The Beginnings of a National Protectorate: Curial Cardinals and the Irish Church in the Fifteenth...

The Beginnings of a National Protectorate: Curial Cardinals and the Irish Church in theFifteenth CenturyAuthor(s): Katherine WalshSource: Archivium Hibernicum, Vol. 32 (1974), pp. 72-80Published by: Catholic Historical Society of IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25529601 .

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The Beginnings of a

National Protectorate

curial cardinals and the irish church in the fifteenth century

Katherine Walsh

During the early and high renaissance period individual cardinals at

the Roman curia developed spheres of interest or influence, which were

gradually to evolve into a formal protectorate, whereby a particular cardinal

would assume the duties of cardinal protector representing the interests of

a particular ruler or nation. By the end of the fifteenth century this practice

had begun to touch the church in Ireland.

The notion of a cardinal protector developed in two quite separate forms,

both with different origins. The earliest in time was the protector of a

religious order, a cardinal chosen to represent the interests of a particular

order at the curia, to be followed some two centuries later by the national

protectorate or protector of a natio. By the mid-sixteenth century these

cardinal protectors had acquired the exclusive right to refer in the papal

consistory the nominations to bishoprics and monasteries in the lands

under their protection. The national protectorates, unlike those of the

orders, came to an end in the Napoleonic era and were never revived, with

the single exception of Portugal which had a cardinal protector until 1930.

The first type of protector can be traced back to St Francis, who personally

requested Pope Honorius III to provide his order with a member of the

college of cardinals who would act as gubernaior, protector et corrector istius

fratemitatis. Such protectors were particularly prominent in the thirteenth

century among orders with a large lay element, e.g., the Friars Hermits of

St Augustine with Cardinal Riccardo Annibaldi as first protector. The secular protectorate, though

a later development, was analogous

to the religious protectorate. At the council of Constance there was a

suggestion that each natio should have representation in the college of

cardinals, and Cardnial Pierre d'Ailly proposed that every politically autonomous land

- regnum seu

regimen -

should be represented, a proposal

which in any case would have excluded Ireland from separate representation.

Even Scotland was not considered in this context to be a separate natio,

and the most cursory glance at the nationes which came into question showTs



THE BEGINNINGS OF A NATIONAL PROTECTORATE 73

how strongly thinking in this direction was influenced by the conciliar

practice of voting by nations: the French, Spanish, Italian, German and

English nations. In the absence of a cardinal native to a particular nation,

an existing curial cardinal might be commissioned to handle that nation's

business, as in the case of the Holy Roman Empire and Hungary after 1425

when Cardinal Branda da Castiglione represented the interests of the

Emperor Sigismund. Branda was a particularly influential figure at the

court of Martin V (1417-1431) and also represented the English king at

the curia.

The expression protector had been used for religious orders as early as

1223, but in the context of a secular protectorate, of a cardinal commissioned

with the protection and representation of the interests of a foreign power

at the curia the precise formulation protector only appears during the second

quarter of the fifteenth century. Before that the more neutral form promotor

had been used in relation to such national interests. For their services

these promotors received an annual stipend, e.g., we know that Cardinal

Branda received annually from Sigismund the sum of six hundred Hungar

ian ducats for his services at the curia. It was however precisely these

financial advantages of the secular protectorate which aroused papal

suspicion and the cardinal protectorship was frequently mentioned in the

reform proposals of the fifteenth century. But the total prohibition of the

national protectorate in the reform proposal of Martin V in 1425 was

watered down by the Council of Basel and limited to preventing partisan

representation and financial exploitation. The fifteenth century was to

see an important change in the papal attitude to the national protectorate,

from total prohibition in 1425 to guarded approval by the end of the century. The usual procedure for appointing a cardinal protector was for the

pope to appoint personally, but usually acting in response to the wishes

of the religious order or secular ruler concerned, who invariably got the

cardinal of their choice: the Teutonic Knights asked for and got Cardinal

d'Estouteville in 1458, likewise Frederick III got Francesco Piccolomini

in 1471, and Henry VII of England got the same cardinal when he speci

fically requested him in 1492. By 1485 we find the Cardinal of Angers Jean Balue acting

as protector of French interests at the papal court; as

protecteur des affaires du Roy en court de Rome Cardinal Balue received an

annual salary of two thousand livres tournois, and he exercised the function,

not merely of cardinal protector, but also of ambassador of the French

crown. In the case of England, already in the reign of Edward IV, the

king had written in 1482 to Sixtus IV with regard to Cardinal Ferry de

Clugny, quod mea subditorumque meorum ac regni et patriae negotia eius opera

et consilio sub Vestre Sanctitatis gratia et adiutorio diriguntur, without making

any specific reference to the term protector. But it is clear that Ferry de



74 THE BEGINNINGS OF A NATIONAL PROTECTORATE

Clugny did exercise at least a quasi-protectorate at the curia for the affairs

of Edward IV. The first cardinal who actually appears as protector of

England is Cardinal Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, nephew of Pius II

and subsequently elected pope as Pius III, only to die after a 26-day ponti ficate. In a letter of 6 September 1492 Henry VII congratulated the new

pope Alexander VI on his election, proferred his obedience and officially

requested Cardinal Piccolomini as protector of the English crown and of

the English nation. The selection of Piccolomini to represent English interests had in fact taken place earlier that year, while Innocent VIII

was still pope. This is indicated by a letter which can be dated to February March 1492 and written by Giovanni Gigli the English orator in Rome to

Henry VII. From the contents of this letter it is clear that Henry VII had

chosen three possible cardinals -

Piccolomini, Giuliano della Rovere and

Ascanio Sforza - and Gigli recommended Piccolomini as the other two

had strong leanings towards France and were less likely to have the interests

of the English king at heart.

Piccolomini continued to represent English interests at the curia until

his election to the. papacy eleven years later. Unlike the French cardinal

Balue he never combined his protectorship of England with the functions

of an ambassador, nor is there any evidence that he exploited the office for

money. Between 1492 and 1503 the propina, that is the proportion of the

taxes due on each benefice which he would have received for referring in

the papal consistory the nominations to English and Irish benefices might have reached a total as high as 20,000 florins, but this cannot be established

with certainty. He probably received an annual stipend for his services;

it is also possible that grants were made to him from proctorial funds, but

even so his income from protecting the interests of the English and Irish

churches could never have reached the generous 2000 livres tournois which

Balue received fiom the French king for the year 1485. Piccolomini appears never to have received even a minor English

or Irish benefice to complement

his modest collection of German and Italian ones. In this he differed from

the later cardinal protectors: Castellesi held the see of Hereford; Giulio de*

Medici was bishop of Worcester, and this see was also held by Cardinal

Ghinucci who acted as protector of Ireland after the English Reformation

settlement was completed; Campeggio held the bishopric of Salisbury, one of the wealthiest in England. From Piccolomini onwards until the

Henrician settlement, or more precisely until the death of Cardinal Cam

peggio in 1539, the cardinal protectors of England acted also for the Irish

church, referring the nominations of candidates for Irish benefices. After

1539 we find a separate protector for the Irish church: the first was Girolamo

Ghinucci, cardinal vice-protector of the Dominican order (+ 6 July 1541). He was followed 1545-1554 by Cardinal Ridolfo Pio da Carpi, also pro




tector of Scotland. Then on the accession of Mary and the restoration of

the Roman church in England the distinguished Cardinal Giovanni

Morone, papal legate at the council of Trent, became cardinal protector

of the English nation and at the same time took over the representation of

Irish interests, so that the two churches had once more a joint protector

as before Henry VIII's break with Rome. Morone, who was also cardinal

protector of the Dominican order, continued in the reign of Elizabeth to

act for the Irish church alone until his retirement in 1574.

The appointment of Piccolomini as cardinal protector of Henry VII

and of the church in his dominions, including Ireland, marks the first

formal recognition by king and pope of the function of a cardinal in this

particular sphere of interest, but throughout the fifteenth century it is

possible to identify a number of curial cardinals who represented Irish

interests, at least to the extent that they consistently referred the nomina

tions to Irish bishoprics in consistory. In the case of Piccolomini and Eng land, a chapter which is considerably better documented than the affairs

of the Irish church, it is possible to identify his other activities which show

that the scope of his role as protector went beyond questions of episcopal

provisions. But in the case of the Irish church, the only available yardstick which we have for measuring the involvement of curial prelates is the extent

to which certain cardinals consistently referred the nominations of candi

dates for Irish sees in the papal consistory. Here it might not be out of place to refer briefly to the sources used.

The Calendar of Papal Letters is of no value for this particular problem, a

statement which is best illustrated by pointing out that for the years 1471

1492 neither of the two curial cardinals most closely involved in filling Irish bishoprics, Giovanni Arcimboldi and Francesco Piccolomini, even

figure in the index to these volumes. For most of the fifteenth century there are no extant Acta of the papal consistory. However for the ponti

ficates of Martin V and Eugenius IV there is a seventeenth-century copy

of the Acta Miscellanea, while volumes 66, 72 and 83 of the cameral series

Obligationes et Solutiones provide information for all pontificates from

Nicholas V (1447-1455) to Innocent VIII (1484-1492) with the single

exception of the pontificate of Pius II (1458-1464) for which the relevant

volumes no longer exist. Not until 1489 do we have extant Acta Camerarii,

which from this date onwards are the main source for the protectors. These

Acta are basically a register of consistorial decrees and they rarely tell us

anything of the political machinations which might lie behind the nomina

tions of specific candidates. Further it is a fair assumption that much of

what passed between the orators at the curia and the national protectors

would have been oral.

The scope of this paper does not permit extensive quotation from the




lists of cardinals, candidates and dates from which these general observa

tions have been deduced, and it is intended to publish a more detailed

study elsewhere. But several features emerge which must be illustrated.

In the years after 1431, that is after the accession of Eugenius IV, the

number of individual cardinals dealing with Irish benefices decreased in any

given decade, and more nominations to Irish bishoprics became concen

trated in the hands of fewer cardinals, as the sphere of interest developed.

During the years 1431-1436 more of the Irish sees which fall vacant are

referred by Lucido Conti, cardinal protector of the Teutonic Knights and

vice-protector of the Regular Canons of the Lateran Congregation, and by

Joannes Casanova, O.P., vice-protector of the Dominican order, than by

all other cardinals put together. 1438-1442 most Irish episcopal nomina

tions are referred by Cardinal Francesco Condulmer, nephew of Eugenius

IV and papal vice-chancellor, and cardinal protector of the Lateran canons.

The Greek cardinal Bessarion of Trebizond, who acted as cardinal protector

of the Franciscan order from the death in 1458 of Domenico Capranica until his own death in 1472, referred almost every Irish bishopric which

fell vacant between 1443 and 1447. A lesser number of bishoprics was

nominated by Cardinal Capranica, protector of the Franciscans and of the

Teutonic Knights, whose nominations fell in the years between 1442 and

1450.

Cardinal Domenico Capranica had a further connection with Ireland,

which was more closely linked with his activity as cardinal protector of the

Franciscans. During the 1430s Philip Norris, a canon of St Patrick's in

Dublin and a doctor of theology of Oxford University, was conducting a

propaganda campaign against the four mendicant orders. Apart from the

more lurid and hysterical accusations that the friars were thieves, traitors,

rapacious wolves, anti-Christs, disciples of Mohammed, Norris revived

the controversy about the friars' pastoral privileges of hearing confessions,

preaching and burying the laity in rather similar terms to those of Arch

bishop Richard FitzRalph of Armagh in the mid-fourteenth century.

Consequently representatives of the four orders of friars in Ireland appealed

to Eugenius IV, a pope known to be well-disposed towards the regular

clergy. Eugenius commissioned Capranica to examine the dispute in secret

consistory, an examination which resulted in Capranica finding in favour

of the friars and issuing a judgment in their favour under his own cardinal's

seal. But this was clearly not enough to end the matter, and the friars

appealed once more to the pope in 1440 to have Capranica's decision issued

with the full weight of papal authority.

During the years 1447-1457 the two cardinals who referred most Irish

nominations wTere Pietro Barbo, the wealthy Venetian patrician who became

pope as Paul II (1464-1471), and Prospero Colonna, a member of the




important Roman family which had such close connections with the

Franciscan order as their palace was located beside the basilica of the

Twelve Apostles which was - and still is

- in Franciscan hands. One of

the most important curial cardinals of the period -

certainly one of the

wealthiest and most influential, and several times papabile - was the French

cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, related through his mother with the

royal house of Valois. Strictly in terms of numbers, this cardinal proposed more candidates for Irish bishoprics in the papal consistory than any other

in the fifteenth century, excepting the future cardinal protector Francesco

Piccolomini who referred the same number, nine in each case, at least as

far as the available sources record. D'Estouteville acted as cardinal protector

of the Augustinian friars from 1446 until his death in 1483, and for the

Teutonic Knights 1458-1483. Of the remaining cardinals who acted

during the years 1470-1492, most of the bishoprics were nominated by one

or other of four cardinals -

Theodor of Montferrat, Giovanni Arcimboldi,

Raffaello Sansoni Riario, one of the nephews of Sixtus IV, and the cardinal

of Portugal Jorge da Costa. Of these the Milanese Giovanni Arcimboldi was cardinal protector of the Benedictine Congregation of Monte Oliveti

and vice-protector of the Lateran Canons; Riario, like all the della Rovere

family exerted a paternal influence over the Franciscans, and Costa acted

as protector of the Franciscan order in the 1490s during the absence in

France of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, the future Julius II.

The connection of Francesco Piccolomini with the Irish church did not begin with his formal assumption of the office of Protector in 1492.

He was of course protector of Ireland only in the sense that Henry VII was lord of Ireland as well as king of England, but as early as 1466 he had

referred the nomination of Nicholas Weston to the see of Derry. On 21

April 1490 he acted as substitute in the consistory for the Neapolitan Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, protector of the Dominican order, who otherwise

did not figure in the nominations of Irish bishops. In this case Piccolomini

referred a disputed provision to the see of Ross, where the competing

candidates were one Odo O'Driscoll, canon of Ross, and Tadgh MacCarthy

'clerk of the diocese of Cork, by both parents of knightly race'. Both men

had at separate times been granted bulls of appointment, and Carafa had

summoned the two 'bishops' to Rome to be examined. In the consistory

Piccolomini reported Carafa's finding in favour of O'Driscoll and on the same day Piccolomini referred the nomination of MacCarthy to Cork and

Cloyne. In July 1492, still in the pontificate of Innocent VIII, Piccolomini referred the nomination of the Dominican Richard MacBrien to the see

of Elphin. Even after his appointment as cardinal protector Piccolomini did not assume a

monopoly of referring nominations to Irish benefices, nor

even of those bishoprics which lay within the limits of Anglo-Ireland, as




one might assume in view of his appointment specifically to represent the

interests of Henry VII. In the eleven years 1492-1503 he nominated no

more than half of the Irish bishoprics, the remainder being scattered

among other curial cardinals. This was in striking contrast to the situation

in England where - out of the 38 nominations made to English sees between

8 February 1492, when Piccolomini began under Innocent VIII to take a

more serious interest in the affairs of the English church before the formal

request by Henry VII to Alexander VI, and his election to the papacy on

22 September 1503 - he referred the nominations in 34 cases. Although he continued to refer nominations for other nations as well, particularly

for Germany, of which he was also protector, it was only in England that

Piccolomini exercised a near-monopoly.

During the 1490s Piccolomini had plenty of opportunity to encounter

something of the confusion existing in the church in Ireland. With the

single exception of Kildare (1492) no vacancy occurred in any see within

the Pale during Piccolomini's protectorship. In fact from 1494 to 1497, a period which roughly coincided with the period from the opening of the

parliament at Drogheda until after the issue of Alexander VFs strange but

abortive plan for the reform of the Irish church at the hands of a council

of English prelates in a bull of 28 October 1496, there is a complete silence

in the consistorial Acta about provisions made for Ireland. Of the seven

provisions made in these years which we know of from other sources, two

- in 1494 and 1495 - were absentee Italians provided to the by then defunct see of Glendalough, and others were cases where papal collectors were

provided and failed to get possession of their sees. It is not known whether

Cardinal Piccolomini had any connection with these nominations, and even

if we did it would be difficult to interpret its significance. It might be

tempting to see Piccolomini as useful to Henry VII in assisting him to

control papal provisions to other Irish sees, those beyond the Pale, as they fell vacant, but the evidence for such an attractive theory is lacking.

Certain general conclusions emerge from an examination of the pro

moters to Irish bishoprics for the period. The most striking one is that in

any given year or run of seveial years there is always one cardinal who deals

more exclusively than all others with this particular matter. For most of

the fifteenth century it is not an office which any one cardinal adopted for

life, but a duty which he carried out for a brief period, or perhaps for

several years, then sporadically, and then once more intensively. An

example of a cardinal who carried out the office for a concentrated period

of short duration is Bessarion who in the numerical table comes after

Piccolomini and d'Estouteville, promoting eight nominations in the years 1443-1447 and then no more although he did not die until 1472. Another

such case is Arcimboldi who only acted for the period 1478-1484 although




he did not die until 1488. A man who nominated sporadically throughout a long period 1448-1479 was d'Estouteville, but here too there was a heavy concentration of nominations in the years 1448-1450 and 1475-1479. It is

possible to work out for each pontificate, with the exception of those of Pius II and Paul II in the middle of the period under discussion, who were

the cardinals assigned to dealing with Irish nominations for each pontificate. Another striking feature to emerge is the heavy concentration among

the cardinals dealing with such nomination of those members of the Sacred

College who were acting as cardinal protector of one, or more, of the

religious orders with foundations in Ireland. In the fifteenth century a

large proportion of those appointed to Irish sees were still members of the

regular clergy, and it is reasonable to suppose that those cardinals who

had some dealings with the religious orders and represented their interests at the curia would also be slightly less ignorant of Irish conditions than others. This is not to suggest that they were

'experts' -

they carried out

these consistorial duties alongside many others, but they would at least have

the opportunity of coming into contact with Irish proctors and orators at

the curia, with the Irish community resident in Rome in the fifteenth

century about whom we know so painfully little. The cardinals' interest

in the orders might stimulate interest and knowledge about Irish ecclesi

astical affairs, but there is no indication that cardinal protectors of individual

orders tried to further members of these orders and have them nominated

to bishoprics. On the contrary the nominations cross all dividing lines on

the criteria of religious orders. They also cross what might be described

crudely as the 'national divide'. The division of who proposed nominations to what benefices does not reflect the two nations in the Irish church. It

is not a case of the cardinal protector of the English nation, or in the years

before 1492 the curial cardinals most closely involved with England, dealing with the sees that lay within the Pale and other curial cardinals dealing with the 'non-aligned'

sees or those located in Gaelic Ireland where largely

local forces determined who actually succeeded in gaining possession of a

benefice. But the nominations do tell us something of the Roman, or curial

view of relations between the Irish church and the English crown, and the

fact that Cardinal Piccolomini as protector of the English nation acted for as many Irish bishoprics as all the other curial cardinals put together

indicates the extent to which the Irish church was at Rome considered to

be an appendage of the English crown.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The principal sources used in this study were the series Acta Miscellanea, Obliga tions et Solutiones, and Acta Camerarii, all in the Archivio Segreto Vaticano. Cf.

Leonard E. Boyle, OP., A survey of the Vatican Archives and its medieval holdings




(Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1972)- A number of documents

relating to the protectorship of Cardinal Piccolomini are calendared in Cal. S. P. Venice, 1202-1509. Also indispensable is Conradus Eubel, Hierarchia catholica medii aevi II (2nd ed. Munster 1914).

On the beginnings of the protection of foreign powers at the papal curia see Josef Wodka, Zur Geschichte der nationalen Protektorate der Kardinale an der rdmischen Kurie

(Publikationen des ehemaligen osterreichischen Historischen Instituts in Rom 4/1, J937); Alfred A- Strnad, *Aus der Friihzeit des nationalen Protektorates der Kardinale', in Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte 81, Kanonistische Abteilung 50 (1964), pp. 264-271 and 'Konstanz und der Plan eines deutschen "National-kardinals"',

Das Konzil von Konstanz. Beitrage zu seiner Geschichte und Theologie, ed. A. Franzen and W. Muller (Freiburg i. Br., 1964), pp. 397-428. Fundamental for Cardinal Fran cesco Piccolomini, and indeed for the College of Cardinals in the second half of the fifteenth century is Strnad, Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini. Politik und Mdzenaten tum im Quattrocento (Romische Historische Mitteilungen 8 [1964-65] and 9 [1965-66] and separate Graz

- Cologne, 1966).

There are a number of studies of individual protectors of various religious orders, of which the most recent is Williell R. Thomson, 'The earliest Cardinal-Protectors of the Franciscan Order: a study in administrative history, 1210-1261', in Studies in

Medieval and Renaissance History ix (1972), pp. 21-80. However the most useful works in the present context are S. L. Forte, The Cardinal-Protector of the Dominican Order (Istituto Storico Domenicano, Rome, 1959); Philipp Hofmeister, OSB, 'Die

Kardinalprotektoren der Ordensleute', Tubinger Theologische Quartalschrift 142 (1962), pp. 425-464

William E. Wilkie, The Cardinal Protectors of England, Rome and the Tudors before the Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 1974) appeared too late for detailed consideration in this paper.



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