Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici, 1475-1521), second son of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-92), became pope in 1513. Trained as a humanistic scholar and destined as a child for the church, Leo was also influential in the Medici government of Florence. Although Julius II had signed a decree forbidding simony in church politics, Leo installed his relatives in important positions. The Italian Wars drained the papal treasury, so Leo instigated a tax on benefices to fund his proposed campaign against the Turks. To pay for the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s, he renewed the sale of indulgences permitted by Julius II. This decision instigated the Protestant Reformation. In 1521 he excommunicated Martin Luther, misjudging the potential power of Luther and his supporters.
2.1 Portrait of Pope Leo X (seated). Raphael, 1518. (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy/Bridgeman Art Library)
Handbook to Life in Renaissance Europe
Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici, 1478-1534), raised by his uncle, Lorenzo de’ Medici, became pope in 1523. His uncle’s patronage of the arts and learning influenced Clement, who commissioned works by artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo, including frescoes for the Sistine Chapel. His papacy was hindered by his adversarial relationship with the emperor Charles V, settled only after Clement conceded a portion of the Papal States to the Holy Roman Empire. This enmity had contributed to the 1527 sack of Rome by Imperial troops and the destruction of numerous monuments and works of art. Seeking an ally in the king of France, Clement married his grandniece, Catherine de’ Medici (1519-89), to a son of Francis I (1494-1547). She would become queen of France and then the powerful queen mother, persecuting Huguenots and other alleged heretics. Clement, however, was powerless to confront Protestants in the north.
Paul III
Paul III (Alessandro Farnese, 1468-1549) was elected in 1534. He attracted the attention of important men in Rome through his sister, who was a mistress of Alexander VI. Paul fathered four children by his own mistress and abandoned her to become a priest in 1519. He made sure that his sons and grandsons benefited from his papacy, granting them part of the Papal States and other property belonging to the church. Ironically, he subsequently campaigned against this sort of corruption and became known as one of the reforming popes of the 16th century. Paul III realized that the church could best survive the Protestant Reformation by changing within. He formed a commission to make recommendations for improvement, and the resulting report formed the basis of discussions at the Council of Trent.
Paul IV
Paul IV (Giam Pietro Carafa, 1476-1559), a member of a powerful Neapolitan family, became pope in 1555. He was an ascetic man who as a youth loved humanistic scholarship and correspondence with learned friends. In 1524 he cofounded a new religious order known as the Theatines, becoming militantly reformist and rejecting humanism. Although he ruled for only four years, Paul accomplished significant reforms in the Curia and in church policy. An important reform concerned the benefices of monasteries, which no longer could be awarded to members of the secular clergy. Because of his prominence as a reformer, Paul became closely identified with the Catholic Church, so that devout Catholics began to think of themselves as papal supporters. (Enemies of the Church pejoratively referred to them as papists.) The people of Rome, however, hated Paul III, whose zealous condemnation of public immorality was quite unpopular. Upon his death, the population rioted, smashing the office of the Inquisition and releasing the prisoners sequestered there.
Pius IV
Pius IV (Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici, 1499-1565) became pope on Christmas day in 1559. He was able to limit the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and he reissued the Index of Prohibited Books with a more temperate listing in 1564. Pius IV also reconvened the Council of Trent, dormant since 1552. His bull of 1564 published the council’s decrees, and he encouraged Catholics throughout Europe to implement them.
Pius V
Pius V (Antonio Ghislieri, 1504-72) was elected in 1566. A Dominican, he began his career as a lecturer in theology and philosophy at the University of Padua. Then he was appointed as an Inquisition official in 1551, and supporting the Inquisition became an important goal of his papacy. He excommunicated Queen Elizabeth and sent financial aid to France to battle the Huguenots. Pius V was also responsible for the holy league that defeated Turkish forces at the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.
Gregory XIII
Gregory XIII (Ugo Buoncompagni, 1502-85), elected in 1572, devoted his career to the strict
Religion
Implementation of Counter-Reformation policies formulated by the Council of Trent. In his campaign to improve the education of members of the clergy and missionaries, he founded several colleges. Many of these missionaries were trained to return to their Protestant countries to reclaim those areas for Catholicism. He attempted to expand Catholic dominion in eastern Europe, and he succeeded in drawing Poland away from the Eastern Church to reconcile it with the Church of Rome. With all of the attention he paid to reform, however, this pope neglected the Papal States, and bandits were harassing several regions during the final years of his papacy. Gregory XIII is best known for his reforms of the calendar; the Gregorian calendar is the one we use today. (See chapter 12, Daily Life, for information about the calendar reforms.)
World History
