Pope Paul III (1468-1549)

In popular memory, Paul III is remembered above all for two contradictory images: the old worldly cardinal traditionally said to have benefited from the favor obtained through his sister Giulia^[11], and the austere pope who convened the Council of Trent. The truth is that he was both at once, and it is precisely this duality that makes his pontificate so decisive.

When he was elected in 1534, the Church was undergoing the worst crisis of its recent history. Fifteen years earlier, Martin Luther had broken with Rome; the Protestant Reformation had already conquered part of Germany and Switzerland; England had just separated under Henry VIII (1534); the sack of Rome in 1527 had humiliated the papacy and traumatized Christendom. Neither Leo X nor Clement VII embarked on the reform council that many were calling for: the Catholic Encyclopedia observes of Clement VII that “the pope seems to have had a horror of the idea of convoking a general council, foreseeing, no doubt, grave difficulties with France in any such attempt”.^[12]

Paul III broke with this paralysis. Where his predecessors had retreated, he committed the Church to structural reform—not without delays, not without setbacks, but in an irreversible way. Under his leadership, the instruments were put in place that would, after his death, enable the Catholic reconquest: a dogmatic council, new religious orders, a restored discipline. He himself saw only the first eight sessions, held at Trent, and died before reaping its fruits; but without his persistence, the council would never have taken place.^[13]

This is what makes him an uncomfortable and instructive pope. He illustrates a truth the Church has always held: God uses imperfect instruments. A man whose youth was scandalous, whose methods often remained those of an Italian prince, was nonetheless the architect of a spiritual renewal. Neither a golden legend nor a black legend: Paul III calls for a perspective that distinguishes what served the Church from what harmed it.

Before becoming a reformer, Alessandro Farnese was first and foremost a child of the Roman Renaissance, with all its brilliance and ambiguity. His ecclesiastical career began not with a vocation, but with favor—and it would take decades for the man to grow into the office.

Born into the High Aristocracy

Alessandro Farnese was born on 29 February 1468, probably at Canino, in the countryside of Latium—the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the records vary between Rome and Canino—, into a family of the Roman feudal nobility.^[14][15] The Farnese were then minor lords, wealthy in lands around Lake Bolsena and suppliers of captains to the great Italian houses. His father, Pier Luigi Farnese, and his mother, Giovannella Caetani—herself from the powerful Caetani family of Sermoneta—ensured that the child received a careful education.^[16]

The young Alessandro first studied in Rome under the humanist Pomponio Leto, then in Florence, in the palace of Lorenzo the Magnificent, where he became friends with the future Pope Leo X.^[17] There he acquired a perfect command of classical Latin and Italian, a taste for ancient letters and the arts—in short, the full culture of a humanist prince. This education explains the great patron of the arts he would become; it did not particularly predispose him to sanctity.

The “Cardinal of the Petticoat”: A Red Hat Won by Favor (1493)

Alessandro Farnese’s rise owed much, according to tradition, to his sister, Giulia Farnese, famed for her beauty, whom this tradition holds to have been the mistress of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia): as early as 1535, the Venetian nobleman Soriano already recorded the mocking nickname aimed at Farnese on account of the relationship between his sister and Alexander VI.^[18] On 20 September 1493, at the age of twenty-five, Alessandro was created cardinal-deacon of Saints Cosmas and Damian by this same Alexander VI.^[19] Modern historiography sees in this the fruit of family favor rather than ecclesiastical merit; the Catholic Encyclopedia, for its part, mentions neither Giulia nor this favor and explains his rapid advancement by his birth and talents.^[20][21]

“He owed his promotion to the favor his sister Giulia enjoyed with Alexander VI.” — Summary of historiography, as reported by The Catholic Encyclopedia, art. “Pope Paul III”^[22]

This origin earned the young cardinal the mocking nickname “cardinal of the petticoat” (cardinale della gonnella, literally “cardinal of the skirt”), a transparent allusion to the manner in which he had obtained the red hat.^[23][24] The sobriquet is cruel, but it reflects a truth of the era: the red hat was then distributed as a dynastic good. Farnese would wear this purple for more than forty years before becoming pope, making him the most senior and experienced of the cardinals.^[25]

Silvia Ruffini and the Cardinal’s Children

In his youth, like many prelates of his time, Cardinal Farnese led a life far from ecclesiastical. From his long-standing relationship with a Roman noblewoman, Silvia Ruffini, were born four children—Costanza, Pier Luigi (the future Duke of Parma), Paolo, and Ranuccio—as listed by name by Miranda.^[26] Two of his sons would be legitimized by papal bull, in 1505 and again in 1513—a common practice, but one that reveals the moral climate of the Renaissance Curia.^[27][28]

These children are not a mere biographical detail: they would become the Achilles’ heel of his pontificate. The nepotism of Paul III, which would cast a shadow over his entire reign, was simply the logical consequence of this early fatherhood. The reforming pope would remain, until his death, a father and grandfather intent on establishing his lineage.

The Conversion of a Worldly Prelate and Priestly Ordination (1519)

A turning point came around 1513. Under the pontificate of Leo X, Cardinal Farnese appears to have broken with his former life: he ended his liaison, devoted himself more to his duties, and displayed a newfound piety.^[29] Appointed bishop of Parma as early as 1509, he was, however, ordained a priest only on 26 June 1519—at fifty-one years of age—and consecrated bishop on 2 July following by Leo X^[30]—a sign that, in the Renaissance Church, one could be a cardinal and bishop without having received priestly ordination.

Having become a resident bishop, he strove to implement in his diocese of Parma a discipline still unknown to the universal Church: pastoral visits, diocesan synod, reform of the clergy. This local experience of reform would nourish his convictions as pope.^[31] The man who would convene Trent was thus not a late and superficial convert, but a bishop who had seen firsthand the need for renewal.

Dean of the Sacred College: The Candidate-in-Waiting

In 1524, Farnese became cardinal-bishop of Ostia and, as such, dean of the Sacred College: the foremost of the cardinals.^[32] During the conclaves of 1521 and 1523, his name was already circulating as papabile. But a Medici prevailed each time. Farnese waited. His longevity, canonical expertise, diplomatic skill, and the memory of his conversion gradually made him the natural candidate of a Church weary of Medici indecision.^[33][34]

At the death of Clement VII on September 25, 1534, the Church was in need of a pope capable of decisive action. The conclave proceeded with remarkable speed: assembled on October 11, the cardinals agreed on the name of Alessandro Farnese as early as October 12, 1534—the election date retained by the Catholic Encyclopedia—and confirmed this choice by a formal ballot on the morning of October 13, almost unanimously.^[35][36][37] At sixty-six years old, the dean of the Sacred College took the name Paul III. He was crowned on November 3, 1534 on the steps of St. Peter’s.^[38]

“His election was received with universal satisfaction. People expected from him what his predecessors had refused: a council, and reform.” — According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, art. “Pope Paul III”^[39]

The new pope was neither an unknown nor an improviser. He had lived through ten pontificates, survived the sack of Rome, and witnessed the collapse of Christian unity. He knew, better than anyone, what needed to be done. The question remained whether he would have the strength—and whether he could resist the temptation, almost natural to him, to confuse the cause of the Church with that of his own family.

The act that defines Paul III’s entire pontificate—the one for which history remembers him—is the convocation of the Council of Trent. What seems obvious today was, at the time, a decision of extraordinary political courage: a council could revive conciliarism—the thesis that a council is superior to the pope—which the papacy had feared since Constance and Basel.^[40][41]

Three Failed Convocations (Mantua, Vicenza)

As early as 1536, less than two years after his election, Paul III announced a council and summoned it to Mantua for May 1537.^[42] But the Protestant princes refused, the Duke of Mantua set unacceptable conditions, and the war between Charles V and Francis I made any gathering impossible. The pope then moved the convocation to Vicenza (bull of May 1, 1538), but again without success.^[43] For eight years, the council remained a promise endlessly postponed by the secular powers.

These failures did not discourage the pope. On the contrary, they revealed his tenacity: where Clement VII had used political obstacles as a pretext for inaction, Paul III confronted them one after another.

Laetare Ierusalem and the Opening at Trent (1545)

On November 19, 1544, Paul III issued the decisive bull, Laetare Ierusalem, summoning the council to Trent—an imperial city but Italian-speaking, chosen as a compromise between imperial and Roman demands.^[44] The bull assigned the council three aims: to heal confessional division, to reform the Church in both head and members, and to restore peace among Christian princes in order to organize defense against the Turks.^[45][46]

“Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all you who love her, gather together.” — Incipit of the convocation bull Laetare Ierusalem, Paul III, November 19, 1544^[47]

After one final delay, the Council of Trent was solemnly opened on December 13, 1545.^[48] During Paul III’s lifetime, the first eight sessions were held: the first seven established crucial dogmatic foundations: the canon of Scripture and the value of Tradition, original sin, and above all the Decree on Justification (session VI, January 1547), which responded point by point to the Lutheran doctrine of salvation by faith alone; the eighth (11 March 1547) voted no dogmatic decree and merely transferred the council to Bologna.^[49] The details of these definitions belong to the article dedicated to the council itself; what is owed to Paul III is that he made it possible.

The Showdown with Charles V and the Transfer to Bologna (1547)

In March 1547, under the pretext of a typhus epidemic, the majority of the Fathers transferred the council to Bologna, a city of the Papal States.^[50][51] Charles V, who wanted to keep the council on imperial soil to control its debates and appease his Protestant subjects, fiercely opposed the move: the imperial bishops remained at Trent. The council thus found itself divided, paralyzed by the conflict between the pope and the emperor.

This crisis revealed the limits of papal power in the face of imperial might, but also the steadfastness of Paul III, who refused to submit the council to the tutelage of Charles V. Rather than yield, the pope suspended the council in September 1549. He would die before the crisis could be resolved; it would fall to his successors, Julius III and then Pius IV, to reopen and complete the Council of Trent.^[52]

The council was only one aspect of Paul III’s reforming work. At the same time—and through his own pontifical acts, independent of the council—he established the institutions that would carry the Catholic renewal far beyond his own lifetime.

The Reform Commission and the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia (1537)

As early as 1536, Paul III appointed a commission of nine reform-minded cardinals and prelates, among them the greatest spiritual minds of the age: Gasparo Contarini, Gian Pietro Carafa (the future Paul IV), Jacopo Sadoleto, Reginald Pole, and Gregorio Cortese.^[53][54] Their report, the Consilium de emendanda ecclesia (“Advice on the Reform of the Church”), submitted in 1537, is a document of striking candor: it unsparingly denounces the abuses of the Curia, the sale of offices, the accumulation of benefices, and traces the root of all these evils to an overly legalistic and self-interested conception of the papal office.^[55]

“The source of these evils has been that certain popes [...] surrounded themselves with doctors who taught them that the pope is the owner of all benefices.” — Consilium de emendanda ecclesia, cardinalatial commission, 1537^[56]

This text, which soon circulated—even falling into the hands of Protestants who used it against Rome—shows that criticism of abuses arose first from within the Church itself. Paul III did not need Luther to tell him what was wrong; he tasked his best cardinals with spelling it out for him in black and white.

Approval of the Society of Jesus (1540)

On September 27, 1540, by the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, Paul III officially approved the Society of Jesus founded by Ignatius of Loyola and his first companions.^[57] He initially limited the number of professed members to sixty, a restriction he lifted in 1543 when their usefulness became evident.^[58]

This decision, taken despite the reservations of several cardinals wary of a new order, is one of the most fruitful in the entire history of the Church. The Jesuits would become the spearhead of the Catholic Reformation: teaching, distant missions, spiritual direction, doctrinal defense. From Protestant Europe to the missions in Japan and China, the order approved by Paul III would carry the Catholic faith to the ends of the earth. The pope could not have foreseen its full impact; he had the discernment to authorize it.

The Roman Inquisition and the Holy Office (1542)

Faced with the spread of Protestant ideas even in Italy, and at the insistence of Cardinal Carafa, Paul III reorganized the Inquisition by the bull Licet ab initio on July 21, 1542.^[59] He established a Supreme Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, composed of six cardinals with centralized authority over all the tribunals of the peninsula.^[60][61]

“[This congregation is charged] with maintaining and defending the integrity of the faith, examining and proscribing errors and false doctrines.” — Bull Licet ab initio, Paul III, July 21, 1542^[62]

This Roman Inquisition—not to be confused with the notoriously infamous Spanish Inquisition, a state institution over which the papacy had little control—is the direct ancestor of today’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Its own history, procedures, and excesses are the subject of a dedicated article; what is due to Paul III is his desire for a Roman body of doctrinal discernment at a time when the unity of the faith was being torn apart.

Capuchins, Theatines, Barnabites, Ursulines

Beyond the Jesuits, Paul III encouraged the flourishing of new orders that characterized the first Catholic Reformation. He confirmed and protected the Capuchins (the reformed branch of the Franciscans), the Theatines founded by Carafa, the Barnabites, and the Ursulines of Angela Merici, dedicated to the education of girls.^[63][64] Where his predecessors saw suspicious novelties, Paul III recognized forces of renewal: it was in these fervent communities, even more than in decrees, that the real regeneration of the Church was taking place.

Paul III was not a theologian, but several of his actions directly engaged the magisterium and continue to have lasting impact. Two of these far surpass the Italian context of his time.

Sublimis Deus: The Human Dignity of the Peoples of the Americas (1537)

On June 2, 1537, Paul III promulgated the bull Sublimis Deus, one of the most luminous magisterial texts of the Renaissance. While some colonists and theorists claimed that the Native Americans were inferior beings, “mute brutes” created for the service of Europeans, the pope solemnly proclaimed their full humanity and freedom.^[65]

“The Indians are truly men, and not only are they capable of understanding the Catholic faith, but, according to our information, they ardently desire to receive it.” — Bull Sublimis Deus, Paul III, June 2, 1537^[66]

The bull draws a legal consequence of remarkable boldness for its time: no deprivation of liberty or property may be imposed upon them, even if they are still outside the faith of Christ.^[67]

“The said Indians and all other peoples who may later be discovered by Christians are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property [...] and are not to be reduced to slavery.” — Bull Sublimis Deus, Paul III, June 2, 1537^[68]

This document, founded on Christ’s universal missionary mandate (“Go, teach all nations”), stands as one of the Church’s earliest major texts on the inviolable dignity of every human person, regardless of race or belief. It would be invoked in debates over the conquest, notably by Dominican defenders of the Indians. That this text was the work of a pope otherwise so concerned with his own dynasty does not diminish its significance: magisterial truth does not depend on the perfection of the one who proclaims it.^[69][70]

The Excommunication of Henry VIII and the Anglican Schism (1538)

When Henry VIII of England broke with Rome (Act of Supremacy, 1534), married Anne Boleyn, and had papal loyalists such as Thomas More and John Fisher executed (1535), Paul III prepared the sentence of excommunication. He initially suspended it in hope of reconciliation, but then solemnly published it on December 17, 1538, releasing English subjects from their obedience to the king.^[71][72]

The excommunication did not prevent the consummation of the schism: the Church of England separated permanently. But it marked the doctrinal firmness of a pope who, on the question of Rome’s authority and the indissolubility of marriage, would not compromise, even at the cost of losing an entire kingdom. The cause of the English martyrs, More and Fisher, would become one of the most brilliant spiritual fruits of this resistance.

Facing Protestantism: Colloquies and Firmness

Paul III did not initially exclude dialogue. Together with Charles V, he encouraged religious colloquies between Catholics and Protestants, including the Colloquy of Regensburg (1541), where Cardinal Contarini sought agreement on justification.^[73] The failure of these attempts confirmed that the rupture was deep and that only a council could resolve it. The pope then moved from seeking compromise to dogmatic reaffirmation, which would become the work of Trent. For the systematic refutation of Reformation theses, the Church would henceforth rely on the Tridentine decrees; see responses to Protestantism.

None of Paul III's religious decisions can be understood apart from the titanic struggle then tearing Europe apart: the rivalry between Emperor Charles V (the Eagle of the Habsburgs) and King Francis I of France (the Lily). The pope was forced to navigate between these two giants, whose ongoing war rendered any council impossible and any crusade illusory.

A Difficult Neutrality

Paul III adopted a policy of prudent neutrality, refusing to align himself with either sovereign despite their constant pressure.^[74][75] This independence earned him accusations of duplicity: Charles V suspected him of favoring France, while Francis I believed he served the Empire. In reality, the pope's primary aim was to preserve the Church's freedom of action and to prevent either side from gaining mastery over Italy and the papacy.

"He employed tortuous diplomatic skill to avoid taking sides between Charles V and Francis I." — Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Paul III"^[76]

He achieved a success by negotiating the Truce of Nice (1538) between the two rivals, whom he brought together without their agreeing to meet face to face. This fragile truce granted Christendom a few years of respite.

The Turkish Front and the Defense of Christendom

Like all sixteenth-century popes, Paul III was haunted by the Ottoman threat. Suleiman the Magnificent pressed at the borders of Hungary and in the Mediterranean. The pope attempted to unite Christian princes in a Holy League (1538) with Venice and the Empire; the naval defeat at Preveza that same year dashed these hopes.^[77] Defense against the Turks remained, in the bull convoking the Council of Trent, one of the three objectives assigned to the council—proof that, for him, internal reform and the external security of Christendom were inseparable.

The Schmalkaldic War

At the end of his reign, Paul III supported Charles V in the Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) against the league of German Protestant princes. He provided the emperor with three hundred thousand ducats and twenty thousand infantrymen, but under strict conditions: no separate agreement with the heretics was permitted.^[78] Yet the imperial victory at Mühlberg (1547) did not benefit the pope: Charles V, now too powerful, imposed his own views, multiplied disputes over the council and Parma, and the pontificate ended in a de facto rupture between Rome and the Empire.^[79][80]

If posterity hesitates to fully exalt Paul III, it is because of the persistent shadow of nepotism. For him, love of family was not an occasional failing but a policy of rule, pursued with a consistency that ultimately contradicted his reforming work.

The Grandsons as Cardinals

On December 18, 1534, barely elected, Paul III created two of his adolescent grandsons cardinals: Alessandro Farnese, fourteen years old, and Guido Ascanio Sforza, sixteen.^[81][82] The scandal was all the greater as these promotions occurred just as the pope was convening his reform commission against abuses. The young Alessandro Farnese would nevertheless become one of the greatest patrons of the arts of his century (the Church of the Gesù, the Villa of Caprarola), proof that nepotism could, by accident, produce beautiful things—without ceasing to be an abuse.

The Duchy of Parma and Piacenza for Pier Luigi (1545)

Nepotism reached its height in 1545, when Paul III detached the cities of Parma and Piacenza from the Papal States to create a hereditary duchy for his son Pier Luigi Farnese.^[83][84] The move was legally questionable—the pope alienated Church property for the benefit of his own line—and politically explosive, as it encroached on Charles V's claims in northern Italy.

This decision was the living contradiction of the pontificate: the man who had his cardinals denounce the confusion between Church property and private interests committed precisely this fault, on a grand scale, to establish his dynasty. Even the most favorable Catholic historiography does not attempt to excuse it.

The Assassination of Pier Luigi and the Final Tragedy (1547)

Nepotism turned tragically against its author. On September 10, 1547, Pier Luigi Farnese was assassinated in Piacenza in a conspiracy of local nobles supported by the imperial governor of Milan. Charles V immediately occupied Piacenza.^[85][86] For the aged pope, it was a terrible blow: he lost both a son and the fruit of his dynastic policy. The drama deepened further when his grandson, Cardinal Alessandro, and his other grandson Ottavio, negotiated with the Empire over the fate of Parma behind their grandfather’s back. To feel his own family plotting against him, after he had sacrificed everything for them, would be the wound that ultimately broke the pope.^[87]

A humanist prince to the end, Paul III was also one of the greatest patrons in papal history. His reign marked the apogee of the Roman Renaissance and the transition to a reshaped Rome, much of whose present appearance is owed to him.^[88][89]

The Last Judgment and the Pauline Chapel

Paul III entrusted Michelangelo with the completion of the monumental fresco of the Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, finished in 1541.^[90][91] He then commissioned him to decorate his Pauline Chapel in the Vatican, where the artist painted, between 1542 and 1549, the Conversion of Saint Paul and the Crucifixion of Saint Peter—his last great painted cycles, moving meditations on grace and martyrdom.

Architect of St. Peter’s and the Capitoline

In 1546, upon the death of Antonio da Sangallo, the pope appointed Michelangelo chief architect of St. Peter’s Basilica.^[92] The artist took over the project, simplified the plan, and designed the dome that still crowns Rome today. Paul III also entrusted him with the redesign of the Capitoline Square (Piazza del Campidoglio), a masterpiece of urban planning that transformed the medieval hill into a monumental forum.

To this were added the completion of the Palazzo Farnese, one of Rome’s most beautiful residences, and numerous other works to embellish the city. Under Paul III, Rome ceased to be the humiliated city of the 1527 sack and once again became the artistic capital of Europe.

Titian’s Portrait

The image posterity retains of the pope is the one immortalized by Titian. Around 1543, and especially in 1546 with the famous Paul III and His Grandsons, the Venetian master painted an old man with a piercing gaze, stooped but fiercely alive, surrounded by his grandsons Alessandro and Ottavio.^[93] The painting, left unfinished, is an extraordinary psychological document: one reads in it mistrust, cunning, and the weight of family intrigue. No chronicle says as much about the complex soul of the last Renaissance pope as this canvas.

An End Marked by Sorrow

Paul III’s final years were overshadowed by the strife within his family. The loss of Piacenza, the assassination of Pier Luigi, and above all the betrayal of his grandsons negotiating with the Empire over Parma, broke the old pope. During a stormy interview with his grandson Cardinal Farnese, he tore off his skullcap in rage; shortly after, he fell ill with a violent fever and died at the Quirinal on November 10, 1549, at the age of eighty-one.^[94][95]

“He died overwhelmed with grief at the conduct of his own grandsons.” — According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, art. “Pope Paul III”^[96]

There is a tragic irony in this end: the pope who had sacrificed everything to establish his dynasty died a victim of that very dynasty. The lesson the Church draws from this is ancient: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (Psalm 127).

The Tomb in St. Peter’s

Paul III was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica, where a magnificent tomb of bronze and marble sculpted by Guglielmo della Porta, a pupil of Michelangelo, stands topped by a statue of the pope in benediction.^[97][98] This monument, one of the most beautiful in the Vatican basilica, preserves the memory of a pontiff who, even in his burial, united the grandeur of art with the ambition of a princely house.

The Verdict of History: The Pivotal Pope

How should Paul III be judged? Historiography, including Catholic, resists simple verdicts. On the personal and familial level, his reign remains marked by a nepotism that nothing can fully excuse and which contradicts his own reform program. On the institutional and spiritual level, he was the decisive pope who lifted the Church out of paralysis: without him, neither Trent, nor the Jesuits, nor the structures of the Catholic Reformation would have existed in their present form.^[99][100]

Britannica’s formula remains the most accurate: Paul III was “the last pope of the Renaissance and the first of the Counter-Reformation.”^[101] A man of a vanishing world, he had the genius or the grace to open the door to the world that was coming. It is precisely this pivotal position—a foot in humanist worldliness, a foot in Catholic renewal—that makes him an irreplaceable figure for understanding how the Church, wounded and divided, found the strength to reform itself from within. His direct successor, Julius III, would reopen the council; Paul IV, formerly Cardinal Carafa from his reform commission, would harden its spirit; and the entire line of popes of the Catholic Reformation would reap what Paul III had sown. The whole of the Catholic Reformation, which would restore the Church's missionary and doctrinal vigor, finds its roots in this fifteen-year pontificate.

• The Council of Trent (1545–1563) — the dogmatic work convened by Paul III and completed by his successors.
• The Catholic Reformation (Counter-Reformation) — the great movement of renewal whose era Paul III inaugurated.
• The Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther — the crisis to which Paul III was compelled to respond.
• Anglicanism — the schism of Henry VIII, excommunicated by Paul III in 1538.
• Pope Alexander VI and the “decadence” of the Borgia popes — the world of Renaissance pontifical life in which the young Farnese was made cardinal.
• Pope Julius II — the other great patron pope of the Renaissance, predecessor of this line.
• Responses to Protestantism — the doctrinal refutation developed from the Tridentine decrees.