After Leo X’s sudden death, the Medici are briefly out of power in the papacy. In the meantime, Emperor Charles V changes the landscape of European politics by getting elected as Holy Roman Emperor, and the fate of the Medici family is put in the hands of an orphaned, illegitimate son.
Transcript
Since I didn’t want to risk adding more to the overstuffed narrative, I did just slide over what I think was one of the most important political events of the sixteenth century: the election of King Charles of Spain as Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. It might just seem like icing on the cake from Charles’ point of view. What, being Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, and king of Castile and Aragon wasn’t enough, you had to be Holy Roman Emperor too? But to be fair Charles himself believed that if didn’t gain the imperial title, it would have been a risky situation. After all, the Holy Roman Emperor had historic claims on many of Charles’ titles in the Netherlands, and having an unfriendly emperor would even threaten the Hapsburg ownership of their own heartland, Austria. That definitely would have been the outcome if that emperor also happened to be the king of France. With the encouragement of the Elector of Brandenburg and the Elector of Saxony, King Francois threw his own crown in the ring. France wasn’t part of the Holy Roman Empire, but in the past foreign princes had run for the office and had come very close to claiming it, like the English prince Richard of Cornwall who was elected King of the Germans, but was never actually crowned emperor, in the thirteenth century.
Even though Charles had his grandfather Maximilian’s blessing to succeed him as both emperor and Archduke of Austria, he was still forced to spend lavishly to essentially bribe the electors. It’s not just possible but likely that the electors never really considered Francois to be a serious competitor; they just wanted a heated election where at least two candidates would flood them with honors and cold, hard cash. There was even talk of electing Charles’ brother Ferdinand or one of the electors themselves like the Elector of Saxony or the Count Palatine. It was this option of a non-Hapsburg German prince that Pope Leo, who wished to see the Holy Roman Empire broken off from Spain and Naples, desperately wanted. From our perspective in the present we just see there is a long, almost unbroken line of Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperors, for Charles it wasn’t a sure thing. But, in the end, all seven electors voted unanimously to confirm Charles as king in Germany and king of the Romans, titles that the rulers of the empire by that time used until they were crowned emperor by the Pope. Agents of King Henry VIII of England estimated that all in all this election cost Charles a staggering 1.5 million florins.
I mentioned last time how vast Charles V’s empire was, but the thing was it was an empire kept together by duct tape. The frustrating paradox that faced Charles was that by the size of his territories he was the greatest monarch Europe had seen in centuries, but he was also in some ways more vulnerable than either Francois or Henry. Compared to other empires throughout history, being the emperor of the Hapsburg territories was basically being an emperor on hard mode. Generally empires expand and consolidate their territories in areas where cultural and political traditions, if not the languages, are similar, like in China or India. Or if they do expand into lands inhabited by peoples very different from them, they’re in a position to culturally and socially assimilate them, which is how the Roman Empire in western Europe worked. In Charles’ case, though, he found himself with an empire that had to function on top of a multitude of different countries that all had their own unique legal and political institutions that had all evolved over the course of centuries. Each of them had their own ideas about the powers of the monarch, their own representative bodies and political traditions, and even their own past agreements between the people and the sovereign. Even a place like the Spanish kingdom of Aragon had its own concepts about the authority of the king in relation to the representative body, called the cortes, that were significantly different from the case in the neighboring kingdom of Castile. Charles simply couldn’t just set up a capital in Vienna or in Madrid and govern all his territories. Instead, he had to constantly travel as well as leave a great deal of power in the hands of various subordinates. These included his brother Ferdinand, who ruled Austria on Charles’ behalf since 1521, and his aunt Margaret, whom Charles appointed the regent of the Netherlands.
Charles lived in a time when the expectation that people were living through the End Times was high, both in the Christian and Islamic worlds. The fall of Constantinople and Granada, the revolt of the Hussites, the Ottoman conquest of Jerusalem and Egypt, and the discovery of new lands unmentioned in any ancient text, all happening within the span of a lifetime no less, seemed to herald the end of the world. The new Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Suleyman, began wearing a special four-part crown that symbolized his status as the last great emperor before Judgment Day and adopted the title Sahib-kiran, “World Conqueror.” Similarly, as early as 1515 Charles was the subject of prophecies predicted that he would bring England and all of Italy under his rule and finally retake the Holy Land for Christendom. After Charles was born, King Henry VII of England himself predicted that Charles “will be able to rule the world.” Later on, his son Henry VIII was excited to wed his daughter Mary to Charles, since he was flattered at the idea of at least being the father-in-law to the possible emperor of the world. It was only when Charles snubbed Henry and instead married Isabella of Portugal that Henry became obsessed with the idea of fathering a male heir no matter what, a decision that incidentally will have consequences for the history of the Medici.
How seriously Charles himself took the idea of becoming the emperor of the world is something of a mystery. Early on, Charles was willing to go to great lengths to protect his inheritance, although in some ways this was as much self-preservation as it was ambition. As we’ll see, he also didn’t hesitate to add new domains to the Hapsburg empire when he could. And yet, he hesitated to make certain moves that would have all but guaranteed more titles for the Hapsburgs, like marrying the likely heiress to the kingdom of England for himself. Also late in life, tired and depressed, he would abdicate his throne and split his massive domains between his son Philip and his brother Ferdinand. If Charles ever seriously entertained the idea that he or one of his successors could ever become emperor of the world, that dream crashed and disintegrated against the reality of just trying to rule much of Europe, much less the whole planet.
As I mentioned once before, Charles was not handsome and chivalrous like his rivals, Henry VIII and Francois I. He could be charming and gracious, even to beggars he came across in his travels and to prisoners of war, but he also seems to have suffered from what his contemporaries called melancholy and what we might describe as clinical depression. Also he came across as stoic or cold, depending on who was writing about him, and could be callous toward members of his own family, treating them more like extensions of himself or pawns in the great political game. Also he was perhaps the worst person to be emperor at the same time as Martin Luther’s runaway success as a firebrand. A true believer, Charles V genuinely feared that he could be damned to Hell if he didn’t do enough to stamp out heresy and un-Christian faiths in his domains. In just one example, Charles refused to comply with a request from the English government to pardon some Protestant merchants who were in Spain and ended up arrested for heresy by the Spanish Inquisition. For him, it was a matter of principle, not politics.
Part of the reason I dwelt so much on Charles V is that he really doesn’t get as much attention as his more attractive rivals, Francois I and Henry VIII. More importantly, though, Charles V’s shadow is about to loom over everything, including the papacy andthe future of the Medici family. Plus, although neither could have known it at the time, the forces of history were setting the stage for a struggle between Charles V and Giulio de’ Medici that would leave unimagine casualties in its wake.
While Charles V was from the very beginning had a great destiny mapped out for him, Giulio de’ Medici was frankly seen as damaged goods just because of the fact that he was the illegitimate son of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s brother Giuliano de’ Medici. It is true Lorenzo the Magnificent did not hesitate to have him raised alongside his own children. But for a while it was assumed that Giulio would become inducted into the church and later join the Knights of St. John on the Greek island of Rhodes, manning one of the last Christian outposts in the eastern Mediterranean against the Ottoman Empire. This was something Giulio’s cousin Giovanni, the future Pope Leo X, considered for himself too, but it was more important for the family that Giovanni stay in Italy and represent the family in the Vatican. Giulio, on the other hand, was barred by church law from joining the higher offices of the church simply because he was born out of wedlock. If you’re a “Games of Throne” fan and this sounds like Jon Snow, well, you’re not wrong.
Instead, though, after Lorenzo the Magnificent’s death, Giulio decided to instead follow the path of Giovanni, who was always the one Medici sibling he was closest to, and become active with the church in Rome despite the stigma on him. After the Medici exile, he became an active advocate for the Medici cause, representing his cousin Piero the Unfortunate at the court of King Francois and even leading armies on behalf of the French king, putting the training he got as a potential recruit to the Knights of St. John to use.
In contrast to h Pope Leo X, Giulio was shy and reserved while Giovanni was friendly and extroverted. Guicciardini described Giulio as “very grave and cautious in all his actions” and “perfectly self-controlled.” Also, while Leo spent generously and never seemed to bother checking his bank accounts, Giulio was naturally economical, to the point that in another life he would have made a good accountant. Another advantage that Giulio had was that he inherited his father’s good looks. Even now, you can see in his portraits that Giulio had classic chiseled Mediterranean features. It’s even possible that Giulio, again unlike his cousin, may have had at least one love affair, but we’ll put a pin in that for now.
Almost as soon as he became Pope, Leo X had named Giulio the Archbishop of Florence, something that strained if not outright broke the church’s restrictions on the children of illegitimate unions. So Leo formed a commission to look into reports that before he was murdered Giuliano de’ Medici had actually secretly married Giulio’s mother, Fioretta Gorini, making Giulio legitimate after all. Needless to say, the commission’s conclusions were miraculously decided even before they had their first meeting.
From the start, Giulio was Leo X’s most trusted advisor. When Lorenzo the Younger died, Giulio rushed to Rome where he took over as the city’s unofficial lord. Giulio was actually popular and undid most of the damage done by Lorenzo’s incompetence and Leo’s unpopular campaign to make him Duke of Urbino. Most notably, Giulio managed to repair the bad state finances that Lorenzo’s neglect had caused.
As soon as news reached Florence that Pope Leo X died, Giulio set out for Rome, confident that he would be the next Pope. This was all because of Charles V. While the old rivalries between different Roman noble clans remained a factor, for the most part the papal court was split down the middle between pro-imperial and pro-French parties. Since Cardinal Giulio was rightfully seen as shaping Leo X’s foreign policy, Charles V actually wanted him to be the next Pope as much as King Francois opposed the election of a cardinal he deemed as an enemy to French interests. For now, though, the scales among the cardinals tilted in favor of the imperials.
Unfortunately, there were a few flies in the ointment. Giulio wasn’t the only man of the church rushing from Florence to Rome. There was also Francesco Soderini, who was as anti-Medici as ever. Also there were two power players among the cardinals, the English cardinal Thomas Wolsey – yes, that Cardinal Wolsey – and the cardinal Alessandro Farnese, whose credentials as a Roman blue blood were impeccable, were hoping to take advantage of the clash between French and imperial supporters and make themselves Pope. So even though Giulio de’ Medici should have had the votes, the cardinals instead settled on an unlikely compromise candidate: Adrian Boeyenz, the Dutch son of a shipwright who later became the tutor to Charles V himself.
No one could have bet Adrian would have won. In fact, he wasn’t even in Rome at the time of the election, but had been away in Spain where he served as Charles V’s regent and the head of the Spanish Inquisition. When word reached him that he was suddenly the new Pope, he was horrified, not least because right away he was already being pressured to do political favors for his former student Charles. Meanwhile King Francois was threatening to break away from the papacy and establish the independent Church of France if Adrian proved to be a puppet of the emperor.
Overall, Adrian was the worst kind of person to be the Pope in that era: a genuinely and deeply pious man. He set himself up in the most modest apartment in the Vatican he could find. He would rise before sunrise every day to pray, spent only a florin a day on his food budget, and ate humble meals prepared by a notoriously short-tempered elderly woman from Flanders. These things might seem to be good qualities for a Pope, but even average Italians just saw it as examples of the lack of sophistication typical of barbarians from the north. The elites of the papal court had even more reason to dislike him. Save for a few trusted advisors, Pope Adrian required all the archbishops and cardinals staying in Rome to leave and make their primary residences in the dioceses they reportedly represented. Some of them found themselves forced to go to places they never even set foot in. Giulio himself discreetly left for Florence, fearing Soderini’s influence over the new Pope, and resumed his political duties. However, Pope Adrian soon recalled him, since he and Charles V still saw him as a friendly ally. In the end, Giulio would have almost as much influence over Pope Adrian as he had over his cousin Leo.
After just short of a year as Pope, though, Pope Adrian suddenly sickened and died. Rumors of poison flew as they always did, and it was particularly suspected that Adrian was killed by agents of King Francois. Whatever the case, his official cause of death was kidney failure. Adrian did little to address the Protestant Reformation or add to the glory of Renaissance Rome. Instead his main legacy to the history of papacy is in providing the answer to trivia questions like “Who was the only Dutch pope?” or “Who was the last non-Italian to be elected Pope until Pope John Paul II in the 20th century?”
Now once again the pro-French, the pro-imperials, and the simply ambitious were left to fight it out for the papal hat This time, the squabbling and the negotiations were even more fierce. It became the longest papal conclave in history up to that time, lasting over two months. The cardinals were threatened with having their food reduced to just bread and water if they didn’t get on with it. But there were two other things that really broke the deadlock. First, one of Giulio’s more serious rivals, Thomas Wolsey, ducked out of the competition when he became convinced that the people of Rome would riot if another non-Italian became pope. Second, Giulio managed to secure the vote of Pompeo Colonna, another cardinal from Roman aristocracy who was holding out to become Pope himself. He did so by offering Pompeo ownership of the Riario Palace in Rome.
By November of 1523, at the age of 45, Giulio de’ Medici, an orphaned child born out of wedlock, became Pope Clement VII. He wasn’t as austere as Adrian, but he was known for taking simple meals and set to work fixing the papal finances just as he had for the government of Florence. He did not hunt and he didn’t spend money on jesters or little people. But at the same time he knew how to play the political game, rewarding his allies and winning over people on the fence by distributing favors, and he was also mindful of artistic and architectural patronage, both in Rome and in Florence. This second Medici pope seemed to have almost all of the qualities of Pope Leo, but none of his personal faults and excesses.
The future for both the papacy and Florence must have looked bright. If only they knew.
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