The New International Encyclopædia/Paul (popes)

PAUL. The name of five popes. Paul I., Pope 757-767, the brother of Stephen II., whom he succeeded. He was the candidate of the Frankish party, and as Pope maintained close relations with Pepin I., whose help he needed both against the Lombards and against the Greek Emperor, who had not given up his claims to the exarchate and the Pentapolis. Pepin, however, was constant in his support of the Pope, and assured him a fairly peaceable possession of the ecclesiastical territory.—Paul II., Pope 1464-71, Pietro Barbo. He was born at Venice in 1417, the nephew of Eugenius IV., to whom he owed his introduction to an ecclesiastical career. He was made a cardinal in 1440, and held a position of great influence under Nicholas V. and Calixtus III. Pius II., however, did not regard him so favorably, and his election to the Papacy as successor to Pius was largely due to the older cardinals, who had not been in sympathy with that pontiff. At the beginning of his reign he tried to form an alliance of Christian sovereigns against the Turks, but the circumstances of the time frustrated his purpose. He was obliged to oppose the claims of the French King, Louis XI., to absolute power, and demanded of him the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction. He attempted to suppress the non-Christian or properly so-called humanistic Renaissance, especially by the dissolution of the Roman Academy, which had become a meeting-place for the enemies of religion, and by severe penalties against the scholars who combined pagan doctrine with pagan immorality.—Paul III., Pope 1534-49, Alessandro Farnese. He was born in 1468, was educated in Rome by Pomponio Leto, and went to Florence, entering into close relations with the Medici. Alexander VI. made him a cardinal in 1493; later he became Bishop of Ostia and dean of the Sacred College. He held various important offices, twice representing the Pope during his absence as legate in Rome. He strongly advocated the calling of a general council, and was a member of the commission appointed by Clement VII. to consider the question. After his elevation to the Papacy, he vigorously pursued the reforming policy he had always advocated. He first summoned the council to meet at Mantua in 1536, then at Vicenza in 1538, and again at Mantua in 1542; but each time its assembly was prevented by the discord between Charles V. and Francis I. It finally met at Trent in 1545. (See Trent, Council of.) Against Henry VIII. of England he took decisive steps, finally issuing in 1538 the bull of excommunication and deposition prepared three years earlier. He took vigorous steps also for the suppression of Protestantism in Italy, reconstructing the Inquisition and establishing a strict censorship of books. (See Index.) The reproach of nepotism is brought against him. In 1545 he is to he credited with an enlightened patronage of letters and art. He made his natural son, Pietro Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, having appointed Michelangelo architect in chief of the Vatican and of Saint Peter's, and provided for many great works.

Paul IV., Pope 1555-59, Giovanni Pietro Caraffa. He was born at Naples in 1476. In 1494 he entered the service of the Curia, and in 1507 was appointed Bishop of Chieti, in which see he labored most earnestly for the reformation of abuses, and for the revival of religion and morality. With this view he established, in conjunction with several congenial reformers, the congregation of secular clergy called Theatines (q.v.), and was himself the first superior. It was under his influence that Paul III. organized the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Rome. On the death of Marcellus II. in 1555, although in his seventy-ninth year, he was elected to succeed him. He enforced vigorously upon the clergy the observance of all the clerical duties, and enacted laws for the maintenance of public morality. He established a censorship, and completed the organization of the Roman Inquisition; he took measures for the alleviation of the burdens of the poorer classes, and for the better administration of justice, not sparing even his own nephews, whom he banished from Rome on account of their corrupt conduct and profligate life. His foreign relations, too, involved him in much labor and perplexity. He insisted on the restoration of Church property in England, a demand which Julius III. had in the interests of peace refused to press; and on Elizabeth's accession declared her illegitimate and not entitled to the throne. He was embroiled with the Emperor Ferdinand, with Philip II. of Spain, and with Cosmo, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Having condemned the principles of the Peace of Augsburg, he protested against its provisions.—Paul V., Pope 1605-21, Camillo Borghese. He was born in Rome in 1550. In his early life he was a distinguished canonist and theologian; and after the ordinary prelatical career at Rome he rose first to the post of Nuncio at the Spanish Court, and afterwards to the cardinalate under Clement VIII. His Pontificate is rendered memorable by the celebrated conflict with the Republic of Venice, into which he was plunged at the very outset of his career. The original ground of dispute was the question of the immunity of the clergy from the jurisdiction of civil tribunals. The Venetian Senate resisted the claim of the clergy to be tried by ecclesiastical tribunals; and further causes of dispute were added by a mortmain law, and a law prohibiting the establishment of new religious Orders or associations unless with the sanction of the Senate. Each party remaining inflexible in its determination, Paul issued a brief, directing a sentence of excommunication against the Doge and Senate, and placing the Republic under an interdict unless submission should be made within twenty-four days. The Senate persisted, and an animated conflict, as well of acts as of writings, ensued, in the latter of which the celebrated Fra Paolo Sarpi, on the side of the Republic, and on the Papal side Bellarmine and Baronius, were the leaders. Preparations were even made for actual hostilities; but, by the intervention of Henry IV. of France, the dispute was accommodated and peace restored in 1607, although dissatisfaction afterwards arose on the subject of the nomination of a patriarch. Paul's administration was a vigorous and noble one, and marked by the development of religious Orders and missionary enterprise. Consult his Life by T. A. Trollope (London, 1861).