Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham-Dixon Read Free Book Online Page A

of the Senate were jurists drawn from the Milanese patriciate, men with a strong sense of Milanese legal traditions, whereas the governor of the city was one of the highest representatives of the Spanish sovereign, who was naturally disposed to act in accordance with Spain’s larger strategic aims. Milanese politics was a balancing act, a fragile equilibrium of occupier and occupied.
    Institutional continuity under Spanish rule was mirrored by a continuity of approach to the balance of secular and religious powers. The Sforza had pursued a gradually consistent policy of strengthening civil authority and weakening that of the Church. One of their main aims had been to establish control over ecclesiastical nominations in the Duchy of Milan, so that those whom they considered politically undesirable, or outright hostile, could be excluded from powerful positions such as that of bishop. Under Spanish rule, this strategy was pursued to the point where many other traditional powers of the Church were usurped by the state. Frequently, it was the civil, rather than the religious, authority that tried those accused of heresy, that took responsibility for discipline in the duchy’s convents and monasteries, and that assumed the right to punish clerical abuses. This naturally reinforced Spanish power over all areas of life in Milan, but, though its aim was to limit ecclesiastical powers and privileges, it was never intended to weaken the Catholic faith itself.
    In his instructions to his viceroys and governors, the fervently devout Philip II constantly stressed that the defence of Catholicism was his absolute priority. He had inherited a medieval Spanish conception of his role as monarch, according to which his first duty was servicio de Dios . He was brought up to believe that as king he had been singled out as the instrument of divine will. So, by a self-perpetuatingly circular logic, his policies were held to be those decreed by God and those best calculated to advance the holy mission of Catholicism. Spain’s cause was the cause of God; and this was true even if Spanish policies clashed directly with those of the supreme ecclesiastical authority, the pope. That was exactly what happened in Milan during the years immediately before and after the birth of Caravaggio. Other circumstances besides conspired to create a mood of incendiary religious fervour, often bordering on hysteria, in the city where the artist spent his formative years.
    CARLO BORROMEO
    The dominant figure in Milan during Caravaggio’s youth was not a Spaniard but an Italian. Carlo Borromeo was a dour and deeply pious man with a fierce sense of mission. He became Archbishop of Milan in 1565. He saw the city as the world itself in microcosm, a place teetering on the brink of damnation, teeming with sinners to be converted and souls to be saved. Like the ascetic Dominican friar Savonarola, who had preached in Florence almost a hundred years before, Borromeo galvanized the Milan of Caravaggio’s childhood into regular paroxysms of mass repentance. His appearance, gaunt, hollow-cheeked, charismatically severe, was itself symbolic: a visible sign, like the rags adopted four centuries earlier by St Francis of Assisi, that Borromeo had renounced wealth and privilege to follow directly in the footsteps of Christ and his apostles.
    Although he would become one of the most radical reformers of the Catholic faith and way of life, he had first been pressed into the service of the Church by the forces of old-fashioned nepotism. His uncle, Pope Pius IV, appointed him to the position of his own private secretary and elevated him to the rank of cardinal when Borromeo was still barely in his twenties (and despite the fact that he had received no theological training). Yet he soon justified that favouritism. A skilled negotiator, he played a vital part at the end of the Council of Trent. This was the hugely significant nineteenth Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church –