XI. Ecclesiastical Principalities
It now remains for us to discuss only ecclesiastical principalities, in which all the difficulties come before they are possessed. For they are acquired either by ability or by fortune, and kept without either, because they are sustained by institutions grown old in religion, which have been so powerful and of such a kind that they keep their princes in power however they behave and live. These princes alone have states and do not defend them, and subjects and do not govern them; and their states, though undefended, are not taken from them, and their subjects, though ungoverned, do not care, and neither think of breaking away from them nor can. These principalities alone, then, are secure and happy. But since they are ruled by higher causes, which the human mind cannot reach, I will not speak of them; for since they are exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act of a presumptuous and rash man to discuss them. Nevertheless, someone might ask me how it has come about that the Church has risen to such greatness in temporal power, when before Alexander the Italian powers (and not only those called the powers, but every baron and lord, however small) held it in little esteem as a temporal force, while now a king of France trembles before it, and it has been able to drive him out of Italy and ruin the Venetians. Although this is well known, it does not seem superfluous to me to recall a good part of it to memory.
Before Charles, king of France, came into Italy, this province was under the rule of the pope, the Venetians, the king of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and the Florentines. These powers had to have two chief concerns: one, that no foreigner should enter Italy in arms; the other, that none of them should seize more territory. Those they were most concerned about were the pope and the Venetians. To hold back the Venetians required the union of all the others, as in the defense of Ferrara; and to keep the pope down they made use of the barons of Rome. These were divided into two factions, the Orsini and the Colonna, and there was always cause for trouble between them; and standing with arms in hand under the pontiff’s very eyes, they kept the papacy weak and infirm. And although a spirited pope sometimes arose, like Sixtus,1 neither fortune nor wisdom could ever free him from these troubles. The shortness of the popes’ lives was the cause of it; for in the ten years that a pope lived, on average, he could barely put down one of the factions; and if, for instance, one pope had almost wiped out the Colonna, another arose who was hostile to the Orsini, which made the Colonna rise again, and he did not have time to wipe out the Orsini. This made the temporal forces of the pope little esteemed in Italy. Then Alexander VI arose, who, of all the pontiffs there have ever been, showed how far a pope could prevail with money and with force; and with Duke Valentino as his instrument, and the coming of the French as his opportunity, he did all the things I discussed above in speaking of the Duke’s actions. And although his intention was to make not the Church great but the Duke, nevertheless what he did turned to the greatness of the Church, which, after his death and the Duke’s fall, became the heir of his labors. Then came Pope Julius, and he found the Church great, holding all the Romagna, with the barons of Rome wiped out and those factions crushed by Alexander’s blows; and he also found the way open to a method of accumulating money never used before Alexander’s time.
Julius not only followed these things but increased them. He planned to win Bologna, to destroy the Venetians, and to drive the French out of Italy; and all these enterprises succeeded for him, and with all the more praise to him because he did everything to increase the Church and not any private person. He also kept the Orsini and Colonna factions in the condition in which he found them; and although there were some leaders among them ready to make trouble, two things have kept them quiet: one, the greatness of the Church, which daunts them; the other, their having no cardinals of their own, who are the source of the tumults among them. These factions will never be quiet whenever they have cardinals, because the cardinals nourish the factions in Rome and outside, and the barons are forced to defend them; and so from the ambition of prelates arise the discords and tumults among the barons. His Holiness Pope Leo,2 then, has found this papacy very powerful; and it is hoped that if those popes made it great with arms, he, with his goodness and his countless other virtues, will make it very great and venerable.