The Renaissance was a vibrant period in history, taking place between the 14th and 17th centuries. The modern world emerged from the Middle Ages with the rediscovery of classical learning, art, and humanism. There was marked improvement in the human condition: intellectually, economically, and socially. But spiritually? The Universal Church that was supposed to guide souls has had a long history of venality and corruption, but the increasing secularism of the age seemed to have aggravated the symptoms. The Renaissance Popes behaved no differently from the power-hungry princes of the time, provoking the Protestant secession and the rending of Christendom.
Related: 10 Biggest Turnarounds by the Catholic Church
10 The Slave Trade
With the Renaissance came the age of exploration and discovery, which opened hitherto unknown lands and peoples to European colonization and exploitation. The Portuguese exploring West Africa were the first to recognize the economic profits of a large-scale slave trading enterprise. In 1441, a Portuguese ship captain named Antam Goncalves made the first raid for the express purpose of kidnapping slaves, capturing less than a dozen, a small beginning for what would become a massive trans-Atlantic traffic in human beings.
Fifteenth-century jurisprudence regulated the treatment of captive Jews, Muslims, and Christians, delineating who was enslaveable and who was not. But the status of these “black Gentiles” was not so clear. In 1453, Pope Nicholas V (1397–1455) issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, giving King Alfonso V of Portugal the authority to reduce and enslave “Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers,” effectively giving his sanction to the West African slave trade. On January 8, 1455, he followed it up with the bull Romanus Pontifex, granting Portugal the exclusive right to conquer and enslave the inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa.
It was Nicholas who gave religious justification for the detestable practice, suggesting that the conversion of the slaves to the True Faith was actually an act of piety and charity.
The Romanus Pontifex was a fateful and far-reaching document that is responsible for all the abuses, oppression, and horrors endured by Blacks down through the centuries, especially in the New World. It reverberated even long after the abolition of the slave trade in the Jim Crow South of post-Civil War United States. [1]
9 All in the Family
The Unspeakable Things Pope Sixtus IV Did During His Reign
Nepotism, the bestowal of offices and favors upon a Pope’s relatives, had bedeviled the Church before. However, Pope Sixtus IV (1414–1484) raised it to new heights. He created a grand total of 34 new cardinals out of his nephews, friends, and allies, none of whom were qualified for the job. One nephew, Girolamo Riario, became the Captain-General of the Church, a powerful post with control over the papal military. Sixtus housed his sisters in Rome’s most luxurious homes, with everything they desired within reach. (Link 4)
A contemporary critic, Stefano Infessura, dismayed by the deluge of worthless appointees, speculated that Sixtus was a closet homosexual and that he distributed offices to his illicit lovers. He characterized Sixtus, who embroiled himself more in political feuds than shepherding the Church, as “an impious and unjust king, who had no fear of God, no love of governing the Christian people, with no affection for charity or love, only caring for dishonest pleasure, greed, and vanity.”
The Holy Father was not averse to waging war to promote family interests. To obtain the duchy of Ferrara for Girolamo, Sixtus encouraged Venice to attack it, but almost every Italian state rallied to its defense, thwarting the Pope, who was forced to sue for peace. The defeat was said to have hastened Sixtus’ death. [2]
8 Assassination in a Cathedral
The Plot To Kill The Medici: The Pazzi Conspiracy…
Girolamo Riario, Sixtus’s nephew, resented the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de Medici, because he was standing in the way of the Captain-General’s efforts to consolidate papal territories in the region. He allied himself with the Medici’s political rivals, the Pazzi family, who plotted to eliminate Lorenzo. Using his family connection, Girolamo got his uncle, the pope, to back up the plan.
On Easter Sunday, April 26, 1478, the Pazzi assassins attacked Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano while they attended Mass at the Duomo Cathedral. Giuliano was killed, but Lorenzo, though wounded, managed to escape. That the attack took place on a solemn holy day in a sacred space shocked many. That the pope was an instigator of the crime would shock even more. Lorenzo’s allies took brutal, murderous revenge on the Pazzis, who were thrown out the windows of the Palazzo Vecchio, their corpses strung up and left to rot in the sun. The enmity between Lorenzo and Sixtus led to the pope placing the city under interdict, forbidding Masses and sacraments from being given.
Sixtus encouraged his ally King Ferdinand I of Naples to attack Florence, starting a war that dragged on fruitlessly for two years, throwing Italy into confusion and disorder. In 1480, Lorenzo and Ferdinand made peace, and Sixtus had to lift his interdict. [3]
7 Extermination of Witches
Witchcraft – Malleus Maleficarum – The Hammer of Witches – History and Analysis of the Inquisition
Giovanni Battista Cibo (1432–1492), father of two illegitimate children, was elevated to the Chair of Peter as Pope Innocent VIII in 1484 in a conclave marred by politics, factionalism, bribery, and riotings. His reign would be as corrupt and tumultuous as a result of his involvement in secular Italian politics and his struggle against the Ottoman Turks. In an unprecedented move, Innocent had the Sultan’s brother and rival come to live with him in the Vatican, hoping to use him as a bargaining chip to keep the Sultan at bay. A Muslim prince living in luxury at the very heart of Christendom disturbed many.
At least Innocent did not forget his spiritual duties. He battled the Waldensian and Hussite heretics and appointed the sadistic Tomas de Torquemada as Inquisitor in Spain. Torquemada’s name would become virtually synonymous with Inquisitorial terror and brutality. When Dominican friar Heinrich Kramer requested authority to hunt witches in Germany, Innocent responded with the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus of 1484, giving Kramer the go-ahead.
Together with another Dominican, Johann Sprenger, Kramer wrote what may be the most diabolical book next to the Mein Kampf. The Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches) was the primer for witch-hunters, detailing the nature and depravity of witchcraft, how to detect witches, and how to prosecute them. Before this, it was held that witches were powerless against God, and they received relatively light punishment. Now, the Malleus lumped witches together with heretics, deserving of being hunted down and killed. Torture was recommended to ferret out the guilty.
Some theologians condemned Kramer’s book as unethical and illegal, but it had already stoked people’s fears and was considered an authoritative source on Satanism. The systematic extermination of witches had begun, and Malleus Maleficarum, with Innocent’s bull on the preface, guided the witch-hunters on their grisly task in the following deadly centuries. [4]
6 The Pope’s Mistress
Most Evil Pope in History – Alexander VI The Devil Pope
Some popes had taken mistresses before, and loose morals were no scandal in Renaissance society. But the relationship between Alexander VI (1431–1503), the former Rodrigo Borgia, and Giulia Farnese, probably the most beautiful woman of the time, raised many eyebrows: Giulia was forty years younger than her lover. People mockingly called her the “bride of Christ.”
Giulia’s relationship with then Cardinal Borgia began when she was just 14 when she married Orsino Orsini. When he became Pope, Alexander moved her to Rome with him, leaving Orsini behind. Giulia’s family approved of the arrangement, knowing that their interests would benefit. They were not disappointed. Alexander lavished rich gifts upon Giulia and elevated her brother Alessandro to the cardinalship (he would later become Pope Paul III). Orsino was mollified by the bestowal of a lucrative career. The Farnese family rose to prominence.
When Giulia returned to her hometown to visit a dying brother and Orsino, her long absence from Rome drove Alexander to suspicion and jealousy. Accusing them of ingratitude, he threatened the Farnese and Orsini with excommunication and confiscation of property unless Giulia returned to him immediately. On the way back, Giulia was waylaid and kidnapped by French troops, and a ransom of 3,000 ducats was demanded from Alexander for her release. The money was surrendered without hesitation by the pope, who would have gladly paid 50,000 ducats to redeem his lover, according to the ambassador of Ferrara, as she was “everything to him—a heart and soul.”
For unknown reasons, Alexander and Giulia ended their affair in 1500, three years before the pope’s death. At age 30, Giulia was finally free and was married again, remaining with her husband for eight years until his death and spending the last two years of her life in Rome. [5]
5 The Banquet of Chestnuts
Exposing The Party The Roman Catholic Church Doesn’t Want You to Discover
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