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Diplomatic Aspects of Charles the Bold's Relations with the Holy See
R.J. Walsh

This paper is offered only as a small contribution to a large subject. There is an obvious need, and there is certainly no shortage of material, for a detailed study of Charles the Bold's relations with the Holy See comparable with the works by Joseph Combet and Paul Ourliac on the relations between Rome and Louis XI^1.. Today, however, owing to limitations of both time and knowledge, I shall confine myself to discussing some of the diplomatic aspects of the duke's relations with the papacy.

I shall consider five topics: - first, the activities of papal legates in connection with Charles the Bold's disputes in the field of diplomacy; second, the question of appointments to bishoprics in his lands; third, his attempts to win friends at the papal court; fourth, the monopoly given to papal alum in his lands between 1468 and 1473; and, lastly, the effect on his relations with the Holy See of the increasingly Italianate character of the fifteenth-century papacy^2..

Both Paul II and Sixtus IV, the two popes whose pontificates spanned the reign of Charles the Bold, made great efforts to bring about peace among the rulers of Christendom. They considered that peace was not just desirable in itself; it was also a necessary precondition of a united Christian expedition against the Turks. Consequently, in a diplomatic context, perhaps the most persistent feature of Charles the Bold's relations with the Holy See was the attempts of a series of

1. Combet, Louis XI et le Saint-Siège, 1461-1483 (Paris, 1903); Ourliac, ‘Le concordat de 1472. Étude sur les rapports de Louis XI et Sixte IV’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4e sér., XXI (1942) 174-223, and XXII (1943) 117-154. A synthesis of Charles's relations with the Holy See is in A.G. Jongkees, Staat en kerk in Holland en Zeeland onder de Bourgondische hertogen, 1425-1477 (Groningen, 1942) 40-41.

2. Much of what follows is based on my University of Hull Ph.D. thesis Charles the Bold, the last Valois Duke of Burgundy 1467-1477, and Italy (1977) chap. 2, 124-264: ‘Charles the Bold and the Papacy’, hereafter cited as W. Other abbreviations used are: ADN B = Lille, Archives départementales du Nord, Série B; AG = Mantua, Archivio di Stato, Archivio Gonzaga; ASM = Milan, Archivio di Stato, Fondo Visconteo-Sforzesco, Potenze Estere; VM = Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS 8170 (= Classe Italiani, codice 398); and VP = Venice, Archivio di Stato, Collezione del Cardinale Lodovico Podocataro, Atti della Curia Romana.

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papal legates to mediate in the various disputes which took place between the duke and his neighbours. The resident legate, Lucas de Tol(l)entis, was authorized to deal with some of the minor disputes. But in the majority of cases the papacy dispatched special envoys. These were: - Stefano Nardini, archbishop of Milan, who was required to deal with the affairs of France and Liège in 1467 and 1468; Onofrio di Santa Croce, bishop of Tricarico, who took over the Liège mission from Nardini in 1468; Cardinal Basil Bessarion and Andrea dei Spiriti (or de Spiritibus) of Viterbo, who attempted to make peace between France and Burgundy in 1472 and 1473; Niccolò Sandonnino, bishop of Modena, and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, whose business in France in 1475 and 1476 brought them into contact also with Charles the Bold; and Alessandro Nanni (or Numai), bishop of Forli, who, as legate ad partes Germaniae, intervened in the duke's relations with Emperor Frederick III and with the Swiss during the last two years of his reign.

The achievements of these missions, as is well known, were not outstanding. Nonetheless, they do give a good illustration of the limitations of papal diplomacy. In fact, only Alessandro Nanni achieved any sort of success. Stefano Nardini came to be regarded by both Charles the Bold and Louis XI as being partial to the other. The same was true of Cardinal Bessarion. One may perhaps criticize Onofrio di Santa Croce for not having been much more resolute in opposing Burgundian interference in the ecclesiastical principality of Liège. Yet, when Andrea dei Spiriti went as far as excommunicating Charles the Bold in October 1473 for refusing to make peace with Louis XI, he was not supported by Pope Sixtus IV. Sixtus claimed that he had not been consulted in advance, and he suspected, apparently correctly, that Andrea's action was the result of a plot between him and the king of France. Andrea had been empowered by Sixtus to excommunicate either Louis or Charles if one or the other refused to make peace. It seems, however, that Andrea was in league with Louis to ensure that this power was used only against Charles, their intention being to compel him to make peace. Compulsion appeared to be necessary because peace was desired by Louis but not by Charles. But the pope did not want his hand forced by the precipitacy of his legate, and he wanted to avoid embarassment to the Holy See. He therefore set up a commission of cardinals to investigate the matter. Inevitably this meant delay; the duke sent a persuasive appeal to Rome; and in the event his excommunication seems never to have been formally ratified^3..

The fact was that these legates had few weapons at their command other than

3. Apart from W 176-184, see Jongkees, Staat en kerk, 40, and K. Bittmann, Ludwig XI. und Karl der Kühne. Die Memoiren des Philippe de Commynes als historische Quelle (2 vols.; Göttingen, 1964-70) II/I, 159-162.

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exhortation, and their masters in Rome often appeared to have an insufficient understanding of the intractability of the problems which they encountered. The legates, as Andrea dei Spiriti discovered, could not compel those in dispute to make peace but could only help to facilitate the making of peace if and when both parties were willing. Alessandro Nanni was able to do this at Neuss in 1475, but he failed to achieve an accommodation between Charles and the Swiss in the last months of the duke's reign, because the Swiss insisted on the ending of the Burgundian occupation of Lorraine, which Charles refused, and in fact some of the Swiss became suspicious that the legate was not impartial but simply wanted to extricate his Burgundian friend from a dangerous and unfavourable situation^4..

As for peace between Burgundy and France, Charles, while he agreed to a series of short truces between 1471 and 1475, refused to agree to any long-term settlement which left in French hands the territories seized by Louis XI in the war of 1471, especially the towns of Saint-Quentin and Amiens. He also raised other objections. He did not regard papal legates as necessarily impartial merely because they represented the Holy See. He suspected Nardini, Bessarion and Spiriti of pro-French and pro-Milanese sympathies, and he reposed real confidence only in Tolentis and Nanni. In 1472, after the death of Bessarion, he objected to Sixtus IV's proposal to appoint as Bessarion's successor Louis XI's friend Guillaume d'Estouteville, cardinal-archbishop of Rouen. His objections succeeded, but he felt nonetheless that this episode had proved the truth of his accusations of papal bias against him.

But the duke was not always obstructive. He won the friendship and admiration of several of the legates and he sought to enlist their help in advancing his interests. Lucas de Tolentis, for instance, became convinced of the duke's greatness and religious devotion, and he took it upon himself to advise Sixtus IV to do everything necessary to retain the duke's goodwill^5.. In 1472 Charles appointed him maître des requêtes, and in 1474, when Lucas was recalled to Rome, the duke empowered him to organize opposition there to ratification of his recent excommunication. When Lucas was sent back to the Burgundian court in 1476, the Mantuan ambassador in Rome noted that he enjoyed great favour with the duke, while Louis XI suspected that his return was a sign of papal

4. Combet, Louis XI et le Saint-Siège, 139-140; Die eidgenössischen Abschiede aus dem Zeitraume von 1421 bis 1477, A.P. Segesser, ed. (Luzern, 1863) 625-628, 636-637, 648; Chronique de Lorraine, L. Marchal, ed. (Nancy, 1859) 257-258; and Hans Knebel, Diarium, II, W. Vischer and H. Boos, ed. (2 vols.; Leipzig, 1880-1887) 40, 55, 70, 72-73, 79-80, 82.

5. J. Paquet, ‘Une ébauche de la nonciature de Flandre au XVe siècle: les missions dans les Pays-Bas de Luc de Tolentis, évêque de Sebenico, 1462-1484’, Bulletin de l'Institut historique belge de Rome, XXV (1949) 27-144 (90).

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hostility towards France^6.. Pietro Aliprandi, who joined Lucas at the Burgundian court in 1473 and who succeeded him in 1474, was originally hostile to Charles, but his attitude must have changed quickly, because, when he returned to Rome in September 1474, he was described as being the duke's ambassador^7.. Alessandro Nanni won the duke's friendship by helping to extricate him from the siege of Neuss, and in January 1476 he was described by the chancellor of the duke of Milan as behaving as if he were Charles the Bold's own proctor and retainer^8..

When Charles became duke in 1467, virtually all the bishoprics which lay within his frontiers, or whose authority extended over parts of his lands, were held by candidates who had been proposed or approved by his father. Thus Cambrai was held by John of Burgundy, Charles's illegitimate uncle, appointed in 1439 (-1480); Utrecht, by his elder illegitimate half-brother David, appointed in 1455 (-1496); and Liège, by his cousin and former brother-in-law Louis de Bourbon, appointed in 1456 (-1482). We might also mention Metz, held since 1459 (-1484) by Georg von Baden, who became a pensioner of Charles the Bold^9.; Toul, held since 1460 (-1495) by Antoine de Neuchâtel, son of Thibaud, marshal of Burgundy, and nephew of Charles, archbishop of Besançon (1463-1498); and Arras, held since 1463 (-1499) by Pierre de Ranchicourt, nephew and protégé of the influential Jean le Jeune, bishop of Thérouanne in the reign of Philip the Good^10..

These six bishoprics remained in the same hands throughout Charles the Bold's reign, and the absence of vacancies removed one potential source of conflict between the duke and the papacy. On the other hand, the appointment of candidates acceptable to his father did not remove every difficulty. This was the case not only, of course, at Liège, but also at Utrecht, where David of Burgundy refused to act as the duke's subordinate and sought instead to preserve his independence^11., and at Cambrai, where John of Burgundy was an absentee

6. P. de Commynes, Mémoires, D. Godefroy and N. Lenglet du Fresnoy, ed. (4 vols.; Paris, 1747) II, 199 n. 61; Charles's letters of credence for Lucas addressed to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga dated Vesoul, 23 March 1474, in AG 2187, fo. 1121; Giovanni Pietro Arrivabene to Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga, 9 March 1476, in AG 845 (‘è molto accepto e creduto da quello signore’); and Sacramoro dei Chiozzi to the duke of Milan from Rome, 17 June 1476, in ASM 81.

7. Sacramoro to the duke of Milan from Rome, 29 April 1474, in ASM 77 (‘per ambasciatore del duca de Borgogna’).

8. Cicco Simonetta to Sacramoro from Pavia, 16 January 1476, in ASM 80 (‘lui se ingerisce como cancellero de monsignore lo duca de Borgognia e fa como s'il fosse suo stipendiato e procuratore’).

9. R. Vaughan, Charles the Bold, the Last Valois Duke of Burgundy (London, 1973) 105; Philip the Good, however, had originally supported another candidate at Metz, Olry de Blamont.

10. J. Lestocquoy and R. Rodière, Les évêques d'Arras (Fontenay-le-Comte, 1942) 51-52, and E. Panofsky, ‘Two Roger Problems’, Art Bulletin, XXXIII (1951) 33-40 (34-37).

11. S.B.J. Zilverberg, David van Bourgondië, bisschop van Terwaan en van Utrecht, (± 1427-1496) (Groningen, 1951) 30-38.

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bishop who did little to extend ducal influence^12..

One of the appointments made in Philip the Good's reign of which his son did not approve was at Thérouanne, were David of Burgundy, transferred from Thérouanne to Utrecht in 1455, had been succeeded by Henri de Vaudémont-Lorraine. Henri had sworn loyalty both to Charles VII and later to Louis XI. Moreover, he was closely related by marriage to King René of Anjou, who had married his cousin Isabelle and whose daughter Yolande was his sister-in-law. Consequently, during the war with France in 1471 Charles persuaded, or forced, Henri to leave his strategically situated bishopric and retire to Metz. Later, in September 1474, the duke's councillor Guillaume de Clugny, who had already been appointed as Henri's coadjutor in about 1470, was granted the right of succession to Thérouanne, although he did not actually live long enough to make good this right^13..

In fact, there were only two vacancies during the duke's reign in what might be called Burgundian bishoprics, namely those at Amiens and Tournai, both of them in 1473. Charles did succeed in having his own candidate appointed at Tournai, but not at Amiens, and here his failure had important diplomatic implications. The previous incumbent was Ferry de Beauvoir, a confidant of Philip the Good who had acted as ducal proctor in Rome. When he died in February 1473, Charles wanted, and expected, his successor to be Ferry de Clugny, brother of Guillaume de Clugny. Instead, Sixtus IV appointed in July 1473 the candidate of Louis XI, Jean de Gaucourt, who had helped administer the diocese for many years and whose father was Louis XI's governor of the city. Charles was furious at this choice, not just because Louis XI's candidate had been preferred to his own but also because of the strategic significance of Amiens itself. Amiens, of course, was one of the Somme towns mortgaged to Philip the Good in 1435, redeemed by Louis XI in 1463 but regained by Burgundy in 1465. Louis had seized it again during the war of 1471, but from 1471 until 1475 Charles the Bold attached a major priority to getting it back, and, despite the entreaties of Rome, he refused to make a formal peace with the French king until he succeeded. Consequently, he interpreted the appointment of Jean de Gaucourt to mean that Sixtus IV regarded Amiens as rightfully a French and not

12. During his episcopate he apparently made only three visits to Cambrai and none of these occurred in Charles the Bold's reign: C. Thelliez, ‘A propos du testament de Jean de Bourgogne’, Anciens pays et assemblées d'états, LXII (1973) 31-91 (33-34, 46-47).

13. Regestes des évêques de Thérouanne, O. Bled, ed. (2 vols.; Saint-Omer, 1904-1907) II, 34 and n. 1; C. Eubel, Hierarchia catholica Medii Aevi (2nd ed., 2 vols.; Münster, 1913-14) II, 196; Ourliac, ‘Le concordat de 1472’, 184; J. Bartier, Légistes et gens de finances au XVe siècle. Les conseillers des ducs de Bourgogne Philippe le Bon et Charles le Téméraire (Brussels, 1955) 370 and nn. 1-2; and W.K. von Isenburg and F. von Loringhoven, Stammtafeln zur Geschichte der europäischen Staaten (4 vols.; Marburg, 1953-8) I, 13, II, 34.

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a Burgundian town. As a compromise, he asked the pope to appoint Philippe de Brimeu administrator of the temporalities of the diocese, but without success. However, an opportunity quickly arose for the pope to mollify the duke's anger to some degree. In August 1473 Bishop Guillaume Fillastre of Tournai died, and in the following month Ferry de Clugny was appointed to succeed him. Again there were political implications, for the city of Tournai itself was an enclave of French territory surrounded by the Burgundian provinces of Artois, Flanders and Brabant. The appointment of a French candidate here would have been a major diplomatic defeat^14..

Such, then, were some of the objectives which Charles set himself in his relations with Rome. Now, he clearly felt himself entitled to expect a favourable attitude from the Holy See towards these objectives; was he not, after all, virtuous in his private life, magnificent as a ruler, a devoted son of the Church and a would-be crusader? But, in his typically methodical way, he left nothing to chance. He disseminated propaganda to ensure that others too thought well of him. He entered into a much closer relationship with the rulers of Italy than his father had, and this policy was designed in part to increase his standing in Rome. He sought to place his agents at the papal court and to win friends among the cardinals. Moreover, one of his long-term ambitions was to obtain the promotion of his own, Burgundian cardinal, or even of two, if possible.

I mentioned earlier how the duke won the friendship of some of the papal legates. His alliances in Italy with Naples and Milan were also aimed at increasing his influence in Rome. King Ferrante's supposed influence there was one of the arguments put forward by Charles in 1473 in favour of his election to the Order of the Golden Fleece. Even before this, at the end of 1472, Ferrante had tried to help his ally by mediating between him and Pope Sixtus. In 1474 the king of Naples exerted his influence in Rome against the ratification of the duke's excommunication. In the same year Charles asked Ferrante to use his influence in Rome on behalf of Philippe de Brimeu and of his confessor, Enguerrand Seignart. Philippe wanted to be promoted to the see of Lausanne, which he believed - mistakenly - to be on the point of becoming vacant, while Enguerrand aspired to the vacant see of Auxerre, which had previously been held for twenty-five years by a councillor of Philip the Good, Pierre de Longueil. But Charles felt that it was useless to write himself to the unco-operative Sixtus IV, so

14. Eubel, Hierarchia, II, 86, 253; Bartier, Légistes et gens de finances, 126 and n. 1; Paquet, ‘Une ébauche’, 116-117; and R. Vaughan, Philip the Good. The Apogee of Burgundy (London, 1970) 218. Charles had earlier considered asking for the installation at Amiens of Philippe de Brimeu: W. Paravicini, Guy de Brimeu (Bonn, 1975) 446-447.

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he was approaching his Neapolitan ally because, he said, he knew Ferrante enjoyed some influence in Rome^15..

Charles made similar use of the duke of Milan, with whom he concluded an alliance in 1475 and who was reputed to enjoy the predominant influence in Rome. In May 1475 the Milanese ambassador there was instructed to further the duke of Burgundy's request for the promotion of Enguerrand Seignart to Auxerre. In September 1475, again in response to a Burgundian request, Galeazzo Maria instructed his ambassador in Rome to urge the pope to grant to Philippe de Brimeu the next bishopric to become vacant in the duchy of Milan. Charles also asked his Milanese ally in 1476 to support his request to Sixtus IV to reserve the bishopric of Chalon-sur-Saone for his Neapolitan doctor Matteo de Clariciis; in addition, Matteo himself, perhaps as a form of insurance in case there were obstacles at Chalon, asked Galeazzo Maria to reserve him a bishopric in the duchy of Milan^16..

Charles had friends in the college of cardinals itself. The powerful Pietro Riario, cardinal of San Sisto and nephew of Pope Sixtus, at one time offered his protection to Burgundian ambassadors in Rome^17.. Iacopo Ammanati-Piccolomini, cardinal-bishop of Pavia, took the duke's part in 1472 when he advised Sixtus IV against appointing Guillaume d'Estouteville as legate to France and Burgundy^18.. In 1474 Charles asked Francesco Gonzaga, cardinalbishop of Mantua, to exert his influence in Rome against the ratification of his excommunication^19.. Shortly afterwards, in a dispute with the abbot of Liessies in

15. Vienna, Archiv des Ordens vom Goldenen Vliesse, reg. III, fo. 33v, and F.A.F.T. de Reiffenberg, Histoire de l'Ordre de la Toison d'Or (Brussels, 1830) 73; Zaccaria Barbaro, Venetian ambassador in Naples, to Doge Niccolò Tron, 24 December 1472, in VM reg. IV, fo. 45 (Ferrante ‘ricorda a sua S. tà el debi compiacer al predicto S. re ducha de quelle tre cose el vuole, primo revocar i preti francexi de li benefitii del ducha de Borgogna per essere suspecti et inimici, secundo el non mandar el cardinal de Rohan per essere subdito del Re, terzio compiacer al ducha de i due cardinali vuol quel S. re’); Ferrante to Antonio Ci(n)cinello, his ambassador in Milan, from Aversa, 25 March 1474, in ASM 225; and Francesco Bertini to Ferrante from Luxembourg, 24 June 1474, in ASM 515.

16. The duke of Milan to Sacramoro from Pavia, 12 and 13 May 1475, and from San Giorgio, 14 September 1475, in ASM 79; Charles to the duke from the camp at Lausanne, 11 April 1476, in ASM 519; and Matteo to the same from the same, 11 April 1476, in ASM 516 (i.e. misfiled). Seignart was appointed to Auxerre in March 1476; Philippe never obtained a bishopric, although he received numerous lesser benefices; Matteo died in July 1476 and Chalon did not become vacant until 1480.

17. W 243-245.

18. Combet, Louis XI et le Saint-Siège, 120-121. Iacopo was a friend of Francesco Bertini, the Neapolitan ambassador at the Burgundian court, in his letters to whom he expressed admiration of Charles and asked to be kept informed of the duke's progress; see his Epistolae et commentarii (Milan, 1506) fo. 202v.-203, 235v., 261.

19. His intermediary was the returning legate Lucas de Tolentis. See his letters of credence for Lucas addressed to Francesco (‘Reverendissime in Christo pater consanguinee noster carissime’) dated Vesoul, 23 April 1474, in AG 2187, fo. 1121, and Francesco's letter to his father, Marquis Lodovico, from Rome, 9 May 1474, in AG 845. Francesco's younger brother Rodolfo had stayed at the Burgundian court for a year in 1469-1470.

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Hainaut, he sought the support of Cardinal Teodoro of Monferrato^20..

In addition, he had his own agents, ‘ses gens estans a Romme’, some of whom were ducal proctors at the papal court, such as Jehan de la Motte, Hendrik van Bergen and Pieter Bogaert^21..

But the duke was not satisfied with mere proctors. Like other rulers of the time, he wanted his own cardinal, both as a matter of prestige and as a practical means of ensuring that his views were listened to in Rome. He was given encouragement by Pope Paul II, who, in a secret consistory held shortly before his death in August 1471, promised the red hat to four men, namely two Venetians (Giovanbattista Savelli and Pietro Foscari), a Hungarian (the archbishop of Esztergom), and a Burgundian, Ferry de Clugny^22..

Difficulties, however, soon arose. Paul died before he could carry out his promise, and his successor refused to be bound by it. Sixtus IV's reasons were that he did not wish to increase the Venetian representation in the college of cardinals and also that he was reluctant to offend the king of France by promoting a Burgundian. As for the cardinals, they were reported to want no addition to their numbers, while the Italian majority - larger now than for many years - sought to minimize the influence of the ultramontanes^23..

The next two years were marked by incessant intrigue^24.. Charles the Bold's behaviour was alternately threatening and conciliatory. Louis XI countered by urging the promotion of his own candidate, Charles de Bourbon, archbishop of Lyon, and by agreeing in 1472 to a concordat which superseded the offensive Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges and thereby removed a major obstacle in the way of better relations between the papacy and the French crown. Sixtus himself sought refuge in delay, partly to avoid alienating Louis XI, partly to avoid satisfying the claims of the Venetians, and partly to try and force the duke of Burgundy into adopting a more compliant attitude towards the Holy See, with regard, for instance, to agreeing to the plans proposed by papal legates for a lasting peace with France. The pope, eventually, was compelled to give way, but, at the same time, he reached a compromise which allowed him a partial solution of the dilemmas facing him. Instead of Ferry de Clugny, the Burgundian cardinal

20. J. Peter, L'abbaye de Liessies en Hainaut depuis ses origines jusqu'après la réforme de Louis de Blois, 764-1566 (Lille, 1912) 10/ n. 3.

21. ADN B 2064, fo. 334 (October 1467); ADN B 2068, fo. 193 (1468); and R.J. Walsh, ‘The Coming of Humanism to the Low Countries: Some Italian Influences at the Court of Charles the Bold’, Humanistica Lovaniensia, XXV (1976) 146-197 (188, 192).

22. Eubel, Hierarchia, II, 15, n. 6, and Pietro Aliprandi to the duke of Milan from Bruges, 31 December 1472, in ASM 515 (cf. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts Existing in the Archives and Collections of Milan, A.B. Hinds, ed. and trans. (London, 1912) 172).

23. Sacramoro to the duke of Milan from Rome, 8 April 1473, in ASM 72.

24. Fuller account in W 249-259.

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whom he promoted on 7 May 1473 was Philibert Hugonet. This choice enabled him to escape the obligation to promote the two Venetians who, together with Ferry de Clugny, had been promised the red hat by Paul II in 1471; also, Sixtus hoped to improve relations with Burgundy by honouring a man who was the brother of the duke's chancellor Guillaume Hugonet^25..

The promotion of Philibert Hugonet was thus a great triumph for Charles the Bold, but he was still not completely satisfied, because he continued to hope for the promotion of Ferry de Clugny as well; this, however, he did not live to see^26..

An interesting interaction between domestic and diplomatic policy can be seen in the agreement made between the duke and Pope Paul II in 1468 which gave a monopoly in the Burgundian Low Countries to the alum produced at the papal mines at Tolfa. The economic aspects of this agreement have been fully examined by others^27.. But if we ask why Charles made the agreement and why he later ended it, then I believe we must answer largely in terms of politics and diplomacy. The agreement proved in time to be burdensome to his subjects, and it seems unlikely that this could not have been foreseen already in 1468. So, from the beginning, Charles was apparently prepared to risk the opposition of his subjects in order to obtain from the papacy something beneficial for himself. He wrote to Paul II from Lille on 4 February 1468 expressing the wish that relations between them might be as close as those between their respective predecessors, Philip the Good and Pius II^28.. But in fact Charles went further than his father, for Philip, towards the end of his reign, had been asked to allow a papal alum monopoly but had hesitated to do so. Similarly, Edward IV and Louis XI had been asked but had refused. Clearly, the new duke of Burgundy hoped to differentiate himself from his contemporaries and to establish himself in the eyes of the pope as an especially devoted son of the Church, who, for that very reason, should be entitled to especially favourable treatment, not least because the alum monopoly was designed not simply to fill the papal coffers but to help finance the crusade and the relief of refugees from the Turks.

25. Ammanati-Piccolomini, Epistolae, fo. 260v-261 and Giovanni Andrea Ferrofini to the duke of Milan from Rome, 9 May 1473, in ASM 72 (‘anche per havere più favorevole et obsequente el duca per mezzo del suo Gran Canc.o’).

26. Letters of Barbaro and Aliprandi cited in nn. 15, 22 and Paquet, ‘Une ébauche’, 105-106. Sixtus IV, after his next creation of cardinals, wrote to Tolentis on 28 December 1476 asking him to convey to Charles his regrets that he had still been unable to satisfy Ferry (VP 1, no. 261), although he had not this time hesitated to promote Charles de Bourbon; Ferry's promotion came in 1480.

27. L. Liagre, ‘Le commerce de l'alun en Flandre’, Le Moyen Age, LXI (1954-1955) 177-206 (192-203); R. de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397-1494 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963) 152-164, 438-441, and J. Delumeau, L'alun de Rome, XVe-XIXe siècle (Paris, 1962) 7-22, 32-36; text of the treaty in Codex diplomaticus dominii temporalis S. Sedis, A. Theiner, ed. (3 vols., Rome, 1861-1862) III, 451-455.

28. Copy in ASM 515.

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At the start of his reign, then, Charles made a concession to Rome which he hoped would bring him long-term rewards. One of these was the promotion of a Burgundian cardinal. But in the short term, in the first year of his reign, there was one particular benefit which he wanted from Paul II, namely a dispensation to marry Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV, which would allow him to consolidate his alliance with England. It was not absolutely certain that the pope would grant this dispensation, because Louis XI did his best to persuade him not to do so. The timing of events therefore suggests that Charles agreed to the papal alum monopoly in part as a quid pro quo for the grant of this dispensation. Thus, he had written to Paul II in October 1467 asking for the dispensation and, before the end of the year, he had agreed in principle to a papal monopoly. Paul, for his part, soon promised to grant the dispensation. But then followed long delays. At one stage it was reported that Charles could not have been more discontented with the pope, and some even claimed that he was threatening to convoke a general council of the Church in retaliation^29.. Agreement over the monopoly was reached only on 5 May 1468, and the dispensation was granted (by the papal legate in England, Dr. Stefano Trenta, or Trento, bishop of Lucca) on 17 May, but Charles did not confirm the agreement until 24 June.

The position of the monopoly as a bargaining counter between the duke and the pope was made explicit in 1469. In that year Charles asked for a dispensation for a marriage between his illegitimate half-sister Anne and his cousin Adolf of Cleves. In October Paul II replied with an expression of willingness to grant the request. But at the same time he wrote to Lucas de Tolentis instructing him to impress on the duke the magnitude of the favour requested, because previous popes, he wrote, had seldom permitted marriages between couples related in the second degree (as were Anne and Adolf); on this occasion, however, he was prepared to take into account the devotion to Rome and to the cause of the crusade shown by Charles and his forbears; but, naturally, he wanted something in return, and he made it clear to Tolentis that he expected the alum agreement to be implemented more effectively than it had been hitherto^30..

The agreement was ended four years later. On 7 June 1473 Charles issued letters patent authorizing the unrestricted import of alum into his lands from 28 August onwards. The reason, he told Lucas de Tolentis, was that the States General had made this a condition of their agreeing to his request for a six-year grant for the

29. Copy of a letter of Tommaso Portinari from Bruges, 8 April 1468 (to Lorenzo de'Medici?), in ASM 515 (‘Questo S. non potrebbe essere pegio contento che gli è del papa’), and L. von Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters (16 vols; Freiburg im Breisgau, 1901-1933) II, 375 n. 2.

30. Paul's letters to Charles and Tolentis, both dated 18 October 1469, in VP 1, no. 26. Anne and Adolf married in 1470.

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maintenance of his army^31.. The grievance of the States General was certainly genuine, and, indeed, it had been in deference to his subjects that Charles had not enforced the monopoly fully until 1471. But other, diplomatic reasons for the ending of the monopoly can also be detected. One was the duke's desire to obtain a subsidy from his ally King Ferrante of Naples. Charles had claimed since 1472 that Ferrante was obliged to pay such a subsidy by the terms of their alliance made in 1471. Ferrante, however, was aggrieved because the monopoly enjoyed by the papal alum in the Low Countries had prevented the sale there of the alum from the mines which he owned at Ischia. Consequently, large stocks of unsold Neapolitan alum had accumulated in the duke's lands. So in 1473 Ferrante persuaded Charles to end the papal monopoly in order that this Neapolitan alum could be sold and he agreed to pay him 20,000 ducats from the proceeds. Charles later complained that this sum hardly gave him sufficient compensation for having compromised his relations with Sixtus IV^32..

The fact was, though, that those relations were already compromised. He felt that Sixtus IV was biased against him and partial to Louis XI. He had been irritated by the actions of the papal legates in France and angered by the pope's delay in promoting the Burgundian cardinal promised by Paul II. Moreover, the advantage of the alum monopoly as a political lever had been lessened in 1472 when Louis XI abrogated the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges and concluded a concordat with Rome. Charles had threatened as early as June and December 1472 to end the monopoly^33..

But if he already had sufficient reasons to end the monopoly, his timing requires some explanation. Ferrante had made his offer of money in return for a suspension of the monopoly at least as early as March 1473^34.; and the States General, which, so Charles claimed, had forced him to break his agreement with Rome, had dispersed on 1 April. But it was not until 7 June that the duke gave notice of his intention to suspend the agreement from the following August. The reasons for this delay may, I think, be found in the imminence of a new promotion of cardinals; Charles wanted at least one of them to be Burgundian, and that would have been prejudiced by a prior suspension of the alum monopoly. One of the duke's candidates, Philibert Hugonet, was in fact given the red hat on 7 May; the news arrived at the Burgundian court fifteen days

31. Paquet, ‘Une ébauche’, 107; Liagre, ‘Le commerce’, 203.

32. Bittmann, Ludwig XI. und Karl der Kühne, II/1, 117; further details in W 57-60, 220-221.

33. Paquet, ‘Une ébauche’, 87; Aliprandi to the duke of Milan from Abbeville, 6 December 1472 (cf. Calendar Milan, 171), and from Bruges, 31 December 1472, both in ASM 515.

34. Charles had then refused it: Barbaro to the doge from Naples, 21 March 1473, in VM reg. V, fo. 19.

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later^35.; and, with this promotion, probably the last remaining barrier against the suspension of the papal alum monopoly disappeared.

By the fifteenth century the papacy was concerned less to intervene throughout Christendom than to build up its strength in Italy. This Italianate character of the papacy was of great importance to Charles the Bold in two ways. First, he was much more closely involved with Italian politics than his father had been, so that his relations with Rome's neighbours were an additional factor influencing the attitude towards him of the Holy See. Secondly, Italian rivalries were embodied in the persons of the two popes with whom he had to deal. Pietro Barbo, who reigned from 1464 until July 1471 as Paul II, was a Venetian; in Italy this implied hostility to Milan and Florence, and hence, beyond the Alps, hostility also to Louis XI but a friendly attitude towards Charles the Bold. By contrast, Francesco della Rovere, who was elected pope as Sixtus IV in August 1471, came from Savona in the Ligure, a region closely identified with both France and Milan. Moreover, the influence of Galeazzo Maria played a large part in his election. Since Milan was an ally of France and an enemy of Burgundy until the treaty of Moncalieri between Milan and Burgundy in January 1475, Sixtus IV's attitude towards Charles tended to be reserved, even hostile. Thus in 1471 Louis XI described Paul II as ‘Burgundian’ and rejoiced at the election of Sixtus IV^36., while Charles described Sixtus in June 1474 as being more contrary to him than even the king of France was^37.. Sixtus IV's attitude towards Charles became slightly warmer following the treaty which his patron the duke of Milan made with Burgundy in 1475, but by 1476 he was expressing fear and dislike of the duke's apparently insatiable appetite for war and conquest^38.. As for Charles, he certainly delayed rendering his formal obedience to Sixtus until after 1474^39..

Examples of the contrast between the two popes have been mentioned already. Paul II allowed Charles a dispensation to marry Margaret of York (against the wishes of Louis XI), promised to create a Burgundian cardinal and, indeed, declared himself in 1469 to be ready to grant the duke anything within reason^40.. But under Sixtus IV Charles ended the papal alum monopoly, complained

35. Paquet, ‘Une ébauche’, 105.

36. G.P. Arrivabene to Marchioness Barbara of Mantua from Rome, 11 April 1471, in AG 844; Sforza Bettini, Milanese ambassador in France, to Galeazzo Maria from Ham, 11 June 1471, in ASM 538; and Bittmann, Ludwig XI. und Karl der Kühne, I/2, 552-553.

37. Letter of Bertini cited in n. 15.

38. R.J. Walsh, ‘Charles the Bold and the Crusade: Politics and Propaganda’, Journal of Medieval History, III (1977) 53-86 (80).

39. He had not done so by December 1474 when his ally the duke of Brittany, despite Charles's dissuasion, rendered his obedience: Sacramoro to the duke of Milan from Milan, 15 December 1474, in ASM 78.

40. Paul to Charles, 18 October 1469, in VP 1, no. 26: ‘nos enim Dilectissime Fili quod decet desideriis tuis morem gerere parati sumus’.

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bitterly about the actions of papal legates in France, obtained the promotion of a Burgundian cardinal only after a delay of two years and even suffered the indignity of a temporary excommunication.

The same contrast was evident in the diplomacy of the Italian peninsula. In 1469 Paul II encouraged Burgundian intervention, notably against Milan^41., and in 1470 he helped to mediate an alliance between Venice and Naples designed to counter the pro-French league of Milan and Florence^42.. But as for Sixtus IV, he clearly disapproved of the alliance between Burgundy and Naples concluded in 1471^43., and in 1472 he helped to bring about a brief reconciliation between Naples and Milan, an action which angered Charles the Bold because he feared that it might lead to the return of Naples from the Burgundian to the French camp^44..

Another example of this contrast is the fate of the resident papal legate in the Low Countries, Lucas de Tolentis. Lucas, a Dalmatian, came from a region dominated by Venice. Under Paul II he rose steadily in the esteem not only of the pope but also of Charles the Bold. But the election of Sixtus IV weakened his position. The duke of Milan regarded him purely and simply as a servant of the interests of Venice, and by this time Venice was the ally of Burgundy and the enemy of Milan; Galeazzo Maria and his friends in the papal entourage, such as Pietro Aliprandi and Andrea dei Spiriti, represented the legate as being too friendly towards Burgundy to the point of betraying the interests of the pope himself; and in 1474, after much intrigue, Lucas was recalled to Rome in apparent disgrace^45..

Let me conclude. On the whole, I think it is fair to say that, in his relations with the Holy See, Charles the Bold was not unsuccessful. In marital diplomacy he received a papal dispensation on each of the occasions that he sought one. He talked of wanting more control over appointments to benefices in his lands^46., but he did not make a major issue of it. Of the two episcopal vacancies affecting his northern lands which occurred during his reign, he managed to have his candidate appointed at Tournai but not at Amiens. Papal mediation tended to be

41. Bittmann, Ludwig XI. und Karl der Kühne, 1/2, 407-408, II/1, 315-316; Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Friedrich III. Achte Abteilung, erste Hälfte 1468-1470, I. Most-Kolbe, ed. (Göttingen, 1973) 62, 64-65; further details in W 21-22, 130, 200.

42. G.P. Arrivabene to the marchioness of Mantua from Rome, 5 May 1470, in AG 844.

43. Nicodemo Tranchedini to the duke of Milan from Rome, 20 November 1471, and Tranchedini and G. Arcimboldi to the same from Rome, 28 November 1471, both in ASM 68; and Cardinal Gonzaga to the marquis of Mantua from Rome, 29 November 1471, in AG 844.

44. Paquet, ‘Une ébauche’, 89.

45. Further details in W 135-140.

46. Aliprandi to the duke of Milan from Bruges, 31 December 1472, in ASM 515 (‘...disse volere disponere de le benefitii soi como fano li S.ri de Italia...’); see also the letter of Barbaro quoted above in n. 15.

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acceptable in his German affairs but not in his relations with France. He won friends at the papal court, sought bishoprics for his servants and obtained the promotion of one Burgundian cardinal, although he would have preferred two. Above all, he did not let himself be outdone by the king of France; and in the eyes of the duke himself this was probably success enough.