LEO X. AND THE DANCE OF DEATH
When Julius II. made his last survey of the world in which he had
played so vigorous a part, he must have concluded that he had placed
the Papacy on a foundation more solid than any that had yet supported
it. The Conciliar movement, its most threatening enemy in the mind of
the Popes, had been discredited by the failure of its latest effort
and by the naked ambitions of those who supported it. The princes
of the world had proved less stubborn than in the days of the early
Emperors, and the Papacy had now a broad and strong base of secular
power. The new culture had been, to a great extent, wooed and won by
the Pope's princely patronage of art and embellishment of Rome; and the
Inquisition, in one form or other, could silence the intractable. There
was still, among the dour and distant northerners, much cavilling at
the avarice and luxury of Rome, but, if the succeeding Popes used the
Lateran Council to ensure some measure of reform, it would diminish;
it had, in any case, not yet proved dangerous. Neither Julius nor any
other had the least suspicion that the Papacy was within five years of
the beginning of an appalling catastrophe.
We have, however, seen that the opinions which were to bring about
that catastrophe had long been diffused in Europe, and a particular
conjunction of circumstances might at any time convert them into
rebellious action. For more than a century, there had been a critical
scrutiny of the bases of Papal power, and to a large extent the Papacy
had escaped the consequences by a greater liberality toward rulers and
by sharing with them the wealth it extracted from the people. France
maintained the Pragmatic Sanction, which Rome detested, and other
countries gave rather the impression of federation than of abject
submission to a spiritual autocracy. Moreover, while the pressure
of the central power was eased, doctrinal rebellion seemed to make
little progress. Lollardism was extinct, Hussitism confined to a sect,
Savonarolism murdered. Yet the Reformation was coming, and we see now
that Luther was but the instrument of its deliverance.
It is impossible here to discuss all the causes of the Reformation,
and a few considerations will suffice for my purpose. Printing had
been invented and printed sheets were being circulated. Men were now
reading--which provokes independent reflection--rather than sitting
at the feet of oracular schoolmen. Among the books which poured out
from the press, moreover, the Bible--in spite of a popular fallacy on
that subject--occupied an important place, even in the vernacular.
Further--and this was most important of all--the last great extension
of the Papal fiscal system, the granting of indulgences for money, was
in one important respect based on a novel speculation of the schoolmen
and was not supported by Biblical Christianity. The realization of this
stimulated men to get behind the fences of Decretals and scholastic
speculations, and to claim a reform which should be something more than
the substitution of a good Pope for a bad Pope. Finally the renewed
corruption of the Papal Court under Leo X. set this psychological
machinery in conscious motion.
Twenty-five cardinals were enclosed in the Sistine Chapel on March
4th for the election of the new Pope. Wealth was now of no direct
avail, for all accepted the Bull of Julius condemning bribery. Some of
the poorer cardinals, knowing that their votes were not marketable,
had tried to secure the treasure (about 300,000 ducats) left by
Julius, but the keeper of Sant' Angelo had been incorruptible. Yet we
must not emphasize the absence of bribery: there is such a thing as
gratitude for favours to come. For nearly a week the enclosed cardinals
discussed and negotiated. It is confidently stated that, while the
older cardinals were, as usual, divided in allegiance to several
of their body, the younger cardinals stood aloof and were secretly
resolved to elect Giovanni de' Medici. Cardinal Giovanni lay abed in
his little cell--imagine the Sistine Chapel containing thirty-one
bedrooms--suffering from fistula. A surgeon was with him in the
Conclave, and his condition was unpleasantly felt in the sealed room.
A close friend of his, Bernardo Dovizo, or Bibbiena as he was commonly
called, canvassed for him, and assured the cardinals of his liberal and
grateful disposition, his high origin, and his peaceful intentions.
He was only thirty-seven years of age, but the older cardinals may
have concluded that his malady compensated for his youth. At the first
scrutiny, on March 10th, he was elected, and he took the name of Leo X.
The earlier life of Leo X. has been told in the previous chapters.
The second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, born on December 11, 1475,
he was thrust into the ranks of the clergy at the age of seven, he
received the title of cardinal at the age of fourteen, and he was
openly admitted to the Sacred College two years later. He had received
a stimulating education from the Humanist scholars of Florence, and
amidst the dissipations of Rome he remained a sober and diligent
scholar. He retired to Florence under Alexander VI., and, when his
family were driven from power and repeatedly failed to recover it,
he travelled in Germany, the Netherlands, and France. Under Julius
II., he found some favour and became Legate for Bologna and Romagna.
He was captured by the French at the fatal battle of Ravenna, but
he made his escape on their retreat from Italy, and soon afterwards
became the chief representative of his house on their restoration to
Florence. His public record was, therefore, slight, and his time had
been mainly devoted to the cultivation of letters and the enjoyment
of art, especially music. His interests were so well known that on
one of the triumphal arches erected for his coronation it was boldly
announced that Venus (Alexander) and Mars (Julius) had now made way for
Minerva; which a more discerning neighbour had modified by erecting
an assurance that Venus lived for ever. It was, and is, believed that
his life before he became Pope was free from irregularity. In spite of
three fasts a week and a strenuous devotion to the chase, he was an
abnormally fat man, and his pale, puffy face was not improved by his
large myopic eyes, which saw little without the aid of a glass. But
his unfailing smile, his charming manners, his ready wit, his prodigal
generosity, and his unalterable love of peace and sunshine promised a
genial contrast to the reign of his predecessor, and Rome gave him a
princely welcome.
There are three chief aspects of the Pontificate of Leo X. which it
is material to consider, and, although it is difficult entirely
to separate them, it is convenient to attempt this. There is his
political--or more correctly his diplomatic--action, which, though,
in that Machiavellian age, it seemed only a degree worse than was
customary, impresses the modern mind as almost revolting in its studied
duplicity. There is his personal life, which inspired the reformers
with volumes of vituperation, while modern writers seem able to regard
it without much sentiment. And there is the Pontifical activity which
culminates in the struggle with Luther. His relation to mediæval art is
less important than is commonly supposed.
Mediæval Italy was no place for a prince of peace, and Leo soon found
that, if he were to avoid the sword, he must follow a crooked course.
He sincerely loathed the clash of swords. He loved jewels and music
and comedies and books; he wanted to spend the Papal treasury in
surrounding himself with pretty things and flashes of wit--and he thus
spent the whole of Julius's 300,000 ducats in two years. But France
and Venice thirsted for revenge and sought his support; while the
envoys of Milan, Spain, England, and the Empire claimed his blessing,
and his ducats, for the opposite side. While, however, in the actual
condition of Italy, the Papal States were safe, a victory of France and
Venice would bring perils. Leo secretly joined the Holy League against
France, and secretly paid for the service of 45,000 Swiss mercenaries.
The policy turned out well. France was driven back, and the leaders of
the schismatical cardinals, Carvajal and Sanseverino, came to Rome,
and humbly accepted Leo's obedience. France repudiated the schism, and
Venice, after a desultory struggle, was pacified.
Leo found some time for domestic matters, of which two may be noted
here. On September 23d (1513) he created four cardinals, of whom three
were relatives and one a literary friend. Bernardo Bibbiena (or Dovizo)
had, as I said, promoted his interest in the Conclave, and at earlier
times, and was an accomplished literary man; he was also entirely
devoid of moral sentiment, composed the most indecent comedy that was
enacted at the Vatican, and was a genius at organizing festivities.
Innocenzo Cibò, son of Innocent VIII.'s natural son Franceschetto and
Leo's sister Maddalena, was a youth who seemed eager to emulate the
scandalous repute of his father. Giulio de' Medici, cousin of the Pope,
had already received a Papal dispensation from illegitimacy, and the
quiet and delicate youth was advanced a little nearer to the Papacy.
Lorenzo Pucci, lastly, was quite a distinguished canonist, and a
relative of Leo; he was also expert in pushing the sale of indulgences
and very solicitous about his own commission.
Leo then regarded the fortunes of the chief lay members of his family.
His brother Giuliano, a highly cultivated man of thirty-four, was too
much softened by vice and indulgence to carry out the Medici policy
at Florence. This policy, embodied in a paper of instructions which
there is good reason to ascribe to Leo himself, was entrusted to the
Pope's nephew Lorenzo, a vigorous young sportsman. Giuliano was made
a Baron of Rome and commander of the Papal army--Leo remarking that
he trusted there would be no demand upon his military talent--and it
was so confidently rumoured that the Pope proposed to make him King
of Naples that Ferdinand was alarmed and had to be reassured. It is
still disputed whether Leo really had this intention, or whether he
merely proposed to make a small principality in central Italy for his
worthless brother; nor, in view of the secrecy and duplicity of the
Pope's methods, is the point ever likely to be settled on a documentary
basis. It seems consistent both with the course of events and with
Leo's character to suppose that he kept both alternatives in mind,
but that nepotism was not the _first_ principle of his policy: his
fundamental idea was the maintenance of his own luxurious security.[294]
In this pleasant promotion of his friends and relatives and their
innumerable followers, in the prodigal encouragement of the artists,
musicians, poets, and jewellers who flocked to Rome from all parts,
Leo spent two years which were only slightly clouded by the rapid
exhaustion of the Papal treasury. Meantime, however, the political
situation had once more claimed his impatient attention, and we may
for the moment confine ourselves to that interesting aspect of his
work. Louis, disgusted with the Papacy, approached Ferdinand of Spain
and was prepared to abandon to him his claims on Milan, Genoa, and
Naples. This prospect of the enclosure of Papal territory in a Spanish
vice threw the Pope into a fit of diplomatic activity. He secretly
negotiated with Venice and Florence and Ferrara, and sent a legate
to England to help to reconcile Henry VIII with Louis. He trusted
to induce these Powers to form a league with him for the purpose of
driving the Spaniards out of Italy, and aimed at securing Naples for
his brother.[295] In October the French King married Mary Tudor, and
the Spanish spectre was laid. But, with the unvarying logic of Papal
politics, the fear of Spain was succeeded by a fear of France, and the
Pope had recourse to the kind of diplomacy which is characteristic of
him, and in which, we are assured, he took great pleasure. He made a
secret treaty with Spain for the defence of Italy, and a secret treaty
of alliance with Louis against Spain.[296] He encouraged Louis, who
held out to him the prospect of Naples, to attack Italy, and secretly
promised to assist Milan and the Emperor against the French if Louis
did attack Italy, which he thought improbable. He thus, he thought,
secured a principality for Giuliano, whichever side won. "When you have
made a league with one man," he used to say, "there is no reason why
you should cease to negotiate with his opponent."
This policy, it is recorded, cost Leo sleepless nights, though not on
account of moral scruples. Louis pressed him for a definite alliance
against Milan, and he tried to evade it by pleading that it was
not meet for Christian princes to engage in warfare while the Turk
threatened Europe. The death of Louis in January (1515) made matters
worse, as his successor, Francis I., determined with all the vigour
and ambition of youth to press the French claims. Leo kept a legate
negotiating with Francis, and we learn from the Legate's letters that
he offered an alliance on condition that Naples should be surrendered
to Giuliano. In the meantime (February 1st), he secretly approved of
the league of Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Milan, and Genoa against
France, and stipulated that he should have Parma, Piacenza, Modena, and
Reggio; he would pay 60,000 ducats a month to the league, and would
induce Henry VIII.--partly by making Wolsey a cardinal--to join it.
In July he secretly signed the league, yet continued his deceptive
correspondence with France. We have still the document in which Leo,
after joining the league, offered an alliance to Francis on condition
that he renounced his claim to Parma and Piacenza, made peace with
Spain with a view to meeting the Turks, and surrendered his claim to
Naples "in favour of the Holy See or of a third person approved by the
Holy See."[297]
During the campaign which followed, Leo wavered according to the news
he received. When the French took Milan, he made peace with them; they
were to respect the position of the Medici at Florence, and Leo was
to renounce the Papal claim to Parma and Piacenza. He had, however, a
more creditable object in view than the interest of his family. He met
Francis at Bologna, and there can be no doubt that they then agreed to
substitute a Concordat for the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438. For the
promise of a tithe on his clergy, Francis surrendered their Gallican
privileges, and became, as he thought, the real ally of the Pope. Leo
ordered the Swiss to refrain from attacking the French in Milan, and
listened approvingly to the King's designs on Naples. Within three
months, however, the Emperor Maximilian led a body of Swiss troops, in
the pay of Henry VIII., to an attack on Milan, and Leo was summoned
by Francis to dispatch troops in accordance with their agreement.
Carefully retarding the levy of his troops so that they should not
arrive in time, and keeping a legate by the side of Maximilian, Leo
awaited the result. The expedition failed, and he sought favour with
the exasperated Francis by revealing to him that Henry VIII. had
secretly paid the Swiss, and by sending once more an insincere command
that the Swiss must not dare to attack an ally of the Papacy. He sought
to retain the favour of Maximilian by reminding him that he had sent
him two hundred Papal horse under Mark Antonio Colonna; and to Francis
he protested that Colonna had acted without permission. He then assured
Francis that he had sent a legate to induce Maximilian to make peace
with France, and he gave secret instructions to the legate that such a
peace would not be to the interest of the Papacy.
This is the admitted framework of that diplomacy which Roscoe contrives
to dress in such opulent phrases, and it was a policy that Leo never
altered. His next step was to seize the duchy of Urbino for his nephew
Lorenzo: a step which, after all his apologies, Dr. Pastor admits to
have "something repulsive about it." The Duke of Urbino (nephew of
Julius II.) had, in spite of his feudal obligations, refused to attack
the French at the command of the Pope, and seems to have discussed
with Francis the duplicity of the Pope's procedure. Yet his liberality
to the Medici in the days of misfortune had been such that Giuliano
earnestly joined with Francis I. in imploring Leo to overlook his
conduct. Leo harshly refused, and, to the disgust of many, the duchy
was subdued and given to Lorenzo. I may conclude this matter by
recounting that in 1517 the exiled Duke recovered his territory, and
the long struggle for his ejection cost the Papal treasury, according
to Guicciardini, 800,000 ducats.
A fresh anxiety clouded the Pope's pleasures when he heard that France,
Spain, Germany, and Switzerland had formed an alliance, and that
Francis I. and Charles V. (who succeeded Ferdinand on January 23d)
were virtually to divide northern and central Italy between them. This
project was abandoned, but in the following year an even more serious
event alarmed the Pope. The younger cardinals who had pressed his
election were generally aggrieved. Fast and luxurious as most of them
were, they had expected a larger pecuniary gratitude on Leo's part,
and they observed with annoyance that his relatives and his literary
admirers secured the greater part of his lavish gifts. In 1517, one
of these worldly young cardinals, Petrucci, conceived a particular
animosity against Leo, on account of some injustice done to his
brother, and there is little room for doubt that he spoke and thought
of having the Pope assassinated. Whether or no we trust the romantic
story told by Guicciardini and Giovio, that the surgeon who attended
the Pope was to poison his wound, we can hardly accept the opposite
rumour, that the whole conspiracy was invented by the Pope or his
brother in order to secure money. Petrucci was not offered the option
of a fine; and Cardinals Riario and Sauli confessed that they knew of
the plot. After a dramatic period of inquiry and incrimination Petrucci
was, in spite of the protests of cardinals and ambassadors, strangled
in his prison, and the flesh of his guilty servants was torn from their
bones with red-hot pincers. Cardinal Riario paid 150,000 ducats for his
release, and the less wealthy Cardinal Sauli 25,000. Cardinals Soderini
and Castellesi fled, when they were impeached, and their property and
that of Cardinal Petrucci was seized.
These events caused the gravest scandal throughout Christendom.
Cardinal Riario was the Dean of the Sacred College, and many preferred
to think that the plot was an invention for the purpose of securing
funds rather than that the cardinals had sunk so low. The dilemma was
painful, but we can have little doubt that Leo, at least, was convinced
of the reality of the plot. Instead of proceeding with greater
caution, however, he went on to give a fresh ground of criticism.
In a Consistory which he held on June 26th, he told the cardinals
that he was going to add no less than twenty-seven members to their
college. Their stormy protests increased his determination, and on
July 1st he promoted thirty-one cardinals. The rumour at once spread
through Christendom, and is in substance undoubted, that most of the
new cardinals paid large sums of money for the dignity; Sanuto makes
individual payments rise as high as 30,000 ducats. Some of them were
men of low character, and others were either related to, or had lent
money to, the Pope.
We may, however, conclude the political consideration before we discuss
these domestic matters. Maximilian induced the Diet of Augsburg to
elect his grandson Charles as his successor to the imperial title,
and, as a Bull of Julius II. enacted that the investiture of the
kingdom of Naples reverted to the Papacy if its holder became King of
Rome, the Pope was pressed to give a dispensation from this Bull. Leo
pleaded that his "honour" was at stake; but he secretly negotiated with
Francis (who bitterly opposed the dispensation) and with Charles, and
bargained shamelessly for his refusal or consent. In the end Francis
(out of funds raised in the name of a crusade) gave Lorenzo de' Medici
100,000 ducats "for services rendered," and promised a further sum of
100,000 to the Pope. It is an equally undisputed fact that on January
20, 1519, Leo, Lorenzo, and Francis entered into an alliance; the Pope
and his nephew were to promote the interests of Francis, and the French
King was to protect the Papal States and the estates of the Medici
family, and to admit the claims of the Church at Milan. It is, perhaps,
the choicest example of Leo's diplomacy--"unparalleled double-dealing,"
Dr. Pastor calls it--that he secretly drew up a similar treaty with
Spain and signed it a fortnight after he had signed the preceding
(February 6th).
In the meantime Leo heard that Maximilian had died on January 12th,
and he confronted, or evaded, the situation in his distinctive way. He
informed his German legate that Charles was already too powerful, and
that either Frederic of Saxony (whom he wished to induce to surrender
Luther) or Joachim of Brandenburg (a docile noble) ought to have
the imperial title. Hearing, however, that these candidates had no
prospect, he adopted Francis I. and urged him to defeat Charles. His
policy at this stage is not wholly clear, and it is possible that at
first he pitted Francis against Charles in the hope of making profit
from one or the other. In time he seems seriously to have adopted
Francis. He, on March 12th, offered the red hat to the Electors of
Trèves and Cologne, and proposed (on the 14th) to make the Archbishop
of Mayence (a disreputable prelate) permanent legate for Germany;
and he then, on May 4th, issued a Brief to the effect that if three
Electors agreed in their choice the election should be valid. His
schemes were shaken for a moment by the premature death of Lorenzo,
which moved him, in a nervous hour, to exclaim that henceforward he
belonged, "not to the house of Medici, but to the house of God."
But his associates were not kept long in suspense. He attempted to
incorporate Urbino in the Papal States, and, when Francis objected that
Urbino belonged to Lorenzo's surviving child (and her French mother),
the Pope began to abandon France. He was just in time to approve
Charles and promise a dispensation in regard to Naples before that
prince was elected to be Emperor.
But the consciousness of his long opposition to Charles weighed upon
him, and in September he again made a secret treaty with Francis I.; he
would refuse the crown of Naples to Charles and would promote French
interests by secular and spiritual weapons in return for the French
King's aid against Charles and against "insubordinate vassals." Vassals
of Leo X. cannot easily have kept pace with the remarkable policy of
their feudal lord, but we are hardly reconciled to the Pope's mingled
greed and nepotism. He secured Perugia and some of the smaller places
in Ancona and Umbria, and made an unsuccessful attempt to get Ferrara.
During all this time, he listened amiably to German proposals for
an alliance, and in the first months of 1521 he again duped the two
monarchs. In January--and it was repeated in March and April--he gave
the representatives of Charles a written assurance that he had no
engagements to the disadvantage of that monarch and would not incur any
within three months; in the same month (January) he agreed to secure
for Francis, for the purpose of an attack on Naples, a free passage
through the Swiss lines, and to receive in return Ferrara and a strip
of Neapolitan territory.
By this time, however, the shadow of Luther had fallen on the
Papal Court. The magnitude of the danger in Germany was by no
means appreciated, but Leo was eager to get Luther to Rome and
must conciliate the Emperor. In May, hearing that the French were
approaching the Swiss and the Duke of Ferrara, he formed an alliance
with Charles and prepared to use all his forces to drive his former
ally out of Italy. The campaign opened successfully, but Leo did not
live to see the issue and profit by it. He caught a chill as he sat at
an open window in November watching the popular rejoicing, and died on
December 1st, at the age of forty-two. Both the leading authorities,
Giovio and Guicciardini, accept the current belief that either the Duke
of Ferrara or the late Duke of Urbino had had him poisoned, but it is
now generally recognized that the recorded symptoms of his seven days'
illness point rather to malaria.
This admitted career of duplicity will not dispose us to expect a
domestic atmosphere of virtue and piety at the Vatican, and it is
singular that any historian has affected to find such. That Leo heard
or said mass daily, and was attentive to his ceremonious obligations,
is not, in that age, inconsistent with impropriety of conduct. His
lavish charity was a becoming part of his habitual liberality, and his
weekly fasts were rather intended to reduce the flesh than to subdue
it. On the other hand, some of the frivolous remarks attributed to him
have not the least authority. When the Venetian ambassador ascribes to
him the saying, "Let us enjoy the Papacy now that God has given it to
us," we may or may not have a mere popular rumour, though the phrase
is at least a correct expression of Leo's ideal; but that the Pope
ever mockingly attributed his good fortune to "the fable about Jesus
Christ" is not stated until long after his death, and then only by an
English controversialist, the ex-Carmelite Bale. Whether Leo was or was
not addicted to sins of the flesh is not a grave matter of historical
inquiry, but the evidence seems to me conclusive that, at least in his
Pontifical days, he was irregular.[298]
The character of life at the Vatican and in Rome under Leo X. was,
indeed, such as to prevent us from imputing any moral scruples to the
Pope. Leo spent, on the lowest estimate, five million ducats in eight
years, and left debts which are variously estimated at from half a
million to a million ducats. He must have spent nearly £300,000 per
year, and in order to make his official income of about 400,000 ducats
meet this strain he created and sold superfluous offices--they were
estimated at 2150 at this death,--pressed the sale of indulgences and
the exaction of fees and first-fruits, and borrowed large sums at
exorbitant rates of usury; several of his bankers and friends were
ruined at his death. A very large proportion of this money went in
gifts to literary men and scholars. Leo was a royal spendthrift of the
most benevolent and thoughtless nature. All the scribblers of Italy
flocked to Rome, and money was poured out without discrimination as
long as it lasted. Yet letters and scholarship actually decayed owing
to the recklessness of the payments. "The splendour of the Leonine
age, so often and so much belauded, is in many respects more apparent
than real," says Dr. Pastor, who has several valuable chapters on
Leo's relation to letters and art. The Roman University, which the
Pope at first supported with great liberality, was suffered to decay,
and great artists were not always encouraged. Ariosto was treated
harshly, and, while Rafael and his pupils were richly employed, Michael
Angelo was little used. Leo did not adequately appreciate sculpture
or architecture, and even the building of St. Peter's made very
little progress during his Pontificate. It is true that the state of
the Papal finances was the chief reason for the neglect of the great
architectural and educational plans of his predecessors. The check to
the sale of indulgences--brought about by Cardinal Ximenes in Spain
as well as by Luther in Germany--was felt severely at Rome.[299]
But we read that to the end Leo spent prodigious sums on musicians,
decorators, goldsmiths, and jewellers. An inventory in the Vatican
archives values at 204,655 ducats the jewels he left behind.
It was, in fact, not so much the discriminating promotion of art and
culture as a princely luxuriousness that absorbed Leo's funds. He was
temperate at table. The cardinals and wealthier Romans continued to
enjoy the senselessly rich banquets which they seem to have copied from
the most decadent pages of Roman history. Cardinal Cornaro is noted as
giving a dinner of sixty-five courses on silver dishes. Banker Chigi,
a useful friend of Leo, had his valuable plate thrown into the river
after one choice banquet; and on the occasion of his marriage with his
mistress (whose finger was held by Leo to receive the ring) he brought
luxuries, even live fish, from the ends of Europe. Banker Strozzi gave
rival banquets, at which cardinals fraternized with courtesans. Leo
approved, and sometimes attended, these banquets (at Chigi's palace),
but was personally temperate. He had only one meal each day, and
fasting fare on three days in each week, but he spent immense sums on
musicians and trinket-makers, and many of his pleasures were in the
grossest taste of the time. Men of prodigious appetite--one of them a
Dominican friar--were brought to his table to amuse him and his guests
by their incredible gluttony. The Pope bandied verses with half-drunken
poetasters and patronized the coarsest buffoons as well as the keenest
wits. When he went to his country house at Magliana for a few weeks'
hunting--in which he displayed extraordinary vigour--he took a troop
of his poets, buffoons, musicians, and other parasites. At Carnival
time he entered into the wild gaiety of Rome; and comedies of the most
licentious character were staged before him. Ariosto's _Suppositi_
(in which Cardinal Cibò took a part), Machiavelli's _Mandragola_,
and Bibbiena's _Calandria_ alternated with Terence and Plautus. The
_Calandria_, written by Cardinal Bibbiena, Leo's chief favourite, the
frescoes of whose bathroom seem to have been like those on certain
rooms in Pompeii today, is a comedy of thin wit and unrestrained
license; the Pope had it presented in the Vatican for the entertainment
of Isabella d'Este.
Such was the Pope who presided over the Lateran Council for the reform
of the Church, and the historian will hardly be expected to enlarge
at any length on its labours. Julius had initiated the council in
order to checkmate France and the schismatical cardinals, and it
continued its thinly attended sittings, at wide intervals, for four
years. Some seventy or eighty Italian bishops attended, and they
issued some admirable counsels to the clergy to improve their lives,
condemned heretical writings, and voiced the sincere wish that some
Christian prince would arrest the advance of the Turks. A committee
of the council drew up a stringent and comprehensive scheme for the
reform of Church-abuses, but this was lost amid the vehement wrangles
of monks, bishops, and cardinals. In the end (1514) a very slender
reform-bill was issued; nor were the clergy disposed to comply with
this when they noticed that, in the following year, Leo himself
bestowed a bishopric, and soon afterwards the cardinalate, upon the
boy-son of Emmanuel of Portugal, and granted to the father a large
share of the proceeds of the issue of indulgences. The council also
forbade the printing of books without approbation, and encouraged the
spread of banks or pawn-shops (Monti di Pietà) for the poor. On March
16, 1517, Leo, in spite of the murmurs of the reformers and the revolt
in Germany, brought to a close his almost futile council. He had no
desire whatever for reform, and even the measures which were passed
were not enforced. The reforming prelates were deeply saddened by his
levity, and, before the close of the council, Gianfrancesco Pico della
Mirandola drew up in their name an appalling indictment of the state of
the Church and predicted that the refusal to remedy it would bring on
them a heavy judgment.
The one work of the Council in which the Pope took a lively interest
was the granting of a Concordat to France. The Gallican sentiments of
the French prelates and doctors had been embodied in the Pragmatic
Sanction (1438), and Rome had not ceased to protest against this
cession to local councils of the powers it claimed. By the Concordat of
1516 the King and the Pope virtually divided these powers between them;
the King had the right of nomination to bishoprics and abbeys, the Pope
received the "first-fruits" (Annates). The Concordat was signed by Leo
on September 16, 1516, but was not published until 1518, when it caused
fierce indignation at the universities and among the clergy.
Leo had dismissed the reformers of the Lateran Council, and in the
spring of 1517, the very year in which Martin Luther nailed his
challenge on the door of the castle-church at Wittenberg, turned with
relief to his corrupt court. There had, as we saw, long been an outcry
in Germany against the corruption of a very large proportion of the
clergy and against the Papal fiscal system, yet Leo had light-heartedly
maintained the disorders. In 1514 he had, in order to secure the votes
of two Electors, conferred the Archbishopric of Mayence upon a young
and worldly noble, Albert of Brandenburg, and had (for a payment of
24,000 ducats) permitted him still to retain the sees of Magdeburg
and Halberstadt. In order to recover the 24,000 ducats, which he had
borrowed on the security of a share in the sale of indulgences, the
unscrupulous prelate pressed the traffic eagerly, and some of the more
enlightened German clergy protested. There were already princes, such
as the Elector of Saxony, who refused to allow the Papal envoys in
their dominions, and there were writers, like Ulrich von Hutten, who
violently assailed their procedure. Leo, however, failed to appreciate
the gravity of the situation and proposed to raise large sums,
ostensibly for the building of St. Peter's, by granting indulgences.
I have already explained that, though John XXIII. undoubtedly sold
absolution "from guilt and from penalty," as the Council of Constance
established, the indulgence was, properly speaking, a remission of the
punishment due to sins which had been duly confessed. In earlier Papal
practice, the indulgence was the commutation into a money-payment of
the penance for sin imposed by the Church, but, as the doctrine of
Purgatory developed, the indulgence came to be regarded as a remission
of the punishment due in Purgatory. Two questions had then arisen on
which the schoolmen had exercised their ingenuity: on what ground could
the Church claim to remit this punishment, and whether the indulgence
could be extended to the dead who were actually suffering in Purgatory?
The schoolmen found a satisfactory answer to both questions. Then
Boniface IX. decreed that an indulgence might be earned by a payment of
money to the Church (the price of a voyage to Rome), and the way was
opened for the later abuse. In their commercial zeal the Papal envoys
and preachers undoubtedly represented that souls were delivered from
the fire of Purgatory when the coin rang in their collecting boxes.
The Dominican monk Tetzel, who in 1517 was sent to preach the
indulgence as Albert of Brandenburg's sub-commissary, was more zealous
than scrupulous in his representations, and people of Wittenberg,
who had crossed the frontier in order to profit by the indulgence,
came home with unedifying reports of his sermons. Martin Luther,
then a professor at the Wittenberg University, heard these reports
with disdain. There was no defined doctrine of the Church on the
subject, and more than one divine had felt, like Luther, that this
apparent traffic was as enervating to real piety as it was in itself
distasteful. A man of intense and stormy spiritual experience, he
sternly combated all that seemed to encourage "sloth" in religious
life; his was the more arduous religion of St. Paul and St.
Augustine. Conscious, therefore, that the whole practice was based on
comparatively recent speculations of the schoolmen, which he had a
right to dispute, he challenged Tetzel to justify his "lying fables
and empty promises." A war of pamphlets ensued, and, as his opponents
naturally appealed to the language in which the Popes had announced
indulgences, Luther was compelled to slight the words of the Popes and
appeal to the declarations of Councils and the teaching of Scripture.
He was still orthodox; the language he used had been heard in the
Church for two centuries, and in that age one would as soon have
thought of claiming impeccability as infallibility for the Popes.
At the beginning of 1518 it was reported to Rome that the agitation
raised by the robust professor was seriously interfering with the
indulgences, and Leo, encouraged by the angry Dominicans, directed
his superiors to restrain him. When they failed, he summoned Luther
to Rome. The monk, knowing how such trials ended at Rome, appealed to
the Elector of Saxony and to Maximilian. The appeal to the Emperor,
however, fell at a time when the Papal favour was sought for Charles,
and Maximilian encouraged the Pope to take action. Leo ordered Luther
to present himself at once before the Papal Legate and prepare for
trial at Rome. On the other hand Frederic of Saxony insisted that
Luther should be examined in Germany, and the Pope dreaded to irritate
an Elector on the eve of an imperial election. Legate Cajetan was
therefore empowered to see the rebel at Augsburg, and a series of
futile conferences took place on October 12th-14th. Luther wished
to argue and justify his thesis: Cajetan was instructed merely to
demand his submission. Luther insisted that he should be tried by the
learned doctors of Basle, Freiburg, Louvain, and Paris: the legate was
charged to assert the Papal authority. On October 18th Luther departed
in disgust for Wittenberg; and his temper was not improved by the
discovery that Leo had, on August 23d, directed the legate, in case of
obstinacy, to declare him heretical. He appealed to a General Council.
Luther was still within the limits of orthodox sentiment and practice,
and the protection of the Elector embarrassed the Pope. A more
diplomatic envoy, Karl von Militz, a Papal chamberlain, was sent to
Germany, and some months were spent in amiable correspondence. Luther
promised to be silent if his opponents would keep silence, and wrote
a respectful letter to the Pope; to which Leo made a gracious reply.
But the truce was little more than a diplomatic regard for Papal
interests during the period of the imperial election, and the policy
of silence soon proved impossible for both sides. Ulrich von Hutten and
other critics encouraged Luther to assail the Papal authority, and the
exaggerations of his opponents reacted on the growth of his mind. By
the end of 1519 he seems to have concluded, with some firmness, that
the Papal system was an unwarranted addition to primitive Christianity,
and a formidable movement supported his ideas.
In January (1520) Luther's case was submitted to a commission of
theologians at Rome, and the Elector was summoned to compel him to
retract. Frederic refused, and in June Leo signed the Bull _Exsurge
Domine_; Luther was to be excommunicated if he did not submit within
sixty days, and the secular authorities would incur an interdict if
they did not surrender him. It is not of material interest to quarrel
with the Pope's procedure: to point out that the disappointed Cajetan
was one of the heads of the commission of inquiry, and that Luther's
vehement opponent Eck was one of the two legates entrusted with the
publication of the Bull. Rome demanded submission; and, if Luther
had submitted, some other German would before long have instituted
the Reformation. Europe was ripe for schism, and it may be doubted
whether even a reform of the Church would have long prevented the
growth of a body of men holding the Reformers' view of the bases of
Papal authority. On December 10th (1520) Luther publicly burned the
Bull. Even this act was not without orthodox precedent, but Luther
was constantly advancing. He was summoned before the Diet of Worms in
April (1521), and he then stated that the word of neither Popes nor
Councils would condemn him; he must be judged by reason and Scripture.
But the political situation, which casts its shadow throughout on the
development, was now modified. Charles obtained his wish of an alliance
with the Papacy against France. This alliance was signed on May 8th: on
the 12th the Diet issued the Edict of Worms. Luther was, in accordance
with the Pope's second Bull,[300] declared a heretic. He retreated to
the Wartburg under the protection of Frederic, and the gravest phase of
the struggle opened.[301]
Leo died in December, as I have stated, leaving to his successor
the terrible legacy of his frivolity in face of a grave calamity.
In his last two years he apprehended, to some extent, the magnitude
of the German trouble, but he plainly proposed to answer the just
demand of reform only by the burning of a few heretics. His entirely
dishonourable diplomacy and his costly indulgence of tastes which ill
befitted a successor of Leo I. imposed the last unendurable burden on
the patience of Europe. For him the Papacy was a principality, and the
religious nature of its financial sources makes more contemptible the
use to which he put his wealth. Even that artistic splendour which
casts a glow over the Papacy before the breaking of the great storm
owed to him comparatively little. The middle or secular phase of the
development of the Papacy came to an end in the tawdry luxuries and
unscrupulous measures of a Pope who has been treated with singular
favour at the bar of Catholic history.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 294: F. Nitti, _Leo X. e la sua politica_ (1892), seeks to
defend Leo against the charge of excessive nepotism. He strains the
evidence at times, and quite admits that duplicity was the essential
feature of the Pope's policy. See also his _Documenti ed osservazioni
riguardanti la politica di Leone X._ (1893). A biography of Leo was
written by the contemporary Bishop of Nocera, Paolo Giovio, but this
_Vita Leonis X._ is the work of a courtier. Guicciardini (_Storia
d'Italia_), Sanuto (_Diarii_), and Bembo (_Opere_) are more critical,
and the letters of the Roman ambassadors are valuable. P. de Grassis,
Master of Ceremonies at the Papal Court under Julius and Leo, wrote a
_Diary of Leo X._, but there seems to be some reluctance to publish
it. The work published by Armellini (_Il diario di Leone X._, 1884) is
merely a discreet compendium of it. Fabroni's _Leonis X. Vita_ is too
ancient (1797), and _The Medici Popes_ (1908) by H.M. Vaughan, is an
excellent popular work. Roscoe's stately _Life and Pontificate of Leo
X._ (1805) is too flattering to its hero and is discredited in places
by more recent research.]
[Footnote 295: Sanuto, _Diarii_, xviii.]
[Footnote 296: Guicciardini, xii. There is a copy of his Spanish treaty
in the State archives at Florence.]
[Footnote 297: The instruction is reproduced by Nitti, p. 61. As the
document adds that Leo will not allow any prince, "even were it his
own brother," to hold "both the head and the tail of Italy" (Milan and
Naples), Nitti and Pastor claim that it shows that nepotism was not the
key-note of Leo's policy. It seems strange that, in view of all his
admitted duplicity, they can take seriously this phrase of the Pope's.
We may admit, however, that the security of the Papal States was the
Pope's first consideration.]
[Footnote 298: Dr. Pastor (viii., 81) is here less candid than usual.
He says that "Giovio passes over the whole truth of the accusations
brought against the moral conduct of Leo X.," whereas the Bishop of
Nocera devotes several very curious pages to the subject (lib. iv.,
pp. 96-99 in the 1551 edition of the _Vita Leonis X._) and ends with
a reminder that we can never be quite sure about the secrets of the
chamber and an assurance that Leo was at all events less guilty than
other Italian princes. The courtly writer seems to me convinced that
Leo was addicted to unnatural vice. Vaughan, on the other hand, is
wrong in saying that Giovio alone mentioned these vices. Guicciardini
(lib. xvi., c.v., p. 254, in the 1832 edition of the _Storia
d'Italia_), in the course of a sober characterization of Leo, says that
he was generally believed to be chaste before his election, but he was
"afterwards found to be excessively devoted to pleasures which cannot
be called decent."]
[Footnote 299: It is sometimes pointed out, rather in the way of merit,
that Leo received less than some of his predecessors by the issue of
indulgences. It was not from want of will on his part.]
[Footnote 300: _In Coena Domini_, March 28th.]
[Footnote 301: The situation in England does not call for consideration
in this chapter. Henry VIII. wrote against Luther and, in presenting
his book to the Pope, requested a title analogous to that of "the most
Catholic King." By a Bull of October 26, 1521, Henry received the title
of "Defender of the Faith," which his successors retain.]