PAPAL PORTRAITS.

(Gregory I.)

The morals of this pontiff concerning the chastity of ecclesiastics were very rigid. In the business of choosing a bishop, he principally recommended it to the electors to inform themselves, whether the person proposed were guilty of adultery, or mere fornication. “Nay, he would have them to ask him in private whether he had been guilty of that sin, admonishing him that, if he were guilty of it, though nobody knew it, and there was no proof to convict him, yet he could not in conscience receive orders; that, nevertheless, they should be given him, if he protested that he was free from that vice; but, if he confessed it, it should be gently represented to him, that he ought rather to think of a cloister to do penance, than of the priesthood, of which his crime, though secret, made him unworthy.” This chaste pontiff understanding Maimbourg, from New Letters against Maimbourg’s Hist. of Calvinism, page 351. ¹⁰⁷ “That some ecclesiastics of Sardinia had committed that sin, after they had received orders, ordered not only that they should be deposed, without any hopes of being ever restored to the functions of their ministry, but also that, to prevent so great an evil, none should be admitted to sacred orders, and especially to episcopacy, without assurance that they had always lived chastely, and even preserved their continency many years after they were separated from their wives, in

order to be admitted to the priesthood.” The suffrages being divided at Naples in the election of a bishop, this pope, without more ado, declared plainly that he could not approve John the deacon, Maimbourg, ibid. page 353. ¹⁰⁸ “because he had been well informed he had a very little daughter. What presumption, added he, is this in him, to aspire to episcopacy, when he is manifestly convicted by this little child, of the small space of time he has preserved his continence?” He caused it to be inviolably observed, according to the canons, “that every ecclesiastic and beneficed man, whether sub-deacon, deacon, priest, abbot, or bishop, who should be guilty of impurity, if there were proofs of his crime, should be deposed, and put to penance in a monastery, and incapacitated to be ever restored to his order and dignity. Hearing that the abbot Secundinus, who was a very wicked man, bad committed horrible crimes, he said, that without seeking proofs for a judicial conviction, it sufficed that he himself, perhaps boasting of what this sort of debauchees call good fortune, had confessed that he had sported with women, which had not hindered him from being an abbot; whereupon he caused him to be depased.” He treated in the same manner the Bishop of Docleatina, a city of Illyricum, at present called Cataro; and he gave order to his metropolitan, “that, if this wicked man, who had been justly deposed for having stained his character by this infamous vice, durst ever pretend, or even intimate by a single word, that he had still some thoughts of being a bishop, he should be confined to a monastery to do penance all his lifetime, and be deprived of the communion till his death. What is very observable herein is, that the bishop of Tarentum not being accused, but only suspected, of keeping a concubine since he was a bishop, he advises him very seriously that, if he is conscious of this crime, though it were in secret, and he denied it, and there were no convincing proof against him, yet he is obliged in conscience to depose himself, and to forbear all sacerdotal functions. This will seem the more strange, because this bishop having committed another crime, which in the eyes of the world seems to be much greater, he inflicted a much less punishment on him. The same angry prelate having been disobliged by one of the poor old women, that were kept at the expense of the church, caused her to be beaten at such a rate that she remained half dead. It is certain that if she had died a few days after she had been so cruelly beaten, he had been most severely punished, according to the rigour of the canons, as guilty of murder: however, because she died not till eight months after, St Gregory did not think that her death was to be ascribed to the blows she had received, and contented himself with suspending him for two months. But for the sin of incontinence, which, by the laws of human justice, should be punished less rigorously than that other action so unworthy of a bishop, he declared to him, that if he had committed it, though it could not be proved, it was absolutely necessary, for the satisfaction of his conscience, that he should leave his bishopric.” Maimbourg, ibid. page 355, et seq. ¹⁰⁹

Maimbourg does not leave this subject without saying, “that the rigour of the canons upon this point is not at present in use, and that a man is not obliged to follow St Gregory’s opinion upon this case of conscience.”

Gregory was also very severe with respect to calumny. All that Maimbourg says upon this subject seems so good to me, that finding nothing useless in it,I shall not abridge it. He observes first, “that there is a very subtle oppression, and the more dangerous, because it is most difficult to be discovered, viz. calumny, which the wisest of men, and even those

who glory in suffering joyfully the first, find so barbarous and intolerable, that they cannot hinder their constancy from being shaken, be their minds ever so strong.” After which he goes on thus:— “I know that the civil and canon laws appoint punishments for this crime, so much complained of in the world; but they are not always well observed with respect to ecclesiastics, as St Gregory testifies, and especially in the communities, where calumny hardly meets with any rebuke, under pretence that the punishing of a false accusation would take away the liberty of bringing true ones, and discovering punishable faults to the superiors. Now this is what St Gregory could in no wise bear with, as appears by many of his letters. Hilary, sub-deacon of the church of Naples, having brought a false accusation against John, deacon of the same church, which could not be maintained against many witnesses, who attested the deacon’s innocence, the holy pontiff was very much offended that Paschasius, their bishop, had not as yet punished the slanderer. Whereupon he gave order to the defender, Anthemius, to tell him from him, that he would have him first deprived of his office of subdeacon, of which he was unworthy: secondly, that he should be publicly whipped; for this sort of correction was in use at that time to chastise clerks, as may be seen in St Augustin, though this custom has been since abolished; and lastly, that having been thus chastised, he be sent into exile, that is, either into a monastery to do penance, or by the order of the magistrate, to whom alone it belonged to punish a criminal with banishment by the law of the state. As he manifested his abhorrence of calumny by punishing it so severely, so he kept strictly upon his guard, that he might not be overreached; and never believed any informer till, having examined the least circumstances of the accusation and exactly heard both sides, he could not in the least doubt of the truth of it. He was moreover so much afraid of being deceived by the artifices of calumniators, that, when he could, he forbore giving his judgment about an accusation, referring himself to some other person, on whose sufficiency and probity he entirely depended.”

“Gregory cannot be excused for prostituting his praises, to insinuate himself into the favour of a usurper. The emperor Maurice’s army, having revolted against him at the instigation of Phocas, marched towards Constantinople, and took it without any difficulty. The emperor was delivered to Phocas, who by an unheard of cruelty, caused five little princes, Maurice’s children, to be murdered in his presence, before their father’s eyes, whom that unfortunate father could not save. The nurse of the youngest had cunningly withdrawn him from the massacre, and substituted her own in his place; but Maurice, who perceived it, caused his own child to be returned to the executioners. After this, the tyrant, more cruel than the wildest beasts, being no ways moved with so brave and generous an action, which melted all the assistants into tears, commanded this poor little innocent to be killed, and the bloody sacrifice to be perfected, by laying Maurice upon the bodies of his five children, as upon an altar, where he was inhumanly butchered. The eldest son of Maurice had been, a little before, sent to the king of Persia; but he was taken at Nicæa, and beheaded. The cruel Phocas put also to death almost all the relations and friends of the emperor Maurice, and even the empress Constantina and her three daughters, contrary to the promise he had made to the patriarch Cyriacus, that he would suffer them to live quietly in a monastery where they were. In fine, there never was so much innocent blood shed, nor so many miseries and misfortunes, as in his reign. And, indeed, there

never was a more infamous tyrant than this wretched man; without virtue, birth, honour, and merit,

horribly ill-shaped, abominably ugly, of a frightful aspect, appearing always in a fury when he spoke, drunken, lascivious, brutish, sanguinary, without any sense of humanity, being wholly a wild beast in his look and humour, and having nothing of a man, but a very deformed shape; in a word, having all the ill qualities, which may be set in opposition to those, which the historians have extremely praised in Maurice.”

I have used Maimbourg’s words, that nobody may say I have aggravated Phocas’s crimes to cast a greater blot upon St Gregory; and I will still use the same author’s expressions, as to this pope’s flatteries, that I may not be accused of representing things to his disadvantage. “I confess,” says that historian, “that what I have been saying may offend those, who after this shall read the three epistles which this holy pope wrote to Phocas, and to Leontia his wife, when they knew at Rome what had been done at Constantinople, when he was crowned emperor there. He seems in those three letters to rejoice, and to thank God for his coming to the crown, as for the greatest advantage that could happen to the empire, and to speak of him in the most advantageous terms, as of an admirable prince, who would make it flourish again, by delivering it from all miseries wherewith it had hitherto been afflicted. And he thanks God that the world, being delivered from so hard and uneasy a yoke, began to enjoy the sweets of liberty under his reign.”

Maimbourg gives the best colour he can to this strange flattery; he alleges several reasons for it; but he says nothing of the true one; which is, that Maurice had declared for the patriarch of Constantinople against pope Gregory, in very nice disputes, such as are always the differences about authority or superiority. The pope, overjoyed to be delivered from an emperor, who favoured the patriarch of Constantinople, loaded this new prince with praises, in

order to obtain from him what he desired against his rival. There are hardly any examples of a virtue that has been proof against the jealousy of authority, or the interest of a party. Though a prince be endowed with the noblest qualities, if he be withal contrary to a certain church, and be banished or killed, she looks upon this as a heavenly favour, and respectfully kisses the human hand that procures it, especially when this hand acts contrary to the other prince. In such a juncture, two contradictory propositions are found in the mouths of the clergy; the party that loses its patron considers this loss as a horrid conspiracy of infernal powers; it cites both divine and human laws against the revolution; but the other side speaks of nothing but the wonderful ways of providence, the paternal care of heaven, and runs into political doctrines. But I question whether this prepossession was ever carried to such infamies as those of St Gregory. What a fall! what blindness! what base condescension! a pope, who is so severe to a poor fornicating clergyman, and so terrible in his sentences thereupon, writes to Phocas, without so much as expressing his wish that Maurice and his children had not suffered death. There are no men that make greater outcries against the Sceptics than the clergy, and yet no men are more used to turn the rules of morality like a nose of wax, according to the reciprocal interest of their cause; which, at the bottom, is a most dangerous Scepticism.

Gregory was equally complaisant to a most wicked queen of France, queen Brunehault. In all the letters this pope wrote to her, he bestowed upon her all the praises that can be given to one of the most perfect princesses in the world, so far as to make no difficulty to say, in a very affirmative manner, that the French nation was the most happy in the world, since they deserved such a queen, endowed with all sorts of virtues and good qualities. The following passage on

this subject is to be found in the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres. “We ought to make more account of this pope’s good intentions, than of his excessive complaisance for queen Brunehault, the most wicked woman in the world, as almost all historians say, but at the same time the most artful at gaining the clergy, because in the midst of her heinous crimes, she showed an extraordinary munificence towards churchmen, and in her foundation of churches and convents, not forgetting to make a devout request for relics to the holy father.” Maimbourg proves the exemptions, which are said to have been granted by this pope to the pious queen Brunehault, to be fictitious; for it is this virtue St Gregory praises in her, and the like will ever be done to any one that is liberal to the church, the dupe of those people, who sometimes are dupes in their turn. This puts me in mind of the answer that was given by a Carthusian to Philip de Comines, “The body pf John Galeazzo, a great and wicked tyrant. ...is in the Carthusian monastery at Pavia, near the park, higher than the great altar, and the Carthusians showed it me, at least his bones, which smell as nature requires: a native of Bourges called him saint, and I asked him in his ear why he called him saint, when he might see painted about him the arms of many towns he had usurped, to which he had no right? He answered me softly, in this country, we call all those saints that are our benefactors.” Philip de Coniines, Mémoires, liv. vii , pag. in. 451. ¹¹⁰ The rule of these good monks is of all times and countries.

It is not certain that Gregory caused the noble monuments of the Romans to be destroyed, although certain that he has been accused of it, as it appears from these words of Platina, who rejects this accusation. Platina, in Gregoria 1. ¹¹¹ “Nor ought we, in this matter,to let Gregory be censured by the ignorant and illiterate, for

ordering the buildings of the ancients to he demolished, lest travellers and strangers (as they pretend) coining to Rome on a religious account, should neglect places of devotion, and view with admiration the triumphal arches and monuments of the ancients. Be this reproach far from so great a pope, who, certainly next to God, valued his country dearer than his life.” The same historian observes, that Sabinian, who succeeded Gregory, expressed a violent resentment against his predecessor, so far as almost to burn bis books. Some inhabitants of Rome excited the new pope to this, because, said they, St Gregory had mangled, or thrown down, the statues of the ancient Romans. Platina rejects also this accusation.

It is farther asserted that Gregory caused a vast number of heathen books to be burnt, and that the Palatine library, founded by Augustus, was reduced by him to ashes. I have read this no where but in Joannes Sarisburiensis, and therefore I give no great credit to it. What is certain, is, that this pope had conceived a great aversion for heathen books, as it appears from this passage of his history. Desiderius, archbishop of Vienna, “was a man of an extraordinary merit, of admirable learning, and a shining virtue, to whom St Gregory wrote more than once with great commendation; and yet he found fault with his conduct, and sharply reproved him, as being guilty of a great crime, for spending his time in teaching some of his friends grammar and literature, and explaining the poets to them. He assures him that this unlucky piece of news had given him so much trouble, that all the joy he had conceived, upon hearing the success of his studies, and his great capacity, was changed into sorrow: “because” says he, “that the praises of Jupiter and of Christ cannot be in the same mouth: consider what an unworthy and abominable thing it is for a bishop to

sing such verses, as a devout and religious layman could not repeat with decency, and without doing injury to his profession.' He adds, that though he has been informed from other hands, that it was not so, yet he cannot but lay it much to heart, and that he will make a more exact inquiry into the truth of it, because it is a horrid, and even execrable thing, to hear such a report of a priest and a bishop. ‘ But if” says he, at last, to comfort him, ' I can be fully satisfied that this report against you is false, and that you do not amuse yourself with these fooleries of human learning, and worldly sciences, I shall give thanks to God for'not suffering your heart to be defiled with the praises full of blasphemies, which those profane authors bestow on the most wicked men.'” It is said, that Livy in particular was thus treated, because he insists too much on the superstitious rites of the heathens. “At mirificus zelus fuit S Gregorii, qui ut S Antoninus, et ex eo Jo Hesselius, ex utroque Raderus ad Martialem tradit, Livium propterea combussit, quod in superstitionibus et sacris Romanorum perpetuo versetur.” Vossius de Histor. Lat. pag. 98. ¹¹²

I had almost forgotten this pope’s zeal for the psalmody of the church. “He especially applied himself to regulate the office, and the singing of the church,” says Maimbourgh: “to which end he composed his Antiphonary. Nothing can be more admirable than what he did on this occasion. Though he had upon his hands all the affairs of the universal church, and was still more burthened with distempers, than with that multitude of business, which he was necessarily to take care of, in all parts of the world; yet he took time to examine with what tunes the psalms, hymns, oraisons, verses, responses, canticles, lessons, epistles, the gospel, the prefaces, and the Lord’s prayer, were to be sung; what were the tones, measures,

notes, moods, most suitable to the majesty of the church, and most proper to inspire devotion: and he formed that ecclesiastical music so grave and edifying, which at present is called the Gregorian music. He moreover instituted an academy of singers, for all the clerks to the deaconship exclusively, because the deacons were only to be employed in preaching the gospel, and distributing the alms of the church to the poor; and he would have the singers to perfect themselves in the art of true singing, according to the notes of his music, and to bring their voices to sing sweetly and devoutly, which, according to St Isidore, is not to be obtained but by fasting and abstinence. For, says he, the ancients fasted the day before they were to sing, and lived, for their ordinary diet, upon pulse, to make their voices clearer and finer; whence it is that the heathens called those singers, bean-eaters. I question whether, at present, the singers would willingly submit to that method, to which they are not used. However, St Gregory took care to instruct them himself, as much a pope as he was, and to teach them to sing well. Joannes Diaconus says, that, in his time, this pope’s bed was preserved with great veneration in the palace of St John of Lateran, in which he sang, though sick, to teach the singers; as also the whip, wherewith he threatened the young clerks and the singing boys, when they were out, and failed in the notes.”

Many fabulous miracles are related by this pope in his dialogues. “Some learned men, who do not approve the recital of so many miracles, doubt whether St Gregory be the author of those dialogues, because they do not appear to them worthy of so great a doctor. Denys de Sainte Marthe, who speaks thus, solves the doubts of those learned men with very solid reasons, and shews that those dialogues are the works of St Gregory. Mr Du Pin is of the same opinion; but he owns at the same time,

that they do not seem to be worthy of the gravity and judgment of that holy pope, being full of extraordinary miracles, and almost incredible stories. It is true, he relates them upon the credit of others; but he should not have been so credulous as to believe them, and afterwards to publish them as matters of fact. The stories mentioned in those dialogues, are frequently grounded upon a bare relation of some ignorant old men, or upon common reports. The miracles, are so frequent, so extraordinary, and often wrought for so inconsiderable reasons, that it is a difficult thing to believe them all. He tells some stories which can hardly be reconciled with the lives of those he speaks of; as the voluntary imprisonment of St Paulinus in Africa, under the king of the Vandals. Visions, apparitions, and dreams, are more frequently to be met with in the dialogues of that pope, than in any other author. Hence it is, that he owns about the latter end of his work, that more discoveries had been made in his time about the other world, than in all the foregoing ages. But I do not think that any body will warrant the truth of all those relations.” Father Denys de Sainte Marthe acknowledges, “that he would not warrant all the miracles and visions contained in those dialogues.” Nevertheless he does not blame that pope. “That holy man,” says he, “might relate some upon the testimony of persons a little too credulous. He thought they were not to be slighted by reason of the edifying things he observed in them. The prudent reader ought to examine what degree of certainty he allows them, and who are his authors.” This monk plainly sets up for an apologist, who thinks, that St Gregory is not in the least to be blamed. But the worst is, that the reasons he alleges to prove it are not solid; for if one may be allowed to publish a relation, because it contains some things that are edifying, how many fables may not one give out as true and pious histories? though a writer does not say in express words, this is matter of fact, nobody ought to doubt of it;—yet if he do not quote cotemporary and grave authors, but only an ancient tradition, he cannot be justified, and afford not a sufficient preservative. The apologist moreover enlarges to shew, that the extraordinary things, related in those dialogues, were very frequent at that time. One of his reasons for it is, that there were many heretics to be converted, and many Catholics, who did not believe the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the dead.” It is an undeniable matter of fact, that in St Gregory’s time, many Christians wavered in the belief of two fundamental doctrines of our religion. He is so humble as to confess, that he himself had formerly doubted of the resurrection; and therefore he makes it his business, in many of his homilies, to inculcate those truths into them. As there have been, at all times, many libertines, even within the pale of the Catholic church, there have always been many people whose interest it was, that there should be no future life, no resurrection and judgment, and therefore they easily believed it; for a corrupt heart will soon be attended with an erroneous mind. However it be, it is certain, that Italy, and particularly Rome, was full of such unbelievers in St Gregory’s time. It were needless to prove it, after what has been said upon this subject by the last translator of the dialogues, in his excellent preface. Gregory of Tours mentions a dispute he had with one of the priests of his church, who maintained, that there was no resurrection to be expected. He also speaks of a deacon of the church of Paris, who pretended to be a man of great parts, and who fell into that error, disputing about it with great eagerness: whence it may be inferred, that many others in France were engaged in that dangerous heresy. If any one read the dialogues, he will find, that Peter, the deacon, knew many christians, who doubted of the immortality of the soul. Was it not therefore becoming the mercy of God, that he should work miracles at that time, to help the weakness of those poor infidels? and is St Gregory to blame because he collected them?”

I shall make only two short observations upon this: one is, that, if those unbelieving Catholics questioned only whether the soul was immortal, and whether the bodies should be raised out of their graves, they argued very pitifully; for the truth of the gospel being once admitted, it is a ridiculous thing to raise any doubts about those two points. The other is, that perhaps there never were so many unbelievers, as in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; I mean such unbelievers, as are not contented to reject the building, without destroying the foundation, but who reject both the foundation and the building. Besides, there were in those two centuries a great many heretics, who required conversion. Miracles should therefore at least have been as frequent in these ages, as in that of St Gregory. Whence we may conclude, that the argument of Father Denys de Sainte Marthe by proving too much proves nothing. If it be true that part of this pope’s books were burnt after his death, and that they would all have been destroyed, had it not been for an accident much the same with that, which, in former times, prevented the Romans putting to death the senators, as having murdered Romulus, some persons would infer from it, that the glory of that pope, and of some other ancient fathers, is like rivers, which, being very small at their spring, grow very large at a great distance from it. Something might be said against this comparison; but it is certain, generally speaking, that the objects of memory are of a very different nature from the objects of sight.

The latter lessens in proportion to their distance, whereas the former commonly increase, according as we are remote from the time and place of their existence.—Art. Gregory I.

Gregory VII.

Gregory VII, called Hildebrand, before he was raised to the papal see. Of all the popes, who went about to increase the pontifical power, none has been so bold and successful in it as he. He was without doubt a wicked man; but it cannot be denied that he had the qualities of a great man. A modern author gives us the following character of him. “He was a man of small stature, but he had a very great soul, a quick and penetrating wit, an undaunted courage, and never gave over his enterprizes, whatever difficulty he met with in the execution of them. He was fiery, imperious, hasty, bold, and daring, too forward in the execution of his designs, and carrying things to the last extremities, without being afraid of the ill consequences that might attend his vigorous, but too violent resolutions. He was, otherwise, a man of an unblamable life, notwithstanding all the calumnies of his enemies. He gave first the example of what he required from others; Forma gregis factus, quod verbo docuit, exemple demonstravit. Otto Frising. ¹¹³ and was very learned, especially in the divine sciences, Virum sacris literis eruditissimum, et omnium virtutum genere celeberimum. Lambert. Schafuab. ¹¹⁴ the laws, and the rules and customs of the church, as the historians, and even the Germans, who have no reason to favour him, acknowledge. Lastly, if his fiery and inflexible humour could have permitted him to temper his zeal with the noble moderation of his five predecessors, it is certain that he would have prevented many evils,

and the shedding of a great deal of christian blood, and the historians would have bestowed none but great encomiums upon him.” Maimbourg, Decadeuce de l’Empire, livr. iii. pag. 220. ¹¹⁵ If you consider well the following words of Naudé you will find in them the idea of a great man. Naudé, Apologie des Grands Hommes, pag. 577. ¹¹⁶ “He was one of the greatest pillars of the church, and, to speak of him sincerely and impartially, he was the first, who put her in possession of her franchises, and who freed the sovereign pontiffs from the slavery of the emperors.” Some may say, that purchasing liberty, shaking off the yoke, making one’s-self independant, and subduing one’s own masters, are wicked actions; but they cannot say, that such things can be performed without noble endowments, and a great courage. This pope resembled some conquerors, who are, otherwise, guilty of a great many crimes. I am the more willing to use this comparison, because I am persuaded, that the conquest of the church was a work that required no less courage and ability than the conquest of an empire.

Hildebrand was born at Soana, a small town of Tuscany, and rendered himself so considerable in the monastery of Clugny, that he was made prior of it. He negociated several affairs with and for the popes, and was at last raised to the pontificate in the year 1073. He resolved, without any loss of time, to deprive the emperors of their right of giving the investiture to the bishops; but, being afraid of meeting at first with insurmountable obstacles, if it could be objected to him that he had acted as a pope before his election bad been approved by the emperor, he wrote to that prince in very submissive terms, and declared to him, that he would not be consecrated or crowned till he knew his will about it. The German bishops advised the emperor to disapprove that election; but the only thing that they could obtain was,

that he would get himself informed of the manner how it was made; and he approved of it as soon as he heard the good answers his envoy received from Hildebrand. He had quickly occasion to repent of it; for the new pope, in the first council he held at Rome, renewed the ancient decrees against simonists, and such ecclesiastics as kept concubines; and made a new one, whereby he declared both those to be excommunicated who should receive the in vesture of any benefice from a layman, and those who should give it.

No pope had ever been so severe as Hildebrand against the priests who did not observe celibacy; and therefore he was very much hated. Here are the words of Lambertus Schaffnabergensis: “Pope Hildebrand, having called several synods of the bishops of Italy, ordered that, according to the ancient canons, priests should have no wives, and those who had, should part with them or be deposed, admitting none into the priesthood, but such as should promise to live in perpetual continency. This decree being published all over Italy, he wrote to the bishops of Gaul, enjoining them to do the same in their churches, and that the priests should leave their wives upon pain of excommunication. The whole faction of the clergy rose up immediately against that decree, saying that it was heretical, and contained senseless doctrine, contrary to the word of God, which says, ‘ all men cannot receive this saying; he that is able to receive it let him receive it and likewise contrary to the apostle, who commands that ‘ those who cannot contain themselves should marry, it being better to marry than to burn.’ They farther added, that this man, by a violent exaction, would have men live like angels, and would occasion all manner of irregularity by stopping the course of nature. These factious priests concluded that, if he obstinately persisted in his resolution, they had rather renounce the priesthood, than forsake their wives; and he might then see where he could find

angels to govern the churches, since he would not make use of men.” Coëffeteau adds, according to the testimony of Marianus Scotus, “that many clergymen chose rather to be excommunicated by the pope, than to part with their wives; but the pope ordered, in a synod, that no Christian should hear the mass of a married priest.”

I shall observe a thing which seems to deserve attention, namely, That the popes have found it incomparably more difficult to bring the clergy of the northern countries under the law of celibacy, than those of the southern. When those of Italy and Spain had been for a long time subjected to that yoke, those of Germany and other cold countries held out still, and disputed the ground for marriage, “tanquam pro aris et focis:” nay, I do not know but it may be said, that in Luther’s time, the concubinage of priests was more apparent and scandalous in Germany than in Italy. It ought not to be thence inferred that the inhabitants of the southern counties are more chaste; on the contrary it seems that the northern priests chose rather to keep certain concubines, than to disguise their incontinence by a vague lewdness. They acted therefore with greater fairness, and perhaps they believed it was less a crime.

“Hildebrand excepting no one in his excommunication of those who gave benefices being a layman, his legates declared to the emperor, who went to meet them as far as Nuremberg, that they had express orders to treat him as an excommunicated person, until he had received absolution for the crime of simony, of which he had been accused by the late pope. He did what they desired of him, received the absolution, and wrote to the pope that he would always remain submissive to him. Nevertheless he did not permit the legates to call a council; and he kept with him those ministers of his who had been excommunicated. For these reasons and several others, the pope

summoned him to appear at the next synod of Rome; in default of which he threatened to excommunicate him. The emperor slighted his threatenings, and offered all sorts of indignities to the legates, who had been so bold as to threaten him; and he convoked a council at Worms, where he was charged with so many crimes, that the assembly declared the election of that pope to be void, and wrote to him letters full of injurious words, to acquaint him with their determination. Those who presented the letters did it with great brutality; and yet that pontiff who, notwithstanding his hasty and fiery temper, had a great command of himself, took them unconcernedly and without saying any thing. But the very next day, having imparted them to his synod, he pronounced in a solemn manner an anathema against the emperor, and declared I know not how many prelates of Germany and Lombardy excommunicated. The latter were so little concerned at it, that they quickly assembled at Pavia, and excommunicated him. As he had foreseen that his conduct would draw upon him very potent enemies, he omitted nothing to strengthen his party; and in the first place he brought over three princesses to his interest; the empress Agnes the emperor’s mother, the duchess Beatrix his aunt, and the countess Matilda, his cousin-german. Beatrix and Matilda being very powerful in Italy, where they had vast estates, were able to assist him more effectually than the empress Agnes by her remonstrances, which Henry made no great account of. These two princesses, who were very devout, had a great opinion of Gregory’s virtue, who was looked upon as a holy man, and very austere; nay, he was said to have revelations and extacies, with the gift of prophecy and miracles, which are powerful motives to make a ghostly father. Afterwards they resolved to be governed by him; and he, on his part, answering the confidence they reposed in him, took a particular care to direct them by his letters in the way to virtue, and expressed a great affection for them, and a mutual confidence: so that when this great rupture between the pope and the emperor divided the empire into two parties, they did not in the least waver, but openly declared for Gregory, and resolved to assist him with all their power, especially the countess Matilda.” I use the words of Maimbourg, lest the readers should suspect that I design to impose upon them by artificial translations. It must be confessed that this pope was a very cunning man, and that notwithstanding his fiery and violent temper, he knew very well how to make use of the most effectual devices: he made sure of the female sex, and pitched upon the ladies who had the greatest power.

Matilda, in particular, adhered to him in such a manner as was very much talked of. A pope, though never so peaceable and well beloved, could not have avoided the satirical strokes of ill tongues, had he been so intimate with a lady as Hildebrand with Matilda. You may therefore judge whether a pope, so violent as he was, and who had many enemies, could avoid being defamed on account of the mutual affection between him and that countess. I shall set down another passage of a Jesuit, who cannot be suspected upon this occasion. “The countess Matilda finding herself alone, and being absolute mistress of her states, because the duchess Beatrix, her mother, died much about the same time that the death of Godfrey came to be known, resolved to be directed by Gregory more than ever, and made him entirely master of her mind, her conduct, and estate; and therefore, according to the usual custom of those devout women, who would think themselves undone if they were far from their directors, for whom they have sometimes too great a fondness, she did whatever she could, not to lose sight of him. She constantly followed him, and did him a thousand services with an incredible affection. She acted only by his orders, which she

executed with a wonderful exactness; and though she was the greatest princess of Italy, she preferred the title of that of his most humble servant and dear daughter, looking upon him as her father and master, for whom she expressed a great deal of respect, zeal, and devotion; though perhaps she did it with less prudence and discretion than she should have done, if I may say so, without pretending to lessen the honour that is due to the memory of so illustrious a princess. For, in short, the partisans of the emperor, and the enemies of Gregory, especially the clergy of Germany, whom he absolutely resolved to deprive of their wives, whom they had imprudently married against the most holy laws of the church, thence took occasion to inveigh against him in a strange manner, to accuse him of too great a privacy with that countess, and to tell many scandalous stories of him, and such as cannot be credited in the least, as being contrary to truth, and the known virtue of both. And therefore the German historian, who lived at that time, and who relates this, adds that all judicious persons, and such as were not blinded and prejudiced by an unjust passion, were fully sensible that they were mere impudent calumnies, which like thin clouds so vanished away, by the apostolical life the pope led in the sight of all the Roman court, and those who knew him did not entertain the least suspicion of him.”

Gregory also made a league with the duke of Suabia, and dispersed several circular letters, which had a good effect; for he declared all those to be excommunicated who should correspond with the emperor; he forbad all bishops to absolve him; and enjoined all princes to force him to submit to the holy see, or to proceed to the election of another emperor. What is very remarkable is, that he durst maintain that, in in deposing him, he had only conformed to the practice of the court of Rome. The league that was formed in his favour in Germany was so powerful

that, after a long deliberation, it was declared, that “they ought to elect another king by the pope’s authority, who should give him the imperial crown.” The emperor, notwithstanding his mean condescension to the confederate princes, could obtain but very hard conditions; which obliged him to go and beg the pope’s absolution; and, in order to obtain it, he was forced to submit to the most unheard of indignities. He set out, in the beginning of the winter, with his wife, one of his children, and a very small retinue, and passed the Alps in the worst time of the year, being exposed to great inconveniences, which might raise compassion for a mere traveller, and much more for so great a prince, reduced to so miserable a condition. Nevertheless, his arrival in Italy gave some uneasiness to the pope; and therefore Matilda carried him to her castle of Canossa, that he might be safe whatever should happen. Many princes intreated him to absolve the emperor, but he continued a long time inexorable; and then, being rather overcome by importunities, than moved with the continual and earnest solicitations of those princes, he told them at last, that he would absolve him, according to their desires; but upon condition that, in order to make it appear to all the world that he truly repented of his revolt, he should first send him his crown, and all his other royal ornaments, to dispose of them at his pleasure; and that he should publicly confess that, after what he had done in his infamous conventicle at Worms, he was unworthy of being a king or an emperor. The princes threw themselves at the pope’s feet, beseeching him for God’s sake to be contented with something more tolerable: and they obtained, with great difficulty, that he might come then, in God’s name, if he had a mind to be absolved; but that, in order to obtain that favour, he must resolve to do whatever should be enjoined him for a penance. The emperor submitted to those terms. He went to the first gate of the castle, expecting with great submission what should be required of him. First, he was obliged to go alone, and to leave all his attendants out of doors to wait for him, and go back with him at his coming out; which was certainly a very nice point, and no sovereign prince but he would have submitted to it. In short, he delivered himself, as it were bound hand and foot, into the hands of those who might have absolutely disposed of him as they pleased, and kept him prisoner in a place that was thought to be impregnable, and out of which his attendants had never been able to rescue him. Besides, when he got out of the first inclosure, they stopped him in the second; where he was obliged to lay down all the ensigns of the royal majesty, to pull off his clothes, and put on a woollen tunic, like a hair-cloth, and to stay there bare-footed in the coldest time of the winter; (for it was about the latter end of January) and fasting from morning till night, imploring with deep sighs God’s and the pope’s mercy. And what is most strange is, that this poor prince was forced to continue in this sad and pitiful condition three days together, whilst the pope could not be moved by tears and intreaties to admit him sooner into his presence, in order to comfort him: and the thing went so far that, as he himself confesses, boasting of his extreme severity in his letter to the princes of Germany, all those that were with him murmured at it, being amazed at his hard-heartedness; nay, some made no scruple to say, that such a behaviour was more like the barbarous cruelty of a tyrant, than the just severity of an apostolic judge. They are the very words of Gregory, mentioned by cardinal Baronius. That prince was like to lose his patience about the end of the third day of so severe a penance, when the Countess Matilda undertook this business with more earnestness than before; and then pope Gregory, who could not deny any thing to so great a princess, to whom he was so much indebted, resolved at last to receive Henry on the fourth day in the morning, and to reconcile him to the church upon these terms: “That he should submit to the judgment which the pope, in the time and place appointed for it, should give upon the accusations brought against him; and that, in the mean time, he should not exercise any act of sovereignty.” I omit the other conditions, which were all very severe.

His excommunicated friends were treated much in the same manner. He did not use much more gently the German bishops and others, both ecclesiastics and laymen, who came a little before to throw themselves at his feet, in order to be absolved from the excommunication they had incurred. For, before he absolved them, he caused each of them to fast a considerable time, against the custom of the country, where, by reason of the cold, fasting is with more difficulty observed than in Italy. Fasting is without doubt one of the greatest mortifications that can be laid upon the northern nations, especially upon rich people, who are used from their younger years to feed well, and to make long meals, where, if they eat a great deal, they drink still more. If the Christian religion had been first planted in that country, I do not think they would have sent into the east the same canons about abstinence and vigils, which came from the east to the northern nations.

The pusillanimity of the emperor made the Lombards less zealous for him; and he could not recover their esteem but by expressing a desire of revenging himself. The wars he had upon his hands in Germany, where Rodolphus, duke of Suabia, had been made king, prevented his attacking the pope; but, having obtained great advantages over his rival, he showed himself but little disposed to perform what Gregory required of him. Wherefore this pope, in a council held at Rome in the year 1080, excommunicated and deposed him anew. “By this thundering

decree, he deprived him of the empire, and of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, absolves all his subjects from their oath of allegiance; and what he would not do till then, confirms Rodolphus’s election, to whom he sent a rich crown of gold, about which there was an inscription, contained in one verse, importing that Christ, who is the mystical stone, gave the diadem to Peter, and in the person of Gregory to Rodolphus.” These are father Maimbourg’s words. If it be true that Gregory’s father was a carpenter, we have here an instance, that men of the most lofty courage may be born among the dregs of the people. Can any body be more haughty than our Hildebrand was? did not he make it bis business to humble kings; “because,” said he, that “they carried it too high, and he was resolved to bring down their pride by his severe usage. —“Imperatoribus et regibus, cæterisque principibus ut elationes maris, et superbiæ fluctus comprimere valeant, arma humilitatis, Deo auctore, providere curamus: proinde videtur utile, maximè Imperatoribus, ut cùm mens illorum se ad alta erigere, et pro singulari vult gloriâ oblectare, inveniat quibus se modis humiliet, atque unde gaudebat, sentiat plus timendum. —To humble the pride of kings and princes, we take care, by God’s assistance, to provide the arms of humility: esteeming it useful to show monarchs the way to humble themselves amidst their greatness, and discover to them the danger of the situation they so much pride themselves in.” Observe that the Jesuit Maimbourg rejects what has been said of Gregory’s father.

This final stroke brought things to the last extremities. The emperor called an assembly first at Mentz, and then at Brixen, wherein Gregory was declared to have forfeited the pontificate, and Guibert of Parma, archbishop of Ravenna, was elected in his room, and took the name of Clement III. The emperor, having gained two battles, one in Germany over Rodolphus,

notwithstanding the pope’s prophecies, the other near Mantua, over the troops of the countess Matilda, resolved to go and settle his antipope at Rome. Hildebrand, in order to encourage Rodolphus and the Saxons, assured them that he knew by revelation, “That a false king was to die that very year,” which he understood of the emperor Henry IV; “and if it be not true,” added he, “I desire to be no longer pope; nay, if it do not happen before St Peter’s day.” Du Plessis Mornai, who had this from Sigebert, observes, “that Rodolphus, depending on that oracle, renewed the battle four times, others say six times; and not only lost it, but also his right hand, wherewith he had sworn to the emperor, and also his life.” Coëffeteau answers, “that cardinal Baronius had prevented that calumny, and showed that Gregory never pretended to the revelations his enemies lathered upon him, but only that he affirmed in general, trusting to God’s mercy, and the justice of his cause, that God would destroy his enemies, and that his friends would shortly be uppermost; but without fixing any day, as he had been falsely charged by the schismatics.” It was replied to Coëffeteau that Baronius says this, upon occasion of a letter Gregor. Regist. lib. viii, Ep. vii. ¹¹⁷ written by Gregory to his fellow bishops and other faithful: and it is true that the words of that letter may bear such an interpretation; but this does not prove that the pope did not speak otherwise elsewhere. And indeed the charge laid upon him concerns quite another thing, not contained in a letter, but spoken in a public sermon, which he preached in his pontifical habit. The words run thus: “Do not look upon me hereafter as a pope, but turn me out from the altar, if this prophecy be not fulfilled on St Peter’s day.” It fell out that the assassins, who had been bribed, could not strike the intended blow, in order to fulfil the prophecy; so that, to justify himself, he pretended that his words were only to be understood of the death of the emperor’s soul, because he had not been able to destroy his body. Rivet, Remarques sur la Réponse au Mystere d’iniquité, Part II, pag. 182. ¹¹⁸

Hildebrand’s craft proves that those who pretend to foretel things to come, take care to have a brazen face, and an inexhaustible source of equivocations, in order to explain events in their favour, though they be never so contrary to them. If the enemies meet with worldly prosperity, they say they grow more obdurate, and that it is the true misery which was foretold by them. See how Hildebrand applies to the death of the soul, what he ventured to foretel concerning the emperor’s death. Of what use could it be to Rodolphus that the emperor Henry IV should be damned, after a certain number of years, if, before that Rodolphus was to be killed in a battle gained by the emperor?

The emperor effected the humiliation of his enemy after many difficulties, and had the satisfaction of forcing him to fly from Rome, and retire to Salerno, where pope Gregory VII died, the 24th of May 1085. It is no easy thing to give a particular account of his actions with any certainty; for, besides that the writers who speak of him, confute one another, it cannot be denied that his enemies appear too passionate, and that what they say of his being a magician is mere fiction. However this be, I can affirm, that no pope was ever so well or so ill spoken of as our Gregory VII. Many miracles are ascribed to him, and he has been inscribed in the catalogue of Saints.

He was buried at Salerno, in St. Matthew’s church, which he consecrated not long before he died. His body was searched for, in the year 1573, and it was found clothed with the pontifical ornaments. The following epitaph was added to it. “Gregorio VII.

Soanensi Pont. Opt. Max. Ecclesiasticæ libertatis vindici acerrimo, assertori constantissimo, qui dum Rom. Pontificis auctoritatem adversus Henrici perfidiam strenuè tuetur, Salerni sancte decubeit, Anno Dom. 1085. 8 Kal. Junii. Marcus Antonius Columns, Marsilius Bononiensis Archiepiscopus Salernitanus, cum illius corpus, quingentos circiter annos, sacris amictum, ac ferè integrum reperissit, ne tanti pontificis sepulcrum diutius memoria careret. Gregorio Kill. Bononiense sedente, anno dom. 1578. pridie kalendas Quintilis.—To perpetuate the memory of Gregory VII, of Soana, Pope, the most inflexible assertor of the immunities of the church, who, whilst he strenuously asserted the papal authority against the perfidiousness of the emperor Henry, died holily at Salerno, A. D. 1085, May 25. This epitaph was inscribed by Mark Anthony Colonna, archbishop of Salerno, having found his body after about 500 years interment, clothed in his pontifical habit, and almost entire: A. D. 1578, June 30, in the reign of Gregory XIII.” He was placed in the Roman Martyrology in the year 1584, and his festival was celebrated in 1595. We may very well wonder at the uncertainty of history, when we read the apologies published by his favourers. Art. Gregory VII.

(Pius II.)

A letter which Pope Pius II wrote to the sultan, Mahomet II, has much employed the controversial writers. Mr du Plessis Mornai was the aggressor in these words: Du Plessis, Mystery of Iniquity, pag. 541. ¹¹⁹ “The ambition of Pius II cannot be better known than by his epistle 396, wherein he offers and promises the Grecian empire to Mahomet sultan of the Turks, provided he would turn Christian, and succour the church, that is, his own party, and assist him to rend Christendom in pieces, as he did

by continual wars, giving him to understand, that it was in his gift, and that thus his predecessors had granted the empire of Germany to Charlemagne.”

Coëffeteau filled all the sails of his eloquence, or rather of his anger, in answering this passage of Du Plessis. “Is it possible,” says he, Coëffet, Answer to the Mystery of Iniquity, pag. 1197. ¹²⁰ “that heresy should so far extinguish all ingenuousness, as to make us condemn what is most commendable in the actions of those we have a mind to defame? There can be nothing so learned and eloquent, nothing so solid and nervous, nothing so humble and Christian, nothing so pious and religious, as this epistle; and yet Du Plessis alleges it as a signal mark of the insolence of its author. Does any spark of modesty, any sense of justice, remain with him? Here are the words, from which he would infer the ambition of Pius. 'If you desire,' says this pope to Mahomet, ‘ to enlarge your empire among the Christians, and render your name glorious, you need neither gold nor silver, nor armies, nor ships to do it. One little thing may render you the greatest, the most powerful, the most famous, of all men that live this day. You will ask what it is? It is not difficult to find it, and you need not search far for it; it is to be met with in all parts of the world; it is only a little water, to baptise you, that you may embrace the Christian religion,and believe the gospel. If you do this, no prince in the world will exceed you in glory, or equal you in power. We will call you the emperor of the Greeks, and of the East; and what you now possess by violence and injustice, you shall then possess by right and equity. All Christians will honour you, and make you arbitrator of their differences, &c. And again, if you were baptized, and would go with us into the house of the Lord, the people would no longer dread your empire, nor would we assist them against you; but rather we would implore your aid

against those, who sometimes usurp what belongs to the Roman church, and lift up their horns against their mother. And as our predecessors, Stephen, Adrian, and Leo, called in to their assistance Pepin and Charlemagne against Astulphus and Desiderius, kings of the Lombards, and, after they had by them been delivered from the oppression of tyrants, transferred to their deliverers the empire of the Greeks; so we would make use of your assistance, and we would not be ungrateful for the benefit we should receive.’ Can a reader, who considers these things without passion, discover any appearance of ambition in this epistle? was it not rather his zeal, that made him write thus, to influence the pride and courage of this barbarian? And does he promise Mahomet any thing, but what all Christendom would have consented to, if this barbarian had been willing to embrace these conditions, which Pius proposed to him?”

Rivet, answering for Du Plessis, confesses, that the long letter of Pius II to Mahomet contains very good things against the belief of the Turks, in confirmation of the Christian faith; but, adds he, Rivet’s Remarks upon the Answer to the Mystery of Iniquity, part ii, pag. 617. ¹²¹ “Besides that it appears to be a very useless design, that of converting this prince by an epistle, which was no ways probable, there is a diabolical malice in it. For, instead of shewing that the poor Christian Greeks under the empire of this barbarian, raised the compassion of the Christians in these parts, and exhorting him to treat them civilly, he seems to have written this epistle on purpose to blacken them as false Christians, and to discover, that their loss does not affect the Latins. Our history adds, as a mark of ambition, that he proposes to Mahomet, provided he would be baptized, the peaceable empire of all he had usurped, and promises him, that ‘ all will make him judge of their debates, and that the whole world will appeal to

his ‘decision,’ (you may judge whether the princes, who had been a long time Christians, were not mightily obliged to him); ‘that many of themselves would submit to him, and to his sentence, &c.’ He adds, ‘ that the charity of the Romish church will not only be towards him what it is to other kings, but so much greater, as he is higher than they.’ Observe this stroke. ‘ In fine, he represents to him, that the Romish church would implore his aid against the undutiful children that rose up against their mother.' And in fine, having boasted, that the Popes had transferred the empire of the Greeks to the French, he promises, that, in consideration of his services done to the church, he would do the like by him, in return for his benefits. There is wanting a long commentary on this discourse. In a few words, this way of converting men by promising them the empire of the world is not apostolical. It is a ridiculous thing to promise a foreign and potent prince, what he is already possessed of. It is contrary to charity, which is no respecter of persons, to be greater toward those who are more highly advanced. It is against the same charity, to discover to an infidel die miseries of Christendom, and to desire his conversion, on purpose to make use of him against princes already Christians. Lastly, it is vanity, ambition, and presumption, to boast, that the empire of Charlemagne is a reward from the Pope, and to pretend, that he could reward, after the same manner, him to whom he speaks: let the reader judge, whether this discourse becomes him, who says he is seated in the chair of St Peter: Is this a discourse humble, Christian, modest, and pious? Would these conditions and promises have been approved by all Christendom?"

It seems not possible to reply any thing very material to the remarks of Rivet; but, on the contrary, it seems very possible to make them more unanswerable; for what can be more horrible, and shameful to

the Christian religion, than to see Mahomet II, one of the greatest criminals that ever lived, a man, who had shed so much blood, and robbed so many persons of their estates by a continual train of cruelties and injustices, become lawful possessor of all his usurpations; provided he would be baptized? What becomes of that inviolable law of Christian morality, that the first step of repentance that expiates a robbery, is the restitution of the ill-gotten goods? What should we say, if a Jew, guilty of a fraudulent bankruptcy for three millions, should obtain, by the mere ceremony of baptism, without being obliged to make any restitution, a full absolution of his crimes, and a right to possess those three millions? Would not the Infidels have very good reason to defame Christianity as the pest of equity and natural morality? And yet this procedure with respect to the bankrupt would be only a peccadillo, in comparison of the offers, which Pius II made to Mahomet, to make him lawful possessor of his conquests, by means of a few drops of water sprinkled upon bis face. What would the apostles say at the sight of such a dispensation, and such a use of the keys? Is this agreeable to what St Paul says, or even to what Ovid a Heathen poet says:

O niminium faciles qui tristia crimina cædis
Fluminea tolli posse putatis aqua.

Fools! to believe, that water, duly spilt,
Can wash away the crimson stains of guilt.

Some persons believe, that the letter of Pius II was not written with the design of being sent to Mahomet. I shall add nothing to the words which I borrow from a Catholic writer. “Here we must add a word about the long letter, which Francesco Sansovino has published, under the name of Pope Pius to Sultan Mahomet. For it appears by it, that this Pope wrote it at the time, when the conquest of Sinope

and Trebizonde made the Latin princes fear the like effort from the Ottoman arms. It shews at large the advantages of the Christian religion above the Mahometan, and pretends to invite the Sultan to baptism by great examples, representing to him how glorious it was for Constantine the great, to have been the first of the Roman emperors, who became a Christian, and to Clovis to have been also the first of the French kings, who embraced the Gospel, and that it would be no less honourable for him to be the first of the Ottoman monarchs, who embraced our faith. There are many, who, reflecting upon the inaccessible and morose humour of Mahomet, do not think it probable, that a letter, on so nice a subject, was ever delivered to him, or that any durst wait for an answer to it. They add, that at least it would have found the Sultan very little inclined to the proposal, and that, unless by a miracle, his conversion could not be the effect of the remonstrances of a letter. Thus when the Italians would express the little hopes there is of success in any matter, they say pleasantly in their language ' La penna non toglie il filo alla spada: that the pen does not blunt the edge of the sword.’ It is probable therefore, that it was published among the western nations, after the taking of Trebizonde, as a manifesto, to justify the arms of the Crusade, and to awake the ardor of the warriors in Christendom, after they had seen, that the Pope had endeavoured in vain to divert the arms of the Sultan in the peaceable way of remonstrance.”— Art. Mahomet II.

(Innocent VIII.)

Innocent VIII, created pope in the year 1484, was of Genoa, and his name was John Baptist Cibo. Authors are not agreed about the illustriousness or the obscurity of his family; but it is acknowledged that he was sent to the court of Naples in youth,

and that he served king Alphonso. He was afterwards one of the cardinal Bologna's domestics at Rome, which I think was of some use to him, in order to be promoted to the bishopric of Savona. Pope Sixtus IV, who was much his friend, bestowed on him the bishopric of Melfi, and afterwards a cardinal’s cap. One of the first actions of Innocent VIII, after his advancement to the pontificate, was to conspire with the grandees of the kingdom, against Ferdinand king of Naples; he sent for Robert Sanseverino to give him the command of the troops in the expedition against that king; but not being satisfied with the conduct of this general, he turned him out of that post, and made peace with Ferdinand. The conditions of the treaty were, that the king of Naples should pardon the rebels, and pay to the holy see the tribute that he owed: he performed neither the one nor the other, and frustrated the pope’s designs, who endeavoured to revenge that infraction. Afterwards Innocent VIII thought no more of war, and applied himself to make Rome enjoy the fruits of peace. We shall see how difficult it is to exercise the papacy; for if the popes are blamed for meddling with the politic affairs of Europe, they are also blamed when they do not concern themselves with them, and it is then said that they are useless to the public good, and Guicciardini gives this idea of Innocent VIII. It is true, he adds something that softens his censure; for he observes, that the indolence the pope fell into, produced this advantage, that nobody feared his giving any disturbance to Italy. This matter of fact is to be found in the following words, with a parenthesis of a Protestant divine. “Guicciardini describes Innocent VIII in these words, that his life in other respects useless to the public good (an excellent quality for a pope) was at least useful in this, that having suddenly laid down his arms which he had unfortunately taken up in the beginning of his pontificate against Ferdinand, at the instigation of several barons of the kingdom of Naples, and afterwards turned his mind to idle pleasures; he had neither for himself, nor for those who belonged to him, any thoughts that tended to disturb the repose of Italy.’' Those who shall consider the parenthesis, will perceive, that the reason why I quote Rivet’s reply, rather than the original words of Guicciardini, is because the passage of Rivet serves me for a proof. Would to God there were no other faults committed but such as contribute to the public peace.

Innocent procured a great plenty and cheapness of provisions, and caused robbers to be severely punished. He created new offices, the sale whereof brought him a great deal of money, and he was the first pope who gloried in having bastards, and loaded them with, wealth.

Volaterranus speaks of it in this manner. “He was the first of the popes who introduced that new and extraordinary proceeding of owning publicly his spurious issue, and without any respect to the ancient discipline, heaping upon them riches without measure.” He mentions but one son, and one daughter of this pope, and he says, that the one obtained of his father some towns in the neighbourhood of Rome, and the advantage of being son-in-law to Lorenzo de Medicis, and that the daughter was married with a prodigious fortune to a Genoese. Moreri has stumbled here; he says, “that Innocent VIII left two rich sons, which he had before his pontificate.” This is an error both as to the sex, and the number of these bastards. They were sixteen, eight sons and eight daughters; whence this epigram:

Quid quæris testes, sit mas an fœmina Cibo,
Respice natorum, pignora certa, gregem:
Octo noceus pueros genuit, totidemque puellas,
Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrein.

Of Cibo’s sex, if you full proofs require,
Look on the pledges he has left below,

Eight lads, eight lasses, own him for their sire,
The stile of father well might Rome bestow.

Innocent was a handsome man, obliging even to excess, but covetous, ignorant, and of little wit. I will quote a Catholic writer, because a Protestant would be suspected. “Innocent was tall, well made, and of a fine person, but slow of understanding, and had no learning.” He died in July 1492, at the age of sixty.—Art. Innocent VIII.

Julius II

Julius II created pope the night between the thirty-first of October and the first of November, 1503, was nephew to Sixtus IV, and was called Julian de Rovere. It is said that he had been a waterman: Erasmus has inserted this tradition in his adages. “From the oar to the tribunal, is proverbially said when any one is suddenly raised from a low condition to an honourable employment. I know not whether this happened more luckily to any one than to Julius II; for it is reported that when he was a young man, he used to row for hire, and yet he was raised from a boatman not only to the seat of justice, but even to the highest of human honours; and not satisfied with this elevation, he greatly enlarged the Papal authority, and would have carried it still farther, had he not been prevented by death.” Anastasius Germonius, archbishop of Tarentaise, has maintained that all the stories concerning the birth of Sixtus IV and Julius II, are false, and that Leonard de Rovere, father of Sixtus IV, was a very noble knight, and that before the exaltation of this pope, the family of Rovere was in a flourishing state; but Mr de la Monnoie pretends that Anastasius Germonius, who only copies Onuphrius, cannot stand against Philelphus, Baptist Fregosus, Volaterranus, Corio, Erasmus, Machiavel, Chasseneuz, Bandello, Du Ferron, Masso, and so many others cited by Spondanus in his continuation

of Baronius, on the year 1471, n. 10. Bandello affirms that Julius II boasted that he had steered a little vessel. “Pope Julius II made no difficulty frequently to say, that from Arbizuola, a village in the Savonese, he many times when a boy, carried onions in a boat to sell at Genoa. He was nevertheless a man of great parts, and an exalted genius.”

There was something very remarkable in his election; he was sure of it before the cardinals entered the conclave, so that he came into it pope. He was an exception to the common proverb that he who enters the conclave pope, comes out cardinal, “Chi entra papa, esce cardinale.” He had secured his faction by so many promises, and had in his power so many means of enriching such as would serve him, that it was not possible for him to miss the papal dignity. Besides the riches which he had already gotten, he had in hand those of others; every one was eager to offer him money and even their benefices, so that he saw himself in a capacity of promising more than was asked. Thus you see the iniquitous way by which he rose to the pontificate; It is not a Protestant but an Italian author that says it. Guicciardini, lib. vi. fol. m. 165, verso. ¹²² “But that which served most in his advancement, was the promises immoderate and infinite which he made to the cardinals, princes and barons, and to all others whom he might make profitable to him in that action. Besides, he had the means to distribute money, benefices, and spiritual dignities, as well such as were his own, as those that were the rights of others; for that such was the bruit and renown of his liberality, that many made willing offers to him to dispose as he best liked of their treasures, their names, their offices, and benefices. They considered not that his promises were far too great then, than being pope he either could or ought to observe; for that he had of so long continuance enjoyed the name of just and upright, that

pope Alexander himself, his greatest enemy, speaking ill of him in all other things, could not but confess him to be true of his word, a praise which he made no care to defile and stain thereby to become pope, knowing that no man more easily beguileth another, than he that hath the custom and name never to deceive any.” If he had not made use of this simony, how could he have induced the cardinals to give him their voices? he who had always discovered so terribly and turbulent a temper, and had made many enemies. Money brings about every thing; it made a pope before they had met for the election, a thing never known before. Julius gained the faction of the duke of Valentinois, by making him believe that he was his father, and promising to treat him as his son; he did afterwards just the contrary. No man had ever a more martial spirit than he; he was in person at the taking of towns, and appeared more fiery than those who commanded his armies. Du Plessis Mornai adds nothing to the expressions of Guicciardini when he says “Being resolved to attack Ferrara, he was advised first to take Mirandola, and being tired with the slow progress of that siege which went not to his mind (a thing not expected, and never known before) the vicar of Christ on earth was there in person against a Christian town,” says Guicciardini; “and though old and sick, was so obstinate and impetuous in a war which he himself had raised against the Christian princes, that nothing was done soon enough; he was always calling to the captains in a fury, having his quarters so near the battery that two men were killed in his kitchen, notwithstanding the remonstrances the cardinals made to him of the disgrace he brought both upon himself and his see.” Monstrelet says on that occasion, “he deserted St Peter’s chair to take the title of Mars the god of battle, to display his three crowns in the field, and to sleep in a watchtower; and God knows what a fine figure these mitres, crosses, and crosiers made, fluttering in the camp; the devil was not such a fool as to be there, for benedictions were too cheap.” Guicciardini does very well represent what concerns the siege of Mirandola; for he observes that this pope had no regard to the horrible cold of the season, which retarded the works of the besiegers. Complaining of his captains, he encouraged his soldiers with the hopes of plunder, for he promised them not to capitulate with the town, but to suffer them to sack it. Mezerai says that the town being taken by composition, the nineteenth of March, the pope would be carried into it through the breach.

A great number of writers affirm that he once threw St Peter’s keys into the Tiber; hitherto I have found no authority for this, besides this Latin epigram of one Gilbertus Ducherius Vulto Aquapersanus:—

In Galium ut fama est, bellum ges turns acerbum,
Armatum educit Julius urbe manum:
Accinctus gladio, claves in Tibridis amnem
Projicit et sævus, talia verba facit:
“Quum Petri nihil efficiant ad prælia claves,
Auxilio Pauli forsitan ensis erit.”

Fame says Pope Julius once the sword did wield,
And to engage the Frenchman took the field.
Fierce into Tiber’s stream the keys he threw,
Exclaiming loudly as his sword he drew:
“Since in my aid thy keys, O Peter, fail,
Thy sword, O Paul, in battle may avail.”

It must be confessed that this is a very weak foundation; for when a poet has a pretty thought, and finds no proper subject that he may apply it to, he makes no scruple to supply the want of it by his amplifications and fictions; and he will dispense with the truth rather than lose a witty saying: be that how it may, this action true or false, of Julius II is to be found in many authors. One of the latest writers in whom I

I have read it, relates it thus: Joan. Henricus Heidegg. Historia Papatus, pag. 192, 193. ¹²³ “Having made an alliance with the Venetians, this most unjust and perfidious warrior led his army against the emperor’s allies, the duke of Ferrara and Lewis XII king of France, with an expression which denoted him rather the successor of a most abandoned and wicked robber, than of St Peter; for marching out of Rome with his army, he in a rage threw St Peter’s key into the Tiber, adding these words: ‘Since St Peter’s key is of no farther use (at the same time he drew his sword), let us try St Paul’s sword.'” However this may have been, if this pope wanted the qualities of a good bishop, he had at least those of a conquering prince. He had great courage and a political bead, by which he formed leagues and broke them according to the exigency of his interest; he made a most formidable one against the republic of Venice, and made use among other things, of the thunder of his excommunications; but when he saw that the victory which the king of France, one of the heads of that league, obtained over the Venetians, too much weakened that republic, he forsook his allies and reunited himself with it. The emperor and the king of France equally dissatisfied with him, endeavoured to bring him to reason by a way always formidable to the popes, which was by the calling of a council; but he was not daunted at that, he proceeded severely against this council, and called another himself which had the better of it, to which at last the king of France submitted in a low manner: it is true that Julius II was then dead. The sacred league which he formed in Italy received a terrible check by the battle of Ravenna; and if they had known how to make use of that advantage, they would doubtless have humbled this haughty pontiff, whereas they permitted him to recover himself from that severe blow, by the little use they made of that victory, to which the powerful diversion in his behalf contributed very much. He recovered himself so well, that the same year the French were forced to abandon the Milanese. Nothing was so prejudicial to Lewis XII as the superstition of Anne of Bretagny his wife. She filled her head with so many scruples about the war that France made with the pope, that she retarded all the good designs of her husband. Julius obtained great succours from the Swiss, and was very liberal of titles and marks of honour towards the cantons; he died of a sickness, full of vast designs, the twenty-second of February, 1513. This is what Guicciardini says: “He was a prince of incredible constancy and courage, but so full of fury and unruled conceptions, that the reverence that was borne to the church, the discord of princes, and the condition of the times, did more to stay him from his ruin than either his moderation or his discretion; worthy no doubt of great glory, if either he had been a secular prince, or if that care and intention which he had to raise the church into temporal greatness by the means of war, had been employed to exalt it by the mediation of peace in matters spiritual. Nevertheless he was lamented above all his predecessors, and no less esteemed of those who having either lost the true consideration of things, or at least, ignorant how to distinguish and appease them rightly, judged it an office more duly appertaining to popes, to increase the jurisdiction of the apostolic see by arms and blood of Christians, than by good example of life and due curing and correction of corrupt manners, to travel for the saving of those souls, for whom they glory so much that Jesus Christ hath named them his vicars on earth” How judicious is this, and what an admirable censure upon those impatient doctors who believe all to be just, provided the temporal grandeur of the church be improved by it! It in particular hits cardinal Palavicini, who speaks so faintly of Julius II’s faults, and excuses them by reason of the temporal advantage they brought to St Peter’s patrimony. “He was endowed with a high spirit, insomuch that if he had been a temporal prince, he would deserve to be put in the number of the heroes. Certainly, had it not been for that fierceness, he would not have recovered to the church the best part of her patrimony.” Istoria del Concilio, lib. i, cap. 1, n. 5. ¹²⁴ Paul Jovius affirms that Julius II died having a vast design upon the kingdom of Naples. It was said that the title of deliverer of Italy, with which he suffered himself to be flattered, was but an empty name while the Spaniards were possessed of Naples: “If God let me act,” answered he, striking his stick upon the ground, “this shall not last long. Ad quod Pontifex quassato scipione quo innixus pavimentum infrendendo pertundebat, responds brevi futurum, ut Neapolitani non iratis superis externum jugum excuterent."

Julius was a lover of wine and women, and he is accused even of the unnatural sin; and there is no sort of crime but he is charged with, in a dialogue it is feigned he had with St Peter at the gate of Paradise. We are told of an exclamation of the emperor Maximilian: “Good God! what would become of the world, if thou didst not take a particular care of it under the reign of such an emperor as I am, who am but a poor hunter, and under that of so wicked and drunken a pope as Julius II.” Some historians observe that this pope invented a new name to accuse the French of drinking too much wine, and discharging it immediately by urine, and they add that this was his great vice. “He gave the French the general appellation of Micturovini, thus adding a new word to the Roman language, implying that they were immoderate drinkers of wine, which was afterwards to be discharged, of which vice he himself was very guilty." It is said that one of his officers, a Norman by nation, told him one day, “Faith, holy father, you are then a true

Frenchman, for you are one of the greatest Micturovini upon earth.”

His hatred against France, where he had found a good sanctuary under the pontificate of Alexander VI, was so excessive, that he ordered that all the French which could be met with, should be killed, and promised a recompense to whomsoever should execute his order. We are not to believe that the wine and hams which he sent to the king of England, were the true cause of the war of the English against France. Spondanus has been so unjust as to insinuate this, and to jest upon it; and he pretends that Polydore Virgil said nothing of it, to save at once the honour of Italy and England. Polydore was an Italian and lived in England; he was therefore concerned in the glory of both these nations. Now he thought it unworthy of Italy to win people by such allurements, and unworthy of England to suffer itself to be caught by such a bait. These are the words of the annalist: Spondanus, ad ann. 1512, n. 3, pag. m. 289. ¹²⁵ “It is a merry story which Guicciardini relates, that a ship belonging to the pope, laden with Falernian wine, cheeses, and Westphalia hams, arrived at that time in England, which being made a present of in the pope’s name to the king, nobles, and prelates, was received by them all with wonderful applause; and that the common people, whom trifles affect no less than things of moment, flocked to see that ship with great pleasure, boasting that they had never before seen in that island, any ship with Papal colours. Guicciardini tells us that nation was fond of wine and high-seasoned meats, by which the Pope knew he should easily draw them to his party, as they say Narses once enticed the Lombards into Italy, sending them all kinds of fruit and other delicacies with which Italy abounds, that they might be induced to leave their own native poverty, and take possession of a

country full of all sorts of riches. Now whereas Polydore Virgil has not inserted in his history of England this memorable fact, so highly acceptable to the king, nobles, prelates, and people, I take the reason to be, because being an Italian and residing in England, he had regard to the gravity of both nations.” Mezerai comes much nearer the truth, for he observes that the pope spurred on Henry VIII with the ambition of protecting the true church. “The English,” says he, “were upon the point of breaking with the king; for the pope had made them drunk with the vain-glory of defending the holy see, and with the flavour of delicious wines of all sorts, with which he had sent them a great ship laden, together with hams, sausages, and spices to make them relish the better.” According to Varillas it was from a motive of religion that an English bishop sounded an alarm for war the day after the feast given by Henry VIII, where the chief members of the parliament were treated with the good wines and excellent cheeses which the pope’s ship had brought to London. This prelate represented that Lewis XII was a persecutor of the church, and that it “would be an eternal disgrace to the English nation to live in peace with the persecutors of the holy see.” Varillas should have a little better explained all the reasons of this prelate, and not have been contented to give us to understand that some political reasons were added to those religious motives. The English prelate urged no doubt that Lewis XII would depose the pope only to create another in bis room, who would permit him to conquer Italy. This certainly was the true spring that put Henry VIII in motion; he plainly perceived that if no opposition were made to it, Lewis XII would reap all the glory of deposing Julius II the scourge of Christendom, and of creating a new pope devoted to him, and of subduing all Italy. Human policy and jealousy do not suffer a prince to consent to such an aggrandizing of the glory and power of his neighbours; and for this reason Lewis XII saw the forces of England, Switzerland, and Spain against him.

The history of Venice written by Cardinal Bembo, is sufficient to shew the passion, treachery, and prodigious ambition of Julius II, though this historian is less prolix upon it than Guicciardini. Bandelli tells a story that is pleasant enough: “The Germans,” says be, having asked the Pope leave to eat flesh upon St Martin’s day when it should fall on a fish day; Julius would not flatly deny them that favour, but granted it on condition they should drink no wine the same day.” This was the same thing as a refusal, there being more to be lost than gotten by such a favour. In the year 1511, Julius II interdicted the whole kingdom of France except Brittany.

Art. Julius II.

Leo X.

Leo X, elected pope the 11th of March, 1513, was called John de Medicis. He had been honoured with a cardinal’s hat at fourteen years of age by Pope Innocent VIII, and a long time after, with the dignity of legate by pope Julius II. He discharged the functions of it in the army which was beaten by the French near Ravenna, in the year 1512. Here he was taken prisoner; and during his confinement he made a wonderful experiment of the force of superstition, even over the minds of common soldiers. The soldiers who had vanquished him expressed so great a veneration for him, that they humbly begged pardon for their victory, beseeched him to give them absolution, and promised never to bear arms more against the pope: this I learn from Cardinal Palavicino. It is thought that nothing contributed more to his elevation to the popedom, than the wounds he had received

in the combats of Venus. I have so often given the reason why I choose rather to cite Catholic than Protestant writers on such occasions, that without farther preamble, I shall here produce the words of a French historian, and a bitter enemy to the Protestants.— “Three months had not passed since the return of cardinal de Medicis to Florence, when the death of pope Julius II obliged him to leave that town and go to Rome. He was carried in a horse litter by reason of an imposthume in those parts which modesty will not allow us to name, and travelled so slowly that the pope’s obsequies were over, and the conclave sitting, when he arrived there. The conclave had not ended so soon as it did, the young and old cardinals persisting in contrary opinions with equal obstinacy if an odd accident had not brought them to agree. The cardinal de Medicis being extremely hurried by the number of visits he made every night to the cardinals of his faction, his ulcer broke, and the scent proved so offensive that all the cells, which were separated only by slight partitions, were perfectly poisoned by it. The old cardinals, whose constitutions were less capable of bearing the malignancy of a corrupted air, consulted the physicians of the conclave to know what they should do; these physicians, who had seen cardinal de Medicis, and judged of his state more by the ill humours which flowed from his body, than by that strength of nature which drove them out, answered, being first gained by the promises of Bibiana, that cardinal de Medicis had not a month to live. Their passing this sentence of death upon him was the cause of his being chosen pope; the old cardinals, who thought to outwit the young, agreeing to give them a satisfaction which could not, as they presumed, last very long. They waited upon them and let them know that they at last yielded to their obstinacy, on condition they would remember to do the like for them another time. Thus cardinal de Medicis was elected pope, upon a false information, being not full thirty-six years old; and, as joy is one of the most sovereign remedies, he soon recovered so perfect a state of health, that the old cardinals had occasion to repent of their being over credulous.”

Not to conceal any thing, I am obliged to acquaint my reader that Paul Jovius does not place this ulcer in the place where Varillas does, but in the fundament, which would suppose a disgraceful cause: and with the same sincerity I add, that this pope ascended the throne with a great reputation of chastity, if we believe Guicciardini, and was reckoned very continent from his youth, if we credit Paul Jovius. Whence we must conclude that the papal dignity was that which ruined Leo the Tenth’s good morals: he grew vicious, when he should have grown virtuous; and lastly, I observe, that the sense in which I allege Varillas’s words, and which Seckendorf gives them, is gathered only from consequences, and such as do not necessarily follow from them.

His expenses were excessive on the day of his coronation. He would be crowned upon the same day on which he lost the battle of Ravenna and his liberty the year before and rode the same Turkish horse which he rode on the day of that battle; he ransomed him from the French; and, as he loved him mightily, he had him very carefully kept and pampered to an extreme old age. “Vectus est etiam in pompa illo eodem equo Thracio in quo ad Ravennam captus fuerat, quern ab hostibus pecunia redemptum ita adamavit, ut postea usque ad extremam senectutem summa cum indulgentia alendum curarit. Jovius, ubi supra, pag. 129, 130. ¹²⁶ And as his head was filled with the magnificence of ancient Rome, and the triumphant days of the ancient consuls, he endeavoured to revive those fine shows, and was so well served in this design, that since the irruption of the Goths, there never was seen in Rome any thing more

magnificent than his coronation. See the description of it in Paul Jovius, who agrees with Guicciardini, that the expense of it amounted to a hundred thousand ducats. He led a life little suitable to a successor of the apostles, and perfectly voluptuous. He took too much pleasure in hunting, and it is said his eye at this sport was surprisingly quick. He had such a violent passion for it that he understood and observed the laws of it much better than those of the gospel. He could not bear that any one should disturb his sport; and had no mercy on those who, through imprudence or otherwise, occasioned the escape of the game, to whom he gave all manner of ill language. He was so much out of humour when the chace did not succeed, that nobody durst then ask him a favour; but transported with joy, if it ended luckily; and these were the favourable moments for obtaining whatever was desired of him.

As to his sight, here is a passage which I take from a book of the Sieur des Accords. Des Accords Bigarrures, cap. xii, fol. m. 105, verso. ¹²⁷ “Pope Leo from having these numeral letters to be written, to signify the year of his pontificate, they were thus interpreted, MCCCCLX. Multi Cardinales cæci crearunt cæcum Leonem decimum. Now I must say, by the way, that I do not know why he should be called blind since by the help of glasses he could see hawks, vultures, and eagles, at the highest soar; but on the other hand, whenever he read, he clapped the paper to his nose, and even then could hardly distinguish a letter, as Lucius Gauricus informs us, in his Schematibus Celestibus; which puts me in mind of a certain honest curate who cannot read the church books of the fairest character, without spectacles, and yet shall distinguish the smallest dice, and is never to be deceived.” Paul Jovius confirms this but in part; for he says, that Leo read the smallest print with great ease, when he brought the

paper near his eye. Let us cite Gauric, and admire the impertinence of his attributing to the planets the different qualities of the right and left eye of this pope. Lucas Guaricus Geophonensis, Episcopus Civitatensis in tractatu Astrologico. ¹²⁸ “The sun, with nebulous stars, entirely dimmed the sight of his right eye, with many transverse lines. The moon, in the sixth house, in Gemini, applying to the quartil of Mars, impaired likewise the sight of his left eye, insomuch that he could read nothing without a large crystal glass; yet he did not wholly want the sight of it, because the salutary star Jupiter was in trine to the moon; and thus he read letters by bringing them near his nose and eyes; and, by the help of a crystal glass, he distinguished hawks and eagles, in their highest flight, much better than other sportsmen; besides, he often hunted hares, goats, and foxes, and had a clear sight of them, when caught by the hounds or mastives.”

As Leo had been taught by preceptors, who instructed him thoroughly in the Belles Lettres, he loved and protected men of wit and learning. He favoured the poets in a particular manner, and that without always preserving the gravity which his character required. The pleasures he allowed himself with them, sometimes degenerated into buffoonry. Quernus, who had been solemnly crowned, and promoted to the honour of poet Lauréat, was little better than a merry-andrew. He used to come to Leo the tenth’s dinner, and eat at the window, the morsels which were conveyed to him from hand to hand. They gave him the pope’s wine plentifully, but upon condition, that he would make extempore verses on the subjects that were given to him. He was obliged at least to furnish a distich; and if he failed, or if his verses were good for nothing, he was condemned to drink a great deal of water with his wine. Sometimes also the pope made extempore verses with his

arch-poet, which set all the company a laughing. What want of gravity was this! One day a poet presented him with some Latin verses in rhime; the pope, to divert himself, gave him no other recompence than an extempore flight, containing an equal number of verses in the same rhymes. The poet, vexed to see that Leo gave him nothing, returned the following distich:

Si tibi pro numeris numeros fortuna dedisset,
Non esset capiti tanta corona tuo.

Had fortune thus thy verse with verse repaid,
The triple crown had not adorn'd thy head.

Hereupon the pope extended to him his usual liberality, and by this we may see, that he turned every thing to his diversion. But here is a passage that clearly discovers the buffooning spirit, which then reigned in the pope’s palace. A man having something to ask of Leo X, and finding himself amused for several days with ungrateful delays, which made him despair of being introduced, bethought himself of this stratagem. He acquainted Leo’s great chamberlain, that he had the most admirable verses to shew the pope, that ever were made. The chamberlain, transported with joy, goes immediately to the pope, and tells him, he had alighted on the very top of fools, and the fittest thing alive to divert him. It was the way of Leo’s courtiers, to find out such as were half crazy, and complete the disorder of their brains, for the diversion of the head of the church. But they were the dupes of the pretended poet I speak of; for when he was admitted to the pope’s presence, he let him know the true reason which induced him to counterfeit a crack-brained poet, and declared his real business. This spirit appeared even in the privileges which he granted to Ariosto. Was it keeping the decorum of the papacy to expedite a bull so favourable to the poems of Ariosto? “Almost

at the same time, that he thundered his anathemas against Martin Luther, he was not ashamed to publish a bull in favour of the prophane poems of Lewis Ariosto, threatening those with excommunication who found fault with them, or hindered the profit of the printer.” David Blondel’s Examination of pope Innocent the tenth's Bull, pag. 3. ¹²⁹ We shall see elsewhere Article Machiavel. ¹³⁰ that he was a great admirer of burlesque pieces. He had not the same relish for theological studies. Cardinal Palavicino could not deny it; he honestly confesses, that Leo X valued those more, who understood mythology, the ancient poets, and profane learning, than those who understood divinity, and ecclesiastical history. His words which are more frank, and have less of the bias than usual, are these. Palavic. ubi supra, cap. ii, n. 2, pag. 50. ¹³¹ “Father Paul objects, that he was better acquainted with profane letters, than with sacred or religious learning; which I do not deny. God had endowed Leo with a great genius, and a singular industry; and being yet but a youth, he saw himself placed in the supreme senate of the church, but he neglected that part of literature, not only the most noble, but most suitable, to his station; and this neglect increased, when, at the age of thirty-seven years, being appointed head and master of religion, he not only continued to give himself up to the curiosity of profane studies; but for the regulating of the said religion, did rather call to him those who were acquainted with the fables of Greece, and the delights of the poets, than those who knew the history of the church, and the doctrine of the fathers. He nevertheless favoured scholastic divinity, in honouring with the purple Tommaso di Vio, Ægidio da Viterbo, and Adriano Florenzio, his successor, and in appointing Silvester da Prierio, master of the sacred palace; who, by their writings, have acquired an immortal glory, in illustrating that sacred science. But he did not converse with the divines, as he did with the poets; nor encouraged the sacred erudition, as the profane; leaving the church in the same want, he found her, of learned men, who, after the unhappy ignorance of many ages, should revive the former as they did the latter.” It were to be wished, that these two historians always agreed so well.

I will not vouch for this story that he ridiculed the whole Christian doctrine, as a mere fable. The tradition is, that secretary Bembo alleging something from the gospel, he answered him, “it is well known of old, how profitable this fable of Jesus Christ has been to us. Quantum nobis nostrisque ea de Christo fabula profuerit fatis est omnibus seculis notum.” This story is found in the Mystery of Iniquity, and in abundance of other books: but still without being supported by citations, or having any other foundations than the authority of Bale; so that three or four hundred authors, more or less, who have said this, copying one another, ought to be reduced to Bale’s single testimony; a testimony manifestly exceptionable, since he wrote in open war against the pope, and against the whole Romish church. No tribunal in the world would receive the depositions of such a witness, swearing that he has seen or heard so and so, for when once the person appears to be his enemy against whom he deposes, the challenges of the accused party are declared valid. Since books of controversy then are pieces which the parties produce in a suit pleaded before the public, it is certain that the testimony of a Protestant disputant, upon a fact which reflects upon the pope, or the testimony of a popish disputant, on a fact reflecting on the reformers, ought to be reckoned as nothing. The public, which is judge of the process, ought to reject all these testimonies, and have

no more regard to them, than to things which never happened. Private persons are permitted, if once persuaded of the probity of Bale, to believe what he affirms; but they ought to keep their persuasion to themselves, and not produce it to public view, as a juridical proof against their adversaries; which, in my opinion, is a thing not sufficiently observed.

They tell another story, which lies open to the same battery as the former. It is said, that Leo hearing two men dispute, one whereof denied, and the other affirmed, the immortality of the soul, pronounced, that the affirmative seemed true, but that the negative was more proper to give a man a cheerful countenance. Luther is the man who says this. We may, if we please, believe he spoke truth, but we ought not to allege his testimony; he is a person at war with the pope; he is an enemy persecuted and anathematized; the judicial practice requires, that his testimony should be rejected and even his oath not admitted; he ought either to prove what he says, or say nothing. Leo had the industry to ruin the council, which the emperor and the king of France had set up against Julius II, and he made the council of Lateran triumph; for he obtained of Lewis XII all the submissions he could desire. He obtained of Francis I a much more solid advantage by the concordat, concluded between them in the year 1515. This did not make him more favourable to France. He formed leagues against her, and took that affair so much to heart, that having received the news of the misfortunes of the French, he died, it is said, of joy. He did not always behave in a manner agreeable to the emperor Maximilian. “Having rekindled the war between the emperor Charles and the king of France, in order to drive the French out of Italy, the news was brought him, at one of his country seats, called Maliagno, of the taking of Milan and Parma from them, which

gave him such an excess of joy, that he was seized with a slight fever that very night, of which he died a few days after. Du Plessis, Mystere d’iniquité, p. 590. ¹³²” These are Du Plessis’s words. All historians agree, that Leo X received this good news with a wonderful satisfaction, but I do not find many who say, that this pleasure caused his death; and though they should affirm it, I should not believe it; for they who die of joy, die suddenly, oppressed, according to all appearance, by too great an effusion of blood into the ventricles of the heart. If the. first impressions of a violent joy be withstood, as was done by the pope, a man is better afterwards, instead of being seized with a dangerous fever when other reasons do not occasion it. John Crespin’s account seems much more probable, who supposes that Leo the tenth’s death was sudden, but not of that sudden kind which is occasioned by an excess of joy. “Hearing that the French were beaten at Milan by the emperor’s forces, and driven out of Italy, which indeed was not done without his help: as he was drinking and making merry, and wonderfully rejoiced at the news, it is said that he suddenly gave up the ghost, he who believed neither a heaven nor hell after this life.” Sannazar’s distich, alleged by this author, favours the supposition of sudden death; but yet it is certain, that the distemper Leo died of, lasted some days. Strada has given two relations of this pope’s death, one in Livy’s stile, the other after the way of Tacitus. They are fine and well wrought.

I have already said that he did not always please the emperor Maximilian. The latter had conceived good hopes of Leo X, but when he was informed of this pope’s correspondence with the French, he said, “If this pope had not deceived me, he would have been the only pope, whose honesty I should have had

reason to commend.” The sordid traffic to which he reduced the distribution of indulgences, gave birth to Luther’s reformation, as every body knows. They made it a kind of monopoly, and indulgences were let out to farm; the commissioners appointed for the collection of the sums, bought their commissions of the pope, after which they stuck at no kind of exaction, and observed decorum so little, that the powers for releasing souls out of purgatory were played for in the taverns, as we are assured by Guicciardini. The discontent of the people grew greater, when it was known to what use these sums were designed: almost all the money that was raised by them in Germany, being converted to the use of the pope’s sister.

Some say he spoke honourably of Luther in the beginning. This particular had hardly been known, if Colomiés had not mentioned it: Mr de Seckendorf Histor. Lutheran, lib. i. pag. 40, col. 2, littera b. ¹³³ learnt it from him, being told by a counsellor of Spires, that it was to be found in Colomiés’ Opuscula: the passage is this. “When the Lutheran sect began to appear, several gentlemen being in the house of our worthy Scipione Attellano, and discoursing about divers things, some of them very much blamed Pope Leo X, for not having taken timely care, when Silvester Prierio master of the sacred palace, shewed him some heretical doctrines which friar Martin Luther had vented in his book concerning indulgences; but indiscreetly answered that friar Martin had a fine genius, and that these surmises were monkish jealousies. Words which Sleidan would not have failed placing in the front of his history, if he had known them.” Colomiés, Recueil de Particularités, pag. m. 111. ¹³⁴

I do not find that Guicciardini abuses this pope so much as Mr Varillas insinuates. These are Guicciardini’s words.—“A prince who was endowed with

several good and bad qualities, and deceived the expectation they had of him when he was raised to the papal chair; for he showed more wisdom, but less goodness, than was expected by the world.” When this historian speaks of Leo the tenth’s election, he does it in a manner very much to the glory of this pope. He owns he was free from simony, and all other evil suspicions, and that the reputation of the elected cardinal stood very well in point of morality.

Paul Jovius’s apology to me seems trifling. The methods this author takes to justify Leo X may be reduced to four. He pretends that “it was not from a vicious nature, but a gentle, easy, and magnificent temper, that this pope, beset by a voluptuous crew, engaged a little too far in pleasures.” Paul Jovius observes, in the second place, “that if Leo be compared with his predecessors, he will be found very chaste. Si aliqua ex parte eo nomine sugillari inclyta virtus potuit, Leo certe cum superiorum principum fama comparatus æstimatione rectissima continentiæ laudem feret.” This excuse is no better than the former. He says, “that this pope, having a good reputation as to continence, precautioned himself afterwards against the attacks of impurity, by renouncing high food and by regular fastings.” This is better than all the rest. Lastly, he asserts, “that we ought to make a great difference betwixt the vices which belong to a sovereign, as such, and those which belong to him as a man: and he alleges the emperor Trajan so beloved of the Roman people, that it was the height of their wishes that the succeeding emperors should reign as well as he; and yet no one was ignorant of the drunkenness of Trajan.” His meaning is, that Leo the tenth’s vices were not repugnant to the qualities of a good sovereign, but to those of a good Christian only, and therefore the irregularities of his youth ought to be pardoned, since they did not hinder his being a good prince.

Generally speaking, this author’s maxim is true: it is very possible for a prince to be an honest man, and at the same time but a poor king; that is, a king who cannot maintain the vigour of the laws, nor remedy the disorders of the state. On the other hand, it is very possible for a prince to be an ill observer of those rules of morality which prescribe the duties of private persons, and yet be a good king, that is, a king who maintains order in his state, and wisely distributes punishments and rewards, without being burthensome to his people by imposts, and pecuniary edicts. But it is very rare that a voluptuous and prodigal prince, such as Leo X was, is a good prince; to supply his expences, he must be burdensome to his subjects, and commonly he distributes his favours, according to the humour of the ministers of his pleasures, and consequently to unworthy persons, whose evil administration he has not time to punish, being too much taken up with his pleasures to allow the functions of royalty that application which they demand. It were easy to show, that Leo the tenth’s subjects were sufficiently loaded. Besides, it is not considered, that Leo’s principal dignity was of a sacred and ecclesiastical nature. So that, to know whether he discharged his duty, the great question is, not whether he has done what his temporal dignity demanded, it being impossible to justify him, without showing that he diligently acquitted the duties of his other dignity, that is, observed the precepts of the Gospel, and omitted nothing to recommend the practice of them to others. This was his principal function, and here his apologist is forced to forsake him. “As to divine matters, his character has suffered not a little: for he was so lavish of indulgences (those old instruments by which the popes get money) that he seems to have lessened the credit of the holy authority.”

I must upon this occasion say, that this blending

the temporal with the ecclesiastical authority, in the same person, is generally the ruin of the evangelical spirit. This combination had place among the Pagans, and was not unserviceable to the temporal good of religion.

Rex Anius Rex idem hominum Phœbique sacerdos.”
Virgil, Æn. lib. iii, ver. 80.

Anius, at once a king, and Phoebus’ priest.

It has remarkably served the same ends in Christianity; but has produced an extreme corruption of manners. The ecclesiastical character ought to prevail, and be predominant, since the other dignity is only an accessory; and yet it is almost always swallowed up by its colleague. The joining these two together, is like the joining a dead carcase to a living body; a fatal conjunction, where the dead communicates corruption to the living body, and receives no vital influence therefrom.

The author of the Critique Générale, mentioning the distinction, between a pope speaking ex cathedra and the same pope speaking in another manner, has related the witty saying of a peasant in the electorate of Cologne. I had a long time thought that this witty saying was preserved only by tradition, but I was mistaken; it has been printed in grave books for above an age. Duaren has inserted it in one of his books, and copied it from Fulgosius. Here is the whole story; it is true, that an elector of Cologne is not expressly named in it. “There goes a pleasant story of a German husbandman, who being at work in his field, saw his bishop pass by, attended by a train more becoming a prince, than one who calls himself the successor, or deputy of an apostle; being highly scandalized at it, he could not forbear laughing, and laughed so loud, that the reverend gentleman would needs know the reason of it. The husbandman answered in bis natural way, that is, as a true and

plain person; I laugh when I think of St Peter and St Paul, and see you in such an equipage. How is that, said the bishop? Do you ask how, says the clown? Why they were ill advised to walk alone on foot throughout the world, when they were the heads of the Christian church, and lieutenants of Jesus Christ, the king of kings, and thou, who art only our bishop, go so well mounted, and have such warlike attendance, that thou resemblest more a prince, than a pastor of the church. To this his reverence replied, but, my friend, thou dost not consider, that I am both a count and a baron, as well as thy bishop. At which the rustic laughed more than before; and the bishop asking him the reason of it, he answered yea sir, when the count and baron, which you say you are, shall be in hell, where will the bishop be? This confounded the right reverend, who proceeded on his journey without answering a word.”

I shall produce a long passage from Varillas’ Anecdotes, containing in short a pretty just character of Leo X. We find it in the preface of this book, and is as follows. “Guicciardini represents this Pope as an accomplished model of modern policy, and the greatest statesman of his age. He sets him above king Ferdinand the Catholic, and makes him triumph in his youth over all the artifices of this old usurper. It is to him he attributes the secret of getting all his designs seconded by the councils of Spain, whether they would or not. After having established these wonderful principles, there are no shining virtues, but what heighten the picture of Leo X. He forms at twelve years of age, when he was made cardinal, those vast projects, which he executed afterwards, when he was exalted to the chair of St Peter. He negotiates with the states of Venice to save the ruins of his house, which had not power to withstand the fortune of our Charles VIII. He changed not his resolution upon seeing his brother lost in the

passing of a river. He bad no other thoughts than the educating the only son which this brother had left in the cradle; upon which he returns to Rome, where his intrigues recommended him to the favour of pope Julius II, and occasioned his being chosen legate in the army designed to drive the French out of Italy. He is taken prisoner at the battle of Ravenna, but makes his escape in a lucky conjuncture for him, Julius happening just then to die: he enters into the conclave, where he takes such advantage of the caprice of the young cardinals, who were obstinately bent on making a pope of their own age, that he procured their votes in favour of himself. He joins with the Spaniards, and manages their friendship, as long as it is useful towards re-establishing his family in the principal functions of the magistracy of Florence; but as Soon as fortune turns her back upon them, and he finds they are not inclined to see him usurp the duchy of Urbino, and invest his nephew with it, he treats with the French upon that condition; he draws up the famous Concordat, in which he baffles the stratagems and long experience of the chancellor Du Prat; he caresses Francis I, as long as that king is in a condition of doing him service; but no sooner obtains of him all he desired, than he quits him to reconcile himself with Charles V. He projects a new league with him, to re-establish the Sforzas in the duchy of Milan. He succeeds in it better than he expected, and conceives a joy on the news of his success, which occasioned his death.”

Men of letters, of what religion or nation soever, are bound to praise and bless the memory of this pope, for the care he took to recover the manuscripts of the ancients; he spared neither pains nor cost in searching for them, and procuring very good editions. I have two anecdote letters, which are a proof of this, and which the reader will undoubtedly be glad to find here:

Venerabili Fatri Alberto Moguntin. et Magdeburgen. Archi-Episcopo, Administrated Halberstaten. Principi Electori ac Germaniæ Primati.

LEO PP. X.

Venerabilis Frater, Salutem et Apostolicam benedictionem. Mittimus dilectum filium Joannem Heytmers de Zonvelben, Clericum Leodiensis diœceseos, nostrum et Apostolicæ sedis Commissarium ad inclitas Nationes, Germaniæ, Daniæ, Suetiæ, Norvegiæ et Gothiæ, pro inquirendis dignis et antiquis libris qui temporum injuria periere, in qua re nec sumptui nec impensæ alicui parcimus, solum ut sicut usque a nostri Pontificatus initio proposuimus, quod altissimo tantum sit honor et gloria viros quovis virtutum genere insignitos præsertim literates, quantum cum Deo possumus, foveamus, extollamus ac juvemus. Accepimus autem penes Fraternitatem Tuam, seu in locis sub illius ditione positis esse ex dictis antiquis libris, præsertim Romanarum Historiarem non paucos qui nobis cordi non parum forent. Quare cum in animo nobis sit tales libros, quotquot ad manus venire potuerint in lucem redire curare pro communi omnium literatorum utilitate, Fraternitatem Tuam ea demum qua possumus affectione hortamur, monemus et enixius in Domino obtestamur, ut si rem gratam unquam facere animo proponit, vel eorundem librorum omnium exempla fideliter, et accurate scripta, vel quod magis exoptamus ipsosmet libros antiquos ad nos transmittere quanto citius curet, illos statim receptura, cum excripti hic fuerint juxta obligationem per Cameram nostram apostolicam factam, seu quam dictes Joannes Comissarius noster præsentium later ad id mandatum sufficiens habens nomine dictæ Cameræ denuo duxerit faciendam. Et quia dictus Joannes promisit nobis se brevi daturum trigesimum tertium librum Titi Livii de bello Macedonico, illi commisimus ut eum ad manus Tuæ Fraternitatis daret, ut ipse quam primum

posset per fidum nuntium ad nos, vel dilecto Filio Philippo Beroaldo Bibliothecario Palatii nostri Apostolici mittat. Quoniam vero eidem Joanni certain summam pecuniarium hic in urbe enumerari fecimus pro expensis factis et fiendis, et certain quantitatem debemus, volumus, et ita Fraternitati Tuæ committimus et mandamus ut postquam acceperit prædictum librum Titi Livii ipsi Joanni solvat seu solvi faciat centum quadraginta septem ducatos auri de Camera ex pecuniis indulgentiarum concessarum per illius Provincias in favorem fabricæ Basilicæ Principis Apostolorum de urbe; quam quidem pecuniarum summam in computis Tuæ Fraternitatis cum Camera Apostolica admittemus, prout in præsentia per præsentes admittimus et admitti mandamus. Juvet præterea eundem Joannem salvis conductibus litteris et auxiliis, et illi per Provincias suas assistât pro libris extrahendis, et pro illo etiam fide jubeat, si opus est, pro dictus libris intra certum tempus a nobis restituendis et ad sua loca remittendis. Quod si Fraternitas Tua fecerit, ut omnino nobis persuademus, et ingens nomen apud Viros literatos consequetur, et nobis rem gratissimam faciet. Datum Romæ apud S. Petrum sub annulo Piscatoris die XXVI Novembris MDXVII. Pontificatus nostri anno quinto.

Ja. Sadoletus.

To our Venerable Brother, Albert, archbishop of Mentz and Magdeburg, administrator of Halberstadt, electoral prince and primate of Germany.

LEO PP. X.

Venerable Brother, Health and Apostolical Benediction. We send our beloved son John Heytmers de Zonvelben, ecclesiastic of the diocese of Liege, commissary of the Apostolical see to the illustrious nations of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Gothland, to search for valuable and ancient books that have been lost through the injury of time, in

which business we spare no expence, only that, as we have determined from the very beginning of our Pontificate, solely with a design to promote the honour and glory of the Most High, we may, by God’s assistance, cherish, promote, and serve famous men of all sorts, especially the learned. We have been informed, that, of the said ancient books, there are not a few, in possession of your fraternity, or in the places subject to your jurisdiction, especially relating to the Roman history. Wherefore, intending to procure the publication of as many such books as can come to our hands, for the common good of all learned men, we affectionately exhort your fraternity and earnestly entreat you in the Lord, that, if you ever propose to do a grateful action, you would transmit to us as soon as possible fair and correct copies of all those books, or which we rather wish, the books themselves, which shall be returned to you, as soon as transcribed here, according to an obligation drawn up by our apostolical chamber, or such as the said John our commissary, bearer of these presents, sufficiently instructed for that purpose, shall think fit to be drawn up in the name of the said chamber. And because the said John has promised in a short time to give us the thirty-third book of Livy of the Macedonian war, we have commissioned him to give it into your fraternity’s hands, to be transmitted as soon as possible by a faithful messenger to us, or our beloved son Philip Beroaldus, librarian of our apostolical palace; but because we have ordered to be paid here in the city to the said John, a certain sum of money, and are indebted to him a certain quantity for expenses already made and to be made, we will, and authorize, and command your fraternity, after he shall have received the said book of Livy, to pay, or cause to be paid to the said John, 147 gold ducats of the chamber, out of the money arising from indulgences granted through those provinces in favour of the royal fabric of the prince of the apostles, which sum we will allow in the accounts between your fraternity and the apostolic chamber, as at present we do allow and order to be allowed. You are likewise to assist the said John with safe conducts, letters, and aids, and help him through your provinces in coming at books, and if occasion be, engage your word for him that the books shall be returned within a certain time, and sent back to their places; which if your fraternity shall do, as we are fully persuaded you will, you will acquire a great reputation among learned men, and perform a thing the most acceptable to us. Given at Rome, at St. Peter’s, under the fisherman’s ring, November 26, 1517, in the fifth year of our pontificate. Ja. Sadolet.

This is the first of the two letters, here is the second. There is something in it which may incline us to think that the entire history of Livy was then in being. Mr de Seidel has been credibly informed that it is believed that a canon of Magdeburg, who was one of the ministers of state to the marquis Joachim Frederick, administrator of that archbishopric, took an advantage of the confusion things were then in, and carried away several manuscripts out of the public library, particularly this Livy, to enrich his own. His heirs preserved it, but they concealed the manuscripts because they had come unjustly by them. At last the whole was destroyed when the town was pillaged in the year 1631.

Venerabili Fratri nostro Alberto Archiepiscopo Moguntin. Principi Electori et Germanise Primati.

LEO PP. X.

Dilecti filii Mr de Seidet believes that this letter was written to the canons of Magdeburg, since Albert of Brandenburg was archbishop of Mentz as well as of Magdeburg. ¹³⁵ salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Rettulit nobis dilectus filius Joannes Heytmers de

Zonvelben Clericus Leodiensis diœceseos quem nuper pro inquirendis antiquis libris, qui desiderantur ad inclitas nationes Germanise, Daniæ, Norvegiæ, Suetiæ et Gothiæ nostrum et apostolicæ sedis specialem nuncium et commissarium destinavimus, a quodam, quem ipse ad id substituent, accepisse literas, quibus ei significat in vestra Bibliotheca reperisse codicem antiquum, in quo omnes decades Titi Livii sunt descriptæ, impetrasseque a vobis illas posse exscribere cum originalem codicem habere fas non fuerit. Laudamus profecto vestram humanitatem et erga sedem apostolicam obedientiam. Verum dilecti filii, fuit nobis ab ipso usque pontificates nostri initio animus, viros quovis virtutis genere exornatos, præsertim literates, quantum cum Deo possumus, extollere ac juvare. Ea de causa hujuscemodi antiquos et desiderates libros, quotquot recipere possumus, prius per viros doctissimos, quorum copia Dei munere in nostra hodie est curia, corrigi facimus, deinde nostra impensa ad communem eruditorum utilitatem diligentissime imprimi curamus. Sed si ipsos originales libros non habeamus, nostra intentio non plane adimpletur, quia hi libri, visis tantum exemplis, correcti in lucem exire non possunt. Mandavimus in Camera nostra apostolica sufficientem præstare cautionem de restituendis hujuscemodi libris integris et illæsis eorum Dominis, quam primum hic erunt exscripti, et dictes Joannes, quem iterum ad præmissa commissarium deputavimus, habet ad eandem cameram sufficiens mandatum, illam obligandi ad restitutionem præ- dictam, modo et forma quibus ei videbitur. Tantum ad commodum et utilitatem virorum eruditorum tendimus; de quo etiam dilecti filii abbas et conventus monasterii Corviensis ordinis S Benedicti Padebornensis diœceseos nostri locupletissimi possunt esse testes, ex quorum bibliotheca cum primi quinque libri historiæ Augustæ Cornelii Taciti qui desiderabantur, furto subtracti fuissent illique per multas manus ad nostras tandem pervenissent, nos recognitos prius eosdem quinque libres et correctes a viris prædictis literatis in nostra curia exsistentibus, cum aliis Cornelii prædicti operibus, quæ extabant nostro sumptu imprimi fecimus. Deinde vero, re comperta, unum ex voluminibus dicti Cornelii, ut præmittitur, correctum et impressum, ac etiam non inordinate ligatum, ad dictes Abbatem et Conventum Monasterii Corwiensis remisimus, quod in eorum bibliotheca loco subtracti reponere possent. Et ut cognoscerent ex ea subtraction potins eis commodum quam incommodum ortum, misimus eisdem pro ecclesia Monasterii eorum indulgentiam perpetuam. Quocirca vos et vestrum quemlibet, ea demum qua possumus affectione in virtute sanctæ obedientiæ monemus, hortamur, et sincera in Domino caritate requirimus, ut si nobis rem gratam facere unquam animo proponitis, eundem Joannem in dictam vestram bibliothecam intromittatis, et exinde tarn dictum codicem Livii, quam alios qui ei videbuntur per eum ad nos transmitti permittatis, illos eosdem omnino recepturi, reportaturique a nobis prœmia non vulgaria. Datum Romæ apud S. Petrum, sub annulo piscatoris, die prima Decembris MDXVII Pontificates nostri anno quinte.

Ja. Sadoletus.

To our venerable brother Albert, archbishop of Mentz, electoral prince and primate of Germany.

LEO PP. X.

Beloved sons, health and apostolical benediction. Our beloved son John Heytmers de Zonvelben, ecclesiastic of the diocese of Liege, whom we lately appointed special nuncio and commissary from us and the apostolical see, to the illustrious nations of Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Gothland, to search after ancient books, has informed us that he has received letters from a certain person whom he had appointed for that purpose, in which he acquaints him

that he had found in your library an ancient book containing all the decads of Livy, and that he had obtained your leave to transcribe them, not being allowed to have the original book. We commend your humanity and obedience to the apostolical see; but my beloved sons we resolved from the very beginning of our pontificate, to promote and favour, with God’s assistance, all men of merit, especially learned men. With this view we procure this kind of ancient books so much wanted, as many as can come to our hands, to be first corrected by very learned men, of which there are many, by the gift of God, in our court, and afterwards to be carefully printed for the common benefit of the learned; but if we have not the original books themselves, our design will not be fully answered, because these books, the copies only being seen, cannot be published correctly. We have given orders in our apostolical chamber, that a sufficient security be given that these books shall be restored whole and uninjured to their owners, as soon as they shall have been here transcribed; and the said John whom we have again deputed as commissary for the aforesaid purpose, has a sufficient order to the same chamber to oblige it to the said restitution in the manner and form he shall think proper. We only aim at the benefit and advantage of learned men, of which our beloved sons the abbot and convent of the monastery of Corvey, of the order of St Benedict of Paderborn, are ample witnesses; out of whose library when the five first books of the Roman history of Cornelius Tacitus were stolen, and through many hands came at last into ours, we took care to have them first corrected by the aforesaid learned men residing in our court, and were at the expense of printing them with the rest of the works which were extant of the said Tacitus. Afterwards, the matter being discovered, we sent one of the volumes of the said Tacitus corrected, printed, and handsomely bound, to the said abbot and monastery of Corvey, to be placed in their library in the room of that which was stolen; and that they might know that this theft turned rather to their advantage than disadvantage, we sent them a perpetual indulgence for the church of their monastery. Wherefore with the utmost affection, and in virtue of holy obedience, we exhort and with sincere charity in the Lord, require you and any of you, that if you ever intend to oblige us, ye would admit the said John into your library, and suffer him to transmit to us from thence, both the said book of Livy and others that he shall think proper, which shall be returned to you by us, together with no common reward. Given at Rome, at St Peter’s, under the Fisherman’s ring, Dec. 1, 1517, in the fifth year of our pontificate. Ja. Sadolet. Art. Leo X.

Julius III

Julius III, created pope the seventh of February 1550, was called John Maria del Monte. He was of low extraction and a true soldier of ecclesiastical fortune; he rose up step by step till he came to be president of the council of Trent; he was a very voluptuous man, and passionately loved a young boy very ugly and of very mean birth. When he was made pope he gave him his cardinal’s cap, and made a pleasant answer when the unworthiness of the person was represented to him. Some said it was his son, others .denied it, and told how cardinal del Monte having found this lad playing tricks with a monkey in the streets, took him into his service because there was nobody but he that durst play with that creature. This was the foundation of a kindness which afterwards grew a disorderly passion, although this lad had nothing in him but what was loathsome, only he had gotten a habit of buffoonery. Thomas Erastus relates this fact, and these are his words:—“He has a boy a black, filthy, insolent brute; silly, ignorant,

and quite a fool, except that he can play the buffoon a little; upon the whole he is a monster both in body and mind. Who he is and whence he sprung, no one knows; some think him his son, and those who deny it ingeniously come off by saying he found him in the streets, and brought him up from a child, because of his playing with an ape which no one else dared to do: the cardinal (or bishop then) was so pleased they say with the sight, that he took him for his own. He is the fondest imaginable of this boy, as indeed he exceeds all others in pederasty.” Thuanus says a thing which confirms part of this; as first, that this boy was called the monkey, even when he had obtained the cardinal’s cap. In the second place, that he had his name because of his employment with the cardinal his master, which was to look after a monkey. “Soluti ad omnem licentiam animi homo they are the words of this great historian, which give a very ill character of pope Julius III.—“Being addicted to every kind of pleasure, he was no sooner created pope than he discovered to everyone his disposition; for it being an ancient custom that the new pope gives his hat to whom he pleases, he gave it to a certain youth whose name was Innocentius, and who, because he had the care of a monkey in the family, retained the name of Simia, giving him his name and marks of honour.” Erastus, whom I have already cited, gives us a more particular account. This boy was left at Bologna, so that Julius III who would not bring him to Rome before he had made him a cardinal, and who wanted a little time to make that promotion relished, was very uneasy at his absence, and endeavoured to find a remedy for it. He was never gay and pleasant but when he heard of his Innocent, and enquired after him of all those who could give an account of him. He ordered him to come near Rome that he might have an opportunity to go and see him; and having sent for him once secretly into the city, he expected him at the windows with all the impatience of a man to whom his mistress has promised a night. He was heard to say that the chief reason why he rejoiced for being pope was, because it gave him an opportunity of being a benefactor to Innocent; and that he thought himself less indebted to the cardinals for making him pope, than for having consented to the promotion of Innocent to a cardinal’s hat. He appointed him his principal minister and intercessor for all those that would obtain favours of him. Some satires were published at Rome, in which it was said that this favourite as ugly as he was, was a new Ganymede. The pope made no mystery of it; but sometimes told the cardinals some stories of this boy’s lascivious tricks. “Romæ fama, erat, et libellus quoque prescriptum fuit, à Jove Ganymedum foveri, licet deformem: sed nec ipse Pontifex hoc ad reliquos Cardinales dissimulare, et per jocum fertur aliquando commemorare, quam sit lascivus adolescens et importunus.” Sleidanus, Histor. lïb. xxi, fol. m. 609, versa. ¹³⁶ The discourses of Julius had but little gravity in them, as appears from the reflection he one day made upon the answer of two cardinals. They found him in the court of his palace in a very indecent posture; for by reason of the heat he had put off his clothes and was walking in his drawers. He obliged them to do the like, and afterwards asked them what the people would say of them should they go and shew themselves in that figure in the field of Flora and the streets of Rome? “They would take us,” answered they, “for idle rogues, and would throw stones at us;” “Therefore,” replied he, “it is to our clothes we are obliged for not being thought idle rogues: how much then are we indebted to our clothes?”

The want of gravity was not the greatest fault of Julius: his discourse proceeded sometimes to profaneness and blasphemy, as when he excused his passion by instancing the anger that God expressed against Adam for an apple. During the

conclave in which he was elected, some of his letters were intercepted, which made it conjectured that this future pope would be a lewd man, for those letters were stuffed with the most extravagant obscenities. It is thought his money frustrated the election of cardinal Pole which had been concluded on, and the publication whereof was only deferred because they were afraid it would be an ill omen to notify it in the night. The medal which he ordered to be struck after the death of Edward king of England, had for its motto a sentence of the holy scripture, the application whereof proved false in a little time. They expressed an extraordinary joy at Rome for the death of king Edward, because the princess Mary who succeeded him, restored England to the obedience of the pope; but the reasons of that joy ceased in a little time. Queen Elizabeth re-established the reformation, and rendered that island one of the most flourishing kingdoms in Christendom; so that the prediction of the medal was a mere chimera.—“Julius arrived to such a pitch of madness, that he ordered a medal to be struck to perpetuate the memory of the king; on one side of which was a figure with three horns, and on the reverse this inscription: Heidegger. Hist. Papatus, pag. 238. ¹³⁷ ‘ The people and kingdom which will not serve thee, shall perish foolishly arrogating to himself what Isaiah said of Christ. But the joy lasted not long.” This pope died the twentieth of February, 1755, being about sixty-eight years of age. He pretended to be sick, and the better to deceive the world he reduced himself to a course of physic, which brought upon him a real disease of which he died. It is said that there was so great an intimacy betwixt him and cardinal Crescentio, that they had mistresses in common, and that they maintained the children they had by them at a common charge, for want of knowing who was the true father. Each of them also paid his quota for the maintenance of these women. Cardinal Pallavicino extenuates as much as he can the faults of this pope, but he does not confute what father Paul says of them. He owns that Julius loved to divert himself, but he adds that he equally loved application to business; he grants that he died being little esteemed and loved, but he pretends that his too free and familiar way of acting was the cause of it; because not getting the public veneration, he made it believed that he was not a good pope. He adds that this judgment was unjust, and that if the faults of Julius III were more conspicuous than his good qualities, they were not perhaps of so much consequence as his virtues. As to the promotion of the young lad, he is contented to say that it dishonoured the first days of his papacy. He acknowledges that the birth of this boy was so obscure that it was still unknown; but he pretends the affection cardinal del Monte had for him was founded upon this, that he looked upon him as the son of his judgment; the meaning whereof is this: whilst the cardinal was legate at Piacenza, he was pleased with the pretty carriage of a little boy who often came near his table; he took this for a sign of wit, and resolved to raise this young plant at his own charge, and seeing the boy improving, he loved him more and more. He applauded himself for his happy conjecture, he looked upon him as the son of his judgment, a sort of creature which we set a greater value upon than upon a child of our body. He would have his brother to adopt him, and when he was pope he raised hint to the dignity of a cardinal, the thirtieth day of May, 1550. He had made him stay till then in a village a day's journey from Rome. He gave him an income of twelve thousand crowns; but did not then entrust him with the administration of affairs. This new cardinal was scarcely seventeen years of age; he showed himself wholly unworthy of this honour, and it was necessary under the following pontificate to punish him for his debaucheries. This is all that Palavicino observes: he has cautiously forborne to criticise on father Paul, whom he does not accuse of malicious slanders, but is contented to say that he is mistaken as to the time of the adoption, and as to the place where this young man first began to make himself acceptable. The court of France offered to this pope’s nephew a princess of the blood; but this alliance was refused. The pope answered that marriages between persons of so different a rank could not be happy; and as he acknowledged the royal house of France to be the noblest in the world, he acknowledged his own to be the meanest upon earth. However he did not give the true reason of this refusal; for that which induced him to refuse so glorious an alliance, was, the desire of marrying his nephew to the great duke’s daughter, which was more useful to him for the execution of what he was projecting in favour of his family. Observe, that one of the daughters of Cosmo duke of Florence, was betrothed to Fabian del Monte, who was Baudouin’s son, and not yet marriageable. See Thuanus, book xiii. Palavicino, in the place above cited, observes, that' Fabian was Baudouin’s bastard. It must be confessed that this anecdote places the houses of Valois and Medicis in a very exalted point of view. Ed. ¹³⁸—Art. Julius III.

(Alexander VII.)

Fabio Chigi born at Sienna, the sixteenth of February 1599, was Pope under the name of Alexander VII. His family, seeing him a hopeful young man, sent him early to Rome, where he contracted a very useful friendship with the marquis Pallavicino; for that marquis recommended him in such a manner to Pope Urban VIII, that, in a little time, he procured him the place of inquisitor at Malta. Chigi, having shewed in that employment, that he was capable of greater things, was sent to Ferrara in the quality of vice-legate, and afterwards nuncio into Germany.

He had the most favourable opportunity that a man of that character could desire, to shew his intriguing genius; for he was mediator at Munster, during the long conferences that were held there for the peace of Europe, and acted his part very well. Before he went to Munster, he had the nunciature of Cologne, and exercised it some years after the conclusion of the peace. He held it in 1651, when cardinal Mazarin fled to the elector of Cologne; and he was ordered to complain, in the name of Pope Innocent X, a great enemy of that cardinal, that that elector permitted his eminence to raise troops. Cardinal Mazarin bore some resentment for it against Fabio Chigi, who was soon after promoted to the cardinalship, and to the office of secretary of state, by Innocent X; but that resentment was sacrificed to politic interests, at the election of a pope in 1655. Cardinal Sacchetti, a good friend of cardinal Mazarin, seeing no likelihood to obtain the papacy, by reason of the great obstacles of the Spanish faction, advised the latter to consent to the exaltation of Fabio Chigi, and his request was granted. When the dispositions of France were known in the conclave, all the partizans of that crown united their voices in favour of Chigi; on which the flying squadron, who looked upon him as their master, resolved to be favourable to him. The faction of the Medicis and Spaniards had their particular reasons to choose him; insomuch that he was created pope by the voices of all the sixty-four cardinals that were in the conclave. There are but few examples of such a unanimity in the election of popes.

It being known the day before the election, what choice the Holy Ghost had resolved to inspire the next day, the cardinals went to congratulate his eminence, who answered them at first only with sighs and tears in his eyes, desiring them to make a better choice: but afterwards he took courage, and thanked

them for their good-will. After the election, he was carried, according to custom, to St Peter’s church, to receive the adoration of the cardinals on the great altar. He would not be placed in the middle of that altar, but on one of the corners of it; because, as he said, he did not think himself worthy of the place held by his predecessor. During all the ceremony of the adoration, he continued prostrate on the ground with great humility, with a crucifix in his arms. Being come to his apartment at the Vatican, before thinking of any thing else, he ordered his coffin to be made, wherein his body was to be laid after his death, and to be placed under his bed, to excite him the more to holiness by a continual idea of death. When they clothed him with his pontifical habits, they found a hair cloth under his shirt. He continued to fast twice a week, as he had done when he was cardinal. The day after his election, he repulsed Signora Olympia rudely, who was come to wish him joy, saying to her, that it was not decent for a woman to set her foot in the palace of the head of the church. He also forbad his relations to come to Rome without his leave; but his subsequent behaviour shewed, that this was only dissimulation and cunning; and many Roman Catholics made no scruple to complain of his artifices. Afterwards he became civil and obliging to his nephews, and no pope better deserved the pasquil, et homo factus est, nor took more advantage of the privileges of Nepotism than he. It is said (I know not how truly) that he had sworn never to receive his relations in Rome, and that, being perplexed with the sacredness of his oath, he knew not how to satisfy the affection he had for his family; that father Pallavicino removed those scruples, by advising him to go and meet his relations, some leagues from Rome, and made him understand, that his holiness’s oath did not forbid him to receive his relations on the road from Sienna to Rome, but only to receive them at Rome; that the pope, assured by this ingenious distinction, went to meet his family, and received it upon the road, in the very high way. Afterwards he poured dignities and benefices on his relations. His brother, Don Mario, was made governor of the Ecclesiastical State; Flavio Chigi, the son of Don Mario, was made cardinal Patron; Sigismund Chigi, the orphan son of another of the pope’s brothers, was gratified with several good pensions, till he came to be of age to be made a cardinal with some decency. Augustin Chigi, designed to be the pillar of the family, was married to a very rich niece of prince Borghese; a very great match, with a fortune of an hundred thousand ducats, and twenty thousand doubloons over and above, instead of jewels, and lastly, sixty thousand doubloons delivered up into the hands of the husband. One of the sons of the pope’s sister was made a cardinal; the other, who was a knight of Malta, was made general of the gallies. Donna Berenice, the wife of Don Mario, and her daughters, had also rich presents. Flavio Chigi, who was cardinal Patron, and who was sent legate à latere into France, to make satisfaction concerning the business of the Corsicans, made himself much spoken of. He died the 13th of September, 1693, at 63 years of age, loaded with riches and titles. Vice-dean of the sacred college, bishop of Porto, arch-priest of St John of Lateran, prefect of the signature of justice, &c. He made his nephew Don Livio Chigi his chief heir, and left ten thousand crowns, and the enjoyment of the estate, which he had at Sienna, to his brother-in-law the Marquis Zandedari, whom he charged to take the name and the arms of the house of Chigi.

All this was a sad disappointment to the famous antagonist of father Paul. I mean father Sforza Pallavicino, author of a history of the council of Trent, designed for the refutation of father Paul,

and which was rewarded with a cardinal’s hat. He prefixed a pompous eulogy of Alexander VII to his book, wherein he had very much praised the design, which the holy father had persisted in, not to suffer his relations to come to Rome. Every body sees, that many fine things may be said on that subject, and that it affords noble matter for an excellent panegyric in the hands of a good orator. But it fell out unluckily for father Pallavicino, that the pope altered his resolution, and desired to aggrandize his relations, according to the practice of Nepotism: nay, it is said, that that father was obliged to remove the scruples of his conscience. After all, it was more advantageous to please the pope and his family, than to be fond of a prologue already printed, though the panegyric, which it contained, was never so fine. Nevertheless, this was not agreeable to an author; but there was no help for it; he was forced to suppress what was already come out of the press, and to adjust things as well as he could.

For the curiosity of the thing, I shall observe, that there are some printed books, wherein it is asserted, that Alexander VII had a mind to abjure his religion, and to turn Huguenot. The Dutch gazettes praised him much, and informed the public, that he did not approve of the violences, which were committed against the Vaudois in Piedmont. What he said to some Protestant gentlemen, who came to kiss his feet, has been much talked of. Sorbiere, being to answer a letter, wherein somebody had written to him, that his journey to Rome would make him return again to the reformed church, declared, that he had seen nothing at Rome, but what edified him, “and that the Roman court, notwithstanding its pomp, had a great deal of affability and modesty. For my part,” he goes on, “I can assure you, sir, that I could not observe so much haughtiness in any of the cardinals, whom I had the honour to approach,

as there is in some ministers of our acquaintance; and, in all the audiences that I have had of our holy father, I spoke to him with the same liberty as I converse with you, his goodness requiring it so from all those who approach him. I shall tell you a remarkable particular on this occasion, that you will not be displeased to know. A little before my departure, some English gentlemen, who had a mind to be witnesses of what I tell you of his holiness, got in among those, who went to pay their respects to him on their knees. He asked them what countrymen they were, and, afterwards, if they were not Protestants, which they owned. Whereupon his holiness replied, with a smiling countenance, " Rise therefore, I will not have you to commit an idolatry, according to your opinion. I shall not give you my blessing, since you do not believe me to be what I am; but I pray God to make you fit to receive it.”

It has been said, in other books, (not without finding some mystery in it) that he was related to the grand signior Mahomet IV. I have not the book, wherein this is proved, so that I can only serve my reader with these words of Heidegger:—“He was akin to Mahomet, at that time emperor of the Turks, in the fifth degree, by Alanc Moruglius, the common stem and ancestor of the fathers, both of the pope and the grand Turk, as Pastorius, in Henninge redivivo, has demonstrated.” Heidegg. Hist. Pap. pag. 413. ¹³⁹ I have since met with a book, which sets forth in a table the parentage of Alexander VII and the great Turk. It is pretended, that Margaret Marsili, daughter of Nani Marsili, a noble Sienese, was the wife of Soliman, and the mother of Selim II, whose son Amurath III was the father of Mahomet III. The latter was the father of Achmet I, who was the father of Amurath IV, whose son Ibrahim was the father of

Mahomet IV. On the other side, Leonard Marsili, brother of Margaret had a son, whose name was Cesar Marsili, who was the father of Alexander Marsili, and of Laura Marsili, the mother of Fabio Chigi, who was pope by the name of Alexander VII. The author, whom I cite, alleges the account, which Francis Niger gives of the taking of a castle in the territory of Sienna. The Turkish pirates, who plundered that castle about the year 1525, found Margaret Marsili there, and, because she was very handsome, they kept her for Solyman.

Alexander VII was an author. The finest edition of his Latin poems is that of the Louvre, in folio, in the year 1656. It consists of heroic, elegiac, and lyric verses: the last exceed the other in number. There is also a tragedy, intitled Pompey. The author made it in the country, in the year 1621. Seneca was his model, both for the disposition of the piece, and the measure of the verses. A letter, prefixed before this collection, inform us, that he unwillingly consented to the printing of his poems, and that he would not suffer his name to be put to them, nor any other title, than that which discovers, that they are only the fruits of his younger years. The title is Philomathi Musæ Juveniles. ¹⁴⁰ But there are many pieces in it, that he composed when a man, and if all the praises, which the authors of the Poetical Acclamations They are printed at the end of the edition of the Philomathi Musæ Juveniles. ¹⁴¹ have bestowed upon this pope’s verses were true, he was the most accomplished of all the poets; but, because those authors flourished at Rome under this pontiff, their eulogies are not much to be relied upon. He loved literature, and to discourse of poetry, history, and politics, with learned persons. He loved stately buildings; and it was not his fault, that the whole city of Rome did not become equally magnificent and regular as to the

streets, squares, and houses. The mischief was, that these expenses exhausted the apostolic chamber, and that, by ordering the demolishing of many houses, which were not according to the rules of symmetry, he ruined the proprietors. There is something great in the design of the college della Sapienza, the building whereof he finished, and which he adorned with a very fine library. The consistorial advocates raised him a pompous inscription on that subject. He died the twenty-second of May 1667, much more lamented by the Jesuits, than by the Jansenists.—Art. Chigi.

Innocent XI.

Innocent XI, created pope the 21st of September 1676, was of Como in Lombardy, and called Benedict Odescalchi. His first profession was that of a soldier. He left it to devote himself to the ecclesiastical state, and went to study at Naples; where he received his doctor’s degree, after which he retired to Rome, in the pontificate of Urban VⅢ, who made him first apostolical secretary. He discharged so well the duties of that place, that he was made president of the chamber, and afterwards apostolical commissary, and governor of Marca di Roma. He obtained a cardinal’s cap, the 6th of March 1645, and the legation of Ferrara some time after, and after that the bishoprick of Novora. The French give out that his liberality and courtliness procured him the cardinalship, by the interest of Donna Olympia. See the Mercure Galant; in which you will find that our Benedict Odescalchi, the son of a rich banker of Como, played with Donna Olympia, and lost his money on purpose, in complaisance to this lady. This puts me in mind of a passage in the Menagiana: “Pope Innocent XI was the son of a banker; he was elected on St Matthew’s day. Pasquin said, invenerunt hominem sedentum in telonio.”

The following words are also to be found in a little book printed at Avignon for John Bramereau in the year 1652, with this title: La juste balance des Cardinaux vivans. “After the death of Urban VIII Odescalchi made his court to Donna Olympia, niece to pope Innocent X, and having treated her several times, she began zealously to espouse his interest; and especially for a thing, which this prelate did, that is worthy to be taken notice of. Going to see her in the beginning of the pontificate of her uncle Innocent X, it happened that a goldsmith came to shew her a noble and rich chest of silver drawers, which he had to sell. Donna Olympia having taken a view of it in the presence of Odescalchi, and many lords, after observing in their hearing, that it was a noble piece of plate, but that being a poor widow, she could not lay out so much money, retired into her chamber. Immediately Odescalchi called the goldsmith, asked for the price of the chest, and bargained with him for 8000 crowns; after which without saying any more, he ordered it to be presented in his name to Donna Olympia, who seeing such a present, was perfectly astonished at so extraordinary a generosity. Upon this she went to the pope, and begged the office of clerk of the chamber, as a pure gift to this prelate, and afterwards a cardinal’s cap, which he obtained likewise by the mediation of cardinal Palotta.”

They cannot however deny that Innocent appeared very remote from a voluptuous pope, but was of rigid morality, and looked upon as a devout man. He was much more favourable to the Jansenists than his predecessors had been; which was the reason why the Jansenists more zealously adhered to the cause of the popes, than they had done before. He offended abundance of people by the suppression of an office of the immaculate conception, and also by that of several indulgences. There was nobody in

France, besides the Jansenists, that was edified with this; they dispersed those two decrees, and added some notes to them. I do not believe that every body approved his forbidding to honour the name and bones of Anthony Cala. A veneration had been a long time paid to this man in the kingdom of Naples, on account of his having been a holy hermit: but Innocent XI, in 1680, commanded all this worship to be abolished, and Antony Cala’s bones to be carried into the common church-yard, to be there mixed with others, and never to be taken up again. He enjoined also that his images, his habits, and all his other relics, should be removed from all consecrated places. Innocent expressed so inflexible a stiffness in his quarrel with France, that he has convinced the world, that in point of revenge, there are no men comparable to those who pretend to be rigid moralists. It is thought that a voluptuous pope who could have sacrificed his passions to political interests would have been more useful to the Catholic religion. The court of France under Lewis XIV, and the court of Rome under Innocent XI, were actuated with the same spirit of haughtiness and inflexibility, whereby they afforded all Europe instances of that spirit for a long time. They strove on both sides to carry revenge as far as ever they could; but at last the world was forced to yield to the church. The pope has shewn that it is not for nothing that he calls himself the vicegerent of God on earth; of God I say, who reserves vengeance to himself, and who has declared that it is he to whom it belongs, and that he will pay it. The pope, as the vicegerent of the God of vengeance, has admirably maintained the rights of his deputation. I will not adopt the thoughts of those satirical wits, who pretend that in point of revenge, the laity are novices in comparison of the clergy; but we have scarcely seen any quarrels between the church and the world, in which the popes have not at last had the better in point of revenge: they are the vicegerents of God, who has reserved vengeance to himself, and that is saying all. If I well remember, the protection that was granted by Innocent XI to some bishops of France, persecuted for not consenting to the extension of the Regale, was the first step that provoked the court of France; because the briefs of Innocent XI in favour of those bishops were expressed in very strong and vigorous terms. This haughtiness put the court of France upon the most effectual ways to vex him. The clergy declared their opinion about the authority of the church, and formed four propositions thereupon, which reduced the power of the pope to such bounds as were very odious to the court of Rome. This was not at the bottom a new doctrine; the clergy decided nothing but what was agreeable to the maxims of the Gallican church, and what the Sorbonne had taught a hundred times; so that one might have thought that another pope would not have taken exceptions at it, and that Innocent XI would perhaps dissemble his resentment: but to put him under a necessity of confessing that he had received a very great affront, the decisions of the clergy were proposed by royal authority, as a doctrine that no body was allowed to oppose, and which was to be maintained by all those who would take their licences in divinity and the civil-law, and be advanced to a doctor’s degree. They studied all the formalities that might give the greatest lustre to the king’s declarations upon this affair. These doctrines were maintained by the rector of the university of Paris, in a disputation wherein the archbishop of Paris presided, and in which the respondent was invested with all the marks of his rectorship, that it might appear that it was the whole body of the university, represented by their head, that maintained these decisions. The thesis was posted upon the door of the nuncio’s house, notwithstanding the oppositions he threatened to make against it. The pope expressed his resentment against the clergy; he answered harshly the letter he had received from them, and would never grant his bulls to those who assisted at the assembly of 1682. He abolished the franchises of the ambassador of France, like those of others, and would never receive the marquis de Lavardin, who was sent ambassador to him. France did then a very remarkable thing, this ambassador entered Rome almost by main force, and having taken possession of his quarters, he set a guard about it, as if it had been a fortified town. The pope, without being astonished, revenged himself by a surprising blow; he cast an interdict upon the church of St Louis, because the marquis de Lavardin had been admitted into it, and excommunicated this ambassador, and obstinately refused to acknowledge him.

Things were at this pass, when his most Christian Majesty, perceiving that the continuation of these differences would be prejudicial to him, secretly dispatched a trusty man to whom he gave a letter of his own writing as a credential to his holiness. This man was to discover to the pope the most secret intentions of the king; but the pope would neither receive the letter, nor give him any audience. Hereupon the king wrote a letter to cardinal d'Estrée, which was communicated to the cardinals. He complained in it of the pope’s conduct, and showed in particular the prejudice that Europe and the church might suffer, from what the pope had already done against cardinal Furstenberg. He ascribed to this partiality the intrigues that were forming against king James, in favour of the protestant religion, &c. This letter, dispersed in Rome, was perhaps a new motive which induced the pope to countenance more and more prince Clement of Bavaria, to the prejudice of cardinal Furstenberg. Now by the exclusion of this cardinal, he revenged himself a hundred-fold for all the affronts he had received. He

deprived the king of France of being the arbitrator of peace and war, and involved him necessarily in a war with almost all Europe. He quickly saw the effect of this conduct; and if he lived not long after so terrible a revenge, he lived long enough to have the satisfaction of seeing France attacked by so many enemies, that according to the general conjectures, she was to sink the very first campaign. Tell me now whether the church did not obtain the victory over the world, in a long dispute, where both parties contended in point of revenge. If Alexander the Great had been a Catholic, he would have had much ado to draw out of the pope’s mouth what he did from the priestess of Delphi, “My son, thou art invincible.”

Those who do not love this pope say, that he was well enough acquainted with the general affairs to know that, in the state they were in when cardinal Furstenberg sued for the electorate of Cologne, he might have saved the king of England, and enabled France to execute all her projects; for with the assistance of such a cardinal, who would have succeeded to all that his predecessor possessed, she would have tied the arms of the princes of Germany that were ill affected to her. She experienced it in the year 1684, when she desired a truce. Now it is certain that the victories of this crown would have extended the catholic religion, and strangely weakened the protestant—whence comes it then that the pope was so contrary to that cardinal? It is, say they, because he hated the king of France, and chose rather to renounce the advantages of the Catholic religion, than the pleasure of crossing his enemy, or the sweetness of revenge. These same persons add, that he knew very well there was a league forming, of which the Protestants would be the chief directors, and which might be able in its turn to oppress the catholic religion almost all over Europe; and that the most effectual means to prevent this league, was to put the whole succession of the late

elector of Cologne into the hands of a cardinal, who would never join with heretical princes. Why then was Innocent XI so contrary to the interest of this cardinal? Because, say they, he was overjoyed to expose the French monarchy to the greatest dangers: and provided he could revenge himself of the court of France, he cared but little for the losses of the popedom. This is what is said by his enemies; but it is not too much to be relied on; their passion ought to make their conjectures suspected. It is perhaps much more reasonable to say, that being very intent upon the reformation of manners, and pious exercises, he was neither capable of knowing what was useful to his religion, nor of preferring the profitable before the honest part. Now he believed he was bound in justice to prefer the duke of Bavaria’s brother before the cardinal candidate. Some apply to Innocent XI what was said of Hadrian VI: he was an honest man, but did not understand politics. It was the good fortune of the Protestants, that in the year 1688, the see of Rome was possessed by a pope who did not well understand his own interests, or was was too stiff to take advantage of the present juncture, to the prejudice of his particular passions.

But after all, who can assure us, that Innocent XI did not in some respects behave himself like a good politician? Has the court of Rome nothing to fear from the too great power of princes, that are most violent against the sects separated from her communion? Did not Sixtus V who so well understood politics, choose rather to countenance Henry IV and queen Elizabeth, than to suffer the king of Spain to grow too powerful? Who can affirm that Innocent XI was not moved by some such spring, when he entered upon measures so contrary to the interests of France, and so useful to the Protestants?

This pope expressed great zeal against women who shewed their bosoms. “Finding he was not

able to prevail with the fair sex, by the many powerful means he used, not to shew their bosoms and their arms, and knowing withal that the terror which seized all Italy, when the Turks besieged Vienna, did did not put a stop to that disorder, had recourse to the last remedy; namely, excommunication. He published an order the thirtieth of November 1683, which enjoined all maids and women to cover their shoulders and breasts, up to their necks, and their arms down to their hands, with some thick and not transparent stuff, upon pain of being so fully excommunicated ipso facto, if they did not obey in six days time, that, except at the last hour, no one but the pope could absolve them; for it was declared, that the confessors who should presume to absolve them from that excommunication, should incur it themselves, and should be liable to such spiritual and temporal punishments as his holiness should think fit to inflict upon them: which temporal punishments, the fathers, husbands, masters, and other heads of families, by whose permission or connivance their daughters and wives act contrary to his ordinance, shall likewise undergo. Nouvelles de la Repub. des Lettres, May 1686, art. ii. pag. 495. ¹⁴²”

I do not know what was the success of these terrible menaces; but I believe that as they were renewed from time to time under the predecessors of Innocent XI, there was occasion to renew them some time after. It is the fate of these sumptuary laws: luxury, and the desire of setting off beauty, quickly elude the wisest regulations. We may say of this disorder, what a grave historian has observed with respect to astrologers; they were always commanded to depart Rome, but they never went. King Lewis XIV has lately I write this in May 1700. ¹⁴³ put out fine edicts against luxury: if he can command obedience upon that

head, it will be a more admirable thing than the power he has had to lessen very considerably in his kingdom the madness of duelling. The news-writers have told us lately, that the advocates of the parliament of Paris, have engaged to see this reformation of profuseness observed in their own houses. Time will inform us, whether by the concurrent authorities of the prince and the husbands, the reformation will be established for a continuance. These gentlemen have been told that as their wives as part of those that set up most for women of quality, would perhaps have a great repugnance to retrench any thing from their sumptuous habits, furniture, coaches, &c. as also from the superfluous number of their waiting-women, embroiderers, tapestry-workers, and footmen, which they have in their service, it had been resolved to oppose a licentiousness so little consistent with the state and quality of those ladies. The king’s intention was, that they should obey and reform themselves the soonest, without any distinction of birth and quality, and that they should begin immediately by not suffering their train to be borne up. It is added, that two famous advocates were charged to communicate this order to their brethren, and that the latter being overjoyed, expressed their acknowledgment for it, and unanimously resolved to thank the first president for procuring a regulation so just, so necessary, and so worthy of the king’s wisdom; and to assure him at the same time, that they would cause it to be observed in their own houses, with the utmost exactness; all of them looking upon it as the most effectual means to free them from infinite discontent, and to prevent the fruits of their laborious employments from continuing to be sacrificed to the extravagant ambition of their wives. It is very likely that they spoke as they meant; for indeed their fine, noble, and profitable employments are attended with great toil. They sometimes envy the happiness of a countryman, who can sleep all night.

Agricolam laudat juris legumque peritus
Sub galli cantum consultor ubi ostia pulsat.
Horat. Sat. 1, lib. i, ver. 9.

The lawyer wak’d, and rising with the sun,
Cries, happy farmers that can sleep till noon.
Creech.

Is it not reasonable, that they should desire that a gain, which costs them so many watchings, should not be squandered away by superfluous expenses; and that the royal authority should enable them to remedy it, since otherwise they could never accomplish it?

I shall insert some verses of Mr de la Fontaine, which shew how freely they wrote against Innocent XI at Paris. We find amongst his posthumous works a letter, part of which I will transcribe:

Pour nouvelles de l'Italie,
Le pape empire tous les jours,
Expliquez, Seigneur, ce discours
Du costé de la maladie.
Car aucun Saint-Père autrement
Ne doit empirer nullement.
Celuy-ci véritablement
N’est envers nous ni Saint ni Père.
Nos soins de l’erreur triumphans
Ne font qu’augmenter sa colère
Contre l’Ainé de ses Enfans.
Sa santé toujours diminué,
L’avenir m’est chose inconnue,
Et je n'en parle qu’à tâtons;
Mais le gens de delà les Monts
Auront bientôt pleuré cet homme;
Car il deffend les Jannetons,
Chose très-nécessaire à Rome.
La Fontaine, œuvr. posthumes, pag. 182, Dutch edit.

From Italy, my lord, they say
The pope grows worse and worse each day,

But let me beg you to apply
This language to his malady;
Since it sounds oddly, in discourse,
To say the pope grows worse and worse.
But as ’tis true, I say it rather,
To us, nor holy he, nor father,
Our triumphs over error here
Only augment his spleen and fear,
And serve to egg his anger on,
Against the church’s eldest son:
Worse as he grows.... I cannot tell
Whether he will do ill or well,
On this howe’er I'll pawn my word,
His loss will not much grief afford
Beyond the Alps .... since he dismiss’d
Each girl who would be freely kiss’d,
And banish’d by, too harsh a doom,
The sweetest, slightest, sin in Rome.

Here are some verses of a freer strain, and taken from the same work:

Et tout le parti Protestant
Du Saint-Père en vain très-content.
J’ay là dessus un conte à faire.
L’autre jour touchant cette affaire
Le Chevalier de Sillery, En parlant de ce pape-cy,
Souhaitoit pour la paix publique,
Qu’il se fust rendu Catholique,
Et le Roy Jaques Huguenot.
Je trouve assez bon ce bon mot.

In vain the party Protestant
Are with our holy pope content.
But t’other day I heard a tale,
To make you laugh it scarce can fail.
The Chevalier de Sillery
Said for the public peace ’twould be,
If once the pope turn’d Catholic,
And good king James a Heretic.
However this odd change might hit,
His saying surely wants not wit,

Racine threw a dart at the pope, but not so openly;

however it was a dart. Innocent died on the 12th of August 1689.—Art. Innocent XI.

Alexander VIII.

Peter Ottoboni, a native of Venice, was pope in the XVIIth century, under the name of Alexander VIII. Marc Ottoboni, his father, grand chancellor of Venice, bought a patent of nobility, which cost him a hundred thousand ducats, in 1646. Peter Ottoboni, having pursued his studies first at Venice and then at Padua, and taking the degree of Doctor of Law at the latter of those two places, went to Rome at the age of twenty. He had, under pope Urban VIII, the government of Terni, Rietti, and Citta-Castellana, and the post of auditor of the Rota. He received the cardinal’s cap under Innocent X, in the year 1652. Two years after, he was made bishop of Brescia. He was datary under Alexander VII, and was at last chosen pope, October the sixth, 1689, after the death of Innocent XI. The war which was kindled with such violence between the house of Austria and France, contributed not a little to the election of Ottoboni; for the neutral cardinals justly feared they should too much expose the Catholic religion by creating a pope born a subject to the king of Spain, as the late pope was, whose partiality against France had done infinite service to the Protestants. They thought therefore, that Ottoboni, who was qualified for the chair, would be a more proper person than any other in that juncture, in regard that he was a Venetian.

The only advantage which France reaped from this . election was, that Pope Alexander VIII did so strenuously animate the Venetians to wage war with the Turks, and encouraged them with such effectual assistance, that he quite frustrated all hopes of a peace, which the emperor was desirous of concluding 19 2

with the Porte, in order to employ all his troops against France. As for the rest, Alexander VⅢ thought of nothing but the aggrandizing of his family.

What is commonly said of beasts, that they are never more dangerous than in their dying bites, may very properly be applied to Nepotism. As it stood upon its last legs under Alexander VIII, so it gathered together all its strength, to be the more capable of devouring. Mr Menage told a story that will come in here very à propos. “Alexander VIII,” said he, “being elected pope at seventy-nine years of age, and having preferred all his nephews in three weeks after, asked one of his domestics ‘ what people said of him?’ The domestic made answer, ‘ that people said he lost no time in the advancement of his family.’ ‘Oh, oh,’ said the pope, ‘ sono vinti tre hore e mezza,—I have but half an hour left out of the four and twenty.’ ” To behave himself as he did with respect to an abuse which his successor should have abolished, was giving it an honourable funeral. Perhaps pope Ottoboni’s great age was not the only reason that obliged him to such quick dispatch in loading his whole family with riches; he considered perhaps, that Rome had had time to forget in some measure the disorders of Nepotism, which had never appeared under the long reign of Innocent XI. Upon this consideration, the complaints of the people might be fainter, and he had to do with subjects who had enjoyed an interval of repose after their ancient fatigues. This calls to my mind the sharping tricks of flatterers, and the dexterity with which, like true jugglers, they pass backwards and forwards the most sacred things. But that this criticism, which does not arise from my own sources, may have more weight and authority, I shall give it from a book printed with licence at Paris. “Among the encomiums he John Palatius, author of a book in five volumes in folio, printed at Venice in 1691, and intituled, “ Gesta Pontificum Romanorum.” ¹⁴⁴ bestows upon Innocent

XI, that which he is most full of is, his having kept his nephews in a private station, in imitation of our Saviour, who knew no other relations but those who did the will of his father. Alexander VIII, having had views exactly opposite to those of his predecessor, Palatio has found out a method to justify his solicitousness in loading his relations with riches and honours; and maintains, that in that point also, the pope imitated the example of our Saviour, who honoured his relations according to the flesh, with the participation of his priesthood, and intrusted them with the dispensation of his Gospel; so fertile is eloquence in inventions, when it is employed in flattering the passions of governors, and excusing the greatest irregularities in their conduct.”

Alexander gave himself scarcely any manner of concern about the differences between France and the court of Rome; and yet that affair was of such consequence as to require a speedy conclusion, and if Alexander VIII had had as much zeal for the interests of St. Peter’s chair as for those of his family, his considering as he did of the short time he had to live, would have induced him much more to make haste in accommodating the difference with France, than in enriching his relations. By delaying it, he left to his successor the glory of re-establishing in France the authority of the pope upon the ancient footing; which it had been impossible to effect, had they waited till the king of France had been at peace with his neighbours. True policy required, that the court of Rome should make the best use of the entangled state of France; and in that Innocent XII did very dextrously. Some fanatics, who had conceived hopes that the league formed against France in 1688, would be fatal to the

papacy, and that the approaching ruin of Catholicism would begin with the reformation of the court of France, were very much out in their measures; for that league has made France more popish than it was in 1682 and 1688, and consequently occasioned the reparation of one of the breaches of popery.

Cardinal Ottoboni was so old when he came to the chair, that it is no wonder his reign was short. He enjoyed the papal dignity but fifteen or sixteen months, dying on the first of February 1691.

Art. Ottoboni.

END OF VOL. II.

London:—Printed by C. Richards, St. Martin's Lane.