The Sack of Rome (1527)

On 6 May 1527 the Spanish, German, and Italian troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, sacked Renaissance Rome. The Sack was a climactic event in the War of the League of Cognac, begun in 1526, and in the broader Italian Wars waged between Spain, France, the Papal States and various Italian city-states between 1494 and 1559. Rome was poorly defended by Pope Clement VII, who shortly beforehand had agreed to a truce with the imperialists against the wishes of his allies and had subsequently dismissed his mercenaries. With official blessing, however, the imperial commander Charles de Bourbon did not honor this truce, instead moving south down the Italian Peninsula, threatening Florence and then advancing on Rome. Although Bourbon was fatally wounded during the sack, his troops quickly took the city. The pope fled to safety in Castel Sant’Angelo, where he remained trapped until he escaped to Orvieto in December; he would return to Rome only the following fall. The invading army moved largely unimpeded through the city, assaulting and slaughtering its citizens, pillaging, and violating sacred spaces and objects. The levels of violence reported in eyewitness accounts shocked the rest of Italy and Europe, even after decades of regular warfare. The Roman population waited in vain for salvation by the French army or the troops of the League under the command of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. The imperial army remained in Rome for nine months, all the while kidnapping and torturing the local population so as to unearth hidden money and valuables. While it is difficult to measure with precision the impact of the sack, Hook 2004 estimates that by the end of 1527 nearly half of the city’s population had been killed, died of famine or disease, or had fled the city. Other notable consequences included the torment and, in some cases, the death of artists and intellectuals, the destruction of humanist libraries, and the diaspora of artists, writers, and others previously connected to the city’s cultural activity. A lasting truce was struck only in June 1529, when Clement and Charles signed the Treaty of Barcelona. A symbolic enactment of peace occurred at the Congress (or Peace) of Bologna in late 1529 and early 1530, when the pope officially crowned Charles emperor and the cultural elite of Europe converged on the city; Rome, meanwhile, remained in shambles and was left to slowly beginn the process of rebuilding.

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