Background
Paul III was born o February 29, 1468 in Canino, into one of the more powerful Renaissance families of northern Italy.
Paul III was born o February 29, 1468 in Canino, into one of the more powerful Renaissance families of northern Italy.
Sensitive and talented, Alessandro Farnese was entrusted to the Humanist Pomponio Leto for his early education. Then he attended the University of Pisa.
After his education in Rome and in Florence at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, he entered the service of the Church. Created a cardinal in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI, he continued his warm friendships with artists, scholars, and humanists. He was ordained in 1519.
In the conclaves of 1521 and 1523 he was almost elected to the papacy. This office he received on October 13, 1534. During his 15 years as pope, Paul III created a new atmosphere about the papacy.
He raised to the College of Cardinals most exemplary men, such as Marcello Cervini (who became Marcellus II), Reginald Pole, Giampietro Carafa (later Paul IV), and Gasparo Contarini.
In 1526 Paul inaugurated the incisive review of the central problem of reform in the Church known as the Consilium de emandanda ecclesia.
In 1542 he founded the Congregation of the Roman Inquisition, or the Holy Office, as the final court of appeal in trials of heresy. He encouraged many new religious communities and gave papal approbation of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1540 and of the Ursulines in 1544.
Paul's greatest encouragement to the Catholic reform was the opening of an ecumenical council which he tried to inaugurate as early as 1537 at Mantua. Because of immense difficulties, arising in large measure from the international rivalry between the Holy Roman emperor Charles V and the French king Francis I, he succeeded only in December 1545 in getting the council under way at Trent. Further difficulties followed, and Paul transferred the council to Bologna in February 1548 and finally suspended it in September 1549. Retaining his early enthusiasm for art and scholarship, Paul was ambitious to give Rome the primacy in these fields.
Society of Jesus
As a young cleric, Alessandro lived a notably dissolute life, taking for himself a mistress and having three sons and two daughters with her.
