The Papacy, too, when its sufferings became so great, began to excite a sympathy half religious and half political.The kings could not tolerate that one of their number should arrogate to himself the right of Papal gaoler, and concluded (August 18, 1527) the Treaty of Amiens, one of the objects of which was the deliverance of Clement.They thus, at all events, turned to their own account the unpopularity which the deeds of the Imperial troops had excited.At the same time the Emperor became seriously embarrassed, even in Spain, where the prelates and grandees never saw him without making the most urgent remonstrances.
When a general deputation of the clergy and laity, all clothed in mourning, was projected, Charles, fearing that troubles might arise out of it, like those of the insurrection quelled a few years before, forbade the scheme.Not only did he not dare to prolong the maltreatment of the Pope, but he was absolutely compelled, even apart from all considerations of foreign politics, to be reconciled with the Papacy, which he had so grievously wounded.For the temper of the German people, which certainly pointed to a different course, seemed to him, like German affairs generally, to afford no foundation for a policy.It is possible, too, as a Venetian maintains, that the memory of the sack of Rome lay heavy on his conscience, and tended to hasten that expiation which was sealed by the permanent subjection of the Florentines to the Medicean family of which the Pope was a member.The 'nipote' and new Duke, Alessandro Medici, was married to the natural daughter of the Emperor.
In the following years the plan of a Council enabled Charles to keep the Papacy in all essential points under his control, and at one and the same time to protect and to oppress it.The greatest danger of all--secularization--the danger which came from within, from the Popes themselves and their 'nipoti,' was adjourned for centuries by the German Reformation.Just as this alone had made the expedition against Rome (1527) possible and successful, so did it compel the Papacy to become once more the expression of a world-wide spiritual power, to raise itself from the soulless debasement in which it lay, and to place itself at the head of all the enemies of this reformation.The institution thus developed during the latter years of Clement VII, and under Paul III, Paul IV, and their successors, in the face of the defection of half Europe, was a new, regenerated hierarchy, which avoided all the great and dangerous scandals of former times, particularly nepotism, with its attempts at territorial aggrandizement, and which, in alliance with the Catholic princes, and impelled by a newborn spiritual force, found its chief work in the recovery of what had been lost.It only existed and is only intelligible in opposition to the seceders.In this sense it can be said with perfect truth that the moral salvation of the Papacy is due to its mortal enemies.And now its political position, too, though certainly under the permanent tutelage of Spain, became impregnable; almost without effort it inherited, on the extinction of its vassals, the legitimate line of Este and the house of Della Rovere, the duchies of Ferrara and Urbino.
But without the Reformation--if, indeed, it is possible to think it away--the whole ecclesiastical State would long ago have passed into secular hands.
Patriotism In conclusion, let us briefly consider the effect of these political circumstances on the spirit of the nation at large.
It is evident that the general political uncertainty in Italy, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was of a kind to excite in the better spirits of the time a patriotic disgust and opposition.Dante and Petrarch, in their day, proclaimed loudly a common Italy, the object of the highest efforts of all her children.It may be objected that this was only the enthusiasm of a few highly instructed men, in which the mass of the people had no share; but it can hardly have been otherwise even in Germany, although in name at least that country was united, and recognized in the Emperor one supreme head.The first patriotic utterances of German literature, if we except some verses of the 'Minnesanger,' belong to the humanists of the time of Maximilian Iand after, and read like an echo of Italian declamations.And yet, as a matter of fact, Germany had been long a nation in a truer sense than Italy ever was since the Roman days.France owes the consciousness of its national unity mainly to its conflicts with the English, and Spain has never permanently succeeded in absorbing Portugal, closely related as the two countries are.For Italy, the existence of the ecclesiastical State, and the conditions under which alone it could continue, were a permanent obstacle to national unity, an obstacle whose removal seemed hopeless.When, therefore, in the political intercourse of the fifteenth century, the common fatherland is sometimes emphatically named, it is done in most cases to annoy some other Italian State.But those deeply serious and sorrowful appeals to national sentiment were not heard again till later, when the time for unity had gone by, when the country was inundated with Frenchmen and Spaniards.The sense of local patriotism may be said in some measure to have taken the place of this feeling, though it was but a poor equivalent for it.
