Pope Paul III

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Pope Paul III is the head of the Catholic Church to whom Nicolaus Copernicus dedicated his treatise on a sun-centered universe. That single dedication tied the Farnese name to one of the boldest scientific claims of the age.

  Born Alessandro Farnese, he rose through the Roman Curia to sit on the throne of Saint Peter. He arrived at a moment when the Catholic Church itself seemed to be cracking apart. It had been battered by the sack of Rome and by a Protestant revolt spreading across German lands.

  How did a cardinal tied to scandal reach that throne at all? What did he actually do once he held it, faced with reformers demanding change and an emperor demanding obedience? And why would a pope who summoned the Council of Trent and welcomed the Jesuits also spend his reign advancing his own family? He fathered children before he ever wore the tiara. He signed decrees that reached into the freedom of slaves living in Rome. The record he left behind pulls in several directions at once.

• 2. A Cardinal's Complicated Rise

  ›

  On the 29th of February 1468, Alessandro Farnese was born in Canino, Latium, the second son of Pier Luigi I Farnese and Giovanna Caetani. Her family, the Caetani, had already produced two popes, Gelasius II and Boniface VIII. The Farnese had prospered for generations, but Alessandro's own rise to the papacy multiplied the family's wealth and power far beyond that.

  At the University of Pisa and later at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, Alessandro received a humanist education, then trained as an apostolic notary. He joined the Roman Curia in 1491, and two years later Pope Alexander VI appointed him Cardinal-Deacon of Santi Cosma e Damiano. His sister Giulia was reputedly the pope's mistress, and may have helped secure her brother's promotion. Contemporaries mocked him as the Borgia brother-in-law, just as they mocked Giulia as the Bride of Christ. Decades later, in 1535, the Venetian nobleman Soriano recorded a cruder nickname: cardinale Fregnese, which translates roughly as Cardinal Pussy or Cardinal Cunt.

  As a young cleric, Alessandro kept a mistress named Silvia Ruffini, with whom he had at least four children between about 1500 and 1510. Their names were Costanza, Pier Luigi, Paolo, and Ranuccio; Paolo died young, before ever being legitimized. In July 1505, Pope Julius II legitimated the two eldest sons so they could inherit the Farnese estates. On the 23rd of June 1513, Pope Leo X legitimated Pier Luigi a second time and extended the same status to Ranuccio.

  On the 28th of March 1509, Alessandro was named Bishop of Parma. He was not ordained a priest until the 26th of June 1519, and not consecrated bishop until the 2nd of July that same year. As bishop, he came under the influence of his vicar-general, Bartolomeo Guidiccioni, who steered him toward reform. Alessandro broke off his relationship with Silvia Ruffini and recommitted himself to reforming his diocese.

  Under Pope Clement VII, Alessandro rose to Cardinal Bishop of Ostia and Dean of the College of Cardinals. That post put him one step from the papal throne itself.

• 3. An Election to Buy Time

  ›

  When Clement VII died in 1534, the College of Cardinals elected Alessandro Farnese as Pope Paul III on the 13th of October. Farnese belonged to no faction, and cardinals reasoned that his poor health promised a short papacy, buying them time to agree on a future candidate. On the 3rd of November, the protodeacon Innocenzo Cybo formally crowned him.

  Paul III elevated his own grandsons to the cardinalate: Alessandro Farnese, aged just 14, and Guido Ascanio Sforza, aged 16. The move angered the reform party and drew a formal protest from Emperor Charles V. Charles forgave the appointments soon after, when Paul also brought Reginald Pole, Gasparo Contarini, Jacopo Sadoleto, and Giovanni Pietro Caraffa into the Sacred College.

  One of them, Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, would later reign as Pope Paul IV. His presence in the Sacred College hinted at the reform still to come.

• 4. Reform, Rebuffed

  ›

  As the fourth pope to confront the Protestant Reformation, Paul III was the first to take active steps against it. On the 2nd of June 1536, he summoned a general council to meet at Mantua the following May. Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, refused to guarantee order for the gathering. Protestant princes opposed it outright, so Paul first delayed the council a year, then abandoned the plan entirely.

  In 1536, Paul assembled nine prelates known for learning and piety and asked them to report on reforming the Church. Their 1537 report, the Consilium de emendenda ecclesia, exposed abuses across the Curia and public worship and proposed bold fixes; it was widely printed. Martin Luther's 1538 edition of the report carried a vignette showing cardinals scrubbing the Augean stable of the Roman Church with foxtails instead of brooms. In the end, none of the committee's recommendations produced real results.

  At the Conference of Regensburg in 1541, Cardinal Gasparo Contarini proposed a formula holding that we are justified by faith alone. Rome rejected the formula in a consistory on the 27th of May. Luther said he would accept it only if his opponents admitted it changed Church doctrine. When the Regensburg talks collapsed, Emperor Charles V pushed for a still larger council. The Council of Trent finally convened on the 15th of March 1545, under the bull Laetare Hierusalem.

  In England, the campaign against what Rome called idolatry culminated in the dismantling of the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Paul III responded by excommunicating Henry VIII on the 17th of December 1538 and placing all of England under interdict.

  The same years in which Paul confronted heresy abroad also saw him draw the papacy into his own family's ambitions much closer to home.

• 5. Family Wars, Foreign Wars

  ›

  To secure the Duchy of Camerino for his grandson Ottavio Farnese, Paul forcibly seized it from the Duke of Urbino in 1540. Heavy new taxes on his own subjects brought him close to open war at home. Perugia renounced its obedience and was besieged by Paul's son Pier Luigi, surrendering its freedom entirely. The burghers of Colonna were likewise defeated, and in 1541 Ascanio Colonna was banished.

  After the peace of Crespy in September 1544, Emperor Charles V turned to suppressing Protestantism by force. Ahead of the 1545 Diet of Worms, Paul's legate Cardinal Alessandro Farnese struck a covenant committing the pope to help fight the German Protestant princes. Paul's real motive was territorial. With the emperor distracted in Germany, he saw a chance to win the duchies of Parma and Piacenza for his son Pier Luigi. He offered to trade the less valuable territories of Camerino and Nepi in exchange, and Charles agreed, pledging 12,000 infantry, 500 cavalry, and substantial funds.

  The campaign opened in the west, where Archbishop of Cologne Hermann of Wied had converted to Protestantism in 1542. Hermann was excommunicated on the 16th of April 1546 and forced by the emperor to abdicate in February 1547. By the end of 1546, Charles had subjugated South Germany. His victory at the Battle of Mühlberg on the 24th of April 1547 secured his authority everywhere, capturing both leaders of the Schmalkaldic League. The emperor then declared the Augsburg Interim, a compromise imposed on the defeated Protestants.

  Even after subduing the Protestant armies, Charles refused to back Paul's territorial ambitions for Pier Luigi, and relations between them turned cold. The break became total when Ferrante Gonzaga, the imperial vice-regent, forcibly expelled Pier Luigi from his territory. In 1547, Pier Luigi was assassinated at Piacenza, and Paul placed part of the blame on the emperor himself. That same year, the death of Francis I of France removed a potential ally, and Paul was forced to accept the emperor's Interim measures. When Paul demanded the restitution of Piacenza in the Church's name, the emperor refused to surrender the city. Pier Luigi's own heir, Ottavio Farnese, blocked him in Parma as well.

  Paul's rule extended well beyond his wars in Italy and Germany. It reached into decisions about who could trade, worship, and live free across the Papal States.

• 6. Merchants, Slaves and Mercy

  ›

  In 1534, Paul opened the door in Ancona to merchants of every nationality and religion from the Levant, letting them settle there with their families. Ancona had passed into the Papal States under his predecessor Clement VII, and the decision turned it into a prosperous trading city for centuries afterward. A Venetian who passed through the city in 1535 recorded that it was full of merchants from every nation and mostly Greeks and Turks. That Greek and Ottoman presence faded later in the 16th century, worn down by restrictive measures from Italian authorities and the pope himself.

  In May and June of 1537, Paul issued the bull Sublimis Deus, also called Unigenitus or Veritas ipsa. The historian Prein later called it the Magna Carta for the human rights of the Americas' indigenous peoples. The bull itself declared that the Indians were human beings and they were not to be robbed of their freedom or possessions. Its companion document, Pastorale officium, made excommunication automatic for anyone who defied the new ruling.

  The Council of the West Indies and the Spanish Crown fought back, arguing that the bull violated their patronato rights. Paul annulled his own orders the following year in the document Non Indecens Videtur. The scholar Stogre notes that Sublimis Deus does not even appear in Denzinger, the standard compendium of official Catholic teaching. Davis argues the annulment came from Paul's dispute with the Spanish crown. The original bull kept circulating anyway, quoted for years afterward by las Casas and other supporters of Indian rights.

  According to Falkowski, Sublimis Deus effectively revoked Alexander VI's earlier bull Inter caetera, even while leaving colonizers the duty of converting native peoples. Father Gustavo Gutierrez calls it the most important papal document relating to the condition of native Indians, addressed to all Christians. Maxwell points out that the bull never changed older Church teaching. Enslaving Indians remained permissible if they counted as enemies of Christendom in a just war, though he adds Indian nations retained the right to self-defense. The sociologist Stark calls the bull magnificent and argues it was long forgotten only because Protestant historians neglected it. Falola adds an important caveat. The bull concerned native peoples of the New World. It said nothing against the transatlantic slave trade driven by the Spanish monarchy and the Holy Roman Emperor.

  In 1545, Paul repealed an ancient Roman law that had let slaves claim freedom by touching the emperor's statue on the Capitoline Hill. He justified it by pointing to the number of homeless people and tramps crowding the city. The repeal covered people who had become Christian after being enslaved, as well as those born to Christian slaves. It also reaffirmed the right to publicly buy and sell slaves of both sexes in Rome. Stogre argues the real reason for lifting the restriction was a shortage of slaves in Rome at the time. By 1548, Paul had gone further still, authorizing the purchase and possession of Muslim slaves throughout the Papal States.

  That same year, 1537, Paul also issued Altitudo divini consilii, a bull addressing how missionaries should apply the sacraments, above all baptism, to new converts. The bull mattered most in the early colonial years, when hundreds and sometimes thousands of indigenous people were baptized in a single day. On the thorny question of polygamy among new converts, the bull ruled that a man had to marry his first wife. If he could not remember which wife came first, he could simply choose among the wives the one they preferred.

• 7. Stone, Fresco and Patronage

  ›

  The Last Judgement, Michelangelo's fresco for the Sistine Chapel, stands as the most significant artistic work produced during Paul's reign. Clement VII had first commissioned it, but after Clement died in 1534, Paul renewed the commission and saw it through to completion in 1541.

  As a cardinal, Alessandro had already begun building the Palazzo Farnese in central Rome, and its scale grew even grander once he became pope. The architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger designed it, Michelangelo later refined it, and Giacomo della Porta completed it. Like his Villa Farnese at Caprarola, the palace announced the family's wealth and power for all of Rome to see.

  When Antonio da Sangallo died in 1546, Paul put the aging Michelangelo in charge of building St. Peter's Basilica. He also commissioned Michelangelo's final frescoes, the Crucifixion of St. Peter and the Conversion of St. Paul, painted between 1542 and 1550. They hang in the Pauline Chapel of the Vatican.

  The Venetian painter Titian portrayed the pope in 1543, and again in 1546 alongside his grandsons Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma. Both paintings now hang in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. Paul also strengthened military fortifications across Rome and the Papal States. He had Michelangelo relocate the ancient bronze of Emperor Marcus Aurelius to the Capitoline Hill, where it became the centerpiece of the Piazza del Campidoglio.

  Stone and fresco were not the only structures Paul left standing. He was reshaping the Church's own institutions at the very same time.

• 8. New Orders, Final Reckoning

  ›

  During his pontificate, Paul recognized the Jesuits, the Barnabites, and the Congregation of the Oratory. On the 27th of September 1540, Paul formally approved the Society of Jesus in the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae. The founding bull, Iniunctum nobis, initially capped the order at 60 members. Paul lifted that limit once he saw how effective the Jesuits were in their missionary work. In 1548, he permitted Ignatius of Loyola to print his Spiritual Exercises.

  Paul approved the Rule of the Somaschi Fathers in 1540. On the 9th of June 1544, he approved the Rule for the Ursulines, in the bull Regimini Universalis.

  Across his papacy, Paul elevated 71 cardinals in 12 consistories, six of whom he first named secretly, in pectore, before revealing them later. Two of those cardinals became popes afterward: Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte, the future Julius III, and Marcello Cervini, the future Marcellus II. Paul also brought Rodrigo Luis de Borja y de Castre-Pinós, a great-great-grandson of Alexander VI, into the college. He added Ippolito II d'Este, Alexander VI's grandson, and Enrique de Borja y Aragón, another of the Borgia pope's great-grandsons. He also named John Fisher a cardinal, but King Henry VIII had Fisher executed after warning the pope not to make the appointment.

  In 1535, Paul intended to make Desiderius Erasmus a cardinal, but Erasmus declined, citing his poor health and advanced age. Ahead of the 1542 consistory, Paul planned to nominate Giovanni Guidiccioni, who died before it convened. The historian Conradus Eubel notes that Paul reserved an unspecified number of cardinals in pectore at that same gathering. During his papacy, Paul canonized a single saint, Ginés de la Jara, in 1541.

  On the 3rd of November 1549, Paul celebrated the anniversary of his papal coronation. He was weighed down by his own family's betrayals and by the recent fall of Parma to Charles V. In a violent argument with his cardinal nephew, Alessandro Farnese, Paul grew so overwrought that he tore off his own red beretta. He ripped it apart and hurled it to the ground. The strain may have triggered a heart attack. On the 6th of November, a sudden fever sent him to the Quirinal Hill, where he hoped fresher air would ease his illness. On the 7th of November, Diego Lasso, agent to King Ferdinand I of Bohemia and Hungary, wrote that the pope's temperature had risen that morning. The French ambassador in Rome told King Henry II of France that Paul was suffering from a catarrh by 7 in the evening. He guessed the pope had little time left to live. Paul III died of the catarrh on the 10th of November 1549, reportedly repenting of his nepotism on his deathbed. His bronze tomb, the work of Guglielmo della Porta, still stands inside St. Peter's Basilica.

  Stendhal drew on an unreliable Italian account of Alessandro's dissolute youth to write his novel La Chartreuse de Parme. Peter O'Toole later played a version of the pope in the television series The Tudors. The young Alessandro appeared on screen through Diarmuid Noyes in Borgia and Cyron Melville in The Borgias.

  Four centuries after his death, his face resurfaced in a very different setting. It appeared in a parody of the Sgt. Pepper's album cover, tucked inside the Mothers of Invention's We're Only in It for the Money.