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 a mournful letter to Colocci, in which he speaks of past glories—a letter aptly called by Gregorovius the swan's song, the farewell to the cheerful world of humanist times.

Clement's participation in the league against Charles and the Empire had favoured the spread of the Lutheran Reformation in Germany. Unwittingly the Pope had become Luther's best ally at the very moment when for Catholicism everything depended on strengthening the Emperor's opposition to the Reformation, which had the hour in its favour. Even after the Sack the Pope was not chiefly concerned for the preservation and improvement of the Church, or for the reparation of the evil done to Rome. What absorbed his attention were the dynastic interests of his own House, which had once more been expelled from Florence, and the restoration of the Papal State. The Emperor could have ended the Temporal Power with a stroke of the pen had he not feared the immense influence of the clergy and the threatening voice of the Inquisition, which did not hesitate to cross the threshold even of the most mighty. Charles needed the Pope, since a lasting enmity with him would have cut the ground from under his feet both in Spain and Germany. He needed him in order to keep his hold on Italy, and by his influence to divide the League. And so the Treaty of Barcelona was brought about (June 29, 1529), whereby the Emperor acknowledged the power of Sforza in Milan, gave the Papal State back to the Pope, undertook to restore Florence to the Medici by force of arms, and as a pledge of friendship to give his illegitimate daughter Margaret to Alessandro de' Medici. The Imperial coronation was moreover to take place in Italy. The "Ladies' Peace" of Cambray (August 5, 1529) confirmed Spanish rule in Italy. Clement crowned Charles Emperor on February 24, 1530, in Bologna, having come thither with sixteen Cardinals. The Emperor left for the diet at Augsburg on June 15. The Pope returned to Rome on April 9; and on August 12 Florence fell after a heroic death-struggle, burying the honour of the Pope in its fall, since he had not hesitated to hand over the freedom of his native town to his family. The republican constitution of the town was formally annulled on April 27, 1532, and Alessandro de' Medici was proclaimed Duke of Florence.

Clement VII is said to have sighed during the siege: "Oh that Florence had never existed!" The Papacy itself, as well as its representative in that time, had good reason to utter this cry; for the fall of the Republic brought about by the Pope and accomplished by the Emperor and his bands of foreign mercenaries, joined the Papacy henceforth to all movements inimical to the freedom and unity of Italy. It delivered over Italy and the Church to the idea of an ecclesiastico-political despotism native to Spain; it severed the bond which in the Middle Ages had kept Rome in touch with the national aims of the Italian people. In December, 1532, Emperor and Pope met once more in Bologna in order to conclude an Italian league. At the same moment