Episode 45: The Edge of the Abyss

Clement VII brings back the artistic glories of Renaissance Rome, but disaster for himself, his family, and for Rome looms overhead. 

Transcript

At first Giulio wanted to just use a version of his own name as a papal title, which would have made him Pope Julius III. It also would have kept with the tradition of Renaissance Popes adopting names that invoked the great heroes of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine history, like Alexander, Hadrian, and Leo. However, Clement was instead convinced by his advisors to choose a different papal name. I couldn’t find a source explaining exactly why Pope Clement chose the name that he did. One theory is that he did so to signal that he would be merciful to his enemies like Cardinal Soderini. In fact, despite Soderini’s involvement in the Cardinal Plot against Leo X, Clement did in 1521 allow Soderini to return to Rome, although perhaps it was at least in part a practical decision to stop him from getting up to too much mischief in Florence. Another, more likely theory is that Clement chose the name because at one point in his career climbing up the church hierarchy he was once the priest at the Church of Saint Clement in Rome. Personally I wonder if it might have been meant at least a little to be a sly if elaborate shot at Emperor Charles V, since Pope Clement I was according to legend imprisoned under the orders of the first century Roman Emperor Trajan. Even if it wasn’t intentional, later events would prove the connection to be ironic.

But for the time being the Romans celebrated Clement VII’s election. The pious barbarian who couldn’t tell the difference between an original Pietro Perugino from a work by Luca Signorelli was gone and replaced by a Medici no less. Clement wasn’t as gregarious and extroverted as his beloved cousin was, but he was well-liked at the beginning. However, a shrewd Venetian ambassador pegged Clement as “timid.” Paul Strathern wonders if Clement, having been born illegitimate in a society that treated illegitimacy like a crime, might have been living with what we would call self-esteem issues.

It certainly didn’t help that Clement didn’t have much family to rely on. There was his cousin Lucrezia, the only one of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s five children to still be alive, and her cousin Jacopo Salviati, a rich Florentine banker. Clement made Jacopo the papal banker and put Lucrezia in charge of the papal household at a time when putting women in positions of authority at the papal court was almost unheard of. Lucrezia was even entrusted with the administrative care of the churches and monasteries assigned to her son, the Cardinal Giovanni Salviati.

However, another woman who played a role in Florentine affairs, the widow of Piero the Unfortunate, Alfonsina, had died in February of 1520. This might have been the best because Alfonsina was never popular in Florence, and later her name would be invoked as a watchword for Medici corruption and tyranny. It’s hard to get a handle on how much her reputation was deserved. Of course, she was a woman – a foreigner, at that – so that’s already several marks against her. She was also unfairly blamed, even by Lorenzo the Magnificent, for how Piero the Unfortunate turned out. Still, I don’t think even the reality of Renaissance misogyny or the age-old tradition of hating one’s mother-in-law can quite explain why Alfonsina’s own son-in-law Filippo Strozzi had this epitaph to give her at the time of her death:

“Her death no one mourned, her life everyone mourned, and her burial is most delightful and life-giving for mankind.”

To be fair, during her life, she was famous for her charitable acts. Other stories suggest she was also tight-fisted when it came to money. One story claims she purchased a lake and some marshland in Fucecchio in Tuscany and never fully made the proper payments. Then she had the lake and some of the marshland partially drained, which devastated the local fishing industry, and never even paid for the draining or the planting of crops in the drained parts of the lake. I do have a hard time believing even a wealthy and politically connected woman at the time could have gotten away with not paying so many people for so much work, especially given how litigious Renaissance Italy could be, but with all the specific details I think there must be at least a spot of truth to this account. And well, if you know anything about today’s millionaires, there’s no contradiction whatsoever between giving extensively to charity and being horrible in your business practices.

In any case, when it came time for Clement VII to claim his place in Rome, there were very few members of the family left he could rely on. Giovanni of the Black Bands, who started wearing his black bands in mourning for his patron Leo X, either didn’t want to get involved in Florentine politics or was effectively locked out. I suspect the former. As for the next generation, Alessandro de’ Medici was being educated alongside his supposed half-sister Caterina at Paggio a Caiano, a Medici estate in Prato near Florence. Speaking of Alessandro, he may have been more than just the son of Clement’s cousin Lorenzo the Younger. He might have actually been Clement’s own son, whom he fathered while he was a cardinal. I want to save the mystery of Alessandro’s parentage when we get to talking about him more in depth, but it’s a possible fact worth keeping in mind. Then there was Ippolito, the out of wedlock son of Giuliano de’ Medici. Even though he was about a year younger than Alessandro, it was fifteen-year-old Ippolito that Clement entrusted to sit on the Medici’s invisible throne. Well, just to sit on the throne. Ippolito would be put in the awkward and frankly bizarre situation of having a regent to do the actual ruling for this political title  that technically didn’t exist. For this odd job, Clement enlisted Cardinal Silvio Passerini, who wasn’t part of the family but was one of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s many proteges.

With the future of Florence entrusted to a loyal Medici supporter and the next generation, Clement turned to the papacy. As I mentioned last time, Leo X had left papal finances in a shambles, and Pope Adrian did next to nothing to try to fix the situation. So Clement set about reforming the papal budget. However, this does not mean he was any less of a patron than the other Medici. The papal court revived with the activities of scholars, artists, and musicians, whom Clement enjoyed listening to while he ate. The painter, architect, and writer Giorgio Visari, most known for writing the collection of biographies titled “Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architechts”, claimed that during Adrian’s brief pontificate the artists and writers of Rome were “little better than dying of hunger.” Either during his time as cardinal or as Pope, Clement VII hobknobbed with some of the most famous names of Renaissance Italy. He arranged for Leonardo da Vinci to have a place to stay in Rome. Like other Medici, he was on an intimate level with Michelangelo, whom he addressed as “Remarkable man, our most brilliant friend.” At Clement’s prompting, Michelangelo began to paint the Sistine Chapel, although Clement wouldn’t live to see the iconic work completed, and oversaw the construction of what would become the Laurentian Library in Florence. As we’ll see, politics would drive the two men at odds and cause Michelangelo to flee not only Florence but Italy itself. Even then, at least according to  Michelangelo’s friend and collaborator and another of the artists Clement patroned, Sebastiano del Piombo, while Clement was hurt and confused by Michelangelo’s later ill feelings toward his family, he still thought of Michelangelo like a son. Bad blood didn’t stop Clement VII from commissioning Machiavelli, the man once accused and possibly tortured for plotting against his family, to write a history of Florence. Despite Machiavelli’s clear admiration for the medieval republic of Florence that emerged after the Ordinances of Justice were established and his cynical presentation of Clement’s ancestors as men who were just and kind but who leveraged their benevolence to achieve power, Clement liked the work. He even consulted with Machiavelli for his ideas on military reform, although any possible changes end up steamrolled by coming events.

Another artist Clement treated like a friend, well maybe, is the goldsmith Bernardo Cellini. Given that Cellini had a tendency to, well, lie  in his autobiography, we don’t know for sure how close they were, beyond the fact that Clement was exasperated by Cellini’s tendency to get into brawls. Another artist Clement commissioned to add art to the Vatican was Giulio Romeo, who painted a series of frescos depicting the life of the Christian emperor Constantine I, including Constantine’s triumph over his pagan rival Maxentius, Constantine’s legendary vision of the cross at the Milvian Bridge, and Pope Silvester presiding over the baptism of Constantine, with Clement VII himself making a cameo as Silvester.

As for actual religious issues, Clement mostly had his hands tied. Protestantism was spreading like wildfire across Germany, to the point that the elector of Saxony had broken away from the Catholic Church, at least officially, and Albrecht von Hohenzollern, the Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order converted to Protestantism and declared himself the first duke of Prussia. Perhaps naively, Clement hoped his cousin Leo’s old plans for a crusade against the Ottomans would reunify Christendom under the papacy. However, most of Europe was still divided between Charles V and Francois I, and Charles V insisted on a church council. Clement rightfully saw this as a threat to his own authority, perhaps to the future of the papacy itself, so he dithered and delayed.

Besides, the world of real politik was much more demanding, just as it was in Leo’s day. Francois of France had still been going to war to try to reclaim Milan. Clement tried to broker a peace in the interest of a united front against the Ottomans, who by the winter of 1522 were on the move against Christian Europe again. The Sultan Suleyman managed to round up a massive enough navy to capture the Greek island of Rhodes, which had been the home base for the old crusading order the Knights Hospitallier since they took the island from the Byzantines in the early fourteenth century. Charles V granted them the island of Malta so they could remain a naval bulwark against the Ottomans. In the meantime, iit was clear that Sultan Suleyman had turned his attention west again. Still, the Italian Wars raged on. Deciding with good reason that Charles V was the bigger threat after all, Clement VII entered negotiations with Francois, first pitching the idea of marrying little Caterina to the king’s eldest son, the Dauphin Francois. King Francois convinced Clement to enter into an open alliance, lending his own forces including the mercenaries led by Giovanni of the Black Bands

Leading French and papal forces, Francois besieged Pavia, a city south of Milan that was more or less the key to the whole territory. Imperial forces moved by the evening of February 23, 1525. It was a battle fit for Hollywood. On one side was the young, handsome king Francois I himself. On the other side was Francois’ one-time friend and distant cousin, Charles de Bourbon, who at first served the king loyally but turned against him when Francois sided with his mother against Charles in a dispute over an inheritance. The last independently powerful nobleman in France owning large estates in the south, Charles conspired with Henry VIII of England and Charles V to overthrow Francois and cut up France with Charles taking Burgundy, Henry VIII helping himself to Paris and northern France, and Charles de Bourbon carving out a new kingdom from southern France. Needless to say the plot failed, and Charles de Bourbon defected to the imperials, where he proved himself to be a military genius. I think in most Hollywood movies Francois would have triumphed over the backstabber, reluctantly but heroically agreeing to forgive him as he dies in his arms and vowing revenge against the evil Charles V. Unfortunately, history rarely if ever follows Hollywood rules. Instead, the French army was surrounded at all sides and were blocked from maneuvering by some deep woods at the site of the battle. Francois’ horse was killed right under him and he was taken prisoner, eventually shipped off in a boat to a fortress in Madrid. No less than 12,000 soldiers in Francois’ army were reputedly either killed or captured. In Venice later it was reported: “Many dead bodies have come by sea into the Lido. Perhaps a hundred or more thrown up by the sea. They were naked and some were wounded.” Giovanni delle Bande Nere didn’t fight in the actual battle but was shot in the right leg, forcing him to flee to Venice while he recuperated.

Clement caved as soon as he heard news of the disaster at Pavia. He sent his envoys to Charles, begging for peace terms. No doubt enraged that the Pope he once thought would be a pawn had betrayed him, Charles V set some steep terms: Clement had to pay an indemnity of 25,000 ducats, recognize Francesco Sforza not Francois as the rightful Duke of Milan, and agree to become the empire’s military ally. Not having any choice at all, Clement agreed, raising taxes in both the Papal States and Florence in order to pay off Charles V.

By March the next year, King Francois was out of his Madrid prison. He signed a treaty with Charles, giving up any and all claims to Naples and Milan and surrendering the territory of Burgundy in eastern France to Charles, who had his own claim through his grandmother, Mary of Burgundy. To make sure he honored this agreement, Francois left behind both his sons, the Dauphin Francois and Henri, in his Madrid prison as hostages. However, probably even before he left his old prison, Francois calculated that Charles V was too civilized to even seriously consider having two young princes murdered even if it was to punish their lying father.  His calculations were correct, if chillingly selfish. As soon as he got back to France, Francois not only reneged on all of his promises, but the war for Milan and Naples was yet again back on.

As for Pope Clement, you might be thinking, surely he wouldn’t end up backing the same king who just suffered a historic defeat so bad you’d have to go back centuries to find a parallel for, and who proved to all of Europe he couldn’t be trusted to keep an agreement even if the lives of his own children, his own heir were on the line?

Well, you know, to quote Winston Churchill, “It is the courage to continue that counts.” Not sure if he’d apply that quote to this situation, but still, he said it.

Thank you for listening, and buona notte.