Leo X

“ Italy rejoiced when Giovanni de' Medici was selected to succeed him, with the title of Leo X. "Venus ruled in Rome with Alexander, Mars with Julius, now Pallas enters on her reign with Leo." Such was the tenor of the epigrams which greeted Leo upon his triumphal progress to the Lateran. It was felt that a Pope of the house of Medici would be a patron of arts and letters, and it was hoped that the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent might restore the equilibrium of power in Italy. Leo X. has enjoyed a greater fame than he deserved. ”

“ Leo X, the great Medicean pope, was elected in 1513, he who ordered the great Raphael set of the Acts of the Apostles, but it was before the establishment of important looms in Italy, so to Flanders and Van Aelst are due the glory of first producing this series which afterward was repeated many times, in the great looms of Europe. Leo X emulated in the patronage of the arts his father Lorenzo, well-named Magnificent. What Lorenzo did in Florence, Leo X endeavoured to do in Rome; make of his time and of his city the highest expression of culture. ”

“ Humanism was triumphant at the Papal Court, but, unfortunately, religion was neglected. Though in his personal life Leo X. could not be described as a deeply religious man, yet he was mindful of his vows of celibacy, attentive to the recitation of the divine, office, abstemious, and observant of the fasts of the Church. As a secular ruler he would have stood incomparably higher than any of the contemporary sovereigns of Europe, but he was out of place considerably as the head of a great religious organisation. ”

“ It was at Rome, among the great ecclesiastics, that these Pagan fashions principally flourished. Eminence of all kinds found a home with Leo X., assuming the purple of the prelate and the scarlet of the cardinal at his indulgent hands. The genius of the Renaissance seemed to have followed this first-291- Medicean Pope from Florence. Though Leo was a man of merely pleasure-loving and receptive temperament, who left no lasting impress on his age, he knew at least how to appreciate ability, and found the height of his enjoyment in the arts and letters he enthusiastically patronised. ”

“ With such views of the riches of salvation by Jesus Christ, there was no need of indulgences.
Luther, while attacking the papacy, speaks honourably of Leo X. "The times in which we live are so bad," says he, "that even the greatest personages cannot come to the help of the Church. We have now a very good pope in Leo X. His sincerity and knowledge fill us with joy. But what can one man, though amiable and agreeable, do by himself alone? He certainly deserved to be pope in better times. ”

“ The pope succeeded in freeing Northern Italy from French oppression, and only his early death prevented him from delivering Southern Italy from the Spanish yoke.
§ 110.14. Leo X., A.D. 1513-1521.―John, son of Lorenzo Medici, who was cardinal in A.D. 1488, in his eighteenth year, when thirty-eight years of age ascended the papal throne as Leo X.; a great patron of the Renaissance, but luxurious and pleasure-loving, extravagant and frivolous, without a spark of religion (§ 120, 1) , and a zealous promoter of the fortunes of his own family. ”

“ Let us live in fervent desire of the peace that we may not fully attain. Let princes restrain their peoples; let churchmen above all be peacemakers. So the treatise passes to its conclusion with that eulogy of the Medicean pope already mentioned, which perhaps was not wholly undeserved. To the modern world the name of Leo X has come down marked with a note of censure or even of ignominy. ”

“ He was the Pope's confidant and quite at home in all those political intrigues which later under Leo X brought ruin upon him. His book can only be regarded as a blow aimed at Julius II, Alexander's old enemy, who now wore the tiara and was preparing to glorify his pontificate by the highest effort of which Christian art was capable. Providence had granted him for the execution of his plans three of the greatest minds the world of art has ever known: never had a monarch three such men as Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raffaelle at once under his sway. ”

“ It is true that Leo X., in the Council of Lateran, December 21, 1513, procured the confirmation of a bull in which he deplored the spread of the doctrine of the mortality of the soul and of there being but one soul common to mankind. He also condemned the opinions which maintained the eternity of the earth and that the soul has not the form of the body, and in prohibiting their teaching in the schools he especially alluded to the ingenious device adopted by professors of arguing against them so equivocally as to lead to the conviction of their truth. ”

“ Leo X., whose oversights and too supine trust in the profound ignorance of the people had given rise to this sect, but whose sound judgment, moderation, and temper, were well qualified to retard its progress, died in the flower of his age, a little after he received the king’s book against Luther, and he was succeeded in the papal chair by Adrian, a Fleming, who had been tutor to the emperor Charles. ”

“ His three Egyptian journeys, immediately after the Turkish conquest, all probably fell between 1517 and 1520; on one of these he ascended the Nile from Cairo to Assuan. As he was returning from Egypt about 1520 he was captured by pirates near the island of Gerba, and was ultimately presented as a slave to Leo X. The pope discovered his merit, assigned him a pension, and having persuaded him to profess the Christian faith, stood sponsor at his baptism, and bestowed on him (as Ramusio says) his own names, Johannes and Leo. ”

“ The State of Ferrara again found itself in serious difficulties, for Leo X, following the example of Alexander VI, was trying to build up a kingdom for his nephew Lorenzo de' Medici. As early as 1516 Leo had made him Duke of Urbino, having expelled Guidobaldo's legitimate heirs from their city. Francesco Maria Rovere, his wife, and his adopted mother, Elisabetta, were in Mantua,—the asylum of all exiled princes. Leo was consuming with a desire also to drive the Este out of Ferrara, and it was only the protection of France that saved Alfonso from a war with the Pope. ”

“ His bull of the 1st of July 1519, which regulated the discipline of the Polish Church, was later transformed into a concordat by Clement VII. Leo showed special favours to the Jews and permitted them to erect a Hebrew printing-press at Rome. He approved the formation of the Oratory of Divine Love, a group of pious men at Rome which later became the Theatine Order, and he canonized Francesco di Paola.
As patron of learning Leo X. deserves a prominent place among the popes. ”

“ After the death of Giovanni, Leonardo wearied of his life in Rome. Uncertainty, waiting, forced inaction enervated him. His usual occupations, his books, machines, experiments, paintings failed in interest. Leo X. had not yet found time to receive him, nor to give him the order for a painting. However, he set the artist to the mechanical task of perfecting the coining mill for the Papal Mint. Leonardo despised no work, however humble ”

“ His sanguine constitution also gave him tremendous driving power. "Pope Alexander," says a later writer, censuring the dilatoriness of Leo X, "did but will a thing, and it was done." As a ruler, careful of the material weal of his people, he ranks among the best of his age; as a practical statesman he was the equal of any contemporary. ”

“ The restoration of the Medici to supremacy in their native city had been the doing of Julius; the choice of their cardinal as his successor was the act of his nephew. [*252] Thus was the bond of friendship confirmed by ties of gratitude. But from such fetters princes are often prone to assume an exemption, and Francesco Maria was destined to experience that they are not more binding upon pontiffs. [253]
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Leo X. has been one of the most fortunate of men. His all but sovereign birth was still more distinguished by the merit of his family, to which history has done the amplest justice. ”

“ Leo X succeeded Julius II, and under his pontificate Christianity assumed a pagan character, which, passing from art into manners, gives to this epoch a strange complexion. Crimes for the moment disappeared, to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste, such as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by Catullus. ”

“ He soon recovered his health, and lived eight years longer, so that the old cardinals had occasion to repent of their credulity. The young Pope celebrated his coronation by lavish expenses. He insisted on being crowned on the same day that he lost the battle of Ravenna and was taken prisoner, and rode the same Turkish horse that bore him on that day. This horse was greatly valued, and carefully kept and pampered to an extreme old age. Leo X.’s head was full of the magnificence of ancient Rome, which he sought to perpetuate. ”

“ More recent studies have served to produce a fairer and more honest opinion of Leo X. A report of the Venetian ambassador Marino Giorgi bearing date of March 1517 indicates some of his predominant characteristics:—“The pope is a good-natured and extremely free-hearted man, who avoids every difficult situation and above all wants peace; he would not undertake a war himself unless his own personal interests were involved; he loves learning; of canon law and literature he possesses remarkable knowledge ”

“ 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 ”

“ Bazzi painted some subjects from the life of Alexander the Great; " Alexander in the Tent of Darius " and the " Nuptials of the Conqueror with Roxana " (by some considered his masterpiece) are more particularly noticed. When Leo X. was made pope (1513) Bazzi presented him with a picture of the " Death of Lucretia " (or of Cleopatra, according to some accounts) ; Leo gave him a large sum of money in recompense and created him a cavaliere. Bazzi afterwards returned to Siena and at a later date went in quest of work to Pisa, Volterra, and Lucca. ”

“ There was, however, something equivocal in this sign, which the ancient inhabitants of Rome did not always consider propitious; and as the fears are likely to last longer than the consolations of superstition, it is not strange that the Romans of the age of Leo X. should have been so much terrified at some misinterpreted storms as to require the exhortations of a scholar, who arrayed all the learning on thunder and lightning to prove the omen favourable ”

“ The academy became more flourishing than ever, and counted among its members a great number of bishops and prelates of the church. [87] Pope Leo X. himself, before his elevation to the papacy, was in the habit of attending its reunions. Archæology, poetry, 522and music all had a part in them, as well as other sciences, and all these Leo X. sincerely loved. “I have always loved letters,” wrote he to Henry VIII. “This love, innate in me, age has only served to increase ”

“ In a small book printed at Paris A.C. 1689, entitled, An historical dissertation upon some coins of Charles the great, Ludovicus Pius, Lotharius, and their successors stamped at Rome, it is recorded, that in the days of Pope Leo X, there was remaining in the Vatican, and till those days exposed to public view, an inscription in honour of Pipin the father of Charles the great, in these words: Pipinum pium, primum fuisse qui amplificandæ Ecclesiæ Romanæ viam aperuerit, Exarchatu Ravennate, & plurimis aliis oblatis; ”

“ He received for a translation and commentary of a work of Aristotle fifty gold florins, ‘ab eo a quo se totum inauratum iri speraverat.’ On the deliberate exclusion of the humanists from the cardinalate by the popes before Leo, comp. Lor. Grana’s funeral oration on Cardinal Egidio, Anecdot. Litt. iv. p. 307.
[511] The best are to be found in the Deliciae Poetarum Italorum, and in the Appendices to the various editions of Roscoe, Leo X. Several poets and writers, like Alcyonius, De Exilio, ed. Menken, p. 10, say frankly that they praise Leo in order themselves to become immortal. ”

“ He must quiet the disagreeable wranglings of the German humanists. Other problems connected with his family interests served to complicate the situation and eventually to prevent the successful consummation of many of his plans. At the very time of Leo’s accession Louis XII. of France, in alliance with Venice, was making a determined effort to regain the duchy of Milan, and the pope, after fruitless endeavours to maintain peace, joined the league of Mechlin on the 5th of April 1513 with the emperor Maximilian I., Ferdinand I. of Spain and Henry VIII. of England. ”

“ The limbs below remaining human still:" [105]
that is, till having reached the summit, the man has the felicity to find himself an accomplished ass. The poet, immediately afterwards, applies this unlucky hieroglyphic to himself and his journey to Rome, to congratulate Leo X. on his accession to the triple crown. His services, expectations, and disappointments, while a worshipper of that golden calf of literary idolatry (whose rites have not yet ceased) , are humorously but vindictively recapitulated. Illustrative of these, he introduces another fable in his own free and easy manner. ”