There was another king of Spain at the beginning of the 17th century, Philip III, who is said to have died of a fever he contracted from sitting too long near a hot brazier, helplessly overheating himself because the functionary whose duty it was to remove the brazier, when summoned, could not be found. (Location 162)
His point is reinforced from an unexpected source in a perceptive comment by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who cautioned, “In analyzing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.” (Location 438)
Dependence on lay rulers was a fatal legacy of the Schism because rival popes found it necessary to make up for divided power by all kinds of bargains, concessions and alliances with kings and princes. (Location 889)
Because income too was divided, the Schism commercialized as well as politicized the Papacy, making revenue its primary concern. (Location 891)
once the Holy See was definitively restored to Rome in the 1430s, (Location 894)
Opulent, elegant, unprincipled and endlessly at odds with each other, the rulers of Italian life were, by reason of their disunity and limited territorial scope, no more than potentates of discord. (Location 895)
The dominating political factor of the period was the repeated invasions of Italy, in league with one or another of the Italian states, by the three major powers—France, Spain and the Hapsburg Empire—competing for conquest of the peninsula or part of it. While the Papacy engaged to the hilt in this struggle, it lacked the military resources to make its role decisive. The more it took part in the temporal conflicts with consistently pernicious result, the more impotent among the monarchs it revealed itself, and in fact became. At the same time it shrank from the obvious task of religious reform because it feared loss of authority and of opportunity for private gain. (Location 902)
Many explanations have been offered for this recovery: the invention of printing immensely extended the access to knowledge and ideas; advances in science enlarged understanding of the universe, and in applied science supplied new techniques; new methods of capitalist financing stimulated production; new techniques of navigation and shipbuilding enlarged trade and the geographical horizon; newly centralized power absorbed from the declining medieval communes was at the disposal of the monarchies and the growing nationalism of the past century gave it impetus; discovery of the New World and circumnavigation of the globe opened unlimited visions. (Location 981)
Throughout the conflict with Naples the Papal States were treated like a poor relation and the Pope personally with diminished respect, reflecting Ferrante’s insolence. (Location 1228)
Diplomatie maneuvers continued to swirl around him. The Sultan, fearing a Christian offensive with Djem as its spearhead, opened overtures to the Pope, sent envoys and the gift of a precious Christian relic, the Holy Spear, supposed to have pierced the side of Christ on the cross, which was received with immense ceremony in Rome. (Location 1271)
Upon Borgia’s election as Pope, the disgraceful traffic that gained him the place soon became common knowledge through the fury of the disappointed della Rovere and his partisans. Borgia himself openly boasted of it. (Location 1322)
had not shared in the golden shower. (Location 1342)
