The Popes During the Reformation
The Reformation did not unfold against a settled Roman background. It unfolded while five very different men held the chair of Peter, and the character of each shaped what happened next. Together their reigns run from the year Columbus sailed to the year the Council of Trent stood adjourned in its first session.1
Alexander VI (1492–1503). The Borgia pope, whose reign showed Europe what the papal office had become: a dynastic prize, bought and defended like any other. He excommunicated Savonarola and divided the New World by decree. Luther was a schoolboy.
Leo X (1513–1521). A Medici, a patron of Raphael, and desperately short of money for St. Peter’s. His indulgence for the basilica produced Tetzel, and Tetzel produced the Ninety-Five Theses. He condemned Luther in 1520 and excommunicated him in 1521, having never understood what he was dealing with.
Adrian VI (1522–1523). A devout Dutchman and the last non-Italian pope until 1978. He told the German estates plainly that the corruption had passed “from the head to the limbs” and that the curia must be reformed first — and then demanded that the Edict of Worms be enforced. He died after twenty months, detested by Rome.
Clement VII (1523–1534). Another Medici, abler than he was decisive. Rome was sacked under him in 1527 by an imperial army full of Lutheran soldiers, and his six-year delay over Henry VIII’s annulment ended with the English church severed from Rome.
Paul III (1534–1549). A Renaissance prince who nonetheless began the Counter-Reformation: the reform commission of 1536, the Jesuits in 1540, the Roman Inquisition in 1542, and the Council of Trent in 1545.
Among Paul III’s successors, three carried the Counter-Reformation through and beyond the council: Paul IV (1555–1559), the former head of the Roman Inquisition, who issued the first papal Index of Prohibited Books; Pius IV (1559–1565), who brought the Council of Trent to its close; and Pius V (1566–1572), who excommunicated Elizabeth I. For the other opponents of the Reformation, see Catholic Opponents of the Reformation.
Two observations are worth carrying away. The first is that for thirty years after 1517 Rome had no settled policy toward the Reformation, because the men in charge were occupied with Italian politics, imperial armies, and family advancement. The movement grew in the space that distraction left.
The second is that when Rome did answer, under Paul III, the answer was twofold and has remained so: the abuses were conceded and corrected, and the doctrine was defined and defended. Any honest account of the Counter-Reformation must say both. The traffic that provoked Luther was abolished; the theology that produced the traffic was placed under anathema’s protection. See Justification and Indulgences.
