URBAN VIII

5

URBAN'S POLICY TOWARDS THE HAPSBURGS, ESPECIALLY AT THE DIET OF REGENSBURG.

 

The estimate formed of Urban's character, moral and political, depends very largely on the view taken of his relations with the Hapsburgs of Vienna. Von Ranke paints Ferdinand as the unselfish crusader, robbed of his reward by an unscrupulous prince, masquerading as a priest. Gregorovius quotes with approval the criticism that Urban would have preferred "to see the success of the protestants rather than that the dominion of Europe should pass to the hand of a single man". Fletcher, in his Gustavus Adolphus, says " Urban was an open Gustavite," and proceeds to praise him for his toleration—a virtue which the pope would have disowned with some asperity. Modern historians are content in the main to repeat the biassed reports of Venetian envoys, such as Aluise Contarini, or the vague rumours which were sedulously propagated by cardinal Borgia and his clique. Many of the proofs which they adduce of Urban's animosity against the Hapsburgs rest on an imperfect statement of events. Von Ranke's criticism on the Spanish match ignores the fact that Urban imposed rather harder conditions on Charles of Wales, when he was wooing Henrietta of France, than in the abortive negotiations for his marriage to the infanta of Spain. Again, the instructions to Sachetti to prevent the projected alliances between the Spanish princesses and Bethlen Gabor and the electoral prince of the Rhine are adduced to prove the pope's implacable hatred for the Hapsburgs. They admit of a much simpler explanation. On every occasion where a question of a marriage dispensation arose, Urban endeavoured to secure the best terms for the church. The so-called "French" pope opposed the French crown on the marriage of Gaston of Orleans, because he would not admit Louis' right to override the church's laws. The Wittelsbach, Wolfgang Wilhelm, duke of Neuburg, applied to him for a dispensation to marry the princess of Zweibrileken. Urban answered him (June 28, 1631) that having praised the Duke's work for catholicism, he expressed his willingness to do anything for him except to allow his marriage to a heretic. Ladislaus VII of Poland desired to marry a daughter of Frederick of the Palatinate; despite pressure from Spain, instigated by England, Urban refused the request. The consent of the Polish diet was necessary, and the pope took good care to secure that assembly's hostility to the proposed alliance. Ladislaus eventually married a Nevers princess. Charles IV of Lorraine, after ten years of matrimony, endeavoured to persuade Urban to pronounce his marriage with Nicolle invalid, on the grounds that he had been forced into it, and that the ceremony had been performed by a priest who was afterwards condemned for evil conduct. Although he was well disposed to the house of Lorraine, the pope refused Charles' request, and anathematized his second marriage.

That Urban, as an Italian prince, feared Hapsburg aggression is certainly true: that he acted entirely from secular considerations or carried his opposition so far as historians generally assert, is not proved. His attitude towards the advancement of Ferdinand's II's eldest son presents no little difficulty. Carlo Caraffa undoubtedly assisted the election of the younger Ferdinand as king of Hungary; it was essential for catholic interests that a protestant should not receive the crown. The fact that the nuncio opposed his immediate coronation (Report of Monsignor Caraffa on the state of the empire and Germany) does not indicate papal aversion to Hapsburg advancement, but merely a prudent desire not to sacrifice an important advantage to Austrian prejudice. When, in 1630, the emperor endeavoured to persuade the electors to choose his son as king of the Romans, Urban was placed in a very difficult position. He would probably have liked to see the quasi-hereditary claims of the Austrian house to the Imperial crown broken by the election of some other catholic prince, such as Maximilian of Bavaria. The Hapsburg party certainly believed that he opposed the election of the younger Ferdinand. Nicoletti mentions the rumour that the pope despatched Galbiatti to the diet to procure the rejection of the emperor's proposals,  and disproves it. But the Bavarian envoy, Crivelli, certainly thought that his master would be acting in the interests of the Barberini family if he opposed Ferdinand's candidature. The envoy wrote that cardinal Francesco had confided to him that, whatever Bocci might openly advocate at Regensburg in Ferdinand's favour, "the intention of his Holiness and myself is different". He went on to say that he trusted the election would not be attempted until it was known that it was pleasing to his Holiness. Afterwards Urban received the envoy and told him that his nephew had been carrying out papal orders in making this communication, and ordered the closest secrecy in the matter. Crivelli gathered further that the curia was working in concert with Venice and France: the excuse for opposing the election was that the times were unsuitable for such a momentous step.

Urban himself afterwards denied that he had acted against the emperor in this matter. The official correspondence between the curia and its envoys do not justify the supposition, nor does the description of Gustavus as "that serpent, who with his venom tried to poison the whole world", quite accord with the theory that the pope was an enthusiastic admirer of the king of Sweden. Nicoletti's account of the general joy at Rome, when the result of the battle of Lützen was announced, is strangely at variance with the story that he said mass for Gustavus' soul. It is possible that the wish was father to the thought with Crivelli; but his account is too circumstantial to be dismissed as the fiction of a partizan. Urban was a hot-headed man, often swayed by the impulses of the moment. In the course of the lengthy interview which he accorded to the Bavarian envoy, he may possibly have allowed more definite expressions co escape him than were prudent. The mere fact that he denied it afterwards hardly disproves Crivelli's statement. When he was blamed for the losses which catholicism had suffered from the publication of the Edict of Restitution, he asserted that he had not urged its promulgation, whereas he instructed his envoys to press for its adoption, and wrote to the emperor to congratulate him on the service he had rendered to catholicism. His opposition to the younger Ferdinand's election may have strengthened the resistance of Maximilian and his colleagues. It certainly was not the sole, nor the chief cause of the failure of the emperor's plans.

Nicoletti relates one of the Spanish libels which were circulated about the pope. It was alleged that the city of Avignon had been used as the meeting-place for the international conspirators against the house of Hapsburg. France, Venice and Savoy, the representatives of Laodicean catholicism, had joined with England, Holland, Bethlen Gabor and the protestants of Germany, to compass the downfall of the emperor and his Spanish cousin. The attack was to be delivered simultaneously in Germany, Flanders, Italy and America, while the maritime powers were to clear the Atlantic and Mediterranean of Spanish shipping. The pope provided in his territory a safe meeting place. as he trusted to make good the papal claims in the kingdom of Naples and perhaps to recover the Tuscan ports as well. Unfortunately the date of the alleged conference (November and December, 1622) falls within the years of Gregory XV's pontificate.

The incident is a fair example of the regard for truth which characterized Hapsburg methods of controversy.