Paul V

Italian pope (1605-1621)

• Born: September 17, 1552
• Birthplace: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)
• Died: January 28, 1621
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

A vigorous proponent of papal political supremacy, Paul was a strong governor of his church during the Catholic Counter-Reformation, using excommunication and interdict to compel obedience. Paul canonized saints, completed the building of St. Peter’s Basilica, and organized the Vatican archives. His failed political engagements, however, cost the Papacy much influence in affairs of state.

Early Life

Pope Paul V (Camillo Borghese) was of Sienese ancestry. His father, Marcantonio Borghese, a lawyer, served Pope Paul III, and his mother, Flaminia Astalli, was of Roman nobility. Paul V studied philosophy at the University of Perugia and received the doctor of laws degree from the University of Padua, after which he served the Vatican and became a distinguished canon lawyer. In 1596, Pope Clement VII made him a cardinal.

During an era of much partisan contention within the papal consistory, Paul joined no faction, a course of behavior that made him an acceptable candidate when, in 1605, the cardinals could not agree about electing a pope. Prior to his elevation to the cardinalate, Paul held the positions of vicar of the Basilica of St. Mary Major and vice-legate of Bologna (1588), general auditor of the Papal Camera (1590), papal ambassador to Spain (1593), and, after receiving a cardinal’s red hat, bishop of Iesi (1597-1599), cardinal vicar of Rome (1603), and inquisitor (1603).

Paul’s career in papal service and his abstinence from factional disputes among the cardinals made him a likely candidate for the papacy when Clement VIII died in 1605. The College of Cardinals, however, chose Alessandro de’ Medici, a former legate to France, as Leo XI, whose pontificate ended twenty-seven days later with his sudden death (1605).

Life’s Work

The demise of Leo XI required a new conclave of cardinals, one in which the French and Spanish members were especially contentious. After failing to agree on the nomination of such distinguished figures as Jesuit theologian and cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a militant enemy of Protestants, and celebrated ecclesiastical historian Caesar Baronius (Cesare Baronio), plus some other cardinals, the college selected Camillo Borghese as a compromise candidate, who assumed the name Paul V.

Once in position, the pontiff pursued the interests of his own family by granting Church offices to his relatives, who consequently enjoyed lucrative incomes from their benefices, in some cases acquiring huge wealth. To his credit, however, Paul required all bishops to reside in their dioceses, as the Council of Trent (1545-1563) had decreed. Absenteeism among prelates had been a scandal for some time, and Paul resolved to eliminate it, so even episcopal cardinals who lived comfortably in Rome had to return to their bishoprics.

Consistent with his conception of papal supremacy, Paul asserted his authority over secular rulers from whom he expected obedience, a policy that brought conflict with Naples, Genoa, and Turin, disputes that did not produce open ruptures. Contention with Venice was, however, serious to the point that it could have led to military combat.

The issue with Venice involved disagreements about the proper boundaries of Ferrara and control over the Venetian clergy. In the manner of his powerful predecessors Gregory VII (1073-1085) and Innocent III (1198-1216), Paul insisted he had a God-given right to depose civil authorities who defied his mandates. In taking this position, the pope received encouragement from the Jesuit polemicist Bellarmine, who argued that clerics were not accountable to secular officials, and from 1605 to 1607 there was a bitter controversy, after Venetian authorities arrested two priests and accused them of crimes for which they must stand trial in a state court. This decision conflicted with a Tridentine decree that ecclesiastical courts alone had jurisdiction over the clergy. Paul responded to Venetian defiance by excommunicating the doge, the official head of state, and the senate of the Republic. When that did not produce compliance, the pope placed Venice under interdict.

In addition to the controversy about immunity for the clergy from civil prosecution, Paul denounced the action of Venice that required government permission to erect new churches or monasteries and forbade the donation of real estate to the Church. The republic refused to succumb to papal intimidation, and almost all Venetian clerics honored the directive of the state to ignore the interdict. Except for the Jesuits, Theatines, and Capuchins, the priests continued religious services as usual. At points, the government hinted it might adopt Protestantism, and war between the Papacy and the republic seemed likely.

In the struggle to assert his supremacy, the pope had support from Bellarmine and Baronius, the latter a leading scholar who used history as a tool with which to rebut Protestant attacks upon Rome. The Venetian government employed its own historian, Paolo Sarpi, a monk and the leader of the Servite order, who had a reputation for immense learning and disdain for papal authoritarianism. Sarpi’s opposition to the veneration of the Virgin Mary aroused the Jesuits, and the Inquisition disputed his orthodoxy. When it became evident that Sarpi could not prevail, Paul accepted a compromise that allowed him to save face while gaining little of substance.

King Henry IV of France arranged negotiations that led to peace. The pope revoked the interdict, and the Republic released the detained priests but did not acknowledge papal authority in matters of state, nor did it revoke the policies about church properties that had angered the pope. Although the banished Capuchins and Theatines were allowed to return to Venice, the Jesuits were not, for authorities there considered them subversive agents of Rome.

Paul V’s problems with Venice were compounded by poor relations with Protestant England, where the Gunpowder Plot (1605) had failed to kill King James I and end his parliament. The pope appealed to the king to not punish all Catholics for the crime of a few. When Parliament demanded that Catholics renounce the pope’s authority to depose rulers, Paul prohibited them from subscribing the oath, thereby ensuring that English Protestants would continue to regard Catholicism a threat to the kingdom. Even in Catholic France, Paul’s policy caused consternation, and the Estates-General declared the king held his authority as a grant from God unrelated to the Papacy. The same body refused to promulgate the decrees of Trent.

The pontificate of Paul V was a dynamic one in that he chartered the Congregation of the Oratory, which Philip Neri founded, and he canonized Neri and several others. Paul promoted missions as far abroad as China, and in the realm of theology he forbade arguments about the efficacy of grace in salvation, a controversy in which the Jesuits had taken a leading role. Paul rejected the heliocentric view of the universe that Copernicus presented, and he censured Galileo for advocating Copernicus’s theory. The pontiff contributed to scholarship, nevertheless, by authorizing the cataloging of the Vatican archives. In architecture, he made his mark by completing construction of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Paul V died on January 28, 1621, soon after celebrating the victory of Catholic forces over Protestant Bohemians at the Battle of White Mountain near Prague.

Significance

Paul V led the reform of the Church, reducing the corruption and abuse that had blemished its image and given credence to complaints from Protestants. The pope’s patronage of his own relatives, however, displayed an inconsistency in his commitment to wholesome changes, although in most cases he appointed able men. Still, the wealth his favorites acquired encouraged suspicions about his own integrity. His nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese (formerly Scipione Caffarelli), for example, gained enormous riches and wielded terrific influence upon papal policy while securing the fortunes of his own family. Paul corrected some abuses in the courts of the Church, promoted public works in Rome—including an aqueduct to improve the watersupply—and subsidized the restoration and preservation of ancient structures and monuments. His support of libraries, museums, and charities was substantial.

In contrast with Paul V’s achievements is his conspicuous failure in relations with secular rulers. The pontiff insisted upon his temporal supremacy to the point that he had the right to depose disobedient monarchs. His inability to do so made the claim appear ludicrous and thereby impaired the prestige of the Vatican in world affairs. Dynastic politics had become the decisive force in international relations as the nation-state system emerged. The political influence of the Papacy was diminishing, and no pontiff would be able to retrieve it.

Bibliography

Bouwsma, William J. Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. This careful study relates to Renaissance ideas the Venetian resistance to papal political assertions, and it contains perceptive coverage of Paul V.

Grendler, Paul F. The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540-1605. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. This erudite study of papal policy toward Venice explains tensions that led Paul to impose excommunication and interdict. Includes a large bibliography.

Pastor, Ludwig von. The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. Translated and edited by Dom Ernest Graf. 1937. Reprint. St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1952. Despite its age, this Roman Catholic work remains the most comprehensive treatment of Paul’s pontificate.

Ranke, Leopold von. History of the Popes. Vol. 2. 1901. Reprint. Translated by E. Fowler. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966. This is a thorough, dispassionate work by the pioneer of modern historiography and is especially useful for its coverage of Paul’s relationship with the Jesuit order.

Wright, Anthony D. The Early Modern Papacy from the Council of Trent to the French Revolution. London: Longman, 2000. This is a well-documented topical study of the Vatican that is rich in details about Paul V.