Pope Paul IV
Pius IV | |
---|---|
Orders | |
Consecration | 18 September 1505 by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa |
Created cardinal | 22 December 1536 by Pope Paul III |
Personal details | |
Born | Gian Pietro Carafa 28 June 1476 |
Died | 18 August 1559 Rome, Papal States | (aged 83)
Previous post(s) |
|
Motto | Dominus mihi adjutor ("The Lord is my helper")[1] |
Coat of arms | |
Other popes named Paul |
Papal styles of Pope Paul IV | |
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His Holiness | |
Spoken style | Your Holiness |
Religious style | Holy Father |
Posthumous style | None |
Pope Paul IV (
Carafa was appointed
Early life
Gian Pietro Carafa was born in Capriglia Irpina, near Avellino, into the prominent Carafa family of Naples.[2] His father Giovanni Antonio Carafa died in West Flanders in 1516 and his mother Vittoria Camponeschi was the daughter of Pietro Lalle Camponeschi, 5th Conte di Montorio, a Neapolitan nobleman, and Dona Maria de Noronha, a Portuguese noblewoman of the House of Pereira.[citation needed]
Church career
Bishop
He was mentored by Cardinal
In 1524,
Cardinal
In December 1536 he was made
The
Election as pope
He was a surprise choice as pope to succeed
Carafa, elected on 23 May 1555, took the name of "Paul IV" in honor of
Papacy
As pope, Paul IV's nationalism was a driving force; he used the office to preserve some liberties in the face of fourfold foreign occupation. Like Pope Paul III, he was an enemy of the Colonna family. His treatment of Giovanna d'Aragona, who had married into that family, drew further negative comment from Venice because she had long been a patron of artists and writers.[7]
Paul IV was displeased at the French signing a five-year truce with Spain in February 1556 (in the midst of the Italian War of 1551–1559) and urged King Henry II of France to join the Papal States in an invasion of Spanish Naples. On 1 September 1556, King Philip II responded by preemptively invading the Papal States with 12,000 men under the Duke of Alba. French forces approaching from the north were defeated and forced to withdraw at Civitella del Tronto in August 1557.[8] The Papal armies were left exposed and were defeated, with Spanish troops arriving at the edge of Rome. Out of fear of another sack of Rome, Paul IV agreed to the Duke of Alba's demand for the Papal States to declare neutrality by signing the Peace of Cave-Palestrina on 12 September 1557. Emperor Charles V criticized the peace agreement as being overly generous to the Pope.[9]
As
With the
Paul IV was violently opposed to the liberal Cardinal Giovanni Morone, whom he strongly suspected of being a hidden Protestant, so much that he had him imprisoned. In order to prevent Morone from succeeding him and imposing what he believed to be his Protestant beliefs on the Church, Pope Paul IV codified the Catholic Law excluding heretics and non-Catholics from receiving or legitimately becoming pope, in the bull Cum ex apostolatus officio.[citation needed]
Paul IV was rigidly orthodox, austere in life, and authoritarian in manner. He affirmed the Catholic doctrine of
On 17 July 1555, Paul IV issued one of the most infamous papal bulls in Church history. The bull, Cum nimis absurdum, ordered the creation of a Jewish ghetto in Rome. The Pope set its borders near the Rione Sant'Angelo, an area where large numbers of Jews already resided, and ordered it walled off from the rest of the city. A single gate, locked every day at sundown, was the only means of reaching the rest of the city. The Jews themselves were forced to pay all design and construction costs related to the project, which came to a total of roughly 300 scudi. The bull restricted Jews in other ways as well. They were forbidden to have more than one synagogue per city—leading, in Rome alone, to the destruction of seven "excess" places of worship. All Jews were forced to wear distinctive yellow hats, especially outside the ghetto, and they were forbidden to trade in everything but food and secondhand clothes.[15] Christians of all ages were encouraged to treat the Jews as second-class citizens; for a Jew to defy a Christian in any way was to invite severe punishment, often at the hands of a mob. By the end of Paul IV's five-year reign, the number of Roman Jews had dropped by half.[14] Yet his anti-Jewish legacy endured for over 300 years: the ghetto he established ceased to exist only with the dissolution of the Papal States in 1870. Its walls were torn down in 1888.[citation needed]
According to Leopold von Ranke, a rigid austerity and an earnest zeal for the restoration of primitive habits became the dominant tendency of his papacy. Monks who had left their monasteries were expelled from the city and from the Papal States. He would no longer tolerate the practice by which one man had been allowed to enjoy the revenues of an office while delegating its duties to another.[16]
All begging was forbidden. Even the collection of alms for Masses, which had previously been made by the clergy, was discontinued. A medal was struck representing Christ driving the money changers from the Temple. Paul IV put in place a reform of the papal administration designed to stamp out trafficking of principal positions in the Curia.[10] All secular offices, from the highest to the lowest, were assigned to others based on merit. Important economies were made, and taxes were proportionately remitted. Paul IV established a chest, of which only he held the key, for the purpose of receiving all complaints that anyone desired to make.[16]
During his papacy, censorship reached new heights.[17] Among his first acts as pope was to cut off Michelangelo's pension, and he ordered the nudes of The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel be painted more modestly (a request that Michelangelo ignored) (the beginning of the Vatican's Fig leaf campaign). Paul IV also introduced the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or "Index of Prohibited Books" to Venice, then an independent and prosperous trading state, in order to crack down on the growing threat of Protestantism. Under his authority, all books written by Protestants were banned, together with Italian and German translations of the Latin Bible.[18]
In the Papal States, a Marrano presence was noticeable. In Rome and, even more so, the seaport of Ancona, they thrived under benevolent popes Clement VII (1523–34), Paul III (1534–49), and Julius III (1550–55). They even received a guarantee that if accused of apostasy they would be subject only to papal authority. But Paul IV (1555–59), the voice of the Counter-Reformation, dealt them an irreparable blow when he withdrew the protections previously given and initiated a campaign against them. As a result of this, 25 were burned at the stake in the spring of 1556.[citation needed]
Consistories
Throughout his pontificate, Paul IV named 46 cardinals in four consistories, including Michele Ghislieri (the future
Death
Paul IV's health began to break down in May 1559. He rallied in July, holding public audiences and attending meetings of the Inquisition. But he engaged in fasting, and the heat of the summer wore him down again. He was bedridden, and on 17 August it became clear he would not live. Cardinals and other officials gathered at his bedside on 18 August, where Paul IV asked them to elect a "righteous and holy" successor and to retain the Inquisition as "the very basis" of the Catholic Church's power. By 2 or 3 pm, he was close to death, and died at 5 pm.[20]
The people of Rome did not forget what they had suffered because of the war he had brought on the State. Crowds of people gathered at the Piazza del Campidoglio and began rioting even before Paul IV died.[21] His statue, erected before the Campidoglio just months before, had a yellow hat placed on it (similar to the yellow hat Paul IV had forced Jews to wear in public). After a mock trial, the statue was decapitated.[21] It was then thrown into the Tiber.[22]
The crowd broke into the three city jails and freed more than 400 prisoners, then broke into the offices of the Inquisition at the Palazzo dell' Inquisizone near to the
The crowd dedicated to him the following pasquinata:[24]
- Carafa hated by the devil and the sky
- is buried here with his rotting corpse,
- Erebus has taken the spirit;
- he hated peace on earth, our faith he contested.
- he ruined the church and the people, men and sky offended;
- treacherous friend, suppliant with the army which was fatal to him.
- You want to know more? Pope was him and that is enough.
Such hostile views have not mellowed much with time; modern historians tend to view his papacy as an especially poor one. His policies stemmed from personal prejudices—against Spain, for example, or the Jews—rather than any overarching political or religious goals. In a time of precarious balance between Catholic and Protestant, his adversarial nature did little to slow the latter's spread across northern Europe. His anti-Spanish feelings alienated the Habsburgs, arguably the most powerful Catholic rulers in Europe, and his ascetic personal beliefs left him out of touch with the artistic and intellectual movements of his era (he often spoke of whitewashing the Sistine Chapel ceiling). Such a reactionary attitude alienated clergy and laity alike: historian John Julius Norwich calls him "the worst pope of the 16th century."[14]
Four or five hours after his death, Paul IV's body was taken to the
Paul IV's nephew, Cardinal-nephew Carlo Carafa, arrived in Rome late on 19 August. Worried that the rioters might break in and desecrate the pope's corpse, at 10 pm Cardinal Carafa had Pope Paul IV buried without ceremony next to the Cappella del Volto Santo (Chapel of the Holy Face) in St. Peter's. His remains stayed there until October 1566, when his successor as pope, Pius V, had them transferred to Santa Maria sopra Minerva. In the chapel founded by Paul IV's uncle and mentor, Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, a tomb was created by Pirro Ligorio and Paul IV's remains were placed therein.[22]
In fiction
Paul IV's title in the
As Paul IV, appears as a character in John Webster's Jacobean revenge drama The White Devil (1612).[26]
In the novel
Alison MacLeod's 1968 historical novel "The Hireling" depicts Cardinal Carafa befriending the English Cardinal Reginald Pole during Pole's long exile in Italy, their later falling out, and Pole's feelings of betrayal after Carafa, once elevated to the Papacy, charges him with heresy at the very time when Pole was striving to return England to the Catholic fold.[citation needed]
Pope Paul IV is a major villain in Sholem Asch's 1921 historical novel The Witch of Castile (Yiddish: Di Kishufmakherin fun Kastilien, Hebrew: Ha'Machshepha Mi'Castilia המכשפה מקשיטליה). The book's depiction of a young Sephardi Jewish woman in Rome being falsely accused of witchcraft and being burned at the stake, dying as a Jewish martyr, is placed in the context of Paul IV's actual persecution of the Jews.[citation needed]
See also
References
- ^ "Pope Paul IV (1555-1559)". www.gcatholic.org. Retrieved 12 May 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f Loughlin, James F. (1911). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company. . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.).
- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 956.
- ^ (Firm), John Murray (1908). "Handbook for Rome and the Campagna".
- ^ "Britannica". 14 August 2023.
- ^ MacCulloch, Dairmuid. Reformation in Europe, London, 2005
- ^ Robin, Larsen and Levin. Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance. p. 24.
- ISBN 978-1317897736.
- ISBN 978-0191649615.
- ^ a b c "John, Eric. The Popes, Hawthorne Books, New York". Archived from the original on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
- ^ "Crown of Ireland Act 1542". Heraldica. 25 July 2003. Retrieved 1 November 2012.
- ^ Ryrie, Alec (23 September 2020). "England's Catholic Reformation". See transcript, or 46:55 in the video.
- ^
Will Durant (1953). The Renaissance. Chapter XXXIX: The Popes and the Council: 1517–1565.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ ISBN 978-1-4000-6715-2.
- ISBN 9780813215952.
- ^ a b "Wines, Roger. Leopold von Ranke: The Secret of World History, (1981)". Archived from the original on 18 August 2017. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
- ^ Deming 2012, p. 36.
- ^ "Remaking the world | Christian History Magazine". Christian History Institute. Retrieved 10 May 2023.
- ^ Salvador Miranda. "Pius IV (1555-1559)". The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
- ^ ISBN 978-0871691149.
- ^ ISBN 978-0295980256.
- ^ ISBN 978-0871691149.
- ISBN 978-0871691149.
- ^ Claudio Rendina, I papi, p. 646
- ^ "Prophecies of Future Popes". The Month: An Illustrated Magazine of Literature, Science and Art. June 1899. p. 572.
- ISBN 9780754661528.
- ^ Garber, Jeremy (Winter 2006). "Reading the Anabaptists: Anabaptist Historiography and Luther Blissett's 'Q'". The Conrad Grebel Review. 24 (1). Archived from the original on 29 November 2014.
Bibliography
- Aubert, Alberto. Paolo IV. Politica, Inquisizione e storiografia, Firenze, Le Lettere, 1999
- Booth, Ted W. "Elizabeth I and Pope Paul IV: Reticence and Reformation". Church History and Religious Culture 94.3 (2014): 316–336 online.
- Deming, David (2012). Science and technology in world history Vol. 3: The Black Death, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., Publishers. ISBN 9780786490868. Retrieved 24 October 2015.
- Firpo, Massimo. Inquisizione romana e Controriforma. Studi sul cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509–1580) e il suo processo d'eresia, Brescia, Morcelliana, 2005
- Mampieri, Martina. "From Paul IV 'the Evil' to Pius IV 'the Merciful'". in Living under the Evil Pope (Brill, 2019). 160–204.
- Mathews, Shailer. "The Social Teaching of Paul. IV. The Messianism of Paul". Biblical World 19.4 (1902): 279–287 online.
- Pattenden, Miles. Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa: Nepotism and Papal Authority in Counter-Reformation Rome (Oxford UP, 2013).
- Pocock, Nicholas, Marinus Marinius, and J. Barengus. "Bull of Paul IV concerning the Bishopric of Bristol". English Historical Review 12.46 (1897): 303–307. JSTOR 547469.
- Santosuosso, Antonio. "An Account of the Election of Paul IV to the Pontificate". Renaissance Quarterly 31.4 (1978): 486–498. JSTOR 2860374.
External links
- Aubert, Alberto (2014). "Paolo IV, papa," (in Italian), in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani Volume 81 (2014).
- Article "Paul IV" in Dizionario storico dell'Inquisizione (in Italian)
- Dispatches of Bernardo Navagero, Venetian ambassador, and others documents about the papacy of Paul IV (in Italian)
- Paul IV letter to Philip II, MSS 8489 at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University