bad_.
When in the year 1505, Pope Julius II. went to Bologna to expel from
that city the family of the Bentivogli, who had been princes there for
over a hundred years, it was also in his mind, as a part of the general
design he had planned against all those lords who had usurped Church
lands, to remove Giovanpagolo Baglioni, tyrant of Perugia. And coming
to Perugia with this intention and resolve, of which all men knew, he
would not wait to enter the town with a force sufficient for his
protection, but entered it unattended by troops, although Giovanpagolo
was there with a great company of soldiers whom he had assembled for
his defence. And thus, urged on by that impetuosity which stamped all
his actions, accompanied only by his body-guard, he committed himself
into the hands of his enemy, whom he forthwith carried away with him,
leaving a governor behind to hold the town for the Church. All prudent
men who were with the Pope remarked on his temerity, and on the
pusillanimity of Giovanpagolo; nor could they conjecture why the latter
had not, to his eternal glory, availed himself of this opportunity for
crushing his enemy, and at the same time enriching himself with
plunder, the Pope being attended by the whole College of Cardinals with
all their luxurious equipage. For it could not be supposed that he was
withheld by any promptings of goodness or scruples of conscience;
because in the breast of a profligate living in incest with his sister,
and who to obtain the princedom had put his nephews and kinsmen to
death, no virtuous impulse could prevail. So that the only inference to
be drawn was, that men know not how to be splendidly wicked or wholly
good, and shrink in consequence from such crimes as are stamped with an
inherent greatness or disclose a nobility of nature. For which reason
Giovanpagolo, who thought nothing of incurring the guilt of incest, or
of murdering his kinsmen, could not, or more truly durst not, avail
himself of a fair occasion to do a deed which all would have admired;
which would have won for him a deathless fame as the first to teach the
prelates how little those who live and reign as they do are to be
esteemed; and which would have displayed a greatness far transcending
any infamy or danger that could attach to it.