Following Adrian VI's death on 14 September 1523, Cardinal Giulio overcame the opposition of the French king and finally succeeded in being elected Pope Clement VII in the next
conclave (19 November 1523). 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." But the pope's attempt failed.
Continental and Medici politics (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
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. 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
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
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. 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.
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
patronage within their colonies in the Americas.
Sack of Rome The Pope's wavering politics also caused the rise of the Imperial party inside the
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. From this point on, Clement VII could do nothing but follow the fate of the French party to the end. 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
Landsknechts led by
Charles III, Duke of Bourbon and
Georg von Frundsberg, allowing them to reach Rome without harm. 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
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
ducats 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, the Tuscan city capitulated and Clement VII installed his illegitimate nephew
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 , 1526 During his half-year imprisonment in 1527, Clement VII grew a full beard as a sign of mourning for the
sack of Rome. This was in contradiction to Catholic
canon law, 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.
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.
English Reformation , enthroned over his defeated enemies (from left):
Suleiman the Magnificent, Pope Clement VII,
Francis I of France, the
Duke of Cleves, the
Elector of Saxony, and the
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 annulled. The couple's sons died in infancy, threatening the future of the
House of Tudor, although Henry did have a daughter,
Mary Tudor. Henry claimed that this lack of a male heir was because his marriage was "blighted in the eyes of God". Catherine had been his
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. Moreover,
Pope Julius II had given a
dispensation to allow the wedding. 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. Pope Clement VII discreetly advised King Henry VIII to divorce Queen Catherine without seeking an official annulment, aiming to resolve the politically and personally sensitive situation surrounding the legitimacy of their marriage. Despite the Pope's counsel, Henry VIII remained committed to following the proper ecclesiastical procedures, insisting that any actions taken must align with the established norms of the Catholic Church. 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 previously dispensed. 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. of Clement VII, found in
Hertfordshire, England Henry subsequently underwent a marriage ceremony with
Anne Boleyn, in either late 1532 or early 1533. 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 bulls 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. Cranmer was prepared to grant the annulment of the marriage to Catherine as Henry required. The Pope responded to the marriage by
excommunicating both Henry and Cranmer from the Catholic Church. Consequently, in England, in the same year, the
Act of Conditional Restraint of Annates transferred the taxes on ecclesiastical income from the Pope to the Crown. The
Peter's Pence Act outlawed the annual payment by landowners of
one penny to the Pope. This act also reiterated that England had "no superior under God, but only your
Grace" and that Henry's "imperial crown" had been diminished by the Pope's "unreasonable and uncharitable usurpations and exactions". Ultimately, in 1534, Henry led the English Parliament to pass the
Act of Supremacy that established the independent
Church of England and broke from the Catholic Church.
Marriage of Catherine de' Medici 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. 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." According to Medici historian Paul Strathern, Clement marrying Catherine into France's royal family and Alessandro becoming
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. ==Death==