Renaissance in Italy Volume VI Part 1

Renaissance in Italy.

by John Addington Symonds.

RENAISSANCE IN ITALY

_THE CATHOLIC REACTION_

PART I

NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1887 _AUTHOR'S EDITION_

PREFACE.

At the end of the second volume of my 'Renaissance in Italy' I indulged the hope that I might live to describe the phase of culture which closed that brilliant epoch. It was in truth demanded that a work pretending to display the manifold activity of the Italian genius during the 15th century and the first quarter of the 16th, should also deal with the causes which interrupted its further development upon the same lines.

This study, forming a logically-necessitated supplement to the five former volumes of 'Renaissance in Italy,' I have been permitted to complete. The results are now offered to the public in these two parts.

So far as it was possible, I have conducted my treatment of the Catholic Revival on a method a.n.a.logous to that adopted for the Renaissance. I found it, however, needful to enter more minutely into details regarding facts and inst.i.tutions connected with the main theme of national culture.

The Catholic Revival was by its nature reactionary. In order to explain its influences, I have been compelled to a.n.a.lyze the position of Spain in the Italian peninsula, the conduct of the Tridentine Council, the specific organization of the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus, and the state of society upon which those forces were brought to bear.

In the list of books which follows these prefatory remarks, I have indicated the most important of the sources used by me. Special references will be made in their proper places to works of a subordinate value for the purposes of my inquiry.

DAVOS PLATZ: _July_ 1886.

RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.

CHAPTER I.

THE SPANISH HEGEMONY.

Italy in the Renaissance--The Five Great Powers--The Kingdom of Naples--The Papacy--The Duchy of Milan--Venice--The Florentine Republic--Wars of Invasion closed by the Sack of Rome in 1527--Concordat between Clement VII. and Charles V.--Treaty of Barcelona and Paix des Dames--Charles lands at Genoa--His Journey to Bologna--Entrance into Bologna and Reception by Clement--Mustering of Italian Princes--Francesco Sforza replaced in the Duchy of Milan--Venetian Emba.s.sy--Italian League signed on Christmas Eve, 1529--Florence alone excluded--The Siege of Florence pressed by the Prince of Orange--Charles's Coronation as King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor--The Significance of this Ceremony at Bologna--Ceremony in S. Petronio--Settlement of the Duchy of Ferrara--Men of Letters and Arts at Bologna--The Emperor's Use of the Spanish Habit--Charles and Clement leave Bologna in March, 1530--Review of the Settlement of Italy effected by Emperor and Pope--Extinction of Republics--Subsequent Absorption of Ferrara and Urbino into the Papal States--Savoy becomes an Italian Power--Period between Charles's Coronation and the Peace of Cateau Cambresis in 1559--Economical and Social Condition of the Italians under Spanish Hegemony--The Nation still Exists in Separate Communities--Intellectual Conditions--Predominance of Spain and Rome--Both Cosmopolitan Powers--Leveling down of the Component Portions of the Nation in a Common Servitude--The Evils of Spanish Rule.

In the first volume of my book on _Renaissance in Italy_ I attempted to set forth the political and social phases through which the Italians pa.s.sed before their princ.i.p.al States fell into the hands of despots, and to explain the conditions of mutual jealousy and military feebleness which exposed those States to the a.s.saults of foreign armies at the close of the fifteenth century.

In the year 1494, when Charles VIII. of France, at Lodovico Sforza's invitation, crossed the Alps to make good his claim on Naples, the peninsula was Independent. Internal peace had prevailed for a period of nearly fifty years. An equilibrium had been established between the five great native Powers, which secured the advantages of confederation and diplomatic interaction.

While using the word confederation, I do not, of course, imply that anything similar to the federal union of Switzerland or of North America existed in Italy. The contrary is proved by patent facts. On a miniature scale, Italy then displayed political conditions a.n.a.logous to those which now prevail in Europe. The parcels of the nation adopted different forms of self-government, sought divers foreign alliances, and owed no allegiance to any central legislative or administrative body. I therefore speak of the Italian confederation only in the same sense as Europe may now be called a confederation of kindred races.

In the year 1630, when Charles V. (of Austria and Spain) was crowned Emperor at Bologna, this national independence had been irretrievably lost by the Italians. This confederation of evenly-balanced Powers was now exchanged for servitude beneath a foreign monarchy, and for subjection to a cosmopolitan elective priesthood.

The history of social, intellectual, and moral conditions in Italy during the seventy years of the sixteenth century which followed Charles's coronation at Bologna, forms the subject of this work; but before entering upon these topics it will be well to devote one chapter to considering with due brevity the part.i.tion of Italy into five States in 1494, the dislocation of this order by the wars between Spain and France for supremacy, the position in which the same States found themselves respectively at the termination of those wars in 1527, and the new settlement of the peninsula effected by Charles V. in 1529-30.

The five members of the Italian federation in 1494 were the kingdom of Naples, the Papacy, the Duchy of Milan, and the Republics of Venice and Florence. Round them, in various relations of amity or hostility, were grouped these minor Powers: the Republics of Genoa, Lucca, Siena; the Duchy of Ferrara, including Modena and Reggio; the Marquisates of Mantua and Montferrat; and the Duchy of Urbino. For our immediate purpose it is not worth taking separate account of the Republic of Pisa, which was practically though not thoroughly enslaved by Florence; or of the despots in the cities of Romagna, the March. Umbria, and the Patrimony of S. Peter, who were being gradually absorbed into the Papal sovereignty. Nor need we at present notice Savoy, Piemonte, and Saluzzo.

Although these north-western provinces were all-important through the period of Franco-Spanish wars, inasmuch as they opened the gate of Italy to French armies, and supplied those armies with a base for military operations, the Duchy of Savoy had not yet become an exclusively Italian Power.

The kingdom of Naples, on the death of Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1458, had been separated from Sicily, and pa.s.sed by testamentary appointment to his natural son Ferdinand. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d Aragonese dynasty was Italian in its tastes and interests, though unpopular both with the barons of the realm and with the people, who in their restlessness were ready to welcome any foreign deliverer from its oppressive yoke. This state of general discontent rendered the revival of the old Angevine party, and their resort to French aid, a source of peril to the monarchy. It also served as a convenient fulcrum for the ambitious schemes of conquest which the princes of the House of Aragon in Spain began to entertain. In territorial extent the kingdom of Naples was the most considerable parcel of the Italian community. It embraced the whole of Calabria, Apulia, the Abruzzi, and the Terra di Lavoro; marching on its northern boundary with the Papal States, and having no other neighbors. But though so large and so compact a State, the semifeudal system of government which had obtained in Naples since the first conquest of the country by the Normans, the nature of its population, and the savage dynastic wars to which it had been constantly exposed, rendered it more backward in civilization than the northern and central provinces.

The Papacy, after the ending of the schism and the settlement of Nicholas V. at Rome in 1447, gradually tended to become an Italian sovereignty. During the residence of the Popes at Avignon, and the weakness of the Papal See which followed in the period of the Councils (Pisa, Constance, and Basel), it had lost its hold not only on the immediate neighborhood of Rome, but also on its outlying possessions in Umbria, the Marches of Ancona, and the Exarchate of Ravenna. The great Houses of Colonna and Orsini a.s.serted independence in their princ.i.p.alities. Bologna and Perugia pretended to republican government under the shadow of n.o.ble families; Bentivogli, Bracci, Baglioni. Imola, Faenza, Forl, Rimini, Pesaro, Urbino, Camerino, Citta di Castello, obeyed the rule of tyrants, who were practically lords of these cities though they bore the t.i.tles of Papal vicars, and who maintained themselves in wealth and power by exercising the profession of _condottieri_. It was the chief object of the Popes, after they were freed from the pressing perils of General Councils, and were once more settled in their capital and recognized as sovereigns by the European Powers, to subdue their va.s.sals and consolidate their provinces into a h.o.m.ogeneous kingdom. This plan was conceived and carried out by a succession of vigorous and unscrupulous Pontiffs--Sixtus IV., Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X.--throughout the period of distracting foreign wars which agitated Italy. They followed for the most part one line of policy, which was to place the wealth and authority of the Holy See at the disposal of their relatives, Riarios, Delia Roveres, Borgias, and Medici. Their military delegates, among whom the most efficient captain was the terrible Cesare Borgia, had full power to crush the liberties of cities, exterminate the dynasties of despots, and reduce refractory districts to the Papal sway. For these services they were rewarded with ducal and princely t.i.tles, with the administration of their conquests, and with the invest.i.ture of fiefs as va.s.sals of the Church. The system had its obvious disadvantages. It tended to indecent nepotism; and as Pope succeeded Pope at intervals of a few years, each bent on aggrandizing his own family at the expense of those of his predecessors and the Church, the ecclesiastical States were kept in a continual ferment of expropriation and internal revolution. Yet it is difficult to conceive how a spiritual Power like the Papacy could have solved the problem set before it of becoming a substantial secular sovereignty, without recourse to this ruinous method. The Pope, a lonely man upon an ill-established throne, surrounded by rivals whom his elevation had disappointed, was compelled to rely on the strong arm of adventurers with whose interests his own were indissolubly connected.

The profits of all these schemes of egotistical rapacity eventually accrued, not to the relatives of the Pontiffs; none of whom, except the Delia Roveres in Urbino, founded a permanent dynasty at this period; but to the Holy See. Julius II., for example, on his election in 1503, entered into possession of all that Cesare Borgia had attempted to grasp for his own use. He found the Orsini and Colonna humbled, Romagna reduced to submission; and he carried on the policy of conquest by trampling out the liberties of Bologna and Perugia, recovering the cities held by Venice on the coast of Ravenna, and extending his sway over Emilia. The martial energy of Julius added Parma and Piacenza to the States of the Church, and detached Modena and Reggio from the Duchy of Ferrara. These new cities were gained by force; but Julius pretended that they formed part of the Exarchate of Ravenna, which had been granted to his predecessors by Pepin and Charles the Great. He pursued the Papal line of conquest in a n.o.bler spirit than his predecessors, not seeking to advance his relatives so much as to reinstate the Church in her dominions. But he was reckless in the means employed to secure this object. Italy was devastated by wars stirred up, and by foreign armies introduced, in order that the Pope might win a point in the great game of ecclesiastical aggrandizement. That his successor, Leo X., reverted to the former plan of carving princ.i.p.alities for his relatives out of the possessions of their neighbors and the Church, may be counted among the most important causes of the final ruin of Italian independence.

Of the Duchy of Milan it is not necessary to speak at any great length, although the wars between France and Spain were chiefly carried on for its possession. It had been formed into a compact domain, of comparatively small extent, but of vast commercial and agricultural resources, by the two dynasties of Visconti and Sforza. In 1494 Lodovico Sforza, surnamed Il Moro, ruled Milan for his nephew, the t.i.tular Duke, whom he kept in gilded captivity, and whom he eventually murdered. In order to secure his usurped authority, this would-be Machiavelli thought it prudent to invite Charles VIII. into Italy. Charles was to a.s.sert his right to the throne of Naples. Lodovico was to be established in the Duchy of Milan. All his subsequent troubles arose from this transaction.

Charles came, conquered, and returned to France, disturbing the political equilibrium of the Italian States, and founding a disastrous precedent for future foreign interference. His successor in the French kingdom, Louis XII., believed he had a t.i.tle to the Duchy of Milan through his grandmother Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti.

The claim was not a legal one; for in the invest.i.ture of the Duchy females were excluded. It sufficed, however, to inflame the cupidity of Louis; and while he was still but Duke of Orleans, with no sure prospect of inheriting the crown of France, he seems to have indulged the fancy of annexing Milan. No sooner had he ascended the French throne than he began to act upon this ambition. He descended into Lombardy, overran the Milanese, sent Lodovico Sforza to die in a French prison, and initiated the duel between Spain and France for mastery, which ended with the capture of Francis I. at Pavia, and his final cession of all rights over Italy to Charles V. by the Treaty of Cambray.

Of all the republics which had conferred l.u.s.ter upon Italy in its mediaeval period of prosperity Venice alone remained independent. She never submitted to a tyrant; and her government, though growing yearly more closely oligarchical, was acknowledged to be just and liberal.

During the centuries of her greatest power Venice hardly ranked among Italian States. It had been her policy to confine herself to the lagoons and to the extension of her dominion over the Levant. In the fifteenth century, however, this policy was abandoned. Venice first possessed herself of Padua, by exterminating the despotic House of Carrara; next of Verona, by destroying the Scala dynasty. Subsequently, during the long dogeship of Francesco Foscari (1423-1457), she devoted herself in good earnest to the acquisition of territory upon the mainland. Then she entered as a Power of the first magnitude into the system of purely Italian politics. The Republic of S. Mark owned the sea coast of the Adriatic from Aquileia to the mouths of the Po; and her Lombard dependencies stretched as far as Bergamo westward. Her Italian neighbors were, therefore, the Duchy of Milan, the little Marquisate of Mantua, and the Duchy of Ferrara. When Constantinople fell in 1453, Venice was still more tempted to pursue this new policy of Italian aggrandizement.

Meanwhile her growing empire seemed to menace the independence of less wealthy neighbors. The jealousy thus created and the cupidity which brought her into collision with Julius II. in 1508, exposed Venice to the crushing blow inflicted on her power by the combined forces of Europe in the war of the League of Cambray. From this blow, as well as from the simultaneous decline of their Oriental and Levantine commerce, the Venetians never recovered.

When we turn to the Florentines, we find that at the same epoch, 1494, their ancient republican const.i.tution had been fatally undermined by the advances of the family of Medici towards despotism. Lorenzo de'Medici, who enjoyed the credit of maintaining the equilibrium of Italy by wise diplomacy, had lately died. He left his son Piero, a hot-headed and rash young man, to control the affairs of the commonwealth, as he had previously controlled them, with a show of burgherlike equality, but with the reality of princely power. Another of his sons, Giovanni, received the honor of the Cardinalship. The one was destined to compromise the ascendency of his family in Florence for a period of eighteen years, the other was destined to re-establish that ascendency on a new and more despotic basis. Piero had not his father's prudence, and could not maintain himself in the delicate position of a commercial and civil tyrant. During the disturbances caused by the invasion of Charles VIII. he was driven with all his relatives into exile. The Medici were restored in 1512, after the battle of Ravenna, by Spanish troops, at the pet.i.tion of the Cardinal Giovanni. The elevation of this man to the Papacy in 1513 enabled him to plant two of his nephews, as rulers, in Florence, and to pave the way whereby a third eventually rose to the dignity of the tiara. Clement VII. finally succeeded in rendering Florence subject to the Medici, by extinguishing the last sparks of republican opposition, and by so modifying the dynastic protectorate of his family that it was easily converted into a t.i.tular Grand Duchy.

The federation of these five Powers had been artificially maintained during the half century of Italy's highest intellectual activity. That was the epoch when the Italians nearly attained to coherence as a nation, through common interests in art and humanism, and by the complicated machinery of diplomatic relations. The federation perished when foreign Powers chose Lombardy and Naples for their fields of battle. The disasters of the next thirty-three years (1494-1527) began in earnest on the day when Louis XII. claimed Milan and the Regno. He committed his first mistake by inviting Ferdinand the Catholic to share in the part.i.tion of Naples. That province was easily conquered; but Ferdinand retained the whole spoils for himself, securing a large Italian dependency and a magnificent basis of operations for the Spanish Crown. Then Louis made a second mistake by proposing to the visionary Emperor Maximilian that he should aid France in subjugating Venice. We have few instances on record of short-sighted diplomacy to match the Treaties of Granada and Blois (1501 and 1504), through which this monarch, acting rather as a Duke of Milan than a King of France, complicated his Italian schemes by the introduction of two such dangerous allies as the Austrian Emperor and the Spanish sovereign, while the heir of both was in his cradle--that fatal child of fortune Charles.

The stage of Italy was now prepared for a conflict which in no wise interested her prosperous cities and industrious population. Spain, France, Germany, with their Swiss auxiliaries, had been summoned upon various pretexts to partake of the rich prey she offered. Patriots like Machiavelli perceived too late the suicidal self-indulgence which, by subst.i.tuting mercenary troops for national militia, and by accustoming selfish tyrants to rely on foreign aid, had exposed the Italians defenceless to the inroads of their warlike neighbors. Whatever parts the Powers of Italy might play, the game was really in the hands of French, Spanish, and German invaders. Meanwhile the mutual jealousies and hatreds of those Powers, kept in check by no tie stronger than diplomacy, prevented them from forming any scheme of common action. One great province (Naples) had fallen into Spanish hands; another (Milan) lay open through the pa.s.ses of the Alps to France. The Papacy, in the center, manipulated these two hostile foreign forces with some advantage to itself, but with ever-deepening disaster for the race. As in the days of Guelf and Ghibelline, so now again the nation was bisected. The contest between French and Spanish factions became cruel. Personal interests were subst.i.tuted for principles; cross-combinations perplexed the real issues of dispute; while one sole fact emerged into distinctness--that, whatever happened, Italy must be the spoil of the victorious duelist.

The practical termination of this state of things arrived in the battle of Pavia, when Francis was removed as a prisoner to Madrid, and in the sack of Rome, when the Pope was imprisoned in the Castle of S. Angelo.

It was then found that the laurels and the profit of the b.l.o.o.d.y contest remained with the King of Spain. What the people suffered from the marching and countermarching of armies, from the military occupations of towns, from the desolation of rural districts, from ruinous campaigns and sanguinary battles, from the pillage of cities and the ma.s.sacres of their inhabitants, can best be read in Burigozzo's _Chronicle of Milan_, in the details of the siege of Brescia and the destruction of Pavia, in the _Chronicle of Prato_, and in the several annals of the sack of Rome.

The exhaustion of the country seemed complete; the spirit of the people was broken. But what soon afterwards became apparent, and what in 1527 might have been thought incredible, was that the single member of the Italian union which profited by these apocalyptic sufferings of the nation, was the Papacy. Clement VII., imprisoned in the Castle of S.

Angelo, forced day and night to gaze upon his capital in flames and hear the groans of tortured Romans, emerged the only vigorous survivor of the five great Powers on whose concert Italian independence had been founded. Instead of being impaired, the position of the Papacy had been immeasurably improved. Owing to the prostration of Italy, there was now no resistance to the Pope's secular supremacy within the limits of his authorized dominion. The defeat of France and the accession of a Spanish monarch to the Empire guaranteed peace. No foreign force could levy armies or foment uprisings in the name of independence. Venice had been stunned and mutilated by the League of Cambray. Florence had been enslaved after the battle of Ravenna. Milan had been relinquished, out-worn, and depopulated, to the nominal ascendency of an impotent Sforza. Naples was a province of the Spanish monarchy. The feudal va.s.sals and the subject cities of the Holy See had been ground and churned together by a series of revolutions unexampled even in the mediaeval history of the Italian communes. If, therefore, the Pope could come to terms with the King of Spain for the part.i.tion of supreme authority in the peninsula, they might henceforward share the mangled remains of the Italian prey at peace together. This is precisely what they resolved on doing. The basis of their agreement was laid in the Treaty of Barcelona in 1529. It was ratified and secured by the Treaty of Cambray in the same year. By the former of these compacts Charles and Clement swore friendship. Clement promised the Imperial crown and the invest.i.ture of Naples to the King of Spain. Charles agreed to reinstate the Pope in Emilia, which had been seized from Ferrara by Julius II.; to procure the restoration of Ravenna and Cervia by the Venetians; to subdue Florence to the House of Medici; and to bestow the hand of his natural daughter Margaret of Austria on Clement's b.a.s.t.a.r.d nephew Alessandro, who was already designated ruler of the city. By the Treaty of Cambray Francis I. relinquished his claims on Italy and abandoned his Italian supporters without conditions, receiving in exchange the possession of Burgundy. The French allies who were sacrificed on this occasion by the Most Christian to the Most Catholic Monarch consisted of the Republics of Venice and Florence, the Dukes of Milan and Ferrara, the princely Houses of Orsini and Fregosi in Rome and Genoa, together with the Angevine n.o.bles in the realm of Naples. The Paix des Dames, as this act of capitulation was called (since it had been drawn up in private conclave by Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, the mother and the aunt of the two signatories), was a virtual acknowledgment of the fact that French influence in Italy was at an end.[1]

The surrender of Italy by Francis made it necessary that Charles V.

should put in order the vast estates to which he now succeeded as sole master. He was, moreover, Emperor Elect; and he judged this occasion good for a.s.suming the two crowns according to antique custom.

Accordingly in July, 1529, he caused Andrea Doria to meet him at Barcelona, crossed the Mediterranean in a rough pa.s.sage of fourteen days, landed at Genoa on August 12, and proceeded by Piacenza, Parma and Modena to Bologna, where Clement VII. was already awaiting him. The meeting of Charles and Clement at Bologna was so solemn an event in Italian history, and its results were so important for the several provinces of the peninsula, that I may be excused for enlarging at some length upon this episode.

[Footnote 1: It is significant for the future of Italy that both the ladies who drew up this agreement were connected with Savoy. Louise, d.u.c.h.ess of Angouleme, was a daughter of the house. Margaret, daughter of Maximilian, was d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Savoy.]

With pomp and pageantry it closed an age of unrivaled intellectual splendor and of unexampled sufferings through war. By diplomacy and debate it prescribed laws for a new age of unexpected ecclesiastical energy and of national peace procured at the price of slavery.

Ill.u.s.trious survivors from the period of the pagan Renaissance met here with young men destined to inaugurate the Catholic Revival. The compact struck between Emperor and Pope in private conferences, laid a basis for that firm alliance between Spain and Rome which seriously influenced the destinies of Europe. Finally, this was the last occasion upon which a modern Caesar received the iron and golden crowns in Italy from the hands of a Roman Pontiff. The fortunate inheritor of Spain, the Two Sicilies, Austria and the Low Countries, who then a.s.sumed them both at the age of twenty-nine, was not only the last who wielded the Imperial insignia with imperial authority, but was also a far more formidable potentate in Italy than any of his predecessors since Charles the Great had been.[2]

[Footnote 2: In what follows regarding Charles V. at Bologna I am greatly indebted to Giordani's laboriously compiled volume: _Della Venuta e Dimora in Bologna del Sommo Pont. Clemente VII. etc._ (Bologna, 1832).]

That Charles should have employed the galleys of Doria for the transhipment of his person, suite, and military escort from Barcelona, deserves a word of comment. Andrea Doria had been bred in the service of the French crown, upon which Genoa was in his youth dependent. He formed a navy of decisive preponderance in the western Mediterranean, and in return for services rendered to Francis in the Neapolitan campaign of 1528, he demanded the liberation of his native city. When this was refused, Doria transferred his allegiance to the Spaniard, surprised Genoa and reinstated the republic, magnanimously refusing to secure its tyranny for himself or even to set the ducal cap upon his head. Charles invested him with the princ.i.p.ality of Melfi and made him a Grandee of Spain. By this series of events Genoa was prepared to accept the yoke of Spanish influence and customs, which pressed so heavily in the succeeding century on Italy.

Charles had a body of 2000 Spaniards already quartered at Genoa, as well as strong garrisons in the Milanese, and a force of about 7000 troops collected by the Prince of Orange from the _debris_ of the army which had plundered Rome. While he was on his road from Genoa to Bologna, this force was already moving upon Florence. He brought with him as escort some 10,000 men, counting horse and infantry. The total of the troops which obeyed his word in Italy might be computed at about 27,000, including Spanish cavalry and foot-soldiers, German lansknechts and Italian mercenaries. This large army, partly stationed in important posts of defence, partly in movement, was sufficient to make every word of his a law. The French were in no position to interfere with his arrangements. His brother Ferdinand, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was engaged in a doubtful contest with Soliman before the gates of Vienna.

He was himself the most considerable potentate in Germany, then distracted by the struggles of the Reformation. Italy lay crushed and prostrate, trampled down by armies, exhausted by impost and exactions, terrorized by brutal violence. That Charles had come to speak his will and be obeyed was obvious.

To greet the king on his arrival at Genoa, Clement deputed two amba.s.sadors, the Cardinals Ercole Gonzaga and Monsignor Gianmatteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona. Gonzaga was destined to play a part of critical importance in the Tridentine Council. Giberti had made himself ill.u.s.trious in the Church by the administration of his diocese on a system which antic.i.p.ated the coming ecclesiastical reforms, and was already famous in the world of letters by his generous familiarity with students.[3] Three other men of high distinction and of fateful future waited on their imperial master. Of these the first was Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who succeeded Clement in the Papacy, opened the Tridentine Council, and added a new reigning family to the Italian princes. The others were the Pope's nephews, Alessandro de'Medici, Duke of Florence designate, and his cousin the Cardinal Ippolito de'Media.