CHAPTER XIII

JULIUS II.: THE FIGHTING POPE

The single merit which sober historians award to Alexander VI. is that, in forming a powerful principality for his son in central Italy, he was re-establishing the States of the Church and ensuring the protection of the Papacy. The course of events after his death prevents us from acknowledging this claim, and Alexander himself must have been well aware that Cæsar Borgia would, if his State endured, protect the Papacy only on condition that he might continue to dominate it. He told Machiavelli that he had made ample preparation to secure his position at the death of his father, but his own illness wrecked his plans. This is untrue. He was quite able to direct his servants and at his father's death they began to enforce his blustering policy. Some forced their way, at the point of the dagger, to the Papal treasury, and carried off the money and plate left by the Pope: leaving his enormous debts to his successor. Others sought to intimidate the cardinals. But Cæsar's power in the North at once began to crumble, his enemies gathered in force from all sides, and he was defeated. The cardinals would not assemble until his troops, and those of France, Spain, and Venice, withdrew from Rome.

The chief contest in the Conclave, which began on September 16th, lay between the French Cardinal D'Amboise and Giuliano della Rovere, who returned from Avignon. Neither could secure the necessary majority, and Cardinal Piccolomini, nephew of Pius II., was chosen to occupy the throne until a stronger man could prevail. The more luxurious cardinals may have smiled at the rejoicing with which reformers greeted the aged and virtuous Pius III., for they knew that he suffered from an incurable malady. He died, in fact, ten days after his coronation, or on October 18th, and the struggle was renewed. Giuliano della Rovere now pushed his ambition with equal energy and unscrupulousness. He promised Cæsar Borgia, who controlled the extensive Spanish vote, that he would respect his possessions and make him Gonfaloniere of the Church[287]; he distributed money among the cardinal-voters; he agreed to the capitulation that whoever was elected should summon a council for the purpose of reform within two years, and should not make war on any Power without the consent of two thirds of the cardinals. He worked so well that the Conclave, which met on October 31st, was one of the shortest in the history of the Papacy. Within three hours the sealed window was broken open and the election of Julius II. was announced.

We have in the last chapter followed the romantic early career of Giuliano della Rovere. He was born on December 5, 1443, at Albizzola, near Savona, of a poor and obscure family. His uncle, being first a professor and then General of the Franciscan Order, sent him to be educated in one of the monasteries of that Order. Some historians strangely doubt whether he actually took the religious vows, but it was assuredly not the custom of the friars to keep young men in their monasteries to the age of twenty-eight unless they were members of the fraternity. At that age (in 1471) Fra Giuliano and his cousin Fra Pietro heard that their uncle had become Sixtus IV., and they were raised to the cardinalate.

Giuliano did not emulate the vices which carried off his younger cousin within two years. He "lived much as the other prelates of that day did," says Guicciardini, in a sober estimate of his character, and his three known daughters confirm the great historian of the time; but he kept a comparatively moderate palace and spent money on a refined patronage of art and culture. He displayed some military talent when he commanded the Papal troops in Umbria in 1474, and afterwards served as Legate in France (1476) and the Netherlands (1480). He, as we saw, maintained his position after his uncle's death by corruptly ensuring the election of Innocent VIII. and exercising a paramount influence over that Pontiff. His power inflamed the animosity of his rivals, and at the accession of Alexander VI. he was driven from Italy. From his quiet retreat in Avignon he instigated the French monarch to invade Italy and depose Alexander, and, when Alexander gracefully disarmed Charles, Giuliano returned in disgust to Avignon. It is true that in 1499 he rendered some service to Alexander, in connexion with Cæsar's marriage, but he felt it safer to remain in Avignon until the announcement of Alexander's death recalled his many enemies to Rome.[288]

In 1503, at the date of his election, Julius II. had long outlived his early irregularities, and had no personal vices beyond a fiery temper and a taste for wine which his enemies magnified into a scandal. The familiar portrait by Raphael brings him closer to us than any of the Pontiffs whom we have yet considered. He was then in his sixtieth year, with a scanty sprinkling of grey locks on his massive head, and with an aspect of energy and determination which must have been lessened by the long white beard he grew in later life. Though troubled--like most of the Popes of this period--with gout, he was still erect and dignified, and the cardinals, who had hardly seen him for ten years, can have had little suspicion of the volcanic fires which were concealed by his habitual silence and quiet enjoyment of culture. They soon learned that they had created a master, and they lamented that he united the manners of a peasant with the vigour of a soldier. He consulted none, and he lavished epithets on those who lingered in the execution of his commands. Yet this brusque and abusive soldier was destined, not merely to place the Papal States on a surer foundation than ever, but to do far more even than Leo X. for the artistic enhancement of Rome.

The supreme aim which Julius held in view from the beginning of his Pontificate was the restoration of the Papal possessions, but I may dismiss first the actions or events which have a more personal relation. He heard or said mass daily, and paid a strict regard to his ecclesiastical duties. He reorganized the administration of the city and the Campagna, suppressed disorder, purified the tribunals, reformed the coinage, and in many other respects corrected the vices of his predecessor, whom he had loathed. These _marañas_ (half-converted Spanish Jews), as he called the Borgias, had fouled Italy with their presence. He improved the Papal table, which had been singularly poor under Alexander, but the vicious parasites whom Alexander had encouraged now shrank from the Vatican. At first he indulged the characteristic Papal weakness, nepotism. At his first Consistory (November 29, 1503) two of the four cardinals promoted were members of his family--his uncle and nephew--and two years later he married his natural daughter Felicia to one of the Orsini, his niece Lucrezia to one of the Colonna, and his nephew Niccolò della Rovere to Giulia Orsini's daughter Laura. One cannot say, as some historians do, that he was no nepotist; though one may admit that, in the words of Guicciardini, "he did not carry nepotism beyond due bounds." To the obligations he had contracted in bargaining for the Papacy he was quite unscrupulously blind, and, although he issued a drastic Bull against simony in 1505 (January 14th), his grand plans imposed on him such an expenditure that he even increased the sale of offices and indulgences until the annual income of the Papacy rose to 350,000 ducats.

Julius at once made it plain that he was not only determined to recover the Papal States, but would override any moral obligation or sentimental prejudice in the pursuit of his object. The treasury was empty, and he had contracted, at the price of several Spanish votes, to respect the person and possessions of Cæsar Borgia. But Venice had encouraged the petty lords of Romagna to recover the places which Cæsar had wrested from them, and itself had designs on some of the towns. Grasping the pretext that the whole of Romagna was thus in danger, Julius summoned Cæsar to surrender the remaining strongholds to the Church. When Cæsar refused, he found himself a prisoner of the Pope, instead of Gonfaloniere of his troops, and he seems to have been dazed by the sudden collapse of his brilliant fortune. Spain withdrew the Spanish mercenaries from Cæsar's service, Venice occupied Faenza and Rimini, and most of his towns cast off their enforced allegiance. After a futile struggle with the Pope the fallen prince surrendered to Julius his three remaining towns--Cesena, Forli, and Bertinoro--and was allowed to retire to Naples. There, at the treacherous instigation of the Pope,[289] he was arrested and sent to Spain. He escaped from Spain two years afterwards, and died in 1507, fighting in a petty war on a foreign soil.

Venice, now at the height of her power and flushed with wealth and conquest, paid little heed when, in the winter of 1503-4, Julius made repeated demands for the restoration of the places she had seized in Romagna. She had, she said, not taken them from the Church, and the Church would, if she restored them, hand them to some other "nephew." The Venetian ambassador at Rome seems to have miscalculated entirely the energy of the Pope, and Venice probably thought that her support of his candidature and his lack of troops and resources promised a profitable compromise; nor can we wonder if statesmen failed at times to see the justice of the Roman contention, that seizure by the sword was a legitimate title in princes who gave cities to the Church but wholly invalid in princes who took them from the Church. Venice offered to pay tribute for the towns which had been Papal fiefs. This Julius sharply refused, and he appealed to France, Spain, and the Emperor to assist him. Toward the close of the year (September 22, 1504) Louis and Maximilian concluded an agreement at Blois to join Julius against Venice, but a quarrel destroyed the compact, and Julius had again to deal with Venice. The Venetians surrendered all but Faenza and Rimini, and Julius, with a protest that the retention of these towns was unjustified, resumed amicable relations with them.

The Pope's next move has won the admiration of many historians, though it has prompted so liberal a judge as Creighton to exclaim that "his cynical consciousness of political wrong-doing" is "as revolting as the frank unscrupulousness of Alexander VI." During the period of disintegration of the Papal States the Baglioni had mastered Perugia and the Bentivogli had taken possession of Bologna. Julius had at his accession confirmed the position at Bologna, but in the spring of 1506 he resolved to recover both cities. France and Spain hesitated to lend their aid for this project, and on August 26th he impetuously ended the slow negotiations by sending a peremptory order to France to assist him and setting out at the head of his troops. With only five hundred horse--though he had sent on an envoy to engage Swiss mercenaries--Julius and nine of his cardinals set out on the long march to Perugia. At Orvieto his anxiety found some relief. Giampaolo Baglione, realizing the force which the Pope would eventually command, came to surrender Perugia, and at the beginning of September Julius sang a solemn mass in the Franciscan convent at Perugia which had once been his home. His energy was now fully aroused, in spite of the discouragement of the word sent by Louis XII. It is said that he already talked of leading his valiant troops against the Turks when he had settled the affairs of Italy. He crossed the hills, in bleak early-winter weather, in spite of gout, at the head of his 2500 men, and boldly sent on to Bentivoglio a sentence of excommunication and interdict. Bentivoglio--more deeply moved by the approach of 4000 French soldiers--fled, and, again without striking a blow, the Pope entered Bologna in triumph on November 11th.[290] After spending five months in the reorganization of government he returned to Rome on March 28th (1507) and enjoyed a magnificent ovation. It may give a juster idea of his mental power to add that he had already (on April 18, 1506) laid the first stone of the new St. Peter's designed on so vast a scale by Bramante.

Three months after his return to Rome Julius had fresh and grave reason for anxiety. France and Spain had composed their differences, and in June of that year Ferdinand was to sail from Naples to meet the French King at Savona. Julius moved down to Ostia to greet him, and must have been profoundly disturbed when the galley conveying Ferdinand and his young French wife passed the port without a word. He would hear that the two Kings held long and secret conferences at Savona, and that among the five cardinals with them was D'Amboise, Louis's chief minister, who still hungered for the tiara of which Julius had robbed him. There had for some time been bad news from France. Louis was reported as saying: "The Rovere are a peasant family; nothing but the stick on his back will keep the Pope in order." Julius sent Cardinal Pallavicino to Savona, but he was not admitted to the counsels of the monarchs. It was rumoured that they meditated the reform of the Church: which meant a council and an inquiry into the election of Julius II.

Papal diplomacy, which, when Papal interests were endangered, never considered "Italian independence," for a moment now dictated an alliance with the Emperor-elect, Maximilian, who had himself proposed to come to Rome for his coronation. There are vague indications that that dreamy monarch already entertained the idea of uniting the tiara with the imperial crown on his own head.[291] However that may be, Julius sent Cardinal Carvajal to dissuade him from coming to Rome, to bring about an alliance of the Christian Powers against the Turks (which would disarm Ferdinand and Louis as regards Julius), and to enter into a special alliance with France and Germany against Venice. The Papal envoy Aretini told the Venetian envoy that, when the danger to Italy from an alliance of Louis and Maximilian was pointed out, Julius exclaimed: "Perish the whole of Italy provided I get my way."[292] The proposal was, at all events, treacherous; for both Julius and Maximilian had treaties of peace with Venice. But the age of which Machiavelli has codified the guiding principles was insensible to considerations of political honesty. Maximilian attacked Venice and was defeated, because she had the support of France. Then France was poisoned against the prosperous Republic, and the League of Cambrai was formed on December 10, 1508: Maximilian, Louis, and Ferdinand entered into a secret alliance for the destruction of Venice, and the Pope, as well as the Kings of England and Hungary, were invited to join in the act of brigandage.

It is clear that Julius hesitated for some months to join the League; though his hesitation was probably due to some anxiety at the prospect of seeing the victorious armies of France and Germany in Italy once more. He tried to induce the Venetians to restore Faenza and Rimini to him and merit his protection. When they refused, he joined the League (March 23d) and put his spiritual censure on the Venetians. The campaign occupied only a few weeks, and the vast territory of the Republic was divided among the conquerors, the Pope receiving Ravenna and Cervia as well as Faenza and Rimini. But the ill fortune and anxiety of Venice promised him further gains if he would break faith with his allies and deal separately with the Republic. To preserve the remnants of their territory the Venetians approached the Pope. At first he exacted formidable sacrifices, and, when they refused and importuned him, he went to his palace at Civita Vecchia to enjoy the rest, if not the pleasures, which Roman gossip so darkly misrepresented.[293] He perceived, however, that the annihilation of Venice would endanger his own security, and in time he accepted the evacuation of Romagna and the abandonment of the Venetian exercise of authority over the clergy.

Louis XII. learned with great indignation in the summer of 1509 that Julius had not only withdrawn from the League of Cambrai, but was now endeavouring to form a league with Venice, Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Henry VIII. against himself. Henry and Maximilian refused to join, but Julius engaged fifteen thousand Swiss and added these to the Papal and Venetian troops. As the Duke of Ferrara was leagued with the French against Venice, and refused to follow the Pope's political example, Julius issued against him an anathema which a writer of the time describes as making his hair stand on end, and resolved to add Ferrara to the growing Papal States. In August he set out once more, dressed in simple rochet, with the troops, and made the tiring march to Bologna. There his great plans nearly came to a premature end. The Swiss failed him, and the French appeared in force before Bologna, where he lay seriously ill and greatly disedifying his attendants by the vehemence of his rage. No doubt his threats of suicide, which are recorded, were merely vague and rhetorical expressions of his despair. He saved himself, however, by a deceptive negotiation with the French commander until his reinforcements arrived, and, as his health recovered, his vigorous resolution became almost ferocious. The long white beard in Raphael's portrait of him reminds us how, at this time, he swore that he would not shave again until he had driven the French from Italy. Louis was now taking practical steps toward the summoning of a General Council, and the temper of the Pope was terrible to witness. In the depth of winter, not yet wholly recovered from his long fever, he rejoined the troops, sharing the hardships of camp-life and stormily scolding his generals for their slowness. He never led troops on the field, but he interfered in the placing of artillery and more than once exposed himself to fire. At the capitulation of Mirandola he shocked his cardinals by ordering that any foreign soldiers found in the town should be put to the sword.

He spent some months thus passing from town to town, infusing his fiery energy into the troops, but his successes and his personal conduct of the war inflamed the indignation of the French King. Louis not only sent reinforcements to his army, but he, with his adherent cardinals, arranged for the holding of a General Council on Italian soil. _Perdam Babylonis Nomen_ ("I will erase the very name of Babylon") was the terrible motto he now placed on his medals. In quick succession the Pope learned that the Bentivogli had recovered Bologna and derisively broken into fragments the magnificent statue of Julius which Michael Angelo had erected: that his favourite Cardinal Alidosi had been assassinated by his (the Pope's) nephew and commander the Duke of Urbino; and that Louis and Maximilian, with the seceded cardinals, had announced a General Council of the Church at Pisa and summoned Julius II. to appear before it.

The attendants who marched by the Pope's closed litter, as he returned to Rome on June 26, 1511, concluded from his unrestrained sobs and groans that his power, if not his life, approached its end. His health was ruined and his troops were scattered. But there was an energy mightier than that of Hildebrand in his worn frame, and with some improvement in his condition he raised his head once more. He had in the spring created eight new cardinals, to replace the seceders, and he now announced that a _real_ Ecumenical Council would assemble at the Lateran on April 19, 1512. That was his answer to Pisa, and to the Papal aspirations of the Cardinal of Rouen and the Emperor-elect. He again fell dangerously ill--so ill that his death was confidently expected. Election-intrigue filled the corridors of the Vatican, and a band of democrats held a meeting in the Capitol and decided, at his death, to restore the republican liberty of Rome. In a few weeks the terrible old man rose from his bed, thin and white but with unbroken energy, and scattered the intriguers. He anathematized the schismatical cardinals, and announced (October 4th) that he had formed a Holy League with Ferdinand of Spain and Venice for the defence of the Church; Maximilian was presently induced to join the League, and before the end of 1511 Henry VIII. was persuaded, by a promise of assistance in his designs on France, to give it his adhesion. Only three months before Julius had apparently lain at the point of death, his new possessions utterly ruined. Now he once more commanded the situation. The schismatical Council of Pisa, which opened on November 1st, turned out a puny French _conciliabulum_, with fourteen bishops and five abbots to represent the universal Church.

The campaign which began in January need not be followed in detail. After a series of varying engagements the French won a crushing victory at Ravenna, and there was panic at Rome. The cardinals demanded peace with France, but Giulio de' Medici, cousin of Cardinal Giovanni, who had been captured by the French, now came to describe the exhausted condition of the French army, and Julius resolved to prosecute the war. He opened his General Council at the Lateran on May 3rd, and had at least the satisfaction of seeing seventy Italian bishops respond to his summons. Then, covering his preparations by a pretence of considering the terms which Louis XII. offered him, he engaged further troops, fired his commanders, and induced Maximilian to withdraw the four thousand Tirolese mercenaries from the French ranks. In a few weeks the French were driven out of Italy, the schismatics were forced to transfer their discredited Council to French soil, and the Pope found himself master of Bologna, Ravenna, Rimini, Cesena, Parma, Piacenza, and Reggio. In appraising Julius as founder of the Papal States one must bear in mind the history of this remarkable period. In October, 1511, Julius was stricken and apparently ruined; by the summer of 1512 he was master of the richest provinces of Italy. But he had not left Rome, and his personal action at this juncture was slight in comparison with those tremendous earlier exertions which had ended in disastrous failure.

Julius was far from satisfied, and his conduct in the hour of victory was at the low political level of the time. He assisted the Medici to impose themselves again on Florence, and the Sforza to recover Milan. He then made a lamentable effort to secure Ferrara. The Duke came to Rome, under a safe-conduct of the Papal General Fabrizio Colonna, and of the Spanish ambassador, to plead that he had acted only in honourable discharge of his engagements to France, Julius had approved the safe-conduct, but when the Duke refused to surrender his territory to the Church, the Pope affected to discover that he had committed crimes not covered by the safe-conduct and detained him. The Colonna redeemed the credit of Italy by cutting their way through the Papal guards and restoring Alfonso, after romantic adventures, to his duchy. When the poet Ariosto was afterwards sent by Alfonso to make peace with the Pope, he had to fly for his life; Julius, in one of his now frequent outbursts of violence, threatened to have him thrown into the sea.

To the end Julius pursued his tortuous diplomacy. Neither Spain nor Germany wished to see any increase of his power, and he was forced to abandon his designs on Ferrara. He then disrupted his Holy League, and made a fresh alliance with Maximilian against Venice and to the disadvantage of Spain. Julius was concerned about the growing power of Spain in Italy; and we shall hardly be unjust if we suspect that, as Alexander VI. had done, he dreamed of adding Naples to the Papal dominion. But he never entirely recovered his health, and his great schemes were closed by death on February 20, 1513. He was neither a great soldier nor a great statesman. There is no indication that his interference in the military operations was useful, and, as I pointed out, the one permanently successful campaign was fought while he directed an ecclesiastical Council at Rome. In the sphere of politics and diplomacy he relied on cunning and deceit rather than statesmanship, and, if he had not represented a spiritual power to which the nations were bound to return in the end, he would have been mercilessly crushed. He had, also, little ability to organize such possessions as he obtained, and his career is marred by violent outbursts and acts of treachery and cruelty. It is sometimes said that he was the greatest Pope since Innocent III. One imagines the shade of that great spiritual ruler shuddering; and one is disposed to agree with Guicciardini that, if Julius was great, a new meaning must be put on the word. He had wonderful energy, and by good fortune his aim was finally attained.

In view of this strenuous campaign for the recovery of the Papal States, we can expect only a slender record of strictly Pontifical work. Julius attended to the propagation of the faith in the new lands beyond the seas, and he impelled the Inquisitors to check the spread of heresy. That he restrained the Spanish Inquisition, and supported its exclusion from Naples, was not due to humane feeling, but to its exorbitant claims of independent authority. He forbade duelling, and endowed a college of singing for the maintenance of the Papal Choir. His Lateran Council was, of course, a political expedient, but there is evidence that when death closed his career Julius was turning more seriously to plans of reform. In spite of his own Bull against simony, the Curia remained as corrupt as ever, and money was raised in all the evil ways known to it. It is, however, curious and creditable to have to place one great reform to the merit of Julius. He passed so drastic a decree against corruption at Papal elections that the rivals who gathered in Rome after his death did not dare to employ bribery.

Julius is probably most deserving of esteem for his artistic work. The literary parasites who swarmed about his successor have associated the glory of late mediæval Rome with the name of Leo X., but discriminating research is convincing historians that Leo did not even sustain the great work of his predecessor. The bold scheme which Julius adopted was due to his artists rather than to his own inspiration, yet he has the distinction--no mean distinction for one immersed, as he was, in an exacting policy--of reflecting at once the vast ideas which were put before him. The new St. Peter's which he was compelled to think of building was not intended at first to be of great dimensions, but he accepted Bramante's design of a church far larger even than the St. Peter's of today, and, in spite of his costly wars, he enabled the architect to employ 2500 workers. He accepted Bramante's designs for a new Vatican and for the Cortile di Damaso. He engaged Michael Angelo to carve a princely marble tomb for himself--his one great luxury--and, when his interest was transferred to the less selfish task of building St. Peter's, he set the artist to the execution of his immortal work on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. Michael Angelo made also, as I have noted, a great statue of Julius at Bologna, but this was destroyed at the return of the Bentivogli. There were many quarrels between the two men, but Michael Angelo found in Julius a manliness and a greatness of conception, if not a feeling for art, the lack of which he bitterly criticized in Leo X.

Cristoforo Romano, Sansovino, Perugino, Signorelli, Pinturicchio, and other great artists were enlisted in the work of making the ecclesiastical quarter of Rome the artistic centre of the world. Some of the finest of the old Greek sculptures which were then being sought in the rubbish of mediæval Italy were bought for the Belvidere, and painters of distinction were richly encouraged. New frescoes and new tombs were ordered in the churches of Rome; the walls and aqueducts were repaired; handsome new streets were laid out; and the cardinals and wealthier citizens were moved to co-operate with the Pontiff in his plans for the exaltation of Rome. We may deplore that the money for these plans was largely obtained by the sale of spiritual offices and indulgences, and we must resent the fact that money obtained by these means was diverted to the purposes of war. But the magnificence of the design and the generosity with which Julius prosecuted it as long as he lived seem to be a more solid and enduring merit than his good fortune--for in the decisive stage it was little more--in recovering a rich dominion which would but serve to enhance the frivolity of his successor.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 287: Burchard, _Diarium_, iii., 293.]

[Footnote 288: Guicciardini's _Storia d'Italia_ and Burchard's _Diarium_ are the chief authorities, supplemented by the dispatches of the Italian ambassadors. There is a slight and somewhat antiquated biography by M.A.J. Dumesnil (_Histoire de Jules II._, 1873) and an abler study by M. Brosch (_Papst Julius II._, 1878). J.F. Loughlin has a candid account, chiefly based on Brosch, of his early career in _The American Catholic Quarterly Review_. Special treatises will be noticed in the course of the chapter, but there is little dispute about the facts I give. Full references will be found in the very ample, if somewhat lenient, study of Dr. Pastor (vi.), and in the works of Creighton, Gregorovius, and von Reumont.]

[Footnote 289: Pastor (vi., 244) quotes from the Vatican archives a letter in which Julius urges the Spanish commander at Naples to arrest Cæsar.]

[Footnote 290: The date was fixed by the astrologers, but Burchard says that, in order to show his contempt for their science, Julius unceremoniously entered the town on the previous day. He acted more probably from sheer impatience. More than one event during his Pontificate, including his coronation on November 26, 1503, was arranged by the astrologers.]

[Footnote 291: See A. Schulte, _Kaiser Maximilian I. als Kandidat für den Papstlichen Stuhl_ (1906). The point is disputed.]

[Footnote 292: Quoted by Brosch, p. 333.]

[Footnote 293: Priuli (_Diario_, ii., 102) says that Romans spoke of his "Ganymedes."]

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