Chapter 18 Cardinals’ Testaments: Piety and Charity

Fausto Nicolai

1 Clerical Status and the licentia testandi

The right to make a will or to leave one’s possessions to a designated heir ac- cording to universal principles recognized in Roman law gained a particular meaning for cardinals.1 This was due to their special status in canon law, ac- cording to which cardinals were beneficiaries of ecclesiastical income in the form of Church revenues (coming from titular churches, deaconries, etc.) and curial incomes as members of the Sacred College and as a result of certain positions (monasteries in commendam, prebends etc.; see the contribution by Lucinda Byatt in this volume) who could not freely dispose of the wealth ob- tained per ecclesiam but only of such possessions as they had obtained pri- vately, and/or through their family. When properties and assets accumulated during a cardinal’s life became part of a single undivided patrimony contain- ing possessions both obtained in private and per ecclesiam, the option of leav- ing these by testament to an heir was lessened – and with that also the faculty of making a will. Moreover, from the Middle Ages onwards the right to make a will was further limited by the practice of the papal jus spolii, the pope’s pre- rogative to appropriate possessions of deceased ecclesiastics, which was seen as an act of recuperation or restitution of that which had been obtained per ecclesiam.2 The lack of clear regulations guaranteeing cardinals full faculty for drawing up their testament was only resolved at the end of the 12th century when, first as customary practice and subsequently as formal act, the licentia testandi was introduced.3 This was a permission to draw up one’s own will which the pope

1 For a historical discussion of the regulations in canon law with respect to the administration of possessions and the legation of goods by cardinals, see Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, I tes- tamenti dei cardinali del Duecento (Rome: 1980), and Barbara McClung Hallman, Italian Car- dinals, Reform and the Church as Property 1492–1563 (Los Angeles: 1985); see also the contribu- tions by Arnold Witte and Mary Hollingsworth on titular churches and the cardinal’s household in the present volume. 2 On the papal jus spolii see the documentary material in Daniel Williman, Records of the Papal Right of Spoil, 1316–1412 (Paris: 1974). 3 Paravicini Bagliani, I testamenti, 42–46.

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Cardinals’ Testaments: Piety and Charity 295 could concede upon request.4 This licentia testandi not only guaranteed a car- dinal complete disposal of his own patrimony, but it also placed it beyond the reach of the papal jus spolii. In conceding the faculty of bequeathing in the form of grace (grazia) or dispensation (dispensa), the pope on the one hand showed his sovereign powers by means of a relative submission of the Sacred College to his will, and on the other hand renounced the possibility of appro- priation of these possessions. The licence granted by the pope allowed a cardinal to formalize his last will, with full powers to administer his entire heritage with the sole exception of li- turgical vestments and the furnishings of his private chapel; these were to be reserved for churches or other holy institutions. From the 13th century on- wards, it became the norm for cardinals to arrange their last wishes; amongst the few who died intestate are Giovanni Battista Savelli (1422–98) and Ascanio Maria Sforza (1455–1505).5 Not only could a cardinal express his testamentary arrangements at any moment, he could also modify them in a new will – so long as he obtained a licentia testandi for every new testament. Therefore, mak- ing changes to a testament required a specific new papal license. The pope would grant this licence in the form of a papal letter or brief, which he addressed directly to the supplicant. A cardinal thus had to turn to the reigning pope with the request for a licence that, if obtained, would remain valid even after that pope’s death. It was only very seldom that a pope refused such a request; if this happened, it was due to the pope’s own personal inter- ests, as was the case when Alexander vi denied Ascanio Maria Sforza a licentia testandi and attempted to confiscate the substantial possessions of this Lom- bard ecclesiastic – the Borgia pope wanted to use these funds to finance his son Cesare’s military campaigns in the Romagna.6 The contents of a licentia testandi can be explained by means of the exam- ple of Cardinal Ottavio Bandini, who obtained permission from Paul v in 1616.7 The decision in the form of a brief consists of approximately ten pages, the majority of which defined the goods obtained per ecclesiam, the beneficiaries

4 From the 12th through to the early 17th century there were no legal premises or requirements for the concession of the licentia. Pope Gregory xv (1621–23) established a preliminary “tax on the ring” of 500 Roman scudi which allowed then the cardinals to receive it and being able in this way to dictate their last wills. See Moroni, 2:68. 5 Marco Pellegrini, Ascanio Maria Sforza: La parabola politica di un cardinale-principe del Rinascimento (Rome: 2002), 626. 6 Pellegrini, Ascanio Maria Sforza, 626. The lack of a licenza testandi resulted in Ascanio Sforza dying without a testament, which permitted Pope Julius ii to appropriate his possessions and use them for the construction of the new St. Peter’s. 7 asv, Segreteria dei Brevi, Reg. 534, fols. 530–40, 11 March 1616.