More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
November 11 - November 16, 2020
When Cesare’s marriage fell through, owing to the princess’s stubborn aversion to her suitor, the French alliance threatened to crumble, leaving Alexander deserted.
The French King, however, arranged another marriage for Cesare with the sister of the King of Navarre, rejoicing Alexander, who in return endorsed Louis’ claim to Milan and joined France in a league with Venice, always ready to oppose Milan.
In the midst of war and turmoil, pilgrims arriving in Rome for the Jubilee Year of 1500 found no security, but instead public disorder, robberies, muggings and murders.
Cesare was now embarked on a full military career to regain control of those regions of the Papal States which had strayed too far into autonomy. That his objective was a temporal domain, even a kingdom for himself in central Italy, was the belief of some contemporaries. The cost of his campaigns drained huge sums from the papal revenues, amounting in one period of two months to 132,000 ducats, about half the Papacy’s normal income, and in another period of eight months to 182,000 ducats.
Sinister and vindictive, the Duke disposed of opponents by the most direct means, sowing dragon’s teeth in their place. Whether for self-protection or to hide the blotches that disfigured his face, he never left his residence without wearing a mask.
Two months after Alfonso’s death, the Pope presided over a banquet given by Cesare in the Vatican, famous in the annals of pornography as the Ballet of the Chestnuts. Soberly recorded by Burchard, fifty courtesans danced after dinner with the guests, “at first clothed, then naked.” Chestnuts were then scattered among candelabra placed on the floor, “which the courtesans, crawling on hands and knees among the candelabra, picked up, while the Pope, Cesare and his sister Lucrezia looked on.”
To finance such extravagance as well as Cesare’s continuing campaigns, the Pope, between March and May 1503, created eighty new offices in the Curia to be sold for 780 ducats each, and appointed nine new cardinals at one blow, five of them Spaniards, realizing from their payments for the red hat a total of 120,000 to 130,000 ducats.
In August 1503 at the age of 73, Alexander VI died, not of poison, as was of course the immediate supposition, but probably of susceptibility at his age to Rome’s summer fevers.
Scandal sheets, to which Romans were much given, appeared every day hung around the neck of Pasquino, an ancient statue dug up in 1501 which served the Romans as a display center for anonymous satire.
So many had been Alexander’s offenses that his contemporaries’ judgments tend to be extreme, but Burchard, his Master of Ceremonies, was neither antagonist nor apologist. The impression from his toneless diary of Alexander’s Papacy is of continuous violence, murders in churches, bodies in the Tiber, fighting of factions, burnings and lootings, arrests, tortures and executions, combined with scandal, frivolities and continuous ceremony—reception of ambassadors, princes and sovereigns, obsessive attention to garments and jewels, protocol of processions, entertainments and horse races with
...more
Religion, except for an occasional reference to Alexander’s observance of Lenten fasts or his concern to maintain the purity of Catholic doctrine by censorship of books, is barely mentioned.
Once more an accidental pope emerged when the leading candidates canceled each other out. The Spanish votes were nullified by tumultuous mobs, shouting hate for the Borgias, which made election of another Spaniard impossible. D’Amboise was cut out by the dire warnings of della Rovere that his election would result in the Papacy being removed to France. The Italian cardinals, although holding an overwhelming majority of the College, were divided in support of several candidates. Della Rovere received a majority of the votes, but two short of the necessary two-thirds. Finding himself blocked, he
...more
A cultivated and learned man like his uncle, though of more studious and secluded temperament, Piccolomini had been a Cardinal for over forty years. Active in the service of Pius II, but out of place in the worldliness of Rome since that time, he had stayed away in Siena through the last pontificates.
At 64, Pius III was old for his time and debilitated by gout. Under the burden of audiences, consistories and the long ceremonials of consecration and coronation, he weakened daily and died after holding office for 26 days.
In the new election, Giuliano della Rovere, using “immoderate and unbounded promises,” and bribery where necessary, and to the general astonishment sweeping all factions and erstwhile opponents into his camp, secured the papal tiara at last. He was chosen in a conclave of less than 24 hours, the shortest ever recorded. A monumental ego expressed itself in the change of his given name by only a syllable to the papal name of Giulio, or Julius, II.
Julius is ranked among the great popes because of his temporal accomplishments, not least his fertile partnership with Michelangelo—for art, next to war, is the great immortalizer of reputations. He was, however, as oblivious as his three predecessors to the extent of disaffection in the constituency he governed.
The goals of his policy were entirely temporal. For all his dynamic force, he missed his opportunity, as Guicciardini wrote, “to promote the salvation of souls for which he was Christ’s Vicar on earth.”
Having broken the power of Cesare Borgia, he moved on to neutralize the feuding baronial factions of Rome by judicious marriages of della Rovere relatives to Orsinis and Colonnas.
In their common if conflicting greeds, all participants in the Italian wars had designs on the expanded possessions of Venice, and in 1508 the parties coalesced in a liquid coalition called the League of Cambrai.
The wars of the League of Cambrai over the next five years exhibit all the logical consistency of opera librettos.
By masterful manipulation of finances, politics and arms, aided by excommunication when the conflict grew rough, the Pope succeeded ultimately in regaining from Venice the estates of the patrimony it had absorbed.
When in the normal course of Italian politics Ferrara, a papal fief, changed sides, Julius in his rage at the rebellion and the dilatory progress of his punitive forces, again took physical command at the front.
The Pope’s relations with the League, it was said, depended on whether his hatred of d’Amboise proved greater than his enmity for Venice. When Julius supported Genoa in its effort to overthrow French control, Louis XII, needled by d’Amboise, made enlarged claims of Gallican rights in appointment of benefices.
His reversal of policy, requiring a whole new set of alliances and arrangements, awed his compatriots and even his enemy. Louis XII, reported Machiavelli, then Florentine envoy in France, “is determined to vindicate his honor even if he loses everything he possesses in Italy.”
In July 1510 Julius ruptured relations with Louis, closing the Vatican door to the French Ambassador. “The French in Rome,” gleefully reported the envoy of Venice, “stole about looking like corpses.” Julius, on the contrary, was invigorated by visions of himself winning glory as the liberator of Italy. Thereafter Fuori i barbari! (Out with the barbarians!) was his battle cry.
Joined also by Spain, ever eager to drive the French out of Italy, the new combination, designated the Holy League, was given a fighting edge by the addition of the Swiss.
Schinner’s tongue, complained the next King of France, Francis I, gave the French more trouble than the formidable Swiss pikes. Julius made him a Cardinal on his entering the Holy League. In later days in battle against Francis I, Schinner rode to war wearing his cardinal’s red hat and robes after announcing to his troops that he wished to bathe in French blood.
“What have the helmet and mitre in common?” asked Erasmus, clearly referring to Julius although prudently waiting until after his death to do so. “What association is there between the cross and the sword, between the Holy Book and the shield? How do you dare, Bishop who holds the place of the Apostle, school your people in war?”
Satiric verses referring to the armored heir of Saint Peter appeared in Rome and caricatures and burlesques in France, instigated by the King, who used Julius’ warrior image for propaganda against him.
Thirty-six feet high, adorned by forty larger-than-life statues, surmounted by two angels supporting the sarcophagus, it was expected by the artist to be his masterpiece and by the client his apotheosis. According to Vasari, the design for the tomb preceded the design of the new church and so excited the Pope that he conceived the plan of a new St. Peter’s as suitable housing for it.
Ignoring disapproval as always, Julius plunged ahead, commissioning the architectural design by Bramante and pressing the work so vehemently that 2500 laborers were employed at one time in demolishing the old basilica.
Under the pressure of his impatience, the accumulated contents of centuries—tombs, paintings, mosaics, statues—were discarded without inventory and lost beyond recall, earning Bramante the title il ruinante.
Ugh
The cost of construction far exceeded papal revenues and had to be met by a device of fateful consequence, the public sale of indulgences.
Clearly the supreme Pope had to be glorified by the supreme artist, but the temperaments of the two terribili clashed. After Michelangelo had spent eight months cutting and transporting the finest marble from Carrara for the tomb, Julius suddenly abandoned the project, refused to pay or speak with the artist, who returned to Florence in a rage, swearing never to work for the Pope again.
When it was viewed by the subject while still in clay, Michelangelo asked whether he should place a book in the left hand. “Put a sword there,” answered the warrior Pope, “I know nothing of letters.”
Cast in bronze, the colossal figure was toppled and melted down when the city changed hands during the wars, and made into a cannon derisively named La Giulia by papal enemies.
Michelangelo, dragooned against his will by the importunate Pope, painted the Sistine ceiling and, caught by his own art, worked alone on a scaffold for four years, allowing no one but the Pope to inspect his progress.
Art and war absorbed papal interest and resources to the neglect of internal reform. While the exterior bloomed, the interior decayed. A strange reminder of ancient folly appeared at this time: the classic marble Laocoon was rediscovered, as if to warn the Church—as its prototype had once warned Troy.
The ancient earth-stained Laocoon was welcomed like royalty. Transported to the Vatican amid cheering crowds and over roads strewn with flowers, it was reassembled and placed in the Belvedere sculpture garden along with the Apollo Belvedere, “the two first statues of the world.” Such was the éclat that de Fredi and his son were rewarded with an annual pension for life of 600 ducats (derived from tolls of the city gates), and the finder’s role was recorded by him on his tombstone.
The Laocoon was art, style, virtue, struggle, antiquity, philosophy, but as a voice of warning against self-destruction it was not heard.
Julius was no Alexander, but his autocracy and bellicosity had aroused almost as much antagonism. Dissident cardinals were already moving into the camp of Louis XII, who was determined to oust Julius before Julius drove him from Italy.
Secularization had worked too well; the aura of the Pope had shriveled until he was, in political if not in popular eyes, no different from prince or sovereign, and subject to handling on those terms.
He was now in the same position as he had once tried to place Alexander, with French troops advancing and a Council looming. Deposition and Schism were openly discussed. The French-sponsored Council, with the schismatic cardinals taking the position that Julius had failed to carry out his original promise to hold a Council, convened at Pisa. French troops reentered the Romagna; Bologna fell once more to the enemy. Rome trembled and felt the approach of doom. Worn out by his exertions at the front, tired and ill at 68, his territory and authority both under attack, Julius, as a last resort,
...more
The Fifth Lateran Council, as it was named, convened at St. John Lateran, the first-ranking church of Rome, in May 1512.
A savage defeat in the Romagna, just before the convening of Lateran V, reinforced the sense of crisis. On Easter Sunday, the Swiss having not yet taken the field, the French, with the help of 5000 German mercenaries, overpowered the papal and Spanish armies in a sanguinary and terrible triumph at Ravenna.
Listening to the Lateran voices at a distance of 470 years, it is hard to tell whether his words were the practiced eloquence of a renowned preacher delivering the keynote address, or an impassioned and genuine cry for a change of course before it was too late.
For all its solemnity and ceremonial and five years’ labors and many sincere and earnest speakers, the Fifth Lateran was to achieve neither peace nor reform.
Subsequent decrees, more concerned with silencing criticism than with reform, indicated that the scolding of preachers had begun to hurt. Henceforth preachers were forbidden to prophesy or predict the coming of Anti-Christ or the end of the world. They were to keep to the Gospels and abstain from scandalous denunciation of the faults of bishops and other prelates and the wrongdoing of their superiors, and refrain from mentioning names. Censorship of printed books was another measure intended to stop attacks on clerics holding offices of “dignity and trust.”
A serious effort to put them into practice might have made an impression, but none was made. Considering that Leo X, the then presiding Pope, was engaged in all the practices that the rules forbade, the will was missing.
The indomitable old Pope had accomplished his aims. Rome exploded in celebration of the flight of the French; fireworks blazed, cannon boomed in salute from Castel Sant’ Angelo, crowds screaming “Giulio! Giulio!” hailed him as the liberator of Italy and the Holy See. A thanksgiving procession was staged in his honor in which he was represented in the guise of a secular emperor holding a scepter and globe as emblems of sovereignty, and escorted by figures representing Scipio, conqueror of Carthage, and Camillus, who saved Rome from the Gauls.
