Pope Paul IV
Pope Paul IV, born Gian Pietro Carafa, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 23 May 1555 to his death, in August 1559. While serving as papal nuncio in Spain, he developed an anti-Spanish outlook that later coloured his papacy. In response to an invasion of part of the Papal States by Spain during his papacy, he called for a French military intervention. After a defeat of the French and with Spanish troops at the edge of Rome, the Papacy and Spain reached a compromise: French and Spanish forces left the Papal States and the Pope thereafter adopted a neutral stance between France and Spain.
Carafa was appointed bishop of Chieti, but resigned in 1524 in order to found with Saint Cajetan the Congregation of Clerics Regular. Recalled to Rome, and made Archbishop of Naples, he worked to re-organise the Inquisitorial system in response to the emerging Protestant movement in Europe, any dialogue with which he opposed. Carafa was elected pope in 1555 through the influence of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in the face of opposition from Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. His papacy was characterised by strong nationalism in reaction to the influence of Philip II of Spain and the Habsburgs. The appointment of Carlo Carafa as Cardinal Nephew damaged the papacy further, and scandals forced Paul to remove him from office. He curbed some clerical abuses in Rome, but his methods were seen as harsh. He would introduce the first modern Index Librorum Prohibitorum or "Index of Prohibited Books" banning works he saw as in error. In spite of his advanced age, he was a tireless worker and issued new decrees and regulations daily, unrelenting in his determination to keep Protestants and recently immigrated Marranos from gaining influence in the Papal States. Paul IV issued the Papal bull Cum nimis absurdum, which confined Jews in Rome to the neighbourhood claustro degli Ebrei, later known as the Roman Ghetto. He died highly unpopular, to the point that his family rushed his burial to make sure his body would not be desecrated by a popular uprising.
Early life
Gian Pietro Carafa was born in Capriglia Irpina, near Avellino, into the prominent Carafa family of Naples. His father Giovanni Antonio of the Counts Carafa della Stadera died in West Flanders in 1516 and his mother Vittoria Camponeschi was the daughter of Pietro Lalle Camponeschi, 5th Count of Montorio, a Neapolitan nobleman, and Maria de Noronha, a Portuguese noblewoman of the House of Pereira.Church career
Bishop
He was mentored by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, his relative, who resigned the see of Chieti in his favour. Under the direction of Pope Leo X, he was ambassador to England and then papal nuncio in Spain, where he conceived a violent detestation of Spanish rule that affected the policies of his later papacy.In 1524, Pope Clement VII allowed Carafa to resign his benefices and join the ascetic and newly founded Congregation of Clerks Regular, popularly called the Theatines, after Carafa's see of Theate. Following the sack of Rome in 1527, the order moved to Venice. There, he wrote in a memorandum in 1533 that reform of the Church and vigorous struggle against any deviations were interlinked. Carafa was recalled to Rome by the reform-minded Pope Paul III, to sit on a committee of reform of the papal court, an appointment that forecasted an end to a humanist papacy and a revival of scholasticism, as Carafa was a disciple of Thomas Aquinas.
Cardinal
In December 1536 he was made Cardinal-Priest of S. Pancrazio and then Archbishop of Naples.The Regensburg Colloquy in 1541 failed to achieve any measure of reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in Europe, but instead saw a number of prominent Italians defect to the Protestant camp. In response, Carafa was able to persuade Pope Paul III to set up a Roman Inquisition, modelled on the Spanish Inquisition with himself as one of the Inquisitors-General. The Papal Bull was promulgated in 1542. Carafa demanded the surveillance of education, ordered the confiscation of many authors, such as Erasmus, and inspired the warning of the Inquisition against printed books containing perceived threats against the Christianity. In this regard, he headed the commission that investigated the Bragadin-Giustiniani dispute and that recommended the burning of the Talmud in 1553.
Election as pope
He was a surprise choice as pope to succeed Pope Marcellus II ; his severe and unbending character combined with his advanced age and Italian patriotism meant under normal circumstances he would have declined the honor. He accepted apparently because Emperor Charles V was opposed to his accession.Carafa, elected on 23 May 1555, took the name of "Paul IV" in honor of Pope Paul III who named him as a cardinal. He was crowned as pope on 26 May 1555 by the protodeacon. He formally took possession of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran on 28 October 1555.
Papacy
Interior Policy
As pope, Paul IV's nationalism was a driving force; he used the office to preserve some liberties in the face of fourfold foreign occupation. Like Pope Paul III, he was an enemy of the Colonna family. His treatment of Giovanna d'Aragona, who had married into that family, drew further negative comment from Venice because she had long been a patron of artists and writers.Paul IV was violently opposed to the liberal Cardinal Giovanni Morone, whom he strongly suspected of being a hidden Protestant, so much that he had him imprisoned. In order to prevent Morone from succeeding him and imposing what he believed to be his Protestant beliefs on the Church, Pope Paul IV codified the Catholic Law excluding heretics and non-Catholics from receiving or legitimately becoming pope, in the bull Cum ex apostolatus officio.
Paul IV was rigidly orthodox, austere in life, and authoritarian in manner. He affirmed the Catholic doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, and used the Holy Office to suppress the Spirituali, a Catholic group deemed heretical. The strengthening of the Inquisition continued under Paul IV, and few could consider themselves safe by virtue of position in his drive to reform the Church; even cardinals he disliked could be imprisoned. He appointed inquisitor Michele Ghislieri, the future Pope Pius V, to the position of Supreme Inquisitor despite the fact as Inquisitor of Como, Ghislieri's persecutions had inspired a citywide rebellion, forcing him to flee in fear for his life. Paul IV also established a special committee to work on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a first draft of which was finished in 1557, that later served as basis for the first version promulgated by the Inquisition after his death in 1559.
Paul IV also begun a more radical and severe policy towards the Jews compared to the lenient papal legislation of the first half of the sixteenth century. As such, in the Papal States, especially in the seaport of Ancona, Marranos had thrived under benevolent popes Clement VII, Paul III, and Julius III. These had even received a guarantee that if accused of apostasy they would be subject only to papal authority. Convinced that the papal policy of kindness had been abused by the Jews and not resulted in enough conversions, he enacted harsh restrictions and ended all dispensations to the Jews in the papal state, with the aim of encourage the Jews to convert.
The policy was formalised in his bull Cum nimis absurdum, which was issued on 17 July 1555 and where Paul IV explicitly declared that the Church had to adopt a policy that led Jews to converting. In the bull, Paul IV restricted the commercial activities and professions Jews could engage with, forbade them employing Christian servants and future ownership of real property while limiting their options to sell their own property. It further ordered that Jews had to wear distinctive yellow hats, especially outside the ghetto, and that Jews were forbidden to have more than one synagogue per city, resulting in Rome alone to the destruction of seven "excess" places of worship. Finally, the bull also ordered the creation of a Jewish ghetto in Rome. The Pope set its borders near the Rione Sant'Angelo, an area where large numbers of Jews already resided, and ordered it walled off from the rest of the city. A single gate, locked every day at sundown, was the only means of reaching the rest of the city. The Jews themselves were forced to pay all design and construction costs related to the project, which came to a total of roughly 300 scudi. In another reversal of previous papal policies, some hundred of the Marranos of Ancona were thrown into prison, 50 sentenced by the tribunal of the Inquisition and 25 Conversos who had reverted Judaism were burned at the stake in the spring of 1556. Finally, the Inquisition prohibited in 1557 under his influence the Jews to possess any other religious work in Hebrew except for the Bible. Paul IV's policy was somewhat successful as the later sixteenth century saw a substantial increase in conversions from Jews to Christianity. By the end of his five-year reign, the number of Roman Jews had dropped by half. Yet his anti-Jewish legacy endured for over 300 years: the ghetto he established ceased to exist only with the dissolution of the Papal States in 1870. Its walls were torn down in 1888.
According to Leopold von Ranke, a rigid austerity and an earnest zeal for the restoration of primitive habits became the dominant tendency of his papacy. Monks who had left their monasteries were expelled from the city and from the Papal States. He would no longer tolerate the practice by which one man had been allowed to enjoy the revenues of an office while delegating its duties to another.
All begging was forbidden. Even the collection of alms for Masses, which had previously been made by the clergy, was discontinued. A medal was struck representing Christ driving the money changers from the Temple. Paul IV put in place a reform of the papal administration designed to stamp out trafficking of principal positions in the Curia. All secular offices, from the highest to the lowest, were assigned to others based on merit. Important economies were made, and taxes were proportionately remitted. Paul IV established a chest, of which only he held the key, for the purpose of receiving all complaints that anyone desired to make.
During his papacy, censorship reached new heights. Among his first acts as pope was to cut off Michelangelo's pension, and he ordered the nudes of The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel be painted more modestly . Paul IV also introduced the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or "Index of Prohibited Books" to Venice, then an independent and prosperous trading state, in order to crack down on the growing threat of Protestantism. Under his authority, all books written by Protestants were banned, together with Italian and German translations of the Latin Bible.