luzio (1907), 57-62. Circa 20 March Pio had an audience with the pope (ibid., 55-6). Evidently Pio was well-informed, replying to the pope on the issue of Delia Rovere's failure to present himself with the troops paid for by the pope in August 1515 that he, Pio, had seen the relevant contract, wherein a clause allowed the duke liberty to act as he had. The pope denied knowledge of such a clause. The contract appears no longer to exist, so one cannot be sure what Pio saw; still, a prince who was a condottiere captain might be prevented by emergencies of all kinds from commanding the forces for which he had a condotta, and so a contract was likely to allow him to nominate a deputy commander in his stead. Hence Pio's case appears inherently probable, despite the pope's denial. Throughout these negotiations of March, which were outstanding for the pope's duplicity, Leo X had the full support of Cardinal Giulio de1 Medici, as Delia Rovere was well aware (cf. Luzio [1907], 55). 55 I have not found an example of the printed Monitorio; the text in MS is in ASV, Reg. Vat. (seer.) 1193, fols. 115-21, which is in part printed in the appendix to Pastor, 7:452-4 (doc. 11); cf. the reliable summary in Balan(1877), 1:98-9. Elisabetta's letter of 2 March indicated that the Monitorio was affixed on the doors of St. Peter's on 1 March. For

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it was he who had enabled his nephew to succeed to the duchy of Urbino. Further, Delia Rovere's treachery to his uncle, and his murder of a cardinal, were evidence of the duke's vile disposition, emphasis on which served to indicate that Leo X's action against the duke was not personally motivated. While the murder of Cardinal Alidosi was common knowledge, very few were likely to have been aware of what was proclaimed regarding the duke's treachery, a denunciation that had some substance. According to a letter from Castiglione to his mother dated 6 November 1511, Julius II was then complaining bitterly and openly of the duke's conduct, repeatedly saying that as a traitor the duke should be quartered.56 Guicciardini picked this out in his History of Italy, noting that prior to the Battle of Ravenna the duke had sent Castiglione to negotiate his military service with the French, and he commented, not entirely accurately, that neither the duke nor his troops had fought at the battle (while the duke did not fight at Ravenna, a contingent of his troops under Domenico da Genga did so under the papal banner). On 15 March 1512 Castiglione, incognito, had, in fact, met with King Louis XII of France and his queen, the treasurer Florimond Robertet being in attendance; clearly such negotiations could be presented as treacherous. 5 Yet the issue was not as clear-cut as presented in the Monitorio and in Guicciardini's History. Francesco Maria had been deprived of his vicariates and papal offices, including that of Captain General of the Church, from July 1511 until May 1512, and accordingly was in financial difficulties. Military convention in large measure supported the view that he had liberty to seek a military condotta wherever he could, since he had been discharged from his previous one as far as his command went. In the case of his condotta in aspetto of July 1515, the duke claimed his contract contained a clause that permitted his conduct. In both cases, however, it could be argued that the pope's express command overrode Francesco Maria's negotiations for a personal command in 1512, as also his conduct regarding the clause of the 1515 contract. In both instances, by sending troops under another captain, the duke showed that he was aware of the issue.58

Alidosi's murder, the anger of Julius II, and the commission of cardinals that recommended Delia Rovere's absolution for the crime, see Pastor, 6:369; ibid., 7:149; Dennistoun (1851), 2:327-9; C Shaw, Julius II: The Warrior Pope (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 287-8. 56 B. Castiglione, Tutte le opere, 1: "Le lettere," 1 (all published) (1497-1521), ed G. La Rocca (Verona: Mondadori, 1978), 1:303^1 (letter no. 236); Cartwnght (1908), 1:30810. 57 Guicciardini (1929), 3:192 (bk. 10, chap. 4), whence Balan (1877), 1:98. Neither appreciated that the pope on 21 July 1511 had deprived Delia Rovere of his vicariates and honors for killing Alidosi (see note 14 above). 58 Delia Rovere was absolved by a papal bull of 9 December 1511 (Dennistoun [1851], 2:329), but Julius II did not reappoint him as Captain General of the Church until May 1512. On 20 August 1511 the pope was so seriously ill that death was believed imminent, which probably alerted Delia Rovere to the need to cultivate a new protector. Given the political situation, he looked to the king of France. Without a military command the duke could be expected to search for one advantageous to himself. In these circumstances Della Rovere's contact with Louis XII in 1511 and 1512 was probably thought by Delia Rovere, as by many condottieri captains, prudent rather than treacherous. For the evidence

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On 1 March 1516, the day the pope gave his first audience to the Duchess Elisabetta, a papal brief was addressed to Duke Francesco Maria, which rehearsed his misdeeds as in the Monitorio. He was ordered to appear within 18 days in Rome, before the tribunal appointed by the pope to try him, failing which he would be excommunicated and lose his vicariates and all honors. 59 Delia Rovere did not so appear; consequently, on 18 March 1516 the bull of excommunication was issued. Thereby Francesco Maria was dispossessed of all papal vicariates, his papal title of duke, and the only papal office he had retained: prefect of Rome. An interdict was pronounced on all who gave him succor.60 News of Giuliano's death on 17 March 1516 reached Rome the following day and, it must be stressed, was irrelevant to the legal process for the duke's deprivation of his duchy of Urbino, which was the culmination of months of double-dealing on Leo X's part.61 Cardinal Giulio had worked very closely with Lorenzo de' Medici in governing Florence, and he strongly backed him for the Urbino duchy. Lorenzo had particular favor as a candidate since his investiture would give substance to the pope's original idea of a Medici prince ruling two mutually supportive states. At least by late October 1515 Lorenzo and his mother, Alfonsina, had been urging the pope to adopt this plan, despite Giuliano's strong opposition. Even so, the contemporary evidence indicates that the idea of investing Lorenzo with the duchy originated not with either of them, but with Leo X and Cardinal Giulio. 62 On 18 March Lorenzo left Florence for Rome. On arrival he was granted by Leo X (without ceremony, perhaps out of respect for the deceased Giuliano) the titles of duke of Urbino and prefect of Rome, which supplemented his authority as Captain General of the Church. 63 Unsurprisingly, contemporaries compared favorably Lorenzo's rise in fortune to that of Cesare Borgia some twenty years earlier. 64

59 60

61

62

63 64

of that contact, see A. Luzio, "Isabella d'Este di fronte a Giulio II negli ultimi anni del suo pontificate," Archivio storico lombardo 39 (1912): 78-9. Pastor, 7:149; Cartwnght (1908), 1:418. For the bull of excommunication, see Pastor, 7:149-50, where it is dated 14 March on the basis of Sanuto. In a note Pastor commented that if Sanuto's date was correct, this was before the 18-day expiry date of the brief of 1 March. I have not found a copy of the bull in question, but consider the briefs legal requirements to have been followed to the letter, hence my belief is that Sanuto's date of 14 is a transcript error for 18. Luzio (1907), 37-8; Pastor, 7:150; Cartwnght (1908), 1:418-19; Fatmi (1939), Ixxxixxcl. There was a last-minute attempt (without Gmliano's approval) to prolong his life by magic (ibid., xc). The rumors that he was poisoned by Lorenzo de' Medici can be dismissed (ibid.; cf. Dennistoun [1851], 2:350). The misleading supposition to the contrary was formulated by the contemporary historian and curial official, Paolo Giovio, in his biography of Leo X. Equally incorrectly, Giovio asserted that only after Giuliano's death was the pope free to act. See Zimmermann (1995), 29; cf. S. E. Reiss, "Widow, Mother, Patron of Art: Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici," in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of An in Renaissance Italy, ed. S. E. Reiss and D. G. Wilkms (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2001), 125-57, at 153, n. 102, which errs on this point. Verdi (1905), 27, n. 7. For instance, Zorzi wrote that "Lorenzino e astuto e atto a far cose non come il Valentino [i.e., C. Borgia], ma poco meno." E. Alberi, Le relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al senato durante il secolo decimosesto, ser. 3, 5 vols. (Florence, 1839-63), 3:49-50; cf. Mini (1892), 29.

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The Wars to Acquire the Duchy and Their Aftermath The duchy of Urbino had still to be acquired by force of arms. From mid-April 1516 troops were being recruited, and by early May Duke Lorenzo had formed a sufficiently powerful army to launch the campaign. 65 Pay for Lorenzo's force derived from the papal treasury, supplemented by 130,000 florins lent by the city of Florence against the security of territory within the duchy of Urbino. 66 The papal army was divided under four commanders: Duke Lorenzo and Renzo de' Ceri advanced into the duchy from the Romagna, Vitello Vitelli from the Massa Trabaria, and Giampaolo Baglioni from Umbria. 67 On 12 May, Gubbio fell to Baglioni and as the four forces closed in, Delia Rovere could do little beyond ordering the cities to surrender to avoid sack and destruction. Urbino surrendered to Duke Lorenzo on 30 May. 68 The next day Francesco Maria's son, his wife and the Duchess Elisabetta, with the family's most valuable portable possessions, embarked at Pesaro for the safety of Mantua; Francesco Maria followed that night. 69 He left garrisons in several key fortresses of the duchy, but the rest was under Duke Lorenzo's control by early June, and the fortresses held out but a few weeks. Probably in May Delia Rovere was deprived of Sora, the pope's aim being to render him penniless. 70 A July Consistory confirmed Lorenzo's enfiefment with the duchy; his investiture took place in late August. 71 On 19 September King Francis I wrote his congratulations to Duke Lorenzo and promised him a royal bride. 72 Over the next five years further developments exacerbated Delia Rovere's hostility to Leo X and Cardinal Giulio, and theirs to him. Early in 1517 Delia Rovere boldly led his forces to recover (if only temporarily) much of his former duchy. During that campaign his strategy and tactics proved to be neither outdated nor ineffective, and he took the initiative against the odds with conspicuous personal valor.73 On 29 March outside Mondolfo, Duke Lorenzo was wounded in the head by an arquebus ball; taken to Ancona, on about 4 April he underwent trepanning, and there appeared to be a slow improvement. By 24 June, however, it was recognized that his 65 For the numbers of troops and an account of the capture of the duchy, see esp. Leoni (1605), 182-8. 66 Stephens (1983), 103, implies that the details relate exclusively to the 1516 campaign, but it is often uncertain if figures provided for the costs of war include as well that of the war of Urbino in 1517. 67 Leoni (1605), 183. 68 Leoni (1605), 186. 69 Luzio and Renier (1893), 227-30; Leoni (1605), 182. With extreme vindictiveness, Leo X sought to beggar entirely Delia Rovere and his family, and even to deprive them of any safe-haven; only reluctantly in September 1516 did he agree to Delia Rovere remaining in Mantua (see Pastor, 7:456-7 [Appendix, doc. 13]), but he reneged on this. For the family's acute financial problems, which on 7 July 1516 necessitated the sale of silver, see Luzio and Renier (1893), 230-34. 70 Leoni (1605), 189-90; Balan (1877), 1:101-3. 71 Verdi (1905), 26; Pastor, 7:157; Luzio and Renier (1893), 224. Dennistoun (1851), 2:351-2, adds (no source) that the next month Lorenzo was invested prefect of Rome. 72 Verdi (1905), III [sic: appendix numeration] (doc. 10). 73 A detailed account of the War of Urbino of 1517 has yet to be written. Meanwhile see Dennistoun (1851), 2:357-88; Balan (1877), 1:104-34; Verdi (1905), 41-88.

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military career was ended in consequence of the wound, and also as he was suffering from syphilis. Thereafter, the cardinal and pope, appreciating that direct military attack was not proving effective in dislodging Francesco Maria from the duchy, resorted to other means. By the end of August 1517 Delia Rovere's troops, largely mercenaries from beyond the duchy, were deserting him for financial inducements offered by the Medici. 75 In the end, Francesco Maria was forced to agree to terms with the Medici whereby he and his remaining troops were permitted unmolested passage out of the duchy, so that he could return to Mantua and take with him personal property, notably the Urbino library; outstanding back pay due to Delia Rovere 's remaining troops was provided from Medici funds. 76 In late September having pardoned his subjects for any wrongs committed against him, he withdrew with his troops by way of Cesena.77 Duke Lorenzo's death on 4 May 1519 dealt a severe blow to the Medici ambition for a hereditary Medici princedom comprising both Florence and the Urbino duchy, as there was no suitable candidate of age to replace him. 78 Upon beginning the War of Urbino, he had left a substitute governing Florence; after his wound incapacitated him, another appointee controlled the duchy of Urbino. 79 Cardinal Giulio, increasingly disenchanted with the resultant government in Florence, returned to assume authority there in early May 1519 and undertook some notable reforms. The duchy passed, meanwhile, from being various vicariates under a prince to being ruled directly by the Church under Count Roberto Boschetti; his administrative center remained Urbino, but the city lost its appellation "Urbinofidelissimo"*0

74 Balan (1877), 1:117-18; Verdi (1905), 66-7; Dennistoun (1851), 2:369; A. Corsiru, Malattia e morte di Lorenzo de' Medici, duca d'Urbino (Florence: Istituto Micrografico Italiano Editore, 1913), 30 (on his syphilis), 62 (for the claim that he infected his wife and thus caused her death). Stephens (1983), 107, cites the Ferrarese ambassador who stated that Lorenzo's death was caused by too much sex. 75 In late summer the king of France, concerned with Spain and England, in a volte-face ordered his subjects to leave Delia Rovere's employ, at the same time actively seeking to engage Swiss infantry for the papal army. Verdi (1905), 73; cf. J. Wegg, Richard Pace: A Tudor Diplomatist (London: Methuen, 1932), 112-13. The king of Spain likewise ordered his subjects to withdraw from Delia Rovere's force, and many took service in the papal army. Balan (1877), 1:132-3; Dennistoun (1851), 2:383^*. 76 For the terms accepted by Delia Rovere and reluctantly ratified by Leo X on 16 September, as brokered by a representative of Francis I and by the viceroy of Naples, see Pastor, 7:210-11; Balan (1877), 1:133-4; Dennistoun (1851), 2:385-6; Verdi (1905), 85. Dowry rights of Delia Rovere's female relatives were confirmed; he and all his adherents were absolved of all ecclesiastical censures (though this was never made effective by Leo X for Delia Rovere); he was granted permission to reside in the Mantuan state, retain his artillery, and take military service with any power save against the Church; there was an exchange of prisoners. 77 Immediately prior to this, once terms had been agreed, the pope had resorted to the aforesaid bounty for the delivery to him of Delia Rovere dead or alive. Delia Rovere was in Cesena by 30 September; he next withdrew to Mantua (Balan [1877], 1:134). 78 Corsini (1913), 219; Pastor, 7:281-2. Both dismiss the rumors of Lorenzo's poisoning. 79 Stephens (1983), 103; Balan (1877), 1:120, 136-7. 80 Stephens, 108-12. Cardinal Giulio was appointed legate to the whole of Tuscany (Pastor, 7:283). Lorenzo's territory, comprising the duchy of Urbino and other Delia Rovere

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The means adopted to create and preserve the Medici princedom stimulated its very disintegration. The campaigns and associated expenses of 1516 and the War of Urbino of 1517 had been an enormous drain on the papal treasury, as on that of Florence, while the duchy was much impoverished. 81 High taxation was a pressing issue both in Florence and, from 1519, in the former duchy of Urbino where, apart from the destruction of war to be made good, there was significant unemployment: there was no Delia Rovere court, nor a mercenary army commanded by the prince; that force, largely recruited from the duchy, had also sustained a host of associated occupations such as horse-rearing, victualling, and the repair of military equipment. 82 There was general dissatisfaction with Medici administration in Florence (mitigated after June 1519 by Cardinal Giulio's reforms), as there had been with Lorenzo's rule, and then that of the Church, in the duchy of Urbino. 83 Florence especially was hit by its financial burden for the war, and to soften this, LeoX's bull of 5 July 1520 granted to Florence in perpetuity that portion of the duchy's territory probably held in pawn since the summer of 1516, namely: Macerata Feltria, Certaldo Feltria, Maiuolo, and the key fortress of San Leo.84 The War of Urbino also had international implications for the papacy. In the summer of 1517, when Leo X urgently needed money to conclude the war, he had obtained a subsidy of 100,000 ducats from the king of England, consigned after 11 August, when Leo X had ratified his agreement to join the papacy in a league with England, Spain, and Maximilian, directed at France. Francis I had sent encouraging words to Delia Rovere at the commencement of the war, but then, as previously and subsequently, his support was not material, and always reflected his own best interests. Leo X died unexpectedly early on 2 December 1521 (modern reckoning of time), poison being suspected, with Francesco Maria Delia Rovere, among others, rumored as responsible; there is no convincing evidence that the pope died from other than natural causes, most likely malarial fever accentuating long-standing disease.85 Certainly the pope had done little to endear himself to Delia Rovere: indeed, he had sought to deprive him of any support. In 1520 the new marquis of Mantua, Delia Rovere's brother-in-law, had been offered the post of Captain General of the Church. This was in part negotiated to cause friction between the two, but primarily, as the terms of the agreement of early 1521 made plain, to ensure that Delia Rovere was hounded from his exile in Mantua and, as an excommunicant, left to wander without his family in the territory of the Republic of Venice. Small wonder that Delia vicariates, was brought under direct control, the governor (or vice-duke) Boschetti working with the legate. For Urbino punished, see Dennistoun (1851), 2:389. 81 For Lorenzo's expenditures, see M. M. Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 130, n. 38. At the end of the war in 1517 Florence's credit with the papacy was 230,000 ducats (ibid.), which helps to explain the pope's granting of territory of the duchy to Florence in 1520 (see below). 82 Clough (2002), 1:57,60. 83 For Boschetti's problems as governor, see Balan (1877), 1:162-70. 84 See Pastor, 7:211, last note. 85 Pastor, 8:63-8, where death from poison is examined and rejected; Balan (1877), 1:1779; Dennistoun (1851), 2:394-5, with a reference (at 395) to the suggestion of Roscoe that Delia Rovere was responsible for the poisoning of Leo X.

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Rovere took immediate advantage of Leo X's death and, as the duke's ceramicist Francesco Xanto subsequently put it in the 18th sonnet of his "Ritratto," crossed "the Rubicon, the Isauro, and the Metro."86

The Duke's Resurgence Within a few days following Leo X's death, Delia Rovere had paid a small force to help him recover the duchy, some financial support coming from Alfonso d'Este, the duke of Ferrara.87 Within three weeks he held virtually all his former state, but not the territory conceded to Florence by the pope in July 1520. Clearly his objective had been to take de facto possession of his former duchy prior to the election of a new pope, who would thus confront a fait accompli. When the conclave opened on 27 December 1521, at once Delia Rovere sent to the Sacred College justifying his actions, since the outcome of its deliberations was directly relevant to his need for papal investiture and de jure recognition. He hoped, too, for an opportunity to recover the former territory of the duchy that had been granted to Florence.88 The election of a Fleming as Pope Adrian VI on 9 January 1522 resulted from Giulio de1 Medici nominating him, and the fact that Cardinal Giulio's party controlled some third of the votes.8g Immediately on hearing of Adrian's election, Delia Rovere sent an envoy to the new pope, then in Spain, to petition for reinvestment with his duchy and for concession to him of his former ecclesiastical honors.90 Meanwhile, the three senior cardinals chosen to administer the Holy See until the pope's arrival in Rome confronted an unprecedented situation: they had found an empty treasury, so could not afford to finance a strong army either to control or to defend the Papal States.91 When Cardinal Giulio left Rome for Florence on 12 January 1522, his prime concern was that Delia Rovere would attack the city, with support probably forthcoming from the anti-Medici faction within Florence, as well as from Florentines exiled by the Medici, including Cardinal Sodenni. Further, Cardinal Giulio feared 86 For the marquis of Mantua becoming Captain General of the Church, and its consequences for Delia Rovere, see note 109 below. For Xante's 18th sonnet in his "Ritratto," presented to the duke in the early 1530s, see F. Cioci, "Nicola da Urbino e Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere," in / Delia Rovere neliItalia delle Corti (2002), 4 ("Arte della Maiolica"):71; for Francesco Xanto Avelli of Rovigo, see F. Cioci, Xanto e il Duca di Urbino (Milan: Fabbri editori, 1987), 136: "lo vidi poi con piu felice corso/saltar il Rubicon, r Isauro e '1 Metro.... 1 ' Xante's echo of Caesar was certainly more apt than Guicciardini's gibe at Della Rovere's military competence prior to the Sack of Rome: "Veni, Vidi, Fugi." Guicciardini (1929), 5:38 (bk. 17, chap. 6). 87 Dennistoun (1851), 2:395-6, his source being: BAV, Urb. Lat. 921, for which see Stornajolo( 1902-21), 2:634. 88 On Venetian assistance in the reconquest of Pesaro, see Sanuto, 32:338-9. For the eventual fall of Pesaro's rocca, see B. Castiglione, Lettere, ed. P. A. Serassi, 2 vols. (Padua, 1769-71), 1: "Lettere di negozi" (paginated separately, the letters numbered separately by "/tor/"), libro i, 11, lett. XI of 4 February 1522, henceforth cited as Castiglione (1769). 89 Pastor, 9:22-3. 90 Dennistoun( 1851), 2:400. 91 The three cardinals were Cornaro, Carvajal, and Schinner (Cartwright [1908], 2:142); for their critical financial situation, see Pastor, 9:3.

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loss of favor with Adrian VI, and with Charles V, the emperor, the latter an important consideration as it could hurt his chances of being elected pope in the next conclave. On 7 February De Abbatis wrote to the chancellor of France from Cambrai of Cardinal Giulio's concerns, as known to him from a letter written to the emperor by the imperial ambassador at Rome. Report had it that Adrian had been elected pope through the efforts of Cardinal Colonna, allied to Cardinal Soderini, and that the Colonna might use their military forces to help Soderini return to Florence. Clearly all this was speculation, but it was detrimental to Cardinal Giulio, and so one can give some credence to Castiglione, who claimed that even before the cardinal left Rome, when the news reached the city that Delia Rovere and his army were advancing toward Siena, Cardinal Giulio and Delia Rovere had been in contact with a view to reaching some understanding. 92 For his part, Delia Rovere in January and February 1522 was increasingly aware of his own political insecurity. His recuperated territories could not be invested on him by the new pope, always supposing he was amenable, for some months, hence he had to look for interim backing to the Sacred College, where Cardinal Giulio, though no longer in Rome, retained much influence. Delia Rovere was impoverished, yet required a significant military force to ensure possession of his state. Further, at least by 16 January, he was faced with renewed attempts by Ascanio Colonna to influence the cardinals in favor of his claims to the duchy of Urbino; significantly, in July, after the failure of the conspiracy in Florence, Ascanio was still looking to Cardinal Giulio for backing. Delia Rovere's solution to the threat, perhaps inspired by his cousin, Felice Delia Rovere (married to the head of the Orsini family, the rival of the Colonna), was to conclude a secret pact with the Orsini for mutual aid; at the

92

For Cardinal Giulio's departure from Rome for Florence on 12 January, leaving Civitavecchia by sea on 15 January to avoid possible detention by Delia Rovere's troops if he went by land, see Castiglione (1769), libra i, 7, letter V of 12 January, and Balan (1877), 1:85; cf. Cartwright (1908), 1:142, and Stephens (1983), 118 (somewhat confused). For Cardinal Sodenni contemplating an assault on Florence, see ibid. For background on the cardinal's antagonism to the Medici, though without testimony of Sodenni's contact at this time with Delia Rovere, see K. J. P Lowe, Church and Politics in Renaissance Italy: The Life and Career of Cardinal Francesco Soderini, 1453-J524 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 125-8, and for the letter of De Abbatis, ibid., 125-6. About 6 January Delia Rovere, following success at Perugia, turned his force toward Siena. Cardinal Giulio feared that the ultimate objective was Florence: see Castiglione (1769), libra i, 8, letter VI of 15 January, written when he (being in Rome) thought that the cardinal would already be back in Florence, referring to negotiations between him and Delia Rovere seemingly as then in progress, which as phrased implies contact prior to the cardinal's departure for Florence on 12 January; this interpretation is substantiated by ibid., libra i, 8-9, letter VII of 18 January to the marquis of Mantua, which refers to Abatino, the marquis's secretary, involved in the negotiations, reaching Rome on 17 January with news of the matter, and also mentioning a letter of 10 January from the marquis, seemingly on the same subject. Castiglione's letter of 16 January (discussed below) was to urge Delia Rovere to reach an agreement with Cardinal Giulio in terms suggesting that the initiative was under way. Castiglione's letter of 18 January to the marquis indicated that by then Castiglione had spoken to the cardinal administrators about negotiations with Cardinal Giulio.

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same time Felice was helping to further Delia Rovere's negotiations with Cardinal Giulio. 93 By 17 January 1522 Delia Rovere and his army were encamped some six miles from Siena.94 His hope was that the proximity of the army would stimulate a popular revolt in the city in favor of Borghese Petrucci, driven out from ruling it in 1516 through Pope Leo X's intervention in favor of Borghese's cousin, Raffaele Petrucci, the bishop of Grossetto. During the early hours of 18 January (modern reckoning of time) a severe snowstorm rendered a military assault on the city impractical, especially as within Siena there was no support for Borghese.95 Wisely Delia Rovere withdrew, probably aware that mercenary troops under the command of Giovanni de' Medici "delle Bande Nere"—sponsored by Cardinal Giulio above all to block Delia Rovere's army advancing toward Florence—were closing in on him.96 But Cardinal Giulio had overplayed his hand: he lacked the finances to pay Giovanni de' Medici's soldiers, so they turned in typical fashion to plunder, initially in Umbria, to the grave displeasure of the cardinal administrators of the Holy See, who ordered that the force be immediately recalled and that there should be no further misconduct on its part. Still without finances to pay the soldiers, Cardinal Giulio could not effect what was required; the force turned toward Florence, and by late February was creating havoc in the Montefeltro.97 Upon withdrawing from Siena, Delia Rovere prudently refrained from attacking Giovanni de' Medici's force; by remaining neutral he sought to retain the goodwill of the College of Cardinals, which was increasingly worried at the destruction being caused in the Papal States by the armies of Delia Rovere and Giovanni de' Medici. On 18 February there was crafted an agreement between Francesco Maria and the cardinal administrators whereby he undertook not to oppose the Holy See, rather, if requested by it, to take military command in its service (the lack of funds to finance such a force remained a problem). Importantly, the draft confirmed the integrity of the territorial boundaries then existing.98 Delia Rovere signed the accord on 93 For the Colonna claims to the duchy, see the text below at note 121. 94 When precisely Delia Rovere left Perugia is uncertain, but since his force included troops of the Baglioni brothers, it was unlikely to have been prior to their restoration on 6 January 1522. By 15 January Delia Rovere was at Buonconvento, southwest of Siena, and had been perhaps for several days. On that day he sent a letter to the governors of Siena, having received their delegation (see the letter in English translation so dated in Dennistoun [1851], 2:397-8). 95 O. Malavolti, Dell'Historia di Siena, 3 pts. (Venice: S. Marchetti, 1599), 3: fol. 121r-v. The Florentines (effectively Cardinal Giulio) had offered troops to defend the city against Delia Rovere, but this was refused as their motives were suspect (ibid.). 96 Malavolti (1599), 3: 118v-19r, 121r-v; F. de' Nerli, Commentari de' fatti civili occorsi dentro la Citta di Firenze: Dall 'anno MCCXV al MDXXXVI (Augsburg, 1723), 135-6. 97 By 4 February news had reached Rome that Giovanni de' Medici's force, accompanied by Gentile Baglioni, had entered the territory of Perugia and sacked Passignano sul Trasimeno before advancing to within five miles of Perugia: see Castiglione (1769), libro i, 10-11, letter IX of 4 February 1522; libro i, 12, letter 11, of 18 February; libro i, 13, letter 12, of 28 February. Dennistoun (1851), 2:398, briefly summarizes these letters. 98 Shortly before 18 January 1522 negotiations on behalf of Delia Rovere and Cardinal Giulio were made known to the cardinal administrators; by 4 February these latter ordered that territory held by Delia Rovere was not to be molested. The document of 18 February,

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1 March." In testimony of his good faith he undertook within a month to surrender Guidobaldo, his son and heir, as hostage to the Captain General of the Church (this was Federico II Gonzaga, the marquis of Mantua, Francesco Maria's brother-in-law, in whose care Guidobaldo then was). On 16 March Delia Rovere wrote to several individuals involved, including Cardinal Giulio, stressing that for his part he was honoring the agreement. In its turn the College of Cardinals promised to defend Delia Rovere's person and the territory held by him; also it undertook to send a letter at once to Adrian VI, requesting him on reaching Rome to invest Delia Rovere with those vicariates that he had held until deprived by Leo X in 1516, and to reconfirm him in his former titles of duke of Urbino and prefect of Rome.100 Against this backdrop one can better understand Cardinal Giulio's apparent willingness to reach an agreement with Delia Rovere. As a member of the Sacred College, a cardinal was committed to the outcome of agreed deliberations (even if in absentia). The College therefore deemed Cardinal Giulio in breach of its orders, issued shortly before 4 February 1522, that the territory then held by Delia Rovere was inviolate. Castiglione's correspondence identifies the particular issue: the Florentine army, under the cardinal's command, had in late February waged war in that part of the Montefeltro region which Delia Rovere then held. Cardinal Giulio, still aiming at the papal tiara, was most anxious to be held in esteem by his fellow cardinals, and a reprimand from the Sacred College was prejudicial to his interests. Naturally the dealings between the cardinal and Delia Rovere were secret, and the remaining record is vague. During his years in exile Delia Rovere had not been employed as a condottiere captain, and had been impoverished, yet had to fight to recover his former state; hence he was in debt and urgently needed the income a prestigious military command could provide. Through Castiglione, who obtained the necessary consent from the Sacred College and from the marquis of Mantua (in his capacity as Captain General of the Church), it was arranged by Cardinal Giulio that Delia Rovere should be offered for a year the post of Captain General of Florence. Terms were agreed by 22 April and took effect in May. 101 This brought immediate financial advantage to drafted in Rome, is in Delia Rovere's papers in ASF, Archivio diplomatico (Pastor, 9:50, misleadingly defines the terms as "temporary"). Delia Rovere undertook not to attack Florence or Siena. For a synopsis of the terms, indicated as drafted by three cardinal representatives of the Sacred College (not the cardinal administrators), see Castiglione (1769), libro i, 12, letter 11, of 18 February, to the marquis of Mantua. 99 Cartwright (1908), 2:150 (without a source). 100 For Castiglione's letter to the marquis, see Castiglione (1769), libro i, 14-15, letter 3, of 14 March; for the letters of 16 March to Cardinal Giulio and Isabella d'Este, see ibid., libro ii, 60-62. On 15 March Castiglione wrote to Delia Rovere (ibid., libro ii, 60, letter 3). 101 Castiglione (1769), 1: libro ii, 60-62, letter IV of 16 March, to Cardinal Giulio, states that the initiative was his, adding that its adoption should greatly please the marquis of Mantua, much in need of military support to deal with developments in the duchy of Milan. By 22 April Castiglione believed Delia Rovere's appointment secure (ibid., 1: libro ii, 70-71, letter 21, of 22 April, to Delia Rovere, and 71-3, letter 23, of 22 April, to Isabella d'Este). That to Delia Rovere names the cardinals opposed, in some measure because they supported other candidates, and Castiglione apparently sought to influence them in favor of Delia Rovere; cardinals who backed him are also named. For approval in May by committees of the Florentine government, see Stephens (1983), 118. Under the terms of

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Delia Rovere, particularly since during the year in which he held the appointment no military fighting was required of him. Presumably Cardinal Giulio aimed to ensure that in the short term Delia Rovere neither attacked Florence to recover the territory of his former duchy nor took service with a power hostile to Florence. Above all he wanted to keep Delia Rovere from supporting Cardinal Soderini, particularly as already in April it was widely anticipated that there would be a major disturbance in Florence (it indeed erupted into the so-called "Conspiracy of 1522").102 Delia Rovere's appointment as Captain General of Florence provides an interesting and generally unrecognized example of "art as power."103 In his Dialogo dell' imprese militari e amorose (1551), Paolo Giovio mentioned that upon appointment Delia Rovere had sent a request to invent for him a device to embellish his personal standard and his trumpets 5 banner. Giovio wrote that passages in Pliny's Natural History (in general: bk. 23:26-50; specifically: bk. 16:222-3) had inspired the impresa he sent: a palm tree weighed down by a block of marble, its meaning explained by the motto: INCLINATA RESVRGIT ("Having been bent low, it springs upright again").104 The allusion was to Delia Rovere's strength of character (virtu), in that, although beaten down by adverse fortune, he rebounded to former glory, which poignantly epitomized his struggle over the years 1516-22 with Leo X and Cardinal Giulio. The device was commemorated on the reverse of a medallion most likely struck in 1522 or 1523 (Figure 6.3), a dating supported by Delia Rovere's apparent age in his portrait on the obverse (Figure 6.4). That Giovio invented this artistic illustration of Medici reversal in 1522, and wrote of it in 1551, is a reflection of his disappointment with Leo X's patronage. Probably contemporaneous with Delia Rovere's impresa (there is insufficient evidence to determine which came first) was that devised for Cardinal Giulio by his agent, the Florentine treasurer, Domenico Buoninsegni, which carries the motto: CANDOR ILLAESVS ("purity inviolate"). The impresa shows the sun's rays passing through a crystal ball without harming it, setting a tree on fire. Giovio says that the agreement of 18 February, approval of the Sacred College was needed for Delia Rovere's appointment to be effective. Cardinal Soderini, frustrated at not having had Delia Rovere's support, delayed the approval (Lowe [1993], 125). 102 Delia Rovere's copy of the condotta, dated 25 May 1522, is in ASF, Archivio diplomatico (Dennistoun [1851], 2:399, n.). For Cardinal Soderini detached from Delia Rovere, see note 92 above. On the Conspiracy of 1522, see Patricia Osmond's essay above. 103 By the phrase "Art as Power" is intended artistic creation used as justification, even propaganda, by those in authority for their political power. Cf. C. H. Clough, "Art as Power: The Impact of Princely Rule in Renaissance Italy," in 17th International Congress of Historical Sciences: Sections chronologiques, 2 vols., 2: Organismes affilies, commissions internes, tables rondes. Rapports et abreges (Madrid: Comite international des sciences historiques, 1990), 545-6; for a detailed example, see C. H. Clough, "Art as Power in the Decoration of the Study of an Italian Renaissance Prince: The Case of Federico da Montefeltro," Artibus et historiae 16 (1995): 19-50. Within the notable art historical literature on the uses of art to justify political authority in the Renaissance, see especially R. Starn and L. Partridge, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300-1600 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992). 104 P Giovio, ed. M. L. Doglio (Rome: Bulzoni, 1978), 89-90. For its date, see Doglio's "Introduzione," 9. It was first printed at Rome in 1555 by A. Barre (cf. Dennistoun [1851], 2:405).

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the focused sunbeams burn all but the very purest things ("le cose candidissime"). Its message was that the innocence or blamelessness of Giulio de' Medici's character ("candore dell'animo suo") could be harmed neither by malicious persons nor by force, an allusion to those Florentine conspirators who had fixed upon 19 June 1522 for his assassination. The concept was likely to have much irritated Delia Rovere, who for years had suffered the cardinal's deviousness; equally probably the cardinal took little comfort from the thrust of Delia Rovere's device. 105 From Uneasy Standoff to Renewed Hostilities Although the conclave of 1521-22 had elected Adrian VI rather than Giulio de' Medici largely out of fear of introducing the hereditary principle, Cardinal Giulio was soon campaigning for election at the next conclave. 106 In April 1523 to be more effective in this (it being known that Adrian VI was in poor health), he responded to the pontiffs summons to Rome; his entry on 23 April was watched by a large throng, Delia Rovere included. 107 Meanwhile, by March 1523 Delia Rovere had established his main residence in Pesaro, preferred by him to Urbino in part for security reasons, especially as the key fortress of San Leo remained under Florentine control. 108 His prospects for allies against the Medici were not encouraging. He could anticipate that his brother-in-law, Federico Gonzaga, would stay uncommitted inasmuch as he was Captain General of the Church (his appointment in 1519 had been shrewdly judged to that end by Leo X). 109 While the duke of Ferrara hated the Medici and had covertly aided Delia Rovere's recovery of his former duchy in December 1521, nonetheless as a papal vassal he dared not be openly hostile to any pope.110 Leo X had taken more 105 G. F. Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini, 2 vols. (London: British Museum, 1930), 1:79-80 no. 330; 2: plate 50. It was struck in gold or silver, the work of an anonymous artist (for others by the same artist, see ibid., 1:79 nos. 318-20); cf. G. Toderi and F. Vannel, Le medaglie italiane del XVI secolo> 3 vols. (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2000), 2:844 no. 2627; 3: lav. 480, as ca. 1521 (with no indication of the metal); cf. no. 2628, perhaps by the same medalist. For a coin of the duke of Ferrara of 1522, similarly inspired, see note 110 below. For Cardinal Giulio's impresa, see Giovio (1978), 66-7; cf. M. Perry, "'Candor Illaesvs': The 'Impresa' of Clement VII and Other Medici Devices in the Vatican Stanze," BM 119 (1977): 676-86. 106 Pastor, 9:5. 107 Pastor, 9:186-7; Zimmermann (1995), 53. 108 Clough (2002), 1:54 and n. 103. 109 In July 1520 Castiglione was sent to Rome as ambassador of the marquis of Mantua, and at an audience with Leo X on 21 July the pope asked if the marquis might consider the appointment as Captain General of the Church; see Castiglione (1978), 1:556-7, letter 236, dated 21 July, to the marquis. The secret negotiations dragged on, in part because Mantua was an imperial fief, and permission of Charles V was required before the marquis could accept the post. The marquis finally took command in August 1521 (J. Cartwright, Isabella d'Este, 2 vols. [London: John Murray, 1903], 2:189-90), but was still unpaid in February 1522 (Pastor, 9:51). 110 Immediately on Leo X's death the duke of Ferrara took the opportunity to recover by military force territory of his duchy from which he had been deprived by Leo X; on 8 December he was checked at Cento and withdrew: see A. Frizzi, Memorie per la storia di Ferrara, ed. C. Laderchi, 5 vols. (Ferrara, 2nd. ed., 1847-50), 4 (1848):289, referring

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drastic measures to eliminate another potential ally of Delia Rovere, Giampaolo Baglioni of Perugia. The pope had reason to believe that in 1517, when Delia Rovere recovered much of his state, he and Baglioni had reached a secret understanding. In 1520 Leo X summoned Baglioni to Rome, issuing him a safe-conduct, but upon his arrival had him imprisoned and, on the night of 11 June (modern reckoning of time), decapitated. 111 Delia Rovere was poorly placed to secure international allies. Clearly he could not rely upon Francis I, who had abandoned him in December 1515. 112 In March 1522 Delia Rovere made a bid for support from Henry VIII—perhaps recalling that an English subsidy had been crucial for the pope in the summer campaign of 1517 against him. But Delia Rovere was unable to detach Wolsey from the papacy, not least as he had nothing of substance to offer, and Wolsey's ambition was the triple tiara. 1 1 3 In the short term such alliances proved unnecessary, as Pope Adrian absolved Delia Rovere from excommunication with a brief of May 1522, and by a bull of 27 March 1523 reinvested him with his vicariates and ducal title, hence his position was much strengthened vis-a-vis Cardinal Giulio's likely election at the next conclave. 114 Equally important for the duke's future would be his success in obtaining a new military command, as that with Florence ended in the summer of 1523. In June, he began negotiating with the Republic of Venice, and on 7 September, a week before Adrian VI's death, he was appointed Governor General of Venice (he would be promoted to the rank of Captain General the following June). 115 Thus when Giulio

111

112 113 114

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to the loan to Delia Rovere of seven artillery pieces. To commemorate his success the duke had minted a "mezza lira" coin with on its obverse: DE MANU LEON IS, see Toderi and Vannel (2000), 1:389 no. 1150, in error MANO LEONU. A study would prove rewarding of the Italian devices, medals, and coins of the period that reflect political issues. Giampaolo Baglioni had failed to support the Medici cause in 1517. In 1520, at Leo X's orders, he was arrested, imprisoned, and executed: B. Astur, / Baglioni (Florence: Olschki, 1964), 217-20; for 1517, see ibid., 209-12; for 1520, see Pastor, 8:6, 478 (Appendix, doc. 16). Leo X had replaced Giampaolo with Gentile Baglioni, who in January 1522, in the face of Delia Rovere's army, had fled. In 1521 relations between Francis I and Leo X had further cooled, but there is no evidence that the king supported financially Delia Rovere in December that year (cf. Pastor, 9:17). On 19 March 1522 Delia Rovere wrote a highly complimentary letter to Henry VIII (Dennistoun (1851), 2:417, n). Given Delia Rovere's international isolation, one can suppose it a bid for some English support or at least recognition. See Pastor, 9:475-6 (Appendix, doc. 4), for the absolution, docketed as received 28 June 1522 by the College of Cardinals. On 18 March 1523 a peace treaty between the pope and Delia Rovere was made (ibid., 9:162, n. 5), and on 20 March Delia Rovere was received in audience; the bull of restitution of his vicariates (which did not include Florentine-held territory, notably San Leo) was dated 27 March (ibid., 9:162). M. E. Mallett and J. R. Hale, The Military Organization of a Renaissance State: Venice c. 1400-1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 289. For the particulars of the contract, see / libri commemoriali della Republica [sic] di Venezia: Regesti, VI, ed. R. Predelli (Venice, 1903), 174-5 nos. 175 and 176 (henceforth "Regesti")', cf. Mallett and Hale (1984), 290-91, for a comparison of the stipend with those of previous commanders. For his contract as Captain General in 1524, see ibid., 289, 291-2: the contract is not in the Regesti, VI.

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de' Medici was elected pope on 18 November 1523, taking the name Clement VII, Delia Rovere was already a client of the Venetian Republic and securely under its protection.116 This military appointment was not only prudent for Francesco Maria, but vital if he should need to combat attempts by any pope to bring his vicariates back under direct papal control (as in 1519), or grant them as vicariates (say to Ascanio Colonna).117 Service with Venice ensured a reliable and generous income and, crucially, a permanent military force always ready under his command should his duchy be attacked. The core of the duke's personal force consisted of subjects of his duchy, who welcomed employment and the consequential much-restored prosperity of the duchy. There was the obvious constraint that the duke was under orders from the Venetian Republic, and past instances underlined that it dealt severely with the least suspicion of treachery.118 Fortunately, as both parties appreciated, their objectives were closely allied, being directed at curbing papal control of the peninsula to their own mutual advantage. Venice retained territory claimed to be part of the Papal States—particularly Ravenna and Cervia—and consistently sought that the more elevated ranks of the Church hierarchy within its state should be Venetians, preferably patricians.119 Predictably, the uneasy standoff between Delia Rovere and Giulio de' Medici did not long outlast the latter's elevation to the papacy. In order to conform to the required legal formalities it is most likely that by the end of December 1523, when under Venetian protection, Duke Francesco Maria requested that Clement VII con-

116 As a former Captain General of the Church, and with papal vicariates, his contracts absolved him from serving against the Church (see Mallett and Hale [1984], 289). Thus Venice, honoring a request from Clement VII, insisted that Delia Rovere's wife and his heir (Guidobaldo) go to Venice as Bourbon's army advanced south: see Regesti, VI, 18990 no. 38, dated 6 March 1527; cf. Mallett and Hale (1984), 290, which also refers to Delia Rovere being permitted to detach 2,000 of his infantry force to guard his state of Urbino. J. Hook, "The Destruction of the New 'Italia': Venice and the Papacy in Collision," Italian Studies 28 (1973): 10-30, at 13-14, states that Clement VII "agreed to let Venice take under her protection the state of Urbino," which is correct, but errs in saying that it "was actually illegal by the terms of investiture of the duchy," inasmuch as Clement did not invest Delia Rovere until December 1529. Delia Rovere remained in Venetian service until his death in 1538 (Mallett and Hale [1984], 289). 117 For the significance of the appointment for Delia Rovere, cf. Mallett and Hale (1984), 289-90. It paralleled the solution adopted in like circumstances by Delia Rovere's Montefeltro grandfather, who was a client of two successive kings of Naples, and enjoyed their protection from papal wiles: see Clough (1992), 143-4. 118 For example, Manfredo Facino of Vicenza was hanged by Venetian authorities in September 1509 for breaking his promise, having again taken arms against Venice (L. da Porto, Lettere storiche, ed. B. Bressan [Florence, 1857], 114-18). Conversely, Venice generously rewarded loyal service (Mallett and Hale [1984], 196-7). 119 Ravenna and Cervia offered themselves to Venice respectively in June and July 1527, a Venetian garrison being sent to each (Mallett and Hale [1984], 226). They were restored to Clement VII only in December 1529 (see note 143 below). The issue of high ecclesiastical appointments for Venetian patricians, particularly in Venice and the Veneto, had long been a source of contention, the Republic's claims being reluctantly surrendered to Julius II in 1509. Following the Sack of Rome, while Clement VII was a prisoner, Venice returned to its former position (see Hook [1973]: 19-20).

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firm him in his vicariates and honors.120 The pope took his revenge, initially procrastinating, then allowing investiture to appear imminent, but never conceding it. In 1525 he issued Ascanio Colonna with conditional investiture of the duchy for three generations (as was normal) in the event of the duchy lapsing to the Holy See. The document asserted incorrectly—hardly inadvertently—that among the daughters of Fedenco da Montefeltro Agnesina (Ascanio's mother) was an elder sister of Giovanna (Francesco Maria's mother). 121 This gave the pope grounds for not investing Francesco Maria with the vicariates, and Ascanio was encouraged to agitate, even to use military or other means, to achieve the promised conditional investiture, particularly since Delia Rovere had not been invested by Clement, and so it might be argued that the duchy had indeed devolved to the Holy See. Even supposing that Delia Rovere received investiture from a pope, only two lives (his own and that of his son Guidobaldo) blocked Colonna from inheriting the duchy. Francesco Maria Delia Rovere and the Sack of Rome On 26 February 1525 the pope received the most disturbing news of Charles V's overwhelming victory at Pavia, and could fear there would be consequences for Florence, which was theoretically in imperial territory. 122 Giovio was to intimate that as a result of this concern the pope was instrumental in forming the League of Cognac (22 May 1526) to thwart imperial ambitions on the peninsula, having found in the Republic of Venice a power similarly concerned.123 Clement VITs basic problem was an insufficiency of funds for a substantial military force in the field and, once again, he had to rely heavily on a fiscal contribution from Florence; as already 120 1 have searched so far in vain for clarification on this important point. Theoretically the duke (as again he then was) was required to pay respects and homage to the new pope for his reinvestment. Almost certainly, following Clement VIPs election, Delia Rovere sent seeking reinvestment (as he had done following the election of Adrian VI in January 1522). One can suppose that he waited in vain for a reply. 121 For Clement VII's tendency to procrastinate, see Pastor, 9:251-2. For the conditional investiture of Ascanio, and the incorrect reference to Agnesina, see Dennistoun (1851), 2:402 n.; cf. F. Petrucci, "Colonna, Ascanio," in DBI, 27:271-5, at 271: "Nel caso ... che fosse stato da considerare decaduti Francesco Maria ... il che non awenne." For Ascanio's claims to the duchy, see Castiglione (1769), 1: libra i, 10, letter 8, 26 January 1522 to the marquis of Mantua; ibid., libro ii, 74, letter 26, 6 May to Delia Rovere, indicating specifically that Ascanio was seeking Cardinal Giulio's support. 122 For the news of Pavia reaching Rome, see Pastor, 9:274-5. 123 The Holy League of Cognac was created in response to the Peace of Madrid agreed on 14 January 1526 by Charles V and Francis I; it was ratified on 22 May 1526 by its participants: Clement VII, Francis I, Venice, and the Sforza, concerned at the emperor's power on the peninsula (Pastor, 9:298-305). Giovio was to declare it the ruin of Italy; Guicciardini wrote that the pope was convinced by Giberti and Canossa that it was vital for him, as "Caesar's greatness was perforce his own servitude" (Zimmermann [1995], 79). The Republic of Venice felt threatened by Charles V's overwhelming victory at Pavia, and feared that he would advance to take possession of the imperial territory of the Venetian terraferma, as Maximilian had done following the 1508 League of Cambrai. In consequence Venice was diligent in its support of the "Liberia d'ltalia" (see Hook [1973], 12-13).

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mentioned, the papal contingent in the army of the League was under the command of Guicciardini. 1 2 4 The core of the League's army was provided by Venice, comprising mercenaries under Delia Rovere, and he was subject to the authority of the ever-present Venetian proveditor in campo. The proveditor appears to have had no conflict of interest with Delia Rovere, even if his motives differed. He was under strict orders from the Republic to permit few casualties, and at all costs not suffer defeat; Delia Rovere's main concern was to appear to adhere strictly to the requirements of the Republic of Venice, his employer and protector. Thus Delia Rovere could claim military expedience for avoiding engagement with enemy troops. Yet in so doing, he could also take revenge on Clement VII for treatment received from him over the previous decade, when cardinal and pontiff. No doubt he hoped to drive the pope to concede to him investiture of the duchy of Urbino, and to restore to him those titles granted by Adrian VI. 1 2 5 By joining the League of Cognac, Pope Clement not only enraged the emperor but gave incentive to loyal imperialists on the Italian peninsula to seize the opportunity to take action against him. On 20 September 1526 a force of some 5,000 under Ascanio Colonna, with others of his family including Cardinal Pompeo, entered Rome and commenced looting the Vatican apartments. The pope took refuge in Castel Sant' Angelo, where he agreed to humiliating terms.126 His reprisals thereafter provoked the Colonna to plot the Sack of Rome with imperial forces on the Italian peninsula. Although aware of the threat, the pope consistently refused to pardon the family and reinstate it in its papal fiefs, an issue in all the subsequent peace terms he discussed with the imperial forces. This is a further element in Clement VII's own folly precipitating the catastrophe of May 1527. In April 1527 Clement VII's immediate concern once again was Florence, as Bourbon's army advanced toward the city threatening sack unless bought off. Be it noted that Bourbon was acting in concert not only with the Colonna but also with a band of Florentines exiled by the Medici. 12 By 26 April the hostile force was at San Giovanni Valdarno, some twenty miles from the city. 128 It was this situation that caused the pope to address to Delia Rovere his briefs of 20, 23, and 30 April; significantly, the first of these reminded Delia Rovere in vague and, given his previous 124 Florence opposed joining a league against the emperor, being concerned at the damage to Florentine trading interests in imperial territory that would ensue; it also feared that it would have to sustain the heavy burden of the military campaign, as it had in 1517 with the War of Urbino, as in fact proved to be the case: Stephens (1983), 188-98; cf. Bullard (1980), 136, 145-50, showing in detail that the sums involved were so considerable that the books were doctored for presentation to the commune's authorities. 125 For the restrictions imposed on Delia Rovere by the Venetian Provveditore in campo, see Finlay (2000), 1015, 1022-3. 126 Pastor, 9:328-35; cf. J. Hook, "Clement VII, the Colonna and Charles V: A study of the political instability of Italy in the second and third decades of the sixteenth century," European Studies Review 2 (1972): 281-99, at 293-4 (hereafter Hook, [1972a]). 127 For Florence being the pope's paramount concern, cf. Zimmermann (1995), 81. The city promised to buy off Bourbon's army (Stephens [1983], 198). For the Florentine exiles with that army, see ibid., 197, and Roth (1925), 18, 20-21, 34, n. 56. These exiles were largely of the Rasponi faction (see Hook [1973], 20). 128 Scipione Ammirato, Istorie fiorentine, 2nd ed., abr., ed. L. Scarbelli, 3 vols. (Turin, 1853), 2: libra vii, 30-31; cf. Roth (1925), 23.

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conduct, unconvincing terms of an undertaking, presumably a promise to invest him with his duchy: As regards our paternal and affectionate concern for your personal dignity and interests, we can add nothing to the promises already made you by letters and envoys which we shall amply carry out. 129 At the same time Clement VII solicited Venice to intervene militarily so as to save Florence from sack, while he made efforts to collect funds to pay off Bourbon's force; the situation was complicated by the armistice that the pope had made, which nominally dissociated Florence from the League, as also by Sienese intrigues with the object of recovering territory filched by Florence in recent years.130 On 26 April, the army of the League advanced to Incisa, blocking Bourbon's progress toward Florence when his force was only 26 miles from the city. Seemingly the previous day, Florentine representatives visited Delia Rovere and promised the restitution of his territory held since 1516.m On 26 April there was a popular revolt against the Medici in Florence (the so-called "Friday Riot"). Delia Rovere with a small force was invited in by those in revolt, seemingly in the belief that he would favor the riot; in the event he helped suppress it, presumably giving priority to the recovery of his territory.132 On 1 May in Florence, where Delia Rovere had remained to ensure that 129 For the three papal briefs to Delia Rovere, written when Clement VIFs concern was the sack of Florence, see note 1 above. The quotation follows the translation in Dennistoun (1851), 3:408. The briefs indicate that the pope was appealing to Venice for help through its ambassador, as well as to Delia Rovere, to protect Florence. 130 The French ambassador to Venice, Ludovico Canossa, already in December 1526 had foretold the sack of Rome and in January had urged Venice to promise help for Florence should Bourbon's force advance toward that city (Clough, "Canossa, Ludovico," 189). For the pope's need to obtain funds to buy off Bourbon's army as it advanced south, see Pastor, 9:375-7, 382. Florence was opposed to joining the League of Cognac, but Clement VII did so on the city's behalf, the Otto ratifying this action on 7 June 1526 (Stephens [1983], 193-4). In an attempt to save Florence as Bourbon advanced, the pope negotiated an eight-month armistice to take effect on 16 March 1527, ratified on 29 March (see Pastor, 9:365, 371-2). Bourbon used this armistice as a means to demand more money, while ignoring its terms by advancing on Florence. Hence the truce was abandoned by the forces of the League, though for a month it had serious consequences for the command of those forces (see Hook [1973], 14-15). The events in Florence on 26 April and the somewhat ineffectual action of the commanders of the League at the time (see the text below) are to be linked to the circumstances of the armistice. In July 1526 a papal force with Florentine military support had attacked Siena, occupying Talamone and Porto Ercole (Malavolti [1599], 3: fols. 130r-31v; Pastor, 9:320-21). For the Sienese negotiations with the army of Bourbon early in 1527, see Malavolti (1599), 3: fol. 132r-v, and Roth (1925), 17-18. 131 On 23 April Francesco Guicciardini with such forces of the League as could be spared reached Florence from the Romagna. That same day the marquis of Saluzzo with some 10,000 French and Swiss encamped at Barberino, about 12 miles from Florence; then Delia Rovere with the Venetian force of perhaps 11,000 reached Incisa, some ten miles from Florence. See Roth (1925), 23, based on Ammirato (1853); for Incisa, see Dennistoun (1851), 2:436 (no source). For the Florentine delegation, see below. 132 Jacopo Nardi (1476-1563), as a Gonfaloniere, witnessed the riot in Florence on 26 April 1527. J. Nardi, Le historic delta Citta di Fiorenza, 1st ed. (Lyons: Appresso Theobaldo Ancelin, 1582), fols. 190-95. That morning, arms were distributed to citizens to create a

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there was no change of mind about his Montefeltro territory by those in authority in the city, a document was signed consigning him that territory. 133 The main body of the army of the League waited for Delia Rovere before it moved after Bourbon's force. Instead of going directly toward Rome the army made a detour, on about 9 May entering Perugian territory, and on 13 May it drove successfully from Perugia its papal governor, Gentile Baglioni. 134 Francesco Mana claimed that Gentile's regime had hostile intentions on his state.135 Certainly neither Delia Rovere nor the Venetian proveditor in campo appears to have been concerned to save Rome from the Sack, which had commenced on 6 May. 136 The prearranged date for a pincer attack upon Rome by Bourbon's army and the Colonna forces had been set for 10 May, Bourbon to attack from the north, the Colonna from the kingdom of Naples in the south. In the event, Bourbon's army arrived prematurely, initiating the assault by itself early on the morning of 6 May. However, Sciarra Colonna, with the Colonna advance party, reached Rome that same day, advancing against fortifications on the Milvian bridge with light horse and Italian infantry. The main Colonna contingent arrived some days later, Cardinal Pompeo entering Rome on 10

133

134 135 136

militia for defense against Bourbon's force. In the afternoon those with the pope's authority in the city, including the Cardinal of Cortona, Cardinals Cibo and Ridolfi, and young Ippolito de' Medici, with some Medici partisans of the citizens and some troops, visited Delia Rovere, then residing in the Medici villa at Olmo (ibid., fol. 191 r). Delia Rovere with a small detachment accompanied this party back to Florence, where the riot was found to be in progress; he and his force helped quell it. Accounts of the riot in Stephens (1983), 198-200, and Roth (1925), 23-31, omit mention of Delia Rovere's in: volvement. The only detailed account of his participation known to me is that of Dennistoun (1851), 2:436 (not consistently reliable, and without any source). Whatever gratitude the Florentines might have felt toward Delia Rovere for saving the city from sack (if ultimately at the expense of Rome) and for saving its government from a popular uprising would have been tempered by the duke's force having looted property as it advanced through Florentine territory; the words "FOR VENGEANCE" daubed on some of the pillaged houses implied that those responsible were most likely native to the duchy of Urbino, repaying old scores. Guicciardini (1993), 105-6. Without specifying the date, Nardi (1582), fol. 195r, reported without explanation that Delia Rovere recovered the fortresses that Leo X had held, and in that of San Leo acquired Florentine artillery. He added that those Florentines who had been encouraged by the commune to settle in the territory of Delia Rovere, were ordered out by him when he recovered it, the former inhabitants being restored to their lands and property; presumably, this was after Delia Rovere took formal possession on 14 May. A likely chain of events is as follows: the first two papal briefs were sent to Delia Rovere to encourage him to save Florence in the hope of a papal reward; the party with Medici authority, which visited Delia Rovere on 26 April, probably clarified the nature of the pope's offer, indicating that Delia Rovere's fortresses of the Montefeltro were what was intended. Such an offer would explain Delia Rovere's otherwise most unlikely support of the Medici authorities in Florence during the riot; that support was followed by his recovery of the fortresses, confirmed by the document to that effect of 1 May and by formal possession on 14 May (see Dennistoun [1851], 2:436, without a source). Hook (1972), 184; Astur( 1964), 245. Whatever justifications were advanced, Delia Rovere's actions can be explained by his deep hostility to Gentile Baglioni as a Medici placeman, notably following the execution of the latter^s cousin, Giampaolo, in 1520 (see note 1 1 1 above). For the commencement of the Sack, see Hook (1972), 162-7.

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May. This was fortuitous: the Colonna family had been prepared to back imperial forces for the Sack of Rome in order to recover territory lost to the pope.137

Restoration and Recovery Following Rome's sack and Clement VII's imprisonment, the pope and a few cardinals withdrew to self-imposed exile, taking residence in the dilapidated bishop's palace at Orvieto.138 There in January 1528 the pope was visited by, and received, Delia Rovere, who congratulated him on his safe delivery. If Delia Rovere thought that such blatant hypocrisy might result in his investiture with the duchy of Urbino, he was to be deluded.139 The next year, when Clement VII was intriguing with Charles V so that an imperial force would re-establish the Medici in Florence (which once again had expelled them a few days after the Sack of Rome), he intended that troops under Philibert, prince of Orange, be ordered to take by military force the duchy of Urbino for Ascanio Colonna.140 In March 1529 rumors that the prince was advancing on his duchy caused Delia Rovere to seek Venetian permission to hasten from Lombardy, where he was stationed, so as to defend it with his army.141 After two years of awe-inspiring fortitude and deprivation, Florence finally surrendered to imperial forces on 12 August 1530.142 In the meantime, Charles V had returned to the Italian peninsula, and to promote his assistance with the recovery of Florence, Clement VII planned an imperial coronation. Preparatory to this, by early 137 Above all, Clement VII had deprived Ascanio, Vespasiano, and Giovanni Colonna of all lands and possessions in the Papal States. For the reprisals, see Pastor, 9:341. The pope's campaign against the Colonna began before expiration of the armistice he had agreed with them on 21 September 1526; Cardinal Pompeo responded by calling Bourbon's army from Milan to the Papal States to recover the lost Colonna possessions. The Colonna enjoyed a special relationship with Charles V, and indeed in 1520 Ascanio had been appointed by him constable of the kingdom of Naples. In December 1526 the pope was warned of the dangers posed by his actions against the Colonna; his refusal to pardon the Colonna drew the imperialists into the conflict. A concerted attack on Rome was planned by Bourbon and the Colonna, while Cardinal Pompeo had undertaken to appeal to a general council at Spiers to bring about the pope's deprivation (see Hook [1972a], 296-7). For Sciarra Colonna's assault on Rome on 6 May, see Pastor, 9:389. 138 For the papal court in Orvieto, see Anne Reynolds's essay below. 139 Pastor, 10:4. 140 For the background to Ascanio Colonna's claims to the duchy, see note 121 above. For the expulsion of the Medici from Florence on 16 May 1527, see Stephens (1983), 200202. For the pope's intrigues regarding the prince of Orange and Ascanio Colonna, seemingly from September 1528 and at least until March 1529, see Dennistoun (1851), 3:40, and cf. Pastor, 10:27-8, esp. 27, n. 1, relating to the expedition launched by the Colonna late in September 1528 to recover territory and property sequestered by the pope in 1526. Apart from scoring against Delia Rovere, the pope's negotiations may largely have been bluff to detach the Colonna from the emperor. 141 Dennistoun (1851), 3:40. 142 A detailed account of the events in Florence from the expulsion of the Medici in May 1527 until the signing of the capitulation is provided by Roth (1925); for the capitulation see ibid., 320. The religious fervor in the city during this period and its impact on the government is covered by Stephens (1983), 203-55.

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December 1529 a league between pope and emperor awaited confirmatory signatures. The pope urged Venice to join the league, and prior to agreeing, the Republic required of the pontiff that Delia Rovere, its Captain General, be invested with his duchy and titles in order to ensure some stability in a region of importance for Venetian security. 143 Probably under some pressure from Charles V, Clement acceded to this request on about 12 December 1529.144 As prefect of Rome, the duke of Urbino was summoned by a papal brief (dated 7 February 1530) to attend the coronation ceremony arranged to take place in Bologna between 22 and 24 February. On the latter day, as prefect, Francesco Maria carried aloft in procession the sword of state with which the pope had conferred knighthood on the emperor, a tableau perpetuated in the nearly 12-meter long etching by Nicholas Hogenberg (ca. 1500-before 1539) (Figure 6.5). 145 Charles V sought to persuade the duke to take service as the commander of the imperial forces on the Italian peninsula, an offer graciously declined with excuses. Thereupon the emperor applied directly to the Republic of Venice for the duke's transfer. The reply came that those very reasons that had prompted the request were why the Republic was unwilling to release him. 1 4 6 So impressed was the emperor with Delia Rovere that he promised to grant him any favor. In reply the duke begged the restoration of the duchy of Sora and of neighboring Arce, Arpino, and Rocca 143 In November 1529 the Venetian government granted full powers to its negotiator to restore the towns of Ravenna and Cervia to the pope (Hook [1973], 20-28; Pastor, 10:867). For the Venetian desire that Delia Rovere should be restored by the pope to his duchy and honors, see ibid., 10:87-8. 144 Cf. Pastor, 10:97, where it is remarked that Charles V never trusted Clement VII and showed exceptional favor to Delia Rovere in the early months of 1530; this eventuality would support the emperor as likely to have pressed the pope for the duke's investiture the previous December. The peace treaty was concluded on 23 December (ibid., 10:88), and one can suppose that the pope agreed to Delia Rovere's investiture some two weeks before; I have been unable to find the papal privilege. 145 For a photographic reproduction of the rather damaged copy in Urbania, Museo Civico, showing Francesco Maria in the procession, see // Trionfo di Carlo V, 1530, ed. F. Paoli, exh. cat. (Urbania: Palazzo ducale, 1991), xxv. The duke, bearing aloft the sword of state, faces away from the viewer; there is no suggestion that the representation was taken from the life. See also F. Paoli, "L'acquaforte del Trionfo di Carlo V nella libreria a stampa di Francesco Maria II Delia Rovere," in / Delia Rovere nell'Italia delle Corti (2002), 3 ("Cultura e Letteratura"): 129-42; cf. // Corteo trionfale di Carlo V: Un capitoh del Rinascimenlo in un acquaforte delle collezioni roveresche, ed. J. T. Spike, exh. cat. (Urbania: Comune di Urbania, 1999), 62-3, where an enlargement of the duke's head and shoulders is likewise provided, the editor remarking that the face clearly lacks the beard that is a feature of Titian's famous portrait; The Procession of Pope Clement VII and the Emperor Charles V ... Designed and Engraved by Nicolas Hogenberg, ed. W. Stirling Maxwell (Edinburgh, 1875), plate 25, at 26-8, distinguishes seven different printings, copies of each known to the editor being indicated, that in Urbania (apparently originating in the Delia Rovere library transferred to Urbania by the last duke) seemingly unknown to him. The reproductions of the Stirling Maxwell edition are of the same printing, being that with armorial shields of ancestors of Charles V, with their names in French (Stirling Maxwell [1875], 27 no. II, of which eight copies are listed). 146 Leoni (1605), 140-42; cf. G. Giordani, Delia venuta e dimora in Bologna del sommo ponteflce Clemente VIIper la coronazione di Carlo V imperatore.... 3 pts. in 1 (Bologna: Fonderia e tipografia governativa "alia Volpe," 1842), 1:168-9, 2:162-3, nn. 649-50.

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\ 07

Guglielmi in the kingdom of Naples, fiefs which in 1501 he had inherited from his father. In 1516, at Pope Leo X's urging, King Charles of Spain (the emperor-to-be) had deprived him of these fiefs. At last in 1533 the emperor paid the noblemen in possession 100,000 scudi in compensation to recover them, and once more Delia Rovere was enfiefed with his Neapolitan duchy. 147 On 22 March 1530 the emperor left Bologna for Germany, and the pope likewise left for Rome, carried in a litter. He reached Urbino on 6 April, and then visited the duke. That same year, the duke gave hospitality in his Urbino duchy to another erstwhile enemy, Ascanio Colonna.149 Francesco Maria's prestigious palatial residence just outside Pesaro, the Villa Imperiale, which was much elaborated over the decade from his improved fortunes in 1522, provides striking testimony that the duke deemed 1530 his annus mirabilis. That year the ceiling of its Sala dei Semibusti was enhanced with a fresco that provides yet another instance of "Art as Power."150 The scene represents the church of S. Petronio, Bologna, toward which on an elevated wooden ramp advanced the coronation procession, with Charles V preceded by Duke Francesco Maria Delia Rovere in his capacity as prefect of Rome holding aloft the sword (Figure 6.6).151 Thus it was abundantly clear that Francesco Maria had decisively outwitted the pope with respect to the tatter's aspirations for the duchy of Urbino. Even without obtaining the duchy, however, Clement VII did ultimately succeed in establishing his family in secure control of Florence. After that city surrendered to imperial forces in the summer of 1530, Charles V returned it by imperial charter to Medici authority, specified as that of Duke Alessandro.152 Under the aegis of the emperor, whose

147 Charles II of Spain (elected emperor as Charles V in 1519) on 23 January 1516 succeeded Ferdinand as king of Spain, Naples, and Sicily, and in the following summer (probably May and certainly before 5 September), under pressure from Leo X, deprived Francesco Maria of Sora and his other Neapolitan fiefs. See Pastor, 7:456-7 doc. 13; cf. Dennistoun (1851), 2:351, and see notes 14 and 54 above. For the emperor's promise of restoration and his honoring that promise in 1533, see Dennistoun (1851), 3:42, citing Giraldi (seemingly Tranquillo Giraldi, probably of Mondolfo), / Dialogii, for which see ibid., 3:363. Sora and the neighboring territory were sold by Francesco Maria II Delia Rovere in 1580 to Giacomo Boncompagni, the illegitimate son of Pope Gregory XIII, for 100,000 scudi (see M. Bonvini Mazzanti, "Aspetti della politica intema ed estera di Francesco Maria II Della Rovere," ml Della Rovere nell'Italia delle Corti (2002), 1:77-91, at 86. 148 Pastor, 10:99-100; Dennistoun (1851), 3:43. 149 Dennistoun (1851), 2:435; ibid., 3:49-50. 150 Reconstruction of the former Malatesta-Sforza palace outside Pesaro began in 1522, following Della Rovere's recovery of the state, when Pesaro became the capital, i.e., once Adrian VI had absolved Della Rovere from ecclesiastical censures, but prior to his investiture in March 1523. See Clough (2002), 1:60. 151 G. Marchini, La Villa Imperiale di Pesaro ([Rome]: Associazione fra le Casse di Risparmio Italiane, [1968]), 21-3 and table XI, top illustration. 152 The articles of capitulation indicated that Florence's government was to be regulated within four months by the emperor, "it being always understood that liberty is to be preserved." On 20 August a Parlamento shouting "Palle" completed the pro-Medici revolution, and thereafter authority in Florence was exercised in the name of Clement VII. On 17 February 1531 the Balia elected Alessandro de' Medici to its number; he returned to the city on 5 June. The following day was issued an imperial bull, antedated to 28

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power on the Italian peninsula was ascendant, the Medici no longer needed to gain control of Urbino to be assured of Florence's political security. On 27 April 1532 Clement VII abolished Florence's ancient constitution, thereby enabling Duke Alessandro to rule with monarchical powers; the aim was to eradicate nascent republicanism and to ensure permanency for Medici rule. In effect, Florence was to become a hereditary princedom. 153

October 1530, declaring pardon for the city in Charles V's name, and recognizing Alessandro, with the title of duke, as head of state. Roth (1925), 330-36. 153 G. Capponi, Storia delta Repubblica di Firenze, 2 vols. (Florence: G. Barbera, 1875), 2: chap. 11; R. Caggese, Firenze dalla Decadenza di Roma al Risorgimento d'Italia, 3 vols. (Florence: Seeber, 1912-20), 3: chap. 1: "L'Organizzazione del principato."

Chapter 7

Clement VII and the Sack of Rome as Represented in the Ephemerides Historicae of Cornelius de Fine .—^

sje

Ivana Ait

At the beginning of March 1511, shortly after having had lunch, an 18-year-old of Flemish origins, a student at the University of Leuven, set out on a journey with the purpose of "going to the city of Rome."1 The chronicle by Cornelius, son of the late Johann de Fine, opens with a detailed account of the journey, which he undertook in the company of a fellow student. After departing from Leuven, they traversed lands and rivers until at last reaching the Eternal City, just in time for Holy Week. "On Sunday," he recounts, "we celebrated Easter Day in St. Peter's."2

*

1

2

Translated from the Italian by Antonia Reiner. BAY, Ottob. Lat. 1613, fol. 2r: "urbem Romam adire." The account of the journey appears in fols. 2r-3r. So far in my research I have found three copies of this work. The first subdivides the text into three books, of which only the initial two survive: BAY, Ottob. Lat. 1613, entitled Ephemerides historicae ab anno 1511 ad 1531 volumen /, and BAY, Ottob. Lat. 1614, entitled Ephemerides historicae ab anno 1536 ad annum 1543 volumen //, which commences with fol. 96, and ends with a reference to a third volume, containing the events of 1544. A second copy the Ephemerides historicae is found in BAY, Ottob. Lat. 2137. The writing is calligraphic, all by the same hand, and the changes of pen and ink are evident: this is likely to be a copy of an earlier version or versions. A third text, a late copy of the entire work (eighteenth century), survives in a miscellaneous volume in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (Paris), Fonds latins 12552, entitled Diaria Romanat at fols. 86r-210r, entitled Diarium Cornelii de Fine. This is the manuscript that Ludwig von Pastor consulted (cf. Pastor, ad indices). A comparison between the Vatican and Parisian texts indicates that at least one more manuscript must have existed. A collation of the two earlier Vatican manuscripts, Ottob. Lat. 1613 and Ottob. Lat. 1614, with the letter by Cornelius de Fine preserved in BNR, Manoscritti e rari, fondo Autographi, led me to believe that these are autograph manuscripts; this is why I have referred to these for the present article. Searches in the Biblioteca Comunale Guarnacci of Volterra, Fondo Maffei, for the lost third volume have thus far proved fruitless. Marc Laureys wrote an entry on De Fine in Hochrenaissance, cat. no. 92 (although he omits mention of Ottob. Lat. 1614), with further bibliography, including Y. Golzio, Raffaello net document! nelle testimonianze dei contemporanei e nella letteratura del suo secolo (Vatican City: n.p., 1936), 282, which publishes a well-known passage on Michelangelo and Raphael. BAV, Ottob. Lat. 1613 (henceforth abbreviated as De Fine), fol. 3r: "apud Sanctum Petrum die dominico celebravimus Pascha[m]."

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Before analyzing the contents of Cornelius's narrative, let us consider its formal elements. In the first place, the narration of the Sack of Rome takes up only a part of Book One of the Ephemerides historicae. Following the detailed account of his journey (fols. 2r-3r), Cornelius announces his plan: to record the more remarkable events that are about to take place in the Christian world ("magis notabilia ... que in Christiano orbe eventura sunt"\ and he goes on to specify that he was induced to begin this account "since there is no era that lasts forever ("quod nulla esset etasperpetua")* Cornelius's intention, which adheres to the humanist topos of overcoming the brevity and fragility both of life and of human memory through the act of writing, was to fix the most important events "for the benefit of posterity, and as an exercise of my mental powers."4 Thus he claims for his work two essential elements: one of a more universal nature, to be useful to future generations; the other of personal significance, to establish a kind of intellectual gymnasium. The historical narration proceeds chronologically, offering a broad analysis of the most salient contemporary events. Still, a central place is taken by the characters of the popes whom he met personally, starting with Julius II, the last two years of whose pontificate found Cornelius in Rome—years that coincided with the initial writing of his chronicle. The first reference to the Sack of Rome of 1527 appears in conjunction with his account of the death of the second Delia Rovere pope. Following the description of a fascinating detail about the location of the pope's tomb, "in Sixtus's chapel, placed underneath in a deep trench," he explains the reason for the selection of such a site: the fear that the sarcophagus might be pillaged of the precious items that, because of the high rank of the pontiff, had been deposited within it, among which he notes "two rings of great value."5 Such an event did in fact happen, he writes below on the same page, "in the year 1527, when the city had been demolished by the imperial troops, with great destruction."6 On this occasion, in fact, the body of the late pontiff was exhumed by the Spanish soldiers, who pillaged it despite the fact that "in the past they had been on friendly terms with him."7 In the Ephemerides historicae, Cornelius de Fine offers plentiful material also on political aspects of the time, so that next to the meticulous and precise description of Charles V's entry into Paris, one finds digressions on the power of the Florentine state and of the Lunigiana. In these the author focuses especially on the Cibo family, Piombino (in the Sienese territorial state), and the countship of Pitigliano. Further3 4

5

6 7

De Fine, fol. 3r. De Fine, fol. 3v: "ad posterum commodum et ingenii mei exercitationem." On the humanist trope of writing transcending the brevity of human life, see P. Casciano, "Storia di un *topos* della stonografia umanistica. Exempla esigna" in La storiogrqfia umanistica. Convegno internazionale di studi dell 'Associazione per il Medioevo e I 'Umanesimo latini, Messina 22-25 Ottobre 1987, 2 vols. (Messina: Sicania, 1992), 1:75-92. De Fine, fol. lOv: "in capella Sixti ubi cantantur horae canonicae et missus suptus terram in profunda fossa"; ibid., "anula [sic] duo magne estimationis." Cf. the Roman humanist Pietro Corsi's Vergilian poem on the Sack of Rome, entitled Romae urbis excidium, which specifies the pillaging of a signet ring from Julius's right hand: "Non veritus dextram gemma impacatus Iberus." K. Gouwens, Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 91, n. 79. De Fine, fol. lOv: "anno domini 1527 cum Urbs a Cesarianis maximo excidio diruta fuit." De Fine, fol. lOv: "olim eius exstiterant familiares."

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more, on the subject of the tributes paid in 1543 by Marseilles to the Turkish corsair known as Barbarossa, Cornelius reports that the routes of his itinerary were to be covered with carpets, an honor not accorded even to Charles V.8 We find also many interesting details regarding the town of Volterra, where Cornelius stayed thanks to his connection with the Maffei family. At the center of the international events, naturally, we find Rome and the papal Curia, Thus when he writes of the elevation of 31 cardinals by Leo X in June 1517, De Fine takes special note of prestigious Romans among them, including Andrea della Valle, Pompeo Colonna, Franciotto Orsini, Francesco Conti, and Paolo Emilio Cesi.9 Here he offers a meticulous description of the cortege formed that night by one thousand torch-bearing members of the Roman aristocracy, who went to Leo X to thank him for this benefit accorded to their ranks.10 In addition to describing public events, Cornelius refers to private circles, occasionally providing a glimpse of interesting and previously unknown details concerning prominent individuals and locations. Such is the case for the description of the wedding in Rome of the famous Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi.11 In referring to this prestigious power-broker who came to prominence in Rome as banker to Julius II, Cornelius employs adjectives that emphasize wealth and social standing: "the most opulent and richest of all merchants in the entirety of Christendom, the greatest and the most illustrious."12 Pope Leo X himself performed the ceremony ("per manus ... summi pontificis desponsavit Augustinum et concubinam suam"), and as a sign of gratitude for the financial services that Chigi had provided, Pope Leo gave him a gold ring with a diamond worth 800 gold coins.13 The sumptuous wedding banquet, described with details emphasizing the exceptional nature of the occasion, was attended by 15 cardinals as well as by "countless bishops, many more ambassadors of princes, and by all the aristocrats of the entire city of Rome and all the foremost members of the Curia."14 De Fine often displays particular awareness of the financial aspects of pontifical politics. Details of economic import, although less frequently mentioned than military and political issues, are often discussed, at times blending with the latter. His shrewd analysis of economic factors is particularly evident when he assesses the 8 9 10

11 12 13 14

BAY, Ottob. Lat. 1614, fol. 199v. De Fine, fol. lOv. On this elevation of men to the cardinalate, incidentally, Adrian of Utrecht—the future Pope Adrian VI (1522-23)—also received the red hat. De Fine, fol. 24r: "mille Romanorum primarii exiere per Urbem omnes induti fulgentibus armis in sero prima hora hoctis perlustrarunt Urbem multi circumfusis tedis cerae albae et ad pallatium summi pontificis accessere, ut prefatum salutarent atque de accepto beneficio gratias agerent... et a summo pontifice pro benigne accepti et honorati instructa acie rediere ad proprias lares magno cum gaudio et letitia singulari." De Fine, 27v-28r, mistakenly dates the ceremony (which took place on 28 August 1519) to 15 May 1518. It was held in Chigi's suburban villa, located along the Tiber and just north of the district of Trastevere. De Fine, fol. 27v: "locupletissimus et omnium mercatorum totius christianitatis ditissimus, maximus et splendidissimus." De Fine, fol. 27v. De Fine, fol. 27v: "innumeri episcopi, quam plures principum oratores et omnes totius Urbis proceres atque primarii curiales omnes." Dancers and musicians performed at the banquet, he says, and exceptionally large sturgeons were served to the guests.

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multiplicity of causes underlying the cruelty and ruthlessness of the Sack of Rome. Thus, in dealing with the elevation of six new cardinals—which took place only a few days before the Sack—Cornelius notes that it was done with the aim of great profit for the papal coffers. It was supposed to have yielded 240,000 ducats, as each candidate had to pay the sum of 40,000 ducats. Nevertheless, according to Cornelius's narration, in the event only three of the six were actually elevated: the archbishop of Ravenna (Benedetto Accolti) and two bishops, Niccolo Gaddi and Agostino Spinola. 15

De Fine's Life and his Perspective on Rome In order to appreciate properly Cornelius de Fine's distinctive vision of the events in question, we need to shed some light on the character of this understudied figure. 16 Thanks in part to what he discloses in his work, we can outline with some precision his biography as well as the milieu that surrounded him in Rome. He was probably born in the 1490s, in Bergen op Zoom, a village situated in the duchy of Brabant, which straddled the border between what are now Holland and Belgium. 17 He attended—we do not know for how long—the University of Leuven, without however obtaining a degree.'8 His journey, initiated (as noted above) in March 1511, ended in April of that year when he reached Rome, fulfilling his goal, but he never justifies its choice. He probably belonged to the crowd of youths attracted by the culture and patronage of the court of Julius II, and it is clear that Cornelius had more or less direct links with the circle of the Curia. A first indication can be found in the account of the time when he and his traveling companions (including some students from Magonza) stayed in Bologna in early April 1511. 19 Following a detailed description of the triumphal entry of Julius II into that city and the ensuing celebrations of the pope's victories in the campaign of Mirandola, Cornelius notes that while he and his companion from Leuven continued the journey to Rome, the others remained in Bologna to attend to miscellaneous business (varia negotia) concerning the Curia. 20 The entrusting of these unspecified tasks to Cornelius's fellow travelers may suggest that they already had a link to the papal court. If so, this would help to explain the high position reached by De Fine inside that circle, evident in his eloquent descriptions of life at the Curia. On the occasion of Leo X's journey to Florence, writes De Fine,

15

16 17 18 19 20

De Fine, fol. 95r. He errs on this point. In fact, on 3 May 1527, not three but six cardinals were created, the remaining three being Ercole Gonzaga (bishop of Mantua), Marino Gnmani (patriarch of Aquileia), and Antione Bohier du Prat (chancellor of France). See Pastor, 9:465, n. 1, and Barbara Mailman's contribution above. Although Pastor draws frequently upon the Paris copy of Cornelius de Fine's text, he does not provide details on the author himself. He notes the proximity of Bergen op Zoom to the port of Antwerp, whose commercial importance he emphasizes. De Fine, fol. 2r. This point is confirmed by my research in the list of freshmen at Leuven. Cornelius and his original traveling companion had stopped in Magonza, at which point these other students joined them in their journey. De Fine, fol. 2r-v. De Fine, fol. 3r: "Socii nostri reliqui varia in ilia civitate et Curia negotia aggressi sum."

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[the pope] left the city of Rome at the beginning of November 1515, and I, who wrote this, [went] with him, and he set out at a slow pace toward Florence, taking in his train the entire Curia and its officials. 21 The expression "cum ed" ("along with him") suggests a close familiarity beyond his mere presence in the pope's entourage. This intimacy is confirmed in the few lively annotations about the banquet offered by Pompeo Colonna on 7 May 1518 in honor of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, held in Rome in the residence of the former, the palace of Santi Apostoli in the Colonna district (i.e., Rione III). Also on this occasion he employed hyperbole to emphasize the extraordinary nature of the banquet, describing it as "splendid beyond measure, the most beautifully decorated and sumptuous, incredibly extravagant ... [banquet] ever seen in Rome."22 Nearby the various cardinals, he adds, were the attendants of the Colonna and of the foremost curialists of the entire city of Rome," and "I too was among [them]."23 Cornelius's access to a privileged elite was endorsed by his relationship with the Dei Conti, a baronial family: thus, in reporting the death of Cardinal Francesco Conti in his palace in Rome (19 April 1521), Cornelius describes the cardinal as "formerly [my] master and patron" ("quondam dominus et patronus")24 Extending his discussion to the cardinal's family, he adds that "these men were of a most illustrious descent, but of even more illustrious virtues, moral standing and kindness"—and with this gesture of appreciation toward those who had started him on the road to a career in the Curia, he ends his brief autobiographical digression.25 De Fine subsequently joined the close circle that centered on another illustrious family, the Maffei of Volterra.26 The correspondence between him and various members of this family gives us interesting glimpses of the many roles that he fulfilled on 21

22 23 24 25 26

De Fine, fol. 18r: "urbem Romam exiit in principio mensis Novembris 1515, et ego, qui hec scripsi, cum eo, et versus Florentiam lento gradu proficiscitur, omnem secum trahens Curiam atque Curie officiales." He adds, perceptively, that the journey was made "at great cost and expense to all" ("magno omnium dispendio et sumptu"). De Fine, fol. 28v: "ultramodum splendidissimum, omatissimum, lautissimum, pretiosissimum ... et rarum in Urbe visum est." De Fine, fol. 28v: "cum pluribus aliis cardinalibus domicellis columnesibus et pnmariis cunalibus totius urbis Rome"; ibid.: "ego etiam interfui." De Fine, fol. 44r-v. Francesco Conti was created cardinal by Leo X in 1517. The Conti family belonged to the group of Roman barons who had risen to prominence in the thirteenth century. Carocci (1993). De Fine, fol. 44v: "viri isti erant illustrissimi genere sed illustriores virtutibus, moribus ac benignitate." P Paschini, "Una famiglia di curiali: i Maffei di Volterra," Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 1 (1953): 337-76; J. F. D'Amico, "Papal History and Curial Reform in the Renaissance: Raffaele Maffei's Brevis Historia of Julius II and Leo X," AHP 18 (1980): 157-210, now reprinted as essay 6 in J. F. D'Amico, Roman and German Humanism, 1450-1550, ed. P F Grendler (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1993). On the Maffei archive in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, see A. Spotti, "Le lettere di Martino Virgoletta a Mario Maffei," in Un 'idea di Roma. Societa, arte e cultura tra Umanesimo e Rinascimento, ed. L. Fortini (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1993), 113-20. See esp. S. E. Reiss, "Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and Mario Maffei: A Renaissance Friendship and the Villa Madama," in Coming About... A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. L. R. Jones and L. C. Matthew (Cambridge: Harvard University Museums, 2001), 281-8, with further bibliography.

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behalf of his new "father and patron to be honored as one unparalleled*' (as he refers to Bishop Mario Maffei in his letters).27 These tasks allowed him to develop links to some humanists who had participated in the famous Roman Academy founded by Giulio Pomponio Leto. De Fine's long experience with the Curia is documented on many occasions, particularly in the papers concerning Mario Maffei. 29 We know that on account of the favor and trust that Maffei placed in him, De Fine was appointed archdeacon of Aquino, and that, once invested with this title, he was able to serve as the bishop's vicar. 30 These duties he also fulfilled in the diocese of Cavaillon, which had been entrusted to Maffei since 1524.31 Thus we can unravel the web of Cornelius's contacts in Rome, or rather in the Roman Curia—a network that gave him access to important public events, as well as to privileged information of a more private kind, in that he got to know places and persons both as a protagonist, when he followed his patrons in their travels, and as an intermediary for others. His vision of the Sack is of particular interest because he belonged to the papal court—the "other Rome," as it has at times been called. Through the eyes of this curialist, the Romans are viewed as heroic defenders of the city and of the pope. Yet his perspective is conditioned by his strongly critical attitude toward the fiscal policy of Clement VII, whom he held responsible for the Sack, which De Fine viewed as a calamity for all humankind. A very different version of the same events is given by another narrator of the vicissitudes of the Sack, the Roman Marcello Alberini, a notable exponent of the municipal aristocracy.32 Whereas Alberini firmly condemns the attitude of the Romans when they were confronted with impending disaster, De Fine traces the underlying cause of the occupation and defeat of Rome to the Curia, which he blames for transforming it into a city of courtesans. 27

BNR, Autografi, A.96.50.1: "Pater et patrone unic[e] colendissime." Letter written in Rome on 6 February 1531, addressed to Mario Maffei, then in Volterra. 28 On humanists active in Rome in the time of Pomponio Leto, see J. F. D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome Humanism and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), esp. chap. 4, "The Roman Academies"; C. L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), passim. On the Maffei library in particular, see J. Ruysschaert, "Recherche des deux bibliotheques romaines Maffei des XVe et XVIe siecles," La Bibliofilia 60 (1958): 306-55. See also Reiss (2002). A part of Cornelius's correspondence is preserved in the Biblioteca Comunale Guamacci of Volterra. 29 In his testament, drawn up in Florence on 14 September 1533, Mario Maffei refers to Cornelius as "familiaris meus antiquus" and leaves him the life tenancy of a house with a tower (the Ville Majne) and of a smaller house ("domuncula") with a vineyard, so long as Cornelius remained in "Etruria." See the copy preserved in Volterra, Biblioteca Comunale Guarnacci, MS. 105,6. 30 Thus he signed himself ("vicario del vescovo") in a letter of 29 November 1525: BNR, Autografi* A.96.49.2. In 1515, Mano Maffei had been entrusted with the diocese of Aquino, a city in southern Italy. 31 This we deduce from letters De Fine wrote in Cavaillon to Mario Maffei, between November 1531 and March 1532. On 25 March 1532, the despondent De Fine confided to "patrono benefactori suo": "mi sforzo di fare amministrare piu iusticia sia possibile tanto temporale quanto spintuale. In nella [sic] iusticia spintuale io non guardo in viso a nessuno et si non mi parto presto sero pegio." BNR, Autografi, A.96.51.5. 32 M. Alberini, // Sacco di Roma. L'edizione Orano e I ricordi di Marcello Alberini, ed. P Farenga (Rome: Roma nel Rmascimento, 1997), xlvii.

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We have, then, two perspectives of eyewitnesses to the Sack that at first glance appear to conflict: one is that of a curialist, a compatriot of the much-maligned Pope Adrian VI (1522-23); and the other, that of a Roman aristocrat who described that pontiff as a "homo barbaro"^ Nonetheless, the two voices are not entirely at odds: for De Fine exalts the stance of the Romans during the Sack precisely so that his negative judgment concerning the financial politics of Clement VII and his most trusted collaborators may acquire greater poignancy. The Sack of Rome The occupation of the city by the armies of Emperor Charles V was an event of strong emotional impact, and it is commemorated in numerous accounts.34 It does not surprise, therefore, that Cornelius gives this event a prominent place in his narrative, not least because he or someone from Bishop Maffei's circle may plausibly have been in Rome at the time.35 Nevertheless, after outlining the various stages of the imperial troops' passage through northern Italy, the narration makes a long digression to analyze conflicts within Rome in the months immediately preceding the Sack. Cornelius describes the lesser known—yet no less historically significant—attack upon the Vatican on 20 September 1526, led by members of the Colonna family.36 33 In his Ricordi, Marcello Alberini reported on the election of Pope Adrian in the following words: "et fu nominate Adriano VI, homo barbaro, de nation vilissimo de Fiandra, et pedante o pedagogo de Carlo." Alberini (1997), 203. The humanists were harsh in their criticism of the austere pope. See, for example, V. Fanelli, "Adriano VI e Angelo Colocci," Studi romani 8 (1960): 13-24. In Cornelius's narration we find a different, concise evaluation of this figure: "Hie erat vir honeste vite atque doctissimus ... ministravit inquam summam iustitiam et ea de causa a vulgo amabatur, a magnatibus vero habebatur in odio." De Fine, fol. 64r. A man of strict moral standards, Adrian had held many important posts, one among these being, in 1493 and again in 1501, that of rector of the University of Leuven. Pastor, 9:34-41, at 38. On the Romans* hostility toward Adrian VI see J. H. Gaisser, Pierio Valeriano on the III Fortune of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist and His World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 31-4, as well as Sheryl Reiss's essay below. Alberini's vernacular narration of the Sack of Rome reflects the image of the city according to the humanist topos accepted by the circle of intellectuals who already in the fifteenth century were denouncing the evils afflicting Rome and its citizens, alienating them from its ancient splendor. 34 Together with other scholars involved in researching the Sack of Rome, I am analyzing the different types of memoirs that survive, to provide a coherent account of the testimonies of a more strictly literary nature. See, too, the essay in the present collection by Anna Esposito and Manuel Vaquero-Pifieiro. 35 On 29 November 1525 he wrote from Rome. BNR, Autografi, A.96.492. The following letter is dated 3 February 1528, and was sent from Montecatini, ibid., A.96.49.3. From a letter by Mario Maffei, sent on 12 June 1527 from his villa at S. Donnino (outside Volterra) and addressed to his adopted son Paolo, we know that De Fine was going to Rome around that time. We have no further evidence for the period of the Sack and occupation of Rome (6 May 1527-17 February 1528) in the Maffei papers either at the BNR or in Volterra, where nevertheless I shall carry out further research. On the Colonna raid of 1526, see De Fine, fols. 77r-83v. 36 De Fine, 77r: "in vigilia divi Mathei Apostoli ultra spem summi pontificis et curialium accidit inopinatus casus qui taliter est: summus pontifex Clemens Septimus inierat fedus

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He also provides details about the subsequent conspiracy on the part of "magnates and retainers of the Orsini family" (magnat[or]um et domicellorum ex domo Vrsind) that was foiled in February of 1527.37 Cornelius identifies as mainly responsible Napoleone Orsini, commendatory abbot of Farfa, who, apparently flattered by the offers of the emperor, took a stand against Clement VII. The narrative enumerates the benefices that the Orsini family stood to gain from their betrayal, mentioning also the restitution of the territory of Tagliacozzo, and the allotment of a yearly revenue of 16,000 ducats that Spain, for its part, would provide.38 As is well known, the plot failed, and as a result Napoleone Orsini was imprisoned in Castel Sant' Angelo. Toward the end of the narration relating to the armies of Charles V, De Fine reports among other things the liberation of Napoleone Orsini in the summer of 1527. This event, made public through the dispatches of Venetian and Florentine ambassadors, has been interpreted as a demonstration of "[h]ow implicitly trustful the [p]ope was."39 According to Cornelius, it was in fact one of the conditions stipulated in the agreement between Clement VII and the imperial representatives. Beyond releasing the abbot of Farfa, in fact, the pope was asked to accept Pompeo Colonna once again among his cardinals.40 In addition, he was to pay 400,000 ducats. Cornelius details the breakdown of this sum: 50,000 ducats to be paid in cash, 50,000 in silver coins, 50,000 to be granted as a loan that could be recovered through the taxes received by the kingdom of Naples, and the remaining 250,000 ducats to be paid within two months.41 As a guarantee, some of the pope's closest advisors, most notably Jacopo Salviati and the datary Gian Matteo Giberti, were to be handed over as hostages. As noted above, De Fine's narrative focuses upon two issues in particular: (1) the attitude of the Romans; and (2) the fiscal policy of Clement VII. Concerning the first, he writes that the Romans formed an army of 7,000 men "for the defense of the City and of His Holiness.'*42 The pope appointed 2,000 foot-soldiers for his own protection. On the financial system adopted by Clement VII we find some interesting notations, particularly concerning the delicate subject of raising the funds necessary for military expenses and for "providing Rome with the soundest defense."43 In con-

37

38 39 40 41 42 43

cum Colonnesibus." For a detailed contemporary account of the Colonna raid of October 1526, see the account of Girolamo Negri, summarized and quoted in part by Pastor, 9:332-3. The letter is preserved in Italian in printed form in Lettere di principi (Venice: Ziletti, 1570), 104r-10[5]v. Alberini (1997) does not mention this last event; he seems instead to concentrate on demonstrating the apathy of the Romans, no longer in charge of their own city, as they faced dramatic events such as the Colonna raid, which anticipates the imperial sack in May 1527. On the events relating to the Orsini during the Middle Ages, see F. Allegrezza, Organizzazione del potere e dinamiche familiari, Gli Orsini dal Duecento agli inizi del Quattrocento (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo—Ecole fran^aise de Rome, 1998). De Fine, foL 88r. Pastor, 9:371, n. 1. DeFine,fol. lOOv. DeFine, fol. lOOr. De Fine, fol. 82v: "in presidium Urbis et sue sanctitatis." The pope formed an army of 2,000 "peditum custodes sui corporis" (ibid.). De Fine, fol. 82v: "munire Urbem validissimo presidio." On this subject De Fine mentions the works for the fortification of the city by way of building "intra et citra Urbis

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trast to the way De Fine characterizes the Romans, who, moved to "heart-felt pity" (cordibus pietatis) by the pope's requests, donated their properties and money as an "amicable loan" (amicabilis mutui), he views the pope's intervention in a negative light. 44 He stresses Clement's exorbitant tax collections, which hit particularly hard the members of the clergy, and not exclusively the Romans—"it was endlessly necessary to pay the debt of the loan, especially in Tuscany."45 Cornelius in fact emphasizes the arbitrary manner of determining the exactions: "subject sometimes to the decision of the Florentine tax-collectors and sometimes to the decision of the Florentine vicar of the archbishop," they were based on the social status of the individuals rather than on what the benefices could actually generate as revenue. 46 A situation ensued in which "priests both local and foreign" were forced to pay "three or even six tithes."47 Whether hit personally, or perhaps voicing the frustration of his patron, Mario Maffei, who suffered directly from this new regulation, Cornelius observes astutely that the new Roman system was in fact modeled upon one already in use in Florence. 48 Without venturing too far into the details of papal finances, one may note that on the eve of the Sack the Monte della Fede, the first public funded debt in Rome, was established following a system already adopted by other cities.49 Cornelius's digression focuses especially on the Medici government in Florence, as well as on the policy that had arisen in Rome with the election of Pope Clement VII. He expresses

44 45 46 47 48

49

menia latitudinis 4 cannarum ut earn uti valeret occurente necessitate ut non inveniretur sine auxilio," as well as by restoring and constructing "omnes pontes et muros." Ibid. De Fine, fol. 82v: "cordibus pietatis"; "amicabilis mutui/ 1 De Fine, fol. 82v: "sine intermissione necesse fuit solvere nomine mutui et maxime in Tuscia." De Fine, fol. 82v: "ad arbitrium quondam exactorum florentinorum et ad arbitrium vicarii archiepiscopi florentini pro qualitate personarum pro eorum persorus et non pro bonis et simili modo [omnes] Romanii prelati tarn domestici quam extranei." De Fine, fol. 82v (see Latin in preceding note). In a letter from Mario Maffei dated 4 July 1527 from his villa in S. Donnino near Volterra we learn that in the night of the 3 July of that year the authorities had produced "non so che scripta alia porta fiorentina di paghar la decima delli beni ecclesiastici credo sia per tentare el terreno come lo trovano da manegiare," BNR, Autografi, A.95.31.2. In other letters written by Cornelius De Fine between February 1531 and May 1532 we find interesting evidence about a legal case brought to the auditor of the Apostolic Chamber by Mario Maffei on the question of the tithes. On this subject De Fine warned his pater et patrone that Blosio Palladio had intervened with the pope on his behalf, as also had Luigi Guicciardini in Florence, who met with Cardinal Cibo and the counselors, from whom he requested a letter to the Captain of Volterra, asking him not to burden Maffei with a further tax. BNR, Autografi, A. 96.50. 1 (Rome, 6 February 1531); A. 96.51. 6 (Florence, 6 May 1532), A.96.51.7 (Florence, 7 May 1532). The Monte della Fede was instituted in November 1526. M. Monaco, "II primo debito pubblico pontificio: il Monte della fede (1526)," Studi romani 8 (1960): 553-69; F. Piola Caselli, "La diffusione dei luoghi di monte della Camera Apostolica alia fine del XVI secolo. Capitali investiti e rendimenti," in Credito e sviluppo economico in Italia dal Media Evo all'Eta Contemporanea Atti del primo convegno nazionale, Verona, 4-6 giugno 1987 (Verona: Societa Italiana degli Storici dell'Economia, 1988), 191-216. For comparative context, see F. Piola Caselli, // buon governo. Storia della fmanza pubblica nell'Europa preindustriale (Turin: G. Giappichelli Editore, 1997).

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a harsh judgment, and he lingers on the measures employed to implement the new taxes, once again stressing the unjust taxation of the clergy: The Florentines' leaders and foremost men, who had for many years held as hateful the tyranny in the Florentine city and the rule of the house of Medici, once the election had taken place, resolved not to tolerate their tyranny any longer, since Clement VII was sitting and reigning, because the citizens, inhabitants, and priests of the Florentines, along with the entire clergy of the Florentines, were being compelled to pay enormous fines and taxes that had never been customary in times other than that of the papacy of Clement VII. 50 Citizens were required to pay sums established at will by the pope, and similar impositions were imposed arbitrarily upon the clergy, the amount of the tithes being set without consistent regard to the number of benefices held, let alone to how much revenue those benefices were producing. 51 He implemented taxes of these sorts in Rome, too, and with disastrous results for his reputation: [There,] individual office-holders of all the colleges werepaymg all the fruits of their offices for more months. These taxes standing between [pope and people], Clement provoked the entire populace, both laymen and clerics, to such great ill-will that as a result they all unanimously desired his death, or perhaps that he be beset by an ill omen—as in fact happened. On account of the aforementioned reasons Clement, being greatly hated, was the cause of his own ruin. Thus Cornelius details the complex systems of tax collection that Clement VII introduced. During the second half of the fifteenth century, as the papal bureaucracy grew, the sale of offices had become one of the most important tools for credit in the Apostolic Chamber. Now, a new phase in revenue collection in Rome had begun—a phase distinguished by oppressive taxation of the clergy which, while strengthening Clement as signore, also cost him enormous good will.

50 De Fine, fol. 92r: "Florentinorum proceres et primarii, qui antea multis annis odio habuerant tirannidem in civitate florentina et regimen domus Medicis, nacti creatione, decreverant florentini amplius non tollerarc eorum tirannidem regnante et sedente Clemente VII, quia status florentinorum et cives, coloni et sacerdotes cum universe florentinorum clero compellebantur solvere multas enormes exactiones numquam aliis temporibus consuete [sic] nisi tempore pontificatus dementis VII." 51 De Fine, fol. 92r-v: "Solvebant cives prestantiam ad arbitrium constitutorum a summo pontifice tantum pro capite—sacerdotes vero prius studium sine studio—et impostam tanturn pro quolibet beneficio; deinde quinque decimas novissime simili modo sicuti laicis decretum erat antea posuerat in clero ad arbitnum, qui nullum habebant arbitnum tantum pro capite ad eorum beneplacitum; ita quod multi qui nullum habebant beneficium vi persolverant alter quinquaginta, alter 40; qui vero habebant beneficia ascendentia ad 100 ducatos solvebant bis centum, ter centum ducatos qui vero e patrimonio reputabantur divites cum aliquis beneficiis ad quingentos et 1.000 ducatos ascendebant." 52 De Fine, fol. 92v: "Et non solum in domo florentina quantum etiam in urbe Roma, ubi singuli officiales omnium collegiorum solvebant omnes fructus suorum officiorum pluribus mensibus; his exactionibus mediantibus provocavit Clemens omnem populum tarn laicos quam spirituales ad tantam malivolentiam, quod omnes unanimiter desiderarent interitum suum vel quod malo omine circumveniretur sicuti contigit. Predictis de causis Clemens valde exosus prebuit causam sue ruine."

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De Fine's account has long been a source for vivid observations on the Sack of Rome. For example, Pastor cites the passage describing the hours before the attack: "In the city the preceding night [i.e., that of Sunday, 5 May] was expended in shouts [of] 'arms, arms,' and the Capitoline bell rang all night and all through the day calling the Romans to arms."53 This passage evokes the tension in the city on the eve of the battle, but it also puts the Romans in the foreground of the narration. Unlike other literary testimonies, this one makes the citizens of Rome the true protagonists. Rome, as described by Cornelius, is not an object that passively suffers looting and plundering; to be sure, there are many references to the violence visited upon the city, but in the context of the narration these are marginal. One of the distinctive traits of Cornelius's chronicle is, in fact, the depiction of the Romans as actively engaged in the defense of the city and of the pope himself. 54 On Sunday, 5 May, the eve of the fighting, the Romans—"just like the sons of Mars" (tamquam Martis filii)—promised Clement that they would defend the city, and that they would live or die along with him.55 The same Romans had fortified the strategic areas of the city in order to face the attackers. Among other things, there was built a bastion (un bastione, as Cornelius labels it in the vernacular), a type of fortification that would fend off the enemy invasion, and that was guarded by 600 armed men from the district of Parione.56 Cornelius adds with regret, however, that they made a strategic error. In fact they expected the enemy troops to arrive from the south, as had happened during the attack by the Colonna the previous year, whereas the army "came from the other side, from the direction of Etruria."57 Through the sixth of May, the pope's soldiers and the Romans "courageously defended Rome from the imperial enemy," and several times Cornelius singles out the brave and powerful behavior of the locals, who actively resisted the enemy and defended the pope.58 The Roman army was recruited according to a system based on districts. An edict issued by Clement in February 1527, in view of the possible arrival of the imperial troops, instructed the "heads of the city roads" (capita viarum) to recruit one man from each house, who would then arm himself at his own expense.59 Thus a militia of 10,000 strong men was raised, "as was being proposed," as Cornelius emphasizes.60 Even in exaggerating the size of the militia, he thus casts reasonable doubt 53 De Fine, fol. 92r: "In Urbe vero tota nox precedens expendebatur in clamoribus arma, arma, et campana Capitolii tota nocte et die tangebatur ad provocandum Romanes ad arma." Cf. Pastor, 9:388, n. 1. 54 Another witness of the Sack, Benvenuto Cellini, noted that u[p]er questa occasione tutta Roma prese 1'arme." B. Cellini, La vita di Benvenuto Cellini, ed. A. J. Rusconi and A. Valeri (Rome: Societa Editrice Nazionale, 1901), 77. 55 De Fine, fol. 95r. The Romans even committed to engaging 5,000 paid men "for the defense of His Holiness" ("ad defensionem sue sanctitatis"). Ibid. 56 DeFine, fol. 155r. 57 De Fine, fol. 95v: "veniebat ab alia parte versus Etruriam." On the planned Colonna strike from the south and its intended coordination with Bourbon's attack from the north, see Cecil dough's essay above. 58 De Fine, fol. 96v: "viriliter defenderent Urbem ab inimicis Imperialis" 59 De Fine, fol. 86v. 60 De Fine, fol. 86v: "ut ferebatur." Foreigners, priests, and religious men in general were excluded from the recruitment.

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upon the notion that the entire male population of Rome participated in the defense of the city, an assertion which he knew was less than accurate.61 He again takes up a hyperbolic tone in describing the parades organized each day in the individual districts, a spectacle of such expense and elegance as had never been seen before: "res mirabiles et enarrabiles" [things extraordinary and to be related].62 In addition to mentioning the number of men enrolled in the army, Alberini gives a very different description of the shows and parades (le mostre et le resegne) staged by "the districts and their leaders, and as the people were not accustomed to fighting, they appeared rather more suited to the battles of Love than of Mars."63 Still in all, Cornelius's narrative tends toward the exaltation of military greatness and of the citizens of Rome, some of whom were prominent figures from the circle in which he himself operated. Functional to his discourse is the detailed review of the soldiers and of their commanding officers, among whom he notes the son of Lorenzo da Ceri (i.e., Renzo), who was responsible for leading the defense of the San Pancrazio gate, and one Luca Antonio who was entrusted with the surveillance of the walls surrounding the vigna belonging to Cardinal Armellini. After treating the "living" city of Rome, the narrative shifts to the "stone" city. These notations, which reveal Cornelius's knowledge of specific locales, can also facilitate the precise identification of sites. For example, in the course of describing the arrival of the imperial troops, he refers to furnaces that were used for firing lime: At daybreak of Monday 6 May, once the line of battle had been arranged in proper order in the valley of Inferno, marching toward the furnaces with the aforementioned duke of Bourbon, with great organization [it] attacked Rome from the mount of Santo Spirito.65 The battle of May sixth against the imperial army produced great losses in both the Roman and the pontifical contingents. About six thousand men perished on that occasion, including some valiant commanding officers. Nevertheless, the enemy also 61 Cornelius's report does not coincide with the information given by other witnesses; in fact, according to Luigi Guicciardini the Romans numbered about 3,000, recruited "tra artigiani, servitori e altre vivissime persone." P. Farenga, "'Nuovi tormenti e nuovi tormentati.' L'Historia del sacco di Roma di Luigi Guicciardini," in Sylva. Studi in onore di Nino Borsellino, ed. G. Patrizi (Rome: Bulzoni, 2002), 281-305, at 303. 62 De Fine, fol. 86v. 63 Alberini (1997), 236-7: "li rioni con li loro capi de rioni et come le genti erano poche use al combattere, comparivano piu presto atte alle guerre di Amore che di Marte." He writes of "le monstre et le resegne" that were staged by "li rioni con li loro capi de rioni et come le genti erano poche use al combattere, comparivano piu presto atte alle guerre di Amore che di Marte." According to Luigi Guicciardini, too, the demise of Rome is to be attributed not so much to the corruption of its inhabitants, but rather "perche in essa si era perduta ogni coscienza della 'militare disciplina.'" Farenga (2002), 291. On the size of the imperial army, sources are at odds with one another. Pastor (1956), 251. 64 De Fine, fol. 95v. 65 "Die lune in aurora 6 maii structa acie per vallem Inferni facientes iter ad fomaces precedente duce de Borbona aggressi sunt Urbem intrepide per montem sancti Spiritus." De Fine, fol. 96r. Recent studies have revealed a large amount of lime and bricks in the area of Rome, reserved to supply the city market. See I. Ait and M. Vaquero Pifleiro, Dai casali allafabbrica di S. Pietro. I Lent: uominid'affari del Rinascimento (Rome: Ufficio Centrale per i Beni Archivistici/Roma nel Rinascimento, 2000), 182-90.

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suffered many deaths, similarly including eminent figures, most notably Charles of Bourbon. Cornelius attributes Bourbon's death to a cannon ball that penetrated his head, specifically "between the eyes."66 Although he is cautious in presenting the quantitative reports regarding the size of the Roman army, he is less so when he gives the imperial army's size as 25,000 highly trained soldiers, among whom he counts 14,000 Germans, 8,000 Spaniards, and 5,000-6,000 Italians. In the evening, once the segment of the city walls between the Porta Settimiana and the Porta San Pancrazio was destroyed, the enemy troops headed for the Ponte Sisto, which was weakly defended. From there they entered Rome shouting "empire, empire, Spain, Spain, Colonna, Colonna!" and started looting the city.67 Among the first looters were Spaniards and Italians, who coursed through the city all night long holding torches of white wax, going from house to house taking hold of the most precious objects of gold and silver that they could find. Only after this first wave of pillage did they begin to take hostages from among the citizens, which they did regardless of social status, demanding however much money pleased them.68 At this point we find graphic details on the violence perpetrated by the enemy on the Romans: "some were being hung by their testicles, others tortured by fire under their feet, and still others suffered various other torments."69 Such episodes, furthermore, could be repeated: in fact it was not rare for the unfortunate victim, after being released, to fall into the hands of other, still "more depraved brigands" (nequiores latrones)10 This sequence of pillage, looting, and extortion caused sudden and irreversible shifts in people's social status. Cornelius's analysis concentrates on the especially severe situation of the Romans belonging to the wealthiest classes. These, in fact, were used to a retinue of ten men and ten horses, but now they were forced to leave the city on foot, even barefoot, deprived of clothes and money. The Romans, once rulers of the world, were now reduced to poverty (iam pauperes quondam mundi dominatores\ humiliated by the Germans and the Spaniards.71 Among those who suffered great loss was Mario Maffei: "he was doing badly, as all his belongings had been ruined," as Cornelius described him in a letter of 1531 to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, whom he beseeched on behalf of Maffei to overlook the taxes owed.72 The 66 De Fine, fol. 96r: "percussus in capite inter palpebras." Cf. Pastor, 9:391, n. 1. 67 De Fine, fol. 97v: "imperium, imperium, Spangna, Spangna, Colonna, Colunna [sic].n 68 De Fine, fol. 97v: "ceperant captivos omnes homines totius Urbis existentes in Urbe cuiuscunque conditionis." 69 De Fine, fol. 97v: "alii per testicula pendebantur, alia igne sub pedibus torquebantur, alii varia supplicia passi sunt." 70 De Fine, fol. 97v. 71 De Fine, fol. 98v. 72 This is an excerpt from the letter that Cornelius wrote to Maffei on 11 February 1531, BNR, Autografi, A.96.50.2: "stava male per esser ruinato d'ongni [sic] cosa." Cardinal Giovanni Salviati held an important role in the Curia as Clement VII's private secretary. From 1527 he was the only person to be entrusted with this role, capable "d'influencer au jour le jour les decisions du pontife" so much so that the Medici claimed that the Pope *se laissait mener par lui et lui faisait totale confiance.'" P. Hurtubise, Une famille temoin: Les Salviati (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1985), 164. An interesting accounts record of the monies cashed on Mario's behalf by Virgoletta in 1528 shows the expenses incurred for the refurbishment of the house, the clearing of refuse, the rebuilding of walls and of the roof, as well as of mattresses and other objects. Among other

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illustrious cardinal replied that he "regretted the damage suffered by Your Lordship; but it was such a universal trouble that You must endure it as best You can."73 From here Cornelius's analysis enters into financial considerations related to the calamity. He identifies the two principal expressions of the economic policy of Clement VII as the main elements responsible for current events: namely, the fiscal policy and the food policy. According to Cornelius, in fact, on the one hand new and grievous taxes had been imposed, and in addition no provision had been made in time to replenish the food supply to make it sufficient for the city. This political mistake he blames on Clement's innate greed (propter innatam suam avariciam): "Always vexed by avarice, he disbursed [money] very stingily," with the result that, through Cardinal Armellini, he "was always set on exacting tolls and taxes [even] beyond the debt and the accustomed measure."74 Cornelius thus fulfills his didactic intent in analyzing the causes of the Sack. Beyond the facile interpretations of the event as simply a result of providential will or of ideological issues, he identifies the main cause of the city's catastrophes as the nonexistent (or at least inadequate) fiscal policy of the pope. If only the pontiff had spent enough money in a timely fashion (si in tempore exponere pecunias), "never would such destitution have arisen ... nor would he have thrown down nearly all of Italy to waste away."75 The pope's political ineptitude led to his imposing two highly unpopular fiscal measures in 1526: (1) new taxes to fund the papacy's participation in the League of Cognac; and (2) an increase of the price of wheat. These ordinances provoked a harsh response from the Roman citizens. Already toward the end of 1526, on the occasion of the Colonna raid, episodes of hostility from the Romans against the pope had occurred. At this point Cornelius introduces a brief and original reflection on the rise of the prices of necessary goods during times of war, when wheat, barley and fodder could cost three times as much as usual. In particular, he notes the price increases recorded in Rome in the summer of 1526: a rubbio of wheat rose from 14 carlini to 42; a rubbio of barley rose from 10 to 16 carlini. As a consequence, people ate stale bread (panis putridus), and still prices showed no signs of decreasing, settling on around 28-30 carlini. The disastrous effects of this situation were felt even more intensely during the Sack of 1527 inasmuch as Rome had been reduced to near starvation already since March. Once again Cornelius focuses upon city trade, in this instance emphasizing the sudden rise in wheat prices from ten to 20 ducats per rubbio immediately following the entrance of the imperial troops. With a sharp analytical eye, Cornelius points out that the greater consumption of wheat by the imperial troops—both for themselves things 2 ducati and 8 giulii were paid back to one master Giovanni "cartholaro" for a loan to Pietro Lefol "per riscotere dalli lansichenechi lo studio et molti libri," and 3 giulii to a carter who transported "lo studio et libri da Sancto Pietro in Parione" where Maffei's house was situated. Volterra, Biblioteca Comunale Guarnacci, Ms. 105, xx. 73 BNR, Autogrqfi, A.96.50.2: "li incresceva del danno de Vostra Signoria benche era tanto universale che besongiava passarla meglio si po." 74 De Fine, fol. 97r: "semper avaricia punctus parcissime expendebat"; ibid., fol. 71 r: "fuit semper intentissimus ad exigendum gabellas et vectigalia ultra debitum et solitum modum." On the accusation of avarice, see Price Zimmermann's essay above. 75 De Fine, fol. 97r: "numquam ad tantam inopiam venisset ... nee Urbem et totam fere Italiam subvertisset ad consumptionem."

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and for their horses—was yet another cause of the insufficiency of wheat available to the Romans. Soon there was an exodus of citizens from the city to escape starvation: "when they [the imperial troops] had captured the city, within the space of a few days the Romans and all the city's inhabitants were being driven by hunger to abandon Rome and to move to the fortified settlements of others/*76 Here Cornelius introduces a literary digression with ideological significance: the causes of the disaster that had befallen Rome are identified (as in interpretations of a humanistic nature) with a series of fortuitous and unpredictable factors, issuing mainly from the degeneration of religious structures and of Church government. Rome, in the manner of Sodom, was humiliated because of the clergy's greatest sin, vainglory, which corrupted any religious expression into falsehood. Although brief, this literary digression underlines Cornelius's fundamental approach to the main issues. In recalling the looting carried out by the imperial troops, he states that it was not merely the indecision of Clement VII about reaching an agreement with the emperor that, provoking the last violent imperial action, "destroyed Rome and the whole of Italy," but rather his fiscal policy.77 Clement VII, in fact, with the help of his camerlengo Cardinal Francesco Armellini (who, too, was an object of great hostility for all the Romans because of the "enormous taxes and new, unaccustomed tolls" that he had imposed), had even levied a new tax on Roman wines, one of the most widely consumed local products.78 In concluding his account of the political figure of Clement VII, Cornelius formulates a stern, negative judgment. He identifies the ineptitude of some of the pope's advisors as a fundamental flaw in the deplorable pontifical government. He refers to these sarcastically as "very experienced" counselors, including among them the datary Giberti, "a boy with respect to mature thought" (puer in maturo conselio [sic]), and the Florentine Jacopo Salviati, who, he says, was elderly but gave puerile advice, and who only possessed one virtue, namely, "that he was most expert in [the art] of usury." This detail is not surprising. Salviati, who worked for one of the foremost Florentine banks, had married Lucrezia de' Medici, the sister of Leo X.80 During Leo's pontificate he had held roles of great economic import, such as that of Treasurer of Romagna, and he was still transacting some business as a creditor.81 The harsh criticism that Cornelius voices against him was probably due to this.82 The condemnation of the papal government is absolute, and it ends by focusing directly on the figure of Clement VII who, concludes De Fine, deserves neither the mercy of God nor that of mankind "on account of the great disaster, pillage, adultery, 76 De Fine, fol. 98v: "cum Urbem cepissent per aliquot dies cogebantur Romani et omnes habitantes Urbis ob famem dimittere Urbem et migrare ad aliorum castra." 77 De Fine, fol. 99v: "destruxit Urbem et universam Italiam." 78 De Fine, fol. 99v: "propter enormes exactiones et nova vectigalia insueta." 79 De Fine, fol. lOOr: "quod essent in usuriis peritissimus." 80 On Lucrezia de' Medici, see Natalie Tomas's contribution above. 81 Hurtubise (1985), 164. 82 We may infer this from the interests shown by Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, who was pressed to intercede on behalf of Mario Mafifei so that he would be trusted with the diocese of Volterra; but the negotiations did not follow through, as the Cardinal imposed conditions "dignes d'un marchand et qui montrent bien a quel niveau se situait toute cette negotiation." Hurtubise (1985), 338. Personal animosities may also have played a role.

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incest, [and] the capturing of Rome and of the whole of Italy." 83 Meticulous in his reconstruction of circumstances and in his search for the causes behind them, free from facile interpretations and stereotypes, looking for a logic within facts, Cornelius de Fine demonstrates an analytical acumen that transcends the mere recording of the events. The Sack of Rome, in his reconstruction, is not simply the inevitable consequence of the downfall of Roman society, as has usually been claimed by humanist historiography, but instead is owed significantly to a lack of a good financial administration. Already when dealing with the first three years of the pontificate of Clement VII, Cornelius pointed out his stringent fiscal policy: With his minister, Cardinal Armellini, serving as intermediary, he [Clement] was always very attentive to exacting taxes and tolls beyond the debt and the accustomed measure, and he brought all things to completion with the utmost parsimony. De Fine says little about himself in the Ephemerides historicae\ indeed, he never discloses his own whereabouts during the Sack. But it is clear, at least, that he harshly criticizes the papal government, whereas he praises the behavior of the Romans, who come to the fore of his narration. Thus it is fitting that his chronicle of the events of 1527 concludes with the peace agreement between Clement VII and the major exponents of the foremost baronial families of Rome, the Colonna and the Orsini.

Conclusion These are initial observations on a text which, as can be seen, not only offers important details that contribute to a more precise reconstruction of the facts, but also provides a unique glimpse from a privileged viewpoint of certain sectors of Rome in the first half of the cinquecento. Cornelius de Fine demonstrates that he has accumulated a large amount of information, and he shows a sharp sense of observation in identifying the fundamental dynamics of the Roman wheat market and of papal fiscal policy. Particularly significant is his constant critique of the lack of a plan for the distribution of food supplies: Cornelius had a very clear idea of the debilitating powers of famine. 85 Behind his economic analysis we find a lucid inquiry into political realities, carried out by one of the many "non-Romans" who helped comprise the varied and complex social fabric of Renaissance Rome.

83 De Fine, fol. lOOr: "ob ingentem cladem, rapinam, adulterium, incestum, capturam Urbis et tote Italic." 84 De Fine, fol. 71r: "mediante ministro suo cardinal! Armellino fuit semper intentissimus ad exigendum gabellas et vectigalia ultra debitum et solitum modum et summa parcimonia omnia perfecit." 85 On famine and the consequences of food administration policies, see L. Palermo, Mercati del grano a Roma tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. I. II mercato distrettuale del grano in eta comunale (Rome: Istituto di Studi Romani, 1996). L. Palermo, Sviluppo economico e societa preindustriali. Cicli, strutture e congiunture in Europa dal Medioevo alia prima eta moderna (Rome: Viella, 1997), provides a more comprehensive economic analysis.

Chapter 8

Rome During the Sack: Chronicles and Testimonies from an Occupied City jig

Anna Esposito and Manuel Vaquero Pineiro

Often at the center of historiographical research—albeit mainly for its particulars, rather than as the object of an interpretative synthesis—the Sack of Rome has not heretofore been studied (save in an episodic manner) for its effects upon the citizenry, conceived above all as a community of people who lived and worked in the assailed and conquered city and who experienced most directly the socioeconomic effects of the disaster. In this article we wish to give a preliminary overview of new research based on documentation found in the registers of Roman notaries.1 In addition to notarial acts, these sources include personal annotations, some of them giving eyewitness accounts of the events of the Sack itself. For the period in which the troops of the emperor Charles V occupied the city of Rome (6 May 1527-16/17 February 1528), we have catalogued all the protocols from the most important notarial fondo in Rome, the Collegio dei Notai Capitolini, today preserved almost in its entirety in the Archivio di Stato in Rome, Occasionally we have drawn upon additional sources to bring into sharper relief the reality of an occupied city—the reactions, the adjustments, or simply the behavior of its inhabitants and of the imperial soldiers— that enable us better to evaluate the social and economic condition of the city by setting it against the backdrop of the well-studied phenomenon of the Sack itself 2 Our essay will thus address in turn two major issues: (1) the historiographical significance of the Sack; and (2) a new contribution to research, obtained through the analysis of notarial documents to interpret an object—the condition of the city of Rome in the time of its sack and occupation—which so far has been examined only partially in scholarly publications.

*

i

2

Translated from the Italian by Antonia Reiner. In this article the authors wish to offer a synthesis of two different papers presented in a seminar on the subject "II sacco di Roma del 1527. Fonti e prospettive di ricerca," organized by the Associazione Roma nel Rinascimento and held on 10 January 1997 at the Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo. This is a first version of a more exhaustive study which is currently being drafted. For example, we have drawn upon other notarial fondi, such as the Collegio dei 30 Notai, the Notai dell'Auditor Camere, etc., as well as upon fondi of a different nature, such as those from confraternities.

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The Sack as Historiographical Issue We will begin with the observation that the Sack of Rome of 1527 is an historiographical issue concerning which we still know relatively little. The proof is the exiguous number of scholarly writings that go beyond simply publishing testimonies and accounts of the events with the intention of offering an overall interpretation of the event and its consequences for the city. 3 The classic work by Andre Chastel dates back to 1983.4 Two years later, Manfredo Tafuri published a brilliant and innovative review highlighting some key issues in the debate over whether the Sack is better conceived as an historical watershed or as part of longer-term continuities. 5 In 1986 there appeared a collection of essays entitled // Sacco di Roma del 1527 e I'immaginario collettivo, followed in 1990 by Massimo Firpo's // Sacco di Roma del 1527: tra profezia, propaganda politica e riforma religiosa. More recently, in 1997, a new edition of Marcello Alberini's Ricordi was published, accompanied by an exhaustive introductory essay by Paola Farenga. 7 The following year Kenneth Gouwens's Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome appeared.8 Meanwhile, the 1996-97 series of seminars organized by the Associazione Roma nel Rinascimento included unpublished papers by Gouwens ("Pietro Alcionio e il Sacco di Roma") and by Danilo Romei ("II Sacco di Roma nella letteratura contemporanea"). To be sure, these scholarly writings represent a very high level of research; yet they remain within the context of literary accounts.9 Thus we still lack a balanced 3

4 5

6 7 8 9

For primary sources published with minimal editorial interpretation, see for example G. Morone, Ricordi inediti sul decennio dal 1520 al 1530 in cui Roma fu saccheggiata, ed. T. Dandolo (Milan: Boniardi-Pogliani di Ermenegildo-Besozzi, 1855); // Sacco di Roma del MDXXVII. Narrazioni di contemporanei, ed. C. Milanesi (Florence: G. Barbera, 1867); G. Cavalletti Rondinini, "Nuovi documenti sul Sacco di Roma del 1527," Studi e documenti di storia e del diritto 5 (1884): 221-46; Pastor, 9:503-9; O. Montenovesi, "Echi del Sacco di Roma dell'anno 1521 " Arc hivi 10 (1943): 9-17; M. L. Lenzi, II Sacco di Roma (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1978). A. Chastel, The Sack of Rome. 1527, trans. B. Archer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Italian edition, Turin: Einaudi, 1983. M. Tafuri, "II Sacco di Roma. 1527: fratture e continuita," Roma nel Rinascimento (1985): 21-35. The choice of the year 1527 as a turning point in sixteenth-century Roman history is found in many other works, and some scholars have termed it a "semiotic model" ("modello semiotico"): see A. Quondam, "Un'assenza, un progetto. Per una ricerca sulla storia di Roma tra 1465 e 1527," Studi romani 27 (1979): 166-75. The notion of change and transition was made explicit by the chronological delimitations adopted in a conference emblematically entitled Roma capitale (1447-1527) that was held in San Miniato in 1993. Its proceedings have been published in Roma capitale (1447-1527), ed. S. Gensini (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1994). // Sacco di Roma del 1527 e I'immaginario collettivo, ed. A. Asor Rosa et a!. (Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Romani, 1986); M. Firpo, // Sacco di Roma del 1527. Tra profezia. propaganda politica e riforma religiosa (Cagliari: CUEC, 1990). M. Alberini, // Sacco di Roma. L 'edizione Orano de \ ricordi di Marcello Alberini, ed. P. Farenga (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1997). K. Gouwens, Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome (Leiden: Brill, 1998). F. Fernandez Murga, "El Saco de Roma en los escritores italianos y espanoles de la epoca,1' in Doce consideraciones sobre el mundo hispano-italiano en tiempos de Alfonso > Juan de Valdes: Actas del Coloquio Interdisciplinar (Bologna, April 1976) (Rome:

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overall approach, not so much to the political contexts, whether peninsular or panEuropean, as to urban dynamics: a category encompassing the broad significance of cultural, artistic, economic, social, and demographic issues. The Sack of Rome represented on the one hand a fundamental link to the modern world, whereas on the other hand it was a wall against which the initiatives and hopes of the opening years of Clement VII's pontificate were shattered. The event can be viewed as the violent and traumatic end of Leo X's Romafeltx, or as the time when the contradictions emerging from the city's social, economic, and cultural realities in the early sixteenth century could no longer be sustained. Whatever else may be said, the Sack did not in fact allow for a natural and gradual evolution of Rome as a great capital city of the early Cinquecento; yet neither did it represent the clamorous break on which the historiographical tradition—excessively influenced by testimonies and initial analyses by humanists and other men of letters—has insisted thus far. Although each of these cases must be considered independently, collectively they have contributed to making the Sack into an historical topos in which apocalyptic overtones, gruesome images, and lists of atrocities including killings, rapes, and sacrilegious acts, have combined to obstruct any comprehensive vision of the actual historical event. Furthermore, practically all of these evaluations have excluded Rome: the city itself is used simply as the backdrop, as for example in the description of a skirmish, rather than as a subject to be examined independently. The risk, as has been pointed out in other contexts by the most recent historians of Rome, is that we may continue to consider the city only for its mythic and symbolic significance, instead of studying it for what it actually was: an urban, economic, social, and political reality. In analyzing the life of the city, it is possible to observe a series of elements pointing to a "crisis" present in the period prior to the Sack, which either accelerated some degenerative processes that were already under way, or provided a salutary redirection of the city's socioeconomic development. For example, we note that, in terms of demography, decline had begun already with the terrible plague of 1522 which, beyond causing numerous deaths, had provoked innumerable departures from the city, most of them permanent. "Everyone is taking flight" (ognuno attende afugere), wrote the ambassador for the Este family in Rome in June 1522, a sentiment echoed later by Castiglione, who estimated that over 40,000 people had abandoned Rome in that period. 10 Howsoever cautious we must be in accepting this type of quantitative evaluation, which gives a generic idea of size rather than precise figures, we can at least assert that the Descriptio Urbis, the population census compiled a few months before the Sack, is not in fact representative of a society in full demographic growth, as has often been suggested in the past. 11 That demographic decline was already the status quo in the months preceding Institute Espanol de Lengua y Literatura de Roma, 1979), 39-78. The observations concerning the years immediately prior to the Sack are also the result of the study of correspondence, literary texts, and accounts of ceremonies, on the last of which see F Cruciani, Teatro nel Rinascimento. Roma 1450-1550 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1983). 10 R. Lefcvre, Villa Madama (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1973), 122, quotes both the Este ambassador and Castiglione. 11 There remain many doubts and uncertainties about why the papal authorities compiled the list (an approximate and incomplete one) of the residents of Rome. For a convenient

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the imperial attack is revealed by several tell-tale signs. To remain within the context of our research, we wish to cite in particular the testimony of the notary Pietro Paolo Amodeus, who wrote of the death of his eight children, from an epidemic of disease, in the period March-April 1527, just prior to the Sack, which then exacerbated an already bad situation. 12 A focus on individuals will also help to illumine the experiential dimension of the Sack of Rome and its aftermath. Thus, rather than describing the virulence of the plague during the imperial occupation, let us consider instead an episode in the life of the Paduan cleric Paolo de Caligariis. Upon taking possession of the church of Sta. Cecilia de Turre in Campo, near Montegiordano, as its new parish priest, after entering and exiting the ground-floor rooms according to ritual, he had been unable to climb to the upper floor, "because it was filled with bodies dead from the plague." 13 With respect to public finances, too, the Sack of Rome probably accelerated certain tendencies already present in the city earlier in the 1520s. For example, we can consider the case of the first papal funded debt, the Monte della Fede.^ This new and progressive system of collection of funds was introduced in Rome prior to the Sack as a consequence of growing financial difficulties for the Apostolic Chamber.15 We should note, however, that it evidences an attempt on the part of the central political power to apply to Rome financial systems that for a long time had been regularly employed in other states and cities. 16 The Sack, along with its consequences, gave impetus to a pontifical economic initiative that would allow the Monte system to become a fundamental element in the public financial structure of Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century. The system of the public debt is indicative, in turn, of a society in which a non-productive elite of rentiers was increasingly pursuing a courtly lifestyle, as opposed to the activities of commerce and artisanship that had been strongly interwoven in Roman production between the end of the fifteenth century and the early decades of the sixteenth. 17 A further example from a different sector is that of the great building works for the papal capital, particularly the new basilica of Saint Peter. After the activities sponsored by Leo X, the site was practically inactive from the end of 1524, and the structures that had been erected were in almost total ruin: thus they appear in draw-

12 13 14 15 16 17

version of the Censimento Urbis, see the edition by E. Lee, Descriptio Urbis. The Roman Census of 1527 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985). ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 51, fol. lOOv. ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 578, fol. 23v (23 June 1527): "quia erat plena corporibus mortuis ex peste." See the discussions of the Monte della Fede in the contributions to this volume by Ivana Ait and Charles Stinger, with further bibliography. The same problems were encountered in the context of property rentals in the city: M. Vaquero Pifteiro, "A proposito del reddito immobiliare urbano a Roma (1500-1527). Alcune considerazioni sulle fonti e primi approcci," ASRSP 113 (1990): 189-207. F. Piola Caselli, // buon governo. Storia della flnanza pubblica nell'Europa preindustriale (Turin: G. Giappichelli Editore, 1997), 239-42. I. Ait and M. Vaquero Pineiro, Dai casali alia fabbrica di San Pietro. I Leni: uomini d'affari del Rinascimento (Rome: Ufficio Cenrrale per i Beni Archivistici—Roma nel Rinascimento, 2000), 96-127.

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ings by the Flemish artist Heemskerck, who visited Rome in the 1530s. We do not wish here to dwell on the details of a complex history of the building, but it is noteworthy that work on it progressed very slowly under Adrian VI and Clement VII. Only in 1530 would construction resume in earnest. 19 From this point of view, therefore, the Sack of 1527 was far from being a setback; in fact, it marked the passage to a period of intense activity both in the planning stage and in the actualization of the work. It is no surprise, therefore, that the universal dimension of papal authority would be reinstated in part through the resumption by the 1530s of intense work on the foremost building site of Christianity. The Testimony of the Notaries The need to explore routes away from the well-trodden, as well as to focus on "Rome-as-city'* as the principal subject of our research, has prompted us to turn to a source that, being less conditioned by ideological or literary deformations, can be considered more reliable than others to reflect a direct image of the actions of the inhabitants of Rome: the acts of notaries who were working in 1527 and 1528, in particular those of the Collegio of the Notai Capitolini. As we shall see, even from the distinctive viewpoint offered by this source, the question of "break-vs.-continuity" remains clearly visible in the background. From our survey of the extant protocols, we have found that during the months of the occupation about 50 notaries were active in Rome. Many were those who left the city after the Sack, finding shelter in the region of Lazio (Tivoli, Civita Castellana, Palestrina, Viterbo, Frascati, etc.), or in other areas (for instance, in Fermo), where they continued to draw up acts in their registers as the need arose (one may wonder how many such registers were left in those locations). There, in at least some cases, they noted the salient events of the Sack and specific details concerning their own escape. Thus the notaries, together with artists, merchants, and humanists, were part of a small diaspora, and they indirectly contributed to broadcasting the tragic events taking place in Rome. The brief chronicles that occasionally appear within their books are not of a literary type or of a culturally elevated level, but rather are emotional and immediate expressions of personal memories; even any evaluation of political events, whenever it is present, is approximate, filtered through strata of "popular" culture. The collection of material of this kind could be useful for defining a new category of testimony: 18 Ait and Vaquero Pifieiro (2000), 154-72; C. Thoenes, "San Pierro come rovina. Note su alcune vedute di Maertes van Heemskerck," Zodiac 3 (1990): 40-61. In drawings of the Roman basilica from the 1530s we can clearly perceive the ideological value of the ruin; in 1530, in fact, St. Peter's is deliberately placed on the same level as the ruins of ancient Rome, so as to draw a parallel between the city's resurgence in the fifteenth century and its revival following the troubled times of the second half of the 1520s. 19 E. Francia, Storia della costruzione del nuovo San Pietro da Michelangelo a Bernini (Rome: De Luca, 1989). For a somewhat different reading, see C. L. Frommel, "St. Peter's: The Early History," in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture, ed. H. A. Mi lion and V. Magnano Lampugnani, exh. cat. (Milan: Bompiani, 1994), 399^*23, at 421.

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alongside accounts which we could call autobiographical/diaristic, in which an individual's particular vision of events prevails and where various personal details are mentioned, these notaries include records of events in which they emphasize description, albeit with occasional annotations presenting private reflections and political analysis. This type of observation is usually recorded by notaries writing after the Sack, whereas it is practically absent in the documents written while the tragic event was occurring. For example, we may compare the account by the notary Giovanni Maria Micinochi, "scribe of the Capitoline court" (curie Capitolii scribd), written upon the death of Clement VII in September 1534, which assessed the principal events of his papacy (including the Sack of Rome), with the small page inserted in the register of the notary Stefano de Amannis, or with the brief annotation by the notary Bartolomeo Rutelli, who limited himself to noting under the date "May 1527": "the entry of the army of His Majesty Caesar into the city of Rome, for the purpose of its destruction"; or that by his colleague Lorenzo de Cinciis, who wrote under the date "Monday 6 May 1527," "This miserable day, the army of the imperialists entered the city of Rome."20 Similarly, Pietro Gaspare Porta entitled a "notebook" of his register simply as "instrumenta after the Sack of Rome of the year 1527."21 Of a different nature is the memorandum of the notary Teodoro Gualteronio, compiled several years after the event, concerning what took place, as well as his personal vicissitudes during and after the Sack. In his narration, the violence and the destruction suffered by the city emerge forcefully, accompanied by his own misadventures and peregrinations: My wife and I were made prisoners by the Spanish, and I settled the ransom of 100 ducats, and lost all my possessions; we left Rome for Tivoli, and then from Tivoli we went to Palestrina, where our house was contaminated by the plague in July, and when I left my house my wife Maria remained there, and she died of the plague as I was in Carsoli; subsequently I returned to Palestrina in September, and I lived there for a few months... , 22 Another valuable testimony contemporary with the events was given by the notary Alessandro Pavone, who, in addition to giving an account of the violence perpetrated by the occupying troops, narrates how he himself was taken prisoner by the imperial soldier Giuliano Sardo.23 Following 22 days of incarceration, and the payment of 150 golden scudi, Pavone hurriedly left Rome and established himself in Fermo. There he 20 See respectively ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1145, I part, fol. 37v; Coll. Not. Cap., 74, fol. 330v; Coll. Not. Cap., 1484, fol. Ir-v; ibid., fol. 33r C'mtroitus exercitus Cesaree Maiestatis in urbe Rome ad eius demolitione"); Coll. Not. Cap, 563, fol. 109r ("ista dies hesercitus Impenalium ingresit urbem Romam"). 21 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 578, fol. 1 In "instrumenta post saccum Rome de anno 1527." 22 "lo con la donna mia fui prisone de Spagnoli et pacai la taglia ducati cento et persi tucte le robe; et ne partemmo da Roma et andammo ad Tivoli et da Tivoli andammo ad Pellestrina dove nel mese de luglio se appesto la nostra Casa, donde me absentai et remase Maria mia donna quale, essendo io in [...] Carsoli morse de peste, et poi ritornai li in Pellestrina de sectembre, et li per alcuni mesi dimorai...." M. Armellini, "Gli orrori del saccheggio di Roma 1'anno 1527 descritti da un cittadino romano di quel tempo," Chronichetta mensuale di scienze naturali e d'archeologia, ser, 4, 20 (1886): 91^4, at 93. The protocols of the notary Gualteronio are kept in the ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 894-908. 23 On Giuliano Sardo, see Appendix, Document Two.

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worked until August 1528, when at last he made his return to the city. In May 1528, while Clement VII and the Curia were still residing in Orvieto, Francesco Peregrine provided an extensive description of the events of the previous year.25 A more thorough reading of the catalogued documents, an impressive 109 registers from which 760 acts have been selected that concern the period from May 1527 to February 1528 (about 51% of the examined documents), reveals that the majority of these relate to the months of June-August 1527: that is, to the early months of the occupation. Most of these records are for the payment of ransoms, for testaments, and for the sale of ecclesiastical benefices. As a whole this type of act represents almost 70% of the notarial documents drafted in that period. Relatively rare, on the other hand, are documents containing marriage contracts, commercial ventures, and work agreements.27 Even in the contingency of its predicament, the city nevertheless felt the need to legalize, in the presence of a notary, the relationships—occasionally violent—between citizens and soldiers. This attempt to maintain rules in everyday life can be read as a desire for continuity. The behavior of Sciarra Colonna, a commander of Italian mercenaries in the imperial army, can be taken as emblematic of this tendency when, on 12 May 1527, he took possession of a large palace which had been forcibly appropriated from its previous owner in the district of San Eustachio, between the piazza of the Dogana, that of San Luigi dei Francesi, and that of Saponara. In accordance with the legal praxis enforced in Rome, Sciarra toured the newlyoccupied building, opening and closing its windows as though it had been a regularly acquired property.28 This impulse toward continuity appears, too, in the cases of soldiers who engaged in the sale and purchase of vigne, the leasing of property, the appointment of procurators, and the granting of loans.29 Although the Spanish soldiers employed the services of notaries, the German landsknechts are consistently absent from documents. For example, all the ransoms and the rewards agreed are on behalf of Spanish soldiers, or of those under the command of Spanish captains. To cite but a few cases, we could mention the ransoms requested by Alfonso de Consuegra, the Spanish captain Aldone, the Valencian Bartolomeo Hyscherardus de Medina

24 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1241, fol. 121v. Once he was back in Rome, the clients of Alessandro Pavone were predominantly clergymen and religious institutions in Fermo, Ascoli, and other cities in the Marche. 25 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1281, fol. 92r-v. 26 Thefondo of the Notai Capitolini comprises 1,900 volumes: those concerning the period of the Sack (6 May 1527-28 February 1528) represent 5.7%. Of the 109 protocolsdrafted by 63 notaries—42 do not contain any notarial acts pertaining to the years 152728. Of the 67 registers that were useful to our research, 70% contain at most 15 acts, whereas only eight protocols include more than 50 acts drafted during the period in question (i.e., between May 1526 and February 1527). 27 The documentation consisting in testaments, ransoms, etc. could in the future be the basis for an analysis of personal attitudes and of the mentality of the individuals involved in this event. Documents concerning acts of an economic nature could also be used for research focusing on the circulation of wealth. 28 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 895, fols. 554r-v and 563r. 29 See respectively ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 942, fol. 293v; Coll. Not. Cap., 74, fols. 342v, 348r, 34 Iv.

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de Riosacco, and the Genoese Jacopo Grunardi, all of whom were in the service of the emperor.30 Turning to a notary became increasingly important when, following the end of the occupation, individuals made an attempt to restore some normality to their lives, trying to recuperate personal goods and real estate that had been relinquished under duress. A notarial act, drafted during these difficult times, could in fact legitimize a claim for the restitution of a house unlawfully occupied, the division of goods between members of a commercial society, or the claim for restitution of valuable objects, or the honoraria and payments due for services given—things that otherwise would have been difficult to prove.31 On this subject the testimony of a German baker, one Gallus Niger, is significant: he offered his services to the Curia, and he continued to work during the early stages of the occupation until, facing increasing difficulties, he chose to return to Germany with his family. In 1529, however, he was again in Rome, seeking payment from the Apostolic Chamber for the bread he had produced during the first months of the occupation. After negotiations, prolonged by the loss of registers and account books, a forfeit agreement was reached, and the Apostolic Chamber settled its debt with the baker.3? The political-administrative arrangements in Rome during the occupation have not previously been discussed at any length.33 In this context too notarial documentation provides useful information. For example, in addition to a number of consuls for the city guilds, one finds mention of the alcaide, that is, the person responsible for the military forces present in the city (the bishop Antonio de Zamora); the governor (Giovanni Francesco di Suardi); the vice-governor (Bernardo de Sanctis from Rieti, a consistorial lawyer); the bariscelli, i.e., those responsible for public order (the Spaniards Juan de Bereta and Bartolome Diaz); and the marshal of the court of Ripa (the 30 This is what happened to the Milanese merchants Aloysi Pyrovano and Giovanni Aloysio Bossi, who ran a staple of textiles and cloth in the quarter of S. Martinello, in the Parione district. On 23 September 1527 their heirs settled their outstanding debts and shared the remaining stock among themselves. See ASR, Coll. Not. Cap. 1012, fols. 520r-523v. Another interesting episode concerns the fate of the possessions of Valentino Letro, a clergyman from Cava. During the first few days of the Sack his personal effects were taken to Hieronimus de Salomonibus' house, then on 3 September 1527 these goods were claimed by the heirs of the late Valentino, and among the objects recorded are mentioned some small bags containing written documents and a number of books (including lacobus Antiquarius, Ugo Rugerius, Hieronimus de Ferrara, Virgilio), ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 503, fols. 43v-44v. 31 Consider, for example, the three giulii received by Doctor Leone from Antonella Capirana, widow of the late Evangelista Pistruenduli: Antonella furthermore paid the apothecary other sums for the preparation of medicines, she remunerated religious institutions for masses given for the soul of her dead husband, and she gave money to a servant who had assisted her during the last days of her husband's life. ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1144, fol. 86r-v. 32 ASR, Coll Not. Cap., 583, fol. 5r-v. 33 Some of the data collected concern Civitavecchia. For example, in January 1528, Gonzalo Hernandez de Cordoba was in charge of the castle and was commander of the imperial troops guarding the port. ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1480, fol. 576r; Coll. Not. Cap., 1483, a. 1528, fols. 17r-18r. That Alfonso Hernandez de Cordoba was buried in Pozzuoli can be deduced from his testament, dated 3 February 1528. ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1484, fols. 9r-llv.

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34

Spaniard Antonio Mergua). Among the acts drawn up, however, there is no shortage of records of violence and abuses of power revealing that, while the activity of the tribunals was practically suspended, despite the safeguards established by the imperial authorities, the Roman citizens were by no means protected from the arbitrary decisions of the soldiers. This state of affairs was exposed in an act dated 9 June 1527, in which two representatives of the Roman municipal aristocracy, Ciriaco and Pietro Antonio de Mattheis, turned to Cardinal Andrea della Valle "as a notable person invested with the dignity of the cardinalate" (tanquam notabili persone et in cardinalatus dignitate constitutes)—he was, in fact, one of the foremost supporters of the emperor within the Roman Curia—asking him to intercede to liberate their respective young sons, who had been captured as hostages by the Spanish captain Aldone, who was demanding a ransom of 8,000 gold ducats.35 In the long and detailed document, a summary is given of the events just prior to the sack of the city: the children (Alessandro, a minor aged ten years, and Paolo, a minor aged eight years, the sons of Ciriaco; and Giovan Battista, a minor aged 12 years, the son of Pietro Antonio) sought refuge in the palace of pro-imperial Cardinal Wilhelm von Enckevoirt, to which building about 180 members of the richest nobility had also repaired, and where precious goods were hidden that amounted in value to approximately 200,000 gold ducats. This account also cited the subsequent entrance of the troops, "acting cruelly, taking prisoners, and tormenting them" (crudeliter agenda captivosque faciendo et tormentandd), and the soldiers' devastation of the city, with the exception of some residences belonging to imperial sympathizers, including the palaces of Enckevoirt and of Della Valle.36 After protracted negotiations between the Spanish captain and Enckevoirt, and following the payment of 40,000 ducats, individuals and goods had been released, but with the exception of the three Mattei boys, whom the prelate had given over to A1 done despite the payment their parents had made to obtain their peaceful release. The two cousins, worried about the welfare of their sons, who had by now been in the hands of Aldone for over a month, were forced to file their protest with Cardinal Della Valle, against both Enckevoirt and Aldone, because "i/i presenti non redit ius in Urbe, maxime contra dictos milites prefati exerciti" emphasizing that their sons' detention was doubly unjust, both because the ransom already had been paid, and because the boys' confinement had taken place

34 On 7 September 1527 Giovan Battista Millini and Giovanni Pietro Caffarelli signed an agreement in the presence of the Consuls of the arte dei bobacterii. ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 137, fol. 34r-v. For the alcaide, see ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 725, fol. 106r; for the governor, see ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1484, fol. Ir; for the vice-governor, see ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1027, fol. s.n.; for the bariscelli, see ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 503, fols. 37v-38v; and for the marshal of the court of Ripa, see ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1706, fol. 107r. 35 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 74, fols. 342v-343r. 36 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 74, fols. 342v-343r. On the indignities suffered by Delia Valle and Enckevoirt, and on the subsequent fall of their palaces, see Pastor, 9:408-9.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture despite the public prohibition divulged around the city in the name of the said army that no prisoner of the age of 14 or under can be taken, and that such prisoner must be released without any demand for a fee or the payment of a ransom.37

As far as the economic sector was concerned, during the occupation the rhythm of work and the pace of the economy slowed significantly, although there was never an absolute interruption. The notary of the Ripa port, for instance, always continued his activity, and it is thanks to the documents drafted by him that we are able to observe that neither commercial transactions nor the importation by societies of merchandise from elsewhere was ever completely immobilized. On the other hand, we must take into account the collapse of some important manufactures, such as the production of textiles.38 As a rule, one could say that the strong drive toward productivity and corporatism of the years 1520-25 was replaced, after 1530, by a sharply reduced level of artisanal activity. While many businessmen found themselves forced—or found it more prudent— to leave the city, many others decided to stay, and during months when the circulation of material valuables and of monetary resources increased dramatically, some families and individuals carrying on financial deals and making loans found an unprecedented chance to augment their own patrimony and consolidate their financial position.40 This was the case for the Caffarelli and the Capizzucchi, who appear with some frequency in notarial acts, through loans that they offered (in exchange for a previously agreed rate of interest) to other aristocratic Roman families which, as is 37 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 74, fols. 342v-343r: "stante publico bannimento per urbem transmisso nomine dicti exerciti quod omnes captivi ab annis 14 infra eorum etatis capi non possint et capti relaxari debeant absque aliqua exatione seu solutione talie." This document reveals the parents' anxiety about the health of their children and the treatment that they were likely to receive from Aldone: "tarn in prestando victum tam in dormiendo, qua re dicti filii de Mattheis, qui nobiles sunt et soliti vivere et dormire cum maximis commoditatibus," "infirmitati fuerunt," therefore "dubitetur de morte ipsorum." 38 M. Vaquero Pineiro, "Artigiani e botteghe spagnole a Roma nel primo '500," Rivista storica delLazio 3 (1995): 99-116. 39 In this context it is relevant to consider a letter written on 13 May 1528 by Pamphilio Pamphili to Porcia Porcari, in which he relates that the only people still in business in Rome were grocers, butchers, tavern-keepers and bakers; the others faced a commercial crisis, although, the Roman aristocrat pointed out, "quelli li quali 'nanzi el Sacco erano poverissimi, che ora si truovano molto meglio di quelli che allhora erano ricchi, excetti quelli che erano ricchi, che possono in qualche meglior modo competentemente rihaversi." The main cause of such suffering and restrictions was the pope and his court's prolonged absence from Rome. Houses were empty and offices produced no income, and so the Roman people sent a legation requesting Clement VII to return promptly to the city. For this letter see A. Modigliani, / Porcari. Storie di una famiglia romana tra Medioevo e Rinascimento (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1994), 137-8. 40 In the general, tumultuous circulation of riches, some churches, as for example S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Piazza Navona, received a large number of weapons, clothes, furnishings, jewellery, and other valuable goods, which were left by soldiers as a token of their repentance or as payment for religious functions. In some cases, through the receipt of a just compensation, the religious institutions returned to their legitimate owners those objects that had been received in such irregular manner. M. Vaquero Pifteiro, "Una realta nazionale composita: comunita e chiese 'spagnole' a Roma," in Roma capitate (1994), 473-91, at 489-91.

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apparent from notarial registers, had suffered more unfortunate circumstances (e.g., the Frangipani and the Capodiferri). 41 For these and other families, the Sack—with the complex dynamics of circulation of money and other goods that it prompted— represented an excellent opportunity for personal profit. On this subject we would like to add one further example, which is representative of the inversion of roles that took place toward the end of the occupation. It concerns the aristocrat Bernardino del Bufalo who, when the imperial troops began to abandon the city in February 1528, promised his protection to some Spanish soldiers, who feared retaliation and were hiding in the Hospital of San Giacomo degli Incurabili. He committed himself to ensuring that they left Rome unscathed, in exchange for all the valuables in their possession.42 For other families, however, the Sack signified total collapse. Whereas Marcello Albenni directly documents this fact in his Ricordi, so too a number of notarial documents attest to the sale of real estate to pay ransoms, which in some cases were very high, calculated according to the evaluation of the economic wherewithal of the prisoners (the ransoms range from 15 to 4,000 ducats). In other documents the sale of real estate—especially when conducted by widows responsible for their dependent children—is often justified by the impoverishment caused by "the sacking generally carried out throughout all Rome," as a result of which they were no longer able to provide for themselves and their children. 43 In the notarial acts we find another episode revelatory of the complexity of Rome's economic history in the period following the Sack: the extracting of taxes from the districts of Ripa, Ripetta, Grascia, and Sant'Eustachio, which was assigned in October 1528 to the Florentines Sebastiano Sauli and Bernardo Bracci, and—more interestingly for our study—to the Roman Ciriaco de Mattheis, for 36,000 ducats per month. It is surely noteworthy that, only a few months after the departure of the occupying troops from the city, there were local merchants, like De Mattheis, who were able to participate in important financial operations.44 As we have seen, the notarial records offer testimonial evidence, and they disclose information that allows us to reconstruct the fates of individuals and their possessions. In the context of the Sack of Rome, testaments—a source whose general importance need not be stressed here—are of particular interest. In about half of the 42 testaments that we have catalogued, the cases concern people contaminated with the plague, which appears to have been most virulent between June and August 1527, and which probably caused more deaths than did the imperial invaders. 45 Among these acts there is no shortage of documents concerning soldiers, on many occasions decreeing the restitution of stolen objects and of money that they had received in 41

The acts concerning the relationship between the Capodiferri and the Capizzucchi are found in the protocols of the notary Felix de Villa, ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1871-3. 42 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1154, fol. 72r-v. 43 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1188, fol. 623r: "propter sacchigium universaliter factum per tota Urbe." 44 Ciriaco de Matteis is one of the cousins mentioned above in the context of the liberation of the sons held hostages by a Spanish captain. 45 At times the acts reveal that the notary kept himself at a distance from the plagued testator: the actum mentions acts drafted infmestra, ante hostium portae, in miniano.

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payment of ransoms.46 These items, in turn, are also mentioned in the testaments of their victims, as are the victims' instructions to reimburse those who had advanced the money for the payment of these ransoms either for themselves or for their relatives.47 Less frequent are the demonstrations of acts of mercy by the invaders: Juan de Urbina, a captain of the Spanish army, and his lieutenant, Bishop Antonio de Zamora, were particularly compassionate. The former donated a dowry of 30 ducats to an 11-year old orphan, whom he entrusted to the nuns of the rione of Campitelli, while the latter, "for the salvation of his own soul" (pro salute anime sue), returned to the canons of St. Peter's valuable silver objects and one brocade vestment that had been stolen from the Vatican basilica by soldiers.48 Once the first extremely gruesome moment was over, the city attempted to regain a normal rhythm of life despite difficult circumstances. This is proved on the one hand by the new custom some notaries adopted of dating their documents according to the reign of Charles V instead of the pontificate of Clement VII, thus showing a strong sense of practical adaptation to the new political reality.49 On the other hand we have the evidence of ceremonies and processions taking place—activities that similarly reveal a desire for normality in daily life. For example, this was the case for the ceremonies celebrating the taking over of a chantry or of other parish benefices, or processions set up in different circumstances attracting a large attendance of participants, who evidently were not afraid of being caught by military brigades, contrary to what literary sources might lead one to believe.

46 See for example the testament of Bartolomeo de Lucena hispanus, where the testator demands from his companions Caporale and Borgognone to return to a certain Maria "omnia bona per eum ablata" from her house "in sacco per eum facto" (ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 942, fol. 326, dated 8 July 1527), or the testament of an imperial soldier lohannes Pasqualis de Alicante, dictating the restitution of 666 ducats received from the bishop of Nicosia, Livio Podocataro, for the safekeeping of his house (ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 725, fols. l l l r and 115r). A particularly interesting act, dated 6 July 1527, regards one Valentino Cabrjan, a Valencian from Alcala, "armiger Cesaree Maiestatis" whereby the plagued testator, lacking access to the services of a notary, dictated his testament to his confessor Luigi Diaz, establishing that the ransoms extorted from the Florentine merchant Bernardo Bracci and from others be given back to them. See D. Gnoli, La Roma di Leon X, ed. A. Gnoli (Milan : U. Hoepli, 1938), 336. 47 See for example the testament dictated by domina Nicola de Boccatiis, who leaves 500 scudi to pay the remaining part of the ransom of her dead husband (ASR, Col. Not. Cap., 725, fol. 106r, dated 9 July 1527); or that of the Florentine aristocrat Giulio Alzatelli, who admits to be in debt to Tarquinio Santacroce, Domenico de Massimi and one of his tenants for 50 ducats each, money that had been paid for the ransom demanded by the Spaniards when they had captured his brother (ibid., fol. 126v, 24 July 1527). 48 See respectively ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 594, fol. 80r, dated 10 July 1527, and Coll. Not. Cap. 725, fol. 105r, dated 9 July 1527. 49 "In nomine domini Amen. Anno domini Millessimo quingentessimo vigessimo septimo sub Cesarea maiestatis Caroli de Austria anno primo." ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1019, fol. 6r, notary lulianus de Manfredis. "Regnante Serenissimo Carolo Imperatore." ASR, Coll. Not. Cap, 1240, notary Mathias de Pauliis. Other notaries preferred to date the acts according to the pope's reign first and the emperor's second, e.g., ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 315.

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The resonance of this event, the persistence of its memory, and the fear that there might be a repeat of the occasion were feelings shared by all. This is evident from a survey and cataloguing of records taken not only from notarial protocols in the years following 1527, but also from other sources, such as camera registers, or books and documents of confraternities. Whereas notarial acts repeatedly cite the destruction of homes by the invaders, and the consequent debts contracted and the impoverishment of individuals, the camera registers present the records of planning permissions for the reconstruction or the repair of buildings damaged or destroyed in the Sack, such as the properties of the Massimo family in the Campo dei Fiori, or particular concessions obtained by individuals who feared retaliation and who were returning to their activities that had been interrupted when they fled the city during the Sack.50 Confraternity sources, on the other hand, report the loss of registers and papers due to the pillage, some of these being found again several years later, or they document the measures taken to prevent valuable goods from being appropriated. Such an occasion is reported by the confraternity of S. Rocco, which entrusted all its precious church furnishings to one of its members, so that he might keep them hidden for the entire duration of the emergency. 51 There is no shortage of registers reporting the events, such as that by Prospero de Mochis, the prior of the confraternity of SS. Annunziata, or compositions of a different nature, such as the brief oration by Tommaso "Petrasancta," the prior of the brotherhood of the Gonfalone, on 2 April 1528, where he tells of the atrocities suffered by the city during the Sack.52 The fear of a repeat occurrence of the trauma of the pillage of the city is voiced clearly in notarial acts. A representative testimony of this kind is provided by a Roman Jew who, in accepting in January 1529 the deposit of 30 ducats for the maintenance of his two nephews, orphaned of their father, obtained release from the restitution of this deposit < 4 in the event that the aforesaid sum is stolen during a public massacre and sack, similar to the one that happened before/'53 The Roman Jewish community, in fact, had paid a high price during the Sack in terms of losses both of human lives and of material possessions. On the latter subject there are several acts concerning the payment of ransoms from Jewish citizens to imperial officials, and other documents regarding ransoms are included in the lists of those who sought 50 See for example ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 627r, 1 November 1528, where a house was let with a perpetual lease as long as it was going to be restored "actentis temporibus peniunosis et angustiosis." The houses were then the property of Antonio de' Massimi, who remembered how his father Pietro had them restored from the foundations up, because they had been "combustas et dirutas in Urbis direptione." ASV, Arm. XXIX, t. 136, fol. 286r, a. 1545. For the resumption of work from before the Sack, see ASV, Arm. XXIX, t. 89, fol. 69r. 51 On the subject of the loss of documents see for example ASR, Arciconfraternita della SS. Annunziata, reg. 353, fol. 113r. For another case see Montenovesi (1943). On S. Rocco see ASR, Ospedale di S. Rocco, reg. 810. fol. 10. 52 ASR, SS. Annunziata, reg. 126, fols. not numbered; ASV, Gonfalone, reg. 46, c. Iv. This is probably Tommaso Pighinuzzi da Pietrasanta, on whom see the biographical sketch in J. H, Gaisser, Pierio Valeriano On the III Fortune of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist and his World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 65-7. 53 ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1417, fol. 340r: "in eventu disrobbationis dictorum bonorum propterea publicam stragem et sacchum, prout hactenus evenit."

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shelter in the residences of cardinals, particularly that of Cardinal Andrea del la Valle. 54 In conclusion—and accepting such a conclusion as provisionary, since the present work is yet to be completed, and as the historical period examined is complex—we may say that the acts of the notaries active during the occupation of Rome confirm that an overall interruption never really occurred, but that instead a multiplicity and a variety of situations following in the wake of the catastrophe.

54

For acts concerning the payment of ransoms from Jewish citizens to imperial officials, see ASR, Coll. Not. Cap. 1417, fol. 340; Coll. Not. Cap., 1418, fol. 205; Coll. Not. Cap., 1485, fol. 118; Coll. Not. Cap., 1711, fol. 592. Among the people sheltered in the Delia Valle palace there were eight Jews. See M. U. Bicci, Notizie delta famiglia Boccapaduli (Rome, 1762), 645; A. Esposito, Un'altra Roma. Minoranze nazionali e comunita ebraiche tra Medioevo e Rmascimento (Rome: II Calamo, 1995), 134.

Rome During the Sack

\ 39

Appendix In the transcriptions that follow, the orthography of the manuscripts has been left intact. Thus, for example, in Document Four, battaglia is spelled battagla, and

meglio is spelled meglo. Less recognizable usages are altered in the text, the original appearing in the notes.

Document One ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 74, not. Stefano de Amannis, fol. 330v. Die 6 maii que fuit in die lune exercitus Cesaree Maiestatis Imperatoris, qui fuerunt in numero 24 miliaria militum vel circa, in Urbe invaserunt et burgum Sancti Petri vi intrarunt de mane hora XI seu XII in qua invasione interfectus fuit dux Borbone generalis capitaneus dicti exercitus. Et eodem die hora XXII seu XXIII in Urbe intrarunt et muros ascenderunt inter portam Seytignanam et portam Sancti Prancatii et totam urbem depredarunt omnesque cives prelates et curiales56 ac artifices et alios habitatores Urbis captiverunt et immensis talijs ab eis extraxerunt; que depredatio pro dies otto continues duravit et deinde per mensem cum dimidio vel circa in Urbe commorarunt spoliando cives et alios prelates etiam cardinales omni frumento vino et aliis commestibilibus ita quod in dicta Urbe unus panis pro uno ducato non reperiebatur ad eo quod fame ducti cohacti fuerunt ab Urbe recedere et vicinas terras et castra intrare pro eorum sustentationem victus. Ante eorum recessum castrum Sancti Angeli ad pacta ceperunt et papam Clementem VII ibi ceperunt et sub eorum custodia tenuerunt, deinde adveniente mense septembris fere in fine mensis totus exercitus predtctus iterum Urbem rediit et milites domos civium et aliorum curialium etiam cardinalium hospitaverunt sumptibus dictarum domorum commedendo cum eorum famulis et fere per tolas domos que inabitabantur portiis fenestris et omnibus lignammibus spoliarunt et multa alia nefanda fecerunt.

Document Two ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1241, not. Alessander Pavonius, fol. 115v. Die lune sexta Maii 1527 amara valde, milites impenales in Romam ceperunt maxima ac crudeli hominum et bonorum strage, Romam penitus depredando cunctosque fere57 homines captivos faciendo et multos interficiendo et alia multa intolerabilia exercendo ut notorium est. Eadem die ego Alexander captus fiii a quodam luliano Sardo, uno ex militibus imperialibus, qui me carceratum detinuit pro XXII dies. Tandem habita libertate XXVII dicti mensis propter cautionem datam de solvendo tagliam centum quinquaginta scutorum. Die lune tertia iunii dicti anni 1527 recessi Roma et ivi ad civitatem Firmi et ibi in edibus episcopatus Firmi moratus sum et ibidem me exercivi pro notario episcopatus prefati pro annum et ultra. Inde XXVII augusti 1528 discessi Firmo et veni Romam versus et Romam applicui die quinta septembris dicti anni 1528 favente Deo Optimo maximo.

55 56 57 58

additur in margine sinistro nota fin em Urbis post curiales deletur captiva fere interscripsitur multos additur

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture Document Three

ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1281, not. Franciscus Peregrinus, fol. 92r-v. Et nola quod de anno domini 1528 die martis sexta presentis mensis octobris S. D. N. Clemens divina providentia papa Septimus ex civitate Viterbiensi. in qua cum curia permanebat, ad infelicem Urbem cum tota eius curia rediit quam quidem 5 Romanam urbem, dudum antea de mense decembris anno Domini MDXXVII die sexta, idem Clemens sub pedibus Cesarei exercitus oppresam et conculcatam, semimortuam, penitus dirutam, bonis omnibus spoliatam, maximam victus penuriam habentem hyspanis et alemanis famulantem reliquerat, in qua quidem urbe omnium aliarum tune miserrima et infelici idem Cesareus exercitus omnibus miserorum civium et incolarum expensis hospitabatur a XXVI mensis septembris anni 1527 usque ad XVI mensis februarit 1528, quo quidem tempore tot domus palatia et edifitia eiusdem Urbis corruerunt ut omnibus dirum spectaculum appareret et ex floridiori, nobiliori, dition et ceterarum Italic et totius mundi // civitatum nobiliori monstrum effecta esset pro6 etiam ecclesiastico subiacebat interdicto, omnia templa profanata, loca sacra et monasteria violata, virgenes rapte, sacrarum rerum ministri capti, vulnerati et interfecti fuerunt, divina offitia nihil celebrabantur nisi pro raro, ianuis clausis, campanis non pulsatis et submissa voce; et tandem null urn inhumanitatis, impietatis et crudelitatis genus reperiri potest. Qum id eadem Roma omnium aliarum civitatum miserrima post illius captivitatem usque ad tempus prefatum per menses decem continues passa fuerit Deo omnipotent! gratias et christianissimo Francisco Gallorum regi, quibus Roma, Romanus populus - qui superest - totaque romana provintia in eternum debet, quondam existente, ut dictum est, prefato Cesareo exercitu - seu potius tot predonum confertu seu collecta - in Urbe earn penitus opprimendo et sepe sepius pauperes et paucos cives tune supersites interficiendo, colloquio habito ut civitate, provincia, bonis, domibus, palatiis, quos lam inter eos dividerant, et mulieribus finiendis in urbe Roma et in eius provincia perpetuo extinctis penitus romanis civibus permanerent et nemine contradicente permanere possent.61 Molem etiam Adriani - hoc est castrum Sancti [Angeli] - possidebant, ibidem eumdem Clementem papam septimum cum cardinalibus et maiori parte cleri captivum tenebant cum quibus, ob magnam auri et argenti quantitatem eis promissam, ad pacta devenerunt, castrum prefatum eidem restituerunt in libertatemque eum posuerunt. Et videns dictus Clemens se liberum, Roma civibus et incolis eiusdem in ditionem prefati exercitus derelictis, ad Urbem Veterem situm inexpugnabilem accessit cum tota curia et cunalibus.

Document Four

ASR, Coll. Not. Cap., 1484, not. Bartholomews de Rotellis, a. 1528, fols. Ir-v. Indictione prima mensis ianuarii die prima. Sanctissimus in Christo pater dominus noster, dominus Clemens divina Providentia papa septimus, absens ab Urbe et in Urbe Veteri residens, post longam calamitatem mirabilem ruinam crudelesque strages impiumque carcerem incomparabiles defatigationes Urbis sueque sanctitatis, romane curie, prelatorum omniumque curialium populique romani deperditionem iuxta restitutionem pristinam in stato Sancte Romane Ecclesie, prout in capitulis inter suam Sanctitatem ex una et cesareum exercitum, firmatam inhitam et stabilitam partibus ex altera, creavit in gubematorem generalem alme Urbis eiusque districtus reverendum in Christo patrem dominum lohannem Franciscum de Suardi [...] et eximium iuris utriusque doctorem Gregonum de Magalottis romanum civem in eius locumtenentem, et illico cause reasumpte, gubernium 59 60 61 62

post quidem deletur dudum antea post pro unum verbum quod legi non potest post possent. deletur eas spatium verborum duo vel tres

141

Rome During the Sack 63

regimenque Urbis nomine sue sanctitatis continuatum, ex quibus dominus Bernardus de Sanctis de Reate cesareus gubernator Urbis suo functus est offitio quod64 toto populo romano gratum et incundum extitit, sperando numinaque invocando de bono in melius quem Deus ad vota sua perducat in populi romani statu quod Sancte Romane Ecclesie christianeque fidei a peste, iniuriis et tyrannide66 cesarei exercitus liberationem et salutem sed in dicti exercitus gravem deperditionem illiusque impiam stragem calamitatesque inmensas, incredibile damnum et opprobrium, quod pia numina faxiunt, ilia ad hec genibus nudis, manibus iunctis, oculisque lacrimosis precibus invocandi.

Document Five ASR, Arciconfraternita della SS. Annunziata, reg. 126, Libro di entrate e uscite di Prospero de Mochis, fols. 144v-146r. Nota che alii 5 di magio—che fu di domenica 1527—el campo dello imperatore compari a Monte Mari in battaglia a ore XX, // quali 68 erano tanti in numero che spandevano insino a ponte Molle, pieni monti e valle et li si acamporno et di contmuo scaramuciomo al monte dereto a Sancto [Martino], et pian piano si ntirorno a porta Torione che tenevano insino alia Magliana spagnoli, lanzechenec et taliani numero quarantamilia. La mattina, che fu lunedi a di 6, che fu una gran nebbia qual fu causa della perdita de Roma, a 1'alba detono la battagla al borgo dalle mura del parcho in sino a porta Santo Spirito et li scaramucciomo per dui ore et fu prese quatro bandere delli imperial] et morto monsignior de Borbon et multi altri valentomini tamen per mancamento de non reforzar gente. Alle mura entrorno da un buso de rincontro a Campo Sancto valentemente et li de dentro a fugire; el papa ando subito in Castello che messer leronimo da Monte Aguto li porto la mala nova. Molto mal content!, el giomo medesmo a ore XX andorno verso Trastevere et porta Sancto Pancratio in battagla con tucte le artigliarie di palazo che lor nonne avevano portate un pezo et incominciorno a tirare alle mura dui botte et scaramucciorno meno de una ora che entrorno in Roma e per la porta Sitignana et per uno buso dalle mura appresso alia porta de Sancto Brancratio et tucti li dentro in fuga,// salvo che al ponte scaramucciorno un po' cho che ci mori Palone de Paloni, et messer pietro Paulo de maestro Simone, valentissimamente che mai si volse rendere. Breviter ilico fu presa, el populo tucto invilito et sbigottito fugirno, et cominciorno a sachigar et far prigioni, generalmente ursini et colonnesi et spagnioli imo ferno pegio a quelli [che] desideravano che venissiro. Illico lo signor Renzo fugi a cavallo in castello con una berretta bianca in testa. El signor Oratio Baglione et signor Stephano, conte Fabio Petrucci, messer Simone de maestro Simone, el cavalier Casale, luliano Leno, Pietro Mellino, Antonio Santacroce, Pietro et Angelo de Maximo, Antonio del Bufalo, Gregorio Suattaro,74 Ramuno Capodeferro, Prospero de Mochis, messer Angelo da Cese, Pietro Stalla, Antonio alle melitie. Li revendissimi cardinali Fer63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

post quibus deletur Cesareu post quod deletur omnibus post romani deletur unum verbum tyrannide] tyrandine ms. post lacrimosis deletur invoc. notatur in margine sinistro Capitani: el principe d'Oranza, Pabbate Nagera, Johannes Durbina. che fu lunedi a di 6 additur in margine sinistro et li ... Roma additur in margine dextro notatur in margine sinistro lo signor Fabritio Maramaulo, lo signor Sciarra Colonna Borbon additur in margine dextro et ... Simone additur in margine sinistro Gregorio Suattaro additur in margine dextro

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

nese, Monte Campegio, 1'Ursino, Rangon, Cesis, Pisano, Trivultio, Sancti Quatro, Armellino, Ancona, Gaddi, Cremona. Prelati: Verona, Suppontino che era governatore, Zara, Pisa, Bergamo, Cesena, Teatino, Matera, A versa guardian del masgio, Caserta, Pistoia. 5 Mercanti con lor robe: laco Salviati, Simone Rancasoli, Donate et compagni Dal Borgo, La Casa, Luigi Gaddi, Monte Aguto. A di 14 de magio 1527 che fu giorni otto de poi alia presa di Roma, venne el cardinale olim della Colonna, el signor Vespasiano, el signor Ascanio, el signor lulio, laco lanbeccaro, el signor Pier Francesco, el signor Cesari Finitino et altri signiorotti con numero de quatromilia persone, quali non avendo obbedientia nisuna ne riguardo dalli imperiali, el popolo resto molto piu sbaguttito de manera che li facevano li prigioni in casa loro et finirno de sachigiar tucti li amici lor restanti, donde el popolo, credendo di far meglo, ferno pegio. Deinde a di XXV, salvo el vero, s'agiunse dal Reame lo vice re Larcon, don Ugo el marchese del guasto in Roma donde loro etiam fumo pocho stimati, tande incominciorno a tractar acordo con el papa; el poco che comparissi in castello fu lo Catinaro al qual, in capo de alquante volte che era venuto in castello, uno fantacino ignorante li tiro una archibuxata in un braccio, donde stette paregi giorni credendo non tornassi piu et poi torno et stando a ragionar con N. S. li cascho al papa un diamante di valore di tremila ducati [... .I76

75

additur in margine sinistro lo maestro de casa additur infra in margine sinistro Lo vescovo da refar li statuti familiare domestico 76 conclusio deest

Chapter 9

The Papal Court in Exile: Clement VII in Orvieto, 1527-28 Anne Reynolds

Orvieto, a hill town of Etruscan origin and a "perfect natural fortress on the boundary between Roman and Tuscan territory," was a roccaforte of the papacy from medieval times. 1 In the tumultuous aftermath of the Sack of Rome (6 May 1527), it was at the center of events that led to the realignment, in 1530, of the major European powers, France, England, Spain, and the papacy. Its role in this destiny was not fortuitous, however: it came about as the result of a concerted plan for the safeguard of the papacy, severely threatened by political developments in the period 1525-27, in particular after declaration of the League of Cognac in 1526. Orvieto was thus important to Clement VII well before he suffered the ignominy of prolonged imprisonment in the Castel Sant' Angelo in the months following the Sack. Referred to by Clement as "our city," Orvieto was already the object of his attention in 1525 when he wrote to the leaders of the town council, known as the Conservatori della Pace, criticizing them and their fellow citizens for neglecting to abide by sumptuary laws relating to the dress of men and women, ornaments, and dowries, and for falling into decadent and spendthrift ways. 2 After the Colonna raid in September 1526, Clement's view of Orvieto was more strategically directed and predicated on the likelihood of another attack on Rome. At that time, he made a request to the Conservatori about fortification and general provisioning of the town in order to respond to "our invading enemies."3 Given the fortress-like impregnability of its cliffs and its strategic position in relation to Rome, Orvieto was a constant reference point during the skirmishes that preceded and followed the Sack.4

1 2 3

4

J. Hook, The Sack of Rome, 1527 (London: Macmillan, 1972), 221. Clement's letter, from the second year of his pontificate, is addressed to "Dilectis filiis Conservatoribus ac Co[mun]itati et hominibus Civitatis n[ost]r[ae] Urbevetana[e]." ASO, Lettere original!, B. 755.4.2. ASO, Diplomatico 30 (20 December 1526), cited in L. Riccetti, "Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane in Orvieto. Una lettera ed altri documenti inediti," MKJF 42 (1998): 67-100, at 73. As Riccetti notes, from December 1526 town leaders were mobilized to follow through the complex set of projects that Clement had set in train in Orvieto, following the model provided by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (ibid., 73-^4, and notes). On the events of the Sack, see Pastor, 9; Hook (1972). In June 1527, the duke of Urbino wrote from camp near Bolsena to Domenico Placido, governor of Orvieto, requesting food and medicine for the army: see ASO, Miscellanea 59. 9, Letters 18-20.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

The Sack of Rome and Imprisonment of Clement VII Giovanni Borromeo reported from Florence on 2 May 1527 that troops of Count Guido Rangoni had traveled towards Rome as far as Orvieto, in a three-pronged advance in which French and Venetian forces also participated, with the aim of reaching Rome before the Landsknechte5 However, the calamity of 6 May was a foregone conclusion. News of Clement's flight from the Vatican palace and his subsequent captivity in the Castel Sant'Angelo was soon spread by those fortunate enough to escape from the city. Marin Sanudo, indefatigable witness and recorder of these events, reported in graphic terms the pope's flight to the castello, the desperation of those who later joined him—some were hauled by ropes over the castle's merlons— and the relatively few able-bodied men among the total number of those confined with the pontiff.6 At the beginning, there were 950 people in the castello, of whom 350 were "people of account," including "13 cardinals and 18 prelates, some courtiers, many Florentine merchants and bankers, and numerous women and children."7 Confinement was absolute, and it was only possible to send messages using children "who got past the guards like little beggars, and carried letters to the camp of the League."8 Letters were smuggled out to maintain contact with pro-papal forces; many of the messengers drowned in the attempt as they swam down the Tiber, attached to flotation devices.9 By 11 May 1527, Orvieto was base for the troops of the duke of Urbino and the marquis of Saluzzo, and on 12 May they were joined by Count Guido Rangoni and his men.10 By 14 May, a concerted campaign to rescue the pope was launched from Orvieto, with separate parties heading towards Rome, as Giovanni Simonetta wrote from near Orvieto to the duchess of Urbino. 11 Such action was urged by Clement, who was under extreme duress, as Benedetto dalPAgnello reported on 11 May 1527: Today there arrived a gentleman of the pope's entourage, named Piero Chiaveluccio [captain of the Papal Guard], who left the Castel Sant'Angelo last Wednesday, sent here by His Holiness to track them down and beseech them to join the troops to liberate him from his present danger, that he has faith in them, with the words that although he knows help will arrive, he would rather live in danger of losing his life than come to any agreement with the imperialists, who are demanding four things: that His Holiness go to Spain with his court; that he pay 300,000 ducats; that he hand over to them the Castel Sant'Angelo; and that they wish all the goods and as many of the people inside the castle as they want.

5

Count Guido Rangoni was a stalwart for the papal cause: see A. Reynolds, Renaissance Humanism at the Court of Clement VII. Francesco Berni's Dialogue Against Poets in Context (New York: Garland, 1997), 302. 6 From a copy of an undated letter written by Francesco Pesaro, archbishop of Zara, in Sanuto, 46:131. 7 Sanuto, 46:132: "13 cardinali e 18 prelati, et alcuni cortesani, et molti mercadanti et banchieri fiorentini, et donne et putti assai." [translations from the Italian are by the author] 8 Sanuto, 46:133: "che passomo le guardie come putti che van accattando, et portono lettere in campo della lega." 9 Sanuto, 46:133. 10 Sanuto, 45:99, 101. 11 Sanuto, 45:112.

The Papal Court in Exile, 1527-28

\ 45

The leaders met in council over this, and they resolved to make every effort to help His Holiness and liberate him from the said castle.12 The severity of these terms indicates the extent of the defeat that the papacy had suffered. The limitations of Clement's confinement are startlingly clear. He was restricted with the cardinals to the upper part of the Castel Sant'Angelo, guarded by the Spanish Captain, Fernando de Alarcon and "his entourage" ("/a sua famiglia") while 100 Spanish and 100 Landsknecte were stationed below to guard the doors.14 These details are confirmed by a citizen of Orvieto, Felice Filippeschi, who reported on 12 June 1527 in a letter to the Conservator! that the pope had retreated with the cardinals to the "castle keep and the Spaniards [held] the rest of the castle."15 In early June 1527, Clement was required to provide seven hostages (those named included his datary, Gian Matteo Giberti, the bishop of Pistoia, the archbishops Antonio Ciocchi del Monte and Francesco Pisani, and Jacopo Salviati, Lorenzo Ridolfi, and Simone Ricasoli), as well as a significant amount of money (150,000 ducats), while all others would be permitted to leave the castello. In Venice in late July, Sir Gregory Casale, envoy of King Henry VIII to the papal court, brought more news of the pope's situation when he appeared in the Venetian College with his brother, Giovanni Battista, English ambassador in Venice: The English envoy [Giovanni Battista Casale] arrived with his brother, Sir [Gregory, or Gregorio] Casale, who showed letters from Rome, with messages that the pope was confined and the Lansquenets were guarding him closely, and they wanted 400,000 ducats as promised, as well as an additional 50,000 ducats, setting a fixed time, or else they would exact double the amount. Clement reportedly claimed difficulty in meeting monetary demands because of the restrictions placed on him:

12 "Hoggi e gionto qui uno gentilomo del Papa che si chiama messer Piero Chiavelucio, quale partite di castello Santo Angelo Mercore proximo passato, mandato a questi signori da Sua Santita ad recercarli et pregarli ad voler andar con questi exerciti ad liberarla del pericolo in che si ritrova, come ha fede in loro, dicendo quando sapia di essere aiutata, vole piu presto stare in pericolo di perdere la vita che di venire ad accordo alcuno con imperiali. Li quali gli domandano 4 cose: Che Sua Santita vadi in Spagna con la corte. Che pagi 300 mila ducati. Che la gli consegni castello Santo Angelo; et che voleno tutte le robe et gente che vi sono dentro a discrezione. Essi signori hanno fatto consiglio sopra cio, nel quale hanno concluso di fare ogni sforzo per soccorrer Sua Santita et liberarla da ditto castello." Sanuto, 45:142-3. 13 See also Instrwnentum Concordiae inter Populwn Romanum et Exercitum Cesareae Maiestatis Die octavo Maii 1527 tempore Sacchi Pontificates dementis Septimi (BAV, Barb. Lat. 2347). 14 Sanuto, 46:134. 15 ASO, Miscellanea 59.9, 8: "maschio del Castello et resto d[el] Castello tenghano i spagnoli." 16 Sanuto, 45:428: "Vene 1'orator di Anglia con il fratello cavalier Caxalio [Gregory Casale], qual monstro lettere di Roma ... con avisi che il Papa era molto ristreto et lanzinech li feva cativa compagnia, et voleva li 400 milia ducati promessi, et 50 milia piu, dandoli certo termine, aliter voriano il dopio."

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture It seems that the imperialists went to tell the pope that they had had orders from Charles V that, giving them the 250,000 ducats he had offered in order to pay the troops, His Holiness and their Eminences would be set free. His Holiness replied that he did not have means to pay unless he created cardinals, something he could not do in the present circumstances; and it appears that he was given more freedom.1

A suggestion that greater liberty for Clement would result in prompt payment was used in later negotiations to grant the pope safe passage to Orvteto, but his liberation did not occur at this time. The unruliness of the Landsknechte and the Spanish troops, caused in particular by lack of pay, prompted the duke of Ferrara to write to Charles V, asking him to send the money that the papacy was in no position to provide so that a "good peace" ("bona pace"} could be achieved for the sake of "poor, wretched Italy'* ("questa povera Italia")™ As Benedetto dall'Agnello reported in late August 1527, pressure was mounting on Clement to meet the conditions imposed in May: From Rome have arrived messages that Cardinals Rangoni and Ponzetta have died, and that the viceroy has made the pope understand through the marquess Alfonso del Vasto that he has no authority to free His Holiness, and that the Supreme Imperial Chancellor would come with orders to do so; although if His Holiness wanted to pay the 250,000 ducats he promised, he would free him in any case, but the pope did not believe them, and there was a heated exchange; asking His Holiness again for Citta del Castello, Spoleto, Orvieto, and certain other cities would be to deprive him of what he has. This mention of Orvieto is noteworthy. While the pope remained imprisoned (and later in Orvieto and Viterbo and also when he returned to Rome), members of the League feared that Clement might make a "particular peace" with the imperialists. Accordingly, during 1528 and well into 1529 they exerted continuing pressure on the pontiff to declare himself for the League, something that Clement resisted for his own reasons, including restoration to the papacy of Ravenna and Cervia. The imprisoned pope was at the mercy of competing pan-European imperatives. By late October 1527, the French commander, Odet de Foix de Lautrec, and his army were looked on as possible salvation in a situation in which Clement's life and finances, and indeed the papacy's continuing status as a political power in its own right, were precarious. That month, too, the Landsknechte set in train a campaign of

17 Sanuto, 45:604: "Che par quelli cesarei siano venuti a dir al Papa, haver hauto ordine di Cesare che, dandoli li ducati 250 milia si ha offerto di dar per pagar le zente, Soa Santita et li reverendissimi cardinali saranno lassati in liberta. Soa Santita rispose non haver il modo si '1 non feva cardinali; il che non poteva far stando come 1'e; et par fusse lassato in piu liberta." 18 Sanuto, 45:646-7. The duke of Ferrara was Alfonso I d'Este. 19 "Da Roma si ha aviso che '1 cardinale Rangone et il Ponzeta sono morti, et che '1 Vicere ha fatto intendere al Papa per mezo del signor marchexe del Guasto, che lui non ha autorita di liberar Sua Santita, et che il Gran canzelier cesareo veneria con commission di farlo; pur quando Sua Beatitudine volesse pagare li 250 milia ducati che Tha promesso, lui lo faria liberare ogni modo ma che il Papa non li crede et da parole per parole: domandando di novo a Sua Santita Civita castellana, Spoleti, Orvieto et certe altre citta, che seria un privarlo di cio che ha." Sanuto, 45:701.

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intimidation to pressure the pope for an agreement. Hostages were walked to the gallows in a dumb-show execution, as Cardinal Alvise Pisani reported on 15 October: There has been an oral report ... that the Landsknechte led hostages with chains around their necks and the gallows were ready to hang them, so that they were greatly afraid, and they led them back to their quarters with the same chains, on account of which the cardinals and prelates and other members of their entourages went to the pope to tell him to reach the best agreement he could.20 Contemporaneously, diplomatic pressure was exerted on Charles V concerning release of the pontiff. 21 The demands on Clement as negotiations proceeded to a conclusion were extremely heavy. One of the conditions bruited towards the end of November was that Orvieto would be given up, along with Forll and Citta del Castello: It has been reported that on 23 November our lord was on the point of agreement with the imperialists, to give them 300,000 ducats which they could not have unless they could wait for three days for the arrival of eight gentlemen from the kingdom of Naples who were coming to be created cardinals. Also, His Holiness promised that he would do all he could to hand over to them the fortresses, Orvieto, the stronghold of Forli and Citta del Castello, and the aforementioned would release all the hostages, plus two, namely Jacopo Salviati and the datary, Bishop Giberti.22

The Flight of the Pontiff to Orvieto The citizens of Orvieto were alarmed by the pope's predicament and, in October 1527, the Conservatori wrote to the bishop of Orvieto, expressing their loyalty "to the death": 20 Sanuto, 46:231: "ha di Roma a bocha ... che li lanzinech menorono li obstasi con le catene al collo et le forche preparate per apicharli, si che hebbeno gran paura, et con ditte catene li tornorono a lo alozamento; per il che quelli cardinal! et prelati at altri loro parent! andorono dal Papa a dirli si acordasse come meglio poteva." 21 In the following account of Andrea Navagero, Venetian ambassador at the imperial court, the English ambassador's frontal diplomacy is underscored: "Cesare ando in colera con li oratori di la lega quando li parlono, dicendo voler quello li e sta tolto [i.e. Pavia], s'il dia parlar di acordo alcun. Item come 1'orator Anglico 1 ha protestato da parte del suo Re defensor dela Chiesia, che '1 voy lassar in liberta il Papa con li cardinali ... Scrive che Cesare era uso a vincer, ma vedendo le cose andarli contrane, non pol tenirse di colera ..." ("Charles became angry with the envoys of the League when they spoke to him, saying that he wanted what had been taken from him if he were even to discuss an agreement. Also, the English ambassador protested on behalf of his king, defender of the Church, that he wanted to set the pope free with his cardinals.... He wrote that Charles was used to being victorious, but seeing that matters were going against him, he could not contain his rage.") Sanuto, 46:314. 22 "Nostro Signore se intende ali 23 Novembre passato era per accordo con li cesarei di darli 300 milia ducati, quali non se haveano se non espetare giorni tre per la venuta de 8 gentilhomeni del regno che se venivano a farsi cardinali.... Item Sua Santita promette che fara quanto piu a lui possa [per] darli in mano le forteze, Orvieto, la rocha de Forli et Civita castellana, et li prefati laserano tutti li ostagi altri doi, zioe messer Jacomo Salviati et monsignor vescovo Datario...." Sanuto, 46:338.

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The Pontificate of Clement Vll: History, Politics. Culture While ever this fortress survives, we are as one, with our children and women, disposed to die on the cliffs of Orvieto to preserve our accustomed faith, borne out by so many proven acts, to the Apostolic See and the pope, and we are as one in our allegiance to the person ... of His Holiness unless we see that he is set free and able to act according to his will. So let them come when they want and they will find us true and faithful to the pope as is befitting to His Holiness and the many singular benefits received by this city from the Apostolic See.23

In the liberation of Clement from the Castel Sant'Angelo, Cardinal Alvise Pisani claimed to have stipulated passage to Orvieto as one of the conditions: And it was just that seeing so many hostages and so much money to be handed over against my will, I was adamant how the liberation of the pope should take place, and that not going to Orvieto, he did not appear to me to be free, and that since so many cardinals had to become hostages to achieve the pope's freedom, it was proper that this liberation occurred according to our wishes and was clear-cut, since even they had good hearts and would permit it most generously, because if they denied us every latitude in the liberation of the pope, it did no service to what they demonstrated was their intended action... ,24 As Pisani reported, Cardinals Orsini and Cesi were left with Cardinal Colonna as surety that those accompanying the pope would not be harmed by the League's troops: "this morning the imperial leaders arrived and they acceded to the pope's going to Orvieto and where he needs [to go] ... and I believe that in two days the pope will depart."25 The negotiators agreed, having been persuaded that the liberation they first envisaged, namely the pope being left "free" in the castello, would not look like a liberation to those who needed to be convinced that Clement was genuinely in a position to negotiate: and from their part, they showed they are pleased, because doing so they do not have to spend money on the pope's imprisonment, and not agreeing to take him to Orvieto would be a clear indication that the liberation was one in name only.26 23

"Et finche questo saxo stara inpiede sia ben disposti una co[n] li n[ost]ri figlioli et donne morire in su la rupe p[er] conservar la solita fe[de] n[ost]ra corroborata da tanti expenme[n]ti, alia sede ap[ostoii]ca et N[ostro] S[ignore] ne siamo p[er] dare obedie[n]tia a homo ... di Su[a] S[anti]ta si prima non la vederemo libera et de directo depe[n]dere da la vera me[n]te sua siche ve[n]ghino a lor libito che ne trovaran[n]o quei veri et fedeli sui che co[n]vieni a sua beat[itudi]ne et alii moltissimi et sing[u]lar beneficii receputi p[er] questa citta da la sede ap[ostoli]ca...." ASO, 714.1.6. 24 Sanuto, 46:634: "et se non era ancora io che vedendo tanti hostaggi et tanti danari da exbursarsi contra mia voglia feci punto in che modo havea ad esser questa liberatione del Papa, et che non andando a Orvieto non mi parea libero, et che havendo ad andar tanti cardinali per hostaggi per la liberation del Papa era honesto che questa liberation si facesse a nostro modo et chiara, poiche anche loro haveano animo bono et la permeteano cosi largamente, perche se ce negavano ogni largezza di la liberta del Papa, non era bon offitio a quel che mostravano voler fare...." (italics added here and in translation above) 25 Sanuto, 46:364-5: "questa matina poi son giunti questi signon cesarei, et hano contentato che il Papa vadi a Orvieto et dove bisogna ... et credo che fra doi zorni il Papa partira." 26 Sanuto, 46:363: "et za parte di loro mostrano esser contenti, perche non se facendo non si vol pagar li danari per star pregione il Papa, che negando il menarlo a Orvieto, sena manifesto iuditio che la liberation fusse in nome ma non in effecto."

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Final agreement between the pope and the imperial negotiators was reached in late November 1527. The diary of the papal Master of Ceremonies, Biagio Martinelli da Cesena, records that "on Saint Nicholas' day, in the month of December of the year 1527, the pope suddenly in the night withdrew towards Orvieto."27 As Pisani reported from nearby Todi on 11 December: The pope is at Orvieto, and there is news as to how: he arrived on 8 December in the early morning, since having supplied the Castel Sant'Angelo with Italian foot soldiers, he said to Captain Alanpon that he wished to depart. Captain Alar9on said it would be better for His Holiness to wait three or four days so that he would not be captured en route; and His Holiness considered these words, and during the night not long before dawn, he mounted on horseback and went to Orvieto with 30 horses, accompanied by Luigi Gonzaga. He writes, today the marquis of Saluzzo and master Federico Gonzaga of Bozzolo departed and went to Orvieto to kiss the feet of the pontiff... and they were due to return in the evening.28 It was not generally understood whether Clement had escaped from Rome or negotiated his way out: Here, through letters of my chancellor ... I have news of how the hostages whom the Spaniards had in their hands on account of the pope have fled, and that His Holiness has gone to Orvieto, but the means of this are not yet known, whether His Holiness fled or whether it was on the basis of agreement. As soon as I have confirmation, I will inform your lordship. A letter of 15 December 1527 from a Perugian, Sforza degli Oddi, to the Conservatori della Pace in Orvieto reflects this general uncertainty: "Having just heard that His Holiness is at Orvieto, I beg your lordships to deign to apprise me of the method of his arrival and of the state he is in, because I would wish to visit His Holiness as soon as your lordships inform me about the safety of travel."30 Orvieto became Clement's safe haven, though papal plans for the town had been set in train some years earlier. The citizens of Orvieto were aware by mid-November 1527 of Clement's impending 27 "Papa in die S. Nicolae de mensi [Decejmbris de improvise in nocte recissit vertus Vreutum [sic] anni 1527.": Diarium Blasii de' Cesena Magistri Caeremoniarum ab Anno 1518 ... ad Annum 1540, BAY Barb. Lat. 2799, c. 130r. 28 "Come il Papa e a Orvieto, et ha aviso il modo zonse a di 8 a hore 2 di nocte; pero che, avendo fornito il castel Santo Angelo di fanti italiani, disse al capitanio Larcone che '1 si voleva partir. El qual li disse era meio Soa Beatitudine restasse 3 over 4 zorni azio in camin non fosse prexo: et che Soa Santita considero queste parole, et la note a hore 8 monto a cavallo et vene li a Orvieto con 30 cavalli acompagnato dal signor Alvise [Luigi] Gonzaga. Scrive, hoxi el marchexe di Saluzo et il signor Federico di Bozolo sono partiti et andati li a Orvieto a basar li piedi a Soa Santita ... et doveano ritornar la sera...." Sanuto, 46:375. 29 "Qui, per letter del mio cancellier ... ho di novo come li obsidi quali spagnoli haveano ne le mani per la Santita de Nostro Signore son fugiti, et che Sua Santita vene a la volta di Urvieto; ma non si scia ancora il modo: se Sua Santita e fugita opur si a stato d'acordo. Come haro la certeza, avisaro vostra signoria" Sanuto, 46:370. 30 "Appresso per haver[e] inteso la S[antit]a di N[ostro] S[ignore] trovarsi a Orvieto prego V. S. si degnino certificarmene, et del modo della venuta et in che modo si ritrova, perche desiderei venire a visitare Sua S[antita] q[ua]n[do] V[ostre] S[ignorie] mi farino intender[e] la sicurta del viagio." ASO, Miscellanea 59.9, 350.

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arrival. On 15 November, decisions were taken to secure food, wine, and firewood. By 6 December 1527, preparations were well underway: "it seems that they were awaiting the pope, and someone had arrived there from Rome to prepare his lodgings." 31

Some Lasting Monuments to the Presence of Clement VII in Orvieto By the end of 1527, Clement's plans for Orvieto were well advanced. In fact, some of the projects commissioned by the pontiff in Orvieto continued long after the departure of the papal court-in-exile. One of his first actions was to order the immediate construction of four reservoirs in the piazza del Duomo, followed by a new well in Via della Cava, in response to the problem of the town's chronically inadequate water supply. 32 Indeed, as early as July 1525, Clement had sent Antonio Cordini, better known as Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, to assess the problem. Instructed by the pontiff, Sangallo was subsequently responsible for major fortification projects in the town. 33 In December 1526, Clement declared his intentions of fortifying the cliffs, constructing new walls in weak spots and supplying artillery for defense. Sangallo responded in person. In January 1527, Orvieto's chancellor, Alessandro Saracinelli, reported that the "Numero sopra la guerra" had been given authority over all the needy people of the Commune, as well as over the "forthcoming wars" ("emergefnjtiis guerrfis]"), and that they had charged Sangallo with the project of fortification of the town and related matters " sup [er] fortification [e] civitatis et similibus"*4 On 5 January 1527, Saracinelli executed the decision of the Numero sopra la guerra to carry out fortifications of the Porta Maggiore, following the model of "Magister San gallus"*5 Strategic demolition began in January 1527, following Sangallo's model for fortification of another gate at the end of Via della Cava, which involved the purchase of subterranean deposits, storehouses, and a number of dwellings. 36 This work proceeded from April to September 1527 and, in November, the Porta Pertusa

31 Sanuto, 46:358: "par che de li aspectavano il Papa, et era venuto uno di Roma li per prepararli li alozamenti." Sanuto, 46:358. 32 See P Perali, "L'acquedotto medievale orvietano," in L. Riccetti, La cilia costruita. Lavori pubblici e immagine in Orvieto medievale (Florence: Le Lettere, 1992), 255. See also P. Perali, Orvieto. Note storiche di topografia e d'arte dalle origini al 1800, 2nd ed. (Rome: Multigrafica, 1979), 168-9; A. Satolli, // pozzo della Rocca di Orvieto volgarmente detto di San Patrizio (Bolsena: Ambrosmi, 1991), 18. 33 In recognition of a long-standing relationship with the town, in 1532 Sangallo was offered a house and exempted from paying taxes. Riccetti (1998), 67. 34 ASO, b. 377C, Filza di atti van, 6. 35 ASO, b. 377C, Filza di atti vari, 6. Sangallo was made a citizen of Orvieto in March 1527 (Riccetti [1998], 74). As Riccetti notes, "il soggiomo o, quantomeno, I'attivita orvietana dell'architetto fiorentino puo essere compreso tra il 1525 e il 1532 ed ancora tra il 1534 ed il 1541, nel ruolo di arcrutetto pontificio: pnma di Clemente VII e successivamente di Paolo III." Ibid., 72. 36 ASO, b. 377C, Filza di atti vari, 6. Caves dug in the tufa, which is the geological support of Orvieto, were ideal, temperature-stable repositories for wine and oil.

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and surrounding area, as the weakest points in the town's defenses, were also fortified. At the same time the Porta Vivaria was relocated.37 Financial and other burdens caused by these works had a significant effect on Orvieto and surrounding towns. In January 1528, the papal-appointed governor, Domenico Placido, wrote to the Conservator! with the demand that they expedite the fortification works, "on the orders and commission of our lord with delegated power over the fortification of the town, that the under-mentioned men and communities should contribute pro rata so as to achieve its more rapid execution," and that they provide building implements, money and food, "hoes, mattocks, stakes, money and provisions for a fortnight with a penalty of 200 ducats to be meted out for noncompliance ... and they should apply themselves to the said fortification works with no pauses whatsoever."38 In March 1528, a number of houses in the contrada of San Giovenale were demolished at Clement's request, but with full compensation to the owners who sacrificed their dwellings ' l for the sake of fortification of the city" ("pro fortificat[io]ne Civitatis")*g A general convocation of the town council on 17 February 1528 had reacted immediately at news of the intended demolitions, resolving to send four citizens, not to undermine the proposal but to explain to the pope the poverty of the town and thus, presumably, to ensure proper compensation: "on the question of the demolished homes, it was discussed that four citizens should be sent to the feet of the most holy lord, who could set out the poverty of the town and ask the pope to do as it may please him."40 The dire state of papal coffers meant that financial support from the pope could not be counted on. From 1527 there were constant burdens for the citizens of Orvieto and surrounding towns and castelli. A manpower levy for building works in January 1528 was matched by a contemporaneous levy for fodder for horses, to which some towns failed to respond, despite solicitations and threat of fines from the governor of Orvieto in a letter of 1 February 1528.41 Surrounding towns were expected to provide by order of "His Holiness," according to a differential scale. A salt tax and money for auxiliary forces amounting to 313 ducats was imposed on Orvieto in August 1528, when the town of Ficulli was expected to provide the sum of 60 ducats. This tax was to be collected by the priest, Bastiano di Bisone da Monferrato, under instructions

37 On 11 March 1527, Sangallo was made a citizen of the town, and he is referred to in local council documents dating to 1528 as "Ant[oni]o san gallo archittectorus di N[ostro] S[ignore]." ASO, Bastardelli Riformagioni B556, c. 46r. 38 ASO, b. 377C, no. 2: "p[er] ordine et co[m]missione di nfostro] s[ignore] deputat[o] sopra la fortificatione dela Citta che Ihomini et comunita infrascripti co(n]tribuissero p[ro] rata loro p[er] piu celere expeditione ... zappi zapponi et pali et pagati et provisti da vivere per quindici giorni sotto pena di ducati duecento da exequirsi ipso facto ... et applicarsi alia d[i]c[t]a fortificatione senza remissione alcuna." 39 ASO, Riformagioni 556, c. 16r. 40 ASO, Rjformagioni 556, c. 17r: "sup[erj domis dirutis dixit quod mitta[n]tur quattuor Cives ad pedes S[anctissimi] D[omini] N[ostri] qui exponant paupertate[m] Civitatis et fiat prout placuerit." 41 ASO, b. 377C, Filza di atti van, 7.

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from Giutiano Leno.42 Another tax was imposed on Orvieto in August 1528 to help increase the number of foot soldiers and cavalry so as to rid the roads of the undesirable elements, on the increase because of the "adversity of the times.'*43 The levy for Viterbo in these circumstances was 25 ducats. In November 1530, when fortification works were still in progress, Antonio Ricasoli, who had succeeded Domenico Placido as governor, wrote to surrounding communities, requesting the supply of firewood for the making of mortar, since the locals were overburdened by the continuing demands of the project.44 The most distinctive element of the overall fortification project, and surely the most celebrated reminder of Clement's presence in Orvieto, is the well of Saint Patrick, originally known as the Pope's Well. Now a tourist site near the cliffs on the northeastern edge of the town, the well was one of many works over time that sought to achieve what one scholar has called "I'autonomia idriccT for Orvieto.45 A singular construction, 53.15 meters deep and 12.21 meters wide, the well is renowned for its double-helix staircase with 72 windows and 248 steps that were sufficiently wide for water-carrying donkeys to negotiate. Begun in late 1527 or early 1528 under the supervision of Sangallo, excavations were finished at the beginning of 1532, and the well was finally completed in 1537 under Pope Paul III. In 1534, when the town's financial resources were at a low ebb, Clement directed to the project half of the fines imposed for criminal acts in the town. Citizens assisted in the cartage and handling of the 30,000 bricks that went into the well's construction. Another symbol of Clement's influence in Orvieto is the altar (sometimes referred to as a chapel) of the Magi, on the southeast wall of the transept of the Duomo.46 The chapel was the property of Donna Giovanna dei Monaldeschi, and its decoration exercised the minds of the Consiglio delFOpera del Duomo on a number of occasions from the early sixteenth century. In 1503, work on the altar was begun by Pietro da Como. Michele Sanmicheli took over in 1510 as chief project architect for the Duomo, and he subsequently demolished work completed to that date and followed his own design, from 1514 to 1521.47 When Sanmicheli left Orvieto in 1526, the Consiglio dell'Opera asked Sangallo to prepare a new design.48 In 1527, Gio42 ASO, b. 377C, Filza di atti van, 5. For Giuliano Leno, see I. Ait and M. Vaquero Pifteiro, Dai casali allafabbrica di San Pietro. I Leni, uomini d'affari del Rinascimento (Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, Ministero per i beni e le attivita culturali, 2000), esp. ch. 3. 43 ASO, 755.3.9. 44 ASO, b. 337C, Filza di atti van, 9. 45 See Satolli (1991), 18. 46 On the Cappella de1 Magi, see L. Fumi, // Duomo di Orvieto e i suoi restauri (Rome: Societa Laziale Tipografico-Editrice, 1891), 314-16. 47 On Sanmicheli in Orvieto, see L. Puppi, Michele Sanmicheli, architetto di Verona (Padua: Marsilio, 1971), 14-18. The notary, Ser Tommaso di Silvestro, records that work began in 1514 on the "columns or the foundation of the altar and the decoration": see Diario di Ser Tommaso di Silvestro notaro con note di Luigi Fumi, fasc. 5 (Orvieto: Tipografia Comunale, 1897), 888. See also P. Perali, Orvieto, Note storiche di topografia e d'arte dalle origini al 1800, 2nd ed. (Rome: Multigrafica, 1979), 157-9. 48 See M. Camberari, "Sanmicheli e la cattedrale di Orvieto," in Michele Sanmicheli. Architettura. linguaggio e cultura artistica del Cinquecento. Atti del XI Convegno del Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio. Vicenza 24-28 agosto 1992, ed. H. Burns, C. L. Frommel, and L. Puppi (Milan: Electa, 1995), 32-7.

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vanni Battista da Siena, then at work on the altar, observed that a review of the design, and possibly a new design by a well-known architect, was timely. In early 1528 Sangallo, who was present in the town, offered his design. However, the previous proposal by Sanmicheli was finally confirmed in March 1528 when Clement, approached by a deputation for his opinion, expressed a preference for it over Sangallo's. 49 On 14 March 1528, the Consiglio determined that Giovanni Battista should be joined by Simone Cioli da Settignano to execute the final work.50 The Florentine Simone Mosca, his son Francesco, and Raffaello da Montelupo subsequently took over in 1535.51 Clement's intervention gave new impetus to the completion of the magnificent altar, finally achieved some eighteen years later, in 1546.

Orvieto as Center of European Diplomacy Clement's presence in Orvieto had far-reaching ramifications. His release from captivity in Rome was celebrated in London with an evening of courtly entertainment centered on a performance of Terence's Phormio, together with symbolic tableaux depicting the overrun of Europe by war, heresy, and ambition. A Latin oration sheeted home the blame for the pope's captivity to the unbridled lust of one man, namely Charles V. 52 Henry VIII had a special interest in securing the pope's favor in the matter of his intended divorce from Catherine of Aragon, aunt of Charles V 53 Therefore, as soon as it was ascertained that Clement was in Orvieto, the English lost no time in returning to their campaign of promoting the king's cause, supported in Italy during 1527 by Sir Gregory Casale and Dr. Stephen Knight. In early 1528, Henry sent two envoys directly to Orvieto: Edward Foxe, bishop of Hereford, and Dr. Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.54 Clement's place of residence in Orvieto was the bishop's palace, a complex of buildings much enlarged overtime, on the right flank of the Duomo.55 On 18 December 1527, the pontiff held his first secret consistory, as recounted in a papal brief

49

Contemporary discussion of the designs is recorded in AODO, Riformanze (Rjformagioni e Contratti e Memorie), Registro 13, cc. 25v-26r. This document, also in Fumi (1891), 333^, records the deliberations of 3 March 1528 of the Duomo building committee, in consultation with the papal governor, the Conservatori, and a group of citizens, at which the citizen Jacopo Ebuzio suggested that on the following day the two designs should be shown to Clement VII by the Conservatory accompanied by the chamberlain responsible for the Duomo, and two citizens, and that the "design that pleased the pope should be the one to be chosen and executed." 50 AODO, Registro 13, c. 27v. 51 See Fumi (1891), 315. 52 Sanuto, 46:595-7. 53 See Price ZimmermamVs contribution above, esp. the text at note 8. 54 See J. A. Muller, Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor Reaction, 2nd ed. (New York: Octagon, 1970), chap. 4, "When Doctor Stephens came to Orvieto." 55 The bishop during the period of Clement's exile was Cardinal Niccolo Ridolfi. See L. Fumi, // Palazzo Soliano o de' Papi in Orvieto (Rome: Tip. Dell'Unione Cooperativa, 1896), 10; R. Bonelli, // palazzo papale di Orvieto (Rome: Carlo Colombo, 1939), 212, 220.

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addressed to Ippolito de Cesi.56 On this day, a papal bull was issued which made clear how many of Clement's actions while he was in Castel Sant' Angelo had been carried out under duress: During our captivity, owing to the insistence and incessant entreaties of ecclesiastics and laymen, many graces, privileges, dispensations, etc., were agreed to and granted more under compulsion than of our own free will, to the scandal, injury, and prejudice of the Church and contrary to the example of our predecessors. Now, being at liberty, and wishing to preserve the honour of the Holy See and desirous to counter future scandals, we repeal collectively and on advice of the Cardinals, all privileges, graces, dispensations, etc., granted to clergy and laity, excepting those conferred on true household members of long standing, continui commensales, and on cardinals and laymen bearing the title of Duke or higher degrees. In order to respond to the financial demands of the terms of his release, Clement ere5ft ated eight cardinals in Orvieto, four of whom were to pay the Spanish directly. Four more cardinals would be created during Lent of 1528, but "without payment" ("senza danar!")59 The pope was under pressure to pay the total of the sum agreed to at the time of his release, although clearly he was not in a position to do so, as Alvise Pisani reported on the last day of 1527.60 Clement was negotiating on a number of fronts in a complex political game, with many players and competing interests, and from a position of serious weakness. One of the best accounts of papal strategy is contained in a report of 2 January 1528 from Bologna on talks in late December 1527 between the protonotary Uberto Gambara and Monsignor de Lautrec. Gambara delivered the papal line that Clement desired a peace that would entail the restoration of the French king's children and tranquility for Italy, and for these reasons he was seeking the support of Francis I and Henry V I I I . Lautrec's view was that Clement wished to remain neutral and that he was not committed to the League. In early January 1528, Pisani reported that Clement was more favorably disposed to the League: 'The pope has created the two Neapolitan cardinals who are to give him money, and Pirro Gonzaga, ... and three others. The pope is heading in the direction of agreeing to the league/'61 The Venetian Francesco Corner was among the cardinals created at this time, for a payment of 26,000 scudi62 The Venetians were critical of the pope's raising money in this way since funds went straight to the Spanish, "who make war on the proceeds" ("che nefanno guerra").^ Accordingly, while they were keen not to alienate Clement, and especially did not wish him to fall in with the imperialists, they set down penalties for any

56

ASV, Reg, Lat. 1437, fol. 6r: "hodie in primo Consistorio secreto p[er] nos in civitate hac ... Urbe veteri celebrato." 57 Cited in Pastor, 10:3, n. 1. 58 Sanuto, 46:442. 59 60

Sanuto, 46:443. Sanuto, 46:445.

61

"II Papa ha fatti li do cardinali napolitani che fi ha da danan, et il Gonzagin ... et 3 altri. El Papa va a bon camino per la liga." Sanuto, 46:468. 62 Sanuto, 46:615. 63

Sanuto, 46:46.

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Venetians who bought preferment, including Corner.64 In response to repeated requests for the return of Ravenna and Cervia mentioned above, Venice also resolved to send a special high-level ambassador, Gasparo Contarini, in order to bolster the severely strained diplomatic relationship and demonstrate that they were at least prepared to negotiate over the problem of the restitution of the two cities.65 In Orvieto, the pope was in dire straits on account of local as well as external problems. As Alvise Pisani reported from Todi on 8 January 1528: According to messages from Orvieto, the pope cannot remain there any more, and there is serious famine, and the town is filling up with people. And the pope wants the French commander to advance, and Venice to send him the envoy to him. Also, there is a message from Rome that the Spanish and Italian troops are on the point of departing, but not the Lansquenets who want all their pay before they leave.66 On 7 January, Don Alvise Lippomano described a dismal situation in the papal courtin-exile where Clement, who at first had only four cardinals in his entourage, was now in the company of seven: In Orvieto, the court is more or less in ruins, and penniless. The bishops go about on foot with skullcaps and threadbare cloaks, and the courtiers blaspheme against God, as though they have lost all hope. The cardinals go about with four menservants and riding mules, the way they did in the primitive Church, but with their accustomed dishonorable attitudes, and they would sell Christ for a farthing. There are seven cardinals, that is, Lorenzo Pucci, Antonio Ciocchi del Monte, the cardinals of Perugia, Ravenna, Ridolfi, Trani and the newly created cardinal, Pirro Gonzaga.67 Lippomano reported on the arrival in Orvieto of Russian ambassadors, as well as the return of the bishops Chieregati and Scariense from Poland, who presented Clement with "black sables valued at 6,000 ducats, that arrived at the right moment, for the pope immediately used them to line a vestment that he subsequently wore."68 Early in January, the pontiff rode on horseback around the town, and it was apparent that he had no further intention of creating cardinals, "because he says he is in no further need of money, and because he does not want to give any more to the Spanish, and

64 Sanuto, 46:468-9. 65 See E. G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), 42-51. 66 "Et avisi hauti da Orvieto, come il Papa non pol piu star li; et che e grandissima carestia, et la terra se empie di persone. Et che '1 Papa desidera Lutrech vadi avanti, et che la Signoria li mandi 1'Orator. Item, e aviso di Roma, che spagnoli et italiani sono per ussir fuora; ma lanzinech non; voleno tutte le page avanti escano." Sanuto, 46:488. 67 "Come de li la corte e qual falita, senza un carlino. Li vescovi vanno a piedi con un capeleto in testa et mantellini frusti, et li cortesani biastemo Idio; sono come disperati. Li cardinali vanno con 4 servitori et su la sua mula sicome andavano in primitiva ecclesia; pur a li soliti costumi disonesti, e per un iulio si venderebbe Christo. Sono 7 cardinali, zoe questi: Santiquatro, Monte, Perosa, Ravena, Redolfi, Trani et il novo Gonzagin create." Sanuto, 46:488. 68 Sanuto, 46:489: "zebelini negri per la valuta di ducati 6000; li quali e venuti a proposito, che subito il Papa di queli si fece fodrar una vesta et la indosso."

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de Lautrec wants no money from him."69 In the postscript to a letter dated 11 January 1528, written from Orvieto by the papal secretary, Blosio Palladio, to Domino de Vere, note is made of the dangers of the highways and local brigands, that made access to the town almost impossible.70 Although in much-reduced circumstances in Orvieto, Clement managed to be active diplomatically. He was involved with representatives of Henry VIII, Francis I and Charles V, in an attempt against the odds to work out ways of achieving his own ends, among which were limitation of the emperor's power in Italy and restitution of the States of the Church. 71 English interest in the pope's welfare remained constant. In a letter of 18 December 1527 from Sir Robert Jemingham to Cardinal Wolsey, it was noted: "Further news has come since his last, that the pope and hostages have escaped. The pope is at Orvieto."72 On 14 December, Clement wrote to Cardinal Wolsey from Orvieto: "Sends the Prothonotary Gambara to inform the King and Wolsey of his having regained his liberty. Expresses his gratitude to them for their exertions in his favor."73 In a letter to the English king, Clement wrote on 16 December 1527: We have received your letter, and given your secretary [Dr. Stephen Knight] audience. You will learn from him how important we consider your request. Your services need no testimony, and we shall be glad of an occasion to oblige you. Fail not in your efforts, which we share with you, for the good of Christendom and the Holy Church. In a letter of 11 January 1528, Clement wrote, again diplomatically, to Charles V: When he was imprisoned, had nothing else to write to him, except for his liberation; but seeing by his letter with what zeal he had given orders for it of himself, cannot but thank him for his good offices ... Acknowledges that Charles has always shown himself devoted to the Holy See, and assures him of his good will ... Had intended upon his liberation to send one of his servants to intimate it to the Emperor, and thank him; but, owing to the difficulties of the passage, both by sea and land, was obliged to content himself with writing, in the hope that it might be sent by France, and has not yet had an answer.75 The pope's circumstances in Orvieto struck the English envoy, Sir Gregory Casale, as abject. On 22 December 1527, some two weeks after Clement's arrival, he wrote to Wolsey: Found the Pope miserable and alone, few of his household remaining. The archbishop of Capua is at Capua; the bishop of Verona has gone to Verona to lead a solitary life there with the bishop of Chieti, which has greatly displeased the court. The protonotary Gambara has gone to France, carrying the hat for the Chancellor; he will then go to England, and finally to Spain. The French secretary will go with him. They have well performed 69 Sanuto, 46:508: "perche dice non ha piii bisogno di danari, perche ne vol darne piu a spagnoli, et Lutrech non vol danari da lui." 70 ASV,Arm. XL, 21,c. 15r. 71 On Clement's political goals, cf. the analysis in Barbara Hallman's essay above. 72 Synopsis by J.S. Brewer of letter dated 13 December 1527, in Letters and Papers. Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (henceforth Letters), ed. J. S. Brewer, vol. 4, pt. 2 (London: Longman and Co., 1872), 1641 (no. 3657). 73 Synopsis by J. S. Brewer of letter dated 14 December 1527, in Letters, 1641 (no. 3658). 74 Dated 16 December 1527, in Letters, 1646 (no. 3666). 75 Synopsis by J. S. Brewer of letter dated 11 January 1528, in Letters, 1689 (no. 3792).

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Wolsey's wishes. The Pope says that he has been expecting Lautrec's arrival, and for that reason prolonged the negotiations with the imperialists> and endeavoured to produce discord amongst them, not without great danger to himself and the hostages.... His Holiness now seems to desire nothing but peace.76 In responding to the English king's request for action on the matter of the divorce, Clement hoped to confirm Henry's financial and other support for any future alliance that might be useful in combating the ambitions of Charles V in Italy. In late December, Casale reported that the pope was relying on the advance of Lautrec in order to reinforce his precarious position in Orvieto.77 By then, the matter of Henry's divorce was a key factor in European diplomacy.78 Also in late December, Sir Robert Jerningham wrote to Wolsey that the "King's secret [the divorce question] ... has not been so covertly kept ... It is known also to the Emperor ... and he has written to the Pope in no wise to consent."79 Papal diplomacy was rendered extremely complex by the matter of the divorce. It can be inferred from the protracted way in which Clement dealt with the question that he was in no hurry to provide resolution while the assistance of Henry was possibly useful to his own purposes. The precariousness of Clement's position at this time is underscored by the following account of the pope's demeanor, from the hand of Peter Vannes: The Pope, before granting this brief [about dispensation for the divorce, which was soon followed by a commission which the King rejected since neither could be effected], had many altercations about it; and said, weeping, that it would be his ruin, for he was living at the mercy of the imperialists, who hold all the State; he said he had but little hope from the French; the Florentines desired nothing more than his destruction; his sole hope of life was from the Emperor, which will now be destroyed, and the imperialists will seek a cause to destroy him; and they will say that he moved the King to this from hatred for the Emperor, in support of which he produced many reasons.... He then asked Casale to swear to him whether the King would desert him or not. Satisfied him about this, and then he granted the brief, saying that he put himself in the King's hands, and that he knew he would be drawn into perpetual war with the Emperor, in whom he will never more trust.80 On 9 February 1528, Giovanni Battista Sanga, the papal protonotary, wrote to Gambara, the papal nuncio in England, that Clement was concerned over the potential war against Charles V in Naples, which had been suggested by the French and English kings to compel the emperor to make peace.81 A papal alliance with Charles was greatly feared by the French and English. However, Clement was in no hurry to make a commitment, as Casale, who remained in Italy after Knight's departure, wrote to Wolsey on 1 March 1528: The pope is not going to leave Orvieto, though the court suffers from a scarcity of everything. Lautrec urges him to declare in favor of the League. This proposal has been 76 Dated 22 December 1527, in Letters, \ 650-1 (no. 3682). 77 Letters, 1677 (no. 3758). 78 A comprehensive study of the divorce is V. Murphy, "The Literature and Propaganda of Henry VHFs First Divorce", in The Reign of Henry VII. Politics, Policy and Piety, ed. D. MacCulloch (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 135-58. 79 Letters, 1652 (no. 3687). 80 Letters, 1663. 81 Letters, 1734 (no. 3889).

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture debated in a Consistory of Cardinals, and it has been determined to do nothing till an answer has been received from the bishop of Pistoia.82

On arrival in Orvieto in late March 1528, the new English envoys Gardiner and Foxe wrote with feeling of the wretched conditions they confronted, both in the papal court and in the town itself: Arrived in Orvieto on Saturday last, with no garments but the coats they rode in, which were much worn and defaced by the foul weather. Informed the Pope of their coming by Mr Gregory, but had to stay home that day and the next while their garments were "at the making." Had much difficulty from the deamess of everything. Commodities were conveyed into the town by asses and mules; and cloth, worth 20s. in England, is here 61., and not yet procurable in any quantity. Had they not made provision for gowns at Luke [Lucca], they would have had to borrow Spanish cloaks from the Pope's servants; and few men here have more garments than one.... Master Gregory says that in summer the south wind brings pestilence here from a river within a mile of the city. The place may well be called Urbs Vetus. No one would give it any other name. Cannot tell how the Pope should be described as at liberty here, where hunger, scarcity, bad lodgings, and ill air keep him as much confined as he was in Castel Angel. His Holiness could not deny to Master Gregory that captivity at Rome was better than liberty here. The Pope occupies a decayed palace of the bishop of Orvieto. Before reaching his privy chamber we passed three chambers, "all naked and unhanged, the roofs fallen down, and, as we can guess, 30 persons, riff raff and other, standing in the chamber for a garnishment." The furniture of the Pope's bedchamber was not worth 20 nobles, bed and all... ,83 In another letter of 27 March, Gardiner and Foxe reported: The air of this city is very contagious, and the weather so moist that, except there be some change of the inhabitants soon, it will be of little consequence who are lords of the country, unless for penance you would wish it to the Spaniards as being unworthy to die in battle. The Pope receives letters from both sides with contrary news. He has a nuncio with Lautrec and Colonna, pretending that he is with the Spaniards, only to save the goods of the Church. Have written to my Lord such news as the Pope desired Sanga to tell us. By all accounts the armies are within half a mile of each other, the Spaniards being about equal, or not more than 4,000 different... Pray to be delivered from this pestilential air, which has already done us such displeasure.84 In a letter dated 31 March 1528, a papal audience is described in detail, providing insights into the intricacies of diplomatic behavior and language. On the first day, the pontiff received the two English envoys in his privy bedchamber, in the company of Cardinal Ridolfi. Clement replied at first that 82 Dated 1 March 1528, in Letters, 1775. 83 Synopsis by J. S. Brewer of letter dated 23 March, 1528, in Letters, 1808-9 (no. 4090). See also Muller( 1970), 23-7. 84 Letters, 1812 (no. 4103). Henry also received direct news, dated 31 March, from his envoys: "Arrived in Orvieto on the 20th. Kept ourselves secret for one day in order to communicate with Gregory. Visited the Pope on the 22nd, and were with him every day three or four hours till this day. We have written in cipher at some length to Wolsey. Foxe expects to return shortly after the dispatch of this post. Sir Gregory is hearty in your service. None could do better. We are indebted to him for our lodgings, which no money could have furnished. It is hoped that Lautrec will shortly obtain Naples." (31 March 1528, in Letters, 1818 (no. 4118).

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he reposed all his trust in the King, and, not withstanding his promise [to provide a legal commission for an investigation of the validity the dispensation given by Julius II for the King's marriage to Catherine], he must dissemble until Italy be pacified. He had ever studied the interests of Christendom more than his own.85 The two envoys were astounded by the circumstances of Clement's court, noting that when on the following day the pope took from them a copy of Henry's book, he sat down to read it on a "form covered with an old coverlet worth 20d [pence]."86 The book in question was a treatise "containing the reasons and causes moving the mind of his Majesty," including the pro- and counter-arguments for the divorce that had been discussed between the king, Wolsey, the English bishops, and other learned men, in the period from Autumn 1527.87 The English envoys' case was pursued with the pope and others at court, principally Cardinals Lorenzo Pucci and Antonio Ciocchi del Monte. A postscript notes Clement's private reflection to Casale about the complexity of his predicament: The Pope told Casale that if the Venetians had not been secretly supported by Francis they would have restored Cervia and Ravenna, that he is deluded on all sides, and if he cannot be supported by his friends he must give himself up to his enemies rather than suffer the ruin of Italy. 8 At the beginning of March 1528, the pope received a deputation from Rome, urging his return to the city. Although Clement declined the request, officials of the Sacra Rota and the Cancelleria did return to the Eternal City in late April 1528.89 One of the imputed motives for the pontiffs remaining in Orvieto was the impossible cost of maintaining an adequate guard in Rome, as Francesco Gonzaga reported in late April 1528: Romans have sent word to the pope to persuade him to go and live in Rome. To which His Holiness did not give a firm reply; nor does he think that he should move there until next September, because he would have pay for the expenses of a guard, as he has worked it out, amounting to 10,000 ducats; and he says that he does not want to go there unless he is well supplied, and at present he has no means of meeting these expenses, since the Apostolic See is denuded of money, such that His Holiness has plans to impose heavier than usual taxes on the lands of the Church, to raise customs levies and impose tithes.90 85 Synopsis by J. S. Brewer of letter dated 31 March 1528, in Letters, 819 (no. 4120). [copy, from Gardiner's letter book] 86 Letters, 1819. 87 Cited in Murphy (1995), 143. For the period of composition and the content of the socalled "king's book," see ibid., 143-5. 88 Letters, 1822. 89 On the Sacra Rota, the Cancelleria, and other offices and bureaus in the Curia in the Renaissance, see J. F. D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), chap. l,esp. 20-9. 90 "Romani hanno mandato a Nostro Signore ad persuaderlo ad andare ad habitare in Roma; al che Sua Santita non ha dato resoluta risposta, ne se pensa se vi si debba transferire fino a Septembrio proximo, perche gli converrebbe far spesa di guardia, come ha designate, de 10 milia ducati al mese; n£ altrimenti dice volerli andare se non con bone provisioni; ne al

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Already by April 1528, however, plans were being made for Clement's move to Viterbo, as Alvise Lippomano reported: The pope is departing with the cardinals to go to reside in Viterbo, since the stronghold which was on the side of the Spanish has surrendered.... On Palm Sunday, in the religious services, the pope exhorted the cardinals and prelates to change their lives and atone for their sins, because the scourge on Rome had come about because of these sins. The date of Clement's departure from Orvieto is confirmed in a record of the Consiglio Generale of the Conservatori della Pace in Orvieto on 1 June 1528, which reports that "Clement VII with the whole papal court, except for the most reverend Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci, shortly before dawn departed from this city and went to Viterbo."92 In the diary of Biagio da Cesena, news of the pope's quitting Orvieto on 1 June 1528 via Montefiascone, is embellished by the detail of how he was caught on the journey in a terrible storm that left him seriously ill. 93 In Viterbo in July 1528, Clement gave Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio the commission that empowered him and Wolsey to hear the cause of Henry's divorce in England. From Viterbo it was just a short journey back to Rome. Gasparo Contarini reported the pope's departure for Rome to the marquess of Mantua on 8 October: On the 5th [of October] the Pope and the whole Court quitted Viterbo. The road was made unsafe by reason of the feud between the Colonna faction and the Abbot of Farfa.... On that evening the Pope lodged at Monte Rosa, the Cardinals and all the ambassadors being quartered at Nepi. 4 Finally in Rome, Clement retained the long beard that he had grown over the many months of imprisonment and exile as a sign of mourning for the ravages inflicted on the Church and the Eternal City. This devastation was a source of deep pain for the

91

92

93 94

presente ha il modo de far la spexa per ritrovarsi la Sede Apostolica priva de dinari, talmente che Sua Santita disegna imponere graveze a le terre de la Chiesa, insolite, augumentare li datii et imponere decime." Sanuto, 47:359-60. "Come il Papa si parte con li cardinal* per andar a star a Viterbo, peroche la roca si ha resa, qual si teniva per spagnoli ... il Papa la Dominica di 1'Olivo in la solennita di le Palme exorto li cardinali et prelati a voler mutar vita et far penitentia di soi pecati, perche per li pecati era venuto il flagello di Roma." Sanuto, 47:235. See also Sanuto, 47:351. u Cleme[n]s vii cu[m] tota curia except[o] R[everendissi]mo Cardinal[e] S[ancti] Quatuor in septima hora noctis circa diem discessit ab hac civitat[e] et ivit Viterbiu[m]." ASO, Bastardelli Riformagioni B 556, c. 58 v. However, there is apparent reference in Sanuto to Clement's presence in Orvieto in July 1528 (unless the report is based on information that is more than one month old): "il vescovo di Trau ... vien da Orvieto, dove e stato dal Papa et ha parlato con Soa Santita, qual ha una barba longa canuda, cavalca con 8 cavalli et 30 fanti della sua guardia. Sta sempre maninconico, ha mal voler contra la Signoria per Ravena e Zervia, et tien sia imperial tutto." [the bishop of Trau . . has come from Orvieto where he has been to see the pope, and he talked with His Holiness who has a long, thick beard; he rides with eight accompanying horses and thirty foot soldiers from his guard. He is constantly melancholic, he bears ill-will against Venice over Ravenna and Cervia, and he claims to be entirely pro-imperial.] Sanuto, 48:226. BAV, Barb. Lat. 2799, cc. 132r-v. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, ed. R. Brown, vol. 4 (1527-1533) (London: Longman, 1871), 172.

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pontiff, as he indicated in October 1528 in a letter to the emperor: "our grief for the ruin of Italy, manifest to every eye, still more for the misery of this city and our own misfortune, is immeasurably heightened by the sight of Rome/'95 The defeat of the French army in Naples in August 1528 confirmed the supremacy of Charles V. Events had demonstrated that the pope's strategy of not responding to the League proved to be the wiser path, and it was now clear that he would reach an understanding with the emperor. In January 1529, when Clement was seriously ill and thought to be on the point of death, Contarini urged Clement to join the League, and the League even solicited Giberti's return from Verona to convince the pope. The League still hoped for a "general peace*' rather than the "particular peace" with Charles V The peace treaty of Barcelona of July 1529, concluded with the emperor, was final confirmation of the future of the papacy that had barely endured the slings and arrows of the previous five years. For a brief time, due to the presence of Clement VII, Orvieto, substantially rebuilt and reinvigorated, was at the center of these tumultuous events.96 Coda Contemporary cultural tourists marvel at the beauty of the Orvieto cathedral and the engineering feat of the well of San Patrizio, in its depth nearly equal to the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They may read in their guidebooks of Sangallo's contribution to the amenity of the town, but they are probably unaware of Clement VII's Orvietan sojourn in 1527-28 at a crucial turning point in the history of the papacy.9 A memory of Orvieto apparently remained with the pontiff almost to the last, when, according to the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, a few days before his death on 25 September 1534, Clement expressed a wish to see the medal on which the artist was then working and requested a second reverse (Figure 9.1) that commemorated the almost-finished engineering masterpiece of the well.98 This medal, which bears an inscription based on Exodus 17:6, "VT BIBAT POPVLVS" ("that the people may drink"), represents the figure of Moses in the desert striking with his rod the barren rock and extracting gushing water. The iconography, implying the status of the second Medici pope as a leader and savior of men in times of calamity, was entirely appropriate to the figure that Clement desired to project in the aftermath of the Sack. At the time of his death, Pope Clement VII had more than one reason to look back and remember Orvieto.

95 Quoted in Hook (1972), 240. 96 Perali (1979), at 167, views this period as "the beginning of the resurrection of Orvieto." 97 Other Sangallo contributions include the palazzo of Tiberio Crispi, later owned by Ludovico Marsciano: see C. Palazzatti, // pozzo di San Patrizio (Viterbo: BetaGamma, 1998), 20-7. 98 B. Cellini, Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, trans. J. A. Symonds (New York: Dolphin Books, 1961), 166.

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Resynthesis

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Chapter 10

The Place of Clement VII and Clementine Rome in Renaissance History Charles L. Stinger

To make sense of Pope Clement VII's pontificate and of Clementine Rome, two interrelated, but in some sense distinct developments require historical scrutiny. These are, first, the prevailing political and institutional assumptions denoted by the term "Renaissance papacy"; and, second, the cultural outlook encompassed in the intellectual and artistic movement we call the "Renaissance in Rome." As pope, Clement's priorities conformed to the general pattern of the Renaissance papacy, typical especially in upholding papal claims to temporal power in central Italy as the key to sustaining papal independence, and thereby to securing what the popes regarded as their rightful headship of Christendom. In the pursuit of this goal, Clement initially seemed to enjoy certain advantages compared to many of his predecessors, but the altered political circumstances that emerged during his pontificate ultimately thwarted his ambitions to continue to define papal power in these terms. In this sense Clement can be regarded as the last of the Renaissance popes.1 The second development, the "Renaissance in Rome," involves a seeming paradox. During the course of Clement's troubled pontificate, the growing Reformation 1

E. G. Gleason, "Who was the First Counter-Reformation Pope?" CHR 81 (1995): 173-84, argues that the answer to this question is Paul III, and suggests that Clement VII, preoccupied with Florentine dynastic priorities, failed to focus on a truly meaningful reform of the Church, nor did such efforts as he made constitute a coherent defense against the Protestant challenge. Clement's pontificate is covered in Pastor, 9:231-509 and all of vol. 10. Useful recent overviews of Clement's career include A. Prosperi, "Clemente VII,'* DBJ 26:237-59; and K. Gouwens, "Clement VII," in ER, 2:18-20, both with further bibliography. A fundamental interpretative study of the cultural world of Clement VII's pontificate by a leading art historian is A. Chastel, The Sack of Rome, 1527, trans. B. Archer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). Chastel argues that following the artistic hiatus of Adrian's pontificate, marked as it was by his outsider's antipathy to the cultural world of Julian and Leonine Rome, Clement brought a renewal of cultural life to the Eternal City, but in a more subtle, sophisticated, and self-consciously aestheticizing vein than had characterized the more heroic outlook of Raphael's commissions under Leo X. To Chastel, there had emerged by around 1525 a distinctive "Clementine style," evident especially in a close-knit group of younger artists including Perino del Vaga, Polidoro da Caravaggio, Rosso Fiorentino, and Parmigianino. This strikes me as a perceptive and suggestive analysis, but I leave the question of a distinctive Clementine style to experts in art history. This essay is concerned less with what is especially distinctive about Clement as a pontiff or about his pontificate than with longer-term trends that I believe are at least as fundamental to understanding the place of Pope Clement VII and of Clementine Rome in Renaissance history.

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controversies, the emergent stirrings of Catholic reform and perhaps above all the catastrophic Sack of Rome in 1527 should, it might seem, have shaken to the core the foundations on which the humanists and artists of Julian and Leonine Rome had sought to create a rebuilt Rome as world capital. How in the face of so many calamities could the vision be sustained of a new golden-age civilization, fusing the rediscovered wisdom of antiquity with a repristinatio of Christianity? Yet in contrast to how fragile proved Clement's aspirations to master the new dynamics of the Italian political world, the image and mystique of the papacy and its ties to the destiny of the city of Rome that had developed during the Renaissance period proved much more resistant to fundamental change and reassessment. Following a consideration in the first half of this essay of the political and institutional constraints Clement faced and of how limited proved his efforts to surmount them, my intent in the latter half is to suggest how key features of Roman Renaissance culture inhibited the development of a self-critical analysis in response to changing historical circumstances. Clement VII as a Renaissance Pope Dynastic Ambitions and Florence Clement VII can be regarded as a typical Renaissance pope, in the first instance, in that he followed a well-trodden path to the papacy. The second Medici to gain the triple tiara, his ascendancy follows the quasi-dynastic pattern discernible in papal elections following the reunification of the papacy a century earlier in the person of Martin V. Five of the 14 Renaissance popes, in fact, including Clement, succeeded to the Chair of Saint Peter in this way. Paul II, Alexander VI, Pius III, and Julius II each followed family members previously elected pope. These successions became possible because their papal uncles had named them cardinals (in Clement's case Leo X was his cousin). In no other historical period, including notably the succeeding Tridentine and Baroque eras, did closely related living family members become papabile in this way. 2 Yet until Clement, cardinal nephews ambitious for the papacy found they had to wait a generation or more before their efforts reached success. Three popes and 17 years intervened between the death of Eugenius IV and the accession of Paul II. Four popes and 34 years came between the two Borgia popes, Calixtus III and AlexanIt is true that during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the election of a family member as pope thrust into sudden greatness such clans as the Aldobrandini, the Borghese, the Ludovisi, and the Barberini, The emergence of the cardinal nephew as the key figure in papal administration also meant dazzling possibilities for patronage and personal enrichment. Still, none of these cardinal nephews in this era ever succeeded as popes themselves. For the changing role of the College of Cardinals during the sixteenth century, see P. Prodi, // sovrano pontefice: Un corpo e due anime—la monarchic, papale nella prima eta moderna (Bologna: II Mulino, 1982), 167-207. For the family strategy of the Barberini, see L. Nussdorfer, Civic Politics in the Rome of Urban VIII (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 33-8.

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der VI. Four popes and 39 years separated the two Piccolomini popes, Pius II and Pius III (who lived for less than a month after his elevation). Three popes and 19 years followed the death of the first Delia Rovere pontiff, Sixtus IV, before Julius II gained the papal throne. Clement VII's succession, following by less than two years the death of Leo X and with only the brief interlude of Adrian VTs pontificate intervening, thus represents the extreme of this quasi-dynastic pattern of the Renaissance papacy. Indeed, Giulio de' Medici had no qualms about pursuing the papacy directly following his cousin's death, and for a time appeared the leading candidate in the conclave, before eventually the elderly and obscure Dutchman Adrian, then residing in Spain, emerged as a compromise choice. In accord, then, with the accepted dynastic practices of the Renaissance papacy, Giulio de' Medici was raised to the purple by Leo X in September 1513, being named in the first group of cardinals that Leo selected. Like his predecessor Rodrigo Borgia (subsequently Pope Alexander VI), whose uncle Pope Calixtus III named him vice-chancellor, Giulio also eventually gained from Leo X, in March 1517, this key curial post in charge of the papal administration. Similarly, when the archbishopric of Florence had become vacant in 1513 shortly after Leo's accession, the pope named his cousin to head the ecclesiastical hierarchy in his native city, just as Pope Calixtus had named Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia archbishop of Valencia, the city that remained the site for securing the historical fortunes of the Borgia dynasty.3 Like Rodrigo Borgia, Cardinal Giulio gained consideration for becoming pope from his position as an insider, and largely because he was considered a proven administrator. Indeed, many credited him for much of what Leo accomplished. For Clement, then, while prophecies portending his election circulated during Leo's pontificate, oracular dreams and portents seemed less crucial in retrospectively justifying his choice as pope than was the case, for instance, for Nicholas V, Pius II, Sixtus IV, or indeed for his cousin Leo X, all first-time elections in their families. Cardinal Giulio also remained the head of a powerful block of cardinals, and remained wellpositioned during what turned out to be Adrian's short-lived pontificate to succeed him. Clement, moreover, for the conclave from which he emerged as pope, did gain (by lottery) the auspicious assignment for his temporary cell the place beneath Perugino's wall fresco of the Delivery of the Keys in the Sistine Chapel. A popular Renaissance superstition, given credence by Julius IPs election from this propitious placement, held that the cardinal allotted this cell would be elected pope, as later was 3

For Giulio's advancement, see H. C. Butters, Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth Century Florence, 1502-1519 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), esp. 213, 220; for the career of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, see M. Mallett, The Borgias: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty (London: Paladin, 1972), 79-101. After his election as Pope Alexander VI, Borgia named his son Cesare to succeed him as archbishop of Valencia (ibid., 112). As dukes of Gandia, with the family estates and castle located just outside Valencia, the Borgias (retaking the Spanish form of the name, "Borja") remained as Spanish grandees into the eighteenth century (ibid., 242-56). For the politicization of the College of Cardinals, which Alexander VI significantly furthered, see M. Pellegrini, "A Turning-Point in the History of the Factional System in the Sacred College: The Power of Pope and Cardinals in the Age of Alexander VI," in Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492-1700, ed. G. Signorotto and M. A. Visceglia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 8-30.

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said to have been the case also for Clement's successor, Paul III. 4 Nonetheless, the conclave that elected Clement lasted 50 days, the longest in the Renaissance period, prolonged by division between pro-imperialist and pro-French allegiances. In the end, only hard-nosed negotiations with the long-time Medici adversaries, the Colonna, and the steady support of the Emperor Charles V, paved the way for Clement's election.5 Clement, as well as Leo, fits yet another profile characteristic of the Renaissance period. During the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the established ruling families of the states of Italy all sought family membership in the College of Cardinals. Indeed, the Sforza of Milan, the Gonzaga of Mantua, and the Este of Ferrara all attained this goal. What was unusual was that two scions of Florence's leading family, the Medici, gained the ultimate prize of the papacy itself. None of these other ruling dynasties, despite significant efforts, even managed to win one papal election. In actuality, the roots of future Medici possibilities lay in the power and influence that Clement's paternal uncle, Lorenzo the Magnificent, had attained in the complex web of Italian politics and diplomacy. It was his dynastic determination that procured from a pliable Innocent VIII the concession that the Florentine leader's teen-aged second son, Giovanni, the subsequent Leo X, would gain the red hat.6 Clement's elevation, then, can be seen as conforming to identifiable Renaissance patterns. Yet in one key way Clement VII differed from his predecessors, most notably Alexander VI. The Borgia pope had directed much of the papacy's political, diplomatic, and financial resources toward the goal of establishing a permanent Borgia state in central Italy for his son Cesare. Despite the meteoric successes that so impressed Machiavelli, all quickly crumbled away when the inveterate Borgia enemy Giuliano della Rovere gained the papacy in 1503. In Clement's case there already existed a Medici state—Florence. Or if not exactly a Medici state, the Medici, thanks to the aftermath of the Battle of Ravenna and a cooperative Spanish army, had in 1512 returned after 18 years of exile and regained leadership of the ruling regime in their native city. True, Leo had not remained content with Florence as sufficient for Medici dynastic aspirations. Plans were bruited for a time to create a new state for Leo's brother, Giuliano, out of Parma, Piacenza, Modena, and Reggio, territory won for the papacy by Julius II, until Francis I, following his spectacular victory over Swiss forces at the Battle of Marignano, vetoed these ambitions in the negotiations resulting in 4

5 6

D. S. Chambers, "Papal Conclaves and Prophetic Mystery in the Sistine Chapel," JWCl 41 (1978): 322-^6; reprinted with additional material in D. S. Chambers, Individuals and Institutions in Renaissance Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), chap. 16, and the following unnumbered chapter, "Additions and Corrections," 1-11, at 10-11. Pastor, 9:231^43. The marriage of Maddalena, Lorenzo's second daughter, to Franceschetto Cibo, the pope's son, in 1488 helped pave the way for Giovanni's advancement the following year. Giovanni's formal installation as cardinal took place only a month before Lorenzo's death in 1492 and occasioned Lorenzo's famous letter, advising Giovanni on how to conduct himself virtuously and honorably in Rome, "that sink of all iniquity." For the circumstances of Giovanni's advancement and fiill text of Lorenzo's letter to him, see H. Ross Williamson, Lorenzo the Magnificent (New York: Putnam's, 1974), 200-214. Note also J. Hook, Lorenzo de' Medici: An Historical Biography (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984), 166-87.

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the Concordat of Bologna of 1515. Leo then looked elsewhere, and the War of Urbino was fought in 1516-17 to replace Duke Francesco Maria Delia Rovere, Julius IPs nephew, with Leo's own nephew Lorenzo—territorial aggrandizement spurred on by Lorenzo's ambitious mother, Alfonsina. 7 But the early deaths of the younger Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici (in 1516 and 1519, respectively) left only the illegitimate minors Ippolito and Alessandro as the subjects of dynastic aims.8 With Leo's death in 1521, Urbino slid without military resistance back into the hands of Francesco Maria della Rovere. Florence thereby re-emerged as the main focus of future Medici efforts. Cardinal Giulio had been closely identified from the outset with the re-established Medici regime in Florence, and his ties remained close despite the growing tensions with Lorenzo, whom Giulio came increasingly to regard as negligent of his responsibilities and excessively ambitious. After Lorenzo's death in 1519, Cardinal Giulio became the regime's nominal head, though after initially attending directly to Florentine affairs himself, including commissioning several major artistic projects, he found that Rome inevitably occupied his attention, with the result that makeshift arrangements were left for the actual administration of Florence.9 Dynastic ambitions, then, were arguably as fundamental a priority for Clement VII as they were to the Borgias, but Clement's family dynastic concerns as pope focused not on acquiring an Italian state, but instead on preserving one. An initial difficulty stemmed from the minority of the only two prospects, the bastards Ippolito and Alessandro, for inheriting leadership of the Medici regime in Florence. Cardinal Giulio had rather easily overcome the botched assassination plot of 1522, which involved the Soderini and other young Florentine patricians, but when he was elected pope, inevitably the actual governance of Florence became a lower priority. This he entrusted to Silvio Passerini, the cardinal of Cortona, a non-Florentine whom many citizens came to despise.10 Nonetheless, Medici control of Florentine affairs in the period 1523-27 proved crucial to papal finances, in particular because Leo's profligate spending had left the papal treasury depleted. Vast Florentine revenues raised from a heavily burdened citizenry provided much of the financing for the League of Cognac's military campaigns in Lombardy in 1526. Indeed, coping with the 7

On Francesco Maria della Rovere and the War of Urbino, see Cecil Clough's contribution above. For the role and contemporary reputation of Alfonsina, who effectively "ruled" Florence from 1515 until Lorenzo's death in 1519, see N. Tomas, "Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici and the 'Problem' of a Female Ruler in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence," RS 14 (2000): 70-90; S. E. Reiss, "Widow, Mother, Patron of Art: Alfonsina Orsini de' Medici," in Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. S. E. Reiss and D. G. Wilkins (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2001), 125-57, at 135, 153nn.l01-3. 8 On Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici, see the contributions to this collection by Julia Gaisser and Barbara Mailman. 9 For the character and actions of the Medici regime after the return to Florence from exile in 1512, and for Cardinal Giulio's role, see Butters (1985), 187-307, and J. N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512-30 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 56-163. For a perceptive recent treatment of intellectual developments in Florence during this period, including the role of Cardinal Giulio as a patron of humanists, see P. Godman, From Poliziano to Machiavelli: Florentine Humanism in the High Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 180-301. 10 Stephens (1983), 120-23, 164-82.

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staggering costs of military expenditures essentially meant draining Florentine resources to serve papal ends.11 A pontiffs authority as temporal ruler of the Papal States normally produced roughly half the total ordinary income of the papacy in the early sixteenth century, though in turn roughly this same proportion of revenues regularly had to be expended on the fortifications, mercenary forces, and other military costs that enabled the popes to maintain their temporal states.12 Clement's circumstances again represent an extreme of the general situation and explain why, setting dynastic considerations aside, retaining Medici control of Florence was so essential The critical period was from 1527 to 1530. Clement VII lost Florence in the same disastrous campaign that led to his effective imprisonment for seven months in his own fortress, the Castel Sant' Angelo, while Rome endured the Sack. Key to the strategy for the restoration of his fortunes following his escape was recovering Florence for Medici rule. At the same time the leaders of the re-established republican regime, zealous revivers of the Savonarolan vision of Florence as a messianic Elect Nation destined to inaugurate the New Jerusalem, had proclaimed Christ the sole and true lord and king of their city, a proclamation that was both anti-Medicean and anti-papal. 13 Clement's new alliance with Charles V, sealed in the Treaty of Barcelona, paved the way for making imperial forces available for the Medici recovery of Florence, but the prolonged siege of 1529-30 required Clement to divert huge amounts of papal revenues to serve this dynastic end, a situation he was naturally anxious to conceal from the official record-keeping of the papal camera, as Melissa Bullard has shown.14 Control of the Florentine state, initially an asset to Clement's goal of maintaining papal temporal power, thus proved for a time a significant fiscal and political liability. Regardless, Clement was determined to prevail in keeping Florence in Medici hands. Yet despite these setbacks, overall in dynastic terms Clement achieved apparent success, as Barbara McClung Mailman argues in her contribution to this collection. The Medici not only preserved their position in Florence, but strengthened it— granted, at enormous cost—and even then the real creation of ducal (subsequently grand-ducal) Florence belonged to Cosimo I, from the collateral branch of the family, rather than to the dissolute Medici bastard Alessandro, assassinated in 1537. As for the other Medici bastard, Ippolito, Clement, when death seemed imminent in 1529, succeeded in gaining the consent of the College of Cardinals to name him a cardinal at the age of 18. Clement also appointed him to that strategic post of vice-chancellor, thus seemingly passing the mantle of insider curial power to the next Medici generation. Ippolito, flamboyant and dissolute in lifestyle, with a household replete 11

Stephens (1983), 182-202; M. M. Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 119-50. 12 For the general picture of papal finances during this period, see P. Partner, "The 'Budget' of the Roman Church in the Renaissance Period," in Italian Renaissance Studies, ed. E. F. Jacob (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), 256-78; P. Partner, "Papal Financial Policy in the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation," Past and Present 88 (1980): 17-62.

13 L. Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494-1545 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 314-86. 14 Bullard (1980), 151-72, esp. 165 for the efforts to circumvent the record-keeping practices of the papal camera.

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with what contemporaries regarded as exotic Africans and Asians, with his fondness for tournaments and hunts, for theatrical performances and banquets, for dressing as a soldier (including for Titian's famous portrait of him in Hungarian garb) and for the pleasures of courtesans, lived more like a Renaissance prince, which he would have preferred to be, than like a prince of the Church. He, too, died young, reportedly of a fever, in 1535, terminating Clement's aspirations to maintain a Medici grip on the key organs of papal administration. 15 In retrospect, Clement's most remarkable dynastic accomplishment involved the historically significant future of his niece Catherine, Lorenzo's infant daughter, whom Clement married to the eventual heir of the French throne in 1533 and who, as queen of France, became a major player during the era of religious civil wars in that country.16 If in 1534 Clement's dynastic strategies seemed achieved, nonetheless these successes masked the declining status of the papacy as an independent power in Italian and European politics. These are the changed circumstances, discussed in what follows, that made it much more difficult for Clement to achieve the temporal goals of his predecessors, despite the initial advantages of access to Florentine revenues.17 With the accession of Francis I to the crown of France in 1515, and even more with Charles V gaining the Spanish kingdoms in 1516 and being elected Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, the fate of Italy, and indeed of Europe, depended on the fluctuating fortunes of war between these emergent great powers. Navarre, Burgundy, and Flanders remained flashpoints in this prolonged contest, as Francis sought to avoid Habsburg encirclement, and Charles in turn strove to substantiate the imperial claims that dynastic succession had thrust upon him as heir to the vast array of Habsburg possessions. But of all the points of contestation, the duchy of Milan proved the most combustible. The waning days of Leo's pontificate and the early phase of Adrian's found imperial forces gaining the upper hand, as the French were driven from Milan. Francis nevertheless was determined not to remain expelled from Italy, and a major French invasion occurred in late 1523, coinciding with the prolonged conclave that resulted in Clement's election.

15 T. C. P. Zimmermann, Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 107-108, 113-16, 123-8, 138-40. Giovio, at Clement's request, joined Ippolito's entourage in 1529. Giovio accompanied Ippolito on various legations and diplomatic missions to northern Italy and beyond the Alps in the years 1529-34, travels he recounts in his Histories. 16 In 1533, Clement borrowed the staggering sum of 130,000 scudi from his banker Filippo Strozzi in order to defray the costs of Catherine de' Medici's marriage into the French royal house. Bullard (1980), 158-60. 17 A useful sketch of these developments by a master historian of sixteenth-century Italy is Eric Cochrane's volume, posthumously edited by Julius Kirshner, in the Longman History of Italy series, Italy, 1530-1630 (London: Longman, 1988), esp. chap. 2, "Prologue: the Sack of Rome," 7-18, and chap. 4, "A New Political Order," 33-54. See also L. Martines, Power and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Knopf, 1979), 277-96. Stephens (1983), 194-5, offers a succinct analysis of the altered circumstances in the Italian political world that constrained Clement's course of action.

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The World Stage: Political Conflict in Europe and the "Turkish Peril" The intensified conflict between Francis and Charles, and the nearly continuous war in Lombardy, dominated Italian politics and diplomacy during the early years of Clement's pontificate, eventually leading to the disastrous Sack of Rome. But this Habsburg-Valois rivalry was in turn played out against the other great geo-political development in the Mediterranean region during the first half of the sixteenth century: the dramatic expansion of the Ottoman Empire into the center of the Mediterranean and into the heartland of central Europe. Selim the Grim's conquest of Syria and Egypt in 1516-17 gave the Ottomans domination of the eastern Mediterranean. In response to this heightened infidel threat, Leo X spent much of 1517-19 organizing efforts for a pan-European crusade. Cardinal legates fanned out to the European powers in the spring of 1518, empowered to seek ratification for a five years' general truce as a prelude to crusade. Among the papal emissaries was Cardinal Tommaso de Vio, called Cajetan, who addressed the Imperial Diet of Augsburg in August 1518, urging German military and financial support for the planned anti-Ottoman crusade. During the course of subsequent, largely fruitless negotiations, he also managed to engage in the fateful series of interviews with the Augustinian monk and theologian Martin Luther, on the doctrine of indulgences.18 Ambitions to launch a successful crusade against growing Ottoman power had long preoccupied the Renaissance papacy. Crusading initiatives reinforced papal emphasis on headship of the respublica Christiana, and repeatedly curial humanists insisted that war against the infidel was a crucial papal responsibility and one integral to reform. Nonetheless papal crusading efforts in this period were either a tale of disaster, such as the destruction of the Christian knights at Varna on the shores of the Black Sea in 1444, or of dashed hopes, such as the agonizing sense of failure the dying Pius II endured as he waited in vain for the crusading fleet to embark from Ancona in 1463.19 Selim's conquest of Syria and Egypt opened a much more daunting and dangerous phase in the Ottoman threat to Christendom. Under his successor Suleyman the Magnificent, Ottoman forces seemed to advance inexorably. Belgrade, which had withstood Mehmed the Conqueror in 1456, fell after repeated assaults to Suleyman in 1521. Next came Rhodes. The Knights Hospitaler, successful in withstanding the Ottoman attack of 1480, this time faced a full-scale Ottoman assault and succumbed after a five months' siege in 1522. It was to the newly-elected Clement VII that the Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John, Philippe Villiers de L'Isle Adam, arrived as a suppliant to Rome in late 1523. There he was appointed guardian to the conclave that elected Giulio de' Medici pope. As a young man the future Clement VII had 18 K. M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571), 4 vols. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984), 3:172-83. For Cajetan's meeting with Luther, see S. H. Hendrix, Luther and the Papacy: Stages in a Reformation Conflict (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 56-65; for the response of Catholic theologians to Luther's views during the early years of the Reformation controversies, note also D. V. N. Bagchi, Luther's Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518-1525 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991). 19 See C L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 108-23, and the sources cited there.

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been a knight of the Order, and as pope he provided the homeless knights a temporary refuge at Viterbo for four years. Eventually, in 1530, after protracted negotiations with Charles V and other European leaders and with Clement's acquiescence, the knights gained possession of Malta. From this strategic base in the central Mediterranean the re-named Knights of Malta continued to maraud Turkish shipping, and there in 1565 they heroically withstood yet another full-scale Ottoman assault.20 As the Italian powers were grappling for some effective response to the French disaster at Pavia in 1525, which resulted in Francis I being taken as a prisoner to Spain, and with Charles V now seemingly firmly in control of Northern Italy, Ottoman forces were on the move again, this time in Hungary. Again Suleyman was victorious, destroying the Hungarian forces at Mohacs in August 1526.21 During the early years of Clement's reign the respublica Christiana thus experienced major setbacks in Eastern Europe and in the Mediterranean despite the triumphalist evocation of a restored Roman mare nostrum, which George Gorse has identified in the hieroglyphics represented on the fictive ancient naval frieze that appears in Sebastiano del Piombo's portrait of the papal naval commander Andrea Doria [Gorse, Figure 17.1].22 After Francis's release from imprisonment pursuant to the Treaty of Madrid (1526), by which he forswore any claims to Milan or Naples, and the ill-fated antiHabsburg league of Cognac that ensued, the French king fought three more wars with Charles V over the next two decades, each time choosing as opportune an instance when the emperor's preoccupation with the Ottomans or with the Protestants in Germany left imperial strength vulnerable elsewhere. As conflict continued unabated in Italy with the imperial Sack of Rome in 1527 and the failed French siege of Naples the following year, Suleyman took strategic advantage, culminating in the first siege of Vienna of 1529.23 The point of this rapid sketch of the political-diplomatic landscape is to suggest that Clement's room for maneuver was rather more circumscribed than that of his predecessors, and that whatever were his decisions and actions—or in the usual view his congenital indecision and inaction—mattered much less than in the past.24 In the age of gunpowder empires, the papacy was to become no more than a second-class power. These emergent geo-political realities, developments that we see progressively unfold in Guicciardini's great history of this era, inevitably constrained the ambitions of Clement VII and his successors, so that no subsequent sixteenth-century pope could realistically attempt to dominate the affairs of Europe as Julius II once had envisioned doing, nor was Italy anymore the cockpit of the continent. 20 Setton (1984), 3:202-16, 351-2; 4:852-81; H. J. A. Sire, The Knights of Malta (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 57-63. 21 Setton (1984), 3:229-68. 22 See George Corse's analysis of this portrait in his contribution to the present collection. For the imperial Roman allusions in various projects commissioned by Doria, see also G. L. Gorse, "Cornmittenza e ambiente alia 'corte' di Andrea Doria a Geneva," in Arte, Commitenza ed Economia a Roma nelle Corti del Rinascimento (1420-1530), ed. A. Esch and C. L. Frommel (Turin: Einaudi, 1995), 255-71. 23 Setton (1984), 3:269-345. 24 On Clement's reputation for indecision and inaction, see the essays above by Price Zimmermann, Barbara Hallman, and Patricia Osmond.

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Nonetheless, during the course of the sixteenth century, the papacy never relinquished its nominal independence, nor did it fall so far within the Spanish orbit as for a time happened to grand-ducal Florence. Indeed, the Counter-Reformation popes consolidated their administrative hold on the papal states and realized some longterm papal territorial ambitions in central Italy, for instance gaining Ferrara at last in 1598. Rome and the papacy, too, benefited from the general late Renaissance prosperity in the Mediterranean. Investment in rebuilt churches, cardinals* palaces, the great country villas and the grand arterials of Sixtus V's vastly expanded city represent an expenditure in urban fabric and aristocratic rural estates vastly exceeding the scale of Renaissance endeavors.25 Yet vulnerable as the city's defenses proved in the sack of 1527, a wholesale revamping of Rome's fortifications was beyond the scope, or at least the political will, of the popes. When early in Paul Ill's pontificate an Ottoman fleet ominously moored in the Tiber estuary, the pope conceived an ambitious plan to modernize the city's defenses. The initial design proposed reducing the long circuit of walls by bypassing much of the sparsely-inhabited monti and then constructing along this shortened defensive perimeter eighteen powerful, double-flanked bastions, spaced a half-kilometer apart and with intermediary gun emplacements. Of this vast scheme only Antonio da Sangallo the Younger's construction of the bastion at Porta Ardeatina, completed in 1542, ever reached conclusion. A widely admired work of military design, its cost proved prohibitive, at least in the pope's view. The expenditure on this abortive project was slightly more than Sixtus V later spent to the move the Vatican obelisk, though only about a sixth of what that same pope had spent building the Aqua Felice, suggesting that unlike in contemporary Turin, in papal Rome ceremonial and symbolic aspirations, and domestic amenities, held priority over fortification in the projection of the city's image as a Baroque capital. Furthermore, the proposed new wall would have had the added drawback of leaving both the Lateran and Sta. Maria Maggiore unprotected at a time when the pilgrimage to the seven basilicas regained spiritual centrality in pious visits to the Eternal City.26 If, by the later sixteenth century, papal Rome's renewed universalist claims as a site for holiness drew pilgrims from a Catholic world that now stretched from Peru to 25 A useful sketch of these developments is J. Delumeau, "Rome: Political and Administrative Centralization in the Papal State in the Sixteenth Century," in The Late Italian Renaissance. 1525-1630, ed. E. Cochrane (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 287-304, which summarizes many of the findings of Delumeau's monumental Vie economique et sociale de Rome dans la seconde moitie du XVIe siecle, 2 vols. (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1957); see esp. 223-339 for the population growth of the city and the ambitious construction projects of the later sixteenth century. 26 S. Pepper, "Planning versus Fortification: Sangallo's Project for the Defense of Rome," The Architectural Review 159 (1976): 162-9. For a more general consideration of Sangallo's career as a military architect, including designs for the refortification of the port of Ancona that Clement commissioned late in his pontificate, see N. Adams and S. Pepper, "The Fortification Drawings," in The Architectural Drawings of Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and his circle, ed. C. L. Frommel and N. Adams, 2 vols. (New York: Architectural History Foundation, and Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), 1:61-74. For the priority given to fortification in the planning and conception of Turin as a capital for the dynasty of Savoy, see M. D. Pollak, Turin, 1564-1680: Urban Design, Military Culture, and the Creation of an Absolutist Capital (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

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the Philippines, the actual governance of papal affairs became more parochial. In a trend marking much of the course of the Renaissance papacy, the papal civil service became almost exclusively Italian. And beginning with Sixtus IV's pontificate, virtually all curial offices became venal. Italian notables increasingly found it advantageous to look to a position at the papal court as a crucial investment strategy to secure family interests. Advancement through the papal offices required significant capital, shrewd judgment, and access to insider clientage networks. Tuscan merchant and banking families benefited handsomely from the opportunities afforded by the two Medici pontificates. Among Medici clients who advanced through this system was the Florentine banking family of the Pucci. Lorenzo Pucci began his curial career under Innocent VIII as a clerk in the apostolic chamber, then became the datary under Julius II. Leo X named him cardinal in 1513. As grand penitentiary, the head of a key organ of the papal judiciary, in late 1527 Pucci accompanied the papal court to Orvieto, to which Clement VII had escaped from the Castel Sant' Angelo, where he had been trapped for seven months following the Sack.27 There Pucci had responsibility for advising Clement regarding responses to the initial legal stratagems that Cardinal Wolsey and others advanced for resolving Henry VIII's Great Matter—his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn. The divorce inevitably became caught up in the larger diplomatic, political, and religious issues at stake between the papacy, Spain, and England, but it seems telling that it was a curial careerist like Pucci who surfaced in the critical position at this juncture.28 The system of venal offices, the careerist impulses, the competition for office and influence—all those developments that worked to the general advantage of the family strategies pursued by Italian notables, and to the special advantage of Florentines during the Medici pontificates—inevitably produced a particular curial point of view. These institutional imperatives tended to promote a certain intellectual and cultural insularity, and to give priority to the insider needs of the papal court. Even when curialists acknowledged the ethical and spiritual shortcomings of the Roman Curia, as a number did, it proved an insuperable obstacle for them to be committed to reforms that would fundamentally threaten their material self-interests and their selfimage. By temperament and outlook, the papal civil service did not develop individuals prepared to engage in any agonizing rethinking of the institutional priorities of the Renaissance papacy. Even the trauma of the Sack did not produce any concerted effort for reform. Instead, as Kenneth Gouwens has perceptively shown, curial humanists in the years after 1527 tended to "remember" the splendor of a pre-Sack

27 On the papal court in Orvieto, see Anne Reynolds's essay above. 28 For these developments, see in general P. Partner, The Pope's Men: The Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), esp. 165 and 246 for the Pucci; and B. M. Hallman, Italian Cardinals, Reform and the Church as Property, 1492-1563 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985): see 138 for the Pucci. For a revealing early humanist treatise (written 1438) that apparently praises the advantages and opportunities afforded by a career at the Roman Curia while deploring its corrupting practices, see the edition with English translation and extensive introduction of C S. Celenza, Renaissance Humanism and the Papal Curia: Lapo da Castiglionchio the Younger's "De curiae commodis " (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999).

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Golden Age, whose perceived glories gave retrospective historical legitimacy to their efforts to cultivate a revived romanitas in the city of the popes.29

The Cultural Outlook of Early Sixteenth-Century Rome

Curial Humanists and the Image of Rome The political and institutional realities sketched here form what from a current perspective (or at least that of this historian) appear to be the underlying political and institutional forces shaping the papacy in the age of Clement VII. Certainly Clement himself and his close political advisers, like the Francophile datary Gian Matteo Giberti, focused extensively on what we could call strategic policy. The people of Clement's administration regarded apprehensively the Ottoman advances, and sought, albeit without much success, to stem the tide in Hungary. If frequently their political judgments can be found wanting in recognizing the course of events in Italy, nonetheless in their efforts to advance papal temporal interests they strove to understand the underlying motivation of their opponents and to calculate the advantages of the options available. This was the world in which Guicciardini operated, and the historical analysis offered here is one he would have found recognizable. Yet in some sense this is not fundamentally how reality was perceived, or at least projected, in the dominant culture of the papal court. As Kenneth Gouwens has noted, there existed in the ideology of the cunal humanists a certain cultural myopia.30 By reiterating the claims for Roma Aeterna, by evoking a renewed Golden Age, by stressing a supernal vision for Rome as capital that transcended the mere vicissitudes of history, the humanists of Renaissance Rome resisted deploying the resources of historical analysis that marked the development of humanist historiography in Florence, or even in the Milan of the Sforza. There the earthly city and the civic world, whether republican or despotic, was regarded in some measure as the product of human intention and intervention, and the historian's task was to identify

29 K. Gouwens, Remembering the Renaissance: Humanist Narratives of the Sack of Rome (Leiden: Brill, 1998),esp. 133-40, 168-74.

30 Gouwens (1998), 23-26, 99-102. A number of important scholarly works devoted to humanist culture in early sixteenth-century Rome have appeared recently. These include I. D. Rowland, The Culture of High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in SixteenthCentury Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); A. Reynolds, Renaissance Humanism at the Court of Clement VII: Francesco Berni 's "Dialogue against Poets" in Context. Studies, with an Edition and Translation (New York: Garland, 1997); and J. H. Gaisser, Pierio Valeriano on the III Fortune of Learned Men: A Renaissance Humanist and His World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999). Professor Gaisser's learned introduction to Valeriano's text presents pertinent material on the career of this curial humanist whose patrons included Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and who subsequently served as tutor of the pope's young nipoti, Alessandro and Ippolito. Her volume also contains an invaluable section (261-330) of biographical sketches, including many humanists active in Rome in the early sixteenth century. See also her chapter below.

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those individual and collective actions that had produced this history. In Rome, the monarchical and courtly character of the Renaissance papacy worked to encourage a focus on biography and on history as the cult of fame, evident for instance in Paolo Giovio's historiography, rather than on an analysis of causes.32 Further in the curial outlook of papal Rome the sphere of the merely human was circumscribed by the persistent emphasis on a loftier, sacred destiny directed by forces transcending human agency. History in this sense becomes the unfolding of divine providence, with the result that curial humanists denied or accorded only a sharply diminished role for fortune in human affairs, unlike the prominence placed on fortuna in other humanist discourses produced during the Italian Wars, notably of course in Guicciardini. 33 This curialist culture involved a distinctive way of seeing Rome, not with the goal of pragmatic historical analysis but instead with that of evoking feelings of wonder and stupefaction. Rather than a city situated within the historical processes of time and space, shaped by human actions, in papal Rome the perceiver's gaze was directed to a congeries of nodal points, sacred to the conjoined Christian and classical destiny of the city that transcended the merely human. This meant underscoring the extra-temporal and perennial characteristics of the city, which as Bonner Mitchell has suggested in his analysis of ceremonial apparati for events like the imperial coronation of Charles V, dignified events and personages by removing them from the arena of ambiguity and contingency.34 It also meant the tendency to cultivate archaeological and antiquarian rather than historical inquiries, for it was the recovered finds from Roman soil, like the statue of Laocoon, that gave tangible testimony to the city's eternal destiny.35 In this sense topography mattered more than history in defining the city's significance. Further, that Rome was somehow the realized New Jerusalem, the claim for realized eschatology that runs as a particular refrain through the speakers at

31 32 33 34

35

For Milan, see G. lanziti, Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas: Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). See Price Zimmermann's essay above for a perceptive discussion of the differing historiographical approaches of Giovio and Guicciardini. See also Zimrnermann (1995), esp. 268-72. I argue these points at greater length in C. L. Stinger, "Roman Humanist Images of Rome," in Roma Capitale (1447-1527), ed. S. Gensini (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1994), 1538, esp. 25-38. I refer to Professor Bonner Mitchell's paper, "History, Mythology, and Allegory in the Pageantry at Bologna, 1529-30," delivered at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (Florence, 2000). These cultural tendencies are perceptively analyzed in Rowland (1998). For the Laocoon, see S. Settis, Laocoonte: fama e stile (Rome: Donzelli Editore, 1999), esp. the appendices, "La fama di Laocoonte nei testi del Cinquecento," ed. S. Maffei. For the Laocoon especially as emblematic for the Renaissance encounter with recovered ancient works of art, see L. Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), chap. 1 (esp. 2-17) and passim. For the general topic, note A. Grafton, "The Ancient City Restored: Archaeology, Ecclesiastical History, and Egyptology," in Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture, ed. A. Grafton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 87-123, and P. Jacks, The Antiquarian and the Myth of Antiquity: The Origins of Rome in Renaissance Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

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the Fifth Lateran Council, also diverted the cultural gaze from the contingent and mundane. Triumphalist imagery, invoking the ritualized traversal of Rome's hallowed terrain that formed part of the ancient Roman ritual of triumph, but now ascribing the title of triumphator to Christ or to Christ's Vicar, formed a leitmotif in the humanist imagery of Rome from Flavio Biondo to Cristoforo Marcello.36 Perhaps the apex of such visions appears in Marco Girolamo Vida's Latin epic poem, the Christiad. Begun around 1518 by this member of the Order of Canons Regular of Saint John Lateran, work proceeded over the next decade and a half during Vida's extended residence in the priory of his Order at Frascati in the Alban Hills. In 1532 he presented the completed poem to Clement VII. Earlier, in the last years of Julius IPs pontificate, Vida had worked on a classically Latin epic Juliad, celebrating the warrior pope's military exploits. In the Christiad he deployed self-consciously Vergilian epic conceits in recounting Christ's earthly odyssey. The poem begins, in medias res, with Christ entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and then in long flashbacks Vida recounts the Annunciation, Christ's birth, and his active ministry. Then come the events of the Passion, including the Crucifixion, followed by the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the descent of the Paraclete. The Ascension forms the climax of the poem, and Vida explicitly compares Christ's celebratory entrance into Paradise to the Roman triumphator's ascent of the Capitoline Hill. Rome too is praised as the true earthly home of Christendom, for like Troy, Jerusalem and its Temple will be destroyed, and the New Jerusalem will rise on the banks of the Tiber, where dominion will be yielded to Christ. There one high priest, Christ's vicar, heir to the mission of both ancient Rome and Jerusalem, but surpassing these, will promulgate laws for the whole of mankind. Both in content and in form, Vida's poem celebrates Rome's timeless destiny, deploying what Roman humanists regarded as the perfected poetic discourse of Vergilian epic. Thus, as a cultural-linguistic project, Vida's Vergilianism parallels the Roman humanist emphasis on Ciceronianism as the perfected standard of classical Latin prose.37 Vida's poem also exemplifies the persistence of what could be called the quanta magis theme in the Roman humanist outlook: that is, whatever aspects of greatness are to be found in ancient classical Rome, whether as world capital, common fatherland of all peoples, lawgiver to all nations, or civilizing force, so much the more (quanta magis) are these the attributes of Renaissance Rome as papal capital, for now its mission is not just to the earthly world but rather to the surpassing and ultimate goal of leading humanity to its heavenly destiny, the realization of which will bring history to its end. The quanta magis theme also fits with the tendency to read developments in terms of prophecy and fulfillment, the figural or typological view persistent in humanist oratory, in Vatican decorative programs, and in ceremony and

36 Stinger (1998), 240^6. 37 M. A. Di Cesare, Vida's "Christiad" and Vergilian Epic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), esp. 202-79. For the Ciceronianism of the curial humanists, see J. F. D'Amico, Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).

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pageantry, that finds for instance Moses and Solomon as the antetypes of the Vicars of Christ.38 Similarly, there was a tendency in Roman Renaissance culture to understand causality in exemplary terms rather than as a matter of historical contingency. Consider, for instance, Zaccaria Ferreri, a humanist who was commissioned by the Medici popes to produce a classicized Latin revision of the breviary and of liturgical hymns and who, in a poetic dream-vision addressed to the newly elected Leo X, envisioned Rome as being transplanted to the sphere of Jupiter, where the popes, Jovelike in their just authority, formed the font of just law for all humanity. Ferreri offered the following advice on the course of church reform to Pope Adrian VI: the Roman Church, the erstwhile Zion that had been marked by purity and pristine beauty, now was a corrupted Babylon that had infected the Christian world; but the way to end this infection and to restore the world to virtue was clear: "Purge Rome, and the world will be cleansed; restore [this is the key word instaurare] and reform Rome, and the whole world will be restored and reformed."39 The exemplary role of Rome was repeatedly affirmed as well in the urbi-orbi linkage, that is "to the city and to the world.'* Thus Antonio Pucci, Lorenzo's nephew, and himself named cardinal upon his uncle's death in 1531, in his address to the Fifth Lateran Council in 1514 had also argued that reform of the Church must begin with Rome: for judgment should proceed first from the House of the Lord and then spread to the world: "Urbem primum, ut judicium incipiat a domo Domini, inde orbem ... restitue."40 This stress on the exemplary is apparent also in the repeated image of Rome as speculum (mirror). When, for instance, Paris de' Grassis, papal Master of Ceremonies under Julius II and Leo X, describes the quadrangular seating pattern for the pope and the College of Cardinals meeting in Consistory or in the papal chapel, he claims that it forms the earthly reflection of the throne of God and the 24 elders, the setting for heavenly liturgies described in the Book of Revelation. 41 This proclivity to view Rome as the wanton, corrupting Babylon, or alternatively as the pristine, holy Jerusalem, has its roots in medieval prophecy. During the Avignonese papacy critics of papal corruption, including Petrarch, frequently played on the juxtaposition of Avignon/Babylon and Rome/Jerusalem, as did popular 38 Stinger (1998), 201-26. 39 "Porro cum Romana ecclesia sit caput, mater et magistra omnium ecclesiarum, ea infecta et reliquiae facile inficiuntur ecclesiae, et ea purgata praeclarisque virtutibus, et moribus instaurata et reformata, reliquiae instaurantur et reformantur ecclesiae. Purga Romam, purgatur mundus. Instaura, reforma Romam, instauratur, reformatur orbis universus...." R. E. McNally, "Pope Adrian VI (1522-23) and Church Reform," AHP1 (1969): 253- 85, esp. 272-5. For Ferreri, note also J. Shearman, Raphael's Cartoons in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen and the Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel (London: Phaidon, 1972), 1-2. 40 N. H. Minnich, "'Incipiat iudicium a domo doming: The Fifth Lateran Council and the Reform of Rome," in Reform and Authority in the Medieval and Reformation Church, ed. G. F Lytle (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1981), 127^12; reprinted as chap. 5 in N. H. Minnich, The Catholic Reformation: Council, Churchmen, Controversies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993). 41 N. H. Minnich and H. W. Pfeiffer, S.J., "De Grassi's 'Conciliabulum' at Lateran V: the De Gargiis Woodcut of Lateran V Re-examined," AHP 19 (1981): 147-72, at 154; note also for the general theme of Rome as speculum, Stinger (1998), 70-71, 295-6.

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prophecies in the Renaissance period that viewed Rome as the domain of the Antichrist or, by contrast, as the seat of the longed-for Angelic Pope. In the opening years of the sixteenth century, Rome was aflood with prophecy. The Savonarolan movement and the ferment surrounding the pseudo-Amadeite Apocalypsis Nova with its prophetic visions of an imminent Pastor Angelicus and of Rome fulfilling its holy destiny as a realized New Jerusalem, combined with humanist interests in the cabala and other esoteric ancient sources of the occult, contributed to a renewed emphasis on such prophetic themes. The preoccupation with monstrous births and other portentous signs linked popular and learned culture with interpretations pointing either to impending trauma or messianic transformation. 42 The frequently evoked antithesis of Babylon/Jerusalem neatly corresponds, moreover, to fundamental features of epideictic rhetoric, the classical oratory of blame and praise, or of diatribe and celebration, which formed so persistent a characteristic of Roman humanist discourse.4 In alt of this there is the pattern of reifying Rome as a static image or sign, alternatively manifesting itself as the haunt of the demonic or as the gateway to the celestial.44 That the underlying nature of reality was extra-temporal rather than historical found favor as well in the intellectual assumptions of the canonists and scholastic theologians in Rome. These professional traditions, with their roots in medieval university training, arguably exercised more influence in Renaissance Rome than did the humanists. Indeed, for a century before the Council of Trent, there had developed in Rome a significant revival of Aquinas's theology. The Thomistic emphasis on hierarchy, order, stability, and harmony found favorable reception among papal theologians like Cardinal Cajetan, who defended the hierocratic claims for papal authority over the Church as integral to the divinely-ordained structure for human salvation. 45 A telling instance of the proclivity in Renaissance Rome to regard truth in static or at least metahistorical terms can be seen in the repeated critiques of Lorenzo Valla's assault on the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine. Recent scholarly work 42 O. Niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy, trans. L. G. Cochrane (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); M. Reeves, ed., Prophetic Rome in the High Renaissance Period (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). For the "Rome as Babylon" theme, note the sources referred to in Stinger (1998), 353-54, n. 262; for Rome as Jerusalem, see ibid., 222-6, 318-21. 43 J. W. O'Malley, S.J., Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric. Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court, c 1450-1521 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1979). 44 Cf. Gouwens (1998), 140, for a similar conclusion. 45 For the revival of Thornism, see esp. J. W. O'Malley, "Some Renaissance Panegyrics of Aquinas," RQ 27 (1974): 174-92, and J. W. O'Malley, "The Feast of Thomas Aquinas in Renaissance Rome: A Neglected Document and its Import," RSCI 35 (1981): 1-27. See also Stinger (1998), 142-7; and, on the most significant artistic representation of Aquinas in Renaissance Rome, see G. L. Geiger, Filippino Lippi's Carafa Chapel: Renaissance Art in Rome (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1986). For Cajetan, see the useful anthology, including extended introduction and commentary of J. Wicks, S.J., ed. and trans., Cajetan Responds: A Reformation Reader (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1978); note esp. 105-44 for the English translation of Cajetan's The Divine Institution of the Pontifical Office over the Whole Church in the Person of the Apostle Peter. 1521.

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has shown that it is a misjudgment to regard Valla's diatribe as the quintessential exemplar of humanist textual-historical debunking of a medieval forgery. Valla meant primarily to oppose the historical and theological premises of "Constantinian ecclesiology," that is, that the Roman Church is heir to the Imperium of ancient Rome. For Valla the Vicar of Christ could not also be the heir to Caesar.46 Ronald Delph has shown, too, that Agostino Steuco—who, as we will see shortly, had his own reasons for defending an imperial Church—on the basis of newly-discovered Greek and Latin manuscripts and superior codicological and philological methods could cast doubt on Valla's textual-critical conclusions.47 More typically, Valla's critics either attacked his motives or dismissed his historical critique as irrelevant and therefore inconsequential. For a person like Pietro Edo, who addressed his refutation of Valla's work to Pope Alexander VI, Constantine belonged not to mere human history but to sacred destiny, for Constantine was converted and guided by divine will. This meant that the Donation was impervious to historical critique.48 The Donation indeed could still be invoked to justify current papal policies. A certain Archangelus Ferrosius, in a work belonging to the by then hackneyed genre on papal power, defends Clement VII's siege of Florence in 1529 as a just war. He claims that the Donation shows that Etruria was included in the concessions Constantine had made to Pope Sylvester, thus giving the pope jurisdiction over Florence. For good measure, as a further justification for papal action against a recalcitrant people, he added that the patent enormity of Florentine sins could hardly be overlooked.49 The Donation of Constantine is also, notably, one of the major, tapestrylike frescoes in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican Palace, initially designed, in part at least, by Raphael for Leo X, but left incomplete at the pontiffs death, with work resuming only after Clement's accession, under the direction of Giulio Romano.50 Here the elements of Constantinian myth, including Raphael's placing the site of 46 S. I. Camporeale, "Lorenzo Valla's Oratio on the Pseudo-Donation of Constantine: Dissent and Innovation in Early Renaissance Humanism," 77/757 (1996): 9-26; note also in this same issue devoted in large part to a "Symposium" on Valla, R. Fubini, "Humanism and Truth: Valla Writes against the Donation of Constantine," 79-86. 47 R. K. Delph, "Valla Grammaticus, Agostino Steuco, and the Donation of Constantine," 7777 57 (1996): 55-77. 48 M. Miglio, "L'umanista Pietro Edo e la polemica sulla Donazione di Costantino," Bullettino dell'Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano 79 (1968): 167-32; for further references, see Stinger (1998), 247-54. 49 De potestate summi Pontiflcis, eius veneratione, et cognominatione, ac de justo bello Clem. VIIcontra Florentines* BAV, Vat. Lat. 4125, fols. 55v-68v. 50 The major monograph on the Sala is R. Quednau, Die Sala di Costantino im Vatikanischen Palast: Zur Dekoration der beiden Medici-Papste LeoX und Clemens VII (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1979). Recent studies include M. Rohlmann, "Leoninische Siegverheissung und clementinische Heilserfullung in der Sala di Costantino," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 57 (1994): 153-69; P. P. Fehl, "Raphael as a Historian: Poetry and Historical Accuracy in the Sala di Costantino," Artibus et Historiae 28 (1993): 9-76. See also Chastel (1983), 50-67. For the broader historical context, including representations of Constantine in the Roman artistic commissions of the later sixteenth-century popes, see J. Freiberg, "In the Sign of the Cross: The Image of Constantine in the Art of CounterReformation Rome," in Piero della Francesca and His Legacy, ed. M. A. Lavin (Washington, D.C: National Gallery of Art), 1995,66-87.

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Constantine's vision of the Cross at the site of Peter's tomb in the Vatican with all its accompanying topographical resonance for the future papal capital, proclaim the timeless glory of the papacy, brought about by the mystery of divine providence working from beyond history to achieve its ends. The Donation is the scene in the Sala most closely identified with Clement VII. His personal impresa, CANDOR ILLAESVS (whiteness undamaged, innocence unharmed) appears here.51 Constantine is depicted kneeling before Pope Sylvester, who bears Clement's features, against the backdrop of the twisted spiral columns of Old Saint Peter's, part of the spoils, so went the medieval legend, from Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The columns, that formed an iconostasis before the confessio over the tomb of Peter in the Constantinian basilica, included one against which Christ had leaned while preaching in the Temple and that thereby acquired miraculous curative powers.52 These columns, according to the legend, were brought to Rome by Titus as part of the spoils of conquest in the Jewish War and were initially installed in the Templum Pads. It was Constantine, the builder of Old Saint Peter's, who then ordered their transfer to the basilica, serving as the human means by which the divine destiny of Rome as the New Jerusalem became a realized sign. In Giulio Romano's depiction of the scene, what Constantine presents as embodying his Donation is not a document, interestingly, but rather a statuette of the goddess Roma, a more multivalent and more potent image of the transfer of Roman imperium from emperor to pope.53 Beyond Clement: Representing Rome under Paul HI \ am struck by the extent to which these mythic images of Rome's singular destiny continued into the Tridentine period. Certain imperial claims and topoi, it is true, gradually became more muted after the Council of Trent. Papal achievements were proclaimed more in sacralized terms of sagacious and providential governance rather than as manifesting classical valor or magnanimity. By the end of the century, papal imagery and oratory devoted increasing interest to the early Roman martyr-saints and emphasized how the physical transformation of the city revealed the triumph of Christian holiness, extirpating pagan errors and superstition.54 Significant interest nonetheless persisted in a classical figure like Hercules, the civilizing hero associated with the foundation myths of Rome. The archaeological discovery in 1545 of the 51 M. Perry, '"Candor Illaesvs1: the 4Impresa' of Clement VII and other Medici Devices in the Vatican Stanze," BM 119 (1977): 676-86. 52 For Renaissance reference to the healing powers of the column believed to have come from the Temple in Jerusalem, see Shearman (1972), 56-7. 53 Fehl (1993), 49-53, notes that it was Vasari who first credited Giulio Romano with substituting the statuette of the goddess Roma for the written text of the Donation, remarking that this was a more eloquent depiction of the event. Fehl suggests that the actual document of the Donation may also be represented in the fresco, held in the hand of one of the background figures, apparently in the garb of a Greek priest, who forms part of the procession around the papal altar, and who is seemingly en route to depositing the parchment scroll in the confessio over the grave of the Apostle Peter. 54 F J. McGinness, Right Thinking and Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 167-92.

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famed Farnese Hercules helped reinforce these notions.55 Imperial and triumphalist claims reemerged with particular prominence in Michelangelo's designs for the Campidoglio under Paul III, and they are keynotes too in the Sala Regia and in the Sala Paolina in Castel Sant'Angelo. 56 Nor did the widespread influence of Pauline spirituality and an evangelical concern for personal salvation evident in Italian intellectual and cultural circles of the 1530s and 1540s mean the eclipse of older Renaissance Roman views. True, figures like Gasparo Contarini and Reginald Pole focused on an interionzed spiritual experience fundamentally different from the visual manifestations of reborn imperial Rome that the curial humanists of Julian and Leonine Rome had highlighted. 57 And Pole and the spirituali attracted converts to the evangelical cause, such as the humanist poet Marcantonio Flaminio, who abandoned elegiac eroticism for religious themes.58 But the curial humanist Agostino Steuco, who spent a dozen years at the papal court during Paul IIFs pontificate and who subsequently joined the pro-papal party at the Council of Trent, stressed against the views of Erasmus and Luther that the external pomp and splendor of liturgical rituals were essential to creating awe and respect for the sacred. So too did the scale and wealth manifest in the Vatican complex affirm 55 C. Burroughs, "The Building's Face and the Herculean Paradigm: Agendas and Agency in Roman Renaissance Architecture," Res 23 (1993): 7-30. Another project, the decoration of the Casino of the Orti Farnesiani, created by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in the 1570s on the Palatine Hill, made topographical reference to the story of Hercules and Cacus, the legendary events of which were supposed to have occurred on that site; similarly, the Sala d'Ercole of the Villa Farnese at Caprarola depicted the building of an ancient temple of Hercules by the shores of nearby Lago di Vico, made, according to local legend, by Hercules himself The iconography of both projects was created by Fulvio Orsini, a learned antiquarian, epigrapher, and bibliophile who served Cardinal Farnese as an artistic adviser during the later 1560s and 1570s: see C. Robertson, "// Gran Cardinale" Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 114-15, 134-7,223-30. 56 For Michelangelo's work on the Campidoglio, see Stinger (1998), 258-64 and the literature cited therein. Charles Burroughs has recently argued in "Michelangelo at the Campidoglio: Artistic Identity, Patronage, and Manufacture," Arbitus et Historiae 28 (1993): 85-111, that the Capitoline remodelling projects received initial impetus from Rome's municipal leaders, rather than from the papacy, and that the original plans, particularly for the Palazzo dei Conservatori, set forth civic and broadly republican values as they related to the patriciate's views of the history and destiny of Rome. For the Sala Regia, note especially L. Partridge and R. Starn, "Triumphalism and the Sala Regia in the Vatican," in "All the World's a Stage": Art and Pageantry in the Renaissance and Baroque, ed. B. Wisch and S. S. Munshower, 2 vols. (University Park: Dept. of Art History, Pennsylvania State University, 1990), 1:22-81; for the Sala Paolina, see R. Harprath, Papst Paul III. als Alexander der Grosse: Das Freskenprogramm der Sala Paolina in der Engelsburg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978), and E. Schroter, "Zur Inhaltsdeutung des Alexander-Programms der Sala Paolina in der Engelsburg," Romisches Quartalschrift 75 (1980): 76-99. 57 E. G. Gleason, Gasparo Contarini: Venice. Rome, and Reform (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993); D. Fenlon, Heresy and Obedience in Tridentine Italy: Cardinal Pole and the Counter Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); cf T. F. Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 58 C. Maddison, Marcantonio Flaminio: Poet, Humanist and Reformer (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965).

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the majesty and authority of the papacy. Indeed, Steuco justified papal temporal power, and the income derived therefrom, as essential sources to sustain the ritual splendor—the tangible signs of the sacred and of the majesty of the divine—that to his mind were required to inculcate piety and to lead men to God. For Steuco, as for many of his humanist predecessors, there was a localization of the sacred in Rome that justified its tangible manifestation in splendid building and ceremony.59 Paul III in fact revived much of the ritual pageantry and ceremonial splendor of Julian and Leonine Rome. His renewal of the processions connected to the Feast of the Assumption and of the Festa d'Agone, the parade of floats that formed part of the Roman celebration Carnival (the 1536 revival recreated the Roman triumph of the pope's namesake, the victorious Roman consul Aemilius Paullus), acted to resanctify or at least to reinforce the sacrality of Rome's processional routes.60 So the cultural developments of Renaissance Rome persisted, if in a somewhat attenuated form, even in the fundamentally altered religious and political circumstances of the mid- and later sixteenth century. High Renaissance views for defining the dignity and centrality of Rome as caput mundi (head of the world), as civitas sacerdotalis et regia (a royal and priestly city) and as patria communis (the common fatherland of all peoples) retained much of their resonance and potency into the Tridentine period. In this sense Renaissance Rome lived on even after the Renaissance papacy had drawn to an end.

59 R. K. Delph, "From Venetian Visitor to Curial Humanist: The Development of Agostino Steuco's 'Counter'-Reformation Thought," RQ 57 (1994): 102-39. 60 C. Burroughs, "The Last Judgment of Michelangelo: Pictorial Space, Sacred Topography, and the Social World," Artibus et Historiae 32 (1995): 55-89.

PART TWO: PATRONAGE, CULTURAL PRODUCTION, AND REFORM

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Clement VII as Patron

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Chapter 11

Clement VII and Michelangelo: An Anatomy of Patronage* William E. Wallace

On 25 November 1523, exactly one week after the election of Pope Clement VII, Michelangelo wrote to his quarry superintendent in Carrara: "You will have heard that Medici is made pope, which I think will rejoice everyone. I expect, for this reason, that as far as art is concerned many things will be accomplished here."1 Michelangelo's confidence was well-founded, for Clement was a discriminating and generous patron with whom Michelangelo already had enjoyed a long, fruitful relationship. Not only were the two boyhood acquaintances, but they had worked together successfully during the papacy of Leo X. It was Cardinal Giulio de' Medici who, in effect, "managed" the artist, as Sheryl Reiss has demonstrated in her extremely fine study of Giulio de1 Medici's patronage.2 With Giulio's election, Michelangelo had every reason to be optimistic, and the next few years were among his most creative, fully justifying his uncharacteristic expression of satisfaction. Eager to renew work on the temporarily suspended New Sacristy, Michelangelo went to Rome in early December 1523 to pay his respects and to confer with the newly elected pontiff. Clement gave Michelangelo assurances of financial support to carry out the sacristy, as well as the additional obligation to erect a library at San Lorenzo (Figure 11.1). In one of the earliest letters following the artist's visit to Rome, Michelangelo was informed of the pope's urgent desire "to make up for lost time." 3 The pope's eagerness, even impatience, is manifest in the flurry of letters that passed between Florence and Rome, on the order of two and three missives a week (the mail moving faster in the sixteenth century than it does today).

*

1 2

3

I would like to thank Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl Reiss for their herculean efforts in organizing the sessions devoted to Clement VII at the meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Florence (March 2000), for their invitation to present this paper there, and for their friendly assistance. I would also like to thank Paul Barolsky, Caroline Elam, Ralph Lieberman, and Michael Sherberg for their help and constructive comments. "Arete inteso chome Medici e facto papa, di che mi pare si sia rallegrato tucto el mondo; ond'io stimo che qua, circha I'arte, si fara molte chose." Carteggio, 3:1. S. E. Reiss, "Cardinal Giulio de' Medici as a Patron of Art, 1513-1523" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1992). See also S. E. Reiss, "Clemens VII," in Hochrenaissance, 55-69; M. Hirst, '"per lui il mondo ha cosi nobil opera': Michelangelo und Papst Clemens VII," in ibid., 429-31. "[S]i che ogni studio, ogni fatica et diligentia v'a a esser gioia per riconperare e' tenpi persi." Carteggio, 3:5.

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Money, a frequent concern of Michelangelo and of any Renaissance artist and patron, was not at first an issue. Shortly after Clement's election, Michelangelo was informed that he should spend "Whatever monies he wanted," and at other times was reminded "to spare no expense" and "not to worry about the cost."4 Michelangelo suggested that a salary of 15 ducats would be sufficient; Clement made it 50, that is, a monthly income equivalent to an entire year's salary for most skilled workers.5 During the course of the next three years, Michelangelo was urged "to think only of work" while receiving numerous assurances of the pope's interest, unfailing encouragement, and financial support.6 Such a carte blanche is rare in the world of artistic patronage. Never before had Michelangelo, or any Renaissance artist, enjoyed such unqualified financial support and personal attention from a pope. Having an enlightened patron with access to the wealth of the Church provided an exceptional opportunity for making art. In addition, Michelangelo already had in place an extensive network of friends, assistants, and intermediaries—even some unwanted volunteers like Andrea Sansovino—who were ready to assist his endeavors.7 Moreover, many of the logistical problems connected with Clement's Florentine commissions had been worked out while Michelangelo labored on the fa9ade of San Lorenzo. Although the contract for this giant enterprise had been formally canceled in 1520, the quarrying and transport operations continued unabated, largely because contracts for materials had already been let, and Florence—especially the Cathedral's Operai—proved insatiable for marble.8 Thus, when Michelangelo once again needed materials to complete the New Sacristy, he had recourse to the supply and transport arrangements established five years previously.9 Scores of quarrymen and supervisors, carters, shippers, and agents, as well as the attendant equipment were already in place and functioning with relative efficiency. Indeed, Michelangelo merely had to check on operations, as he did when, just after Clement's election, he dispatched a trusted associate to the quarries and shortly after received word that "we attend to

4

5 6 7 8 9

Carteggio, 3:5, 12, 22, 80. Three times Giovan Francesco Fattucci wrote, unon guardate a spesa" (Carteggio, 3:76, 80, 84). In a classic article on the Laurenziana, Rudolf Wirtkower misunderstood the financial situation at San Lorenzo. See R. Wittkower, "Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana," AB 16 (1934), 123-218, esp. 195; cf. the revised view of W. E. Wallace, "Bank Records Relating to Michelangelo's Medici Commissions at San Lorenzo, 1520-1533," Rivista d'arte 44 (1992): 3-27, and W. E. Wallace, Michelangelo at San Lorenzo: The Genius as Entrepreneur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 182. See Wallace (1994), 104. Clement cleverly justified expending papal monies on a church in Florence when he quipped, "the wealth of the church is spent on the church" (Cartegg/o,3:12). "[C]he atendiate a'llavorare et non guardate a'nulla." Carteggio, 3:24. Similar expressions are found in Carteggio, 3:25, 95, 210, 212, 214-15, 224, 232, and 233. See Wallace (1994), 97. For the cancellation (or postponement) of the contract, the fate of the marbles, and Michelangelo's bitterness afterwards, see Reiss (1992), 288-92 (which emphasizes Giulio de* Medici's role), and Wallace (1994), 71^. Wallace (1994), chaps. 1, 2; W. E. Wallace, "Drawings from the Fabbrica of San Lorenzo during the Tenure of Michelangelo," in Michelangelo Drawings, ed. C. H. Smyth (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1992), 117-41; Wallace (1992a).

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nothing but quarrying and roughing out marble."10 Michelangelo even obtained permission from the pope to replace certain marbles that he judged of inferior quality—a small indication of the freedom and unrestricted budget that Clement extended to his artist11 Not only did Michelangelo have everything he needed in Florence, but he also had a trusted network of friends and associates in Rome. Michelangelo's closest confidant in Rome was Giovan Francesco Fattucci, the Chaplain of the Florentine Cathedral, who resided at the papal court and who acted as friend, representative, and devoted advocate of Michelangelo's affairs. 12 Fattucci was Michelangelo's most frequent correspondent and a principal intermediary between the pope and artist. Equally important, especially for Michelangelo's peace of mind, Fattucci represented the artist to the heirs of Julius II who were understandably concerned that the great tomb project would be neglected in the frenzy of Medici-related activity. Fattucci dedicated himself to the difficult task of negotiation, including alleviating Michelangelo's not unreasonable fear that he would be held accountable for enormous sums of money already spent on the tomb project. After protracted haggling, Fattucci was able to reassure the artist that even the Cardinal Santiquattro (Lorenzo Pucci), one of the principal impediments to Michelangelo's equanimity, "wants everything the way you wish."13 Thus, thanks to the tireless efforts of Fattucci, but also to those of the pope himself, Michelangelo was temporarily relieved of the extreme anxiety caused by his obligation to the heirs of Julius II. 14 In addition to Fattucci, Michelangelo had two other friends who kept him informed of affairs in Rome: Leonardo Sellaio and Sebastiano del Piombo. Although not as highly placed as Fattucci, both Sellaio and Sebastiano offered Michelangelo news of the Curia and, perhaps just as importantly, of their mutual friends. In short, Michelangelo had eyes and ears in Rome, a significant asset at the slanderous and competitive papal court. And finally there was Clement himself. As busy as he was, Clement nearly always had time for Michelangelo and his affairs. Clement was an interested, wellinformed, and active patron. The correspondence between Rome and Florence is filled with his queries regarding work on the New Sacristy, the site and design of the new library, and a host of additional projects including papal tombs for Leo and Clement, a crystal cross, a ciborium, and a reliquary tribune. The site, cost, and structural problems of the library were discussed at length, as were the design of doors, tabernacles, reading desks, ceiling decoration, and lighting. Despite Clement's distance from the project, he was perfectly adept at visualizing the various locations proposed for the library, and the problems attendant to each site. From a drawing 10 The quarry supervisor Marco di Bernardo in Carrara to Michelangelo in Florence: "Noi non atendiamo a fare altero se non a cavare e fare abociare marmi" (Carteggio, 3:32).

11 12

Carteggio, 3:86, 94. Unfortunately, Fattucci has not received his due in Michelangelo's biography and lacks an entry in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani. For his exceptionally important role in the San Lorenzo commissions, see Wallace (1994), passim. 13 "[PJerche Puci vuole tutto quello che volete voi." Carteggio, 3:49,43. 14 Carteggio, 3:46, in which Clement is described as the artist's "procuratore"; see also Carteggio, 3:49, 55, in which the authority of the pope is invoked on Michelangelo's behalf.

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such as Figure 11.2, he immediately grasped the technical complexities of foundations, even making specific recommendations regarding the reinforcement of preexisting piers and the restriction of the library's walls to an unusually thin thickness of one braccio} In letter after letter, the pope expressed interest in everything from fireproof vaulting to the quality of lime to be used in making stucco. He made recommendations on where to obtain the best quality travertine to make lime, how it should be burned and slaked, and how many coats should be applied. From where, the pope asked, would Michelangelo obtain the beams for the library roof? How many desks would there be in the reading room? He wanted to know the source, quality, and treatment of the walnut for the library desks, and how many books would be placed on each desk. Insatiable, Clement implored the artist to write more often. 16 When there was a temporary lull in Michelangelo's correspondence, Fattucci advised him: "If you cannot write at least once a week, then have your assistant write."17 Clement took pleasure in Michelangelo's frequent missives and occasional wit, and the pontiff once read one of the artist's letters five or six times before reading it aloud to his entire household. 18 Another time, according to Sebastiano del Piombo, Clement studied Michelangelo's letter for two days, convincing Sebastiano that the pope had memorized it completely. 19 The frequency of the correspondence is remarkable, as is the range of topics and the extent of the patron's participation in the design and day-to-day progress of the various commissions. Clement was both patron and collaborator, and he manifested 15 Carteggio, 3:71, discussed in Wallace (1994), 142-3. See also F. Salmon, "The Site of Michelangelo's Laurentian Library," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 49 (1990): 407-29. While Figure 11.2 was probably not the sheet actually seen by Clement, one very similar to it had been sent to Rome. 16 "Avisatemi uno poco piii spesso," and "Priegovi mi scriv[i]ate spesso" (Carteggio, 3:117, 125). 17 "Et se voi non potessi almanco una volta la settimana scrivere, fate scrivere al vostro garzon." Carteggio, 3:218. 18 Fattucci to Michelangelo, 18 April 1526: "hebi la vostra [lettera] col disegno della porta, la quale doppo cena la mostrai a Nostro Signiore, con tanto piacere quanto dire si possa; et volse legere la vostra lettera, la quale lesse almanco 5 o 6 volte. Dipoi la lesse forte a tutti e' sua domestici" (Carteggio, 3:220). See also Carteggio, 3:210, 3:215, and 3:217 in which Fattucci reports that Clement took the greatest delight in reading Michelangelo's letters. When Giulio was still a cardinal, the letter of recommendation that Michelangelo wrote for Sebastiano del Piombo was passed around the Vatican, "so that everyone in the palace talks of nothing else, and it has made everyone laugh" (Carteggio, 2:233). On Clement's pleasure at reading witty letters, cf. S. E. Reiss, "Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and Mario Maffei: A Renaissance Friendship and the Villa Madama," in Coming About: A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. L. R. Jones and L. C. Matthew (Cambridge: Harvard University Museums, 2001), 281-8. 19 "Hora vi fo intender come io ho mostro la vostra littera a Nostro Signore, quale 1'a tenuta doi zorni et alia studiata molto bene, de modo credo 1'abbi imparata a mente." Carteggio, 4:17. Later in the same letter, Sebastiano reports that Clement carefully read and re-read Michelangelo's last missive, and wanted the artist to know it: "Nostro Signore me ha hordenato che io ve debbia scriver per parte de Sua Sanctita che Pa molto ben lecto et rilecio et considerate el penultimo capitolo de la vostra littera...." Carteggio, 4:18. See also a subsequent letter in which Angelini informed Michelangelo: "Fra Bastiano m'a detto che Nostro Signore a studiato molto la vostra lettera" (Carteggio, 4:20).

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interest, had questions, and expressed judgments—often astute—on nearly every aspect of the projects that he and his artist jointly undertook. In accordance with the pope's wishes, Michelangelo regularly sent drawings to Rome; at least 15 instances are mentioned in the first six months of 1524 alone. In a letter of 30 January, for example, Fattucci wrote that Clement was anxious to know all that Michelangelo was doing and wanted to see drawings.20 In order not to waste the artist's time, the pope suggested that Michelangelo's assistant Stefano di Tommaso or someone else make them. Thus, when Fattucci inquired about the stucco ornament for the New Sacristy cupola, he suggested that Stefano make and send the drawing "as I have written him."21 Figure 11.3, a drawing in the Casa Buonarroti, was probably made in response to this request—either by Michelangelo, or, as seems likely, by his assistant, as the pope and Fattucci repeatedly had suggested. After showing it to the pope, Fattucci returned the drawing along with others, writing: Michelangelo, with this I return to you the drawings of the tabernacle, the doorway, and the sketch for the cupola, all of which greatly pleased His Holiness.... However, I still would like to know how large the first row of coffers are, how many are in a row and how many rows there are.22 This is a patron attentive to the smallest details, one who even asked all the relevant technical questions not answered by this drawing.23 Michelangelo sent many designs for the entrance door to the library, including Figure 11.4, which is very close to the door actually carved.24 When Fattucci re* turned the drawing, he enclosed a selection of Latin epitaphs, one of which was to be used for the tablet in the pediment. Fattucci suggested having a notary or a member of the Chancery office translate the epitaphs for Michelangelo, which is, as far as I know, an unnoticed indication of the artist's limited Latin.25 Another time a whole sheaf of drawings was returned to Michelangelo. Fattucci wrote: With this, I return to you the drawings of the windows and of the library; and, in addition, I send you the drawing for the tomb of the pope. And regarding the library, Our Father, in everything and for everything, defers to you.

20 Carteggio, 3:31. 21 u[C]ome gli 6 scritto...." Carteggio, 3:24. 22 "Michelagniolo, per questa vi rimando il tabernaculo, la porta e lo schizo della volta, e' quali piaciano assai a Nostro Signore.... Ancora vorrei sapere quanto sono grandi e' primi quadri della volta, et quanti sono per filo et quanti fili sono." Carteggio, 3:35. See W. E. Wallace, "Two Presentation Drawings for Michelangelo's Medici Chapel," Master Drawings 25 (1987): 242-60. 23 On Clement's attention to detail, see Reiss (1992), 622-4 and passim; Reiss (1999), 56; and Caroline Elam's contribution below. 24 For Sebastiano Serlio's comment concerning this door, see Caroline Elam's essay below. 25 Carteggio, 3:224; see also Carteggio, 3:220. 26 "Per questa vi si rimanda e' disegni delle finestre et della libreria; et ancora vi mando il disegnio della sepultura del Papa. Et circa la libreria, Nostro Signiore in tutto et per tutto se ne rimette a voi." Carteggio, 3:141.

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He then asked the artist to send designs for a rare book room. Michelangelo complied with a striking and ingenious plan for a triangular room complete with indications of furnishings and natural lighting (Figure 11.5). Not everyone can read and understand three-dimensional structures from such drawings, much less fully grasp their technical as well as aesthetic implications. In the Renaissance, wooden models were still the primary means of communication between artist and patron. In contrast to the case of the San Lorenzo fa9ade, a commission from Leo X for which there does, in fact, exist a model in the Casa Buonarroti, for his projects Clement did not ask Michelangelo to design or submit a model. 27 This was a patron who had a keen ability to read and interpret drawings, who had an unusual degree of trust in his artist, and who was eager to move forward with the work.28 In some cases drawings were submitted for Clement's approval, but just as frequently they were sent to keep the pope abreast of progress and of Michelangelo's intentions. The pope was explicit: he wanted to be kept informed because it gave him such pleasure, but most importantly he wanted Michelangelo to do everything his own way ("a vostro modo"). The phrase "a vostro modo" recurs frequently in the correspondence and neatly summarizes the mutually respectful relations between patron and artist.29 When, for example, the prior of San Lorenzo, Giovan Battista Figiovanni, complained about the artist, the pope silenced him by calling him "a fool (bestid) who would be better off if he chattered less."30 Clement then reaffirmed his trust in Michelangelo by again insisting that the artist should do things his own way—"a vostro modo" For all the many requests and recommendations made to Michelangelo, Clement never wavered in encouraging the artist's independence: u Write him a good letter," Clement advised Fattucci, "and tell him that I will always approve everything that he does."31 With such personal and practical support, Michelangelo maintained a fevered pitch of activity at San Lorenzo, so much so that the pope became infected with almost unrestrained enthusiasm for all that was being accomplished. Although once remarking that he wished Michelangelo "to think of nothing but the figures in the [Medici] chapel," in the same letter he took up a discussion of the ciborium and a crystal cross that Clement also wished Michelangelo to design.32 In subsequent letters, Clement asked about the design for papal tombs intended for the New Sacristy,

27

28 29 30 31 32

In one case, Fattucci wrote (29 April 1524): "Circha al modello, non gli pare che voi lo faciate." Carteggio, 3:71. In correspondence regarding the ciborium, Fattucci twice mentioned a modello but it is uncertain whether he was referring to a drawing or a threedimensional model. Carteggio, 3:210, 217. In either case, no three-dimensional model was built or ever sent to Rome. Cf. Reiss (1992), esp. 626-7. For example, see Carteggio, 3:64, 84, 95, 116, 185, 186, 208, 210, 233, 238, 248, 224-5 (where the phrase occurs twice). Fattucci to Michelangelo, 21 December 1526: "Nostro Signiore disse: 'Egli e una bestia, e farebe meglio a cicalare manco.'" Carteggio, 3:248. "Scrivigli una buona lettera, et digli che tutte le cose che e' fara, che io le aprovero senpre." Carteggio, 3:217. llt [I]o non vorrei che e' perdessi tenpo in altre cose, ne avessi a pensare per hora ad altro che alle figure.'" Carteggio, 3:210.

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about a reliquary tribune, and about innumerable details regarding the projects already underway. 33 While the pope was sensitive to the temperament of his artist, he was also relentless in his demands. Hence, despite the nearly ideal circumstances enjoyed by Michelangelo, tensions occasionally arose, but even the tensions reveal qualities of the unusual relationship between artist and patron. A telling example occurred in 1525, during the most intense work on the Laurentian Library. In a rare instance when the pope allowed his enthusiasm to exceed rational demand, Clement requested a design for a colossus to adorn the piazza in front of San Lorenzo. Clement wished the giant figure to be twenty-five braccia high—some forty-seven feet—or at least as tall as the crenelations on the Medici Palace garden wall. 34 When Michelangelo made no response, Clement instructed Fattucci: Tell him that I want him to work only for me, and I don't want him thinking of any public works or any other work except mine, including the Julius tomb because he is free of that obligation. I want him to think about the colossus that I want made for the piazza of San Lorenzo, as I have said to you.35 Still there was silence. After yet another letter inquiring about the colossus and expressing genuine surprise at Michelangelo's stubborn silence, the artist finally was goaded into responding to the outlandish but insistent request. In a masterpiece of ironic and ridiculing wit—not the usual discourse between an artist and pope— Michelangelo proposed a much larger seated statue, 40 rather than 25 braccia high, with a barber shop under its rump, a cornucopia for a chimney, a dovecote in the hollow head, and bells ringing from the gaping mouth. Michelangelo concluded with some ingenious, almost Shakespearian gibberish that only thinly disguised his impatience: To do or not to do the things that are to be done, which you say are not now to be done, it is better to let them be done by whoever will do them, for I will have so much to do that I don't wish to do more. The play on words is even more delicious, poetic, and ridiculous in Italian: Del fare o del non fare le chose che s'anno a fare, che voi dite che anno a soprastare, e meglio lasciarle fare a chi 1'a fare, che io aro tanto da fare ch'i' non mi churo piu di fare.36

33 See, for example, Carteggio, 3:217-18, 220-21, 224-5. 34 Carteggio, 3:170, 176, 184-5, 187. On the colossus, see J. Beck, Michelangelo: A Lesson in Anatomy (New York: Viking Press, 1975), 17-26; V. Bush, The Colossal Sculpture of the Cinquecento from Michelangelo to Giovanni Bologna (New York: Garland Press, 1976), 20-22; Reiss (1992), 49-52. 35 '"Digli che io lo voglio tutto per me, et non voglio che e' pensi alle cose del pubrico ne d'altri ma alle mia, et a quelle di lulio perche e' sia liberate; et voglio che e' pensi al colosso che io voglio fare in sulla piaza di San Lorenzo, come ti dissi.'" Carteggio, 3:184. 36 Carteggio, 3:190-91. On the humor of Michelangelo's letter, see P. Barolsky, Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1976), 68-9.

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The pope—who enjoyed laughing at Michelangelo's occasionally facetious letters—did not find this one quite so humorous. The pope's secretary wrote that the colossus was not a joke and that Clement wished to have it made, and perfectly, like everything else—if there were time. However, in an extraordinary gesture, the pope scrawled a long postscript in his own hand and addressed the artist in the familiar form as "Tu": You know that popes do not live long, and we could not wish more than we do to see or at least to know that the chapel with the tombs of our family and also the library are finished. Therefore, we commend the one and the other to you: meanwhile we will bring ourselves (as you once said) to a decent patience, praying God to give you the courage to carry everything forward. Never doubt that you will lack either work or reward while we live. Remain with the blessing of God and ours. I agree with Sheryl Reiss in emphasizing how exceptional is the character and content of this autograph postscript.38 It is a poignant and modest statement of Clement's ambitions and a frank expression of his regard and warm affection for the artist. Clement even recalled and invoked an aphoristic saying that Michelangelo once used to implore patience ("as you once said"). After all, they had known each other for more than thirty years, and had worked together as artist and patron for more than a decade. The prior of San Lorenzo tacitly acknowledged the close relationship when he remarked that Michelangelo would always enjoy the affection of Clement, "vostro fratello."39 Sebastiano del Piombo confirmed this closeness when he reported to Michelangelo that Clement "speaks of you so honorably and with such affection and love that a father could not speak more warmly of his son."40 Sebastiano was not politely exaggerating, as similar sentiments are fully corroborated by contemporaries. 37 "Tu sai che li pontefici non vivon molto; et noi non potremo piu che facciamo, desiderare vedere, o almeno intendere, essere finita la cappella con le sepulture delli nostri et anche la libreria. Pero ti raccomandiamo 1'una et 1'altra cosa: et intanto ci arrechereno (come tu dicesti gia) ad una bona patientia, pregando Dio che ti metta in core di sollicitare tutto insieme. N£ dubitare che ti manchi ne opere ne premio mentre sareno vivi. Et resta con la benedictione di Dio et nostra." Carteggio, 3:194-5. As Lauro Martines has observed: "Pronouns in private letters tell us much about social proximities and distances." L. Martines, "The Italian Renaissance Tale as History," in Language and Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. A. Brown (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 319. 38 Reiss (1992), 36, 551; Beck (1975), 25; P. Joannides, "Michelangelo and the Medici Garden," in La Toscana al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Politico, Economia. Cultura. Arte, ed. R. Fubini, 3 vols. (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1996), 1:26, n. 10. 39 This phrase is found in a letter from Giovan Battista Figiovanni to Michelangelo, assuring the artist of the pope's abiding affection (Carteggio, 3:115). 40 "Et parla de vui tanto honorevolmente et con tanta afectione et amore, che un pardre non diria de un figliolo quello dice lui" (Carteggio, 3:305), and he added that "Sua Santite li conosce tanto bene" (Carteggio, 3:308). Further, Sebastiano reiterated "che Nostro Signore vi ama de core e vi vol bene" (Carteggio, 3:346). Reciprocally, in 1532, Michelangelo recommended himself to Clement via his friend Benvenuto della Volpaia who reported, "e cierto 1'ebbe charo, perchS se ne mostrd allegro" (Carteggio, 3:403). On Michelangelo's special relationship to the Medici, see W. E. Wallace, "MICHAEL ANGELVS BONAROTVS PATRITIVS FLORENTINVS," in Innovation and Tradition: Essays on Renaissance Art and Culture, ed. D. Andersson and R. Eriksen (Rome: Edizioni Kappa, 2000), 60-74; W. E. Wallace, "How did Michelangelo Become a Sculptor?"

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Clement signed this letter with just the initial of his given name —"I" for lulius. This is the manner in which popes sign official documents, but it is also the name by which Michelangelo knew Giulio from the time they were boys in the house of Lorenzo de1 Medici. 41 Indeed, we might understand the postscript and signature as Michelangelo probably did: it was both an expression of familiarity and an assertion of papal authority. Yet the authoritative voice is muted by the pope's frank and personal sentiments, written in his own hand. 42 Bruce Smith's study of the aural dimension of Shakespeare's London suggests to us that the autograph, personalized character of a note like this is a "speech effort"—it evidences the desire that the artist hear the pope speaking to him directly, as a friend and intimate. 43 Theirs was no ordinary patron-client relationship; rather it was a complicated interplay of friendship and favor, founded on a distant family relationship, long-standing acquaintance, and profound mutual respect. In The Book of the Courtier^ Baldassare Castiglione recommended that a courtier "be conversant with his prince," although he acknowledged that this requires a nearly impossible degree of familiarity. 44 While this ideal remained virtually unattainable by the perfect courtier, it was precisely the familiarity that Michelangelo enjoyed with his papal prince. Nowhere is Clement's refined artistic judgment and his humane character more fully revealed than in his dealings with Michelangelo. Probably no other patron knew Michelangelo so well, so intimately, and for so many years—including even the better known and more celebrated patrons, Lorenzo de' Medici, Julius II, and Paul III. Michelangelo, who is not known for his optimism, was entirely confident in predicting that Clement's election to the papacy signaled great things for the arts. It was Clement's great misfortune that his political effectiveness did not match the brilliance of his patronage. Clement was a great Maecenas and an unfortunate politician. In May 1527, Rome was brutally sacked and the San Lorenzo commissions came to an abrupt halt. Michelangelo was soon caught up in circumstances beyond his control—but not unwillingly, for before all things, he was a Florentine with deeply republican sentiments. In Florence's hour of need, he was appointed to direct the city's defenses, thus devoting himself to resisting the very man who had been his pope, patron, and strongest supporter for the last ten years. With Michelangelo as director of fortifications, Florence withstood a grueling ten-month siege. The city finally capitulated in 1530, and then sustained a protracted witch-hunt of retribution.

41 42 43 44

in The Genius of the Sculptor in Michelangelo's Work, exh. cat. (Montreal: The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1992), 151-67. I would like to thank Richard Sherr for noting this manner of papal signature following the presentation of the paper upon which this essay is based (at RSA 2000 in Florence). The pope's secretary, Pier Polo Marzi, evidently thought Clement's gesture unusual, for he assured Michelangelo that the postscript was indeed written by "la propria mano di Sua Beatitudine" (Carteggio, 3:195). B. R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England: Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). B. Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. G. Bull (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), 125.

198

The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

It is something of a miracle, but once again thanks to Clement, that Michelangelo survived these dangerous times. It is a testament to Clement's character and his unique relationship with his artist that in the brutal and chaotic aftermath of the Last Republic, Michelangelo was forgiven his defection and asked to complete his work at San Lorenzo—the library and a family burial chapel that Clement helped to fashion but never saw.

Figure 6.1:

Titian, Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere, 1536-38, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

Figure 6.2:

Raphael, Portrait of Pope Leo X and Two Cardinals, ca. 1518, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi.

Figure 6.3:

Medal of Francesco Maria L Delia Rovere, reverse with motto INCLINATA RESVRGIT devised by Paolo Giovio, silver, ca. 1522.

Figure 6.4:

Obverse of Figure 6.3a with portrait of Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere.

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Figure 6.5: Nicholas Hogenberg, Procession of Pope Clement VII and the Emperor Charles V at Bologna (detail, Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere as Prefect of Rome, bearing the sword of state), etching, ca. 1530-31, Urbania, Biblioteca Comunale.

Figure 6.6: Workshop of Girolamo Genga?, Coronation Procession of Charles V in Bologna (with Francesco Maria I Delia Rovere holding the sword of state), mural painting, ca. 1530, Pesaro, Villa Imperiale, Sala dei Semibusti.

Figure 9.1: Benvenuto Cellini, Moses Striking the Rock (reverse of portrait medal of Pope Clement VII), silver gilt, 1534, Florence, Museo Nazionale del Bargello (photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY).

Figure 11.1: View of Laurentian Library, San Lorenzo, Florence.

Figure 11.2:

Michelangelo, Sketch for the Laurentian Library, Archivio Buonarroti, Florence, I, 160, fol. 286 recto.

Figure 11.3: Stefano di Tommaso? Design for the Coffering of the Cupola of the Medici Chapel, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 127A.

Figure 11.4:

Michelangelo, Design for the Entrance Portal of the Laurentian Library, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 98A.

Figure 11.5:

Michelangelo, Plan for the Laurentian Library Rare Book Room, Casa Buonarroti 80A.

Figure 12.1: Facade of the Chapter House, cloister, San Lorenzo, Florence.

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Detail of the Chapter House window, San Lorenzo, Florence.

Figure 12.3:

Interior of the New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence, looking towards the Magniflci tomb.

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Tabernacle window, attic level, New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence.

Figure 12.5:

Michelangelo, Design for a "finestra alia Veneziana" red chalk, Florence, Casa Buonarroti, 58A.

Figure 12.6:

Detail of the Lunette zone, New Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence, with "perspectival" window.

Figure 12.7:

Door giving access to the Reliquary Tribune, upper level of cloister, San Lorenzo, Florence.

Figure 12.8:

Detail of the moldings of door in Figure 12.7.

Figure 12.9:

Tabernacle, vestibule, Laurentian Library, San Lorenzo, Florence.

Figure 12.10:

View of the north wall, vestibule, Laurentian Library, San Lorenzo, Florence.

Figure 12.11:

"Mixed" Doric door, after Baldassare Peruzzi, from Sebastiano Serlio's Book IV, Regole generali, first published 1537 (after S. Serlio, / Sette Libri deU'Architettura, Venice: Franceschi, 1584:).

Figure 12.12:

Unidentified sixteenth-century draftsman, Drawing of a ground-floor window in Peruzzi's Palazzo Fusconi da Norcia, pen and ink, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Cabinetto Disegni e Stampe, 2732A.

Figure 14.1:

Giovanni da Udine, Raphael's Workshop, stucco, Vatican, Loggia of Pope Leo X, ca. 1517.

Figure 15.1:

Anonymous, Portrait of the Lutenist Francesco Canova da Milano, seventeenth-century copy (?) of a sixteenth-century original, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

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Figure 17.1: Sebastiano del Piombo, Portrait of Andrea Doria Pointing Down to an Antique Naval Relief, 1526, Genoa, Villa Doria.

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Figure 17.2:

San Lorenzo Ritual Naval Reliefs, second century B.C.E., Rome, Museo Capitolino.

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Fra Bartolommeo, Salvator Mundi, 1516, Florence, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti.

Figure 20.8:

Michelangelo, Risen Christ, 1519-21, Rome, Sta. Maria sopra Minerva.

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Giovanni da Porlezza and Girolamo Pittoni, possibly on design by Jacopo Sansovino, high altar (detail), 1530s, Vicenza, Cathedral.

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Verona Cathedral, view of tornacoro and high altar, 1530s.

Chapter 12

Michelangelo and the Clementine Architectural Style* Caroline Elam

In his book on the Sack of Rome published in 1983, Andre Chastel put forward the idea that it might be possible to identify what he called a "Clementine style" in the arts of Rome and Florence in the 1520s, a style fostered by the pope and discernible in the work of painters such as Perino del Vaga and Parmigianino. 1 He suggested that this was an orientation in which "the overall scope was perhaps less impressive, more concerned with charm than with grandeur'* in comparison with the preceding period of Julius II and Leo X, but one which offered a sophisticated and in some ways brilliant middle course between "too slavish an attachment to modi raffaelleschi" and "too great a submission to la maniera michelangiolesca" This formulation, though tentative enough, was strongly rebutted by the historian Adriano Prosperi, who recommended that, rather than chasing an elusive and perhaps outmoded concept of style, historians might do better to investigate alternative models of artistic patronage.2 Chastel could actually have made a stronger and firmer case had he incorporated architectural ideas and production into his account. Clement's long and welldocumented involvement with projects for buildings and their decoration, from the time of his cardinalate through to the end of his papacy, provides ample evidence of pronounced personal preferences, and of a close involvement with the structure, visual appearance, and iconography of the works produced for him, as well as—perhaps most importantly—a tendency to favor novel solutions, and to push for the unorthodox and the recherche. This emerges with great clarity at the Villa Madama and is

*

1 2

By far my greatest debt in the preparation of this article is due to Suzanne Brown Butters, who years ago discovered and gave me the letter from Battista Figiovanni published here as Document I in the Appendix; we have discussed its implications extensively. I am also grateful, as always, to Howard Burns, and to David Hemsoll, Michael Hirst, Daniela Lamberini, Andrew Morrogh, Kathleen Weil-Gams Brandt, and Charles Davis (who took the photographs of the facade of the San Lorenzo capitolo and the door leading to the reliquary tribune). Clementine conversations over the years with Sheryl Reiss have been fundamental. A. Chastel, The Sack of Rome, trans. B. Archer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); esp. chap. 5; for the phrases quoted here, see 217 and 155. A. Prosperi, "Riforma cattolica, Controriforma," Quaderni di Palazzo Te 1 (1985) 1:8; he was referring in particular to the models proposed in S. Settis, "Artisti e comittenti fra Quattro e Cinquecento," in Storia d 'Italia IV. Intellettuali e potere, ed. C. Vivanti (Turin: Einaudi, 1981), 702-61.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

even more evident in the detailed correspondence with Michelangelo over the New Sacristy and the Laurentian Library; indeed the evolution of Michelangelo's architectural ideas in the 1520s can be seen partly as a response to the specific challenges posed to him by the pope. In pursuing this question we may be able to arrive both at a more robust and more defensible notion of style, and at a more nuanced view of the relationship between artist and patron, one which is neither deterministic nor instrumentalizing, and which does not swallow whole the fashionable view that the artistic commissions of powerful Renaissance patrons were always concerned primarily with the projection of that power. The study of patronage can also become entangled in attempts to assess the "importance" of a particular patron in quantitative and retrospective terms, and the study of Clement's patronage in particular tends to be overwhelmed by the disastrous political events of his papacy which cast an over-gloomy shadow in hindsight. 3 I would of course exclude from this the exemplary studies of Sheryl Reiss, and I would also like to mention the illuminating insights to be found in pieces by Howard Burns, Michael Hirst and Arnold Nesselrath, as well as the general tenor of the studies of the late Manfredo Tafuri.4

Clementine Preferences In summer 1533, when Michelangelo was engaged on his last campaign of architectural activity in Florence, his friend Sebastiano del Piombo wrote to him from Rome, conveying Pope Clement VIFs latest wishes for the Laurentian Library and the New Sacristy: "Concerning the desks,11 wrote Sebastiano: "His Holiness wants them to be all of pure walnut, and don't worry about spending three florins more, because it doesn't matter to him, as long as they are 'alia Cosimesca^ that is, that they resemble the works of the Magnificent Cosimo."5 Sebastiano goes on to report the pope's concerns about the stucco decoration that Giovanni da Udine was currently executing in the cupola of the New Sacristy: "Tell Messer Giovanni, on behalf of His Holiness, that many people have told him that the vault is turning out to be very impoverished in color, and that such whiteness doesn't please him, and that His Holiness would rather that the vault resembled the vault of his own villa [the Villa Madama] than that 3 4

5

Such a pessimistic view of his patronage essentially derives from the overall assessment of Clement's pontificate given for example in Pastor, 9 and 10. S. E. Reiss, "Cardinal Giulio de' Medici as a Patron of Art, 1513-1523," Ph.D. diss. (Princeton University, 1992); S. E. Reiss, "Clemens VII," in Hochrenaissance, 55-69; and S. E. Reiss, "Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and Mario Maffei: A Renaissance Friendship and the Villa Madama," in Coming About... A Festschrift for John Shearman, ed. L. R. Jones and L. C. Matthew (Cambridge: Harvard University Museums, 2001), 281-8. For Clement and the "stile mescolato" and "gusto del inedito," see H. Bums, "Raffaello e *que!l'antiqua architectural" in Raffaello architetto, 383-4; M. Hirst, "'per lui il mondo ha cosi nobil opera': Michelangelo and Pope Clement VII," in Hochrenaissance, 429-31; M. Tafuri, Ricerca del Rinascimento (Turin: Einaudi, 1992), 241. Carteggio, 4:17, Sebastiano in Rome to Michelangelo in Florence, 17 July 1533: "Circa a li banchi, Nostro Signore vuole che siano tutti di noce schietto et non si cura di spender tre fiorini piu, che non li importano, pu[re] che siano alia Cosimesca, cioe che si asomigliano a le opere del Magnifico Cosimo."

Michelangelo and the Clementine Architectural Style

201

of Messer Baldassare da Pescia [the Villa Lante al Gianicolo]. And, above all, that Maestro Giovanni should take care to use colors that are durable and will be as perpetual as possible."6 This letter, which reveals the pope's concern in his patronage for dynastic magnificence, for richness and durability of materials and for coloristic effect, as well as his consciousness of the relationship between his own artistic projects and those of his entourage, is one of the last items in the extraordinarily instructive correspondence concerning Michelangelo's Florentine buildings. It shows that the disastrous events of Clement's papacy, above all the Sack of Rome in 1527, had in no way dimmed his ambitions to make a powerful and magnificent artistic statement in his native city, and that the view sometimes expressed of him as a parsimonious and austere patron, favoring what has been called a "colta simplicitas" is very far from matching his own perceptions.7 Indeed, a different and more convincing view of Clement's patronage has emerged in recent years, stressing his concern for innovation, his desire, as often expressed in the correspondence with Michelangelo, for "qualche fantasia nuova."*

Clement and Earlier Medici Styles The New Sacristy and the Laurentian Library mark, as has been recognized since the analysis of them in Vasari's Lives, a new stylistic direction, with enormous implications for the future history of architecture. 9 Certainly this was a development due in major part to the inventiveness and creativity of the artist himself. But we may ask to what extent the shift can be seen in terms of patronage as well as of personal style. On the one hand Clement VII's desire for a library interior "alia Cosimesca" suggests a powerfully atavistic wish for family continuity in patronage—for an architecture that would above all be recognizably Medicean. On at least two occasions he went out of his way to request that the coats of arms displayed in these buildings be those of the Medici family with his own devices, and not the papal arms.10 But the 6

u

[D]ite a messer loanni, da parte de Sua Sanctita, che molte persone li ha referito che la volta torna molto povera de colori, et che tanta candideza non li piace, et che Sua Sanctita vorria piu presto la volta assomigliasse a la volta de la sua vignia che a quella di messer Baldassare da Pessia. Et sopra tutto che maestro loanni advertischa che mecte collori che durano e che siano piu perpetui che possa." Carteggio, 4:17-18. For the Villa Madama, see C L. Frommel, in Raffaello Architetto (1984), 311-56; Reiss (1992) and (2001); and, for color illustrations, R. Lefevre, Villa Madama (Rome: Editalia, 1973). For the Villa Lante, see C. L. Frommel, in Giulio Romano, exh. cat., Palazzo Te, Mantua, 1989 (Milan: Electa, 1989), 292-3, with previous bibliography; H. Lilius, Villa Lante al Gianicolo. L 'architettura e la decorazionepittorica (Rome: Bardi, 1981). 7 For the notion of "colta simplicitas," see C. Tessari, Baldassare Peruzzi: il progetto dell'antico (Milan: Electa, 1995), 63. 8 For Clement's concern for innovation, see the references cited in note 4 above. 9 Giorgio Vasari, La vita di Michelangelo nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, ed. P. Barocchi, 5 vols. (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1962), \\Testo, 57-9, 199-200; 3: Commento, 790-887. 10 See Cartegggio, 3:224-5, G. F. Fattucci in Rome to Michelangelo in Florence, 6 June 1526: "Delle arme, Nostro Signiore dice che non vi vole arme di Papa, ma quella di casa colle livree, et accomodarvi la sua, cioe [c]andor ille[s]us." The reference is probably to

202

The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

architecture that resulted from Clement's patronage of Michelangelo was much more than an emulation of the past glories of fifteenth-century Medicean patronage. And although it grew out of the architecture promoted by his cousin Leo X, in which Giulio as cardinal was himself deeply involved, it came to have its own very distinctive character. It has been plausibly argued by Howard Burns that we can talk of a "Leonine" style in architecture, which was composed from the particular contributions of Raphael, Jacopo Sansovino and Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, but had an identity—festive, erudite, celebratory—that transcended those individual parts.11 Michelangelo himself contributed a recognizable, if unusually small-scale, example of the genre in the fa?ade of the Chapel of Leo X in the Castel Sant' Angelo. 12 The Leonine style is partly, but not completely, a question of Leonine imagery and lavish use of all'antica detail. It was imported to Florence during Leo's pontificate in buildings constructed by families close to the Medici papacy—examples are the Palazzo Pandolfini and the Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni. 13 But these were recognizably Roman buildings transplanted into Florence, and had surprisingly little lasting impact on the subsequent development of Florentine architecture. The satirical comments that Vasari tells us were attached to the Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni show that the Florentines found this building alien to their traditions. 14

11 12

13

14

the door between the vestibule and the library: Michelangelo prepared, obviously on his own initiative, at least two drawings for the door with papal coats of arms (British Museum, Wilde 37r-v); C. de Tolnay, Corpus dei disegni di Michelangelo, 4 vols. (Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1975-80) [hereafter cited as Corpus], 4:554r-v. Similarly, for the reliquary tribune, Figiovanni instructed Michelangelo to make a papal coat of arms, but was told "per volonta di Nostro Signore, Farme pontificale in Chiesa Sua Beatitudine no ve la vole a conto alcuno, ma si bene quella di casa, che per chiesa altrove sono" (Carteggio, 3:339, Figiovanni to Michelangelo, late October-early November 1531; see W. E. Wallace, "Michelangelo's Project for a Reliquary Tribune in San Lorenzo," Architectura, 17 (1987): 45-57; and, now M. Mussolin, "La Tribuna delle Reliquie di Michelangelo. Culto e architettura nella chiesa di San Lorenzo a Firenze," Tesi di dottorato (XI ciclo, Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, 2001). H. Burns, "Raffaello e 'queH'antiqua architectural" in Raffaello architetto (1984), 383-4. For an up-to-date account of this facade, usually dated 1514-16, see G. C. Argan and B. Contardi, Michelangelo architetto (Milan: Electa, 1990), 64-6; see also, F. Lemerle, "Le Codex italien du musee des Beaux-Arts de Lille: les modeles d'architecture antiques et modernes de Raffaello da Montelupo," Revue du Louvre (1997), 2:47-57, for important corrections to the usual account of the drawing of the facade in the Lille sketchbook, which has been convincingly attributed to Raffaello da Montelupo by Arnold Nesselrath (see note 80 below). For the Palazzo Pandolfini, see P. N. Pagliara, in Raffaello architetto (1984), 189-96; and P. Ruschi, "Vicende costruttive del Palazzo Pandolfini nelFarco del Cinquecento: Documenti e ipotesi," in Raffaello e I 'architettura a Firenze nella prima meta del Cinquecento, exh. cat. (Florence: Sansoni, 1984) 27-64; C.L. Frommel, "Palazzo Pandolfini: problemi di datazione e di ricostruzione, in Studi su Raffaello. Atti del congresso internazionale dei studi, Urbino and Florence 6-14 April 1984 (Urbino: Quattro Venti, 1987), 197-204, For the Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni, see M. Lingohr, Der Florentiner Palastbau der Hochrenaissance: Der Palazzo Bartolini Salimbeni in seinem historischen und architekturgeschichtlichen Kontext (Worms: Werner, 1996). As noted in the Leonine context by Burns, in Raffaello architetto (1984), 386 and n. 43, citing Vasari: "furono queste cose tanto biasimate dai Fiorentini con parole con sonnetti e

Michelangelo and the Clementine Architectural Style

203

Michelangelo's facade for San Lorenzo, had it ever been built, would have been the most powerful expression of the Leonine style in Florence.15 Like all Michelangelo's early designs, it was deeply Florentine in vocabulary: I am not in any way implying that he was in this case importing a Roman solution wholesale. But in its imagery and in the intended richness of sculpture and architecture—so closely connected with the form and imagery of Roman triumphal arches—it would have spelled out quite literally the triumph of the Medici papacy in Florence, even, though, unlike some of Giuliano and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder's designs, it did not carry a colossal sculpture of the pope himself, but only figures of his saintly predecessors, Peter and Paul.16 The project was in every sense the outcome of the Pope's triumphal entry into Florence in autumn 1515, when the city was decked out with temporary decorations transforming it into a New Rome, and an inscription held by a figure of the saint on the fa9ade of San Lorenzo admonished the pope to complete the work of his Medici ancestors.17 In 1519-20, after Cardinal Giulio, already archbishop of the city since 1513, became effective governor of Florence, Michelangelo was relieved of responsibility for quarrying marble for the fa$ade of San Lorenzo and the project was deferred—permanently, as it turned out.18 His energies were instead channeled into two more feasible, less megalomaniacal (and less Leonine) projects, the New Sacristy and the Library. It was in the course of designing these two buildings, carried out under the patronage of Cardinal Giulio, later Clement VII, that Michelangelo's new architectural manner emerged. In this essay I shall present new evidence for a change in project during the construction of the New Sacristy, which can provide a convenient focus for the analysis of that new language.

15

16

17 18

con appicarvi filze di frasche, come si fa alle chiese per le feste dicendosi che aveva piu forme di facciate di tempi che di palazzo." For the facade projects and model, see H. Millon and C. H. Smyth, Michelangelo Architect: The Facade of San Lorenzo and the Drum and Dome of St. Peter's, exh. cat. (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1988); C. Elam, "Drawings as Documents: The Problem of the San Lorenzo Fa9ade," in Michelangelo Drawings, ed. C. H. Smyth, (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1992), 99-114; W. E. Wallace, Michelangelo at San Lorenzo. The Genius as Entrepreneur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), esp. chap. 1; H. A. Millon, in The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo, ed. H. A. Millon and V. M. Lampugnani, exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice, and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1994), 565-72. See K. Weil-Gams Brandt, "Alcuni progetti per piazze e facciate di Bramante e di Antonio da Sangallo il Giovane a Loreto," in Studi Bramanteschi, atti del congresso internazionale, Milan, Urbino and Rome (Rome: De Luca 1974), 313-38. She has also discussed the iconography of the San Lorenzo facade projects in unpublished lectures and conference papers. J. Shearman, "The Florentine Entrata of Leo X," JWCl 38 (1975): 136-54; I. Ciseri, L 'ingresso trionfale trionfale di Leone X in Firenze nel 1515 (Florence: Olschki, 1990). See W. E. Wallace, "Drawings from the Fabbrica of San Lorenzo during the tenure of Michelangelo," in Smyth (1992), 117-41, esp. 130-1. Cf. Wallace (1994) and his contribution to the present volume.

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The Construction of the New Sacristy The contrasts and contradictions between the plain exterior of the New Sacristy, the severe pietra serena articulation of the lower stories of the interior, and the unorthodox, licentious architecture of the tombs, tabernacles, and doors are so extreme that architectural historians in the past have often been tempted to explain them by presupposing some form of pre-existing building. 19 In fact, these contrasts are a measure of the rapidity with which Michelangelo's architectural ideas were evolving in these years. The early phase of the construction is poorly documented, since the account books we know to have been kept by Cardinal Giulio's agent Bernardo Niccolini have not survived, and because Giulio himself spent long stretches of the period from summer 1519 to autumn 1523 resident in Florence, there was less need for detailed correspondence.20 However, such fragmentary evidence as there is demonstrates that Cardinal Giulio kept a close eye on the day-to-day progress of the construction, not only using agents such as his treasurer Domenico Buoninsegni and the canon, later prior, of San Lorenzo, Battista Figiovanni, but also intervening in person himself. We know from Figiovanni's indispensable memorandum that the project for the New Sacristy (and the Library) went back to the summer of 1519, that the works began in November that year, and that Michelangelo was "capomaestro delTarchitettura."21 The documents I published in 1979 showed that the Sacristy was constructed on a site much encumbered previously by houses belonging to the Nelli family (as Figiovanni states), and that the new building entailed the demolition of a corridor with an external door under the patronage of the Ginori family, which can be clearly seen on the plan of San Lorenzo in ca. 1500 published by Howard Burns.22 Both Howard Saalman and Pietro Ruschi have maintained, despite this evidence, that the New Sacristy was largely determined by a hypothetical earlier building on the site, begun by Lorenzo il Magnifico in the early 1490s, but an extract from an inventory of San Lorenzo, dated 1507, recently published by Sheryl Reiss, proves that the 4t androne de* Ginoli," as the corridor is there described, was still standing in that year.23 Michelangelo was therefore not circumscribed in his design by an existing 19 For this controversy, see C. Elam, "The Site and Early Building History of Michelangelo's New Sacristy," MK1F 23 (1979): 155-86; H, Saalman, "The New Sacristy of San Lorenzo before Michelangelo," AB 67 (1985), 199-228; P. Ruschi, "La Cappella Medicea o Sagrestia Nuova," in San Lorenzo 393-1993 (Florence: Alinea, 1993), 119-26; S. E. Reiss, "The Ginori Corridor of San Lorenzo and the Building History of the New Sacristy, JSAH 52 (1993): 339-43; see also the exchange of letters between Howard Saalman and Sheryl Reiss, JSAH 53 (1994): 123-4. 20 See Elam (1979). Niccolini's lost "libro signato littera B intitulato ab extra Giornale et ricordanza" is referred to in Document 5, 178, ibid. 21 G. Corti, "Una ricordanza inedita di Giovan Battista Figiovanni," Paragone 175 (1964): 24-31. 22 Howard Bums, "San Lorenzo in Florence before the building of the New Sacristy: an Early Plan," MK/F21 (1979): 145--53. 23 For the hypothetical earlier building, see Saalman (1985) and Ruschi (1993); see also P. Ruschi, "Un 'sepoltuario' quattrocentesco e il cantiere per la nuova cappella del Magnifico in San Lorenzo", in La Toscana al Tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico: politico, economia, cultura, arte. Convegno di studi, 3 vols. (Pisa: Pacini, 1986), 1:103-21. For the Ginori corridor, see Reiss (1993) and (1994).

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Laurentian building directly on the site: it was the surrounding houses, the confined character of the space available and presumably a desire to match the exterior of the quattrocento church that imposed restrictions on him. In October 1519 the first contracts for the supply ofpietra serena were drawn up with the head stonemason, Francesco Luchesino, and at that date we can suppose that the architectural articulation of the first two stories of the interior (i.e. the main order and the mezzanine; see Figure 12.3) had already been designed and approved.24 In December 1520 letters from Rome speak of the "problems with the stone" and the u poor behavior of the stonemasons," and Cardinal Giulio encouraged Michelangelo to take on other masons if "Cecchone" (Luchesino) was not giving satisfaction. New agreements with Luchesino were signed in January 1521.25 The next documents concerning the architectural structure are two very informative letters of April 1521 from Stefano Lunetti, Michelangelo's assistant and executant architect, and from his friend Giovan Francesco Fattucci, sent when the artist was in Carrara drawing up the marble contracts for the tombs. These precious letters give a clear idea of the relations between Michelangelo, Lunetti, Cardinal Giulio, and the stonemason Luchesino.26 From them we can derive the following points. First, when Michelangelo himself was not on site, nobody had a clear idea of his intentions. Secondly, Cardinal Giulio concerned himself with all the details, including the "cornices" (presumably of the first order), and everything had to be approved both by him and by Michelangelo, who in general were in agreement with each other. Thirdly, the stonemason Cecchone had a tendency to cause trouble, doing things "a modo suo" when Michelangelo's back was turned. William Wallace has recently suggested that Cecchone left the site soon afterwards, and that it may have been for that reason that new contracts for stone were drawn up with Antonio and Romolo di Guelfo, which were renewed in April 1522.27 After this we have no documentary evidence on the works at the New Sacristy until January 1524, by which time fresh impetus had been given to the project by Clement's election in November 1523. Michelangelo had been to visit the new pope in Rome in December, and they must have discussed the Sacristy on that occasion.28 Work now began on coffering the Sacristy cupola in stucco, preparing designs for the marble doors and tabernacles, and making wooden models of the Ducal tombs,

24 Elam(1979), 162-4. 25 For the "cose dei macinghi" and "tristi comportamenti dei scarpellini," see Carteggio, 2:267, Domenico Buoninsegni to Michelangelo, 17 December 1520; for the renewal of the contract, see Elam (1979), doc. 5, 178. 26 Carteggio, 3:288-9, Lunetti to Michelangelo 20 April 1521; Carteggio, 3:292, Fattucci to Michelangelo, 21 April 1521. 27 Wallace (1994), 84. He returned to work on the library in 1525 and 1533, ibid. 28 See Carteggio, 3.1, letter from Michelangelo in Florence to Topolino in Carrara, 25 November 1523, writing of the joy of "tucto el mondo" at Clement's election and the expectation that in Florence, "circha 1'arte, si fara molte chose." Cf. William Wallace's essay in this volume. See also Carteggio, 3:3, Piero Condi in Florence to Michelangelo in Rome, 12 December 1523, expecting that Michelangelo will by then have made "qualche buona conventione" with the pope. He was back in Florence by 23 December 1523.

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complete with clay figures.29 Because the pope was now supervising the project at long distance, the evidence of the correspondence is abundant. Michelangelo's friend, the canon of the Florentine cathedral, Giovan Francesco Fattucci, acted as his agent and intermediary in Rome, conveying to him the ideas of the pope and of his immediate entourage.30 Drawings of almost every remaining element in the Sacristy and of everything to be done in the library went to and fro, and were extensively discussed in Rome; many of these survive in the Casa Buonarroti. It should be emphasized, however, that the correspondence is very one-sided. Popes did not keep letters from artists, however much they admired them, and such letters of Michelangelo's as survive (even to Fattucci) tend to be unsent drafts. Two such undated drafts, from Michelangelo to the pope himself, describe the unveiling by Stefano Lunetti of the marble lantern, to universal approbation. I believe that the most recent dating of these letters, to between late January and early February 1525, is probably twelve months too late, and that the earlier received view is correct, that they are of January 1524.31 Michelangelo speaks in them of having the gilt bronze ball on top of the lantern made, and that he has decided to have it faceted, to "vary it from the others."32 We know that the goldsmith Piloto received payments for the ball, which remained to be gilded, from 21 April to 5 July 1524, and it would be puzzling if Michelangelo were still speaking of this as a project six months after it was essentially completed, or that he should not have mentioned the lantern at all to his patron in the rich exchanges of letters during 1524 if it had yet to be built.33 Thus we can conclude that the architecture of the Sacristy, including the lantern and the internal pietra serena articulation, was essentially complete by January 1524. It remained, then, to execute the marble architecture of the tombs, and of the tabernacles and doors.

29 A good account of this phase is in Wallace (1994), 87-93. This was of course also the period of the early designs for the Laurentian Library. 30 For Fattucci, see William Wallace's contribution to this volume. 31 Carteggio, 3:131-2, dated "Fine di gennaio o primi di febbraio 1525"; other opinions about the dating (ranging from January 1524 to 13 July 1525 are there recorded. In particular H. Thode, Michelangelo. Kritische Vntersuchungen fiber seine Werke, 7 vols. (Berlin: G. Grote'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1908), 1:387, contradicted Prey's later dating of the letter, on the grounds that the erection of the lantern must have preceded the stuccoing of the cupola. The fact that Michelangelo's drafts are addressed to Clement directly, and start off with a statement of general principles asking for independent authority over the tombs, also suggests that they were composed at the outset of the new campaign resulting from Clement's election. 32 "Faccian fare la palla, che viene alta circha un braccio: e io 6 pensato, per variarla dalF altre, di farla a faccie, che credo che ari gratia; e chosl si fa." (Carteggio, as at note 31 above). 33 See G. Gronau, "Dokumente zur Entehungsgeschichte der neuen Sakristei und der Bibliothek von S. Lorenzo in Florenz," Jahrbuch der koniglich preussischen Kunstsammlungen 32 (1911): 62-81, esp. 66 and 80. The evidence from the Salviati Archives mentioned by William Wallace ("The Lantern of Michelangelo's Medici Chapel," MKJF13 [1989]: 1736) of an additional late payment to Piloto of 1 May 1525 (33, n. 5), does not alter the argument.

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The Windows of the Lunette Zone A much later document concerning the windows of the interior of the New Sacristy may help to fill this three-year gap in the documentation, and may also throw light on the stylistic disjunctions which are apparent in the interior articulation. Once again our source is the garrulous but informative prior, Giovanni Battista Figiovanni. On 5 June 1540 (Appendix, Document 1) Figiovanni wrote to Pier Francesco Riccio, secretary to Duke Cosimo I de'Medici, asking for the key to the ricetto of the Laurentian library, so that he could have access to some spare stone left over from the works there.34 The request derived from the need to provide a meeting place for a new Confraternity of the Sacrament—one of the many confraternities of this type founded in Italy at the period.35 The Operai and canons of San Lorenzo had already, according to Figiovanni, allowed the confraternity the use of the chapter house in the first cloister of the canonicate and it was now necessary to close the facade onto the cloister, putting in a door and two windows, to keep the confraternity's documents and valuables secure.36 Figiovanni writes that he had already given the confraternity members "stones for two windows which were made for the New Sacristy which turned out small: Michelangelo had them redone."37 After this initial gift, he wanted to look around among the stone left over from the library project to see if there were suitable pieces to make the chapter house door. The fa$ade of the chapter house as built (Figure 12.1) is not a distinguished piece of architecture. The central pedimented door is rich in moldings but not refined in conception. Flanking it are two arched biforate windows each with a central column and two side pilasters supporting arches and oculi above, with smooth, simply articulated unmoulded archivolts. The capitals are of a "composite" character with leaf moldings, small volutes, flowers and twin rosettes (Figure 12.2). One might almost imagine that all this was part of the mid-fifteenth century building program of the cloister under Antonio Manetti. 38 But, looking more closely, it is not difficult to 34 For Pier Francesco Riccio, see A. Cecchi, "II Maggiordomo ducale Pierfrancesco Riccio e gli artisti della Corte Medicea," MK1F 42 (1998): 115-43, with further bibliography. 35 For the Confraternita dello SS. Sacramento in San Lorenzo, see I. Sebregondi, "Le Confraternite in San Lorenzo," in San Lorenzo: i document! e i tesori nascosti, exh. cat. (Florence: Marsilio, 1993), 119-23, where it is stated that a Confraternity of the Corpus Domini goes back to before 1523, when the constitutions were reformed, and that the Compagnia (now called del Sacramento) was given the chapter house as a meeting place in 1541 (see ACSL, I, Partiti e Deliberazioni, 1516-1644, fol.!64v). The purpose of the Compagnia was largely to take the sacrament to the sick, to transport the dead, and to participate in ceremonies. 36 This decision was ratified on 22 June 1541 at the completion of the works; see above, note 35 and Appendix, Document 3. 37 "pietre per due fmestre che furno fatti per la nuova sacrestia che riuscirno piccole: Michelangelo li fecie rifare." See Document 1. 38 The cloister was built in 1457-63. For the chronology, see P. Roselli and O. Superchi, L'edificazione della Basilica di San Lorenzo, una vicenda di importanza urbanistica (Florence: CLUSF, 1980). The San Lorenzo chapter windows are assumed to be of this campaign, and are compared with the interesting window combining a bifora with a/?nestra a croce guelfa in the sacristy of the Badia of Fiesole, in F. Borsi et al., La Badia Fiesolana (Florence: Le Monnier, 1976), pis. 107-9.

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distinguish the pre-existing elements—the pietra forte arch of the door surround and the window openings—from the pietra serena infill. Initially the chapter house must have been open to the cloister, like that of nearby San Marco.39 Indeed Ruschi has already pointed out that the door and windows of the chapter house were constructed in 1540, the door to a design furnished by Giuliano di Baccio d'Agnolo, as emerges from documents in the chapter archives (Appendix, Document 2).40 Appropriately enough, the stonemason was Michelangelo's ex-assistant Bernardino Basso, and it is significant in this context that Giuliano di Baccio d'Agnolo was paid for a design of the door alone, and not of the windows. 41 Further confirmation of Figiovanni's account comes from the fact that Bernardino Basso was paid for "improvements" (acconcimi) to the stones rather than for carving them from scratch. If stone originating from the building site of the New Sacristy was indeed given to the confraternity by Figiovanni, we may then ask what elements of the chapter house windows can be identified with the stones that "turned out small" for windows in the Sacristy and were refused by Michelangelo. Can we reconstruct the form of these original windows and suggest why they were not put in place? It seems reasonable to suppose that the plain, almost unmolded archivolts and oculi of the chapter house bifore were inserted to adapt pre-existing elements to the exact curve of the chaper house openings, and were not part of any Michelangelesque earlier design. Remaining as possible components of the rejected sacristy windows are the central columns, the pilasters, and perhaps also the capitals. It must be admitted that these are not refined in their execution, but on the other hand their morphology is more plausible for a date of ca. 1519-21, the first campaign on the New Sacristy, than for one of 1540 when the chapter house fa?ade was put together.42 For which windows in the New Sacristy could they then have been intended? There are only two possibilities: we must choose between the tabernacle windows of the second, or "attic" level of the Sacristy or the lunette zone, where the large, elegant tapering windows are now to be found. If the attic windows were the ones in question, only side pilasters from two of them could have been reused for the capitolo, since there is no way that columns could originally have been involved in these openings. We could imagine that 39 See La Chiesa e il Convento di San Marco a Firenze, 2 vols. (Florence: Giunti, 1989), measured drawing pi. XVI, 1:351. 40 P Ruschi, "La canonica e i chiostri," in San Lorenzo 393-1993, ed. G. Morolli and P. Ruschi (Florence: Alinea, 1993), 65-73, esp. 69. 41 See W. E. Wallace, "Michelangelo at Work: Bernardino Basso, Friend, Scoundrel and Capomaestro," / Tatti Studies 3 (1989): 235-77. The payments for the chapter house, however, make it unlikely that Bernardino Basso "followed the master to Rome sometime before 1540" as Wallace there suggests, or that he is the "Bernardino della Croce" paid 600 scudi by the papal camera that year (273). 42 In Michelangelo's built oeuvre, the column capitals most resemble those of the lantern, although the latter have two rows of leaves rather than the single row with rosettes above of the chapter house capitals. However, they are strikingly similar to the drawn composite capital in Casa Buonarroti 1OOA (Corpus 506r), a study for the right-hand bay of the San Lorenzo faQade, first given serious discussion by Michael Hirst, "Addenda Sansoviniana," BM 114 (1972): 162-5; see also M. Hirst, "A note on Michelangelo and the S. Lorenzo Facade," AB 47 (1986), 323-36. This capital has the single row of leaves with rosettes above, but is slightly stubbier, lacking the extra element below the volute.

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Michelangelo, preparing the tabernacle windows for this level, might have rejected such pilasters as being both too small and too poorly carved. 43 The windows now in place (Figure 12.4) are of a type generically derived from il Cronaca's exterior windows at San Salvatore al Monte.44 They have distinctive and rather elegant capitals with a single row of abstracted foliate forms, and bulb-like shapes between them; the morphology is not dissimilar to the chapter-house pilaster capitals, but the carving is superior. In favor of this limited hypothesis, we could note that the bases of the pilasters are well formed and reasonably convincing for Michelangelo, resembling those of the Sacristy windows, while on the other hand the bases of the central columns are rather crude, and seem less plausible as following a Michelangelesque design. If this were the origin of the stone reused by Figiovanni, the episode would be of only marginal interest, revealing little more than further evidence of the "tristi portamenti degli scarpellinr complained of by Michelangelo, or a minor miscalculation on his own part.45 In the end, however, it seems unlikely that the chapter-house pilasters were intended for this position, as the present pilasters of the attic windows are much shallower, with little "return" at the sides. There is, however, a second and much more intriguing possibility—that the stones of the chapter house windows were originally intended for the upper lunette zone of the Sacristy, and that Michelangelo then made a radical change in the design at this level. What kind of window would then be in question? At this point it may be useful to introduce a drawing by Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarroti (Figure 12.5; Corpus 494; Casa B 58A), the purpose of which has never been satisfactorily explained. It shows a biforate window composed of a central column flanked by two pilasters on each side, carrying a straight entablature, with architrave, frieze, and cornice. Charles de Tolnay proposed two possible functions for this design, suggesting first that it might be connected with the facade of the Chapel of Leo X in Castel Sant'Angelo, where there is a trabeated opening with a central (non-columnar element).46 However the forms and proportions are entirely different in the two cases. Tolnay's second suggestion for the drawing, that it might be associated with the windows of the top story of the Palazzo Cocchi Serristori in Piazza Sta. Croce, which he believed to be by Baccio d'Agnolo, is also unacceptable, but more interesting.47 43 The pilasters and columns of the chapter house windows are c.1.59 m. in height, including capitals and bases, while the pilasters of the attic tabernacle windows are around 1.84 m. in height, including capitals and bases, giving an opening of around 1.8 m. The lunette windows (see below) have openings of around 2 m. in height. These dimensions are approximate, as I have not been able to carry out detailed measurements in the New Sacristy. 44 As pointed out by C. de Tolnay, The Medici Chapel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), 30, and figs. 183-4. The best recent discussion of San Salvatore al Monte, with a convincing date in the 1490s, is R. Pacciani, "Attivita professional di Simone del Pollaiolo detto "il Cronaca" (1490-1508)," Quaderni di Palazzo Te 1, n.s. (1994), 13-35. 45 Carteggio, 3:264 and 267, Domenico Buoninsegni to Michelangelo, 14 and 17 December 1520. 46 Tolnay, Corpus, 4: 31-2, no. 494. For the Chapel of Leo X, which has been much altered over time, see Argan and Contardi (1990), 66, with earlier bibliography and an up-to-date account of its vicissitudes, and re-restoration. 47 Argan and Contardi (1990) tend to favor this suggestion, and a date of ca. 1516.

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Certainly this is not a project for Palazzo Cocchi: the proportions of the windows are different, those of Palazzo Cocchi being considerably wider, and the Palazzo Cocchi ones have no lateral pilasters; and in any case Palazzo Cocchi was almost certainly designed by Giuliano da Sangallo (not by Baccio d'Agnolo) and may plausibly be dated to the 1470s, rather than to the early sixteenth century.48 But as such it forms part of the fifteenth-century Florentine architectural language from which Michelangelo derived his early vocabulary, and we can compare the capitals of the Palazzo Cocchi windows with their single, continuous rows of leaves, with those of the chapter house. This type of biforate trabeated window was called in Florence a "finestra alia veneziana'' as we know from the celebrated letter of 1486 from Giuliano da Sangallo to Lorenzo de Medici, discussing the problem of the Sto. Spirito facade.49 Giuliano himself used such a window in one of his projects for the facade of San Lorenzo (Florence, Uffizi, UA280) in 1515-16.50 May we infer from the evidence of the drawing and Figiovanni's letter that Michelangelo designed finestre alia veneziana at the same time as he was planning the pietra serena elements of the first two levels of the New Sacristy, i.e. before October 1519 when the contracts for macigno were agreed with Cecchone?51 As we have seen, Michelangelo had many problems with this stonemason, both because the dressed stone he had contracted to produce was not supplied, and because he went his own way on site, continuing to work on elements that had not been approved.52 48 For a date of 1469-74, based on the catasto and a family division, see I. del Badia in E. Mazzanti, T. del Lungo and I. del Badia, Raccolta delle migliori fabbriche antiche e moderne di Firenze (Florence: Ferroni, 1876), I, 2-3. The dating of 1485-91 proposed by G. P. Trotta, Palazzo Cocchi Serristori a Firenze (Florence: Comune di Firenze, 1995), is not supported by the documents. The attribution to Giuliano da Sangallo, firmly stated by P. Sanpaolesi in "Architetti premichelangioleschi Toscani," Rivista dell 'Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia di Roma 13/14 (1965): 269-96, esp. 279, is reinforced by the morphological identity between the pilaster capitals on the top story, with their distinctive vertical leaves and egg and dart echinus, with the single remaining original capital in the corner of the Palazzo Scala courtyard, also dateable in the 1470s; see L. Pellecchia, "The Patron's Role in the Production of Architecture: Bartolomeo Scala and the Scala Palace," RQ 42 (1989): 258-91. For a window of this form in the orbit of Baccio d'Agnolo, however, see G. Morolli, "Firenze 1494-1527: Un classicismo mancato," in Raffaello e I'architettura a Firenze, ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1984), 126, ill., a simple trabeated flnestra alia veneziana (now blocked up), with brackets supporting both lintel and sill, with a rusticated door below, at the Villa Ginori at Baroncoli. 49 The letter is reproduced in facsimile in C. Pini and G. Milanesi, La scrittura degli artisti italiani (Florence: Le Monnier, 1876), no. 89. 50 C. von Fabriczy, Die Handzeichnungen Giuliano's da Sangallo (Stuttgart: Kommisionsverlag von Oskar Gerschel, 1902), 100; S. Borsi, Giuliano da Sangallo, I disegni di architettura e dell'antico (Rome: Officina, 1985), 481-4. For the "Venezianita" of this form of window, see the ground-floor windows at Palazzo Soranzo at San Polo, Venice, which may date from the late fourteenth century (illustrated in P. Lauritzen and A. Zielcke, Palaces of Venice (London: Phaidon, 1978), 82-4) and those tucked below the first entablature of Codussi's Palazzo Vendramin Calergi of 1502-4; see L. Olivato Puppi and L. Puppi, Mauro Codussi (Milan: Electa, 1977), 221-5. 51 Elam (1979), 162-4, and Document 5, 178; see note 23 above. 52 Carteggio, 2:267, Buoninsegni to Michelangelo, 17 December 1520; see note 24 above.

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When planning the Sacristy in 1519, Michelangelo would have had no obvious precedent to draw upon for the windows of the lunette zone. He had effectively divided Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy lunette zone into two levels, and it would not have been possible, even had he wished to do so, to follow his predecessor's forms.53 He had transformed Brunelleschi's simple arched openings into tabernacle windows, and could not imitate the oculi in Brunelleschi's drum. (Giuliano da Sangallo's Sto, Spirito sacristy, an important source for Michelangelo, also had oculi at this level.)54 A precedent for puttingfinestre alia veneziana at a similarly high level was provided by Francesco di Giorgio's church of S. Bernardino at Urbino, where they give an effect of great luminosity, and we know how important light from above was to Michelangelo at the New Sacristy.55 If this was his original choice, however, it is not surprising that he changed his mind when the construction arrived at this point in ca. 1522-23. Not only would the stone elements later employed in the capitolo have produced far too small an opening, as Figiovanni suggests, but the strict rectangularity of the finestre alia veneziana would have produced a very stiff and rigid effect in this semi-circular area. The brilliance of the completely new form Michelangelo invented (Figure 12.6)—which we find adumbrated in one of the very few drawings that can definitely be associated with the Sacristy architecture (Corpus 205r, Casa Buonarroti 105AR)—is that it makes a perfect visual transition from the lower zones to the cupola.56 The inward converging form of the window frames gives a vertiginous perspectival effect (comparable with Donatello's Ascension of Saint John relief in the Old Sacristy), which is echoed above in the diminishing forms of the coffering of the dome. Michelangelo took his starting point for these highly original windows from the Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli, with its upwardly converging windows surrounded by "eared" frames, which he had copied from the Codex Coner.57 The drawing already shows him breaking out the frame at the top, and initially he planned to break the segmental pediment as well. The dynamism of the windows in their final form is increased by the vertical continuation of the window jambs below—turning down the 53 The classic account is J. Wilde, "Michelangelo's Designs for the Medici Tombs," JWCI 18 (1955): 54-^36. 54 SeeTolnay(1948),29. 55 For San Bernardino, see F. P. Fiore and M. Tafuri, eds., Francesco di Giorgio, exh. cat., Palazzo Pubblico, Siena (Milan: Electa, 1993), 230-42, dateable ca. 1482-96; these are of the simple trabeated version with no side pilasters. They appear on the west facade and in the lunette zone on three sides of the crossing. Pedimented flnestre alia veneziana, with candelabra instead of central columns, appear on the interior and exterior of the drum of Bramante's Sta. Maria delle Grazie in Milan, 1492-97; see A. Bruschi, Bramante (Ban: Laterza, 1969), 194-205, figs. 132-40. Here they are blind, except in four places, when they are replaced by double openings which are themselves enlarged, non-pedimented flnestre alia veneziana. For lighting at the New Sacristy, see Elam (1979), 172; C. L. Frommel, "S. Eligio und die Kuppel der Cappella Medici," in Stil und Uberlieferung in der Kunst des Abendlandes, Akten des 21. Internationalen Kongresses fur Kunstgeschichte in Bonn, 1964, 3 vols. (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1967), 2:41-54. 56 Casa Buonarroti 105AR, Tolnay, Corpus, 205r. 57 Casa Buonarroti 8A, Tolnay, Corpus, no. 511r, where the catalogue entry makes this connection.

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ears of the Tivoli frames—to produce a kind of flying bracket, typical of Michelangelo's fondness for vertically continuous elements. The windows of the lunette zone can be seen to mark a distinctly new phase in the architecture of the New Sacristy (and in Michelangelo's overall architectural development), and it would make a great deal of sense if they represented an actual change of plan. We see Michelangelo moving away from the quattrocentesque forms of Giuliano da Sangallo and Cronaca to more inventive and recherche solutions. That such a transition took place between 1519 and 1524 was already evident; but it would be confirmed by the change of mind I am suggesting here.58 Although we have no letter or document referring specifically to the design and execution of these windows, it seems very likely that they date from the period shortly before or immediately after the election of Giulio de'Medici as Pope Clement VII in November 1523. It is in January 1524 that there is discussion in the letters of the coffering of the cupola, the design of which can be seen as related to the new windows.59 Although Clement probably never saw these windows in person, they must have been described to him, and we can be sure that they would have appealed to his "gusto del inedito" as a wholly novel solution. 60 This is a question to which I shall return.

The Door to the Reliquary Tribune Another significant point to do with the architecture of San Lorenzo emerges from Figiovanni's letter to Pier Francesco Riccio of 1540. Figiovanni writes that it had occurred to him to give the Confraternity of the Sacrament some stone in the vestibule "left over from those tabernacles which are all finished," and recalls that he had already re-employed a spare tabernacle from the vestibule "in that door which goes from the upper cloister into the place of the relics."61 Figiovanni is here recalling a more recent phase in the works at San Lorenzo, dating from the period after the restoration of Medici rule in Florence in 1530. The portal to which he refers is the door in the north-east corner of the upper level of the cloister (Figures 12.7 and 12.8), which has always been something of a puzzle. Tolnay attributed its design to Michelangelo himself, correctly identifying it as the door 58 Of course Wilde believed that there was a much more radical change, from an early design based more closely on the Old Sacristy, without the intermediate story, and that this change occurred in early 1521, when Michelangelo decided on the final designs for the tombs. I argued against this in 1979, on the grounds that the pietra serena contract of 13 October 1519 implied that the first two stories of the present building were in essence settled, and would emphasize that the articulation of these stories is very close in style to that of the designs and model for the fa9ade of San Lorenzo, 1516-18. 59 Carteggio, 3:24, 30-31,35, letters of 18 and 30 January, and 9 February 1524. In the last, Fattucci acknowledges a "schizo della volta" which pleased the pope (this drawing was probably Tolnay, Corpus, 206r; Casa Buonarroti 127r), and asks for further details of the size and number of rows of the proposed coffering. 60 Unless, which is just possible, they were erected before he left for Rome in April 1523: he arrived in triumph on 23 April; see Pastor, 9:187. 61 "[AJvanzati de quelli tabernancoli che sono tutti fomiti ... riaccomodai una in quella porta che dal chiostro di sopra va nel luogo delle reliquie ..."; see Document 1.

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into the staircase that leads to the reliquary tribune on the inner facade of the church; he dated it, again correctly, to the time of the construction of the tribune in 1532.62 However, another opinion about the door had already been expressed and proved remarkably persistent. Rudolf Wittkower noted its similarity to the tabernacles of the ricetto, but maintained that the "clear cut moldings" of the latter had been "translated into a soft rounded style" incompatible with that of Michelangelo, and more likely to be by a later follower. 63 Following an earlier suggestion, Wittkower came to accept an attribution to Dosio, on the basis of a drawing of the door in the Uffizi by that artist.64 As William Wallace has recently underlined, however, there is a letter from Figiovanni to Michelangelo that refers unequivocally to scarpellini working on the door "to go up to the relics" in November 1532, and it was certainly executed at that date.65 Figiovanni's letter of 1540 now allows all these different points of view to be reconciled. It is true that the door resembles the vestibule tabernacle quite closely, but is disappointing in quality. Everything is explained when we realize that it is partially composed from pieces left over from an unused tabernacle (compare Figure 12.9). As Figiovanni observed in 1532, it was already "half done."66 However, because the door is considerably wider than the tabernacles, a pediment from the latter could not be re-used and the moldings of the door pediment are indeed simplified and less well carved than those of the tabernacles, as Wittkower observed.67 The pediment is not, unlike those of the tabernacles, made of a single piece of stone. It rests directly on the capitals of the jambs, with no intermediate architrave; horizontal moldings continue those of the capitals connecting these with a sort of "shadowy element"—of the kind Michelangelo increasingly liked to employ—on each side. A continuous molding runs round the opening, as in Michelangelo's drawings for the library doors. The capitals and the pilasters are probably taken directly from a tabernacle. This is confirmed by the observation that the capitals are carved out of separate pieces of stone from those of the horizontal moldings at this level, and that the 62 Tolnay, Michelangiolo (Florence: Del Turco, 1951), 203, and C. de Tolnay "Michelangelo Buonarroti," in Enciclopedia Universale dell'Arte, 16 vols. (Novara: Istituto Geografico De Agostini, 1958), 9:297. 63 R. Wittkower, "Michelangelo's Biblioteca Laurenziana," AB 16 (1934): 123-218, esp. 203; reprinted in Idea and Image (London: Phaidon, 1978), esp. 57. 64 L. Wachler, "Giovanantonio Dosio, ein Architekt des spaten Cinquecento," Romisches Jahrbuchfur Kunstgeschichte 4 (1940): 143-251, esp. 149-50; Wittkower and Wachler did not realize the purpose of the door, and thought it led to an unexecuted second library wing. The Dosio drawing is copied in the Scholz scrapbook in New York, one drawing from which (of the S. Apollonia portal) Charles Davis has shown to be directly traced from the equivalent drawing by Dosio on a piece of paper with the same watermark. See C. Davis, "A Leaf from the Scholz Scrapbook," Metropolitan Museum Journal 12 (1977): 93-100. 65 Wallace (1989), 271, citing Carteggio, 3:440, letter of Figiovanni to Michelangelo, 23 November 1532: "Li 6 maestri scarpellini anno atteso gia 2 mesi a condurre la porta per salire alle relique, e ancora nonn.e fomita scarpelare, che non so quando mai fussi magior inganno, e era meza fatto." See also Wallace (1987) and Mussolin (2001), cited at note 10 above. 66 "[M]eza fatto;" Carteggio, 3:440, as above. 67 See note 63 above.

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pilasters are detached from the background against which they emerge. Despite the poor quality of some of the detail, the whole door is put together with some care. Evidently Michelangelo was sufficiently pleased with the result to make this the basis for the doors under the portico of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which are extraordinarily close to it in design, especially given that their execution dates from around three decades later.68 A few years ago the original intonaco on the upper level of the cloister at San Lorenzo was uncovered, revealing, among other things a drawing that seems to be for the pediment of the door we are discussing (it is on the left-hand wall leading to that door).69 It is hard to judge the drawing's quality, and it is not clear whether it is by Michelangelo himself or by one of the assistants, for example Bernardino Basso, but certainly Michelangelo's hand should not be ruled out. In any case, the need for such a drawing, similar to those mentioned in 1533 that Cecchone was to follow for the library doors, was evidently because this was one of the entirely new elements of the reliquary tribune door.70 The fact that Figiovanni was able in 1532 to use so many elements from a tabernacle left over from the vestibule requires some explanation. We might suppose either that too many tabernacles were carved—which seems a little unlikely since they were worked on site—or that the quality of the dressed stones for one of them was considered insufficiently high. A third possibility, which is of some interest, is that Michelangelo originally planned to place a tabernacle on the wall opposite the entrance door to the library, where the central bay is today perfectly blank (Figure 12.10). It has been suggested that this whiteness was an aesthetic choice on Michelangelo's part, calculated to be seen from the interior of the library. 71 This may be so, but there is also the possibility that he originally planned a tabernacle for this position, became dissatisfied with such a solution (it might well have seemed too narrow and insufficiently differentiated to occupy the wider central bay), and had not decided on an alternative before he left for Rome in 1534.72 Whether or not Figiovanni was solely responsible for the idea of reusing elements from one of the vestibule tabernacles for the door up to the reliquary tribune, 68 The closeness is pointed out by Tolnay (see note 62 above). There are good illustrations of the Capitoline doors in Argan and Contardi (1990), 32, and in P. Portoghesi and B. Zevi, Michelangiolo architetto (Turin: Einaudi, 1964), pis. 458-60. As Andrew Morrogh kindly pointed out to me, the open grilles in the tympanum, found in both cases, lighting the spaces behind, are extremely unusual. The only major changes in the Palazzo dei Conservatori doors are the triple clustered "capitals," whereas at the Reliquary tribune doors the mouldings continue behind the capitals to give a "shadowed" effect. 69 Ruschi (1993), 69-70. Ferruccio Canale, ibid., 144, seems to date the door to the eighteenth century, and attributes its Michelangelesque qualities to the "ineludibile eredita stilistica che il Buonarroti ha lasciato per secoli." 70 G. Milanesi, Le lettere di Michelangelo Buonarroti (Florence: Le Monnier, 1875), 707; C. Elam, "The Mural Drawings in Michelangelo's New Sacristy," BM 123 (1981): 593602, esp. 594, n. 5. 71 See R. Lieberman, "Michelangelo's design for the Biblioteca Laurenziana," in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. A. Morrogh et al. (Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1985), 571-84. 72 Andrew Morrogh has graphic evidence, which he has kindly shown me, and will be publishing in the future, that a tabernacle was indeed planned for this position.

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the door must in any case be seen as part of the overall program for the tribune, which was carved and erected while Michelangelo was away in Rome in 1532-33. Although he expressed his satisfaction with the tribune when he returned to Florence in July 1533, Michelangelo could hardly have failed to observe that the execution of the door was not up to the level of the carving in the Library, where he had supervised everything and rejected whatever he did not like.73 As he himself was well aware, he was not the kind of architect who could delegate the supervision of the building entirely to assistants. Later, at St. Peter's, he was to lament the fact that the workmen had misinterpreted the design for the vaulting of the apses, because he was too old to visit the building site as often as he would have liked. 74

A Change of Direction in Michelangelo's Architecture The windows in the lunette zone of the New Sacristy as finally built are particularly crucial, because they mark an identifiable change in direction in Michelangelo's approach to architectural design. For this reason, it would be of especial significance if they also represent a revision of Michelangelo's original design. It is therefore important to characterize this change, and to attempt to date the design and construction of the windows, even if precise evidence is lacking. The lunette windows are never referred to in the correspondence between Michelangelo and his patron's agents, either before or after Giulio's election as pope in November 1523. As we have seen, from January 1524 the correspondence becomes frequent and detailed, drawings of every new element are requested and sent, and Michelangelo's extensive ricordi of the day-to-day work on the models of the tombs, the initial stuccoing of the vault and the erection of scaffolding for that purpose have survived. On 29 October 1524 four wooden frames were paid for to close the "finestre di sopra della sagrestia di San Lorenzo" with oiled waxed paper, because rain-water was getting in. 75 This seems to provide a terminus ante quern for the construction of the windows. 73 Leonardo Sellaio explained to Clement VII in 1526 that Michelangelo had to spend much time on the library vestibule because it posed unusual problems for the stonemasons: "e che in questo tempo voi avete pensato al ricepto, chosa inusitata a.ffare gli scarpellini, e bisongnava essere loro appresso a ongni hora" (Carteggio, 3:214-15, Sellaio to Michelangelo, 10 March 1526). 74 Carteggio, 5:113-14, letter to Giorgio Vasari, 1 July 1557. 75 / Ricordi di Michelangelo, ed. L. Bardeschi Ciulich and P. Barocchi (Florence: Sansoni, 1970), 133: "E oggi questo di ventinove o pagato a.bBaccio di Puccione legnaiuolo sedici grossoni per quattro telai di finestre per inchartare, che io gli 6 facti fare per le finestre di sopra della sagrestia di San Lorenzo per rispecto dell'aque che entravano e faceano danno." The year is certainly 1524, and the month can be inferred as October from an analogous payment on 4th November 1524 for materials to oil and wax "le finestre incartate della sagrestia." Bardeschi Ciulich notes that on 9 November 1524 eight similar frames were supplied to close the windows of the lantern for the same reason (Ricordi, 160). For the dating of the lantern, see note 31 above. David Hemsoll has suggested to me that these references might be to some form of temporary closure of the openings before the window frames were constructed, but I think this is unlikely.

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Given the silence in the letters and ricordi that become so abundant after the end of 1523, it seems possible that the windows were already in place by the end of 1523, and that they were designed and erected in the rather mysterious period after April 1521 and before November 1523, when we have very little firm evidence for the progress of the building, or indeed for what Michelangelo was actually doing. It is usually assumed that work slowed down in the Sacristy during the pontificate of Adrian VI, a view that is supported by Michelangelo's draft letter of ca. April 1523, complaining of having had no firm commission to execute the tombs, but some work on the construction must have continued during this period, as the renewal of the contract for stone with Antonio and Romolo di Guelfo suggests. 1 would incline to date the windows later rather than earlier, because they represent such an advance in Michelangelo's architectural thinking. The audacious convergence of the frames, the broken out hoods and the lively unorthodox moldings are a world away from the vocabulary immediately below. The quattrocentesque Corinthian/Composite capitals have been abandoned, and replaced by chunky brackets suggesting unarticulated triglyphs. How did Michelangelo make the conceptual leap toward this "stile mescolato" which then becomes characteristic of the architecture of the Laurentian Library? Elements of this vocabulary are evident in designs for the never-completed tomb of the "Magnifici," Lorenzo and Giuliano di Piero de'Medici, on the south wall of the sacristy, and Andrew Morrogh has recently pointed out how important these drawings are in Michelangelo's architectural development. Unfortunately, the key designs are known only from copies, although their close derivation from Michelangelo cannot be doubted. The most formal of them, and the one known in most versions, has a central tabernacle (containing the seated Virgin and Child) with tapering "herm" pilasters topped by bearded heads.78 The segmental pediment above is broken out at either side, and impost blocks below continue this strong vertical emphasis. The herms look forward to the executed upper level of the tomb of Julius II, and the tabernacles as a whole have much in common with those in the vestibule of the 76 Elam (1979), 168, and Document 6, 178 9; see also Reiss (1992), chap.11 for this period. P. Joannides, in L 'Adoloscente dell'Ermitage e la Sagrestia Nuova di Michelangelo, exh. cat., Casa Buonarroti, Florence (Florence: Maschietto and Mussolino, 2000), 138-40, suggests that the windows might have been executed considerably later, after 1530. This may be so, but I can find no supporting evidence: he suggests a terminus post quern of 1524-25 on the grounds that materials like those mentioned on the undated notes on the verso of Corpus 205r, the design for the present window, "furono acquistati in grande quantita tra 1524 e il 1525," but the materials in question are "asse di tiglio/ chacio/ charbone/ bullecte," which seem common enough to be inconclusive; he then takes up Tolnay's suggestion that the windows might have been part of the "opera di macigno" mentioned in Sebastiano's letter to Michelangelo of 16 August 1533, but we know that the latter certainly refers to the library doors and staircase steps for which specific contracts were drawn up with Cecchone in 1533; see Milanesi (1875), 707. 77 A. Morrogh, "The Magnifici Tomb: A Key Project in Michelangelo's Architectural Career," AB 74 (1992): 567-95. 78 The version of highest quality is Louvre 837, attributed to Michelangelo himself by Paul Joannides, "Michelangelo's Medici Chapel: Some New Suggestions," BM 114 (1972): 541-51. Morrogh (1992), 579, fig.ll, reproduces Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Parker 349. See also Joannides (2000), 126, no. 20 (ill. in color).

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Laurentian Library. Rarely in his built architecture does Michelangelo go so far in breaking the upper moldings of a pediment, although he often breaks the lower frame and pushes forwards sections at either side within the pediment. 79 This particular design for the Magnifici Tomb, which goes so closely with the autograph modello in the Louvre (838) for the tomb of Duke Giuliano, is usually dated April 1521,80 Even more interesting for the theme of Michelangelo's hybrid "stile mescolato" is the project for the Magnifici tomb known from a drawing in the Uffizi usually given to Giovanni Battista da Sangallo, which I take to be by Raffaello da Montelupo, Michelangelo's assistant in the Medici Chapel in the 1530s.81 Here the central tabernacle housing the Virgin and Child has a segmental pediment supported on triglyph brackets behaving like capitals, with a full entablature above. This entire system is continued laterally to either side, and triglyphs with entablature sections above break out in the middle of the side bays. This disjunctive use of the triglyph looks forward to the Laurentian library vestibule tabernacles, and the doubling up of the elements around the tabernacle to give a "shadowed" effect, is also typical of Michelangelo's architecture from the mid 1520s onwards. Morrogh has recently dated the original of this drawing to early 1521.82 If these datings are correct, we see Michelangelo progressing in 1521, albeit a little unevenly, toward his mature Florentine architectural language, which achieves built form with the lunette windows, probably in 1523. It is very likely to have been 79 Casa Buonarroti 65A, Tolnay, Corpus 548r, a black-chalk design for a window frame of uncertain date (Tolnay thinks of the Laurentian Library period, Joannides connects it with the Palazzo Famese), has the upper frame of the pediment broken out in the centre. Breaking out the outer edges of a pediment has antique precedents, and is also found on the facade of Benardo Rossellino's Pienza Cathedral, as Andrew Morrogh reminded me. 80 For the Giuliano tomb modello in the Louvre, see Joannides (1972) and (2000), 123 (with color ill.), rightly classifying it as autograph. The suggestions that it is a copy by Toussaint Dubreuil or by an assistant, possibly Stefano Lunetti, do not seem tenable (see D. Cordellier, "Toussaint Dubreuil 'singulier en son art,'" Bulletin de la Societe de Van fran$ais (1985): 242-60; W. Wallace, 'Two Presentation Drawings for Michelangelo's Medici Chapel," Master Drawings 25 (1987): 242-60. 81 Morrogh (1992), 575, fig. 8. Joannides has pointed out an autograph Michelangelo sketch in the Fogg connected with the low relief scenes apparently related to Medici golden age iconography (P. Joannides, "A Newly Unveiled Drawing by Michelangelo and the Iconography of the Magnifici Tomb," Master Drawings 29 (1991), 255-62. Interestingly, a drawing in Budapest by the same hand as Uffizi 607E, takes up details of the Giuliano tomb modello (L. Zentai, "Un dessin de Giovanni Battista Sangallo et les projets de fresques de la Chapelle Medicis," Bulletin du Musee Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 36 (1971): 79-92. This draughtsman is evidently the author of the sketchbook in Lille, convincingly identified as Raffaello da Montelupo by Arnold Nesselrath; see F. Lemerle, "Livre de dessins de Michel-Ange," in B. Brejon de Lavergnee, Catalogue des Dessins Italiens, Collection des Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille (Paris: Reunion des musees nationaux (1997), 281-324; Arnold Nesselrath, "II 'libro di Michelangelo' a Lille," Quaderni dell 'Istituto di Storia dell'Architettura, n.s. 24 (1994 [ 1997]), 35-52. 82 Morrogh (1992), 574-7. I shall not consider here the drawing in Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, CC470, published for the first time by Morrogh as a faithful copy of a later project, ca. November 1523-January 1524; it shows a more rigorous design, devoid of any licentious or unconventional detailing. Morrogh's dating may be correct, but I am a little doubtful about his notion of a short-lived "classicizing interlude" in Michelangelo's architectural thinking in these months.

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the experience of designing the tombs that produced these new forms, and there may be some argument for supposing that Michelangelo initially felt that this "mixed" language was more suitable for tomb architecture, closer to the expressive modes of sculpture, than for the articulation of architectural spaces, which he seems initially to have thought should be more decorously organized in terms of a grid of recognizably conventional (though not entirely Vitruvian) architectural orders. This would be supported by the early appearance of herms and highly decorative carving on the Tomb of Julius II. 83 As for outside influences favoring this direction in Michelangelo's architectural thinking, at this period they could only have come from Rome. Although Donatello's unorthodox approach to architectural detailing has rightly been cited as important for Michelangelo's "license"—and the idea of dislocation and reversal of elements is certainly very Donatellesque, as are specific forms such as imbrication and feathering—what is entirely absent from Florentine architectural or sculptural vocabulary is the playing around with details of the Doric order.84 To some extent Michelangelo's experimentation with the Doric may derive from a more intensive study of the Leonine architecture of Raphael and Giulio Romano, although their buildings do not provide precise parallels or precedents. The shadowing of elements in the project for the Magnifici tomb copied by Montorsoli, and the way the pediment grows out of the main entablature, are found at Raphael's Palazzo da Brescia, and the use of metopes over the corner pilasters there is a highly unorthodox interpretation of the Doric frieze. Similarly, the abbreviation of the Doric entablature found at the Palazzo Branconio and the Villa Lante al Gianicolo (taken from the Crypta Balbi), results in isolated guttae such as appear at the top of the '"herms"' in the Laurenziana vestibule tabernacles, although the effect there is considerably more bizarre.86 Clement assumes a knowledge on Michelangelo's part of the Villa Madama and the Villa Lante when he recommends the former as model for the stuccoes at the New Sacristy in 1533, but we must remember that between 1516 and 1532 Michelangelo was in Rome for only two brief visits, in January 1518 and December 1523.87 83 Herms go back to the first tomb project of 1505, and the decorative carving of the first level "alia grottesca" can be dated 1513; see C. de Tolnay, Michelangelo II. The Tomb of Julius //(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), 30, 93. 84 For Donatello, see D. Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), chap. 8, 144-63. Although Giuliano da Sangallo's Gondi chapel in Sta. Maria Novella of ca. 1503 and beyond should certainly be mentioned in this context for the use of an unorthodox Doric in a funereal context; see G. Marchini, "L'incrostazione marmorea della Cappella Gondi in S. Maria Novella, Palladio 3 (1939), 205-11. 85 See C. L. Frommel in Raffaello architetto (1984), 157-65. 86 P. N. Pagliara in Raffaello architetto (1984), 171-89, for Palazzo Branconio; Lilius (1981) for the Villa Lante. A forthcoming article by David Hemsoll in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians will explore further sources in the antique and elsewhere for Michelangelo's innovative architectural vocabulary. 87 For the letter of 1533, see notes 5 and 6 above. For Michelangelo's visits to Rome in 1518 and 1523, see Milanesi (1875), 671 (contract for the facade of San Lorenzo signed in Rome 19 January 1518), and Carteggio, 3:3-5.

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A Doorway "much praised by Clement VII" However, the architect in Rome whose approach in the 1520s seems nearest to Michelangelo's (though much more closely tied to the study of antiquity) is Baldassare Peruzzi, and it is highly relevant to our study that Clement VII is said by Sebastiano Serlio to have particularly admired one of Peruzzi's designs which shares Michelangelo's imaginative approach to Doric detail. In his fourth book on architecture, published in 1537, Serlio reproduces, without naming the building from which it comes, a doorway designed by Peruzzi (Figure 12.11), which he uses as an example of how it is possible to "mix" the orders with beautiful results that do not depart from decorum.88 That the door was essentially Doric is evident from the triglyphs in the frieze, but at either side the triglyphs "break out" into brackets where they carry the weight of the pediment. This, says Serlio, I have never seen in the antique, or found it described. But Baldassare da Siena, a voracious devotee of antiquity, perhaps saw some trace of it, or with his beautiful judgment was the inventor of this variation ... and this thing, in my opinion, is both decorous and graziosa to the eye, and was greatly praised by Clement VII, who certainly had very great judgment in all the noble arts. 9 Clement saw Peruzzi's invention on the facade of the Palazzo Fusconi da Norcia in Rome, begun for Ugo da Spina, Uditore di Rota, probably at the end of Leo's pontificate (Spina died before 18 May 1523), and completed for the papal doctor Francesco Fusconi da Norcia after 1 June 1524 but before the Sack of Rome.90 The palace, which once stood on the Vicolo del Giglio, between the Campo dei Fiori and the future Piazza Farnese, is long since destroyed, but sixteenth-century drawings record the strange yet beautiful door and windows, with their eared frames, triglyph brackets and (in the case of the windows) "C"-shaped volutes supporting the lintel (Figure 12.12). The windows, although closer to the antique than Michelangelo's Florentine usage, are strikingly similar in conception and even in detail—not only the dislocation of the triglyph, but also the C-shaped volute was a favorite form for him. 88 S. Serlio, /Sette Libri dell'Architettura (Venice: Franceschi, 1584), repr. (Bologna: Forni, 1978), bk. 4 (originally published 1537), 146v-^7r. 89 "Talvolta una mescolanza, per modo di dire, torna piii grata per la diversita a riguardanti, che una pura semplicita di sua propria natura: onde e piu lodabile, se da diversi membri di una istessa natura sara formato a un corpo proportionao, come si puo vedere nella seguente figura, nella quale sono correnti, & mensole in uno steso ordine, il che in effetto non ho veduto nell'antico ne trovato scritto. Ma Baldassar da Siena consumatissimo nelle antichita forse ne vidde qualche vestigio, o vero col suo bellissimo giudicio fu il trovatore di questa varieta, ponendo i correnti sopra alia apertura perche patiscono meno peso: le mensole sopra il sodo delle pilastrate, le quali sostengono tutto il peso del frontispicio: & questa cosa, al parere mio, serva il decoro, & e gratiosa alFocchio, & fu molto lodato da Clemente settimo, che fu cero giudiocissimo in tutte le arti nobili." (Serlio, as above) See F. P. Fiore, in S. Serlio, Architettura civile. Libro sesto, settimo e ottavo nei manoscritti di Monaco e Vienna, ed. F. P. Fiore (Milan: II Polifilo, 1984), XLVII. Cf. Reiss (1992), 26. 90 See esp. A. Bruschi, "Baldassare Peruzzi nei palazzo di Francesco Fusconi da Norcia," Architettura Storia e Document*, no. 2 (1986): 11-30; see also C. L. Frommel, Die Romische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance, 3 vols. (Tubingen: E. Wasmuth, 1973), 2:189-97.

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Peruzzi's Palazzo Fusconi window/door, and Clement's liking for it, are sometimes interpreted in terms of the "existential unease" in Rome in the 1520s and of Clement's supposedly severe taste for a "colta simplicitas"91 One could take a similarly gloomy and apocalyptic view of Michelangelo's "mixed" Doric. However, all the evidence from Clement's correspondence suggests that he liked to be amused rather than made uneasy by architectural innovation, and that what Manfredo Tafuri aptly characterized as the pontiffs "gusto del inedito" was on both his and his artists' part evidence of an inventive rather than a neurotic mind. The "graz/0" that both Serlio and Vasari saw in the Palazzo Fusconi was clearly not conceived by them to be in any way morbid.92 It is unfortunately not clear in what phase of the Palazzo Fusconi's building history the Doric door and window were completed, and thus it is impossible to say whether Michelangelo could have seen them during his trip to Rome in December 1523 to discuss the Julius tomb and the Florentine projects with Clement. But, in any case, the link between Michelangelo and Peruzzi in this case could easily be Clement himself. Conclusion: "qualche fantasia nuova" Leo X had been almost reluctant to employ the talents of Michelangelo during his papacy, despite the great affection he felt for the artist. Sebastiano del Piombo reported in October 1520 that the pope talked of him as of a brother "almost with tears in his eyes," telling Sebastiano that he (Leo) and Michelangelo had been "nourished together" and that he knew and loved him; but, Sebastiano went on in his letter to the artist: "you frighten everyone, even popes."93 In another conversation the same month, Leo remarked on the extraordinary impact Michelangelo had had on Raphael's style as a painter, but went on: "But he is terrible, as you see: one can't deal with him."94 Michelangelo had to machinate with Baccio d'Agnolo to obtain the commission for the fa$ade of San Lorenzo: we can imagine that Leo would have

91 For "disagio esistenziale ed anche culturale," see Bruschi (1986), 13, and Tessari (1995), 63, who uses the terms "colta simplicitas" and "gusto severe." For a more nuanced view, see Howard Burns's introduction to Tessari (1995), which specifically compares Michelangelo^ Florentine and Peruzzi's Roman architecture. My understanding of the Peruzzi/ Clement connection goes back to Burns's lectures of the 1970s. 92 See Vasari-Milanesi, 4, 596: "A Messer Francesco da Norcia fece per la sua casa in sulla piazza de'Farnesi, una porta d'ordine dorico molto graziosa." This appears only in the 1568 edition; see Le Vite de' piii eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e del 1568, ed. R. Bettarini and P. Barocchi (Florence: Sansoni, 1966-), Testo 4: 320. Vasari may have been prompted by re-reading the Serlio text to put it in, having seen for himself or been told by some well-informed observer which palace the door came from. For the "gusto del inedito," see note 4 above. 93 "quasi con le lacrime agli occhi", "nutriti insieme", "fate paura a ognuno, insino a'papi;" Carteggio, 3:253, letter of 27 October 1520. 94 "Ma e terribile, come tu vedi, non si pol praticar con lui;" Carteggio, 3:247, letter of 15 October 1520.

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much preferred to deal (initially) with Giuliano da Sangallo, or subsequently with Raphael, had he been able to spare the latter from his Roman projects. Giulio de' Medici, by contrast, was evidently far more at his ease with Michelangelo, and was well able to "deal with him." Clement was always encouraging the artist to search for new and different solutions; he was reported on various occasions as wanting "qualche fantasia nuova" for the ceiling of the library, with shallow decoration rather than the standard type of deep, Renaissance coffering found in Roman buildings, and when Michelangelo sent the drawing of the entrance door from the ricetto to the reading room, the pope declared that he had never seen one more beautiful, neither antique nor modern—prefiguring the critical terminology with which Vasari was to discuss Michelangelo's architecture. 95 The stimulating relationship between Clement and Michelangelo probably resembled that between Federico Gonzaga and his court artist Giulio Romano, with not dissimilar results.96 Clement, with his powers of giudizio and his experience as governor of Florence from 1519 to 1523, also had a clearer idea than Leo of what was and was not expedient or appropriate in a Florentine context. Hence, as we have seen, he preferred Medicean rather than pontifical armorials at San Lorenzo, presumably because he wanted to avoid too much emphasis on papal domination in his native city. His one lapse of judgment in his dealings with Michelangelo was the preposterous idea for a colossal statue to be placed opposite the Palazzo Medici.97 But it is clear from the correspondence that the main point of this project was to divert Michelangelo's attention from the alluring prospect of making a Hercules and Antaeus group for the Piazza della Signoria: Clement wanted Michelangelo to work for him and not for the Florentine state.98 And, although the papal secretary Marzi reproved the artist for his ferociously satirical response to the colossus proposal, saying that he should realize that the idea was "not a joke," and the pope "wants to do it, if time allows, both for His Holiness's sake and for yours," Michelangelo must have realized that with Clement, who loved

95 Carteggio, 3:41, letter of 10 March 1524: "bello et non riquadrato, ma con qualche fantasia nuova; et che e' non vi fussi di sfondato piu di dua o tre dita, come voi saprete fare"; Carteggio, 3:221, letter of 18 April 1526: "Della porta disse che e' nonn.aveva veduto mai la piu bella, ne antica ne modema." As Sheryl Reiss kindly points out to me, this is characteristic of Clement's language; see Reiss (1992), 18, for his examination of a medal given to him by Mario Maffei. In the context of the Laurenziana ceiling, it is worth adding that Giulio had specifically asked for flat ceilings in two rooms of the Villa Madama; see Lefevre (1973), 109-10, citing the cardinal's autograph letter to Mario Maffei of 4 June 1520: "Li palchi delle due camere si faccino piani come ultimamente fu ordinato;1' but he may well have found the resulting coffering deeper than he liked. 96 For Federico's version of the "gusto del inedito," see A. Belluzzi and K. W. Forster, "Giulio Romano architetto alia corte dei Gonzaga," in Giulio Romano, exh. cat., Palazzo Te, Mantua (Milan: Electa, 1989), 177-225, esp. 177 and n. 9, 224, with examples of his requests for "novita" from agents and artists. 97 Carteggio, 3:170, 176, 184-5, 188-90, 194, letters of 14 October to 23 December 1525. For the proposed colossus, see also William Wallace's essay in this volume. 98 Carteggio, 3:184, letter of 10 November 1524: "della statua di piaza. Risposemi quello medesimo [Clement]; di poi mi disse: 'digli che io lo voglio tutto per me, et non voglio che e' pensi alle cose del pubricond d'altri ma alle mia....'"

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to be amused, he could get away with satire." Despite the fact that Michelangelo's sentiments towards the Medici family were at best ambivalent after the Siege of Florence, he was well aware, when looking back, that Clement VII had been one of his most discerning patrons.100 Moreover, Michelangelo's distaste for the Medici duchy did not mean that he was nostalgic for the corporate systems of patronage characteristic of the Florentine republic. In 1547, arguing with the bureaucracy of the Fabbrica of St. Peter's, he spoke with disdain of the Florentine Opera del Duomo, saying that he had had a similar responsibility at Sta. Maria del Fiore in Florence where some hundreds of thousands ofscudi had been spent, and the members of the building committee who had charge of it had a different profession, being wool merchants, and they did not understand architecture or buildings.{ l Better a single educated patron, with precise tastes, like Clement VII, than an ignorant committee of wool merchants, however politically acceptable. And it could be argued that the "new architectural order" invented by Michelangelo in his Florentine buildings was particularly well suited to the cultural aspirations of the Medici dukes after the siege. His bizarre, licentious order in the Laurentian library vestibule could be seen as a kind of composite Doric or Tuscan order that consorted well with the Medici redeployment of the Etruscan chimera as the badge of their imperial ambitions. The Leonine style, with its megalomaniac scale and its freight of Roman archaeological detail had been regarded with some suspicion by the Florentines. With the idea of the Tuscan/Doric as something that combined a frugal primitivism with a hybrid licentiousness, Michelangelo, even if this was in no way his intention, provided a kind of key for the formation of an architectural language which would serve the self-representational purposes of the Medici Grand Duchy.102 99 For Michelangelo's satirical response, see his two letter drafts, Carteggio, 3:188-91. For the colossus in an urbanistic context, see C. Elam, "Palazzo Medici nel contesto urbano: strategic urbanistiche dei Medici nel gonfalone del Leon d'Oro 1415-1530," in Palazzo Medici Riccardi, ed. G. Cherubim and G. Fanelli (Florence: Giunti, 1990), 44-57. For the pope's reply, see Carteggio, 3:194, letter of Pier Polo Marzi to Michelangelo, 23 December 1525. This is the letter with the famous autograph "popes do not live long" postscript from Clement, saying how much he longed to see the chapel and library complete, or at least to have knowledge of their completion. For which see Reiss (1992), 36, and William Wallace's essay in this volume. For Clement's love of amusement, see Reiss (2001). 100 See Condivi's comment on the New Sacristy sculptures: A. Condivi, Vita di Michelangelo Buonarroti, ed. G. Nencioni (Florence: S.P.E.S., 1997), 41: "Questo beneficio doviamo a papa Clemente, il quale se nessun'altra cosa di lodevole in vita fatta avesse (che pur ne fece molte), questa fu bastante a scancelare ogni suo difetto, che per lui il mondo ha cosi nobil'opera." 101 "[c]he lui haveva havuto simircaricho in Sancta Maria del Fiore a Fiorenza dove si erano spese qualche centinaio di migliaie di scudi et quelli operari che ne havevano cura che erano mercanti di lana et che havevano altro mestiere et esercitio, che quelli non si intendevano di architettura ne di edifici." See H. Saalman, "Michelangelo at St Peter's: The Arberino Correspondence," AB 60 (1978), 483-93, esp. 490. The question of when Michelangelo might have held the office of Capomaestro at Sta. Maria del Fiore remains to be addressed; Saalman (485) suggests that it may have been during the Last Republic in 1527-30. 102 I explore this idea in an article forthcoming in Renaissance Studies, based upon a paper given at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Chicago in 2001.

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Appendix Document One Letter of Battista Figiovanni to Pier Francesco Riccio, 5 June 1540 (Florence, ASF, MdelP, 1169, Insert 5, no. 179) Prior' Figiovanni dei Medici al Molto Reverendo Monsignor Messer Piero Francesco Riccio Canonico Cattedrale unico secretario di Sua Excellent!a Molto Reverendo Monsignor Patrone mio honorando Adi 5 g[i]ug[n]o 1540 A causa de' mia troppi anni io mi truovo veder' poco, udir' manco e non punto di memoria, et in modo inpedito d'un pie che mi forza andar male, e mancamenti tanti e quali 10 mi sono tolto da ongni servitio appresso de1 mia singnori patroni e lor presenze e delli amici, et iudicandomi persona inutile e perduta mi sono privo di tanto mio refrigierio di ritrovarmi nelle presenze e luoghi dove non che ne resultassi la samta ma la salute d'anima. Ma bisognando come fatto si fusse 1'occasione di ben', io sarei giovane e libero da essi mali, vorrei come sarebbe il voler' et obligo mio et con molto contento di transfer[ir]mi da Vostra Signoria per obtener da quella una singolare gratia, et magiore piacere che con manco suo scomodo legga questa et inteso il nervo di essa bibiaccia, mi vogla exaldir a bocca in 4 parole direi la sustanza. Atteso una opera laldabile, la qual da principio alia sua chiesa di San Lorenzo io [ho] voluto poire la spalla sotto esso peso, ora come gia altra volta in che feci servitio con lanima del [illegible word], e come ancor far voglo con molti canonici, cappellani et popolani di Santo Lorenzo et li Signor operai di quella. Ed i sopradetti anno ordinati una conpangnia e non gia di poco numero huomini da bene, e diciesi in servi[re] a honorar' il sacramento del corpus domini quando portato e alii malati in pericolo di morte al tempo quando 4 di essa conpangnia con 1e vesti cilesti et ciascuno con la torcia aciesa apresso quello et esso sotto uno baldacchino pintato el parte sotto e con molti di essi in conpangnia cosi procieder. Andava prima el sacierdote con 2 chierici e con 2 torci nullo altro apresso come se quello [illegible words]. Et a causa che tal principio possa aver'il suo desiderate fine dal bene al meglo con salute accade dar'luogo di adunarsi dove li arnesi loro e bisongnando deliberar' Io che acade con buona gratia di Sua Excellentia li singnori operai con li di Santo Lorenzo anno conciesso il capitolo di San Lorenzo dove fa bisongno serrar' dinanzi e con 2 fmestre et una porta che fia in servitio di questo gia detto et del camarlingo Io archivo e libri in sepolcro del capitolo e che altro bisogno per quel fu fatto. Di gia posto mano e dato lor pietre per due finestre che furno fatte per la nuova sacrestia che risusc[irono]103 piccole, Michelangelo li fecie rifare magiore. Accadono pietre per la porta le quale per esser nel ricietto apunto a proposito et avanzati de quelli tabernancoli che sono tutti fomiti. E non n'e poca ventura alia poverta della conpangnia trovar' tale comodita di presteza e risparmio e non cose da operarsi cosi in ongni loco e fia cosa bella a redurla e come feci io quando riaccomodai una in quella porta che dal chiostro di sopra va nel luogo delle reliquie che serfve bene]. Et quelli che son sopra tale santa opera anno fatto ogni diligienza apresso di Piero Giglozzi e di Niccolo Tribulo104 e altri persone per aver' la chiave o le pietre e non n'e stato possibile e sono venuti a me come a priore pensando come iusto abbia etc. io dissi che come a peggior' che sono ne fui spoglato il primo di con molto mio 103 Uncertain reading: the word could be "riusc[itej." 104 The sculptor and architect Niccolo Tribolo was appointed "Architettore della Chiesa" of San Lorenzo by order of Cosimo I on 8 May 1542 (see A. Butterfield and C. Elam, "Desideno da Settignano's Tabernacle of the Sacrament," MKIF43 [1999]: 334-57, esp. 353, n. 68), but was evidently already operating there before his formal appointment.

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piacere liberandomi di infasta somissione e tempesta da Piero Giglozzi e mai lo piu ricerchai. 10 credo che li siano in guardarobba dove meglo stanno sotto la cura di Vostra Signoria e dove fusse Tanima e faculta mia la prego ex cor che per dio et per la corce la mi vogla far' questa gratia e piacere far mandare la chiave e dare le pietre perche la cosa non patisca piu e se le dia 11 laldabile fine assalute del si [illegible word]. E per sempre ne restero stiavo a Vostra Signoria el suo servo Prior' Figiovanni de Medici. Document Two Building expenses for closing the openings in the fa9ade of the Chapter House at San Lorenzo, June 1540 to May 1541 (ACSL, 2419, Entrata e Uscita del Capitolo 1540-41) (The same payments are recorded, with no further information than is found below, in ACSL, Debitori e Creditori del Capitolo, 1535-42.) [fol.33r, 15 June 1540] A spese d'aconcimi lire due piccioli per 40 some di rena ... per murare 1'archivio sino a di 12 di giugno passato lire 2 [fol.33v, 24 July 1540] spese d'aconcimi lire 7 soldi 13 aconcinu in piu luoghi ... lire tre soldi 6 per havere fatto nettare e portare via la roba che era sotto le volte [fol.35v, 14 August 1540] A spese d'aconcimi lire ventuna soldi 12 piccioli per tanti spesi piu di sono in moggia 2 di calcina e per 800 pezzi di lavoro per conto della muraglia del capitolo per fare 1'archivio e delta calcina si messe sotto le volte specta porto baldino muratore 290 lire 21 soldi 12 [fol.38v, 2 October 1540] A spese d'aconcimi fatti nel capitolo lire cinquanta quattro soldi 13 d. piccioli in questo modo cioe lire 25 soldi 4 per opere 18 di maestro a soldi 28 il di lire 16 soldi 16 per opere 24 di manovale a soldi 14 il di per mezane e mattoni e quadrucci soldi 34 lire I s.l per fare nettare le schaglie fatte dalli scharpellini per uno corbello s.5 per aguti s.3 per stucco s.3 per rena s.37 d4 per staia diciotto di calcina lire? s.10 che la detta calcina ne servi parte per lo smalto dreto alia porta in tutto 290 lire 54 s.23 - 4. [39r, 9 October 1540] A spese d'aconcimi lire sedici s.2 piccioli per tanti in questo modo cioe per opere 5 di maestro a s.24 il di, per opere 6 di manovale a soldi 13 il di, per some 48 di ghiaia a s. 1 d4 la soma, piu lire 3 per staia 12 di calcina, tucto per fare ismalto drieto alia porta del chiostro et per fare portare la calcina che gia si speza fa che era sotto le volte risecha in tutto 290 lire 16 s.2. [fol.39v, 13 October 1540] A spese straordinarie lire quindici piccioli per tanti a Giuliano di Baccio dd'Agnolo105 per sua fatica per havere fatto il disegno della porta del capitolo 290 lire 15s.??? A spese straordinarie lire una e s.l8 piccioli per tanti spesi allo scharpellino per havere rotto li archi nel capitolo fatto nel chiostro et per una pietra bucata per la catena alia porta del chiostro porto il ghiaia scharpellino col 290 lire 1 s.l8 Mercholedi a di 20 detti [October 1540]

105 Giuliano, son of the woodworker architect Baccio d'Agnolo, followed in the same professions and worked with Baccio Bandinelli from ca. 1542/3 on the Udienza in what became the Salone dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio (see Vasari-Milanesi, 5:354-9; E. Allegri and A. Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici [Florence: S.P.E.S., 1980], 32-9).

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225 106

A spese d'aconcimi lire duegento trentotto per tanti a maestro Bernardino Basso per sua fatica et acconcimi di piii pietre et pietre di suo per conto della [muraglia del] capitolo cioe flnestre et porta fatta nel nostro chiostro nel capitolo per suo resto fatto per Giuliano di Baccio d'Agnolo legnaiuolo porto maestro Bernardino detto in piu volte et per ogni resto hoggi questo di lire venti sette et s.15 piccoli conti in tutto 290 lire 238 [fol.41r] A spese d'aconcimi lire settanta piccioli per tanti spesi in fare inbianchare e chiostri di sotto e di sopra nel capitolo porto Antonio inbianchatore zoppo contanti 290 lire 70 [fol.47r, 7 January 1541] A spese d'aconcimi lire dieci s.13 piccioli per tanti spesi per ferramenti qui dappie per le fmestre e 1'uscio del capitolo del chiostro per arpioni et bandelle et per 4 salisceni di 2/3 con loro fornimenti per una arpione da [ijmbiombare et badela per arpioni da [ijngessare e per lire 5 d.2 d'una fmestra di 7 somi alia finestra del portinaio et per uno paio di campanelle alia porta del detto capitolo et per due paletti da cadere co'loro fornimenti per le dette finestre in tutto 331 lire 10 s. 13. [fol. 48v] Sabato a di 22 di gennaio [1541] A spese d'aconcimi 5 lire s.10 per cinque toppe col chiave et uno arpione cioe una toppa a chiave per 1'uscio del archivio e per una cassa e per 2 armadi nel archivio e per la porta che va sotto le volte lire 5 s. 10 [fol.51r] lire undici s.d. maestri manovali et tegolini embrici calcina et il tetto dove rovino una finestra rimurata di mattoni della libreria et rovin6 sopra el tetto in tucto 331 lire 11 s.2 [fol.62v, 31 May 1541] A spese d'aconcimi lire quattrocento tredici s.10 piccioli che tanti pagati a Petro legnaiuolo in piu partiti portato lui detto di conti per robe et aconcimi fattoci nella nostra chiesa et maxime nel capitolo fatto di nuovo come cosa per cosa apare al libro giornale segnato D a 225 et di mano di Pietro Lioni e di ricordo 331 lire 413 s.10. Document Three The Chapter of S. Lorenzo grants permission to the Confraternity of the Sacrament to meet in the Chapter House, 22 June 1541 (ACSL 2129, Libro di Ricordi 1541-87, fol. 3r) [Margin] Compagnia del Sacramento Ricordo come a di 22 di Giugno 1541 il nostro Capitolo concedette alia Compagnia del Sacramento della nostra chiesa che ella possi liberamente ragunarsi a tutti i suoi bisogni nella stanza nuova da noi aconcia nel nostro chiostro, comunemente detto il Capitolo, con patto pero che delta Compagnia non vi acquista mai ne entratura ne ragione alcuna o dominio piu sempre possa essere mandata a bene placito del capitolo et de' conservatori di quello che pel tempo saranno. Item che essa non possa mai ragunarsi la notte ne cetebrare ufici divini a uso di Compagnia con molte altre condition! che appariscono nello Instrumento rogato per Ser Giovanni Vannucci nostro Cancelliere el sotto detto di.

106 For Bernardino Basso, see note 41 above.

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Chapter 13

Clement VII and the Golden Age of the Papal Choir Richard Sherr

In 1564-65, as a result of the conclusion of the Council of Trent, Pope Pius IV decided on a reform of the Roman Curia. Included in this reform was to be the papal chapel, and the pope appointed a commission of cardinals to look particularly at the membership of the papal choir, the College of Singers, which at the time consisted of 37 individuals, the largest it had ever been.1 There was a more than sneaking suspicion that not that many people were needed; there was, in fact, a more than sneaking suspicion that a good proportion of the choir was in fact totally incompetent (which turned out to be the case, as I have pointed out elsewhere).2 Some explanation of the cause of this state of affairs is warranted. The Constitution of the College of Singers, promulgated in 1545 but reflecting long-standing customs going back at least until the beginning of the sixteenth century, declared that membership in the choir was to be decided by an open audition and then by a secret vote by the other singers.3 This obviously was meant to insure that only competent singers would become members of the organization, an emphasis on competence that was the opposite of everything else that was going on in the Curia, where most offices were in fact open not to the most competent but to those who could afford to pay the price.4 Nevertheless, eventually the College of Singers also became a part of the patronage system. This was certainly what the singers claimed in 1550, when they persuaded Pope Julius III to oust their maestro di cappella, Ludovico Magnasco, bishop of Assisi, for various abuses, one of which was that he was placing singers in the choir purely on executive authority "to please lords and magnates" and thereby populating the choir with incompetents.5 Julius III agreed, and in a motu

1 2 3 4 5

See F X. Haberl, "Die Cardinalskommission von 1564 und Palestrinas Missa Papae Marcelli," Kirchenmusikalisches Jahrbuch 1 (1892): 82-97. R. Sherr, "Competence and Incompetence in the Papal Choir in the Age of Palestnna," Early Music 22 (1994): 606-29; also published in R. Sherr, Music and Musicians in Renaissance Rome and Other Courts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), chap. 14. The Constitution is published in F. X. Haberl, Die Romische 'schola cantorum' und die papstlichen Kapellsdnger bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Bausteine fur Musikgeschichte 3 (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel, 1888), 96-108. See P Partner, The Pope's Men: the Papal Civil Service in the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). See R. Sherr, "A Curious Incident in the Institutional History of the Papal Choir," in Papal Music and Musicians in Medieval and Renaissance Rome, ed. R. Sherr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 187-210.

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proprio of 5 August 1553 declared that the choir was now too large because there were many singers in the choir who were "totally useless," ordering that henceforth membership in the choir would only be granted to singers who passed the audition and furthermore procured express papal permission in the form of a motu proprio. Unfortunately, the last part of the remedy turned out to be worse than the disease. As those who work on the Curia know, anybody with the right connections could get a motu proprio^ and a motu proprio could easily be written so as to trump any silly audition process. Within ten years of its conception, the motu proprio solution, which was supposed to strengthen the overall competence of the choir, had produced the opposite result. By 1565, out of a choir of 37, nine singers had in fact been admitted simply on the basis of a motu proprio obtained by someone with influence and had bypassed the audition process completely. Not surprisingly, as one of the singers' complaints has it, they "did not serve" (interestingly, most of them had entered in the pontificate of Pius IV—the very pope who had ordered the review of the chapel membership).8 Further, a number of singers were old, or had lost their voices, or were constantly ill, or were not even in Rome at the time, and were therefore useless, even though they were still being paid. Some sort of house-cleaning was clearly in order, so part of the mandate of the commission of cardinals was to reduce the size of the choir by identifying the singers who did not really belong there and removing them.9 Examining committees, as we all know, always demand documents—particularly statistics—from those being examined, and the papal singers were required to submit to the committee, among other things, a list of their present membership and to provide some historical background about how it had reached the size that it had. One of these supporting documents claims that until the pontificate of Clement VII there had never been a fixed number of singers, although the numbers had gradually risen from about 12 in the pontificate of Martin V (1417-31), to about 18 in the pontificate of Pius II (1458-64), to over 30 in the pontificate of Leo X (1513-21); the document says 36, although that may be an exaggeration. But under Clement VII something very specific had happened; the document states that: "Clement established the number of singers at 24, that is, seven sopranos, seven contraltos, six basses and four tenors," and then adds: "but since he was an expert musician, this pope examined the singers being admitted, and thus during his pontificate the chapel was illustrious and adorned with a sufficient number both of voice types and of singers."10 6 7

BAV, Capp. Sist. 646, fol. 84r; see Sherr (1994), 609-11. In fact, Julius III was the first to abuse his own reform by ordering the singers to accept a favored musician, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, on the strength only of a motu proprio and without audition (an audition Palestrina might well have failed). See Sherr (1994), 611. 8 Sherr (1994), 611-12. 9 For more detailed consideration, see Sherr (1994). 10 BAV, Capp. Sist. 657, fols. 7r-v: "Presupponendum est quod a tempore fe.re. Martini Pape Quinti usque ad pontificatum fe.re. Julii Pape Tertii fuit consuetude inconcusse observata quod cantores fuerunt admissi in dicta cappella ad eorum vitam previo riguroso examinen et sine motu proprio. A quo tempore citra non fuit certus numerus cantorum nisi tempore fe.re. Clementis Septimi. Nam tempore prefati Martini usque ad Paulum

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The document then goes on to lament the sorry state of the choir in the years after Clement, as more and more singers were foisted upon them without examination through the use of motu proprii until they had reached their present bloated state.11 It would appear then, that the writer of the memorandum wishes to point to the chapel in the pontificate of Clement VII as a kind of "Golden Age" with regard to its membership. This is somewhat curious, since in 1565 there was only one singer in the choir who actually remembered from personal experience what it had been like in the pontificate of Clement VII. This was the Spanish bass Antonio Calasanz, who had joined the chapel in November 1529.12 However, it was precisely Antonio Calasanz who seemed always to have been entrusted with all the singers' legal actions, and he may indeed have prepared the memorandum in question. In any case, 24 was accepted as the ideal size of the choir. In the motu proprio of Julius III mentioned above, it was also ordered that the choir be reduced to 24. When the commission of cardinals of 1565 completed their work, they recommended dismissing 14 singers, reducing the choir to 23 singers. But actually, only 13 singers were eventually dismissed, so that the final result was a choir of 24, the ideal number. For the rest of the

11

12

Secundam reperitur memoria duodecim cantores in dicta capella." "Fe.re. Pius Secundus ampliavit ad numerum decem et octo et fe.re. Leo X.s ad numerum 36. Prefatus vero Clemens prefixit numerum xxiiii cantonim videlicet septem supranos, septem contraltos, sex vassos et quatuor tenores sed cum esset expertus in arte musicis ipsemet pontifex examinabat cantores admittendos et sic tempore suo fuit cappella illustrata et dechorata tarn de vocibus quam de sufficientia cantorum." Another version of the memorandum on fols. Ir-v inserts the following phrase between "admittendos" and "et sic": "sed non exclusit aliquem cantorem ad effectum reducendi cantores ad huiusmodi numerum." It is not exactly clear what this is supposed to mean; perhaps that Clement would not exclude singers from the chapel merely for the purpose of reducing the number to 24 (that point would have been important to the singers, who maintained that they could not be fired except for very good reason). The version on fols. Ir-v has been quoted in the literature, but always out of context. See H.-W. Frey, "Klemens VII und der Prior der papstlichen Kapelle Nicholo de Pitti," Die Musikforschung 4 (1951): 175-84, at 180; H.-W. Frey, "Regesten zur papstlichen Kapelle unter Leo X und zu seiner Privatkapelle," Die Musikforschung 8 (1955): 199. See also F. D'Accone, "The Performance of Sacred Music in Italy during Josquin's Time, c. 1475-1525," in Josquin des Prez: Proceedings of the International Josquin Festival-Conference, ed. E. E. Lowinsky and B. J. Blackburn (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 601-18; R. Kohler, Die Cappella Sistina unter den MediciPdpsten 1513-1534: Musikpflege und Repertoire am papstlichen Hof(Kie\: Verlag Ludwig,2001),35,57. BAV, Capp. Sist. 657, fols. 7r-v: "Tempore fe.re. Julii Tertii ad obviandum favores R.morum DD cardinalium et aliorum magnatum super admissione cantorum fuit signatus motus proprius in quo cavetur quod quousque reducatur numerus cantorum cappelle ad 24 non admittantur cantores in dicta cappella nisi signato motu proprio manu pontificis pro tempore existentis et previo examine. Sed pro dolor quod fuit factum in favorem cappelle fuit retortum in eius preiuditium et gravamen. Cum vigore motus proprii huiusmodi sint introducti plurimi abussus tempore fe.re. Pauli Quarti. Nam manu cuiusvis formantis motum proprium est facultas derogandi statutis cappelle et alias plures clausulas censurarum cominatorias contra cantores et sic ftierunt admissi violenter duo cantores sine examine tempore fe.re. Pauli 4 et tempore S.mi D.N. [Pius IV] septem absque examine." All the rest of the singers in the choir of 1565 had joined the chapel after Clement's death in 1534, although a few of them had joined so shortly after his death that they certainly participated in the institutional memory of what the chapel had been like.

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The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

century, the membership hovered around this number, until 1586 when Sixtus V reduced the choir even further to 21. l 3 All this can be traced back to the decisions of Clement VII. Chart 13.1 gives an idea of what happened to chapel membership after the death of Clement VII. As can be seen, the upward creep begins just when the singers said it did, around 1540 when Magnasco became the maestro di cappella, and then dips sharply down after the cardinals' commission issued its orders. As a first step to considering the implications of this statement about the choir in the pontificate of Clement VII, it might be well to see if there is any real evidence to back it up. With regard to the number, there is. Chart 13.2 is a graph indicating the membership of the choir for every month for which we have a chapel list (unfortunately, this only covers the second half of Clement's pontificate, 1529-34). As Chart 13.2 demonstrates, the number of singers ranges from 20 to 24, usually staying between 22 and 24, and even reaching 24 for several months. We can tell from other evidence that in the period for which we have no chapel lists, the number of singers was usually 23 or 24.14 So Clement indeed seems to have established this as the ideal number of singers for his chapel. But why he should have thought that this was the idea! number is a much more difficult question to answer. Also curious is the lack of a concern to have an equal number of singers for each voice part, for although 24 is divisible by four (the normal number of voice parts in the early sixteenth century), Clement's choir, as described in the document, is unbalanced, with far fewer tenors than any other voice part. Clement as Musician Is there evidence for the claim that Clement was an "expert musician" and that he had the interest really to examine papal singers before they were hired? Regarding the second point, it would fit perfectly within the character of a man known to give instructions about the smallest details of his artistic commissions to be personally involved in the hiring of singers for his chapel.15 As to the first point, there is a great deal of evidence, most (but not all) of it already published, that Clement was perhaps the most musically competent of all the popes of the sixteenth century, and that he actually enjoyed listening to music; one writer, speaking of Clement, says that music was "an art which is very much a part of him, to the extent that it is rumored that the pope is one of the best musicians alive now in Italy.*' 16

13 SeeSherr(1994),616. 14 This can be done by extrapolating from the summary payments for the chapel that do exist. See A.-M. Bragard, "Details nouveaux sur les musiciens de la cour du Pape Clement VII," Revue Beige de Musicologie 12 (1958): 5-18, and A.-M. Bragard, "La vie musicale a la cour du pape Medicis Clement VII," in A Festschrift for Albert Seay, ed. M. D. Grace (Colorado Springs: Colorado College, 1982), 45-70. 15 See the contributions to the present collection by Caroline Elam and William Wallace. 16 "[AJrte a lui molto proprio; di sorte che e fama il papa essere delli buoni musici che ora siano in Italia." See A. M. Cummings, "Giulio de' Medici's Music Books," Early Music History 10 (1991): 65-122, at 68-9.

Chart 13.2: Singers in the Chapel of Clement VD Number of Singers on

]

525-26 12/26

8/29 4/30 6/30 8/30 10/30 12/30

2/31 4/31 6/3J 8/31 10/31

Month/Year

12/31

3/32 5/32 7/32 9/32 12/32

2/31 4/31 10/33

1/34 3/34 5/34 10/34 12/34

o*

Clement VII and the Golden Age of the Papal Choir

233

Interestingly, the anecdotes that relate his reactions to music concern instrumental music, while the anecdotes that relate to his own abilities and knowledge of music relate to vocal music.17 Perhaps the most famous anecdote appears in Benvenuto Cellini's Autobiography, where the author complains that he was more or less dragooned into playing the cornetto in an ensemble of wind players (known aspifferi, consisting of cornetto, shawms, and a sackbut) who were to perform "a motet"—presumably by playing a real vocal motet on instruments—for Clement VII while he was dining in the Belvedere on the "Ferragosto del Papa" (\ August) of 1524. They practiced two hours a day for eight days, apparently to perfect the ensemble.18 The result was more than satisfactory and the pope rewarded their intensive rehearsals when he remarked that he had never heard music played "more sweetly and with such good ensemble."19 This says something about Clement VII, for to like music is one thing, but to notice the effectiveness of the "ensemble" is another, the kind of thing that music critics do. A later anecdote concerns the keyboard player Giulio Segni, whose harpsichord playing caused the pope to stop a serious conversation and to go over just to listen to him.20 When we get to vocal music, however, there is little anecdotal evidence of Clement's appreciation, but more evidence of his abilities and of his desire to have good singers. We know that he had a good voice. For instance, Baldassare Turini wrote to Goro Gheri in Florence recounting for him Cardinal Giulio's first Mass in the Sistine Chapel on 11 March 1518 (which happened to be the anniversary of Leo X's election as Pope and was, therefore, an important occasion), and describing his voice as "sonora, chiara, et intelligibile"2} These vocal characteristics (sonora 17 See the essay by Victor Coelho below. 18 This by the way is one of the few actual documentary references to rehearsals of musicians. Note that it concerns instrumentalists not singers—as far as we can tell, the papal singers did not normally rehearse, except for the performances of Holy Week and then for exactly the same reason, to perfect the ensemble in the polyphonic performances of the Lamentations of Jeremiah. 19 "Occorse in questo tempo che un certo Giacomo piffero da Cesena che stava col papa molto mirabile sonatore mi fece intendere per Lorenzo trombone lucchese il qual e oddi al servizio del nostro duca se io voleva aiutar loro per il Ferragosto del papa sonar di sobrano col mio cornetto quel giorno parecchi mottetti che loro bellissimi scelti avevano ... ed otto giorni innanzi al Ferragosto ogni di dua ore facemmo insieme conserto in modo che il giorno d'agosto andammo in Belvedere e in mentre che papa Clemente desinava sonammo quelli disciplinary mottetti in modo che il papa ebbe a dire non aver mai sentito musica piii soavemente e meglio unita sonare." B. Cellini, La Vita di Benvenuto Cellini, ed. G. Guasti (Florence: G. Barbera, 1890), 52-3. 20 This incident is described in C. Bartoli, Ragionamenti accademici (Venice, 1567), fol. 38v. See K. Jeppesen, "Eine fruhe Orgelmesse aus CasteirArquato," Archivfiir Musikwissenschaft 12 (1955): 190, n. 2, and H. C. Slim ed., Musica Nova, Monuments of Renaissance Music 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), xxxix, n. 112. 21 ASF, MaP, 144, 67. Letter of Baldassare Turini to Goro Gheri dated 11 March 1518: "M. Ghoro, Mons. R.mo ha cantato questa matina la sua prima messa, et la ha decto pronuntiata et cantata tanto bene che tutti li cardinal! prelati et altri che erano in capella se ne sono quodamon maravigliati et con somo ore da tutti e stato decto che non poteva dire meglio perche dicano che la ha dicta con quell e cerimonie che si convengono senza usuarle superstitiosamente, et la ha cantata con una voce sonora, chiara, et intelligibile, et e statisfacta universalmente a tutti che buon pro gli faccia." I am not aware of any modern

234

The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

meaning something like "full voice," chiara meaning clear and direct, and intelligibile meaning that he pronounced the words so that they could be understood) were precisely the qualities desired in singers in chapel choirs. A clear distinction was in fact made at the time between this vocal quality and the quality desired for cantori da camera, which given the more intimate setting did not have to project as much. Some singers were even described as having both a chapel voice and a chamber voice.22 In effect, Clement could judge the voices of his chapel singers since he himself knew how to produce the desired sound. More evidence of Clement's interest in his singers comes from the records of his relationships with individual singers and his attempts to recruit singers both for the papal choir and for his own chamber music ensemble (the musica segreta established by Leo X and apparently continued by Clement).23 For instance, Clement both as cardinal and as pope counted singers among his friends and confidants. We have two letters to Clement, one to him as cardinal, one to him as pope, from the papal singer Niccolo de Pictis (de' Pitti), who had joined the choir in 1506 but must have been a long-standing Medici favorite, since Leo X actually created a new position in the papal chapel, that of Prior, just for him.24 He also maintained a friendly relationship with Cardinal Giulio; a letter from Pictis in Rome to the cardinal in Florence dated 26 May 1521 (a letter in which he introduces the composer Philippe Verdelot) closes in the following way: "I hope (God willing) after the feast of Saint Peter to come and spend a few days there [Florence] relaxing with our friends and with you, to whom I constantly recommend myself, praying to God that He keep you in health and happiness," the point being that the papal singer and Leo's cousin had "friends" in common.25 Pictis escaped the Sack of Rome, and when he heard that Pope Clement was reestablished in the Vatican, he wrote from his refuge in Cremona in the same familiar yet respectful tone, asking the pope to help him out of some financial difficulty, which the pope did.26 Clement also showed particular favor to the singer/composer Jean Conseil, whom he sent on recruiting trips, showered with benefices, and apparently put in charge of his own musica segreta.21

22 23 24 25

26 27

publication of this letter. Describing the coronation of Charles V in Bologna in 1530, the Venetian diarist Marino Sanudo remarked: "Finite che fu le secrete il papa disse el prafatio et molto bene, per haver bona voce, et esser perfeto musico." Sanuto, 52:648. See also Cummings (1991), 69; Kohler (2001), 35. See M. Uberti, "Vocal Techniques in Italy in the Second Half of the 16th Century," Early Music 9 (1981): 486-95. The evidence for the existence of this group is very spotty, consisting of a reference to a "cappella Clementina" in 1524 and to a "cappella secreta" in 1534. See Bragard (1958), 8. See Frey( 1951). u [S]pero (deo dante) fatto San Piero venire a starmi qualche g[i]orno costa a piacere e recrearmi con voi e con li amici nostri, al qual di continue mi racomando, pregando iddio vi conservi sano e in felice stato." See R. Sherr, "Verdelot in Florence, Coppini in Rome, and the Singer 'La FioreV Journal of the American Musicological Society 37 (1984): 402-11. The letter is transcribed in Frey (1951): 180-81. See H.-W. Frey, 'Michelagniolo und die Komponisten seiner Madrigale', Acta Musicologica 24 (1952): 147-97, at 160-65; and Bragard (1958).

Clement VII and the Golden Age of the Papal Choir

235

Clement and the Papal Choir With regard to the chapel choir, Clement was faced with a problem when he ascended the papal throne, in that the massive choir that Leo X had assembled had diminished a great deal under the pontificate of his artistically-challenged successor Adrian VI. If Leo's chapel had numbered 36 as the papal singers claimed in 1565, then it was drastically reduced shortly after the pope's death. In 1522, 17 singers claiming to represent more than two-thirds of the choir signed a notarial document, thus the choir cannot have been greater than 24 at the time, and could have been smaller. 28 We know that some of its most important members, particularly the composers, were no longer in Rome. Elzear Genet, known as "Carpentras," the first singer/composer to be made maestro of the papal chapel, was in Avignon when Leo X died in December 1521, and he did not return. Eustachius de Monte Regalis, also a composer, had moved to Modena, and Vincent Misonne, yet another composer, had returned to Cambrai.29 The composers Andreas de Silva and Antoine Bruhier also disappear from view at the death of Leo X. One of Clement's tasks on assuming the papal throne, therefore, was to recruit singers for his chapel and to get some of the ones who had left to come back. Eustachius de Monte Regalis returned to Rome from Modena by 1525 and Carpentras may have also come back, but did not stay. Moreover, Clement had to go to some length to retrieve Vincent Misonne from Cambrai. The problem was that Misonne was put in prison for debt just as he was leaving for Rome, and Clement wrote to the Chapter of the Cathedral of Cambrai on 24 December 1524 promising to guarantee the debt if they would convince Misonne's creditors to release the singer, who he said was an "ornament to our chapel."30 On the same day, Clement's trusted adviser Gian Matteo Giberti also wrote a personal letter to Misonne, whom he addresses as his "brother," indicating a certain familiarity between the powerful Datary and this member of the papal choir. 31 In the letter, which exists in draft, Giberti basically says that since the pope was going to all this trouble to spring Misonne from jail (implying that the pontiff was actually annoyed about having to do this), he had better turn up in Rome, and not use his new freedom to go and serve someone else. And so Misonne did; he is present in chapel lists of 1525 and 1526, and was even counted in the Roman census taken shortly before the Sack.32 It is also possible and even likely that he is both the 28 ASR, Archivio Notarile degli Auditori della Camera Apostolica 409, fol. 740v. Transcribed in Haberl (1888), 71. 29 On Carpentras see the entry in TNG, 5:181-3; for Monte Regalis, see ibid., 8:446-7; for Misonne, see ibid., 16:756, and C. Wright, "Musiciens a la Cathedrale de Cambrai 14751550," Revue de Musicologie 62 (1976): 204-28. 30 See Appendix for the letter. 31 ASV, Segreteria di Stato, Lettere di Particolari 154, fols. 46r-v: "R.do D.no Vincentio Missone canonico cameracensi tanquam fratri. R.dus tanquam frater...." The rest of the letter is hard to decipher, but the gist is clear. 32 See D. Gnoli, "Descriptio urbis o censimento della populazione di Roma avanti il sacco Borbonico," ASRSP 17 (1894): 375-520, at 439. Misonne is listed as living in the Regione de Ponte (the area of Rome across the Tiber from the Castel Sant'Angelo), with a household of four persons. A more recent edition of the census is E. Lee, Descriptio urbis: The Roman Census of 1527 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1985).

236

The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture

Messer Vincentio Villano musico di cappella who was paid 100 ducats in Cambrai sometime before July 1524 in order to bring four singers to Rome, and the Vincentio cantore who was paid 30 ducats in Rome on 25 April 1525 to defray the expenses of the return of those singers (perhaps the pope had auditioned and rejected them).33 Perhaps more interesting with regard to recruitment is the letter Giberti wrote on Clement's behalf to the cardinal of Liege (Eberhard von der Mark) on 10 January 1525 (which exists in draft).34 The cardinal is informed that since the pope wishes to adorn his chapel with singers for the glory of God and knows that the area of the diocese of Liege (Flanders) is "full of worthy singers" (probis cantoribus refertum), he specifically requests the cardinal to provide him with five: two men and three boys, the men for the papal chapel, the boys for the pope's chamber (the musica segreta). The men are specifically described as a "falsetto soprano'* (soprano mutatus) who knows contrapunctus, that is, a man, not a boy, who could sing in the soprano range and who knew how to improvise over chant, and a "powerful bass" (contrabassum agens). The ranges of the three boys are not specified, but the pope wants them to be well educated in music and to have good voices. These singers may be the "five new singers who have come to stay," who are mentioned in a payment of 14 April 1525, not long after the letter to the cardinal of Liege.35 We also know that in 1525 and 1526, Jean Conseil was in Lyons on unspecified business, but probably also recruiting singers.36 The only securely datable chapel list from before the Sack of Rome (a list of December 1526) shows the effect of these recruitment efforts: out of 21 singers, 10 either were recalls or were new to the chapel. Of the seven new singers, however, only two appear to have been French, which suggests that the early French recruiting trips did not bear all that much fruit. The situation changed dramatically after the disastrous Sack of Rome. Table 13.1 below shows the chapel list of December 1526 compared to the first extant chapel list after the Sack (July 1529). 33 ASF, Corp. Rel. Soppr., Santa Maria Novella 327, fols. 9v, 24v. The payment, dated 29 July 1524, is actually a reimbursement to the Gaddi bank for having paid the money in Cambrai: "Ducati cento larghi pagato a Agniolo Gaddi e compagnia per tanti facti per Sua Santita in Cambrai a M. Vincentio Villano musico di cappella per condurre qui quattro canton;" entry of 25 April 1525: "Ducati 30 d'oro di camera a M. Vincentio cantore per dare alii canton che hanno a ritornarsene a casa." See Bragard (1958), 8 and 10. It is not clear how "Misonne" could have been rendered as "Villano," (although it is within the realm of possibility that an extremely sloppy rendering of "Missonne" could have led to the misreading, with the "M" looking like a "Vi" and the two elongated "s's" looking like "Is"), but circumstantial evidence makes it highly likely that Misonne is the singer referred to in these entries. Or perhaps this is not a mistake but a reference to Misonne's "bad behavior" that got him thrown into jail, "villano" to be read literally as meaning "criminal." 34 See Appendix for the letter. It can also be found in French translation in L. Jadin, Relations des Pays-Bos de Liege et de Franche-Comte avec le Saint-Siege d'apres les 'lettere di particolari' conservees aux archives vaticanes (1525-1796), Bibliotheque de L'Institut Historique Beige de Rome, Fasc. 11 (1961): 1-2. 35 ASF, Corp. Rel. Soppr., Santa Maria Novella 327, fol. 24v: entry of 14 April 1525: "d. 70 d'oro dati a Bassarone [Beausseron] cantore per cinque nuovi cantori che sono venuti per restare." See Bragard (1958), 11. 36 See Bragard (1958), 11.

Clement Vll and the Golden Age of the Papal Choir

237

Of the 21 singers listed in 1526, ten have disappeared by mid-1529 (we know that some escaped the Sack, while others may indeed have died then), reducing the choir by half. To remedy this, Clement sent the trusted Conseil on a serious recruiting trip to France and Flanders in the Fall of 1528, a trip in which Conseil was also on the lookout for boy singers.37 The final result of the recruiting trip is reflected in the list of 1529 in Table 13.1, which shows that among the 11 new singers in the chapel, six were French or Franco-Flemish (from the French speaking areas of Flanders) and that all of them were accepted into the chapel at around the same time (November and December 1528). This, by the way, greatly upset the balance of the three "nations" of the chapel upon which much of its internal politics depended (Italian, French/Flemish, and Spanish), as the choir now counted among its members eight Italians, 11 French, but only two Spaniards (the numbers in 1526 had been eight Italians, six French, and seven Spaniards). Clement, like his cousin Leo, was a Francophile when it came to vocal music. The boys were another matter: As the letter to the cardinal of Liege makes clear, the pope was not interested in boys to sing in the papal chapel, but wanted them for his private music; indeed, the papal choir was the one musical institution in Europe that did not employ boys. Leo X, immediately upon becoming pope, had also requested three boys, this time from the king of France, to be housed with his maestro di cappella. One of these boys was Jean Conseil, who began thus his long career in papal service. Clement as cardinal was involved in these negotiations; indeed, one document about Conseil calls him also a member of the household of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici. 38 The problem with boys, of course, was that their voices changed and that they constantly had to be replaced; the evidence regarding Leo and Cardinal Giulio shows that they requested boys (putti) from France at intervals of approximately four years.39 These boys always seem to have been French and there always were to be three of them. The constant requests may have stirred up some resentment. When Conseil searched for boy singers in 1528, he found that the French did not want to let any go; eventually, he literally kidnapped one ("un putto che si e sviato e rubato")^ And while some of the boys might (like Conseil) eventually have entered the papal chapel, it is not clear that Leo and Clement intended to recruit and train them for that purpose. In fact, there was another organization, the Cappella Giulia, which was supposed to perform that function. 41

37 Haberl (1888), 72-3. On 19 November 1528 it was reported that Conseil had found in Flanders "cinque o sei buoni Tenon et fra gli altri un ottimo soprano di eta [a falsettist] e un buon contrabasso et qui [Paris] ha trovato un buon tenore." 38 Frey(1955), 180-81. 39 Anthony Cummings is preparing a study of the Medici and boy singers. I thank him for sharing his findings with me in advance of publication. Rafael Kohler's attempt to show that boy sopranos were officially members of the papal chapel in the reign of Leo X is unconvincing. See Kohler (2001), 72. 40 Haberl (1888), 73. 41 A. Ducrot, "Histoire de la Cappella Giulia depuis sa fondation par Jules II (1513) jusqu'a sa restauration par Gregoire XIII (1578)," Melanges d'Archeologie et d'Histoire 15 (1963): 179-240,467-559.

Table 13.1: Singers in the Chapel of Clement VII Before and After the Sack Name (nationality)

Place Dec. 1526 1

Place July 1529

Thomas Fazanis (Italian) Johannes Joault alias Brule (French)

2

1

Johannes Scribano (Spanish)

3

Johannes Palomares (Spanish) Petrus Perez de Rezola (Spanish) Vincent Misonne (Franco-Flemish)

4

—

Had been a member since 1514, but had left the chapel before 1525; readmitted on 24 December 1528 Composer; member at least since 1 503; returned to Spain before or shortly after the Sack; returns to the chapel in November 1531 Member at least since 1 503

5

—

Member at least since 1510

Bernardo Pisano (Italian) Constanzo Festa (Italian) Johannes Franciscus Felici (Italian)

7

3

Composer; member at least since 1515; was recalled from Cambrai in 1525; returned to Cambrai in 1527 Composer; member since 1514

8

4

Composer; member since 1517

5

Bias i us Nunez (Spanish) Antonius Ribera (Spanish) Johannes Bonnevin [Beausseron] (French) Bemardus Salinas (Spanish) Johannes Sanchez de Tineo (Spanish)

9

6

Member at least since 1519, but for some reason was not included in the 1526 list Member since 1 520

10

—

Member since 1 520

11

7

Composer; member since 1514

12

—

Member at least since 1525

13

8

Member at least since 1525

Nicolaus de Pictis (Italian)

2

6

Comments Prior; composer; member at least since 1506; went to Cremona before or shortly after the Sack; returned to the chapel in 1528; had died before July 1529 Dean; member at least since 1 502

Petrus de Vien (French) Eustachius de Monte Regalis (French)

14

Johannes Hieronimus de Confectus (Italian?) Johannes Baptista de Fedrigis (Italian?) Johannes Comiere alias Jacquinot (French) Antonius Barbel (French?) Johannes Conseil (French)

16

Marcus Symmardo (Italian) Hieonimus de Tamagnis (Italian) Christophorus de Benedictus de Urbino (Italian) Carolus d'Argentil (French) Petrus Vermont (French) Petrus Lambert (Franco-Flem ish) Philippus de Fontaines (FrancoFlemish) Yvo Barry (French) Johannes Le Conte (French) Andreas de Mantua de Casale (Italian) Hieronimus Arduini (Italian) Florentius de la Haye (Franco - Flem ish)

—

15

Member since 1514 Member at least since 1519; maestro di cappella at the cathedral of Modena, 1520-24. Member at least since 1525

17

—

Member at least since 1 525

18

9

Member at least in 1525; actually returned August 1529

19

—

20

10

21

11

Member at least since 1525; died before the end of April 1528 Composer; member of Leo X's musica segreta since 1514; member of the chapel at least since 1525 Member at least since 1 525

—

12 13

—

14

—

15

Composer; admitted on 20 November 1 528 Admitted on 24 December 1528

—

16

Admitted on 24 December 1528

17

Admitted on 24 December 1528

—

18

—

19

Composer; admitted on 24 December 1528 Admitted on 24 December 1528

—

20

—

21

—

22

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The "Golden Age" of the Papal Choir Let us now return to the meaning of the statement that in the pontificate of Clement VII, because of the pope's direct involvement in choosing members of the choir, it was illustrious and adorned with a "sufficient" number of voice parts and voices, specified as 24 singers consisting of seven sopranos, seven contraltos, six basses and four tenors. What is meant by "sufficient number*'? And why should a choir with relatively so few tenors, one in which the higher voices outnumber the lower voices (a configuration that is to be found in fifteenth-century choirs as well), be considered the ideal configuration? 42 Actually, this latter question is relevant only if we accept a major assumption, which is that all the singers were expected to sing at the same time and the disposition of voice pans reflects some sort of desire to regulate balance in the performance of polyphony. This would in turn imply that tenors had stronger voices than sopranos, basses, or altos, since fewer of them were needed to make themselves heard; it might imply particularly that the falsetto sopranos employed by the chapel had weaker voices since more of them were needed to balance the lower voices.43 But as it turns out, we cannot accept this assumption since a mass of evidence (all from a slightly later period, it is true, but things did not change all that much from decade to decade in the institutions of the Curia) implies rather strongly that the entire complement of singers did not in fact perform polyphony. I would suggest instead that having a "sufficient" number meant: (1) that the cantoria would look full when they all were there; and (2) that there were enough singers in each voice part so that when absences occurred there would always be a sufficient number of singers around so that polyphony could be performed with one or two on a part in alternation (that is, no singer was required to sing everything during the service).45 So 24 may actually only reflect the maximum number who could comfortably fit into the cantoria at one time.46 Or perhaps it had something to do with the symbolism of the number 24, whether as the Pythagorean "number of totality," or as symbolic of the 24 Elders of the Apocalypse, who were generally depicted as holding musical instruments, making music in praise of the Lord.47 Either of these meanings would be ap42 The document also makes clear that, even though tenors and altos often sang in the same range, they were considered to be different voice types. 43 David Fallows draws conclusions like this from the similar distribution of ranges in documents of the fifteenth century (where the emphasis is also on the high voices). See D. Fallows, "Specific Information on the Ensembles for Composed Polyphony, 1400-1474," in Studies in the Performance of Late Mediaeval Music, ed. S. Boorman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 109-60. 44 See R. Sherr, "Performance Practice in the Papal Chapel during the 16th Century," Early Music 15 (1987): 453-62; also published in Sherr (1999), chap. 13. 45 They were, of course, all required to attend papal ceremonies. This would have been important for the visual impression ofmaiestaspapalis. 46 In fact, having stood in the cantoria of the Sistine Chapel myself, I cannot imagine how as many as 30 people could have fit in it at any one time. 47 I am grateful to Hugo Jaeckel for bringing this possibility to my attention. See A. Schimmel, The Mystery of Numbers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 235; H. Meyer and R. Suntrup, eds., Lexicon der Mittelalterlichen Zahlenbedeutungen (Munich:

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propriate for the private choir of the Vicar of Christ, and might in fact explain why later generations also believed 24 to be the "perfect" number for the choir. As to the unbalanced voice parts, it might also be mentioned that sopranos, altos, and basses had specific duties in the papal chapel that might be reflected in the need to have greater numbers of those singers than tenors. Sopranos were needed not just for polyphony, but also because versicles and certain Alleluia verses were to be sung by two sopranos, so it was always imperative that at least two sopranos be present. The altos had to understand the liturgy; it was the job of one of them to find out which chants were to be sung on any given occasion, to ensure that all the correct books were there, possibly even to choose the polyphony; they also turned the pages during performance and perhaps even gave the tactus beat.48 The basses had to sile a ereat deal md the ahalt, paptiaulaply uhel thepe uaq contrapunctus (in the letter to the cardinal of Liege, it is specified that the soprano had to know contrapunctus, but the bass merely needed to have a powerful voice). The tenors did not seem to have special extra chapel duties, but had to have special musical skills such as the ability to decipher enigmatic canonic instructions and to sing very long notes in the elaborate cantus firmus Masses that the chapel even in the early sixteenth century undoubtedly continued to perform (perhaps the smaller number is an indication that there were fewer of these specialized singers available). Thus the compliment of 24 singers with relatively few tenors may have no significance for performance practice in the papal chapel. In fact, later in the sixteenth century, when it is possible to know the voice ranges of the individual singers in the papal choir, it can be seen that the attempt was to keep an equal number of singers in each voice part (it was of course also true that by then the tenor parts were no longer so specialized). What was important was that Clement had brought order to a somewhat chaotic situation in which the choir had bloated to an unmanageable number in the pontificate of Leo X and had then shrunk during the pontificate of Adrian VI, and also that he had made sure (or so the document says) that every singer who was admitted was competent.49 Since these two things were, in fact, precisely what changed in the 1560s, when the choir was the largest it had ever been and had a good number of incompetents, the singers would seem to have been justified in arguing that things had been better in the pontificate of Clement VII. Whether things really were better, of course, will never be known, but that they were thought to have been better is perhaps enough.

A Patron of Music? Now, all of this has dealt only with personnel matters regarding the papal choir, which was the main focus of the cardinals' commission in 1564-65. Is there any evidence that Clement was concerned not only with competence in singing, but also W. Fink, 1987); W. Elders, "Symbolism in the Sacred Music of Josqum," in R. Sherr, ed., TheJosquin Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 531-68, at 566-8. 48 See Sherr (1987). 49 See note 10 above.

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with competence in another aspect of musical abilities: composition? Was he really a "patron of music"? For the papal singers were not merely proud of their performing abilities, they also vaunted themselves as an organization peopled with men skilled in the scientia of music. The papal singer and theorist Ghiselin Danckerts confirms this attitude when he writes in one of the manuscript versions of a treatise begun in 1551 (at the beginning of the epidemic of creeping incompetence) that in the papal chapel: There are always excellent members of that profession [music], among whom it is most rare not to find eight or ten most learned composers, experts in the science of music, who before they came to this place have ... enriched, through their knowledge and worthy works, cities, provinces, and kingdoms. Danckerts had joined the choir in 1538, a few years after the death of Clement VII, and he also points to the chapel in Clement's time as being particularly famous for its scientia: Which has been evident many times, as in Bologna when Pope Clement VII crowned Charles V as Emperor and their chapels sang, and then in Marseilles or in Nice, when Pope Paul III made peace between Emperor Charles and the French king Francis, [and] the three chapels of the most important rulers of all Christianity were together, and in Lucca when the Emperor met with the Pope, [that] the chapel of the Supreme Pontiff was praised and considered by everyone to be first and above the others in the science of music, just as its Master is the first and supreme Prince of all Christian Princes. What is more, the fame of the chapel was so great that The most learned and excellent composers in all Christendom send their compositions to this chapel, considering it as the highest compliment and a great favor and honor to have them seen, sung, and approved as worthy by the said chapel and its composers and singers.

50

"[V]i sono sempre huomini eccellentissimi in la detta professione, tra i quale rarissime volte e che non ne sieno meno di otto o diece compositori dottissimi et esperti nella detta scientia, i quali innanzi che siano meritamente pervenun a questo luogo hanno [illustrati?] et arricchiti con lor sapientie et degne opere chi citta chi provincie, e chi regni." Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS. R 56, No. 15b. 51 "II che piii volte e stato visto ai tempi nostri, et tra le altre in Bologna, ove al tempo che Papa? Clemente settimo dono la corona imperiale a Carlo Quinto, cantavano loro capelle, et poi in Marsilia o in Nizza, ove al tempo che Papa Paulo Terzo puo se piacer [recte pose pace?] tra il detto Carlo imperatore et Francisco re di Francia, erano insieme le tre capelle delli piu grandi et principal! principi di tutta la Christianita; a Lucca, quando il detto superator [recte imperatore?] si vidde col Papa, et sempre la capella predetta del summo Pontefice e stata lodusa [recte lodata] et tenuta da ognuno per la scientia la prima et suprema delle altre, sicome il signor di essa e il primo et supremo principe di tutti li principi christiani." Quoted in E. Vander-Straeten, La Musique awe Pays-Bas, 8 vols. (Brussels, 1867-88, reprint, New York: Dover, 1969), 6: 384-5. His transcription has some obvious errors which I have attempted to correct. 52 "Alia qual capella tutt 1 i piu dotti e piu eccellenti compositori che sono per tutto la Christianita mandano le toro composition! et opere musicali, riputandoselo per somma gratia et a grande honore e favore che sieno vedute cantate et approbate per buone della detta capella e suoi compositori e cantori." Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MS. R 56, No. 15b.

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Now these statements actually come at the beginning of a diatribe against Nicola Vicentino who had just lost his famous debate with Vincente Lusitano on the nature of the genera precisely because two papal singers (Danckerts and Bartolome Escobedo) had ruled against him. Vicentino's response was his treatise L'Antica musica ridotta alia moderna prattica (published in Rome in 1555), but he also apparently had been saying nasty things about the competence of the papal singers in general.53 This sent Danckerts into a tizzy and inspired his own treatise, which was never published but which exists in several manuscript copies and achieved a certain notoriety in its day (and is well-known to musicologists).54 He stresses sclentia, of course, since his object is to prove that any papal singer knew enough about the theory of music to be able to judge Vicentino's crazy ideas. But his statement about composers was in fact accurate; the papal choir did always seem to have a larger number of composers in its ranks than comparable musical institutions of the time (in 1551, there were ten composers in the papal choir).55 Did Clement share this particular concern for the "science" of music among his chapel singers? Did he actually care what they sang, or did he just care that they sang well (and loudly)? Can we posit a "Clementine Style" in music, at least regarding sacred vocal music?56 If Clement's musical tastes were to be defined by the two extant manuscripts that have been connected to him when he was a cardinal (the Cortona/Paris partbooks and BAY, Palat. Lat. 1980-81), then we would conclude that he had a liking for Masses, motets, and French chansons produced mostly at the end of the fifteenth century or in the beginning decades of the sixteenth century by composers such as Josquin des Prez and members of his generation as well as the slightly younger group of French court composers such as Jean Mouton, Antoine Fevin and Antoine Divitis.57 None of this is surprising, although it is striking that none of the composers represented in these sources was a member of the papal chapel during the pontificate of either Leo or Clement. This contrasts significantly with the contents of the one extant Sistine manuscript of polyphony that can be dated in Clement's pontificate, Cappella Sistina 55 (see Table 13.2).58 Here, 10 of the 16 works in the manuscript are by 53 See the Introduction to Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice, trans. M. R. Maniates (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 54 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, MSS, R 56A, nos. 15a, 15b, and 33; and R 56B. See L. Lockwood,