THE SACK OF ROME
we found the Pope Clement with twelve cardinals in one narrow stall. We made them prisoners, and the Pope had to sign the articles which the secretary read to him. There was great sadness among them and they wept a great deal; but we all became rich."
The Pope sought safety by adopting a policy exactly the opposite of that he had sponsored hitherto. Florence had in the meantime cast off the rule of the Medicis; and the French army of Northern Italy was crushed by the Emperors Spanish troops. In order to save Tuscany for his family, Clement curried friendship with his van- quisher. When the land had once again been brought under Medici rule by the grace of Charles, a marriage sealed the reconciliation Allesandro, a Papal dependent and future lord of the Florentine re- public, took for his wife a natural daughter of the Emperor. Charles now also found himself obliged to be more considerate of the Pope if he hoped to avoid being labelled a Protestant, or finally arousing against himself the indignation of his Catholic Spaniards. Pope and Em- peror met in Bologna during 1530. There, in the great hall of San Petronio, Charles received tfce crown it was the last coronation of a German Emperor by a Pope. When he also signed a treaty with Clement, upon whom all Italian patriots had set their hopes, he was the master of the land. From this hour forward Italy beheld in the Germans its mortal enemies. The Guelph idea of freedom lost the powerful protection of the Papacy; and Italy began to serve as the football of Spanish despotism, of Bourbon greed for territory, and of Austrian absolutism.
Charles made it difficult for the Pope to keep the peace. Not as a Catholic but so much more as an administrator of Imperial power, he sought to make the professors of both the new and the old faiths contented subjects of his government. Therefore he found it ex- pedient to keep up the appearance of being one who stood above the parties, and so joined in the general demand for a Council. The Pope, however, had reason to fear that the Emperor s policy was ad- vantageous to Protestant interests, and once more tended to join France. While the redoubtable Julius II had been as frightened of a Council as a schoolboy is of the rod, the weaker Medici Pope was afraid lest he would confront an ecclesiastical parliament forcibly subordinate to the
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