ciding that if Adrian's methods were necessary
to save the church the medicine was worse than the disease, the
cardinals lost no time in raising another Medici to the throne. Like
all of his race, Clement VII was a patron of art and literature, and
tolerant of abuses. Personally moral and temperate, he cared little
save for an easy life and the advancement of the Three Balls. He began
that policy, which nearly proved fatal to the church, of treating the
Protestants with alternate indulgence and severity. But for himself
the more immediate trouble came not from the enemy of the church but
from its protector. Though Adrian was an old officer of Charles V, it
was really in the reign of Clement that the process began by which
first Italy, then the papacy, then the whole church was put under the
Spanish yoke.

[Sidenote: Spanish influence, 1525-6]

After Pavia and the treaty of Madrid had eliminated French influence,
Charles naturally felt his power and naturally intended to have it
respected even by the pope. Irritated by Clement's perpetual deceit
and intrigue with France, Charles addressed to him, in 1526, a document
which Ranke calls the most {380} formidable ever used by any Catholic
prince to a pope during the century, containing passages "of which no
follower of Luther need be ashamed."

[Sidenote: Sack of Rome, May and September 1527]

Rather to threaten the pope than to make war on him, Charles gathered a
formidable army of German and Spanish soldiers in the north under the
command of his general Frundsberg. All the soldiers were restless and
mutinous for want of pay, and in addition to this a powerful motive
worked among the German landsknechts. Many of them were Lutheran and
looked to the conquest of Rome as the triumph of their cause. As they
loudly demanded to be lead against Antichrist, Frundsberg found that
his authority was powerless to stop them. [Sidenote: March 16, 1527]
When he died of rage and mortification the French traitor Charles,
Constable of Bourbon, was appointed by the emperor in his place, and,
finding there was nothing else to do, led the army against Rome and
promised the soldiers as much booty as they could take. Twice, in May
and September, the city was put to the horrors of a sack, with all the
atrocities of murder, theft and rapine almost inseparable from war. In
addition to plundering, the Lutherans took particular pleasure in
desecrating the objects of veneration to the C