The clash with Alfonso de Valdés
On 6th May 1527 the pro-French policy of the Roman court, following on from the League of Cognac, reached a tragic epilogue. In fact, the imperial troops stationed in Italy entered Rome and began its barbarous plunder and brutal depredation, laying siege to the Pope, who to defend himself was forced to seek refuge in Castel Sant’Angelo.
In Madrid Castiglione, in his role as apostolic nuncio, asked for and obtained that all the Spanish clergy, in sign of mourning, suspended all religious activities and went in a procession to Charles V, to beg for the release of the Pope. On 20th August, Clemente VII sent Baldassarre a letter of severe and harsh reprimand, accusing him of not having been able to foresee the tragic events during his conversations with the Emperor and the men of his court, and, therefore, not to having warned the Pope in good time. To this accusation, that inflicted a burning defeat in the field of diplomacy which he held most dear, Castiglione replied on the 10th December, in a filial but dignified and proud manner: repeating his personal political convictions, demonstrating his fidelity and the loyalty of his behaviour, and listing the specific reasons that had made the sack of Rome possible.
Shortly after that, in the spring of 1528, he discovered that the personal secretary of Charles V, Alfonso de Valdés, had written a Dialogo de las cosas occuridas en Roma, in which the regretful sack of Rome was described as legitimate due to the judgement of God, a provident punishment of Rome for the faults of the Pope and the Church of Rome. Castiglione realised that the Emperor’s advisors were now acting beyond the control of Charles V, in order to force the situation to the disadvantage of Rome and to provoke a definitive rupture, and so he expressly warned Valdés not to publish such a work. He then denounced to the Emperor the very serious and dangerous errors, both theological and political, contained in the text, which, however, was circulating as a manuscript and meeting with the consensus of the Spanish.
In September, to put an end to the issue, he wrote a barbed and daring epistle of rebuttal of the ideas put forward by Valdés, defining their inconsistency both on a doctrinal and diplomatic level.
