The Flowering of the Renaissance

Leo, however, did not leave it at that. He had a friend in the leading Italian philosopher of the day, a man of the same moderate temperament as himself. This was Tommaso de Vio, known as Cajetan, a Dominican who at the time of the Council of Pisa had written a sensible defence of the Papacy, marred, however, by a failure to probe the metaphor underlying his description of the Pope as ‘head of the Church corporate’. Leo instructed Cajetan, who was then in Germany, to hold an interview with Luther.

‘I was received,’ writes Luther, ‘by the most reverend lord cardinal legate both graciously and with almost too much respect, for he is a man in every way different from those extremely harsh bloodhounds who track down monks among us … I immediately asked to be instructed in what matters I had been wrong, since I was not conscious of any errors.’ Cajetan began by pointing to a statement by Luther that the merits of Christ do not constitute the treasure of merits of indulgence; this, he said, contradicted an Extravagante1 issued by Clement VI (1342–52). He did not expect Luther to know the Extravagante, which was absent from some editions of canon law. But Luther did know it and replied that it did not impress him as being truthful or authoritative, chiefly because ‘it distorts the Holy Scriptures and audaciously twists the words into a meaning which they do not have in their context.’ The Scriptures, he concluded, were in every case to be preferred to the Extravagante, which merely trotted out the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas. Further discussions then took place ‘but in no one point did we even remotely come to any agreement.’

Agreement was precluded by the fact that Luther differed radically from Cajetan on the nature of the Pope’s teaching authority. Luther began to see that there was more than a fortuitous link between Clement VI’s attitude in the Extravagante and the behaviour of Popes in his own lifetime. Both tried to mould God to man’s needs. So Luther’s next move was to criticize the way papal authority was exercised by such Popes as Julius II and Leo X. In a letter to Leo dated 6 April 1520 Concerning Christian Liberty, Luther attacks the Petrine office less as an institution based on canon law than against its ‘excessive’, imperialistic claim to power, and its abandonment of the notion of service to the Church as the community of the faithful. In a passage which shows how sensitive he was to the actual language employed in Rome, Luther writes: ‘Therefore, Leo, my Father, beware of listening to those sirens who make you out to be not simply a man, but partly God—mixtum Deum—so that you can command and require whatever you will. This shall not be, nor will you prevail. You are the servant of servants, and the most wretchedly and dangerously placed man alive.’

Later in the same year Luther rejected the teaching authority of the Pope altogether and, putting himself at the head of the movement which saw in Rome the chief obstacle to reform, appealed to a Council to be summoned by the Emperor Charles V: a new Nicaea presided over by a new Constantine, at which not only clergy but laity too would hammer out a pure religion like that of the early Christians.

In Rome the machinery for dealing with revolt now slipped into action. Luther’s appeal to a Council was rejected on the basis of Pius II and Julius II’s prohibition of any such move. A commission presided over by Cajetan pronounced heretical 41 propositions in Luther’s writings, most of them already condemned by the University of Louvain, a body which Luther himself had named as being impartial. Among the views condemned were Luther’s conception of all-powerful sin (‘In every good work the righteous man sins,’ ‘A good work done very well is a venial sin,’ ‘No one is certain that he is not always sinning mortally, because of the truly hidden vice of pride’), his interpretation of the role of faith, and of the sacraments, and finally his rejection of papal authority. On 2 May Leo examined a draft of the bull Exsurge at his hunting-lodge, and it was then submitted to the sacred college at no less than four consistories; it is noteworthy that the German episcopate was excluded altogether from proceedings against Luther, and this was later to have an adverse effect on Rome. In June 1520 Exsurge was published, condemning the 41 propositions, ordering Luther’s writings destroyed, forbidding him to teach or preach, and threatening him with excommunication if he did not recant within two months. Copies were sent for enforcement to the Emperor and the German princes.

But Rome was already one move behind. In July Luther had published his Letter to the Christian Nobility of Germany in which, drawing on the views of John Huss and the Bohemians, he moved beyond an attack on the papacy to a complete rejection of tradition, in place of which he set up the holy word of Scripture. By taking his stand on Scripture Luther hoped to re-establish the sovereignty of God alone, over against anything the Church had said or might say. In December Luther publicly burned the bull Exsurge. On 3 January 1521 Leo excommunicated Martin Luther: cut him off ‘as a dead branch’.

But Luther was hardly ‘a dead branch’. As a Saxon and a Wittenberg Professor, he belonged to a vigorous community conscious of its independence and protected by the swaggering, moustachioed Frederick, Elector of Saxony, absolute lord in his own domain and the founder of Wittenberg University, whose professors he looked on as his own children. Frederick had no intention of handing Luther over to be burned at the stake, like poor John Huss a century earlier. Intellectually, too, Luther belonged to a flourishing band of scholars, notably Philip Melanchthon, the armourer’s frail son who was the best humanist in Germany, and Ulrich von Hutten, a tough knight errant steeped in Tacitus’s Germania, finding in that book the purity of morals and manliness he ascribed to the German character. And behind Luther stood the men of Germany, disliking and sometimes hating Rome, conscious of their new strength as a people. Roman cardinals might be rich, but they banked with the Fuggers; German mercenaries in Charles VIII’s invasion army had scattered the Italians, thus proving themselves worthy successors of Arminius, the tribal leader who decisively defeated Varus in 9 A.D. The late Emperor, Maximilian, had confided to his sister that one day he intended to add the papal tiara to his iron crown: was it so impossible an ambition?

These were the men who read Luther’s writings, and were stirred by his extremely powerful, scathingly witty style derived from Lucian. As so often happens, their reactions were at variance with the author’s intention, and by sheer weight of numbers they were to drag Luther in directions he did not always want to go. What appealed to the average reader was less the corruption of man than the corruption of Rome: that Babylon where Christian blood was shed with St Paul’s sword, Plato and Aristotle were painted opposite the Blessed Sacrament, and Bembo advised Sadoleto to ‘avoid the Epistles of St Paul, lest his barbarous style should spoil your taste’. In vain did Leo’s representative, Girolamo Aleandro, argue that abuses committed by Rome should not be confused with Catholic truth; as a scholar, he could not see that it is love and hate, not calm reason, that determine most men’s view of truth. In place of the authority of Rome Luther’s followers erected the authority of Scripture interpreted by the individual Christian according to the light of the Holy Spirit. This had a profound appeal at a time when the printed word, so recent an invention, still wore something of a halo. And so the rift widened: Scripture against Church, Grace against Works, Predestination against Free Will, communion service against sacrifice, the priesthood of every Christian against the teaching authority of the Pope.

In the early 1520’s it became evident in Rome that Exsurge had neither silenced Luther nor checked Lutheranism, which was beginning to erect itself into an organized Church, styled Apostolic and declaring the Roman Church heretical. An answer would have to be found, and found quickly: preferably a dogmatic answer to what was primarily a dogmatic challenge. But precisely here Rome found herself ill-prepared. Ever since 1380 when John Wycliffe first challenged traditiones humanae and William of Waterford made the mistake of defending unwritten traditions by arguing from the insufficiency of Scripture, a false antithesis had been set up: Tradition and Scripture, each envisaged separately. This had sufficed to condemn Huss, but not to provide refutation of his arguments. The Vatican had no books defending Tradition, only Raphael’s painted defence of the Real Presence.

In method also Rome found herself at a disadvantage. As Erasmus remarked, Ciceronian Latin was useless for answering heresy, since it did not contain the necessary vocabulary. There was no chair of Scripture in the Sapienza, and in the words of the Augustinian General, ‘Rome, the prince of cities, is the world’s dunce in Biblical studies.’ Sante Pagnine’s translation of the Old Testament into Latin, made in Lucca in 1518, did not find a publisher until 1528, and then only in Lyons. On his return in 1522 even Aleandro, one of Italy’s foremost humanists, sadly and belatedly had to return to school: ‘I have begun to extract from ancient authors passages which condemn the new enemies of the Church. Since the heresiarchs are always objecting that Latin authors are suspect to them, I have taken these passages from Revelation, from authors who cannot be attacked and from the Holy Councils of the early Church.’

It became obvious to the Pope and his advisers that a complete dogmatic answer could be neither quick nor easy. Meanwhile some other course must be found. The first and most obvious was to call a Council, for Luther had said, ‘I know the Church virtually only in Christ, representatively only in the Council.’ Only a Council could issue a decision which all concerned would regard as undoubtedly binding. Why then did none of the Pope’s best advisers with first hand experience of Germany—Cajetan, Campeggio, Aleandro—recommend a Council?

They were, to start with, victims of the false antithesis Papacy-Council, given new life by the recent Council of Pisa. They could not rid themselves of the fear that the rulers of Europe, acting through their bishops, would destroy the Pope’s independence by whittling away his financial and temporal power. That is why the mere rumour of the summons of a Council caused a sudden fall in the price of all saleable offices. Secondly, and perhaps even more important, they realized that Rome was insufficiently prepared to enter the arena against the new, well-trained, well-armed German gladiators, and that tactical defeat before the assembled prelates of Europe might still further rend Christ’s seamless robe. Twenty-five frustrated years were to pass before a Council would meet.

A third course presented itself: so thorough a Reform in Rome that the Lutherans’ catchword would ring hollow. Here there were hopeful signs. As early as 1515, two years before Luther’s 95 theses, a group of Roman priests and laymen had formed the Oratory of Divine Love in order to sanctify themselves by the sacraments and prayer, and so bring a reforming influence on others. Members set special value on humility: Gaetano di Thiene dwells in his letters on his unworthiness to offer Mass, wherein he, ‘a poor worm of earth, mere dust and ashes, passes, as it were, into heaven and the presence of the Blessed Trinity.’ The Oratory soon numbered more than fifty influential Romans, and from it in 1524 were to issue the Theatines, a new Order of regular clergy vowed to stringent poverty.

To members of the Oratory it seemed nothing less than a direct intervention by the Holy Spirit when the conclave held in 1523 to elect a successor to Leo chose in absentia Adrian Dedal of Utrecht, the son of a poor shipwright who had made his way by intellectual brilliance to become tutor to the Emperor and later his viceroy in Spain. ‘His face is long and pale,’ wrote the Venetian envoy of Adrian VI, ‘his body is lean, his hands are snow-white. His whole bearing impresses one with reverence; even his smile has a tinge of seriousness.’ The new Pope arrived in Rome bent on reform. When told that Leo had employed 100 grooms, he made the sign of the cross and said that four would suffice for his needs, but as it was unseemly that he should have fewer than a cardinal, he would appoint twelve. When Cardinal Trivulzio asked for a bishopric to relieve his poverty, Adrian asked, ‘What is your annual income?’ ‘4000 ducats.’ ‘Mine was 3000, yet I lived on it and even saved.’ It was not meant as a boast. ‘All of us, prelates and clergy, have gone astray, and for long there is none that has done good; no, not one.’

Adrian celebrated Mass daily—and this for a Pope was an innovation. His meals, which he ate alone, were Spartan: a dish of veal or beef, sometimes a soup. When the Laocoön was proudly shown him, he observed dryly—and inexactly: ‘They are only the effigies of heathen idols,’ and ordered all the entrances to the Belvedere walled up save one, the key to which he kept himself. Leo’s poets and painters he would not even see, far less employ. All his time he gave to economies and the appointment of holy, hard-working bishops, who might do something to improve the Italian clergy, only two per cent of whom understood their Latin breviary.

But Adrian lacked warmth and a knowledge of the Italian mind. A Venetian applied to him Cicero’s remark on Cato: ‘He acts as though he were living in some republic of Plato’s, not among the dregs of Romulus.’ The ‘dregs’ hated Adrian. Starved of the pomp which filled their pockets and made their eyes brighten, they jeered at the Pope as a barbarian and mocked at the tongue-twisting names of his advisers: Enkevoirt, Dietrich von Heeze, Johann Ingenwinkel. They composed bitter pasquinades:

Caduto è a terra il gran nome romano

a dato in preda al barbero furore

The great name of Rome has tumbled

And become a prey to the furious barbarian

—little knowing that the lines held a tragic prophecy. At every turn the Romans opposed reform, the whole idea of which they ridiculed. As a result Adrian lived a lonely, wretched life, taking stringent precautions against poison. Then, only thirteen months after entering Rome, he fell ill of a kidney disease induced by the climate—it too was hostile. After asking that no more than 25 ducats be spent on his funeral, this would-be reformer left a world he could not reform. While the Romans facetiously gave thanks to his doctor, an epitaph was cut for his tomb: ‘Alas! how much do the efforts [virtus], even of the best of men, depend upon time and opportunity.’

It now remained to be seen whether Adrian’s successor could achieve the reform for which all Christendom waited. Giulio de’ Medici, who took the name Clement VII, was the son of Giuliano de’ Medici, stabbed to death in Florence Cathedral, and a first cousin of Leo X. Blameless in his personal life, the new Pope possessed a long handsome face, cultivated tastes and the Medici intelligence, without, however, the Medici drive. He had been born an orphan and illegitimate, and all his life he remained to an extreme degree timid and vacillating. He seemed to lack a core.

Clement was, however, full of good intentions and decided to cut the ‘spiritual’ taxes so hated abroad. This was less easy than it sounds. The taxes were payment for legal and secretarial work involved in issuing briefs, dispensations and so on, performed by more than 2000 Curia officials who had bought or inherited their jobs; that is, they or their fathers had put up capital on which they were entitled to a 10% return. If Clement reduced taxes, he would reduce the return, and would have to make good the difference from some other source. But there was no other source: in fact, as certain German princes embraced Lutheranism, income fell sharply. But Clement did make one useful discovery. He saw that the remuneration of Curia officials was being confused with what was in effect the Papacy’s public debt and, banker’s nephew that he was, began to clear up the confusion. When he had to raise money in 1526, he did so not with the creation of new offices but by issuing under the name Monte della Fede

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