Absolute Monarchs

by John Julius Norwich

  At the beginning of November 1699 the eighty-four-year-old pope fell dangerously ill. He never properly recovered but somehow found the strength to celebrate the Holy Year of 1700 with public appearances, blessing the thousands of pilgrims from the balcony of the Quirinal Palace14 and even visiting the principal churches. Then, on August 1, he suffered a serious relapse. He lingered for another eight weeks, dying in the early hours of September 27. In the nine years of his pontificate he had achieved much: the end of nepotism, reconciliation with France. He may even have decided the whole future of Spain; despite his differences with Louis XIV, he certainly advised the childless Spanish King Charles II to nominate as his heir Louis XIV’s grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou, rather than the Emperor Leopold’s younger son, Charles. On October 3, 1700, just a week after Innocent’s death, Charles II changed his will accordingly, himself dying a month later.

  Although he never knew it, Innocent XII was to have one further claim to fame: after some 170 years in his grave, he was to enter the canons of English literature. Readers—if such there be—of Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book will recognize him as one of the twelve narrators in whose words the interminable story is told. It does not improve his reputation; fortunately, his reputation does not need improving.

  1. A Catholic conspiracy to assassinate the king and to blow up Parliament on November 5, 1605. The conspirators were discovered and the plot failed.

  2. When referring to St. Peter’s, which is built in defiance of the normal liturgical rules whereby the high altar is placed at the east end, the points of the compass have to be reversed: east is west and west is east. See chapter 1, this page.

  3. His collection was transferred to the Villa Borghese only in 1891; before that it was housed in Palazzo Borghese, which Pope Paul had bought in 1605, the year of his accession.

  4. He had actually reigned for a year and four days.

  5. By this time the emperor and the kings of France and Spain had gradually established their right of veto on any candidate for the Papacy of whom they disapproved.

  6. Now better known (and spelled) as the Villa Doria Pamphilj. It is not to be confused with the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, with its adjoining art gallery, at the beginning of the Via del Corso, just north of Piazza Venezia.

  7. She subsequently moved to Palazzo Riario (built by the nephew of Sixtus IV), now Palazzo Corsini. This was to be the home of her astonishing art collection and also of the Arcadian Academy, intended for the study of art, literature, and philosophy, which still exists.

  8. God very nearly did: Louis was to be succeeded by his great-grandson.

  9. Careful investigation has revealed that the nephews of Paul V had received 260,000 scudi, those of Urban VIII 1,700,000, those of Innocent X 1,400,000, those of Alexander VII 900,000, those of Clement X 1,200,000, and those of Alexander VIII 700,000 from the Apostolic Camera alone. On top of this there was the considerable income derived from various vacant offices.

  10. Not, of course, to be confused with the sixteenth-century Domenico Fontana. The two were, so far as is known, unrelated.

  11. Since 1871 it has been the seat of the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

  12. The huge porphyry font is said to have originally come from the Mausoleum of Hadrian and later to have adorned the tomb of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II.

  13. The treaty settled the Nine Years’ War, which had pitted France against the Grand Alliance of the empire, England, Spain, and the United Provinces (Netherlands).

  14. The Quirinal was the principal residence of the popes from Clement VIII until 1870 (Pius IX). It is now the residence of the president of Italy.

  CHAPTER XXII

  The Age of Reason

  The seventeenth century had closed with two very old men occupying the Throne of St. Peter; the eighteenth began with a very young one. Giovanni Francesco Albani was only fifty-one when, after long hesitation, he accepted his election as Pope Clement XI. A cardinal since 1690, he had enjoyed considerable influence under his two predecessors and had actually drafted Innocent’s bull prohibiting nepotism. Thanks to his intelligence, scholarship, and gifts as an orator, he had long been considered papabile (suitable to be elected pope), yet curiously enough he had been ordained a priest only two months before his election.

  The deathbed decision of Charles II of Spain to name Philip of Anjou as his successor had had, not surprisingly, an explosive effect, for Charles had been the last male descendant of the Emperor Charles V, and the Spanish crown was now coveted—and indeed claimed—by the two mightiest dynasties of Europe. Philip III of Spain, who reigned from 1578 to 1621, had two daughters: the elder, Anne, had been married off to Louis XIII of France; the younger, Maria, to the Emperor Ferdinand III of Austria. Anne had in due course given birth to the future Louis XIV, Maria to the Emperor Leopold I. In the fullness of time Leopold had married Charles II’s younger sister, Margaret, and their small grandson Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria was consequently the Habsburg claimant. Already the scene seemed to be set for a struggle. When, in 1698, King Charles made a will confirming Joseph Ferdinand as his heir, the matter might have been thought to be settled; but in February 1699 the young prince unexpectedly died. His sudden death was attributed, rather unconvincingly, to smallpox—though there were many, among them the boy’s own father, who suspected poison and did not hesitate to say so. In any event it was Leopold’s younger son, the Archduke Charles, who now claimed the Spanish throne on behalf of the empire.

  Like Innocent before him, Clement favored Philip of Anjou as the next King of Spain. Philip’s grandfather Louis XIV might have had his faults, but he was unquestionably the most powerful existing champion of Roman Catholicism. Moreover, where papal territory in Italy was concerned, the Spanish record was abysmal; it was clear to Clement that the papal lands would be far safer if a Frenchman, rather than a Spaniard, were in control of Spanish-held Milan, Naples, and Sicily. But he could hardly expect the Emperor Leopold to agree with him, nor indeed could King Louis, who lost no time in packing off the young claimant to Madrid to assume his throne without delay, in the company of a bevy of French officials prepared to take over all the key posts of government. What Louis could not have known was how long and how desperate the ensuing war would be or what a price he would have to pay for his grandson’s crown.

  And so it was that in February 1701, less than three months after Pope Clement’s enthronement, Philip of Anjou was welcomed in Madrid as King Philip V of Spain while, almost simultaneously, French troops occupied the Spanish Netherlands. Almost before anyone knew it, Europe had been swept up in the War of the Spanish Succession.

  THE EMPEROR LEOPOLD, too, was moving fast. If Spain were to pass from the hands of the weakest monarch in Europe into those of the strongest, what chance was there that trade would be allowed to continue? Just as the pope had feared, he was determined to seize all Spanish territories in Italy, beginning with Milan, to prevent their falling into French hands. He found his allies in England and Holland. These two maritime countries were both carrying on an immensely profitable trade with Spain; there were several English and Dutch merchants permanently resident in Cádiz and other Spanish ports. Through much of the seventeenth century the two had been at loggerheads; now, however, they shared with the emperor a common concern: to keep out the French. And so the Grand Alliance was born.

  As for Pope Clement, everyone knew of his pro-French sympathies—he had actually sent a letter of congratulation to King Philip in Madrid—so it came as no surprise when his offer to mediate was ignored. On the outbreak of war he did his best to take a neutral stand, though this was by no means easy when both Leopold and Philip demanded to be invested with Naples and Sicily (in which Philip had already been proclaimed without opposition). If we are to believe the Venetian ambassador, the pope feared the power, the boldness, and the pride of the Habsburgs and the frivolity, presumption, and violence of the Bourbons—to say nothing of their Gallican ideas. His greatest weakness had always been ind
ecision; now he vacillated, desperately trying to gain time and thus successfully antagonizing both parties.

  Inevitably, the peninsula once again became a battleground. First the French swept in and captured Milan; but then, in 1706, the empire’s brilliant general Prince Eugene of Savoy drove them out of North Italy. A year later, the Austrian troops of Leopold’s older son and successor, Joseph I, invaded papal territory and took possession of Naples, threatening Rome itself. The pope, who had no army worthy of the name, was forced to accept Joseph’s terms, recognizing both the capture of Naples and the Archduke Charles as the rightful King of Spain—which led, of course, to a serious worsening of papal-Spanish relations.

  Then, on April 17, 1711, Joseph died in Vienna at the age of only thirty-two—this time it was definitely smallpox—and the whole European political scene was once again transformed overnight. In his six-year reign Joseph had enthusiastically espoused the claims of his younger brother, Charles, to Spain, but Charles was now not just a Spanish claimant; he was his brother’s obvious successor on the imperial throne. The Grand Alliance had been formed to prevent a single family, the Bourbons, from becoming too powerful; if Charles were to succeed to the empire—as indeed he did, being elected the following year—the Habsburgs threatened to become more powerful still, with all their dominions once more united as in the days of Charles’s great-great-great-great-uncle Charles V. Inevitably, many months passed before the European powers were able to come to terms with the new situation; it was not until New Year’s Day 1712 that negotiations began between the Allies and France in the Dutch city of Utrecht.

  What is generally known as the Treaty of Utrecht was in fact a whole series of treaties in which, after a European upheaval that had lasted eleven years, France and Spain attempted once again to regulate their relations with their neighbors. Pope Clement, as usual, found himself disregarded. Charles surrendered his Spanish claims to Philip, and was granted Milan and Naples. France and Spain both formally recognized Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, who happened to be King Philip’s father-in-law, as King of Sicily.1 On none of these occasions was the pope consulted. Even the papal fiefs of Parma and Piacenza were disposed of without his consent.

  The political and diplomatic prestige of the Holy See was indeed in sorrowful decline; only in doctrinal matters was the pope still listened to—up, at least, to a point. Here his principal headache was caused by Jansenism in France. By this time it had been causing trouble for well over half a century, defying all Louis XIV’s efforts to stamp it out. It had recently flared up again when forty doctors at the Sorbonne had ruled that it was permissible for Catholics to listen to a condemnation of Jansenism “in respectful silence.” This roused the king to a new fury. He now demanded that Pope Clement, who had already rebuked the doctors, publish a bull declaring that passive acquiescence was not enough; the abominable doctrine must be actively and positively denounced, whenever and wherever it should raise its head. Clement did so—but with consequences very different from those he had expected. There was an immediate outcry in France, spreading far beyond Jansenist circles and spearheaded by that most aristocratic of churchmen, Cardinal Louis-Antoine de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris. Louis, angrier than ever, insisted on yet another bull, which would be nothing less than an out-and-out condemnation of Jansenism. Once again the pope did as he was bid, with the celebrated bull Unigenitus, which condemned 101 propositions taken from a recent and hugely popular publication by a leading Jansenist named Pasquier Quesnel, Moral Reflections on the Gospels; but Noailles, together with fifteen bishops, categorically refused to accept it—Gallicanism, it will be seen, was far from dead—and the stalemate continued until the king’s death in 1715.

  As Louis XV, his great-grandson and heir, was only five years old, the regency was entrusted to Philip, Duke of Orleans. The duke took no interest in religion; he wished only to be rid of the whole problem once and for all. He forbade any further discussion of the controversial bull and left it to the pope to find a solution. Clement responded with a third bull, upholding Unigenitus and excommunicating all those who disobeyed it. This too was widely condemned, not only by Noailles but by several bishops, the French parlements, and the Sorbonne. It was naturally upheld by the regent, but still the dispute went on, doing more and more to destroy the rapidly waning prestige of the Papacy in France, and it was still raging when the pope died, after a long illness, on March 19, 1721. He was seventy-one and had been in office for twenty years, during which Rome had suffered two catastrophic floods and, in early 1703, a hurricane so furious that the church bells rang of their own accord. This had been followed by a whole series of earthquakes, one of which destroyed three arches on the second tier of the Colosseum.

  Clement XI was a man of many virtues. He was deeply devout, hardworking, incorruptible, and a generous patron of the arts. His besetting fault was indecision. He lacked the instinctive political sense which guides a natural leader and was consequently unable to impose his prestige—let alone his will—upon his foreign flock. He had been genuinely reluctant to accept his elevation to the Papacy, and he never deluded himself that he had been a success. Some months before his death, he had dictated his epitaph to his nephew Cardinal Annibale Albani. It read, “Clement XI, Pope, once a chaplain then a canon of this basilica, died on … after a pontificate of … years. Pray for him.”

  AS THE EIGHTEENTH century continued, it gradually became clear that the Papacy had a new enemy with which to contend, an enemy a good deal more insidious than the doctrinal differences that had plagued Christendom for well over a millennium. For this was the Age of Reason. For many churchmen, even heretics were preferable to skeptics, agnostics—relatively few people dared call themselves atheists—or anticlericals.

  In the face of this new intellectual climate, it is not easy to see what measures the Holy See could have taken; what is clear, however, is that it did not take them. The first two successors of Clement XI were pious enough—they had both renounced dukedoms for the sake of the Church—but neither reigned for long (Innocent XIII, already a sick man and enormously fat, lasted less than three years, Benedict XIII less than six), and neither made much impact in Rome. Innocent, it is true, had some success in resolving tensions abroad. In 1721 he endeared himself to Louis XV by raising the king’s dissolute and debauched chief minister, the Abbé Guillaume Dubois, to the cardinalate, and the following year he invested the Emperor Charles VI with Naples and Sicily, something that Clement IX had always refused to do.

  When Innocent’s successor, Benedict XIII, was elected, much against his will, on May 29, 1724, he was already seventy-six and in his dotage. Apart from forbidding the clergy to wear wigs, he refused to act as pope and dealt with Charles, Louis, and Philip of Spain by simply ignoring them; meanwhile, he lived the life of a simple parish priest, sleeping in a small whitewashed room on the top floor of the Quirinal—he subsequently moved to the Vatican—hearing confessions, visiting the sick, and giving religious instruction. Several times a week he waited on thirteen paupers at table. Most of the papal business he entrusted to Cardinal Niccolò Coscia, whom he had known when Archbishop of Benevento and whom in 1725 he promoted—in the face of heavy opposition—to the Sacred College. He could hardly have made a more disastrous choice. Coscia was a scoundrel, deeply corrupt, who thought only of his own self-enrichment, selling off church offices, accepting bribes, filling the Curia with his own Beneventan cronies, and leaving the papal treasury bare. Meanwhile, Benedict accepted all his recommendations without question and would not have a word said against him. Nepotism had been formally abolished by Clement XI; but now the Church, in the words of a recent historian, “had all the evils of nepotism without the nephews.”2

  It was somehow typical of Benedict that when he did show firmness he usually did so on the wrong occasion and at the wrong time. A good example of this tendency was provided when King John V of Portugal claimed the right, enjoyed by several other courts, of proposing candidates for the Sacred College.
When the pope refused, John broke off diplomatic relations, recalled all Portuguese residents in papal territory, forbade all communication with the Curia, and even tried to prevent the sending of alms from Portugal to Rome.

  Thanks to the greed of Niccolò Coscia and the childish gullibility of his master, the Holy See suffered grievously, in terms not only of its finances but also of its political prestige. The pope was too old to learn the arts of statesmanship and good government and too innocent to see the corruption and duplicity of those in whom he put his trust. He died, more of old age than anything else, on February 21, 1730—not a moment too soon.

  But the moment Benedict was lowered safely into his grave, the Roman populace exploded in rage. Despite everything, they had loved the old man, just as they had detested Coscia and his Beneventans. Coscia himself—who had been living in the Vatican in far greater comfort and grandeur than the pope himself—escaped without being recognized (he was carried out on a stretcher) and took refuge with his friend the Marchese Abbati in his house on the Corso; but he was tracked down soon enough. The house was surrounded and narrowly escaped complete devastation. Soon afterward, the unspeakable cardinal was arrested and put on trial. He managed to draw out the proceedings for a considerable time, but in April 1733 he was sentenced to excommunication, ten years’ imprisonment in the Castel Sant’Angelo, and a fine of 100,000 scudi. It was one of the harshest judgments ever given against a member of the Sacred College, but not a word was raised in objection.