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ROME

ROME. From 1500 to 1789, Rome's population grew from about 50,000 to over 160,000. A small civic government maintained some autonomy well into the seventeenth century, but the papacy increasingly controlled local and regional administration, even as its own role in European politics declined. As the center of Catholic Christendom, Rome remained the focal point for the church hierarchy, for numerous religious orders, and for pilgrims. From the 1540s on, concern for doctrinal orthodoxy circumscribed written and artistic expression, but for another two centuries the city of the popes remained a site of cultural creativity and accomplishment, particularly in architecture.

ECONOMY AND GOVERNMENT

In 1500, papal revenues still came primarily from dioceses and church landholdings throughout Europe. After the Protestant Reformation diminished that source, the popes relied more upon heavy taxation of their territories in central Italy, known as the Papal States. A funded debt established in 1526 helped rationalize the curial economy. By 1600, Rome's administration of its territories was arguably as sophisticated as that of any other European state, but its failure to develop new sources of wealth meant reliance upon deficit spending and foreign patronage. The economy of the city beyond the Curia, built largely around the annual influx of pilgrims, perennially lacked a strong industrial or agricultural base. Bad harvests could readily lead to famines, as happened in 1763–1764.

Whereas sixteenth-century popes such as Julius II (reigned 1503–1513) and Paul III (reigned 1534–1549) engaged in wars with powerful Roman families such as the Colonna, over time the local nobles were subsumed into the church hierarchy. A civic government, the Senate and People of Rome, retained some judicial powers and provided a forum for rallying public opinion. It had influence particularly during periods of vacant see (i.e., between popes). But by 1600 all top state officials were churchmen: a cardinal-chamberlain (camerlengo) headed administration of the papacy's temporal domain, with cardinal-legates governing different regions and a cardinal serving as secretary of state. Thereafter, Roman nobles played an essentially ceremonial role, except to the extent that family members obtained high curial offices.

FOREIGN RELATIONS

By 1500, Italian politics were being transformed by the presence of French and Spanish armies. Pope Julius II played the two against each other while strengthening his economic and political hold on the Papal States. By the mid-1520s, however, the might of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, united in the person of Charles V (ruled 1519–1556), became decisive. Clement VII (reigned 1523–1534) sought intermittently to form alliances to contain imperial power on the peninsula, but the League of Cognac (formed 22 May 1526), in which the pope joined forces with Venice and France, was too disunified in purpose to prevent an imperial army from sacking Rome on 6 May 1527. Clement VII ultimately made peace with Charles V, and he officially crowned Charles emperor in Bologna in February 1530.

Thereafter, Spanish sovereigns often proved critical in defending Rome and in furthering papal goals beyond Italy. Paul IV (reigned 1555–1559) bucked this trend, forming with France an alliance designed to drive the Spaniards from Italy, but the strategy backfired when an imperial army under the duke of Alba encamped near Rome in 1557, forcing the pope to make peace. French defeats soon led to the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559), following which Spain enjoyed a uniquely privileged relationship with Rome: Spanish kings exerted influence in the papal court and gained control over substantial church revenues in Spain. In turn, the kings generously endowed religious institutions in Rome and provided military support to the papacy. Meanwhile, the Vatican diplomatic service grew more complex and systematic, especially under Gregory XIII (reigned 1572–1585) and Clement VIII (reigned 1592–1605), and it came under official control of cardinals.

By the 1620s, the balance of power between Spain and France shifted temporarily in the direction of the latter, and Urban VIII (reigned 1623–1644) was elected pope with strong support of French cardinals. Spain remained influential throughout the century, particularly during the pontificate of Alexander VII (reigned 1655–1667). But following the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended the Thirty Years' War, religion became sharply less important in European politics, and so Rome ceased to be as critical to dynastic strategies.

THE URBAN LANDSCAPE

Although the building of Renaissance Rome was well under way by 1500, Pope Julius II gave it added impetus. Seeking to make the city suitably dignified for his ambitions, he sponsored construction projects including the Via Giulia and St. Peter's Basilica (begun 1506). Paul III enhanced the fortifications of the Vatican, employed Michelangelo to restore the city capitol (the Campidoglio), and saw to the construction of major urban thoroughfares. Subsequent pontiffs, notably Sixtus V (1585–1590), further edified and embellished the city. Classical models inspired both urban design and the building of suburban villas with gardens.

The seventeenth century saw the addition of massive baroque structures, many designed by Francesco Borromini (1599–1667) and Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). Commissioned in 1638 to build the Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Borromini later designed its imposing curved facade. Bernini's projects included overseeing the completion of St. Peter's and designing the colonnade that surrounds its square (completed 1667).

In the eighteenth century, elaborate new facades for churches and other buildings transformed the appearance of existing squares and streets. Wealthy families such as the Corsini and the Doria Pamphili commissioned private palaces whose facades vied for attention in the public theater of the city. There was more practical construction, as well: some structures were divided into private apartments of varying size to house the burgeoning ranks of mid-level papal officials, and new buildings were erected for oratories, monasteries, convents, and charitable institutions. By the later eighteenth century, construction was curtailed amidst economic crises, but there was by then a dense core of buildings in central Rome, surrounded on the outskirts by the villas of the wealthy.

RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL LEADERSHIP

Although the Protestant Reformation cut into the papacy's prestige and revenues, Rome remained the world center of the Catholic faith. Starting in the pontificate of Paul III, it was also a center of reform. When the papacy convened the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which enacted extensive doctrinal and institutional reforms, new religious groups had already emerged, including the Capuchins (1528) and the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits (1540). The latter's zealous and at times controversial promotion of the faith, which could threaten secular rulers' prerogatives, led in 1773 to its temporary suppression by Pope Clement XIV (reigned 1769–1774). Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, the Roman Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited Books (first promulgated in 1559) limited the scope of acceptable theological expression but did not entirely stifle other forms of intellectual creativity. The University of Rome, strong before the Sack of 1527, had to shut down for eight years. After reopening, it had mainly regional importance, educating lawyers, mid-level papal and civil officials, and some doctors. Bologna remained the premier university in papal territories. Within Rome, religious orders' schools, especially the Jesuits' Collegio Romano (established 1551), dominated theological education. Literary, scientific, and archaeological culture flourished in the later sixteenth century and beyond, when private collections of manuscripts and antiquities became increasingly fashionable. The constraints of orthodoxy limited radical religious expression, at times forcefully, as in the case of Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. Philosophical, scientific, and literary pursuits that did not directly contravene church dogma flourished, especially in academies such as that of the Lincei (1603–1630) and the Arcadia, founded in 1690 by scholars who had enjoyed the patronage of Queen Christina of Sweden (d. 1689), who had converted to Catholicism.

The early sixteenth century, a peak period for artistic creativity in Rome, encompassed Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508–1512) and Raphael's work in the Vatican stanze (begun 1509). Later influential contributions included Michelangelo's Last Judgment (completed 1541), and around 1600 Rome still drew major painters like Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) and Caravaggio (1571–1610). Achievements in architecture reached new heights the following century in the works of Borromini and Bernini, the latter of whom also made enduring contributions to baroque statuary, notably his Ecstasy of St. Theresa (1652) in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, and the Fountain of the Four Rivers (1651) in the Piazza Navona. In the eighteenth century, public spaces were redesigned with an eye to theatricality. Major projects included the Spanish Steps (1723–1726), the Piazza Sant' Ignazio (1727–1735), and Nicola Salvi's design for the Trevi fountain (mid-1730s), which still today dominates its piazza.

By 1789, Rome had ceased to be a center even of architectural innovation. Still, prints designed and compiled by the architect and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) helped disseminate abroad an appreciation for the city's cultural riches, as did its distinction as the final stop on European aristocrats' grand tour. Although Rome's cultural role had waned, the Renaissance, Reformation, and baroque ages would bequeath a rich legacy to future generations, much as the culture of antiquity had done for them.

See also Art: The Conception and Status of the Artist; Catholicism; Christina (Sweden); Jesuits; Papacy and Papal States; Rome, Architecture in; Rome, Art in; Rome, Sack of; Trent, Council of.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dandelet, Thomas James. Spanish Rome, 1500–1700. New Haven and London, 2001.

Gross, Hanns. Rome in the Age of Enlightenment: The Post-Tridentine Syndrome and the Ancien Regime. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1990.

Partner, Peter. Renaissance Rome, 1500–1559: A Portrait of a Society. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976.

Signorotto, Gianvittorio, and Maria Antonietta Visceglia, eds. Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492–1700. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2002.

KENNETH GOUWENS