The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [42]
After complying with Lorenzo’s wish, Innocent, firm for once, insisted that the boy must wait three years before taking his place, devoting the time to the study of theology and canon law. The candidate was already more learned than most, Lorenzo having seen to a good education by distinguished tutors and scholars. When at last in 1492, Giovanni at sixteen took his place as Cardinal, his father wrote him a serious and significant letter. Warning of the evil influences of Rome, “that sink of all iniquity,” Lorenzo urged his son “to act so as to convince all who see you that the well-being and honor of the Church and the Holy See are more to you than anything else in the world.” After this unique advice, Lorenzo does not neglect to point out that his son will have opportunities “to be of service to our city and our family,” but he must beware the seductions to evil-doing of the College of Cardinals, which “is at this moment so poor in men of worth.… If the Cardinals were such as they ought to be, the whole world would be better for it, for they would always elect a good Pope and thus secure the peace of Christendom.”
Here, expressed by the outstanding secular ruler of the Italian Renaissance, was the crux of the problem. If the cardinals had been worthy men they would have elected worthier popes, but both were parts of the same body. The popes were the cardinals in these sixty years, elected out of the Sacred College and in turn appointing cardinals of their own kind. Folly, in the form of absorption in shortsighted power struggles and perverse neglect of the Church’s real needs, became endemic, passed on like a torch from each of the Renaissance six to the next.
If Innocent was ineffectual, it was partly owing to the perpetual discord of the Italian states and of the foreign powers as well. Naples, Florence and Milan were generally at war in one combination or another against each other or some smaller neighbor; Genoa “would not hesitate to set the world on fire,” as the Pope, himself a Genoese, complained; the landward expansion of Venice was feared by all; Rome was a chronic battleground of the Orsini and Colonna; lesser states often erupted in the hereditary internal conflicts of their leading families. Though on taking office, Innocent earnestly wished to establish peace among the adversaries, he lacked the resolution to bring it about. Energy often failed him owing to recurrent illness.
The worst of his troubles was a campaign of brutal harassment periodically deepening into warfare by the unpleasant King of Naples, whose motive seems no more precise than simple malignity. He began with an insolent demand for certain territories, refused payment of Naples’ customary tribute as a papal fief, conspired with the Orsini to foment trouble in Rome and threatened appeal to that awful weapon, a Council. When the barons of Naples rose in rebellion against his tyranny, the Pope took their side, upon which Ferrante’s army marched on Rome and besieged it, while Innocent sought frantically for allies and armed forces. Venice held aloof but allowed the Pope to hire its mercenaries. Milan and Florence refused aid, and for convoluted reasons—perhaps a desire to see the Papal States weakened—opted for Naples. This was before Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Florentine ruler, made family connections with Innocent, but these were not always decisive. In Italy, partners one day were antagonists the next.
The Pope’s appeal for foreign aid against Ferrante aroused interest in France based on the worn-out Angevin claim to Naples, which, despite the disasters of previous pursuit, the French Crown could never bring itself to relinquish. The shadow of France frightened Ferrante, who suddenly, just when his siege of Rome had brought the city to desperation, agreed to a treaty of peace. His concessions to the Pope, which seemed amazing, were better understood when he later violated all of them, repudiated the treaty