Editing Pope Clement VII (section)

===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}}