respect to the provinces first discovered by them. Precisely
as to-day inventions are guarded by patents, and literary and
artistic creations by the law of copyright, so, at that period,
the papal bull and the protection of the Roman Church were
an effective means for ensuring that a country should reap
where she had sown and should maintain the territory she had
discovered and conquered by arduous efforts; while other
claimants, with predatory designs, were warned back by the
ecclesiastical censorship. In the Vatican the memory of
Alexander VI. is still perpetuated by the Appartamenta Borgia,
decorated by Pinturicchio with magnificent frescoes, and since
restored by Leo XIII.
The short reign of the noble Pius III. (Sept. 22–Oct. 18, 1503)
witnessed the violent end of Cesare Borgia’s dominion. As
early as the 1st of November Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere was elected by the conclave as
Julius II. He was one of those personalities inPius III., 1503.
Julius II., 1503–1513.
which everything transcends the ordinary scale. He was
endowed with great force of will, indomitable courage, extraordinary
acumen, heroic constancy and a discriminating
instinct for everything beautiful. A nature
formed on great broad lines—a man of spontaneous
impulses carrying away others as he himself was carried
away, a genuine Latin in the whole of his being—he belongs
to those imposing figures of the Italian Renaissance whose
character is summarized in contemporary literature by the
word terrible, which is best translated “extraordinary” or
“magnificent.”
As cardinal Julius II. had been the adversary of Alexander VI., as pope he stood equally in diametrical opposition to his predecessor. The Borgia’s foremost thought had been for his family; Julius devoted his effort to the Church and the papacy. His chief idea was to revive the world-dominion of the popedom, but first to secure the independence and prestige of the Holy See on the basis of a firmly established and independent territorial sovereignty. Thus two problems presented themselves: the restoration of the papal state, which had been reduced to chaos by the Borgias; and the liberation of the Holy See from the onerous dependence on France—in other words, the expulsion of the French “barbarians” from Italy. His solution of the first problem entitles Julius II. to rank with Innocent III. and Cardinal Albornoz as the third founder of the papal state. His active prosecution of the second task made the Rovere pope, in the eyes of Italian patriots, the hero of the century. At the beginning of the struggle Julius had to endure many a hard blow; but his courage never failed—or, at most, but for a moment—even after the French victory at Ravenna, on Easter Sunday 1512. In the end the Swiss saved the Holy See; and, when Julius died the power of France had been broken in Italy, although the power of Spain had taken its place.
The conflict with France led to a schism in the College of Cardinals, which resulted in the conciliabulum of Pisa. Julius adroitly checkmated the cardinals by convening a general council, which was held in the Lateran. This assembly was also designed to deal with the question of reform, when the pope was summoned from this world (Feb. 20–21, 1513). Of his ecclesiastical achievements the bull against simony at papal elections deserves the most honourable mention. Again, by his restoration of the papal state, after the frightful era of the Borgias, Julius became the saviour of the papal power. But this does not exhaust his significance; he was, at the same time, the renewer of the papal Maecenate in the domain of art. It is to his lasting praise that he took into his service the three greatest artistic geniuses of the time—Bramante, Michelangelo and Raphael—and entrusted them with congenial tasks. Bramante drew out the plan for the new cathedral of St Peter and the reconstruction of the Vatican. On the 18th of April 1506 the foundation-stone of the new St Peter’s was laid; 120 years later, on the 18th of November 1626, Urban VIII. consecrated the new cathedral of the world, on which twenty popes had laboured, in conjunction with the first architects of the day, modifying in many points the grandiose original design of Bramante, and receiving the contributions of every Christian land.
St Peter’s, indeed, is a monument of the history of art, not merely within these 120 years from the zenith of the Renaissance till the transition into Baroque—from Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, to Maderna and Bernini—but down to the 19th century, in which CanovaThe new St Peter’s and the Vatican. and Thorwaldsen erected there the last great papal monuments. But a still more striking period of art is represented by the Vatican, with its antique collections, the Sistine and the Stanze. Here, too, we are everywhere confronted with the name of Julius II. It was he who inaugurated the collection of ancient statues in the Belvedere, and caused the wonderful roof of the Sistine Chapel to be painted by Michelangelo (cf. Steinmann, Die sixtin. Kapelle II., 1905). Simultaneously, on the commission of the pope, Raphael decorated the Vatican with frescoes glorifying the Church and the papacy. In the Camera della Segnatura he depicted the four intellectual powers—theology, philosophy, poetry and law. In the Stanza d’Eliodoro Julius II. was visibly extolled as the Head of the Church, sure at all times of the aid of Heaven.[1]
As so often occurs in the history of the papacy, Julius II. was
followed by a man of an entirely different type—Leo X.
Though not yet 37 years of age, Giovanni de’ Medici,
distinguished for his generosity, mildness and
courtesy, was elevated to the pontifical chair byLeo X.,
1513–1521.
the adroit manœuvres of the younger cardinals. His policy—though
officially he declared his intention of following in the
steps of his predecessor—was at first extremely reserved. His
ambition was to play the rôle of peacemaker, and his conciliatory policy achieved many successes. Thus, in the very first year of his reign, he removed the schism which had broken out under Julius II. As a statesman Leo X. often walked by very crooked paths; but the reproach that he allowed his policy to be swayed exclusively by his family interests is unjustified. It may be admitted that he clung to his native Florence and to his family with warm affection; but the really decisive factor which governed his attitude throughout was his anxiety for the temporal and spiritual independence of the Holy See. The conquest of Milan by the French led to a personal interview at Bologna, where the “Concordat” with France was concluded. This document annulled the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, with its schismatic tendencies, but at the same time confirmed the preponderating influence of the king upon the Gallican Church—a concession which in spite of its many dubious aspects at least made the sovereign the natural defender of the Church and gave him the strongest motive for remaining Catholic. The war for the duchy of Urbino (1516–17) entailed disastrous consequences, as from it dates the complete disorganization of papal finance. It was, moreover, a contributing cause of the conspiracy of Cardinal Petrucci,[2] the suppression of which was followed (July, 1517) by the creation of 31 new cardinals in one day. This—the greatest of recorded creations—turned the scale once and for all in favour of the papal authority and against the cardinals. The efforts of Leo to promote a crusade, which fall mainly in the years 1517 and 1518, deserve all recognition, but very various opinions have been held as to the attitude of the pope towards the Imperial election consequent on the death of Maximilian I. The fundamental motive for his proceedings at that period was not nepotistic tendencies—which doubtless played their part, but only a secondary one—but his anxiety for the moral and temporal independence of the Holy See. For this reason Leo, from the very first, entertained no genuine desire for the selection either of Charles V. or Francis I. of France. By playing off one against the other he succeeded in holding both in suspense, and induced them to conclude agreements safeguarding the pope and the Medici. Of the two,
- ↑ The closer connexion of these frescoes with contemporary history was first elucidated by Pastor, in his Geschichte der Päpste, vol. iii., which also contains the most complete account of the reign of this the second Rovere pope.—[Ed.]
- ↑ Alfonso Petrucci (d. 1517), a Sienese. He was degraded from the cardinalate by Leo X.—[Ed.]
