Editing Pope Clement VII (section)

==Pope==
Following Adrian VI's death on 14 September 1523, Cardinal Giulio overcame the opposition of the French king<ref>British History Online. Quote: "The King of France declared himself openly against the election of the Cardinal de Medicis." ([http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/spain/vol2/pp591-596 19 November 1523 entry])</ref> and finally succeeded in being elected Pope Clement VII in the next [[Papal conclave, 1523|conclave]] (19 November 1523).<ref name=":2" />{{rp|29}}

Pope Clement VII brought to the papal throne a high reputation for political ability and possessed in fact all the accomplishments of a wily diplomat. But his contemporaries considered him worldly and indifferent to the perceived dangers of the [[Protestant Reformation]].

At his accession, Clement VII sent the [[Archbishop of Capua]], [[Nikolaus von Schönberg]], to the kings of [[Early modern France|France]], [[Habsburg Spain|Spain]], and [[Kingdom of England|England]], in order to bring the [[Italian War of 1521–1526|Italian War]] to an end. An early report from the [[Protonotary apostolic|Protonotary]] [[Marino Caracciolo]]<ref>Giorgio Viviano Marchesi Buonaccorsi, ''Antichità ed excellenza del Protonotariato Apostolico Partecipante'' (Faenza: Benedetti 1751), pp. 297–299. Caracciolo was a Neapolitan, of the family of the Counts of Galera; he became a Cardinal on 21 May 1535.</ref> to the Emperor records: "As the Turks threaten to conquer Christian states, it seems to him that it is his first duty as Pope to bring about a general peace of all Christian princes, and he begs him (the Emperor), as the firstborn son of the Church, to aid him in this pious work."<ref>[http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/spain/vol2/pp591-596 Caracciolo to Charles V (30 November 1523), in: 'Spain: November 1523', in ''Calendar of State Papers'', Spain, Volume 2, 1509–1525, ed. G A Bergenroth (London, 1866), pp. 591–596. British History Online] [accessed 28 March 2016]</ref> But the pope's attempt failed.

===Continental and Medici politics===
[[File:Giuliano Bugiardini - Ritratto di papa Clemente VII.jpg|thumb|Portrait of Clement VII by [[Giuliano Bugiardini]] (c. 1532)]]
[[Francis I of France]]'s conquest of Milan in 1524, during his [[Italian campaign of 1524–1525]], prompted the Pope to quit the [[Holy Roman Empire|Imperial]]–Spanish side and to ally himself with other Italian princes, including the [[Republic of Venice]], and France through a treaty of January 1525. This treaty granted the definitive acquisition of [[Parma]] and [[Piacenza]] for the [[Papal States]], the rule of Medici over Florence and the free passage of the French troops to [[Naples]]. This policy in itself was sound and patriotic, but Clement VII's zeal soon cooled; by his want of foresight and unseasonable economy, he laid himself open to an attack from the turbulent Roman barons, which obliged him to invoke the mediation of the emperor, Charles V.{{cn|date=October 2024}} One month later, Francis I was crushed and imprisoned in the [[Battle of Pavia]], and Clement VII went deeper in his former engagements with Charles V, signing an alliance with the [[Charles de Lannoy|viceroy of Naples]].

But deeply concerned about Imperial arrogance, he was to pick up with France again when Francis I was freed after the [[Treaty of Madrid (1526)]]: the Pope entered into the [[League of Cognac]] together with France, Venice, and [[Francesco II Sforza]] of [[Duchy of Milan|Milan]]. Clement VII issued an invective against Charles V, who in reply defined him a "wolf" instead of a "shepherd", menacing the summoning of a council about the [[Lutheran]] question.{{cn|date=October 2024}}

Like his cousin Pope Leo X, Clement was considered too generous to his Medici relatives, draining the Vatican treasuries. This included the assignment of positions all the way up to Cardinal, lands, titles, and money. These actions prompted reform measures after Clement's death to help prevent such excessive nepotism.<ref name="Tomas">{{cite book | last=Tomas | first=Natalie R. | title=The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence | publisher=Ashgate | location=Aldershot | year=2003 | isbn=978-0754607779 | pages=126–127}}</ref>

===Evangelization===
In his 1529 bull ''[[Intra Arcana]]'' Clement VII gave a grant of permissions and privileges to Charles V and the [[Spanish Empire]], which included the power of [[Jus patronatus|patronage]] within their colonies in the Americas.<ref name="Stogre">{{cite book|last=Stogre|first=Michael|title=That the world may believe: The development of papal social thought on aboriginal rights|year=1992|publisher=Éditions Paulines|isbn=978-2-89039-549-7|location=[[Sherbrooke]]|page=116}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|title = Pope Paul III and the American Indians|jstor = 1508245|journal = The Harvard Theological Review|date = 1937-04-01|pages = 76–77|volume = 30|issue = 2|first = Lewis|last = Hanke|doi=10.1017/s0017816000022161| s2cid=162725228 }}</ref>

===Sack of Rome===
{{Main|Sack of Rome (1527)}}

{{more citations needed section|date=March 2016}}
The Pope's wavering politics also caused the rise of the Imperial party inside the [[Roman Curia|Curia]]: Cardinal [[Pompeo Colonna]]'s soldiers pillaged [[Vatican Hill]] and gained control of the whole of Rome in his name. The humiliated Pope promised therefore to bring the [[Papal States]] to the Imperial side again. But soon after, Colonna left the siege and went to Naples, not keeping his promises and dismissing the Cardinal from his charge.{{contradictory inline|date=March 2016}} From this point on, Clement VII could do nothing but follow the fate of the French party to the end.{{ambiguous|date=March 2016}}

Soon he found himself alone in Italy too, as [[Alfonso I d'Este]], duke of Ferrara, had supplied artillery to the Imperial army, causing the League Army to keep a distance behind the horde of [[Landsknecht]]s led by [[Charles III, Duke of Bourbon]] and [[Georg von Frundsberg]], allowing them to reach Rome without harm.{{dubious|date=March 2016}}

[[File:Castel Sant'Angelo bild.jpg|thumb|Castel Sant'Angelo]]
Charles of Bourbon died while mounting a ladder during the short siege and his starving troops, unpaid and left without a guide, felt free to ravage Rome from 6 May 1527. The many incidents of murder, rape, and vandalism that followed ended the splendours of [[Italian Renaissance|Renaissance Rome]] forever. Clement VII, who had displayed no more resolution in his military than in his political conduct, was shortly afterwards (6 June) obliged to surrender himself together with the [[Castel Sant'Angelo]], where he had taken refuge. He agreed to pay a ransom of 400,000 [[ducat]]s in exchange for his life; conditions included the cession of [[Parma]], [[Piacenza]], [[Civitavecchia]], and [[Modena]] to the Holy Roman Empire. (Only the last could be occupied in fact.) At the same time, Venice took advantage of his situation to capture [[Cervia]] and [[Ravenna]] while [[Sigismondo Malatesta]] returned to [[Rimini]].

Clement was kept as a prisoner in Castel Sant'Angelo for six months. After having bought off some Imperial officers, he escaped disguised as a peddler and took shelter in [[Orvieto]] and then in [[Viterbo]]. He came back to a depopulated and devastated Rome only in October 1528.

Meanwhile, in Florence, Republican enemies of the Medici took advantage of the chaos to again expel the Pope's family from the city.

In June 1529 the warring parties signed the [[Peace of Barcelona]]. The Papal States regained some cities and Charles V agreed to restore the Medici to power in Florence. In 1530, after an eleven-month [[Siege of Florence (1529–1530)|siege]], the Tuscan city capitulated and Clement VII installed his illegitimate nephew [[Alessandro de' Medici|Alessandro]] as duke. Subsequently, the Pope followed a policy of subservience to the emperor, endeavouring on the one hand to induce him to act with severity against the Lutherans in Germany and on the other to avoid his demands for a general council.

====Appearance====
[[File:Sebastiano del Piombo – Portrait of Pope Clement VII (ca. 1526).jpg|thumb|Clement VII, age 48<br />Portrait by [[Sebastiano del Piombo]], 1526]]
During his half-year imprisonment in 1527, Clement VII grew a full beard as a sign of mourning for the [[Sack of Rome (1527)|sack of Rome]]. This was in contradiction to Catholic [[canon law]],<ref>{{cite web |title=Catholic Encyclopedia: Beard |url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02362a.htm |website=www.newadvent.org}}</ref> which required priests to be clean-shaven, but had as precedent the beard [[Pope Julius II]] wore for nine months in 1511–12 as a sign of mourning for the papal city of [[Bologna]].

Unlike Julius II, however, Clement kept his beard until his death in 1534. His example in wearing a beard was followed by his successor, [[Paul III]], and indeed by 24 popes after him, down to [[Innocent XII]], who died in 1700. Clement was thus the unintentional originator of a fashion that lasted well over a century.{{cn|date=October 2024}}

====Ancona====
In 1532, Clement VII took possession of [[Ancona]], which definitively lost its freedom and became part of the [[Papal States]], ending hundreds of years when the [[Republic of Ancona]] was an important maritime power.{{cn|date=October 2024}}

===English Reformation===
[[File:Charles V enthroned over his defeated enemies Giulio Clovio mid 16th century.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|left|[[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]], enthroned over his defeated enemies (from left): [[Suleiman the Magnificent]], Pope Clement VII, [[Francis I of France]], the [[William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg|Duke of Cleves]], the [[John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony|Elector of Saxony]], and the [[Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse|Landgrave of Hesse]]. [[Giulio Clovio]], mid-16th century]]
By the late 1520s, King [[Henry VIII]] wanted to have his marriage to Charles's aunt [[Catherine of Aragon]] [[Declaration of nullity|annulled]]. The couple's sons died in infancy, threatening the future of the [[House of Tudor]], although Henry did have a daughter, [[Mary I of England|Mary Tudor]]. Henry claimed that this lack of a male heir was because his marriage was "blighted in the eyes of God".<ref name="Phillips">{{cite book|last=Phillips|first=Roderick|title=Untying the Knot: A Short History of Divorce|publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]]|isbn=978-0-521-42370-0|location=[[Cambridge]]; [[New York City|New York]]; [[Melbourne]]|page=20|date=28 June 1991}}</ref> Catherine had been his [[Arthur, Prince of Wales|brother]]'s widow, but the marriage had been childless, so the marriage was not against Old Testament law, which forbids such unions only if the brother had children.<ref name="Leviticus 20:21">See: {{Bibleverse|Leviticus|20:21|wyc}} and exception {{bibleverse|Deuteronomy|25:5|Wyc}}</ref> Moreover, [[Pope Julius II]] had given a [[Dispensation (Catholic canon law)|dispensation]] to allow the wedding.<ref name="Lacey">{{cite book|last=Lacey|first=Robert|author-link=Robert Lacey|title=The Life and Times of Henry VIII|date=1972|publisher=[[Weidenfeld & Nicolson]]|isbn=978-0-297-83163-1|editor=Antonia Fraser|editor-link=Antonia Fraser|location=[[London]]|page=17}}</ref> Henry now argued that this had been wrong and that his marriage had never been valid. In 1527 Henry asked Clement to annul the marriage, but the Pope, possibly acting under pressure from Catherine's nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, whose effective prisoner he was, refused. According to Catholic teaching, a validly contracted marriage is indivisible until death, and thus the pope cannot annul a marriage on the basis of an [[Impediment (Catholic canon law)|impediment]] previously dispensed.<ref name="Scarisbrick2011">{{cite book|author=J. J. Scarisbrick|title=Henry VIII|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oSuFAwAAQBAJ|edition=reprint of 1968|date= 2011|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven|isbn=978-0-300-18395-5|pages=163–197|chapter=Chapter 7: The Canon Law of the Divorce}}</ref> Many people close to Henry wished simply to ignore Clement, but in October 1530 a meeting of clergy and lawyers advised that the [[Parliament of England]] could not empower the [[Archbishop of Canterbury]] to act against the Pope's prohibition. In Parliament, Bishop [[John Fisher]] was the Pope's champion.
[[File:Lead-alloy papal bulla issued under Clement VII (FindID 869584).jpg|thumb|Lead [[Bulla (seal)|bulla]] of Clement VII, found in [[Hertfordshire]], England]]
Henry subsequently underwent a marriage ceremony with [[Anne Boleyn]], in either late 1532 or early 1533.<ref name="Ives">For the dates and details of Henry VIII's controversial second marriage, see {{cite book|last=Ives|first=Eric William|author-link=Eric Ives|title=The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: 'The Most Happy'|publisher=[[Blackwell Publishing]]|isbn=978-0-631-23479-1|pages=[https://archive.org/details/lifedeathofanneb00ives/page/160 160–171]|location=[[Malden, Massachusetts]]; [[Oxford]]; [[Carlton, Victoria]]|date=20 August 2004|url=https://archive.org/details/lifedeathofanneb00ives/page/160}}</ref> The marriage was made easier by the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury [[William Warham]], a stalwart friend of the Pope, after which Henry persuaded Clement to appoint [[Thomas Cranmer]], a friend of the Boleyn family, as his successor. The Pope granted the [[papal bull]]s necessary for Cranmer's promotion to Canterbury, and also demanded that Cranmer take the customary oath of allegiance to the pope before his consecration. Laws made under Henry already declared that bishops would be consecrated even without papal approval. Cranmer was consecrated, while declaring beforehand that he did not agree with the oath he would take.<ref>Thomas Cranmer: Churchman and Scholar. By Paul Ayris and David Selwyn. Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1 January 1999 (pp. 119–121)</ref> Cranmer was prepared to grant the annulment<ref>Cranmer, in a letter, describes it as a ''divorce'', but it was clearly not a dissolution of a marriage in the modern sense but the annulment of a marriage which was said to be defective on the grounds of affinity—Catherine was his deceased brother's widow. In his decree, Cranmer uses the words, "...dictum matrimonium..., ut praemittitur, contractum et consummatum, nullum et omnino invalidum fuisse et esse..." {{cite book|author=Gilbert Burnet|title=The History of the Reformation of the Church of England ... in Six Volumes|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-u83AQAAMAAJ|volume=I, Part II|year=1825|publisher=W. Baynes and Son|location=London|language=la|page=153}}</ref> of the marriage to Catherine as Henry required. The Pope responded to the marriage by [[Excommunication (Catholic Church)|excommunicating]] both Henry and Cranmer from the Catholic Church.

Consequently, in England, in the same year, the [[Act Concerning Ecclesiastical Appointments and Absolute Restraint of Annates|Act of Conditional Restraint of Annates]] transferred the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the Pope to the Crown. The [[Act Concerning Peter's Pence and Dispensations|Peter's Pence Act]] outlawed the annual payment by landowners of [[Peter's Pence|one penny]] to the Pope. This act also reiterated that England had "no superior under God, but only your [[Grace (style)|Grace]]" and that Henry's "imperial crown" had been diminished by the Pope's "unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions".<ref name="Lehmberg">{{cite book|last=Lehmberg|first=Stanford E.|author-link=Stanford Lehmberg|title=The Reformation Parliament 1529–1536|url=https://archive.org/details/reformationparli0000lehm|url-access=registration|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-07655-5|location=London and New York|year=1970}}</ref> Ultimately, in 1534, Henry led the English Parliament to pass the [[Acts of Supremacy#First Act of Supremacy 1534|Act of Supremacy]] that established the independent [[Church of England]] and broke from the Catholic Church.

===Marriage of Catherine de' Medici===
[[File: Meeting of Francis I and Pope Clement VII in Marseilles 13 October 1533.jpg|thumb|Meeting of [[Francis I of France|Francis I]] and Pope Clement VII in [[Marseille]], 13 October 1533]]
In 1533, Clement married his cousin's granddaughter, [[Catherine de' Medici]], to the future King [[Henry II of France]], son of King Francis I. Due to an illness, before setting out to [[Marseille]] for the wedding, Clement issued a Bull on 3 September 1533 giving instructions on what to do if he died outside Rome.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/Bull_Clem_7.html|title=Sede Vacante 1534|first=John P.|last= Adams|website=www.csun.edu}}</ref> The wedding ceremony took place at [[Église Saint-Ferréol les Augustins]] on 28 October 1533 and was conducted by Clement himself. It was "followed by nine days of lavish banquets, pageants, and festivities."<ref name="Strathern"/> On 7 November in Marseille, Clement created four new cardinals, all of them French.<ref name=":1" />{{rp|22}} He also held separate, private meetings with Francis I and Charles V. Charles' daughter, [[Margaret of Parma|Margaret of Austria]] was set to marry Clement's relative—[[Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of Florence]]—in 1536.<ref name="Fletcher">Catherine Fletcher, ''The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici'' (London: Bodley Head, 2016)</ref>

According to Medici historian Paul Strathern, Clement marrying Catherine into France's royal family and Alessandro becoming [[Duke of the Florentine Republic|Duke of Florence]] and marrying into the Hapsburg family "marked perhaps the most significant turning point in the history of the Medici family—the ascent into nobility in Florence, and the joining of the French royal family. Without the guiding hand of Clement VII, the Medici would never have been able to achieve the pinnacles of greatness that were yet to come" in the following centuries.<ref name="Strathern"/>