PAUL V, POPE. — Born in Rome on 17 September 1552, died there on 28 January 1621. Camillo Borghese, from a family originally from Siena, with a degree in jurisprudence, held important offices in the Curia; he became a cardinal in 1596, vicar of Rome in 1603, and was elected pope through an agreement among the factions on 16 May 1605. Distinguished for piety, honesty, gentleness, generous charity, love of justice, and tireless activity, he was not free from “petty nepotism”: he gave his nephew Scipione Caffarelli Borghese his surname, the purple (1605), offices, and numerous benefices, and kept him as Secretary of State, while reserving to himself the handling of important affairs; to his other relatives he gave offices and wealth. Very attentive to the interests of the State, he confirmed (30 December 1605) the prohibition against dismembering the papal dominion; he extended the powers of a Commission for good government; secured public tranquillity; reformed the judiciary (1 March 1612), improving the administration of justice and making particular provision for the poor and prisoners; and attended to Rome’s provisioning, roads, hygiene, and construction. He promoted agriculture and commerce, for which he built a port at Fano. He did not know how, or did not wish, to prevent the progressive exclusion of laymen from the bureaucracy; nor did he undertake a radical reform of financial administration, resorting instead too extensively to borrowing.
He made every effort to preserve peace in Europe, and especially in Italy. He therefore remained neutral between France and Spain, seeking to bring them closer, including through matrimonial ties; he opposed the expansionist designs of Henry IV of France and Carlo Emanuele of Savoy; he advocated peace between Venice and Austria in the Uskok War; and he did not allow himself to be drawn in favor of either side in the War of the Valtellina, although it too had a religious pretext.
He avoided taking positions on theological questions, such as those concerning the Molinist doctrine of Grace and the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and imposed silence and respect for opposing opinions on the disputants. It was under him that the Copernican system was condemned in 1616 (v. GALILEI), and in 1622 he placed Cremonini’s De coelo on the Index.
Of what he regarded as the inalienable rights of the Catholic faith and of the Church, P. declared that he wished to be the defender “unto the shedding of blood.” His conflict with Venice remained memorable. It was caused by two laws restricting ecclesiastical property, promulgated by the Republic before P. ascended the papal throne, and by the violation of the privilege of ecclesiastical jurisdiction through the arrest and summons before the Council of Ten of two members of the clergy. The Pope condemned these measures, threatening censures (10 December 1605). The Signoria intensified its opposition to the privileges of the Church; and P., in the Consistory of 17 April 1606, pronounced excommunication against the Senate and an interdict over the entire territory. There followed a violent protest by the Doge and a bitter struggle against what were regarded in Venice as the Church’s unwarranted claims and offenses against the rights of the State. The struggle was waged both with the weapon of the pen, skillfully wielded by jurists and theologians, and especially by the state theologian, ARPI (v.), who fiercely attacked what he asserted to be abuses of papal power, and by police measures: orders that the excommunication be given no effect and the interdict not be observed, together with banishment or severe penalties for anyone who disobeyed. The submission of a large part of the clergy and people to the will of the Signoria was a grave disappointment to P. The danger of Venice’s union with the Protestants seemed imminent; the intertwining of political interests around the religious dispute gave rise to fears of a European conflagration. Through the mediation of France, supported by Spain, an agreement was reached, and the Pope granted absolution from the censures (21 April 1607). Some satisfaction was given him through the release of the two ecclesiastics, the suspension of the laws, and the revocation of the measures against those who obeyed the interdict; but the jurisdictional question remained unresolved. The Jesuits continued to be excluded from Venice for another fifty years. If the Signoria did not obtain the support it had hoped for from the powers against the Papacy, neither did the authority of the latter gain any advantage from the affair.
In the rest of Europe as well, the Pontiff wished to preserve the positions held by the Church and to recover those it had lost; but, being averse to armed conflicts, he generally proceeded with a prudence that at the time seemed excessive to some, and his results were not always successful. In the dispute over the succession to the Duchy of Jülich-Cleves, while striving to prevent it from passing to Protestants, he wished to avoid the outbreak of a war. In the Empire he sought to secure the succession for the House of Austria, and in particular for Ferdinand II, a fervent Catholic, and to prevent dangerous concessions from being made to the Protestants; but he tolerated the maintenance of the Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555, and only when war became unavoidable did he proclaim a jubilee to implore God’s help against the enemies of the true faith (1620), grant tithes and subsidies to the Emperor and the Catholic League, and work toward the conclusion of a league of Catholic powers. In France P. opposed the progress of the Huguenots; and he was able to regard as victories for the Papacy the removal from the office of syndic of the Sorbonne of Edmondo Richer, an opponent of papal power; the withdrawal of a decree of the Parliament of Paris denying the Pope the right to excommunicate and depose a king who had become a heretic; and the deletion from the cahiers of the Estates General of 1614 of a proposal by the Parisian delegation of the Third Estate that it be declared by law that the king held his crown from God and was wholly independent of any foreign spiritual or temporal power. He had, however, to content himself with the Tridentine decrees being published only by the clergy, and not by the political authorities. In England, P.’s prohibition against Catholics rising up against James I did not prevent the King from using the participation of some of them in the famous Gunpowder Plot (5 November 1605) as a pretext to implicate their fellow believers and the Pontiff himself, and to impose upon Catholics an oath of allegiance. P. condemned this oath in a brief (22 September 1606) as contrary to the faith and the salvation of the soul. Despite the Pope’s efforts, the condition of Catholicism in the British Isles, as in neighboring Holland, remained very difficult. In Russia, the hopes P. had placed in the adventurer Demetrius for adherence to the Church of Rome proved illusory and provoked even fiercer hostility toward the Latins. Nor did the concession P. made to the Ruthenians, allowing them to preserve their rite, succeed in overcoming the violent opposition of the schismatics to union with Rome.
But P.’s activity in the religious sphere was manifested above all in promoting the implementation of Catholic reform. He held up to the clergy and the faithful the example of Carlo Borromeo and Francesca Romana, whom he canonized; Tommaso di Villanova, Pasquale Baylon, Ignazio di Loyola, Francesco Saverio, Filippo Neri, and Teresa di Gesù, whom he proclaimed, together with others, blessed. He renewed (19 October 1605) the obligation of residence for bishops, admitting no exceptions. He reformed religious Orders; he raised the Fatebenefratelli of Giovanni di Dio and the Camilliani to the status of Orders, and the Cappuccini and the Scolopi to that of autonomous Congregations; he gave fresh approval to the statutes of the Compagnia di Gesù and bestowed extensive favour upon II. He endowed the sacred rites with regularity and majesty through the publication and imposition of the Rituale Romanum (20 June 1614); he provided for the better preservation of the documents of the Holy See by gathering them into a Secret Archive; at his instigation Bellarmino composed the catechism for youth. The effect of his work was considerable, even if it did not wholly correspond to his wishes. Religious life flourished anew in Rome and in many Catholic countries: for France, the foundation (1618) of the new Benedictine Congregation of S. Mauro, to which belonged those Maurini who were henceforth to leave so profound a mark also in the field of scholarship, the spread of the Orsoline, and the foundation of the Order of the Visitazione were of particular importance.
P. gave very extensive support to missionary activity: evidence of his breadth of vision in this field is the concession he granted to the Chinese to use their own language in the breviary, in the liturgy, and in the administration of the Sacraments. For the missions of the Carmelitani Scalzi, P. founded a seminary and a higher school in Rome. Under his pontificate the Catholic hierarchy was reorganized
in America, and the first Jesuit Reductions arose in Paraguay.
P.’s exceptionally generous patronage was directed above all to the field of art. While what remained of the ancient basilica of S. Pietro, which threatened to collapse, was being demolished, and most of its monuments and precious memorials were gathered in the Grotte, the Michelangelesque Greek-cross structure was transformed, according to Maderno’s design, into the present, much larger Latin-cross building; the vaulting of the naves was constructed, the dome decorated, and the Confessione opened; the atrium and façade were erected, upon which the name of Paolo V Borghese stands prominently. At S. Maria Maggiore P. had built and adorned with frescoes by Reni and other celebrated painters the chapel bearing the name of his family, where his tomb is situated; before the Basilica he had erected the column taken from the basilica of Massenzio and surmounted by the statue of the Virgin. In the Vatican, the Cappella Paolina and that of the S.ma Annunziata were erected, the Library enlarged and embellished, fountains opened, and the bronze portal installed; in the Palazzo del Quirinale, the Pope’s summer residence, the chapel and the portal were among the works carried out. The aqueduct of Traiano, restored and called “Acqua Paola,” supplied the monumental fountain on the Gianicolo, the other near Ponte Sisto, and that by Maderno in Piazza S. Pietro. In Campo Marzio P. acquired and enlarged a palace, while another palace, now the Rospigliosi, near S. Pietro, and the villa Borghese were built through the agency of the cardinal-nephew.
Though not distinguished by spectacular events, the pontificate of P. V nevertheless left profound traces in the life of the Church and in the creation of papal Rome.