The conquest of Rome on 6 May 1527 by troops of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V (ruled 1519–1556) has traditionally been viewed as a turning point in the history of papal Rome and in Renaissance culture. While recent research has highlighted economic, political, and social continuities between pre- and post-sack Rome, a consensus remains that the event, which occurred during the Italian Wars of 1494–1559, had cultural repercussions of lasting significance.
The conquest itself was brief. Around dawn on 6 May 1527, an imperial army composed primarily of Spanish and German troops besieged the poorly defended city. Their commander, Charles de Bourbon-Montpensier (1490–1527), died in the initial assault, but by sunset virtually all of Rome had fallen to his men. His successor, Philibert of Orange-Châlon (1502–1530), could not control the victorious troops, who proceeded to spend months desecrating sacred objects, ransacking the city, and torturing its citizens in order to extract ransoms. Pope Clement VII (Giulio de' Medici; reigned 1523–1534), who had taken refuge in the Castel Sant'Angelo, formally capitulated on 5 June, and remained a captive there until early December. Only in February 1528 did the occupying army leave Rome.
The sack resulted most immediately from Clement VII's decision to join with Florence, France, Milan, and Venice in the League of Cognac (22 May 1526), an alliance formed to limit Charles V's power on the Italian peninsula. As Bourbon-Montpensier's army advanced southward, the particular goals of the Venetians and the French had come to outweigh the interests they shared with the papacy. In March 1527, the pope had agreed to a truce with Charles de Lannoy, the imperial viceroy of Naples, but Bourbon-Montpensier and his men had refused to honor it. Historians disagree about whether or not Charles V authorized the attack on Rome; certainly he abhorred the atrocities that followed. Meanwhile, Clement discovered that he could not count on the league's armies either to come to his rescue or to mount a coherent counteroffensive. Having been effectively abandoned, in 1529 the pope made peace with Charles V, whom he crowned as Holy Roman emperor in Bologna in February 1530. Thus, he adjusted with some success to the emperor's now decisive hegemony on the peninsula.
The cultural impact of the sack was felt acutely throughout Europe. Many artists and architects, including Rosso Fiorentino (Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, 1494–1540) and Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554), sought safety and patronage elsewhere, and in so doing promoted the diffusion of High Renaissance Roman culture. In humanists' rhetoric, claims that the papacy would soon initiate a golden age perforce gave way to more modest expectations. Religious interpretations of the event varied, but there was a widespread consensus—shared even by Pope Clement himself—that moral failings of the clergy were in part to blame for the catastrophe. His successor, Paul III (reigned 1534–1549), did much to restore the papacy's prestige, political influence, and cultural centrality, but any optimism was tempered by a new awareness of political contingency and by nostalgia for an idealized age of cultural efflorescence that was widely perceived to have already passed.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Guicciardini, Francesco. The History of Italy. Translated and edited by Sidney Alexander. New York, 1969. Translation of La storia d'Italia, Book 18, first printed in 1564, includes an account of the sack.
Guicciardini, Luigi. The Sack of Rome. Translated and edited by James H. Mc Gregor. New York, 1993. Translation of Historia del sacco di Roma, Paris, 1664. Adequate English rendition marred by a misleading critical apparatus.
Secondary Sources
Chastel, André. The Sack of Rome, 1527. Translated from the French by Beth Archer. Princeton, 1983.
Gattoni, Maurizio. Clemente VII e la geopolitica dello Stato Pontificio. Vatican City, 2002.
Hook, Judith. The Sack of Rome, 1527. London, 1972.
—KENNETH GOUWENS
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