Burokratie und Nepotismus unter Paul V. (1605-1621): Studien zur fruhneuzeitlichen Mikropolitik in Rom (review)

Wolfgang Reinhard and Volker Reinhardt have both devoted major works to Cardinal Scipione Borghese as cardinal-nephew under Paul V and have considered him the prototypical representative of the institution of the cardinal-nephew in Baroque Rome.¹ The principal function of the cardinal-nephew now came to be, in contrast to earlier papal nephews, to provide for and oversee the permanent social and economic ascent of the reigning papal family into the ranks of the high Roman aristocracy. Scipione Borghese carried out this task in exemplary fashion.

This complicated, occasionally opaque, but ultimately rewarding and persuasive volume carries the investigation of the papal nephew further while supporting those who stress the role of the papacy in the coming of the modern state. Birgit Emich, a student of Wolfgang Reinhard, argues from the case of Borghese that the position of the papal nephew, first formally instituted by Paul III in 1538 and eliminated by Innocent XII in 1692, contributed more to the transition from the patrimonial to the bureaucratic state than did the contemporary minister-favorite as exemplified by the count-duke of Olivares in Spain or Cardinal Richelieu in France. Indeed, the author sees the cardinal-nephew as the Roman variation of the minister-favorite with its own distinctive features. So in the first half of the seventeenth century the Papal States preceded the other European states in the march toward the Weberian bureaucratic state.

The author constructs her case with the help of a thorough knowledge of the Vatican and other Italian archives and a careful use of palaeographical evidence to track down and assess the origin and fate of surviving correspondence. Aware of the practical impossibility of working through all the correspondence of the secretariat of state, Emich focuses on the documentation regarding Ferrara, one of the three legations, the others being Bologna and Perugia, that were administered through the secretariat of state and not through the congregations charged with the temporal government of the Papal States. Ferrara had been incorporated into the Papal States only in 1598, and its location on the border with Venice made it particularly vulnerable during the contest with the Most Serene Republic over the Interdict of 1606.

As nominal head of the secretariat of state and of the secretariat for briefs and prefect of the chief congregations for the government of the Papal States, plus as occupant of a number of other income-producing church offices, the cardinal-nephew first represented an apparent concentration of bureaucratic power. Secondly, whereas the pope himself as head of the universal church and ruler of the Papal States was expected to govern as padre comune, treating all his subjects with fairness and always looking to the common good, the cardinal-nephew could engage more readily in politics and patronage. In common with other minister-favorites, he was expected to co-ordinate all the activities of the government of the Papal States and, more importantly for Emich, to oversee the patronage network of the ruling papal family. This latter task constituted another aspect of his responsibility for the fortunes of the family. Similarly to the minister-favorites, the papal nephew would eventually lose power to the emerging secretaries of state. Special features distinguished the papal nephew from other minister-favorites, and they were rooted in the structure of the papacy as an elective monarchy. The papal nephew was related by blood to the ruler. More importantly, he managed the clientage not of a hereditary monarchy where the ruling family would presumably remain in power but of a papal family whose reign was limited and which needed to build up a secure position that would protect it from the probable hostility of the next papal family with its own adherents. So the...