Chapter 19
The Root of All Power
Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who
gathers money little by little makes it grow.
–
Proverbs 13:11
W
hile the duke of Bracciano was digging a deep financial pit for himself and his heirs as quickly as he possibly could, Sixtus V was trying to climb out of such a pit made for him by his predecessor. Gregory XIII had left the papal finances in an awful state. When he had died in April 1585, every penny of Church income was pledged through October of that year. On May 22, Sixtus told the Venetian ambassador that he despised those pontiffs who did not know how to manage their income and left huge messes for their successors to clean up. He called Gregory and his ministers
scialaquatori,
squanderers. He almost spat when he said the word, and he said it frequently.
Sixtus further told the ambassador that he had had a nightmare in which Gregory XIII was screaming to him from the agonies of Purgatory, where God had placed him for wasting the Vatican treasury. Shaken by the dream, Sixtus had dozens of Masses said for Gregory in the hopes of winging him on his way to heaven.
Within a month of his election, Sixtus reduced his court expenses by 146,000 scudi annually. He dismissed nineteen grooms and a number of chamberlains, and the salary of those who remained was reduced. After a time, he stopped paying for his employees’ holidays, saying that since he had no holidays himself he didn’t see why they should have any.
The papal kitchen budget – which prepared meals for hundreds of Vatican employees daily – was greatly reduced. The court – including the pope himself – ate simply prepared dishes of chicken or fish, fruits, vegetables, and bread, though Sixtus did insist on drinking good wine. And there would be no more lavish Vatican banquets. No four-foot gilded pies stuffed with whole deer, no spun sugar sculptures or piles of quails’ tongues. Visiting dignitaries would partake of the same basic but tasty foods the court ate regularly.
Each new pope had the opportunity to decorate his Vatican apartments from scratch as the servants of his predecessor usually pillaged all the furniture during his final illness. But Sixtus refused to order elaborate cabinets and expensive wall hangings and banished all signs of luxury from his apartments. His carpets, which were necessary in the brief but chilly Roman winter, were of common wool, and not the glorious colorful patterns from Turkey. His candlesticks were of wood, not gold and silver, his tables and chairs plain and functional. “With this parsimony the palace was almost reduced to misery,” according to one contemporary.
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When Sixtus’s shoes got holes in them, he didn’t throw them away, but had them resoled at least once. Princess Camilla, still a laundress at heart, often reprimanded her brother for wearing patched, ratty shirts. The Vicar of Christ, she said, should at least be able to afford a new shirt. But Sixtus replied that he was no
scialaquatore.
“Our elevation, my sister, does not mean we should forget the place we came from. Patches and rags are the first coat of arms of our family.”
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Sometimes, he took off his gorgeous papal robes and wore the simple habit of a Franciscan monk.
Despite the costs of repairing the aqueducts and building new roads, Sixtus vowed to squirrel money away for important purposes. Fighting the heretics, for instance, or the Turks, who still raided the Italian coasts plucking hapless Christians from the shore and enslaving them. Providing bread in time of famine or combating the plague next time it struck, or finishing the embarrassing half-built dome of Saint Peter’s. When Christ’s Church needed so many basics, buying clothes and furniture, employing hundreds of needless servants, and throwing lavish banquets seemed a sinful waste.
“Poor princes, and especially a poor Pope,” Sixtus said, “are a laughingstock even to children, especially in times when everything is accomplished by money; a wise prince ought to follow the example of the ants who during the summer store up provision for the winter.”
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He would add, “The main element of a prince is cash,” and, “A prince without money is nothing.”
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He announced to his cardinals his intention of socking away one million gold scudi a year in the treasury room of Castel Sant’Angelo to be used only in times of urgent need. But Cardinal Farnese was almost apoplectic when he heard this. “He sometimes opposed the plans of the pope with great agility,” wrote one contemporary. “And he feared that the pope was a man greedy for money, wanting only to accumulate it, and not having it serve any purpose, but just because he was avaricious he would impose grave taxes. He said that his grandfather, Pope Paul III, had tried to save money, but it was impossible.”
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Sixtus was doubly offended – at being contradicted again by Cardinal Farnese, and that someone else had come up with his idea. He replied, “It is no great wonder, Monsignor, that your grandfather was not able to increase the treasury of the Church because there were many great squanderers who are not alive, thank God, in our time.” According to the chronicler, “He went on to describe the multitude of sons and daughters the pope had, and nephews of all sorts, and the many and diverse squanderings of all sorts of ecclesiastical benefits to enrich them. When he heard this, Farnese was silent and said nothing more.”
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In order to raise the money, the pope imposed a variety of taxes on goods and services, and sold a number of Church and government offices. Each office sold was a kind of investment, paying a certain annual return until the office holder died. When that occurred, the Church could sell it again. For instance, under Gregory XIII the office of treasurer sold for 15,000 scudi. But Sixtus sold it for 50,000. Throughout the length of his reign, the sale of offices brought him 608,510 gold scudi and 401,806 silver scudi.
Gregory had hired thousands of troops to race across the countryside in a mostly fruitless effort to find bandits by burning down forests and pardoned the few criminals that were captured. But Sixtus greatly reduced the number of troops, which was possible since he had induced citizens to turn bandits in, and even bandits to turn bandits in. Every branch of government was instructed to reduce needless expenditure and operate only on strict necessities. The pope saved 150,000 scudi a year on these costs.
Sixtus looked into the Vatican financial records and found that many nobles had borrowed large sums and never repaid them. He decreed that everyone who owed money to the papal treasury had two months to pay up or their property would be confiscated. Within those two months, the treasury received 600,000 scudi, some of which had been owed for twenty years.
The pope kept his promise of amassing the one million gold scudi a year, “dedicating them to Christ our Lord, to Mary, the blessed Virgin and Mother of God, and to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul.”
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It is likely that the above-mentioned individuals would have been bewildered by such worldly treasure, but the pope knew exactly what to do with it. Every three months, he went into the treasury room of the Castel Sant’Angelo and thrust a stick into the giant leather-bound treasure chests where the coins were deposited. He was overheard to say, “Now from a poor vegetable grower I have become a rich gardener.”
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It was soon acknowledged that the pope was the richest prince in Europe, even if he did wear patched shoes.
Sixtus hired clever Jewish financiers to advise him in fiscal management. Over the centuries, Europe’s Jewish communities had become well-versed in the art of finance and trade. The New Testament prohibited usury – lending money at interest – which left the trade wide open to Jews. Christians frequently needed loans to build a house, finance a dowry, or wage a war, and Jews, prohibited from many other professions, were happy to oblige them.
But a pope employing Jews as his advisers shocked many good Catholics. Unlike his predecessors, Sixtus respected Jews because they, like he, understood how to save money and how to spend it without wasting it. A certain Jew named Lopez, of whom Camilla was very fond, became his chief financial advisor.
Sixtus also respected Jews for being his most law-abiding citizens. It was almost unheard of for a Jew to throw punches in taverns, pick pockets, set fire to houses, rape girls, or duel in the streets, crimes committed by good Christian Italians with alarming frequency. Those few misbehaving Jews were dealt with by Jewish community leaders.
For centuries, Jewish doctors had been known as the best healers in Europe. Their medical tradition was rooted in Islamic practices and had been passed down from ancestors who studied in Persia and the Moorish empire in Spain. In 1555, Paul IV decreed that Jewish physicians could not treat Christian patients, resulting in the unfortunate deaths of many a good Catholic at the hands of well-meaning Christian butcher-doctors.
Pope Paul also forced all Roman Jews to live inside a walled and flood-prone section of the city next to the Tiber River, where their movements could be watched and controlled. They were locked in at night, and Christian guards were stationed at the gate throughout the day to notice their comings and goings, requiring a fee for each entry and exit. This area became known as the ghetto. The first ghetto was created in Venice in 1516, when Jews were relegated to the area of an old foundry, called a
getto,
from the word
gettare,
“to cast.”
In 1566, Pius V decreed that Jews had to wear a yellow circle on one shoulder and limited them to living in Rome and the Adriatic port city of Ancona, and that only to keep trade alive. Though Sixtus often agreed with the decisions of his mentor, here he diverged. He opened up the entire Papal States to Jews. Formerly prohibited from selling foodstuffs lest they poison good Christians, Sixtus allowed them to work once more in the food industry. He also allowed Jewish businessmen to work hand in hand with Christians for the economic advantage of the Papal States. Perhaps most shocking, he said that Jews and Christians could be friends without any punishment at all.
Jews, he decreed, can “enjoy in the places where they are that utility, commodity and privileges that the Christians enjoy.” They were permitted to “open schools and synagogues, where they perform their offices and rites.”
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Former popes had taken away Jewish holy books and burned them. But Sixtus decreed, “We will tolerate these Jews and their rites, constitutions, and laws, and similarly we permit them to possess all Jewish books … [that do not] blaspheme the Holy Church.”
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One rude staff member of a noble house, when passing a Jew, grabbed his hat and threw it into the Tiber. It was a common insult, and by far not one of the worst. Jews were used to it, and it is likely that the Jew didn’t file an official complaint about such a minor infraction. But every example of bad behavior found its way back to Sixtus in the form of a daily report, and when the pope read about this one, he was furious. He had the malefactor whipped through the ghetto to the jubilant hoots and howls of the Jewish population. Never had they seen a pope give them such justice. As a result, Jews were some of the fiercest supporters of Sixtus. He taxed them heavily, of course, as he did the Christians, but most of them didn’t mind paying extra “for the good life that they enjoyed without being molested by anyone.”
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While Sixtus, with the help of brilliant Jewish financiers, was putting the papal finances in order, he expected his subjects to put their personal finances in order as well. During the two decades he had lived in Rome, he had observed how few people ever paid their bills – the most glaring example being the duke of Bracciano, who at that very moment was renting no less than four palaces in the Venetian Republic and cramming them with furniture bought on credit.
Poor merchants who begged rich nobles to pay just a portion of what was owed were often scornfully turned away, sometimes beaten. Some merchants went bankrupt because of unpaid accounts and became a financial burden to the Papal States. Sixtus, who was planning to deal with this vexing issue eventually, was spurred into action by a certain merchant who delivered goods to the papal palace. The merchant complained to the pope about a client of his who had owed him a large debt for years and hadn’t paid a penny. With the thought of Paolo Giordano’s debts still festering, the pope had the debtor arrested, thrown into Castel Sant’Angelo, and criminally tried for having usurped the goods of others. The man was forced to pay the merchant in full, and the papal treasury confiscated 1,500 scudi of his property as a fine.
Sixtus issued an order to all merchants to bring him records of their debtors because he would insist that every bill be paid. When debtors heard about this, many of them “went to search for the merchants with money in their hands, begging them for the love of God to take their names out of the book.”
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Of course, some debtors were in no position to pay their debts back so quickly. The pope assigned prelates to conduct personal interviews with them and look closely into their finances. If they truly could not pay the entire debt, the amount was reduced by half, with the pope personally paying the merchant the remainder. Those individuals who later came into money, however, were expected to pay the pope back. And those who lied about their assets to have their debts reduced were hanged.
The Roman economy suddenly surged. Business was brisk as merchants raked in old debts, paid taxes to the papal treasury on them, and invested the rest in their shops, expanding store fronts, hiring additional employees, and buying new goods to sell. Many merchants were now in a position to buy luxury goods for themselves from other merchants. Overnight, the middle class of Rome was flush with money.
Everyone was now obliged to base spending on income – a novel idea – and no one was permitted to live on borrowed money. Some families overwhelmed by debt fled the Papal States, but Sixtus didn’t care. “A well-ruled state has no need of subjects who live at the expense of their creditors,” he said. “The city will be much more tranquil. The rogues who think they never have to pay their debts will change their conduct in ceasing to eat the goods of others. And I hope that by these means the apostolic chamber will be much richer than ever before.”
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