CLEMENT VII, Pope. - Giulio de' Medici, b. in Florence on 26 May 1478, a month after the Pazzi conspiracy, of which his father Giuliano had been a victim; the latter had had him by a certain Fioretta, whom later, during the pontificate of Leo X, an attempt was made to pass off as his secret consort. His uncle, Lorenzo the Magnificent, had the boy educated together with his own sons; he was particularly close to Giovanni, later cardinal, and followed him into exile from Florence (1494). He returned here after the restoration of the Medici (1512), but, except for the priory of Capua in the Order of the Knights of St. John, he still held no office of any importance. From Giovanni, who had become Pope Leo X, he received the archbishopric of Florence (9 May 1513), which was followed by the cardinalate (23 Sept. 1513), the office of vice-chancellor (9 March 1517) and a great number of bishoprics and benefices, in Italy and abroad, among which, for the longest period, the archbishoprics of Narbonne (1515-1523) and of Eger (1520-23). He was thus able to accumulate great wealth, although he was of a parsimony that bordered almost on avarice.
His religious activity in these years was not negligible: as archbishop of Florence, he convoked a synod (1517-18) to put into execution the decrees of the Fifth Lateran Council; he was the soul of the Roman trial against Luther, which ended with the bull Exsurge, although neither he nor the Pontiff seemed to have a full awareness of the gravity of the threat against the Catholic faith. Also noteworthy was the charitable work he carried out, founding (1519) in Rome the Compagnia della Carità to succour the poor, visit prisoners, and bury the dead.
Already from that time, as a man of good culture and refined taste, he appeared a friend and protector of studies and of art. He had, in fact, Aleandro as his secretary and Bembo among his closest friends; he obtained offices for Machiavelli, albeit modestly paid; he commissioned from Raphael the Transfiguration and the design of the "Vigna di monte Mario," later called villa Madama; from Sebastiano del Piombo the Resurrection of Lazarus; he took an active part in the negotiations between Leo X and Michelangelo for the erection of the façade and the new sacristy of S. Lorenzo.
But far greater, from the time of his cardinalate, was Giulio's political activity. Highly influential with Leo X from the earliest years of his government, legate of Bologna, of Romagna and with the papal army against the French (1514-15), although he already gave proof of his irresolution, he grew so much in Leo's favour as to be his most listened-to counsellor, most skilful in seconding or directing his duplicitous and changeable policy. He played an unclear part in staging the conspiracy of the cardinals against Leo X and in making possible the great cardinalatial creation of 1 July 1517, which was determined above all by financial and political reasons. On the death of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, he was created by the pope legatus ad temporalia (2 May 1519) for all Tuscany and had in his hands the government of Florence, in which he displayed the qualities of a sagacious ruler.
He played a principal part in the conclusion of the alliance between Leo X and Charles V, and was legate with the Hispano-pontifical army of Lombardy (30 Sept. 1521).
In the Conclave that followed the death of Leo X, he was the head of the imperial faction: unable at that time to obtain the tiara, nor to get one of his creatures elected, he proposed, perhaps as an electoral manoeuvre, the name of Adrian of Utrecht. With the new pope Adrian VI, too different from the political and worldly orientation of the Medicean papacy, it seemed at first that he had lost all authority, and he withdrew to Florence. When, through his efforts, the intrigues of Card. Soderini in favour of France were discovered, he was recalled to Rome, became once again extremely powerful in the Curia, and contributed to the defensive alliance of the Pope and the Emperor against France, into which he himself entered in the name of the Florentines. On the death of Adrian VI, Giulio actively sought his own election; he again had the support of the imperialists, but with skilful promises he managed to win over his opponents and, after fifty days of Conclave, was elected pope by unanimous vote (19 Nov. 1523) and took the name of C. VII. His election, he being praised for dignity of person, for upright conduct, for sobriety, for tireless activity, for great experience in ecclesiastical and political matters, was greeted with joy.
But the conditions of the times were very difficult. The bitter struggle between Charles V and Francis I had Italy as its principal stake. C. had the heart of an Italian for his homeland, exposed to losing the last remnant of its liberty, and he felt that the defence of Italy from complete enslavement to a foreigner was at the same time the defence of the independence of the pontificate; but he could scarcely distinguish what was the duty of a pope and what the office of a prince. He could not remain closely bound to Charles V, without the danger of subjecting to him, along with the Papal State and Florence, the papacy; he could not array himself against him, without exposing himself to a most costly and bloody war of doubtful outcome, nor remain neutral at the risk of being abandoned by both contenders and bearing the costs of their discord. On the other hand, the revolt against the Church was gaining ground in Germany and threatened to overflow beyond its borders: to halt it there could be only two ways, either to proceed resolutely to a reform of the Church, or to resort to force. But a reform of the Church seemed difficult amid such thunder of arms and presented the danger of opening the way to limitations of pontifical authority and to the encroachment of princes, and especially of the emperor; recourse to force was not possible without leaning on him and increasing his already excessive authority. And the Pontiff, while striving to free himself, the Church and Italy from the pressure of Charles V and leaning on France, interested in keeping Germany divided, became indirectly the ally of those innovators whom in the spiritual field he was bound and wished to combat. From the East loomed the threat of the Ottomans; but there was no hope that the attempt, already vain under Pius II, to gather Christendom in a supreme defensive effort would now succeed; and aid to those most exposed to the threat was aid to the shaky House of Habsburg. To these difficulties, which could scarcely be overcome by a man of quite another temper, was added the impressionable and uncertain nature of the Pope, prone to illusory hopes and depressing fears, very slow in deciding, ready to undo, for new thoughts, what he had willed. And there was also joined his inability to forget the purely political interests of the temporal State or of his house, nor to subordinate them to other interests broader and more worthy of a pope. Thus the times in which C. reigned and his own qualities contributed to making his pontificate one of the most unhappy. At first, C. wished to remain neutral between the two great rivals in the illusion of being able to re-establish peace and promote a concerted action against the Lutherans and the Turks. After the entry of Francis I into Milan, he hoped to obtain from the apparent victor advantages for the Church and for the Medici and joined with him and the Venetians (Dec. 1524-1525).
"he was left for dead" after the defeat of the King of France at Pavia; and, frightened by the triumph of Charles V, by the advances of the Lutherans, by the advance of the Turks, he allied himself with the imperial forces; but he did not obtain from Charles V what he had hoped for. The disillusionment, the fear of Charles's omnipotence, the counsels of Giberti, his datary, drew him to take part in, indeed in large part to promote, that attempt at a rising of Italy against the "barbarians," which manifested itself first in the unfortunate conspiracy of Morone, then in the League of Cognac, the second Holy League (22 May 1526). But the discord and slowness of the allies, French and Venetians, the violence of the pro-imperial Colonna, who went so far as to sack the Vatican and St. Peter's (20 Sept. 1526), the discontent of the people over the burdens which the Pope, destitute of money, was forced to impose for the war, compelled C. to an armistice with the imperial forces, when the Spanish and Italian troops of Bourbon and the Landsknechts of Frundsberg were already advancing. Nor could he nevertheless halt the terrifying wave that broke over Rome (6 May 1527). Charles V was at the very least conniving; France was inert; the Pope's own allies occupied the cities of the Papal State; Florence, having overthrown Medici rule, re-established the Republic. Having barely saved himself in Castel Sant'Angelo, the Pope remained there "buried alive" for several months, while the soldiery horribly plundered the city, without his efforts succeeding in freeing it. Having finally come to terms with the imperial forces on burdensome conditions (26 Nov. 1527), he repaired first to Orvieto, then to Viterbo, amid hardships and dangers; and he did not re-enter Rome until 6 Oct. 1528.
Once again he tried to remain neutral, while nevertheless insisting that the occupied cities be restored and the Medici reinstated in Florence. In the end, as fortune was already bending decisively in favor of Charles V, he concluded with him the Peace of Barcelona (29 June 1529), in which he obtained from Charles, worried by the Turkish threat against Vienna, better conditions for the papacy and his own family than could have been hoped for. There followed the Peace of Cambrai (5 Aug. 1529), in which Francis I abandoned the Pope and Italy to Charles V, the negotiations of Bologna, conducted personally by the Pope and the Emperor, the league between them and most of the Italian states, including the Duchy of Milan, which C., with unusual tenacity, had succeeded in preserving for Francesco Sforza (23 Dec. 1529); Charles V was crowned emperor in Bologna on 24 Feb. 1530. Meanwhile the imperial troops turned against Florence. The Pope perhaps still hoped for a peaceful submission of the city, but he wanted it back at all costs for the Medici, also because this was the only means of preventing it from falling into the emperor's hands. The Florentines did not yield (12 Aug. 1530), except after a desperate defense, which was the cause for C. of enormous expense: the city returned to the Medici, and from 1531 Alessandro was nominally its lord, whom they said, probably wrongly, to be the Pope's natural son; the latter in fact remained its master.
Having achieved his aim, C. turned again toward France, and concluded agreements for the marriage of Catherine, daughter of Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, with Henry, the king's second son (1531). Then he returned to plans for peace; he had, at Bologna, a second meeting with the emperor, from which issued a secret pact between the two and a second Italian league (Feb. 1532). But, the following year, he accepted the invitation of the King of France for a meeting at Marseille (Oct. 1533), where he blessed the marriage of Catherine with the future Henry II, and entered into secret agreements with the king, without however abandoning his intention of conciliation. And in his conduct, perpetually, but perhaps necessarily, oscillating, he persisted until his death.
Amid such intricate and painful events, his work as temporal ruler could not be conspicuous, although there was no lack of good measures to improve the conditions of Rome and raise it up again after the wretched sack, and to fortify the cities of the Papal State, one of which, Ancona, was then subjected to the direct dominion of the Church (1532).
Even less adequate to the needs of the times was his activity in the religious field. He was not, it is true, forgetful of his duties as pontiff. In promoting the jubilee of 1525, he exempted those who took part in it from the obligation of almsgiving; he issued a bull against dueling (13 Feb. 1524); he prescribed observance of the reforms decreed by the Lateran Council (21 Nov. 1524); he forbade that the natural children of ecclesiastics should succeed to their parents' benefices (30 May 1530). He did not consent, except with many reservations, to the establishment in Portugal of an Inquisition on the Spanish model, and he defended the converted Jews against the king; he was also clement toward the unconverted. He resisted as much as he could the encroachment of the state in religious matters, although circumstances forced him into frequent, dangerous concessions. He approved the foundation of the Theatines (24 June 1524) and, despite fierce opposition, received them under the direct dependence of the Holy See (7 March 1533). He protected in its difficult beginnings that most fruitful branch of the Franciscan Order which was called the Capuchins, granting them the new habit, the beard and life in poverty (13 July 1528), although he did not always prove firm and consistent in the face of the opposition of the Conventuals. He also approved (18 Feb. 1533) the congregation of the Sons of St. Paul, later called Barnabites. He favored the missions in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies and established a hierarchy in them.
For a more energetic work of reform many plans and proposals were made; but C. did not dare or could not set his hand to it. And the abuses persisting in the Curia and the creations of cardinals, made, as has been said, in the majority of cases for political motives or for money, increasingly diminished the prestige of the papacy. In the face of the danger from the Ottomans C. displayed notable zeal; he sought to obtain an energetic intervention of the Christian powers to save Hungary after the battle of Mohács (1526), granted de-
taxes and indulgences for the defense of Vienna; he gave, and in far larger measure promised, money. He obtained from Charles V that Malta be ceded to the Knights of Rhodes, a Christian bulwark in the Mediterranean (1520); he gave ships to Andrea Doria for his enterprises in the Ionian Sea. But these vast projects exceeded the resources of the Pontiff, who lacked forces and money, and they remained subordinate to the unattainable agreement among the Christian powers and to the changing relations of the Pope with Charles and Ferdinand of Habsburg.
On these relations depended also in part the attitude of C. before the grave questions of the Lutheran heresy and of the convocation of the council. It is fair, however, to recognize that, if he often let himself be guided by political motives and gave proof of his habitual irresolution, he also showed notable gifts of prudence, so as not to make the religious division irreparable, as long as there was some, even if illusory, hope of being able to avoid it.
The sending of Cardinal Campeggio (Jan. 8, 1524), as legate in Germany, seemed to prelude to the carrying out of reforms, of which the cardinal was a convinced supporter; after the deliberations of the Diet of Nuremberg (1524), the Pope, while opposing the convocation of a German national council, threatening to the unity of the Church, showed himself willing to adhere to Charles V's plan for an ecumenical council and promised to accept at least in part the gravamina of the German nation. But precisely when the Diet of Speyer (1526) showed itself tolerant toward the innovators and left to each State the dangerous faculty of determining its own religious attitude, C. was engaged in the struggle with Charles V, so that the formation in Germany of the Lutheran State Churches remained undisturbed. When the innovators, ill satisfied with the decisions, though in so large a part favorable to them, of the new Diet of Speyer (1529), formulated the famous protest, C., at Bologna, promised the emperor the convocation of the council, being disposed even to very large concessions to the Protestants, with the intent of preventing the emperor himself from setting himself up as judge. Deluding himself, however, also because of the apparent moderation of the Augsburg Confession, about the real dispositions of the innovators, he demanded that these accept the council and that the king of France accept it, since he could counterbalance imperial interference. The convocation of the council was announced as imminent in an encyclical of Dec. 10, 1531, while Aleandro, nuncio in Germany, was to attempt prudently an agreement with the Protestants. And even when, in the face of the conclusion of the Schmalkaldic League and the growing threat of the Turks, the emperor concluded with the Protestants the religious peace of Nuremberg (1532), which tolerated the Augsburg Confession until the assembly of the council, C. raised no protests, leaving the impression of having approved the agreement. At the second meeting of Bologna, he renewed the commitment to convoke the council, and indeed in Jan. 1533 sent briefs to the Christian princes to obtain their adherence; but in vain Ugo Rangoni, his nuncio in Germany, attempted to obtain the submission of the Protestants to the decisions of the future council; the king of France then declared himself averse to the convocation; and C., who hoped for no useful result from it, was induced to postpone it (March 1534), arousing, not only in the imperial court, but among the most ardent Catholics of Germany, proud and not entirely justified protests.
In the face of the apostasy from Catholicism of Albert of Brandenburg, grand master of the Teutonic Knights (1525), and of the measures that led to the progressive detachment of Denmark and Sweden from Rome, C. showed the usual conciliatory tendency, deluding himself that the rupture could be avoided or easily repaired. In Switzerland he knew neither how to provide timely reforms, nor how to aid the Catholics effectively, and he vainly hoped that the heretics would return to the unity of the faith.
When Henry VIII, king of England, in order to contract a new marriage with Anne Boleyn, put forward scruples of conscience about the validity of Julius II's dispensation for his marriage with Catherine of Aragon and requested together the annulment of this and the dispensation from affinity with Anne because of previous relations with her sister, C., then shut up in Castel Sant'Angelo, did not wish to give an immediate and open refusal. At that terrible moment the king was almost the only friend left to him; and it was, moreover, too much to be feared that this former defensor fidei might now set himself to make the most of the anti-Catholic elements existing in England and drag it, following the example of Germany and the northern countries, outside Roman obedience. C. therefore sought to temporize, and from Orvieto (Dec. 17, 1527) granted a dispensation for the marriage with Boleyn, in the event that the one with Catherine were declared null. But he refused resolutely to place the decision in the hands of Cardinal Wolsey, favorable to the annulment; he delegated to the legate Campeggio and to Wolsey himself the judgment on the question, without however committing himself to confirm its sentence; and while, yielding to Wolsey's urgings, he granted a decretal, which made one hope for, or perhaps promised, the annulment, he set as a condition that it be shown to the king only to strengthen the cardinal's wavering position, but that no other use be made of it, nor that the judgment be founded on its basis, and he did not wish to push toward further and definitive concessions. Certainly, in this unusually resolute attitude of his, no small part was played by the fear of offending too gravely Charles V, who had made his aunt Catherine's cause his own; but it is also true that he, even when he was in conflict with Charles, was not induced to sacrifice the sanctity of marriage, not even before the danger of schism and the advantage that could come to the interests, even religious ones, of the pontificate from a closer union with the king. Then, when through the Peace of Barcelona he was sure of Charles V's support, C. received Catherine's appeal and avoked to the Rota of Rome the cause, which in England would have concluded to her detriment (July 16, 1529). He wavered again, allowed the trial to be drawn out; but he forbade the king to contract a new marriage, until the cause should be judged (1531 and 1532). Nor did the opinions of the French universities, ably solicited by Cranmer, nor the threat of interdiction of the "annates" and of severe measures against those who remained faithful to Rome, avail to move him. The king secretly married Boleyn (Jan. 25, 1533), had Cranmer, intruded as archbishop into the see of Canterbury, declare invalid his marriage with Catherine, and wanted Anne to be crowned.
The Pope proclaimed the new marriage null and excommunicated Henry, if he did not separate from Anne and take Catherine back (July 11, 1533). And to the decrees of the English Parliament, which detached the Church of England from Rome, subjecting it to the king (Jan. 1534), he responded with the definitive sentence, which declared the validity of the first marriage (March 24, 1534). And it may well be that C.'s prudent slowness gave Henry VIII hope of a decision favorable to his passion for Boleyn and therefore encouraged him to persist; but it is also very much to be doubted whether a more resolute attitude of the Pope could have prevented the crisis, or would not rather have accelerated it, and whether therefore the praise should not be attributed to C. of having done as much as was in him to avoid so grave a harm to the Church.
The conditions of the times and the horrendous sack, which put an end to the splendid Rome of the Renaissance, prevented C. from responding to the hopes that men of letters and artists had placed in a Medici pope. Nevertheless he gave favor to men of letters, such as Sadoleto, who was his secretary in the early years, to Sannazzaro, who dedicated to him the De partu Virginis, to Giovio, to Berni, and to many others who, in other respects, were not all worthy of the favor of a Pope. In Guicciardini, to whom he gave the presidency of Romagna in 1524 and later other offices, he certainly rewarded the political man devoted to the Medici rather than the distinguished historian; to Machiavelli, who had presented him with his Florentine Histories, he gave not the auto subsidy; with Erasmus he had friendly relations.
In the field of art he had the Hall of Constantine decorated by pupils of Raphael, in part from the master's designs; he continued the building of St. Peter's entrusted to Peruzzi; he completed the courtyard of S. Damaso and the three streets from Campomarzio to Piazza del Popolo. He erected in Rome the Mint, for which Cellini worked, while Giovanni Bernardi would engrave his most beautiful medals. At Orvieto he had Antonio da Sangallo build the Well of St. Patrick, and at Loreto he had Andrea Sansovino and other distinguished sculptors continue the decoration of the Holy House. Above all, he had the merit of commissioning from Michelangelo the "New Sacristy" of S. Lorenzo with its famous monuments, the erection of the Laurentian Library and, in the last months of his pontificate, the Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel.
Frequently ill during his pontificate, he died after six months of illness "in a Christian and quiet manner" on 25 September 1534, and was buried in a heavy monument, the work of Baccio Bandinelli, in the choir of S. Maria sopra Minerva. - See Pl. CXV.
BBL.: G. Ehses, Die Politik Klemens' VII. bis zur Schlacht von Pavia, in Histor. Jahrb., 6 (1885), pp. 557-603; 7 (1886), pp. 553-93; R. Grethen, Die politischen Beziehungen Klemens' VII. zu Karl V. in den Jahren 1523-27, Hannover 1887; P. Balan, C. VII. e l'Italia dei suoi tempi, Modena 1887; W. Hellwig, Die politischen Beziehungen Klemens' VII. zu Karl V. im Jahre 1526, Leipzig 1889; Pastor, IV, II (with a very rich bibliography); G. Pieraccini, La stirpe dei Medici di Cafaggiuolo, I, Florence 1924; G. Constant, La réforme en Angleterre: le schisme anglican. Henry VIII, Paris 1930; E. Rodocanachi, Les pontificats d'Adrien VI et de Clément VII, ibid. 1933; Fliche-Martin, Histoire de l'Eglise, XVII, ibid. 1948, pp. 22-27.
Giovanni Battista Picotti