On 7th March 1530 Pope Clement VII issued a bull threatening Henry VIII with excommunication if he proceeded to marry again.
The Pope had been informed by Queen Catherine of Aragon that her husband had “boasted” that he would take a second wife “notwithstanding the inhibition and mandate against him”, so the Pope was acting against this rebellious king.
You can read more about this in my article from last year – click here.
Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici) is an interesting character, even though as Pope he appears to have been somewhat out of his depth. He had been a valued advisor to Pope Leo X – his cousin – and surely was elected as a Cardinal and later Pope on the back of his family name. Nevertheless, his was the sort of life you just couldn’t make up; illegitimate, his father murdered, he a fugitive from his home city of Florence, and all the rest; more interesting than fiction could ever be, in my humble opinion. Good looking too, if the portrait of him as a young man in 1526 by Sebastiano del Piombo is a true likeness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pope_Clement_VII. Is there a full-length biography of him, in English, does anyone know?
He does sound like an interesting character and it’s a shame that there doesn’t seem to be a biography of him. When I looked, I just found books on the papacy, such as The Papacy Since 1500: From Italian Prince to Universal Pastor, which looks interesting nonetheless.