PAOLO IV, PAPA. – The election to the papacy of Cardinal Marcello Cervini (Marcello II), which took place on 10 April 1555, was like a breach opened in favor of Catholic reform. The fact, moreover, that after his death Cardinal Giampietro Carafa, dean of the College of Cardinals, was elected to succeed him on 23 May 1555, through the intervention of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, rather than Ippolito d’Este, demonstrated that the idea of Catholic reform could no longer be held back.
Carafa, born at Capriglio on 28 June 1476, from the Neapolitan branch of the Carafa barons, rapidly ascended the ladder of ecclesiastical dignities as the nephew of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa. In 1505 he received the bishopric of Chieti, where he zealously pursued reform; in 1513 he went as nuncio to England, and in 1515 to Spain; in 1518 he was elected archbishop of Brindisi. Already during this period of his life he succeeded in combining a rigorously ascetic way of life with a humanistic formation, which was also recognized by Erasmus. His stay in Spain acquainted him with the efforts being made there for reform, but it also intensified his aversion, grounded in family traditions, to Spanish rule in Italy.
After his return to Rome, Carafa joined the members of the Oratory of Divine Love, devoting 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 planned universal reform of the Church, after the Pope’s death he decided to renounce his bishoprics and founded the Order of the Theatines with St. Gaetano di Thiene, of which he was the first superior. In this Order the fundamental principles of Catholic reform were put into practice: to provide others with a living example of priestly conduct and apostolic activity. Expelled from the city by the Sack of Rome, Carafa spent most of the following years in Venice, from where in 1532 he sent Pope Clement VII a memorandum on the reform of the Church and the struggle against the spread of heresy in Italy (the best ed. in Concilium Tridentinum, XII, pp. 67–77).
Created a cardinal by Paul III on 22 December 1536, Carafa was a member of the Commission that in 1537 composed the celebrated Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia, and, as commissioner, worked with Cardinal Contarini (1539–40) on the reform of the Penitentiary. From the outset he was a member of the Roman Inquisition, and over the years became its true driving force. Although the archbishopric of Naples had been assigned to him on 29 February 1549, he was unable to take possession of it for a long time because of the opposition of Charles V. From 1553 he was dean of the Sacred College.
Although he was already seventy-nine years old at the time of his election, Carafa still burned with zeal for reform, of which his earlier life seemed to have been a prefiguration. Yet the intense expectations of the friends of reform soon turned into disillusionment, because the Pope, in his profound aversion to the Spaniards, allowed himself to be entangled by his unworthy and intriguing nephew, Carlo Carafa, in an unfortunate war against Spanish predominance, concluding an alliance with France for this purpose. The incursion of the Duke of Alba into the Papal States, however, forced him to accept the Peace of Cave (12 September 1557), and thus the attempt to undermine Spanish dominance in Italy came to nothing.
From that moment the Pope concentrated his efforts on the reform of the Church. Even before the outbreak of the war with Spain, in 1556, he had established a special Congregation intended to take the place of the Council of Trent, which had not yet ended but was merely suspended, and he planned to enlarge it into a Roman Council by summoning foreign prelates. This plan, however, was not carried out; and after the Peace of Cave the Pope devoted himself instead, and with all the greater urgency because of the delay, to the Roman Inquisition, whose powers he greatly expanded and at the head of which he placed Michele Ghisleri, the future Pope Pius V. S. Angelo on the mere suspicion of heresy, and to remove Cardinal Pole from his office as legate in England. The Index librorum prohibitorum, which he published at the beginning of 1559 (cf. H. Reusch, Die Indices librorum prohibitorum des XVI. Jahrhunderts, Tübingen 1886, p. 176 ff.), proved impossible to implement because, for example, it prohibited all editions of the Bible and of the Fathers published by Protestant printers, to such an extent that St. Pietro Canisio confessed: « qui maxime catholici videbantur, severum iudicium improbare audent ». The draconian severity employed against apostate monks or those wandering outside their convents (3 August 1558) likewise failed to achieve its purpose. The attempt to compel the Society of Jesus to introduce changes into its Constitutions, especially concerning the recitation of the Office in choir, failed only because of the Pope’s death.
The pontificate of P. IV did not bring the universally expected reform to the Church; nevertheless, it created its essential precondition: the energy of Pope Carafa completely transformed the appearance of the city of Rome and of the Roman Curia. He exercised great conscientiousness in the selection of new cardinals, among whom distinguished ecclesiastics of strong character shone forth, such as Ghisleri, Scotti, Reumano, and Alfonso Carafa. When the Pope learned from the Theatine Geremia the truth concerning the unworthy life and corruption of his nephew, Cardinal Carlo Carafa, and of the Duke of Paliano, he drove both of them from Rome in January 1559. He renounced the revenues of the Dataria, although this caused considerable losses to his income; he prohibited cardinals from obtaining reversions to benefices, because by this indirect means the canonical laws concerning the « cumulatio beneficiorum » were violated. By a decree of 6 March 1559 he obliged all bishops present in Rome who held no curial office to go to their dioceses and reside there. At his direction, Cardinal Scotti, the Theatine Geremia Isachino, and Sirleto began the reform of the Roman Missal and Breviary. Through numerous other decrees he restored the dignity of worship and public morality in Rome. The establishment of fourteen new bishoprics in the Low Countries on 12 May 1559 gave Catholicism, which was seriously threatened in those regions, greater stability.
The later Tridentine reform cannot be conceived without the stern and energetic spirit of Pope Carafa. Yet this very severity, together with the misgovernment of his nephews, was the cause of the disturbances that broke out in Rome after his death on 18 August 1559; the Palace of the Inquisition was stormed, the statue of the Pope erected on the Capitoline Hill was damaged, and then thrown into the Tiber.
No pope of the sixteenth century has been portrayed in so vivid a description of character as that which the Venetian ambassador Bernardo Navagero 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 inability to maintain the proper measure not only often deprived the ecclesiastical measures he adopted of their effectiveness, but also led to the papacy’s dangerous political isolation. There remains—
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.