Henry VIII: his pope, Katherine, Anne and Florence

Henry VIII: the king, his wife, his lover, the French

- Episode 01 -

Henry VIII: his pope, Katherine, Anne and Florence

DOWNLOAD

LISTEN

Henry VIII: his pope, Katherine, Anne and FLORENCE

Saturday 25 June 2022

ALL HISTORY CAFÉ LINKS

LISTEN TO Henry VIII: his pope, Katherine, Anne and Florence

Firebrand Medici cousins, Leo (now pope) and Giulio (left) who would be pope, 1519

To understand the story of Henry VIII’s break with Rome you need to understand the pope Henry had to do business with

The usual story is that Pope Clement was unwilling to allow Henry to end his marriage with Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn because he didn’t believe in divorce and because he was a prisoner of the Spanish King, Katherine’s nephew.

But when you get to know Clement better, you discover that his problem wasn’t really with Katherine or Anne. What this was really all about was Florence.

Pope Clement VII was born illegitimate as Giulio de’Medici, in Florence in 1478. By 1513 the Medicis held all the power in the Vatican: his cousin and friend Giovanni, was now Pope Leo X and he had made Giulio archbishop of Florence and a cardinal. The two former young firebrands were now pope and deputy. And Giulio was effectively ruler of Florence.

Recognising Giulio’s power, European states began courting the new Cardinal. He became Protector of both France and England, which was quite an achievement since the two were at war. His sympathies, however, lay much more with the English and their Spanish allies than with the French. No surprise, since the Medici had only got back into Florence with the help of a Spanish army. At one point Cardinal Giulio even helped lead an army that defeated the French in northern Italy.

It was during this time that Giulio worked with Katherine of Aragon and Cardinal Wolsey to build up the Anglo-Spanish alliance and head off any rapprochement with the French. Together they negotiated an alliance between Spain, England and the Papacy in 1522. And it was because of this co-operation with the Medicis and the Spanish that Wolsey had gradually acquired his extraordinary, almost unprecedented powers as papal legate in England.

The Sack of Rome 1527 by mutinous Spanish mercenaries who had not been paid

Why Clement became a dithering, wavering, indecisive pope and caused the sack of Rome

When Giulio was elected pope in 1523, he took the name Clement VII and confirmed Wolsey’s legatine powers for life.

Spain was threatening the papal lands. But siding with France against Spain would threaten to split Christendom down the middle. So Clement, who had been a sensible, practical cardinal, became a dithering, wavering, indecisive pope. He allied with France in 1524, with Spain in 1525 and with France again in 1526.

By mid-April 1527 a Spanish army was poised to besiege Florence, and Clement was trying to buy it off, taxing the poor Florentines to pay a massive ransom. Charles V’s troops hadn’t been paid in months and were desperate for cash. Negotiations became deadlocked and the city was only saved by the arrival of a French army.

And that’s when the Spanish soldiers moved off in mutinous disgust and headed for Rome. Ten days later they subjected it to its most brutal attack in early modern history.

As soon as the Spanish army left Florence, the citizens broke into revolt. They confiscated Medici property and imposed heavy fines on members of the family. The new Florentine Republic brought back democracy like the old days of Savonarola and ordered all the statues of Clement to be destroyed. Worst of all, the rebels allied themselves with the French.

Pope Clement was caught in a horrible trap. To reclaim his Papal lands, he might have to deal with the French, because it was only the French army that could kick out the Spanish, who’d occupied them.

But if Clement wanted French help, he couldn’t at the same time ask them to help him throw the rebels out of his family’s beloved Florence, since the rebels there were also on the French side. For that, he’d need the Spanish.

And it was at this moment that Henry VIII decides he needed to Pope to end his marriage to his Spanish Queen, Katherine of Aragon.

The pope tried to give Henry his divorce

After the Sack of Rome Pope Clement ordered architect-engineer Antonio da Sangallo to build a well, the Pozzo di S.Patrizio, at his refuge in Orvieto. He feared the Spanish might besiege him

Henry's divorce trial to be overseen by cardinal whose courtesan mistress is called Matrema None Vole, ‘Mother Doesn’t Want Me To

On 26 November 1527 Clement had finally given in and done a deal with the Spanish. The pope would get his Papal lands back (if and when the French army also retreated.) In return he agreed, through gritted teeth, to hold a General Council to deal with the Lutheran heretics who were threatening Charles V’s authority in Germany.

This last promise was a sword of Damacles. Clement was terrified of General Councils, which in Canon Law were superior to popes. He believed that, if he called one, it could depose him because he’d been born illegitimate.

In late December 1527 Henry VIII's diplomats sought the pope out in his hideout in Orvieto. Henry wanted to end his marriage with the Spanish queen, Katherine, because he needed a new alliance with the French. That, of course, was the last thing the Spanish would allow. But at the same time the French had spotted the question of Henry's divorce as a way to prevent the pope allying himself once and for all with the Spanish.

Henry VIII found himself in the middle of all this. That was no accident. It gave little, marginal, impoverished England a way to play power politics with the big beasts of Europe. Henry's game was to present Clement with demands he couldn't possibly meet - above all to end his marriage with his Spanish queen. The French of course backed him. Together they dared the pope to refuse and risk splitting Christendom down the middle.

For months Clement was kept dangling between the Spanish, the French and the English, desperate for Spanish help to regain Florence, but terrified of losing the French and English from the Church for ever. He was finally saved when the French, exhausted by continual war, sued for peace with the Spanish.

Now Henry had to cut his losses and get his divorce case heard by Cardinal Wolsey, his chief minister in England, as the pope had been telling him to do all along.

Clement sent one of his Cardinals, Lorenzo Campeggio to hear the case in England with Wolsey. Henry was hopeful. Campeggio had had a notorious affair with one of Rome’s smartest courtesans, Lucrezia da Clarice, known by her trade name Matrema None Vole, ‘Mother Doesn’t Want Me To.’ The English thought he’d be sympathetic to Henry.

Divorce trial between Henry and Katherine began on 21 June 1529 at the London convent of Blackfriars

The pope's cardinals were on the brink of granting Henry his divorce...

Historians now think that it was in fact Henry who pulled the plug on the trial in London with Cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey and sent the case to Rome. It was suddenly obvious that Campeggio was going to find against him.

Not on the balance of the evidence he’d heard – which (as Campeggio bitterly complained) had almost all been in Henry’s favour – but because news had just arrived that Pope Clement was grievously ill.

If a new pope was going to be elected, Campeggio needed to keep in with the Spanish who held the power in Italy and would lean on the cardinals to elect whoever Charles V wanted. And the pope himself, believing he was about to die, also needed to keep in with the Spanish to use them to regain his beloved Florence from the rebels.

After years of flipping and flopping, the pope had finally flapped for good, over to the Spanish side.

It was bad news for Henry. It was seriously bad news for the citizens of Florence. The Spanish besieged the city in October 1529. Negotiations started but failed because Clement refused to compromise. It took until 12 August 1530, 10 months after the siege began, before the city capitulated. 30 000 people, about a third of those who’d lived and taken refuge in the city, had died.

Much later, in 1533, when Henry finally married Anne (which we’ll come to in another podcast) Clement excommunicated Henry. And on 23 March 1534, twenty-two cardinals excommunicated Anne also, for good measure.

Clement didn't in fact die until 25 September 1534, aged 56. Six months earlier he had commissioned Michelangelo, (whose role in the defence of Florence against the Medicis and the Spanish we explore in the podcast), to paint the Last Judgement on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Henry VIII: his pope, Katherine, Anne and Florence

More info and photos here

View this email in your browser