Alessandro Farnese (cardinal)

• 1. Introduction

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  Alessandro Farnese, born on the 7th of October 1520 at the family castle in Valentano, was appointed a cardinal at the age of fourteen. His grandfather, Pope Paul III, had been elected to the papacy just two months before naming young Alessandro Cardinal Deacon of Sant'Angelo in Pescheria. By the standards of even his nepotism-saturated era, it was a breathtaking elevation. But Farnese would outlast the pope who made him, surviving seven more conclaves, a royal confiscation of his French benefices, the imprisonment of friends, the murder of his father, and the near-constant turbulence of sixteenth-century Rome. How did a boy cardinal become one of the most enduring figures in the Counter-Reformation Church? What did he build, collect, and fight for across six decades at the heart of European power?

• 2. A Cardinal at Fourteen

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  On the 18th of December 1534, Alessandro Farnese received the red hat from his grandfather just weeks after Paul III's election. He had been studying at Bologna alongside his cousin Guido Ascanio Sforza di Santa Fiora, enrolled in the Collegio Ancarano, an institution founded in the fifteenth century for students specializing in legal studies. His early advancement was both a family strategy and a financial mechanism. The offices accumulated rapidly: Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church from the 13th of August 1535 until his death, Governor of Tivoli from 1535, Archpriest of St. Mary Major from 1537, and Archpriest of St. Peter's from 1543. On the 27th of August 1539, still only eighteen, he was named titular Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, a post described in the sources as highly lucrative with only nominal duties. In 1538, he became Pope Paul III's principal Secretary, managing most of the papal business with the assistance of Monsignor Marcello Cervini until 1549. By 1541 he held the titles of Protector of the Holy Roman Empire before the Holy See and Protector of Spain before the Holy See, making him the primary conduit for Imperial and Spanish affairs in the Roman Curia. His opinion was always consulted and, given his family connection to the reigning pope, it was often followed.

• 3. Benefices and Boundaries

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  The scale of Alessandro Farnese's administrative reach across Catholic Europe was remarkable even by the standards of Renaissance cardinal-princes. His grandfather named him Administrator of the Diocese of Parma on the 1st of November 1534, a position that allowed him to collect its episcopal income before resigning it to his cousin on the 13th of August 1535. From the 30th of July 1535 he was Administrator of Jaen in Spain; from 1535 to 1551, Administrator of the Archdiocese of Avignon; and from 1547 to 1552, Administrator of the Diocese of Vizeu in Portugal. Emperor Charles V named Farnese Archbishop of Monreale in Sicily on the 9th of May 1536, a diocese he would hold, through deputies, for decades despite never residing there. The monks of the Cathedral of Monreale and the diocesan clergy were in perpetual conflict, requiring papal intervention by letter as late as 1549. A string of vicars managed the diocese in his absence, including Msgr. Giovanni Antonio Fassari, titular Bishop of Christopolis in Greece, and later Pompeo Zambecari. Farnese did finally visit in 1568, conducting a synod; his librarian, the antiquarian Onofrio Panvinio, died at Palermo during that journey, likely on the 16th of March 1568. The source is frank about these arrangements: all such administrations were opportunities for financial enrichment, not pastoral service, carried out by authorized agents. The Cardinal resigned the Monreale diocese on the 9th of December 1573, having enjoyed its income for nearly four decades.

• 4. Diplomat Between Crowns

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  Farnese's first major diplomatic mission placed him between Francis I of France and Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, two men who had been at war for most of a generation. In the Consistory of the 24th of November 1539, he was dispatched as Apostolic Legatus a latere to broker peace. He left Rome on the 29th of November, entered Paris on the 31st of December, met the King on the 14th of February 1540, then departed for Flanders on the 17th for three months with the Emperor. He was back in Rome by the 5th of June 1540. A second mission followed in 1543, arriving at Fontainebleau on the 29th of December and reaching Brussels by the 14th of January 1544 before returning to Rome on the 1st of March. In 1546, he accompanied the papal troops sent to assist Charles V against the Schmalkaldic League. In 1548, he took into his service as private secretary the poet and prose stylist Annibale Caro, who had previously worked for Farnese's father Pierluigi and then for two of Alessandro's brothers after Pierluigi's murder on the 10th of September 1547. The most dangerous diplomatic episode came in 1551, when Pope Julius III ordered Alessandro to persuade his brother Ottavio to surrender the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. Ottavio refused. Alessandro supported him. Pope Julius confiscated the moveables from the Palazzo Farnese, said to have been worth 30,000 scudi, and sequestered Monreale. The Cardinal withdrew, visiting his sister Vittoria, Duchess of Urbino, then Florence, then Avignon.

• 5. Conclaves and Calculations

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  Cardinal Farnese participated in the major papal elections of the mid-to-late sixteenth century with a recurring pattern: he influenced the outcome decisively but never secured the papacy himself. In the second Conclave of 1555, opening on the 15th of May, the Imperial faction sent Cardinals Corner and Ricci to beg Farnese to abandon Cardinal Carafa and accept their votes for himself instead. He declined, correctly judging that he had neither Imperial nor French endorsement. It was Farnese who, using blandishments and threats, persuaded the Imperialists to leave their caucus in the Hall of the Secret Consistory and join the rest of the cardinals in the Cappella Paolina. On the afternoon of the 23rd of May, the seventy-eight-year-old Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa of Naples was elected Pope Paul IV. In the Conclave of 1559, with Cardinal Philip II's preferences documented, Farnese crowned the new pope Giovanni Angelo de' Medici on the 6th of January 1560. In the Conclave of 1566, Farnese held between twenty-eight and thirty votes but needed thirty-five to elect. When Cardinal Borromeo told him flatly there would be no support in the current conclave, Farnese offered four candidates, one of whom was Michele Ghislieri. On the 7th of January 1566, within two hours of Farnese's suggestion, Ghislieri had sufficient votes; he was elected unanimously that afternoon and took the name Pius V. In the Conclave of 1572, Philip II sent word via Cardinal Granvelle, arriving from Naples on the night the conclave opened, that Farnese should not attempt to become pope "this time" - he was fifty-one and experienced. Granvelle opened the letter in Farnese's presence. It was a decisive intervention on the first day. Ugo Boncompagni was elected on the 14th of May 1572 as Gregory XIII.

• 6. Collector and Patron

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  Alessandro Farnese assembled what the sources describe as the greatest collection of Roman sculpture gathered in private hands since Antiquity. Those works passed by inheritance to the Bourbon-Parma kings and are now mostly held in Naples. Under the direction of Fulvio Orsini, his curator and librarian, the collections were enlarged and systematized. Farnese had paintings by Titian, Michelangelo, and Raphael, as well as an important collection of drawings. He was also the principal patron of El Greco. He commissioned the Farnese Hours from Giulio Clovio, described as arguably the last major illuminated manuscript, which was completed in 1546 after nine years in the making; it is now the property of the Morgan Library in New York. In 1550, Farnese acquired a northern portion of the Palatine Hill in Rome and converted ruins from the palace of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, whose reign ran from A.D. 14 to 37, into a summer home and formal gardens. The Farnese Gardens became one of the first botanical gardens in Europe; the plant Acacia farnesiana takes its name from them, as does the biochemical farnesol, derived from its floral essence. The buildings he built or restored include the Church of the Gesù in Rome, the Villa Farnese at Caprarola, a Farnese palace near Lake Bracciano, and the monastery of Tre Fontane. At Caprarola, in 1556, he commissioned Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola to convert a half-completed fortress into a country villa; construction ran from 1559 to 1573, and in 1561 Taddeo Zuccari and his workshop were commissioned to decorate the lower floor rooms.

• 7. Death and the Gesù

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  On the 7th of July 1588, Vincenzo Remosetti, the physician of the Duke of Urbino, was summoned to the Farnese Palace at Caprarola for a consultation over what was described as a great epileptic episode accompanied by severe respiratory problems. The Cardinal was subjected to cautery and bleeding. By the 13th of August, the doctor had to return to Rome, leaving Farnese restless, weak, and suffering from gout in his left arm. On the 28th of February 1589, he suffered what appears to have been a stroke. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese died quietly of apoplexy in Rome on the 2nd of March 1589, at the age of sixty-eight. He was buried before the high altar in the Church of the Gesù. Forty-two cardinals attended the funeral ceremonies. Above the main interior door of the Gesù is the famous inscription commemorating both the establishment of the Jesuit Order by Pope Paul III in 1540 and the building of the church through Farnese's generosity. The Gesù was designed by Giacomo Vignola and Giacomo della Porta between 1568 and 1575. His will, originally written in 1580 and supplemented in 1585, was revoked and replaced by a new will on the 22nd of June 1588, with further codicils added in July and August, just months before his death.