Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the infamous assault of an army of the Holy Roman Emperor on the city of Rome in 1527. The troops soon broke through the walls of this holy city and, with their leader shot dead early on, they brought death and destruction to the city on an epic scale. Later writers compared it to the fall of Carthage or Jerusalem and soon the mass murder, torture, rape and looting were followed by disease which was worsened by starvation and opened graves. It has been called the end of the High Renaissance, a conflict between north and south, between Lutherans and Catholics, and a fulfilment of prophecy of divine vengeance and, perhaps more persuasively, a consequence of military leaders not feeding or paying their soldiers other than by looting. With Stephen Bowd Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Edinburgh Jessica Goethals Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Alabama And Catherine Fletcher Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Stephen Bowd, Renaissance Mass Murder: Civilians and Soldiers during the Italian Wars (Oxford University Press, 2018) Benvenuto Cellini, Autobiography (Penguin Classics, 1999) Benvenuto Cellini (trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella), My Life (Oxford University Press, 2009) André Chastel (trans. Beth Archer), The Sack of Rome 1527 (Princeton University Press, 1983 Catherine Fletcher, The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance (Bodley Head, 2020) Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss (eds), The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture (Routledge, 2005) Francesco Guicciardini (trans. Sidney Alexander), The History of Italy (first published 1561; Princeton University Press, 2020) Luigi Guicciardini (trans. James H. McGregor), The Sack of Rome (first published 1537; Italica Press, 2008) Judith Hook, The Sack of Rome (2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) Geoffrey Parker, Emperor: A New Life of Charles V (Yale University Press, 2019)
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In 1527, an army of the Holy Roman Emperor broke through the walls of the holy city of Rome, bringing death and destruction on a wholly epic scale.
Later writers compared this to the fall of Carthage or Jerusalem.
And soon the mass murder, torture, rape and looting were followed by disease, worsened by starvation, and opened graves.
It's been called the end of the Renaissance.
A conflict between north and south, between Lutherans and Catholics, and the fulfillment of a prophecy of divine vengeance and, perhaps more persuasively, a consequence of not feeding or paying your soldiers.
With me to discuss the sack of Rome in 1527 are Stephen Bowd, professor, early modern history at the University of Edinburgh, Jessica Gethels, associate professor of Italian at the University of Alabama, and Catherine Fletcher, professor of history at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Kathleen Fletcher, this seems like a period of constant warfare.
What armies were fighting?
Which armies at this time?
Well, there's a description of this time which says the whole world was now at war, and that comes from Benvenuto Cellini, who's a goldsmith, who I'm sure we're going to come back to.
Cellini?
Cellini, yes.
Really, this is a conflict that has been going on, on and off for over 30 years.
And fundamentally, it's a conflict between France and Spain for hegemony in Italy.
Italy at this time is divided into lots of small states, and the wars have actually started off originally because of a conflict between two sides of the ruling family of Milan.