pageant of his triumphal procession to the Lateran, the streets were decked with arches, emblems, and inscriptions. Among these may be noticed the couplet emblazoned by the banker Agostino Chigi before his palace:
Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora; tempora Mavors
Olim habuit; sua nunc tempora Pallas habet.
'Venus ruled here with Alexander; Mars with Julius; now Pallas enters on her reign with Leo.' To this epigram the goldsmith Antonio di San Marco answered with one pithy line:
Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero:
'Mars reigned; Pallas reigns; Venus' own I shall always be.'
This first Pope of the house of Medici enjoyed at Rome the fame of his father Lorenzo the Magnificent at Florence. Extolled as an Augustus in his lifetime, he has given his name to what is called the golden age of Italian culture. As a man, he was well qualified to represent the neo-pagan freedom of the Renaissance. Saturated with the spirit of his period, he had no sympathy with religious earnestness, no conception of moral elevation, no aim beyond a superficial polish of the understanding and the taste. Good Latinity seemed to him of more importance than true doctrine: Jupiter sounded better in a sermon than Jehovah; the immortality of the soul was an open topic for debate. At the same time he was extravagantly munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his zeal for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what was reasonable in the man was ridiculous in the pontiff. There remained an irreconcilable incongruity between his profession of the Primacy of Christianity and his easy epicurean philosophy.
Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, was a bad financier. His reckless expenditure contributed in no small measure to the corruption of Rome and to the ruin of the Latin Church, while it won the praises of the literary world. Julius, who had exercised rigid economy, left 700,000 ducats in the coffers of S. Angelo. The very jewels of Leo's tiara were pledged to pay his debts, when he died suddenly in 1521. During the heyday of his splendor he spent 8,000 ducats monthly on presents to his favorites and on his play-debts. His table, which was open to all the poets, singers, scholars, and buffoons of Rome, cost half the revenues of Romagna and the March. He founded the knightly Order of S. Peter to replenish his treasury, and turned the conspiracy of the Cardinal Petrucci against his life to such good account—extorting from the Cardinal Riario a fine of 5,000 ducats, and from the Cardinals Soderini and Hadrian the sum of 125,000—that Von Hutten was almost justified in treating the whole of that dark business as a mere financial speculation. The creation of thirty-nine Cardinals in 1517 brought him in above 500,000 ducats. Yet, in spite of these expedients for getting gold, the bankers of Rome were half ruined when he died. The Bini had lent him 200,000 ducats; the Gaddi, 32,000; the Ricasoli, 10,000; the Cardinal Salviati claimed a debt of 80,000; the Cardinals Santi Quattro and Armellini, each 150,000.[1] These figures are only interesting when we remember that the mountains of gold which they denote were squandered in æsthetic sensuality.
When the Pope was made, he said to Giuliano (Duke of Nemours): 'Let us enjoy the Papacy since God has given it us—godiamoci il Papato, poichè Dio ce l' ha dato.[2]' It was in this spirit that Leo administered the Holy See. The keynote which he struck dominated the whole society of Rome. At Agostine Chigi's banquets, prelates of the Church and Apostolic secretaries sat side by side with beautiful Imperias and smooth-cheeked singing-boys; fishes from Byzantium and ragouts of parrots' tongues were served on golden platters, which the guests threw from the open windows into the Tiber. Masques and balls, comedies and carnival processions filled the streets and squares and palaces of the Eternal City with a mimicry of pagan festivals, while art went hand in hand with luxury. It seemed as though Bacchus and Pallas and Priapus would be reinstated in their old realm, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself Christian. The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone of pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin declamations of the Capitol and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile, amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls, and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with wide, astonished, woeful eyes—disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in a scabbard, lay sheathed the sword of the Spirit, ready to flash forth and smite.
[1] See Gregorovius, Stadt Rom, book xiv. ch. 3.
[2] 'Relazione di Marino Giorgi,' March 17, 1517. Alberi, series ii. vol. iii. p. 51.
A more complete conception may be formed of Leo by comparing him with Julius. Julius disturbed the peace of Italy with a view to establishing the temporal power of his see. Leo returned to the old nepotism of the previous Popes, and fomented discord for the sake of the Medici. It was at one time his project to secure the kingdom of Naples for his brother Giuliano, and a Milanese sovereignty for his nephew Lorenzo. On the latter he succeeded in conferring the Duchy of Urbino, to the prejudice of its rightful owners.[1] With Florence in their hands and the Papacy under their control, the Medici might have swayed all Italy. Such plans, however, in the days of Francis I. and Charles V. had become impracticable; nor had any of the Medicean family stuff to undertake more than the subjugation of their native city. Julius was violent in temper, but observant of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. He lured Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe-conduct, and then had him imprisoned and beheaded in the Castle of S. Angelo. Julius delighted in war and was never happier than when the cannons roared around him at Mirandola. Leo vexed the soul of his master of the ceremonies because he would ride out a-hunting in topboots. Julius designed S. Peter's and comprehended Michael Angelo. Leo had the wit to patronize the poets, artists and historians who added luster to his Court; but he brought no new great man of genius to the front. The portraits of the two Popes, both from the hand of Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius, bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic temperament; though the brand is hoar with ashes and more than half burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fiber of a sensualist.
[1] He would have given it to Giuliano, but Giuliano was an honest man and remembered what he owed to the della Rovere family. See the 'Relazione' of Marino Giorgi (Rel. Ven. ser. ii. vol. iii. p. 51).
It has often been remarked that both Julius and Leo raised money by the sale of indulgences with a view to the building of S. Peter's, thus aggravating one of the chief scandals which provoked the Reformation. In that age of maladjusted impulses the desire to execute a great work of art, combined with the cynical resolve to turn the superstitions of the people to account, forced rebellion to a head. Leo was unconscious of the magnitude of Luther's movement. If he thought at all seriously of the phenomenon, it stirred his wonder. Nor did he feel the necessity of reformation in the Church of Italy. The rich and many-sided life of Rome and the diplomatic interests of Italian despotism absorbed his whole attention. It was but a small matter what barbarians thought or did.
The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College into great perplexity. To choose the new Pope without reference to political interests was impossible; and these were divided between Charles V. and Francis I. After twelve days spent by the Cardinals in conclave, the result of their innumerable schemes and counter-schemes was the election of the Cardinal of Tortosa. No one knew him; and his elevation to the Papacy, due to the influence of Charles, was almost as great a surprise to the electors as to the Romans. In their rage and horror at having chosen this barbarian, the College began to talk about the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, seeking the most improbable of all excuses for the mistake to which intrigue had driven them. 'The courtiers of the Vatican and chief officers of the Church,' says an eyewitness, 'wept and screamed and cursed and gave themselves up to despair.' Along the blank walls of the city was scrawled: 'Rome to let.' Sonnets fell in showers, accusing the cardinals of having delivered over 'the fair Vatican to a German's fury.'[1]