nedits: There were a dozen popes during the years 1455 - 1549. Nine of them were from Italy. A pair of de Medici, della Rovere and Piccolomini and one Venetian, Pietro Barbo. And a pair from the Spanish family de Borja, one Dutchman, another Genoan and one from near Rome. It was a mix. One of the oldest traditions and problems of Roman Catholicism and Christianity in general was in how to include as many as possible and not break apart into factions. Catholic essentially means 'all together'. Unam Sanctam diversis partibus: One Faith with opposing parts.
Almost in the middle of these years, in 1503 there were three popes. When Alexander VI, Rodrigo de Borja had died there were two forces at play that had immediately to be dealt with. Cesare Borja and Giuliano della Rovere. Both families had become very powerful in Italy over the previous several decades as had the de Medici of Florence and the Sforza in Milan. Of course the Spanish Borgia had been in the papacy and ranging across Italy for nearly a decade. The nephew to the pope, Cesare Borgia acted as knight for his pope taking back Papal lands and a few more by connivance, strategy or siege, sometimes following his uncle's direction and sometimes not but sending knights, nobles, townships and maidens all aflutter off in every direction. A pope had a lot of responsibility in those days.
The copy I have of Burchard's diaries At The Court of the Borgia was edited and translated by one Geoffrey Parker, and published in 1963. He gives a nice summary of the papacy, the office and responsibilities at large. I'll quote from him liberally but in reverse order here.
"Until the closing decade of the [fifteenth] century, the Germans, French and Spanish rulers alike were preoccupied with the internal problems of their own countries, and the most threatening power was that of the Turks, who captured Constantinople in 1453 and pressed into the Balkans and through the Mediterranean in the following years... . " [p.15]
"... conditions in Rome and the Papal State, however, were not dissimilar to those in other parts of fifteenth-century Italy, where to the north, a number of city-states -- Milan, Venice, Florence -- competed for predominance, whilst in the south, Naples alone gave stability to a more primitive realm. In each territory power rested locally very much in the hands of certain individuals or families. The condottiere or military adventures, who were employed with their mercenary armies by the city governments, and often by the papacy itself, served only to augment political rivalries and uncertainties.... the Italians could indulge their internal differences in repeated wars, where the aim was to avoid bloodshed rather than to kill, only because they were threatened by no greater foes outside." [pp 14-5]
"From the time of Eugenius IV (1431-1447), the pope exercised decisive and final government in Rome through the city governor, who was the papal vice-chamberlain and an ecclesiastic. Beyond the city walls, however, in the various lands of the Papal State, direct control was far less widely maintained, and instead, numerous local lords or barons governed particular districts and towns theoretically as Vicariates in the pope's name."
"Territorially the city [of Rome] had to be protected, and the progressive extension of papal control around Rome had been a long development through the Middle Ages. The pope as a result was the sovereign ruler of Rome and claimed to govern various lands -- the Patrimony of St Peter, the Duchy of Spoleto, the March of Ancona, and the Romagna -- which stretched across central Italy and together comprised the Papal States.... Papal claims to jurisdiction over all these petty states existed, but were ignored whilst the pope could not raise an army or give effective power to any commander appointed as Gonfalonier or Captain-General of the Church. Real influence and control were disputed amongst the great families, such as the Colonna or Orsini, whose feuds could sometimes lead to domination of the Vatican itself." [p. 14]
"... it is both possible and important to attempt to place Alexander VI's pontificate in a wider perspective. What character, for example, did the papacy possess in the fifteenth century, how was it related to Rome and to Italy and Christendom beyond Rome, and what evaluation can in consequence be made about the Borgia episode?
The first essential is to realize that papal authority had meaning in more than one sense, for the pope, as head of a spiritual society, the Church, not only asserted a universal authority over all christians, lay as well as clerical, but also stood out as a territorial ruler with his capital at Rome in Italy.... Symbolically and traditionally, Rome held a unique, supreme position since its church was that of St Peter, to whom, as Vicar of Christ, the government of the whole christian community had been granted, and whose successor the pope was...." [pp 13-4]In the fifteenth century not every pope had a mercenery captain-general to maintain territorial order. Alexander VI did with his nephew Cesare Borgia and did for nearly ten years. But so did Giuliano della Rovere, pope Julius II. It would become known as the beginning of the period of the Renaissance Italian wars and it would help make Spain the new heir for the next period of European history.
* All quotes from At The Court of the Borgia, edited and translated by Geoffrey Parker, The FOLIO Society, Ltd, London, 1963
No comments:
Post a Comment