A Short History of Italy (476-1900)Sedgwick, Henry Dwight
History
A Short History of Italy (476-1900)
Sedgwick, Henry Dwight
Italy -- History
Within three years after the sack of Rome, Clement crowned Charles V
with the Imperial crown in Bologna, where, for the last time in Italy,
proclamation was made of a "Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus, Mundi
totius Dominus;" and the Papacy, strengthened at once by its league with
Spain, lifted its head. Further strength came from other sources. The
brilliant young Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola, founded the Order of Jesus,
which vowed itself to poverty, chastity, and obedience to the Papacy
(1534). Spain, too, by the moral effect of example, procured the
Inquisition for Italy. From the time of Innocent III, the Dominican
monks had had charge of preserving the purity of the faith and of
punishing heretics, and they had performed this function with what might
appear to a sceptic sufficient zeal, but during the great racial and
religious struggle in Spain which ended in the capture of Granada, more
zeal was deemed necessary and the Spanish Inquisition was established.
Its fame spread far and wide. The Spanish viceroys introduced it in a
modified form in Naples, and Cardinal Caraffa, a zealous reformer, urged
the need of such an institution in Rome. The Holy Office of Rome was
established, and Caraffa put at its head (1542). Heretics were
frightened into conformity or punished; some were driven out of the
country, a few were burned to death. Freedom of thought was vigorously
attacked; and the _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_ was decreed. The great
and growing power of the reformers may be measured by the fact that the
Pope who sanctioned these great bulwarks of the papal system was the
once gay Alexander Farnese, Paul III, whom we otherwise know as a
brother and a father. The culminating exhibition of the power of the
reformers, however, was in the Council of Trent (1545-63).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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