PAUL IV, Pope. - The election to the pontificate of Cardinal Marcello Cervini (Marcellus II), which took place on 10 April 1555, was like a breach opened in favor of the Catholic reform. The fact, moreover, that after his death there was elected to succeed him, on 23 May 1555, through the intervention of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, not Ippolito d'Este, but the cardinal dean Giampietro Carafa, demonstrated that the idea of the Catholic reform could no longer be held back.
Carafa, born at Capriglio on 28 June 1476 from the Neapolitan branch of the Carafa barons, rose rapidly, as nephew of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, up the ladder of ecclesiastical dignities; in 1505 he received the bishopric of Chieti, where he zealously promoted reform; in 1513 he went as nuncio to England; in 1515 to Spain; in 1518 he was elected archbishop of Brindisi. Already in this period of his life he knew how to combine together a severely ascetic manner of life and a humanistic formation, acknowledged even by Erasmus. His stay in Spain made him acquainted with the efforts that were being made there for reform, but also sharpened in him the aversion, founded on family traditions, against Spanish domination in Italy.
After his return to Rome, Carafa entered among the members of the oratory of the Divine Love, devoted himself to works of charity and to the reform of his two dioceses of Brindisi and Chieti. Chosen by Adrian VI as a collaborator in the projected universal reform of the Church, he took, after the Pope's death, the decision to renounce his bishoprics and founded with St. Cajetan of Thiene the Order of the Theatines, of which he was the first superior. In this Order the fundamental principles of the Catholic reform were put into practice: to make oneself a living example to others of priestly conduct and apostolic activity. Expelled from the city by the Sack of Rome, Carafa in the following years lived most of the time in Venice, whence in 1532 he sent to Pope Clement VII a memorial on the reform of the Church and the struggle against the penetration of heresy in Italy (the best ed. in Concilium Tridentinum, XII, pp. 67-77).
Created cardinal by Paul III on 22 Dec. 1536, Carafa was a member of the Commission that in 1537 composed the celebrated Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia and concerned himself with Cardinal Contarini (1539-40), as commissioner, for the reform of the Penitentiary. He was, from the beginning, a member of the Roman Inquisition and in the course of the years became its true soul. Of the archbishopric of Naples, assigned to him on 29 Feb. 1549, he could for a long time not take possession because of the opposition of Charles V. From 1553 he was dean of the Sacred College.
Carafa, although at the date of his election he already counted 79 years, still burned with zeal for reform; of which his earlier life seemed an anticipation. But the intense expectations of the friends of reform were soon changed into disillusionment, because the Pope, in his deep aversion against the Spaniards, allowed himself to be entangled by his unworthy and intriguing nephew, Carlo Carafa, in a disastrous war against Spanish preponderance, concluding for this purpose a league with France. However, the irruption of the duke of Alba into the States of the Church forced him to the Peace of Cave (12 Sept. 1557) and thus the attempt to undermine Spanish predominance in Italy came to nothing.
From that moment the Pope reconcentrated his efforts on the reform of the Church. Even before the outbreak of the Spanish war, in 1556, he had instituted a special Congregation, which should be like the replacement of the Council of Trent, not yet finished but only suspended, and he planned to expand it into a Roman Council with the summoning of foreign prelates. But this plan was not carried out; and the Pope, after the Peace of Cave, devoted himself rather, and with all the greater haste the greater the delay had been, to the Roman Inquisition, whose competences he extraordinarily increased and at the head of which he had placed Michele Ghisleri, the future pope Pius V. In his zeal for the maintenance of orthodoxy he went so far that he had Cardinal Morone imprisoned in Castel S. Angelo on a mere suspicion of heresy and dismissed from the office of cardinal legate in England Cardinal Pole. The Index librorum prohibitorum, published by him at the beginning of 1559 (cf. H. Reusch, Die Indices librorum prohibitorum des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen 1886, p. 176 ff.) proved impossible to put into effect, because, for example, it prohibited all the editions of the Bible and of the Fathers published by Protestant publishers, so much so that St. Peter Canisius confessed « qui maxime catholici videbantur, severum iudicium improbare audent ». Even the Draconian severity used against apostate monks or those wandering outside the convents (3 Aug. 1558) failed of its purpose. The attempt to force the Society of Jesus to introduce changes in its Constitutions and especially to the recitation of the Office in choir came to nothing only through the death of the Pope.
The pontificate of P. IV did not bring to the Church the universally awaited reform; nevertheless it created its essential premise: the energy of the pope Carafa totally changed the aspect of the city of Rome and of the Roman Curia. Great conscientiousness he used in the choice of the new cardinals, among whom shone strong tempers of ecclesiastics, such as Ghisleri, Scotti, Reumano, Alfonso Carafa. When the Pope learned from the Theatine Geremia the truth about the unworthy life and the corruption of his nephew, Cardinal Carlo Carafa, and of the duke of Paliano, he drove both of them from Rome in Jan. 1559. He renounced the revenues of the Dataria although his income suffered notable losses from this; he forbade the cardinals to procure reversions to benefices, because by this indirect route the canonical laws on the « cumulatio beneficiorum » were violated. With a decree of 6 March 1559 he obliged all the bishops present in Rome who held no curial office to go to their dioceses and to maintain residence there. At his charge Cardinal Scotti, the Theatine Geremia Isachino and Sirleto began the reform of the Roman Missal and Breviary. With numerous other decrees he restored in Rome the dignity of worship and public morality. The erection of 14 new bishoprics in the Low Countries gave on 12 May 1559 better consistency to Catholicism, seriously threatened in those regions.
The later Tridentine reform cannot be conceived without the severe and energetic spirit of pope Carafa. But precisely this severity and the contrasting misgovernment of the nephews were the cause that, after his death, on 18 Aug. 1559, tumults broke out in Rome, the Palace of the Inquisition was stormed, the statue of the Pope erected on the Capitoline was damaged, and then thrown into the Tiber.
Of no pope of the 16th century is there so vivid a description of character as that which the Venetian ambassador, Bernardo Navagero, has left of P. IV in 1558 after his return to Venice (cf. E. Albéri, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti, 2nd series, III, Florence 1848, p. 379 ff.). His volcanic temperament and his incapacity to keep the right measure not only often deprived of efficacy the ecclesiastical measures taken by him, but also led to a dangerous political isolation of the papacy. There remained disturbed relations with Spain, then the bulwark of Catholicism. The Pope entered into conflict with Ferdinand I when the latter, in 1558, without taking any prior contact with him, accepted to be elected Roman emperor. Against the conclusions of the so-called Peace of Augsburg (1555) the cardinal legate Morone protested in vain. In France and in Poland Protestantism was making progress. With the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth, England was definitively lost to the Church. At the Pope's death the situation of the Church showed itself dangerous as never before.
I resti di P. IV (m. il 18 ag. 1559) furono trasportati per ordine di Pio V a S. Maria sopra Minerva, dove la Cappella eretta da Oliviero Carafa accoglie il monumento sepolcrale disegnato da Pirro Ligorio. - Vedi tav. LV.
Bibliography13 works
Hubert Jedin