SIXTUS V, Pope. - B. at Grottammare (Ascoli Piceno) on 13 Dec. 1520, d. at Rome on 27 Aug. 1590.
I. BEFORE THE PONTIFICATE
Felice Peretti, of a very poor family from Montalto Marche, devoted himself as a boy to the humblest labors of the countryside. Having entered the Friars Minor Conventual at the age of twelve, he obtained his degree in theology at Fermo (1548); he acquired a vast culture, especially in theology; he gathered a rich library; he acquired a reputation as a distinguished preacher. He was inquisitor at Venice (1557), consultor of the Roman Inquisition (1560), procurator general and, later, vicar of the Conventuals, sent with Cardinal Boncompagni to Spain, bishop of Sant'Agata de' Goti (1566) and of Fermo (1571-77). He enjoyed the trust of St. Pius V, who created him cardinal in 1570; he was, on the other hand, on less than cordial terms with Boncompagni, Gregory XIII. He then lived in retirement, devoting himself to study and in particular to a new edition of the works of St. Ambrose, which turned out to be defective because of its wholly personal method, far removed from sound criticism. On the death of Gregory, in a conclave in which religious interests prevailed over political ones, the "cardinal of Montalto" was elected pope by unanimous vote (April 24, 1585).
II. CHARACTER AND PROGRAM OF SIXTUS V
In his pontificate Sixtus displayed the indomitable energy of a "terrible" nature; to his rigid, authoritarian, violent and tenacious character there were nevertheless joined piety, simplicity of life and generosity. Even while procuring the fortunes of his own kin, he kept himself far from excesses of nepotism; placing at his side his nephew Alessandro, who had received from him at the age of 15 the surname and the purple, and other trustworthy advisers, he nevertheless reserved to himself every matter of importance. And he consecrated his pontificate to the defense of the Catholic faith, to the reform of the Church, and to the exaltation of the apostolic see.
III. DEFENSE OF THE FAITH AND OF PAPAL AUTHORITY
Not fond of doctrinal controversies, S. avoided taking a decisive position on the question of Grace, which was then burning especially between Jesuits and Dominicans: when the Faculty of Louvain, at the urging of Baius, already condemned by previous pontiffs, censured 34 propositions of the Jesuit Lessius, S. imposed silence on both parties, a tacit disapproval of the censure; but he took no other measures. He did, however, increase the competence of the Roman Inquisition and brought about the establishment of new tribunals for it; he also thought of publishing a new Index, which was prevented by his death.
He wished to give a solid scriptural foundation to religious doctrine, promoting editions of the Bible. The Greek text of the Septuagint and its Latin version were published (1587-88). The critical edition of the Vulgate was entrusted to a commission; but Sixtus reserved the conclusions to himself and wished to establish the text with his own hand, with corrections, introductions of marginal notes, arbitrary omissions. The Sixtine Vulgate came out in 1590 from the press of Basa, preceded by a bull, which declared it the only authorized version. But the criticisms, of which Bellarmine himself was the interpreter, were such that the Pope does not appear to have carried out the promulgation of the bull in the due forms, so that it had no force of law. After his death, the sale of the new Vulgate was suspended and copies were withdrawn: Clement VIII provided for a new edition, nevertheless preserving for it the name of Sixtus.
He also had Baronio continue the reform of the Roman Breviary; he created a commission for a new edition of the Decretals, which did not manage to finish the work before he died; he promoted the publication of the pontifical Constitutions from Leo I onward, the work of Laerzio Cherubini, which came out under the title Bullarium in 1586; he oversaw the collection of the acts of the Apostolic Camera; he had also thought of a central ecclesiastical archive for all of Italy.
Extremely jealous of the pontiff's authority, he resisted not only the pretensions of the representatives of Philip II in Italy, but also measures of the king himself: when the latter issued a Pragmatic of Titles, which regulated also those of ecclesiastics (1586), Sixtus threatened to put it on the Index and even spoke of excommunicating the king.
IV. REFORMING WORK
Catholic reform was uppermost in Sixtus's thoughts. He attended to the improvement of the Roman clergy; he imposed penalties against simony; he prevented violations of monastic discipline; he kept watch over the obligation of residence of bishops and parish priests. He gave an impulse to religious piety, re-establishing the stational functions in the Roman basilicas, introducing the feast of the Presentation of Mary, extending to the universal Church that of St. Anthony of Padua, canonizing the Dominican Ludovico Bertrand (1586) and the Franciscan layman Diego de Alcalá (1588), and proclaiming St. Bonaventure a doctor of the Church.
He was particularly benevolent toward the Franciscan Order; but he was also lavish with favors toward other Orders; he approved the Feuillants, a branch of the Cistercians, and the Camillians (1586). Not overly friendly to the Jesuits, he nevertheless approved the decrees of the Inquisition in their favor on the question of the value of simple vows pronounced by the non-professed, and he demanded the release of four fathers arrested by the Spanish Inquisition. But he wanted a commission to review the Ignatian Constitutions and imposed on General Acquaviva the change of the name "Society of Jesus," a measure not carried out because of his death.
Through his nuncios he promoted Catholic reform and the repression of heresy in central Europe; he was able to obtain the appointment of the holders of the bishoprics of Hungary, long vacant; he founded a University at Graz, entrusted to the Jesuits (1588). The weakness of Emperor Rudolf II and his frictions with the Pope prevented greater progress of Catholicism. Greater results were obtained in Switzerland and western Germany with the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in the mountains of Appenzell and the conversion of the Marquis of Baden.
Sixtus favored the missions of the Jesuits in Japan, where he erected a bishopric at Funai, and those of the Dominicans and Franciscans in the Philippines and in Latin America; he attempted to unite the Eastern Churches and the Egyptian Copts with Rome.
Certain measures of Sixtus had particular importance in the life of the Church. From December 20, 1585, he imposed the visit of bishops "ad limina Apostolorum," bringing the Head of the Church into contact with the individual dioceses. With the bull Postquam serus (December 3, 1586) he brought to light the high dignity of cardinals, their duties, and the advisability of choosing them from the various nationalities (v. CARDINALE, II). He gave the Curia the organization that remained with it until the reform of Pius X (v. CONGREGAZIONI ROMANE, SACRE, I), establishing with the bull Immensa Dei (January 22, 1588) 15 congre-
cardinalitial congregations, of which 9 were for spiritual affairs (Inquisition, Index, Council, Bishops, Regulars, Consistorial, Signature of Grace, Rites, Vatican Printing House), 6 for temporal affairs (Consulta, Fleet, Roman University, Annona, Roads Bridges Aqueducts, Taxes): the Congregations were to meet every week, and a consistory was likewise to be held every week. The cardinals were thus able to attend, in union with the Pontiff, to the government of the Church with greater independence from the lay powers, with a suitable division of labor, with maturity of judgment. Among the cardinals were numbered worthy men, such as Federigo Borromeo, at 23 years of age, and Scipione Gonzaga, the protector of Tasso (1587).
V. ACTIVITY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
The interests of the Church were the constant aim of S[ixtus] also in his political work. Bound by necessity to the king of Spain, who presented himself as the champion of orthodoxy, S[ixtus] took care to prevent the dangerous growth of his power and strove to maintain peace among Christians.
In Italian politics, he kept close to Venice, in which he saw not only a bulwark against the Protestants and the Turks, but a limitation of Spanish preponderance; and he favored the designs of Charles Emmanuel I, which indirectly redounded to the detriment of Spain.
The confused and changeable condition of France placed S[ixtus] in very grave difficulties, amid which he had to move with extreme caution and was unable, or perhaps could not, avoid contradictions and errors. He would have wished that the heresy of the Huguenots be stifled there and the succession of their leader Henry of Navarre prevented; but he did not approve the rebellious attitude of the Guises and of the Catholic League toward King Henry III, fearing on the one hand that the latter might ally himself with the Huguenots, and on the other that a victory of the League with the help of Spain would increase the power of the latter. He therefore sought that the Catholics form a bloc around the king; and when the latter concluded an ephemeral alliance with the League (July 7, 1585), he issued a bull against Navarre and Condé, declaring them deprived of every right to the succession and to the obedience of subjects (Sept. 9, 1585). There followed not only a violent reaction of the Huguenots, but the adherence to Navarre of many Catholics, impatient of papal interference in the dynastic question. After the King's break with the League, the triumph of the duke of Guise in Paris, the flight of the King, the assassination of the duke and the cardinal of Guise and the imprisonment of the cardinal of Bourbon and the archbishop of Lyon at the hands of the king (1588), S[ixtus], while blaming the conduct of Guise, condemned the cowardice of the King and the "homicide" with which he had claimed to redeem it, deplored as a "sacrilegious and unheard-of crime" the killing of the cardinal of Guise, and imposed as a condition for absolving the King the liberation of the two prisoners. But he refused a more energetic action desired by Spain; he did not adhere to the revolt of the League and of the "Union" of Paris against Henry III and, when the latter united with Navarre against Paris, he issued against him a monitory "medicinal and not mortal" (May 24, 1589). When Henry III was killed (Aug. 1, 1589), he sought to exclude Navarre from the throne, should he persist in heresy, and entered into conflict with Venice, which had recognized him as King Henry IV. But he took no measure of severity against the republic and showed himself quite reserved toward the League and the cardinal of Bourbon, proclaimed by it King Charles X. And, although he forwarded to Madrid a project of alliance with Spain, he did not ratify the Treaty, did not accept Spain's pretensions that the Catholics adhering to Henry IV be excommunicated and their legate driven from Rome, and threatened to excommunicate Philip II, who seemed disposed to separate himself from obedience to the Pontiff in order to defend "the cause of Christ" alone. When Charles X died (May 9, 1590), with the victory of Henry IV, still a heretic, already taking shape, S[ixtus] had a new treaty with Spain prepared; but he did not ratify this one either and, in the face of Spain's pressures, threatened to denounce its ambitious aims and declared that he did not wish to close to Navarre the way of return to the Church and therefore of access to the throne. He was thus preparing the future recognition of the converted Henry IV by the Pope and the resurrection of France, which he deemed necessary to the balance of Europe.
Against Elizabeth of England, "the new Jezebel," S[ixtus], while Mary Stuart was still alive, urged an armed intervention by France and Spain; but there is no serious proof that he had a part in the designs of the conspiracy that took its name from Babington. After the killing of the Stuart, he made concessions and promises to Philip II; but he did not grant him the investiture of the kingdom, limiting himself to establishing, in a secret pact with him (July 29, 1587), that a Catholic king would be elected in England. And, although he renewed against Elizabeth the excommunication and the sentence of deposition, he did not cease to hope that the queen, whose singular gifts he did not deny, might be induced to conversion. Little confident in the success of the expedition of the great Spanish "Armada," he was unwilling, after its defeat (July-Aug. 1588), to give Philip II money for new preparations for war.
He took up again the design of a crusade against the Turks, urging Venice to prepare in secret. He favorably received the plan of the Polish king Stephen Báthory to subdue Russia and attack the Turks with Polish and Russian forces and with the help of Persia and the Tartars. When the King died (Dec. 12, 1586), he favored the candidacy of one of the Habsburgs, from whom he hoped for help for the crusade; but he recognized as king the victorious Sigismund of Sweden and procured through his nuncio the peace between the latter and the Habsburgs. He also thought of a war against the Barbary states of Africa and of the conquest of Egypt; but he did not succeed in winning Philip II over to the enterprise, absorbed as he was in his design of hegemony over Europe.
VI. GOVERNMENT OF THE PAPAL STATE
To the spiritual authority of the Pontiff and to his reforming work, S. wished to give firm support in the temporal State. His first task as sovereign was the relentless struggle against brigandage, which had become a scourge under the weak government of his predecessor. The prohibition against carrying arms on pain of death, impunity and rewards for whoever handed over a bandit, alive or dead, the prohibition forbidding ambassadors, barons and communes to obstruct the arrest of bandits, the agreement with neighbouring States to prevent them from finding refuge, capital executions even of persons of authority, the display of heads on Ponte S. Angelo — if these did not entirely uproot the evil plant, they effectively checked its growth, as long as the Pontiff lived. The coasts were defended by a small fleet, so that a commemorative medal could boast that in the State there was «terra marique securitas».
The severity of S. seemed excessive in punishing with very numerous condemnations, including of death, more or less serious offences, such as adultery, incest, abortion, sodomy, theft, blasphemy, betting and gambling, transgression of the Sunday precept, and the spreading of false or slanderous news. The measures against prostitutes and against luxury did not achieve the aim of fully moralizing the city, although they improved its morals.
In order to gather in Castel S. Angelo a treasure of 4 million gold scudi, which was to serve the supreme needs of the Church and the State, S. not only resorted to rigid economies, but extended the venality of offices, increased in number and in capital the «Monti», loans made to the State, which, in exchange for interest, ceded the yield of certain revenues, and sharpened taxes, at the risk of the economic activity of his subjects: measures in use in that age, but neither praiseworthy nor useful.
Worthy instead of high praise are his care for a rigid and impartial administration, his solicitude for the «causes of the poor», his protection of industry and commerce, the provisioning of Rome, the work procured for thousands of unemployed in a house at Ponte Sisto, and the opening of a hospice for the destitute for those unable to work. And bold and most noble was his undertaking of draining the marshes at Ravenna, below Orvieto, at the mouths of the Tiber, and above all of the Pontine marshes, whose reclamation he carried forward for three years with marvellous vigour.
Particular favour S. gave to his native region: he erected at Bologna a Montalto college for young men of the Marches; he established a supreme tribunal at Macerata, raised Fermo to an archiepiscopal see, and Montalto, S. Severino, Tolentino and Loreto to episcopal sees; at Loreto he completed important works, among them the new fortification of the city.
VII. PATRONAGE OF S.; SISTINE ROME. — Like the most celebrated popes of the Renaissance, S. was a generous protector of culture and art; he favoured the Roman University by renewing the College of professors (1586); he created the Universities of Fermo, Graz and Quito; he instituted, besides the College of Bologna, the Franciscan one of S. Bonaventura in Rome; he had a new grandiose building for the Vatican Library erected in the courtyard of Belvedere, with a vast hall richly decorated in which the triumphs of the Church and of S. are represented; he opened in the Vatican a printing press entrusted to Domenico Basa; he granted privileges and subsidies and procured books and manuscripts for the publication of distinguished works, such as the writings of St. Bonaventure and the Annals of Baronio.
But above all he wished that the resurgent Papacy should have a worthy seat in Rome. While still a cardinal, he had had the magnificent villa Montalto built between the Viminal and the Esquiline, on a design by Domenico Fontana, who was later the principal executor of his great works as Pope. In his pontificate he entrusted to Giacomo della Porta the completion of the dome of St. Peter's, within whose lantern are inscribed his name and the date, 1590; he began the construction of the new Vatican Palace, which is still the customary residence of the Pontiffs; he had the monumental staircase from the Vatican to St. Peter's built, completed, enlarging it, the Palazzo del Quirinale; he raised that of the Lateran and the northern façade of the Basilica, with the loggia of the blessings. Near the Lateran he transferred the Scala Santa, adding to the Sancta Sanctorum the two side chapels and the portico. He rebuilt many Roman churches; at S. Maria
Maggiore he built the great chapel beside the right nave, placing beneath the altar the oratory of the Presepio and having the tomb of St. Pius V and his own erected on the side walls.
He restored with gigantic labour the Alexandrine aqueduct, the «Acqua Felice», which reached as far as the Aracoeli and the Pincio and fed great fountains, among them that of Moses at S. Susanna. To facilitate the flow of pilgrims to the basilicas he built very long streets, such as the straight one from S. Maria Maggiore to the Pincio, part of which still bears the name of Via Sistina. He widened the squares; he thought of building a great basin at Piazza Termini, diverting there the waters of the Aniene.
Not always in these works did he show good artistic taste; nor were ancient and venerable monuments respected: imposing remains of the Baths of Diocletian and the Septizodium of Septimius Severus were destroyed. But the columns of Trajan and of Antoninus were restored and surmounted by the statues of the Apostles, to show how the pagan world prepared the triumph of Christianity. And from the ruins of Roman buildings were taken the obelisks, raised at the beginning of the Via Sistina, at S. Giovanni, at S. Croce, and in Piazza del Popolo: most celebrated is that of Piazza S. Pietro, which was transported from the circus of Nero and raised under the direction of Fontana, amid the enthusiasm of the people (1586): the inscriptions on the obelisk and on its base, exalting the victories and the Kingdom of Christ, show what the Pope's thought was.
VIII. A LOOK AT THE WORK OF SIXTUS V
After having tenaciously resisted the weakening of his strength and the grave cares of the spirit, and having attended to the obligations of his most high office until the very end, S. piously closed his pontificate, which perhaps his feverish activity had made shorter. The mob, irritated by his rigid justice and heavy taxes, attempted to overturn the statue erected to him by the Senate in the Palazzo dei Conservatori; the Pontiff's body, first buried provisionally in St. Peter's, nevertheless found worthy rest in the monument in St. Mary Major. Posterity has done justice to the great Pontiff. A man of very broad vision, of boundless designs, of iron will, of tireless industry, S. did not always succeed in carrying out his plans, nor did he know how to carry them out happily. But his pontificate left an indelible mark on the history of the Church, of the Papal State, and of Rome. Even the anecdotes, true and untrue, that flourished around him show how alive his memory still is. - See plate XLVIII.
Bibliography8 works
Giovanni Battista Picotti