Volume 3, Chapter 5

'FACILIS DESCENSUS. . .' 1471-1517

Section 1: A PAPACY OF PRINCES

Section 2: CHRISTIAN LIFE AND THOUGHT, 1471-1517

Section 3: LUTHER

A PAPACY OF PRINCES

THE title of this chapter is melodramatic; it is exaggerated; and, as a summary description of the life of the Church during the next forty years, too inexact, of course, to be true. But the Virgilian line summarises fairly correctly the impression which the reader usually retains from his study of the period; from one, quite understandable, point of view, it may even be said to describe the period very well.

The history of the Church, if history indeed describes the flowing stream of time, bears no relation to that tapestry of the ' full fed river winding slow mid herds upon an endless plain"; it is rather, and it must ever be, a stream in flood, driving over a hard bed and through a resisting channel, where the rapids are frequent, and where, once in a while, there comes a sudden gigantic alteration of the level over which the waters pour in a very Niagara. It is so, and it must be so, because the Church is not just humanity socially ordered for ends that are natural, and to be attained very largely by a harmony of action that need be no more than external. The Church is a divine creation, imposing an order whose ends are supernatural, where the needed harmony is utterly unattainable except by action that is rooted in personal conviction, and based on assents that are, of their nature, internal. Herein lies all the promise of the Church to labouring and expectant humanity; and herein lies the whole tragedy of its long history. For assents such as these lie wholly within the uncontrollable power of the individual; the Church, whose good fortune largely depends on these internal assents, cannot compel them. The Church continues through time, and must face its task, whatever the generosity, or the rarity, at any given period of these needed internal assents to its teaching and direction; and in all ages it never ceases, and can never cease, to demand such assents, and to demand that all else be subordinated to them. Temporal rulers, kings and princes -- the State -- are no doubt bound, in their function, by the same moral law that binds the spiritual ruler; but the spiritual ruler does not only need to keep the moral law, it is the primary function of his office continually to profess and to proclaim it. Kingdoms do not suffer, except accidentally, from the scandal of the ruler's bad life, but when the spiritual ruler falls it is, necessarily, the very institution and notion of the spiritual that the scandal harms. His wrong doing compromises immediately the very raison d'etre of the institution. It is, in a way, contrary to the very nature of his office and of the institution. It is disintegration in what only exists in order to promote integrity; in order to preach that integrity as the inescapable condition of human happiness, and to minister the divinely devised means of achieving integrity. Disintegration here must, always, have about it the air of catastrophe -- no matter how slight the degree in which it is allowed. And in this sense it is true to say that, over the history of the fortunes of the supernatural moving visibly among mankind, there ever hangs something of this dark possibility. "The gates of hell" shall never, indeed, prevail -- but where was it ever promised that they should cease to trouble? and was it not also mysteriously said " When the Son of Man cometh think you shall He find faith on earth?" The temporal kingdom can not only survive the sins of its rulers, it can even, for a time, profit from them; the wicked, here too, flourishing like a green bay tree. But in the spiritual kingdom sin tolerated, fostered, made an instrument of power, is fatal, instantaneously, to all that it touches. Sin in the actual ruling of that kingdom is necessarily not only blacker to the sight but more mischievous in fact; and so too, are all the personal sins of the rulers, whether these be such surrenders to the material as sexual licence, worldliness and avarice, or the still more grievous " spiritual" sins of ambition, libido dominandi, [986] mental sloth, indifference to the development and spread of truth.

SIXTUS IV

With the advent of Sixtus IV, in 1471, the flood does, indeed, seem to pour over the edge of the abyss; the failures and the surrenders are suddenly more grossly material -- and, being this, they are more evidently shocking, shocking now to the least reflective, and perhaps, to these, the most shocking of all. The age of the della Rovere, Borgia, and Medici popes has become, in popular repute, the most scandalous age of all. But sinfulness of this kind -- whether, in the manner of old-fashioned Protestant controversy, we gloat over it as a final proof that the papacy is the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse, or whether, horror stricken, we strive to minimise it in a new apologetic -- was chiefly important in its distraction of the ruler from activities that would have made Protestantism impossible, from the devising of ways, for example, through which good bishops would have filled the sees of Christendom, a true philosophy and a live theology informed its universities, and a clergy, spiritually trained and equipped with professional knowledge been provided for all its parishes. It is a very easy mistake, and a fairly fatal mistake, to concentrate on the dramatic details of these personal sins of la papaute princiere [987] while their graver, if more humdrum, faults of omission go by unconsidered. Such concentration -- as common as it is natural -- wrecks the real proportions of the event.

When Paul II died, so suddenly, July 26, 1471, there was not any obvious successor to him among the cardinals. They were fairly evenly divided into two rival parties and it was only after a certain amount of manoeuvring that, on August 10, they managed to agree on Cardinal Francesco della Rovere. The conclave had begun on the feast of St. Sixtus II, the pope who was the patron of the great Roman martyr St. Lawrence, and the new pope, appropriately, called himself Sixtus IV. He was now fifty-seven years of age, a Friar Minor (but not one of the new Observants) from the Genoese town of Savona, and sprung from so poor a family that it had not even a surname. In his order the friar had had a great career, as lecturer in theology in various Italian universities, as a preacher and administrator. Bessarion had followed the lectures he gave at the university of Pavia and had brought him to the notice of Paul II. In 1464 the Franciscans had chosen him for their minister-general, and in 1467 he had been created cardinal. As minister-general of the Friars Minor, Francesco della Rovere had shown himself a reformer, and in the great theological dispute of the day -- the question of the Immaculate Conception -- he had risen high above the ordinary level of the controversy with his thesis that the views of Duns Scotus and St. Thomas were complementary rather than antagonistic.

It was a curious combination of forces that had secured his election as pope. Bessarion's high opinion of him as a scholar and a religious had done much. The wishes of the Duke of Milan -- Galeazzo Maria Sforza -- had been no less effective. And of a like nature with this political influence was the support of the cardinal vice-chancellor, Rodrigo Borgia, who now, forty-one years of age, after fifteen years of comparative seclusion in the routine of his office, makes his first steps in the public policies of the Holy See. A further element was the skill as negotiator of Francesco's young Franciscan nephew, Piero Riario, whom he had taken into the conclave as a kind of secretaryattendant. It was this young friar who, at the critical moments, did the actual work of binding together and keeping together the heterogeneous majority that made his uncle pope.

Francesco della Rovere, whose strong, intelligent face the genius of Melozzo and Pollaiuolo have made familiar to us, had immense energy; as pope he was to show himself strongwilled, and even imperious, but to be betrayed, time and again, by his lack of knowledge about the political world in which, almost exclusively, he now chose to be active. The one-time reformer of the Friars Minor was determined to make the Papal State secure, once and for all, against the princes who threatened its life, by developing its political resources to the full, and by making the papal sovereignty a reality everywhere within it. But over and over again he blundered, and after thirteen years of rule he left the papacy hated as a power, where before it had merely been mistrusted, and saddled with a new and most disastrous precedent of nepotism, aggressive war and even crime, to say nothing of unconcealed luxurious living and moral laxity. No charge against the pope's own morals -- in the narrow sense of that word -- has ever been seriously sustained. He was regular and attentive to his priestly duties, and noted indeed for his deep devotion to all that affected the cult of the Mother of God. But banquets of a crazy extravagance, hunting parties, gambling bouts, nightly revels began, in his time, and without any interference from him, to be part of the common order of high ecclesiastical life in Rome; and in all this departure of new unseemliness and wickedness the pioneers were the pope's own near relatives, young friars for the chief part, upon whom throughout his pontificate, he heaped one undeserved promotion after another. Never had pope such a horde of needy, insignificant, and incompetent kinsfolk for whom to provide; and never was any pope so lavish in the provision.

Sixtus IV was one of five children, and it was his eleven nephews and two nieces who were the main instruments through which whatever ideals he began with were brought to nought, and through whom a new poison was injected into the none too healthy system of the Renaissance papacy. Of the eleven nephews six were clerics -- it was a simple matter to make five of them cardinals, while the sixth became Bishop of Ferrara and Patriarch of Antioch. Two of his lay nephews the pope married to daughters of the King of Naples, a third to the heiress of the reigning Duke of Urbino, and a fourth to a daughter of the Duke of Milan. A sixth red hat went to one of his niece's sons.

The ablest of this small army -- the only one in fact who proved ultimately to have any real ability at all -- was Giuliano della Rovere, but far more influential in the policies of the reign were the two brothers, Girolamo and Piero Riario. To Piero, the manager of the conclave, a young friar of twenty-five, the pope gave the see of Treviso within a month of his election (September 4, 1471); on December 15 he made him a cardinal; in September 1472 next he gave him the see of Valence, and in 1473 the archbishoprics of Spoleto (April 28), Seville (June 25), and Florence (July 20), with the wealthy French see of Mende (November 3) -- all of which sees the young cardinal was allowed to hold simultaneously. [988] He was, by now, as nearly the equivalent of a millionaire in the life of the time as it is possible to conceive. The story of his extravagances, and his profligacy, is writ large in all the diaries and diplomatic correspondence of the time, a subject of cynical mirth, where it does not provoke disgust. But Cardinal Piero did not last long. The pace soon killed him, and he died, "while he gave promise of still better things," said his uncle, in the first days of 1474. But in the two short years or so of his course he had been the pope's most confidential adviser and agent. This place was now taken by his brother Girolamo, one of the worst men of all this bad time, a typical Renaissance bravo and bully, for whom the moral law can scarcely be said to have held any meaning at all. For Girolamo, his uncle, when he married him to Caterina Sforza, had established a little principality in the north of the Papal State, centring round the episcopal city of Imola. The territory was small, but it was meant to extend, and its strategic importance was already considerable.

The Papal State [989] could hardly have been less conveniently designed for popes who meant to be effective rulers. It may be described as made up of two roughly rectangular territories, one to the south based on the Mediterranean coast of Italy, and the other to the north based on the Adriatic. From the southern tip of the southern rectangle where it touched the kingdom of Naples, to the northernmost point of the state is, in a direct line, 260 miles. The Apennines, in their steepest and least easily traversable masses, are a prohibitive natural barrier between the rectangles in the central part of the state where, for seventy miles, these overlap. During the whole of the Middle Ages, down to the time when the Avignon residence began, the popes were never really masters of much beyond the southern rectangle, the district whose natural centre is Rome and that runs from, say Orvieto to the neighbourhood of Gaeta. By the time of Sixtus IV they were also, fairly securely, masters of the district beyond the Apennines called the Marches, the southern half of the northern rectangle, a region whose chief cities were Fermo Camerino and the port of Ancona. But the richest part of the State, and the wealthiest cities, were in the district to the north of the Marches, the territory called Romagna, the lands to the south of the Po, the ancient Roman Aemilia. Here was Bologna, the most important city of the whole State after Rome -- always violently anti-papal -- and Ferrara, and Ravenna. All this valuable territory was parcelled out into half a score of city states, some republican in their form of government, others ruled by families descended from the successful condottieri. The most important of these states was the Duchy of Ferrara, held by the d'Este family, who were also lords of Modena and Reggio, territories that formed a buffer state between the pope's territory and the Duchy of Milan. Imola lay twenty-five miles to the south-east of Bologna, and almost midway in the narrow part [990] of the long neck that joined the Romagna to the half of the Papal State where the popes were really masters. Imola in strong, trustworthy hands would be a check to Ferrara, a good starting point if ever the pope planned to reduce Bologna, and an excellent centre from which to conduct the lengthy business of destroying the petty tyrants of the Romagna, at Faenza for instance, or Forli, Cesena, and Rimini. [991] Hence the determination of Sixtus to plant his nephew at Imola as its lord, his insistence that Milan (in whose power it then lay) should restore it, and his willingness to pay the Milanese the heavy price asked, 100,000 ducats. And as the pope thus secured -- or hoped to secure -- this key city at the northern end of the " neck," so, by marrying another nephew, Giovanni della Rovere, brother of Cardinal Giuliano, to the heiress of the Montefeltre, he meant to make sure of the entrance to the " neck " from the south, their ducal city of Urbino. Giovanni's son did, in fact, live to inherit Urbino; he is the duke, Francesco Maria, who plays a part in the history of the second della Rovere pope, his uncle, Julius II. And Girolamo, the Count of Imola, lived to make himself master of Forli, and Cesena, and Rimini, and even of Sinigaglia, before, in 1488, some of his subjects found the courage to avenge a hundred crimes by assassinating him.

The other princes of Italy were not slow to realise that a new spirit was influencing the policy of the ruler of the Papal State. At the death of Paul II, Naples, Florence and Milan had stood leagued together against Rome. Now, by his marriage alliances, the pope had detached Naples and was, seemingly, about to make himself master of the all-important lands in the north. It was Florence -- the Florence of Lorenzo de' Medici -- that first grew definitely uneasy about this unmistakable threat on her north-eastern border; there was a succession of " incidents " between Lorenzo and the pope and then a great crime, a terrible repression, and war (1478). Florence was still, in name, a republic where the Medici family were no more than private citizens, but in fact they had now, for half a century, been its all-powerful rulers, through their immense wealth and their skilfully exercised technique for the secret management of public affairs. Lorenzo was much more truly the ruler of Florence, than the pope was ruler of Rome. When the reign of Sixtus IV opened, relations had been friendly, and presently the pope made the Medici the Holy See's banking agents. But he would not consent to make Lorenzo's younger brother Giuliano a cardinal, and then Lorenzo made difficulties about advancing the money that Sixtus needed to buy Imola from Milan for Count Girolamo; he even did his best to prevent the sale, not at all wanting to see the pope's nephew strategically installed on his flank. Then Sixtus changed his financial policy. The Medici were dismissed, and the papal business was given to their rivals, the Pazzi. Next, in 1474, there came a vacancy in the see of Florence. The pope named one of his own kinsmen, Francesco Salviati, but the Medici protested so strongly that he had to give way. When, some months later, he named the disappointed candidate to the vacant see of Pisa, the Medici again protested. This time, however, the pope held firm; but the Medici kept the new bishop out. Now came the conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Medici regime in Florence in which Count Girolamo, the Pazzi, and the Archbishop of Pisa were the ringleaders. They also proposed to murder Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano. And, such was the pitch to which six years of the political game had brought the Roman mind, the conspirators, as a matter of course, laid the whole matter before the pope for his approval.

Sixtus was not at war with Florence, but he had only one objection to make to the plot -- there must be no murder of the two Medici. The count, the banker, the archbishop, and the assassin whom they had hired, laboured long to convince the pope that their death was unavoidable in the kind of thing that a revolution is, and argued that, since the Medici were bound to die, it could not much matter how exactly this happened. But Sixtus would have none of it. He did not indeed countermand the plot, but he explicitly commanded that the princes should not be murdered; it is, nevertheless, hard to believe that, after the interview as we have it recorded, he can have been under any illusion about what the conspirators were determined to do.

The visit to Florence of Count Girolamo's nephew, the newly- created Cardinal Raffaelle Sansoni (a lad of seventeen) provided the opportunity. The cardinal, brought to Florence by his desire to see the wonders of the Medici palaces, was to preside at a High Mass in the cathedral on Sunday, April 26, 1478, and afterwards be entertained by the Medici. The mass seemed to offer a most suitable moment for the murder; the two victims and all the notables of the city would be safely contained and held by the confusion in the great church while, outside, the main body of the conspirators would seize the seat of government and all the controls. At the last moment the bravo hired to do some of the killing -- Montesecco -- did indeed object, some scruple about the place and time of the deed was, it seems, troubling him. But a couple of priests, "patriotic" enemies of the Medici tyrants, were found to take his place. The cardinal entered and the mass began. Then -- at the elevation, or the priest's communion -- the signal was given and the murderers made for their victims. Giuliano de Medici, was killed with a dozen wounds or so in his body, but Lorenzo, only slightly wounded by the clerical enthusiasts who had undertaken to despatch him, managed to gain the sacristy and to barricade himself. Meanwhile in the church there was the expected pandemonium, but the fury was all against the assassins, and the young cardinal -- thought to be in the plot -- came so near to death that, in all the forty years of life that remained to him his face never lost the pallor which came into it that day. While, in the cathedral, the murderers were taken, the chiefs of the conspiracy outside had also failed. Something in the manner of the archbishop as he essayed to bluff the Gonfaloniere into surrender put that officer on his guard. He arrested the archbishop and those with him, and when, presently, the mob came streaming by, mad with the news, he acted very promptly, putting ropes round the necks of the prisoners and thrusting them out from the windows of the palace. When the ropes were cut the mob amused itself with the corpses, [992] as we have seen happen again in that same land within these last few years. All that day, and the next, the vengeance continued. Whoever was thought a supporter of the Pazzi was mercilessly slain. Scores were thus hanged out of hand and thrown to the mob. The cardinal, meanwhile, was kept under close arrest.

The conspiracy then had failed, and except Count Girolamo, who all this time had not stirred from Rome, the conspirators had all of them been taken and executed. When the news reached him the count was beside himself, and the Florentines in Rome were for a time in great danger. The pope took no immediate public action. He regretted the crime of Giuliano's murder and wrote to Florence a letter, which has disappeared, to say so. He also demanded the release of the unoffending cardinal. The Florentine envoy in Rome wrote to support the pope's demand, and Naples and Venice gave their advice that Florence should not add fuel to the fire by keeping the prelate in prison. On May 24 an envoy from Sixtus appeared in Florence with a formal written demand and the threat that, unless the cardinal were released, the pope would punish the republic. The Florentines were, however, not to be moved, and eight days later the bull appeared excommunicating Lorenzo and all who adhered to him, and threatening the republic with an interdict if, within three weeks, it had not obeyed the pope's commands. The pope's case is set out fully: all the political grievances of the years before the conspiracy, the excessive vengeance for the conspiracy itself, the hanging of an archbishop and other ecclesiastics, the imprisonment of the cardinal; the republic must accept the pope's sentence that neither Lorenzo nor anyone who supported him should be capable of ever holding any office in Church or State, or of performing any legal acts; their property must be confiscated, their houses torn down, and Lorenzo handed over to the pope; all this within a month. Again the Florentines refused to be moved, and on June 24 the interdict was declared.

The Pazzi Conspiracy, scandalous as is its history, is of course no more than one of a score of similar events in the complicated story of fifteenth-century Italian politics. It needs, however, to be told in some detail not only because, in this particular feud, the pope was one of the protagonists, but also because of the contrast between the high tone of the pope's demands before he knew he was going to be beaten, and his subsequent tacit surrender of all but the appearances of submission. Here is something which is, for a time, going to pass into the political habits of the papacy, and to be yet another potent cause of that alienation from the popes of their greatest natural resource, the sympathy of instructed Catholic opinion. No power has so rightly been expected to make war on the haughty and successful, to yield to none but the needy. With these political popes the Roman maxim began to be reversed, to the great hurt of their spiritual hold on their children everywhere.

Florence replied to these anathemas by skilfully-written manifestos which all Italy read. The clergy acknowledged that Sixtus was indeed helmsman of the barque of Peter, but complained that it was to Circe's island that he was steering it; while the republic broadcast the confession of Montesecco, in which that scrupulous assassin told the story of the ambiguous interview with the pope. The finished irony of the humanist is now, for the first time, set to mock the solemnities of the papal remonstrance and its awful sentence, and to call in question, by its reasoned moderation, the assumption that the pope is telling the truth. "Collect yourself, we pray you, Holy Father," say the Florentines, " and return to those sentiments which become the gravity of the Holy See."

In August the war began, Florence isolated and the pope leagued with Naples and Florence's eternal foe Siena. The Florentines turned for help to Louis XI of France, and not in vain. The king, already bitter because Sixtus had refused the red hat to the prelates he had nominated, was only too happy at the chance of harassing the pope into new concessions of jurisdiction in ecclesiastical affairs. He had already, in 1475, begun to proclaim himself the champion of the "liberties of the Gallican Church" and begun to speak of the need of a General Council to reform the Church and to elect a lawful pope in the place of the simonist Sixtus IV. [993] Then, in March 1476, he had ordered all the French cardinals and prelates in Rome to return home for a great national council that would discuss the best way of bringing about the needed General Council. Now, upon the Florentine appeal, the French envoys to the Holy See were instructed to join with those of Florence, Milan, Venice, and Ferrara in a protest that the pope's conduct towards Florence and Lorenzo was a scandalous hindrance to the unity of Christendom. Since the pope would not listen to the ambassadors' petition for a removal of the interdict from Florence, a General Council must be summoned (July 11, 1478). [994]

The pope did not find it hard to answer Louis XI, but the emperor -- Frederick III -- was no less pressing that Florence should be treated more mercifully, and most of the cardinals were anxious for peace. But Florence would not accept the only terms the pope offered and presently, her allies not venturing more against Sixtus than threats of a General Council, and her territories ravaged by the papal and Neapolitan armies, the situation of the republic grew desperate indeed. It was saved by the boldness and diplomatic skill of Lorenzo. In December 1479 he made his way uninvited, unannounced, to Naples and won over the king. The terms were hard, but Florence was delivered from the dilemma it faced of destruction or a humiliating submission to the pope. Some submission indeed there was to be, but it came now from the initiative of the republic, and at a time when all other questions were stilled by the recent descent of the Turks on the Italian mainland and their capture of Otranto. [995] On Advent Sunday, 1480, [996] twelve leading citizens of Florence knelt before the pope in the portico of St. Peter's, acknowledged the city's guilt, and humbly besought forgiveness. The pope lectured them, mildly enough, and absolved the city from all the spiritual censures laid upon it. As a penance Florence was to provide fifteen galleys for the war against the Turks. But not a word was said about the position of Lorenzo de' Medici, who, and not Florence, so Sixtus had repeatedly declared, was the real enemy and the reason for the war. Nor, of course, was Lorenzo among the twelve who knelt before the pope.

For a short eighteen months there was peace, but Count Girolamo, who had opposed the peace party in Rome in 1479, now made himself master of Forli on the death of the last of the Ordolaffi who had ruled it for a century or so (1481). And he planned to take Faenza also. In this he had the support of Venice; and the great republic was willing to encourage also a much bolder design, nothing less in fact than that Girolamo should make himself King of Naples. Venice, as payment for its aid, was to be allowed to take Ferrara.

The King of Naples [997] began the war, invading the Papal State (April 1482) when the pope's preparations had scarcely begun, and at a moment when a miniature civil war -- Orsini against Colonna - - was raging. Soon Rome itself was threatened with siege, and though the arrival of a Venetian general, Roberto Malatesta, to command the pope's troops, and his victory over the Neapolitans at Campo Morto (August 21, 1482), delivered the city, the general's death three weeks later, and the departure of the Venetian contingents, soon renewed the danger. For the next few months the Neapolitans ravaged the pope's lands with little hindrance, while in the north the pope's allies conquered Ferrara almost at their ease. To add to the papal misfortune a half-mad Dominican archbishop had re-inaugurated (if that be the word) the Council of Basel, and though, as yet, he was the only bishop present, Florence and Milan were beginning to wonder whether they had not here a useful weapon with which once more to beat the pope. It was Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, seemingly, who finally decided the pope to break with Venice and make peace. On December 12, 1482, the treaty was signed between Sixtus and the King of Naples. All conquests were to be restored and the Duke of Ferrara was to be reinstated; also a pension was guaranteed to Count Girolamo. The Venetians -- with whom the war was going well -- had not been consulted about all this, but the pope now informed them of what had been done, and ordered them to ratify the treaty. Not very surprisingly they utterly refused, and warned the pope not to use spiritual weapons to coerce them, threatening, if he did so, to call in the Turks and plunge all Italy into war.

The pope's diplomacy had not brought him peace. Instead of fighting Naples as the ally of Venice, he was now to fight Venice as the ally of Naples. Immense sums had to be raised and a fleet equipped -- an essential condition for success against the great naval power, the pope declared. [998] The 50,000 ducats needed were got by the creation of new posts, and the sale of the appointments. The immediate problem was to relieve Ferrara, and meanwhile (May 25, 1483) the Venetians were excommunicated, and their state placed under an interdict.

The war went very slowly. The Venetians used their sea power to capture towns on the Apulian coast of Naples, but they failed to take Ferrara. Soon, feeling the strain of their isolation, for the pope's diplomacy had momentarily leagued all Italy against them, they sued for peace (March 1484); but Count Girolamo succeeded in hardening the pope against them. Then the Colonna troubles burst out afresh in Rome, with greater violence than ever (April-June). The pope was successful against the great clan in Rome itself, but the incompetent Girolamo was baffled time and again in the fights for their various strongholds in the surrounding country. Sixtus IV was beginning to feel his age, the unlookedfor strength of the rebels depressed him, and then the great league began to break up -- after all, it had held together for nearly eighteen months. At what seemed the last hour for Venice, the Duke of Milan withdrew, and secretly came to the aid of the republic, and presently the Peace of Bagniolo was arranged (August 7, 1484). Once again all conquests were mutually restored; and this time without any gain at all to Count Girolamo. The news was brought to the pope as he lay dying, and the disappointment of such a peace finished him. On August 12, the feast of St. Clare, one of the two greatest saints of the order he had once governed, he passed away.

So died this first of the popes who showed what a difference the pope could make as a prince in this delicately balanced world of petty Italian states. Sixtus IV had indeed established his family among the reigning houses of Italy, but with all these years of war and of realist diplomatic practice he had not really developed the pope's hold on his own state, nor given that state any new security against the greedy and treacherous princes who surrounded it; while, in Rome itself, the habit of war and the sudden new insistence on the material aspects of the papal office, had given new life to the old habits of riot and feud and had indeed "revived a barbarous past." The cardinals' palaces were now strongholds where each lived surrounded by his own guards, centres of bloody tumult only too often, sanctuaries for bravoes and assassins. The degree of this sharp return to the ages of violence was shown very markedly during the interregnum that now followed the death of Sixtus IV, and the proceedings in the conclave are evidence how greatly he had secularised the college of cardinals.

No sooner was it known that the pope had died, than the mob rose, and with shouts of "Colonna for ever," stormed and sacked the palace of Count Girolamo, and the houses of all his hated Genoese compatriots. The count hastened back to Rome from his operations against the Colonna fortresses, and while he lay encamped outside the city, his wife, Caterina Sforza, the classic type Or the Renaissance virago, boldly installed herself as commandant of the all-important stronghold of Castel St. Angelo. Then, for a fortnight nearly, the rival bands of soldiery fought and plundered in the streets of the city. The Colonna had returned in force, and the different cardinals sent out in haste for reinforcements for their private armies. The funeral services of the dead pope began with hardly a cardinal present; few could have made their way to St. Peter's without fighting their way through the armed forces of their colleagues. Finally the strong statesmanship of one of the few cardinals whom all respected, the Venetian Marco Barbo, a nephew of Paul II, brought peace. He prevailed on the count to surrender St. Angelo, and to leave Rome; and he prevailed on his ally Virginio Orsini, the count being magnificently compensated in money and promises. The Colonna, the Savelli, and the Conti also agreed to march out from Rome. There was to be a truce, not to expire before two months from the day of the new pope's coronation. This was on August 22, and four days later the conclave began.

Sixtus IV had created cardinals lavishly, thirty-four in all, [999] and in the conclave of 1484 no fewer than nineteen of the twenty-five present were of his naming. All but four of the twenty-five were Italians. [1000] The short-lived period of a more or less international college was over: [1001] even had the other seven cardinals then living [1002] been present, the Italians would have been twenty-two to ten. On the other hand, there was not between these Italians, subjects of half a dozen distinct and independent sovereign states, the modern bond of a common national feeling. The twenty-one were fairly evenly divided between the states only lately at war, and always mutually hostile. Venice had five cardinals, Milan four, Naples two; there were four Romans (Colonna, Orsini and Savelli), one from Siena, a Genoese and -- a new element -- four nephews of the late pope who formed a faction apart.

This is the first conclave of the type to be classic henceforward for a good three hundred years and more, where political considerations played a leading part, the first to which different princes sent instructions through their agents and at which, through cardinals who were their subjects, they even felt strong enough to declare to the Sacred College that there were certain cardinals who must not be elected. It was also a conclave in which bribery played a great part. The cardinals began by making a pact that whichever of them was elected would give the poorer cardinals -- those whose income from benefices was below 4,000 ducats -- an allowance of 100 ducats a month, and that he would compensate them for any benefice they lost through failing in their votes to oblige the various princes. The two leading figures in the conclave were Giuliano della Rovere and Rodrigo Borgia. The first wanted a pope he could control, and so maintain the influence on affairs he had begun to possess during his uncle's last years. The other wanted to be pope himself. All were agreed that the new pope must be acceptable to the league whose action had recently imposed the Peace of Bagniolo, and so a friend to Venice. Borgia was the leader of the cardinals who stood actively by the league, a small group that included such powerful personages as Ascanio Sforza, brother of the Duke of Milan, and Giovanni of Aragon, a son of the King of Naples. Borgia made certain he would be elected. But his actual following was small, and he was not trusted. The other leader was hardly more fortunate. In the first scrutiny a Venetian, Marco Barbo, came within five votes of election. Whereupon the skill of Giuliano della Rovere prevailed upon Borgia, and his associates, to abandon his candidature. The election of Barbo would mean an era of reform, and a restoration of ecclesiastical discipline. So Borgia and della Rovere combined forces, and through the night of August 27-28 they worked hard upon their colleagues, directing their minds towards the most complete nullity of them all, Giovanni Battista Cybo. They managed to secure for him eighteen votes in all, and on August 28, at nine in the morning, he was proclaimed as Innocent VIII. [1003]

INNOCENT VIII

The new pope was a Genoese, fifty-two years of age, a bishop since 1467, created cardinal by Sixtus IV in 1473. All contemporaries agreed to praise his kindly nature, his inability to refuse requests, but the different ambassadors noted also -- what events soon showed to be equally true of him -- that he had no judgment of his own, and little understanding of the problems that faced him. It was Giuliano della Rovere who would really reign, "the cardinal of St. Peter. . . pope and more than pope." Innocent VIII, it has also to be recorded, has the unfortunate distinction in the history of this time that he made no secret of the fact that he was the father of a family. [1004] "He was the first of the popes," says the grave Augustinian, Giles of Viterbo, [1005] " openly to make a show of sons and daughters, the first who openly arranged marriages for them, the first to keep up the weddings in his own palace. His predecessors had left him no such example. Would that he had not found successors to imitate him." As Sixtus IV had used the marriages of various nephews to assist his diplomacy, so Innocent VIII now made play with the marriage of his son and his granddaughters.

The pope was all but bankrupt as a result of the wars of his predecessor, the bitter Colonna-Orsini feud was still seething and yet, in the first twelve months of his reign, he, or his adviser- in-chief, drifted into yet another war. The enemy this time was Naples, and once again the papacy was almost without allies, while the rest of Italy stood by, neutral towards the pope and sympathetic to his foes. The cause of the war was the refusal of Naples to pay the annual tribute due to the pope as suzerain of the kingdom. It was another grievance that the king -- Ferrante -- was filling vacant sees without any reference to Rome. The war dragged on for nine months or so (October 1485-August 1486), each side helping the rebels in the territory of the other. Innocent appealed to one after another of the Catholic sovereigns for help, but all were deaf to him. Then Giuliano della Rovere revived the ancient remedy of calling in the French claimant to the Neapolitan kingdom. He went to Genoa to negotiate with the claimant -- Rene II of Anjou -- and to arrange a naval alliance with the republic. But by the time he returned Innocent, terrified by the disorders in Rome, and the damage done his territory by the marauding Neapolitans, scenting disapproval and treachery everywhere among his own commanders, had made peace. Ferrante too was alarmed, at the prospect of a Franco-Genoese invasion. He gladly made terms, giving way on all points to the pope -- it was merely a matter of making promises -- and then going home to glut his vengeance on the Neapolitan barons who had been the pope's allies.

For the next twelve months -- while Cardinal Giuliano sulked in his fortress at Ostia -- the papal diplomacy feebly plunged hither and thither, seeking allies, until it fell under the strong influence of Lorenzo de' Medici. The new alliance was sealed by the marriage of the pope's son Franceschetto to Lorenzo's daughter Maddalena -- a marriage where there was twenty years' difference between the age of bride and groom; and Innocent consented to give the red hat to Lorenzo's second son, Giovanni, a boy of thirteen. It was, however, provided that the young cardinal should not wear the insignia of his rank for another four years, nor be admitted to consistories. Meanwhile the disorders in the Papal State mounted higher and higher. In April 1488 at Forli, Count Girolamo, the once all-powerful bravo, was murdered, and a few weeks later the lord of Faenza met the same fate. At Perugia and Foligno, Ancona and Ascoli there were like troubles, and everywhere the King of Naples was busy aiding the rebels.

The one gleam of success that relieved the tale of ignoble drifting and its sorry fruit was the pope's securing, in the face of great competition, the person of the brother of the Sultan, Prince Djem. Here, it was felt, was a hostage possession of whom could be used to keep the Turks quiescent. The Turks, for their part, were willing to pay the pope handsomely [1006] to keep Djem under lock and key. He cost the pope a cardinal's hat to the grand-master of the Knights of St. John, and another to the French king's counsellor, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and also a promise not to grant without delay the dispensation that would enable Alain d'Albret to marry the heiress or Brittany -- a bride desired for the boy king of France. The story of Djem's adventures, of his reception by the pope, his haughty, undisguised contempt for the whole paraphernalia of the Vatican etiquette, and the spectacle it all was for years to come, to Rome and all its visitors, makes pleasant reading after the petty, sordid chicanery to which the public activities of the papacy had now shrunk.

Towards 1488 a new kind of scandal was discovered, when high officials of the Chancery were arrested on a charge of forging papal bulls. The whole administration of justice had fallen into a bad way. It was a rare crime indeed that could not be atoned for by a money payment. The semi-bankruptcy in which Innocent had found the administration never really improved. Continually the pope created new posts to sell to the highest bidder, twenty-six new secretaryships in 1486, and fifty-two plumbatores whose duty was to affix the leaden seals to the bulls. These last paid, each, [1007] ,500 ducats on appointment: an immense sum which they would recoup from the fees paid by those for whose affairs the bulls were issued. There were obviously better ways still of compensating oneself, and in September 1489 two secretaries and four minor officials were arrested. In two years, they confessed, they had put out fifty bogus bulls, liberal grants and dispensations. For which the pope had them burned alive.

To the very end of the reign, the King of Naples continued to sap and mine the weak pope's authority. Innocent even spoke of leaving Rome, and taking refuge at Avignon. Then suddenly, in the last weeks of 1491, Ferrante veered round completely. Once more he made a treaty in which he accepted the pope's terms, and sealed it with an offer to marry his grandson Luigi of Aragon to the pope's granddaughter, Battistina.

The new year 1492 thus opened well, but in March, Innocent -- rarely free from illness -- began to fail. On April 18 Lorenzo de' Medici died, and all Italy waited in apprehension, for the son who succeeded him had none of his father's political genius. By the end of June it was known that Innocent was slowly dying, and the end came on July 25. [1008] Just nine days later one of his fellow countrymen set sail from Pelos on that voyage which was to discover the New World.

Innocent's reign left the papacy in worse case even than he had found it. He had been cautious in one respect, the creation of new cardinals, though in this he was yet again his own yielding, compliant self. For the existing cardinals had strongly objected to any substantial increase in their numbers. Innocent VIII had had but one creation, March 9, 1489, and added only eight cardinals to the college. Thirteen cardinals had died during his reign, and at his death the total number was twenty-seven. Of these, twenty-three made up the conclave that was to elect his successor, all but two of them Italians; and of the total there were still twelve of the creation of Sixtus IV.

In this conclave of 1492 there was hardly any unity of national groups. There was no Cybo faction, and the four della Rovere cardinals were almost the only party when the election began (August 6, 1492). But there was a strong reaction against Giuliano della Rovere, held responsible for the disasters of the late reign. His rival of 1484, Rodrigo Borgia, so an ambassador hinted to his sovereign, might now achieve much, through the great array of wealthy benefices which h s election would cause to be vacant. The spoil, to a share in which his electors might look, would be tremendous. For four days the election hung fire, three scrutinies taking place without any sign which way the election would go. Then Ascanio Sforza, one of the undoubtedly bad men among the cardinals, doubting his own chances of election, went over to Borgia. Bargains were struck, the spoil apportioned out, and gradually -- counting Borgia's own vote -- he was only short of one vote to make the needed sixteen. Finally the confederates gained the promise of the ninety-six years old Patriarch of Venice, "hardly in possession of his faculties". [1009] Rodrigo Borgia was pope, at sixty years of age, Alexander VI. Such is the story as Pastor tells it, [1010] and it seems to be the true story.

ALEXANDER VI

Alexander VI reigned for eleven years. He had won the name of a good administrator during the thirty-five years he had served the various popes, as cardinal and vice-chancellor. But no more than the weak Innocent VIII, or the technically inexperienced Sixtus IV, did this bureaucrat show himself a statesman in his handling of the grave political problems of the time. His solution, the same miserable superficial business of installing his own family and personal dependants in the chief posts, could, if it succeeded, only add to his successor's difficulties the presence within the curia and the state of yet another powerful faction of well-placed and experienced kinsmen of the last pope, determined to surrender as little as possible of the influence they had wielded. Alexander had to fight, as it were for his life, with the della Rovere. Was the next pope to have against him the Borgia as well? It was a policy that could only have succeeded had the papacy been hereditary, and even then it would have called for a higher degree of statesmanship than any of these papal families were ever able to boast.

The pope's own kin was numerous. In addition to various nephews, he had at least four children of his own who now came into prominence. The eldest son, Juan, betrothed to a cousin of the King of Spain, left Rome for his marriage and his Spanish duchy of Gandia in the first year of the reign. The second, Cesare, a lad of seventeen, was already, thanks to his father's influence, Bishop of Pampeluna. This see he now gave up, and was instead made Archbishop of Valencia, the see his father had held for thirty-six years, ever since the election to the papacy of Cesare's great- uncle, as Calixtus III, had vacated it. [1011] For the youngest son, Jofre, [1012] Alexander secured as a wife Sancia, a granddaughter of the King of Naples. The third of these children was a girl, that Lucrezia Borgia all too famous in the Borgia legend that was later developed by the innumerable enemies that the success of the family produced. Lucrezia, perhaps fourteen years old at the date of Alexander's election, was already engaged, but the marriage was immediately broken off, and a much more distinguished match arranged with a kinsman of the Duke of Milan, namely Giovanni Sforza, [1013] the Count of Cotignola and Lord of Pesaro.

The alliance of Alexander with Milan was far from welcome to Ferrante of Naples. Hostile to Alexander's candidature in the late conclave, and suspicious from the moment of his election, he now strove to avert the marriage. Once the contract was signed he began to work upon the hostility to Alexander of the disappointed Giuliano della Rovere. But the pope's diplomacy produced an anti- Naples combination, and yet another war seemed about to begin when Ferrante made the offer of a royal marriage for the boy Jofre. Upon which a general reconciliation took place, even between the pope and Cardinal Giuliano. Only a few weeks later the brittle peace was again all but broken when, in the first great creation of cardinals, Alexander gave hats to the nominees of almost all the princes of Europe except the King of Naples (September 20, 1493).

Ferrante did not live long enough again to trouble Alexander's peace. He died in the first weeks of 1494. [1014] The King of France, Charles VIII (1483-1498), immediately laid claim to the kingdom, and thereby not only brought to an end the first, easy part of Alexander's reign, but began the first chapter of the history of modern Europe, the long rivalry of France and Spain for the control of European affairs, that was to fill the next hundred and fifty years. The eleven years of Alexander's reign are thus a link between the older world when all the rivalries and wars of Europe are civil wars between small states which are, consciously, parts of a single Christian whole, and the modern age when princes and states strive for a position whence they may dominate the life of the whole world. The accident that Italy was the battle-ground of the first of these great national duels, and that it continued to be so for the next seventy years nearly, gave the popes of the new age a new kind of importance in international politics; they were, in all this game, extremely important figures, but they were not now important as the recognised spiritual chiefs of a christendom where a common religious faith produced a common public estimate of international right and wrong, but important principally as the rulers of a state centrally situated in the territories contended for, a state whose independence was one of the few indubitably fixed and stable elements of European life, and yet a state that might change sides at any moment, since its rulers were elected -- a state that might change sides often, since its rulers were rarely so young when elected as to be likely to reign for long. a

The French invasion of Italy in 1494 was a wholly new kind of thing, and this is the crucial year of Alexander's reign. He was now to meet the supreme test of the administrator promoted to rulership. Meanwhile, his first creation of cardinals was an indication that in his use of high ecclesiastical patronage he would follow faithfully the tradition of his last two predecessors. Unlike Innocent VIII, he was to be lavish in his creations, adding forty-seven in all to the Sacred College in the nine years of his reign, where Innocent had but added eight in almost the same length of time. Alexander's first cardinal, created five days after his coronation, [1015] was his nephew, Juan Borgia, who since 1483 had been Archbishop of Monreale. [1016] Now, in September 1493, the pope created another twelve, six of them from outside Italy. Seven were by favour to the different princes, namely the Roman ambassadors of the Kings of France and Spain, a confidential agent of the emperor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, [1017] the sons of the King of Poland, of the Doge of Venice and of the Duke of Ferrara. There was also a small family group, Cesare Borgia, Giuliano Cesarini (brother to a son-in-law of Alexander) and Alessandro Farnese, whose sister stood to Alexander in a relation that may most politely be described as equivocal. Cesarini and Farnese were both very young, Cesare Borgia was still in his teens and so too was the Ferrarese Ippolito d'Este. [1018]

The French king's claim to succeed Ferrante in Naples met with no support from the papal suzerain. Alexander recognised Ferrante's son Alfonso as king, and sent a papal legate to crown him. But the young Charles VIII was utterly carried away by the desire of military glory, and the opposition to him was welcome. He began to prepare the mightiest army Italy had seen for hundreds of years, and meanwhile his diplomacy was busy "softening" the papal resistance. The threats now usual on the lips of princes determined to wring concessions from the pope were made, namely to withdraw the nation's obedience from him, and to confiscate all benefices held by his appointment. And, on the suggestion possibly of the Duke of Milan -- Charles's Italian partner in the coming expedition -- the services were enlisted of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. On April 24, 1494, Giuliano fled from Rome, first to his bishopric of Avignon, and then to the French camp. Soon Charles was proclaiming the need to call a General Council which should judge the pope, the Colonna -- worked upon by France -- began to move, and by the middle of June Alexander had passed from alarm almost to despair. He even turned to beg aid from the Turks. The pope's sole ally was his cruel, cowardly and treacherous vassal of Naples, Alfonso II.

In September Charles VIII crossed the French frontier. The Dukes of Milan and Ferrara joined him and so, publicly, did Cardinal Giuliano. By October 14 he had reached Pavia, whither Piero de' Medici journeyed from Florence, and surrendered to him -- whereupon the Florentines drove out the Medici and restored the old government of the republic. On November 17 Charles was at Florence, and presently moving against Rome. The French -- thanks to the Colonna -- were already in Ostia and their galleys menaced the mouth of the Tiber. Alexander began to send legates to the king. But Charles refused to treat with anyone but the pope. He had a vow to visit the Holy Places, he said, and must spend his Christmas at Rome. But the legates also reported to Alexander that, everywhere, the French were announcing their mission to reform the Church. And the advance continued, relentlessly. For a brief moment Alexander's hopes rose, for on December 10 the army of the King of Naples marched into Rome. But a closer view of all that his ally could do depressed him to the extreme of preparing for flight. By December 18 " everything in the Vatican down to the bedding and table service " had been packed. It was, however, too late. The very next day the French pickets made their appearance, and from the windows of his palace the pope could see them exercising their horses in the Prati. The Neapolitans retired, glad to be away before the army itself arrived. That same night -- December 25 -- Alexander made terms with the French king's commissioners, and on New Year's Eve his armies marched in.

Charles VIII remained in Rome almost for a month. He was fascinated by the wealth and the beauty and the luxury of the city -- as, indeed, he had been fascinated by all he had seen of Italy since the invasion began. He was also fascinated, and overcome, by the pleasant-mannered pope. No one has ever accused Alexander of haughtiness or awkwardness. His was, it would seem, a gay and gentlemanly spirit, good-humoured, witty, a kindly, talkative man of the world, and his charm worked wonders with the raw, awkward, misshapen little man who was the offspring of that oddest of kings, Louis XI.

Once king and pope had met informally, and Alexander, with no more than a graceful gesture of assent, had admitted two of his friends to the college of cardinals, the murders and rapes and plunderings of the troops in Rome ceased to matter. The army would soon be out of the city and on its way to Naples.

The pope managed to keep possession of St. Angelo, and he was not to be forced into any recognition of Charles as King of Naples. But he had to grant free passage to the French armies through his state, and to surrender his main port, Civita Vecchia; also he must appoint as legates and governors in all the chief cities prelates approved by Charles. He had, next, to surrender to Charles the invaluable brother of the Sultan, and also (as a hostage, though this was not expressly stated) his son Cesare. All the cardinals and barons who had supported Charles were to be forgiven, and especially Giuliano della Rovere. There was no more talk of reforming the Church. The eight cardinals who had gone over to Charles saw their leader become as papal as the pope himself. At the crucial moment of the audience, with Alexander in their toils, Charles had ruined it all by a sudden unconditional profession of obedience and homage, of recognition that Alexander was the true Vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter. On January 28, 1495, the French marched out from Rome.

Charles had got no further than Marino, ten miles to the south, when the news came that Alfonso of Naples, terrified, had abdicated, leaving the chaos to the management of his young son Ferrantino. At the same time the French king received his first hint that even the cynical Europe of the Renaissance would not allow the papacy to become any one prince's tool, when the Spanish ambassadors brought him the strong protest of Ferdinand and Isabella against the invasion of the papal state and the occupation of Rome. And now Cardinal Cesare neatly gave him the slip. But, on February 22, Charles entered Naples, without opposition, the populace frantically enthusiastic for the novelty, more suo.

While the French gave themselves to the manifold pleasures of their new southern possession, the Italian diplomacy knit together a new league that would bar the king's return to France, the pope, Milan, and Venice joining with Spain and the emperor, the pope being pledged to use his spiritual powers for the objects of the alliance (March 31, 1495). Charles was mad with anger and alarm. He might make a parade of himself, crowned as King of Naples, in the cathedral of his new capital, but prudence bade him look to his communications, and only a week later (May 20), with half of his army, he began the return towards France. Alexander, this time, evaded, by a timely flight to Orvieto, the meeting Charles desired. Rome was stripped of its valuables in anticipation of a sack. But the French passed through without any delay. They got over the Apennines safely, and at Fornovo, on July 6, beat off the attack of the allied army without great difficulty. By October Charles VIII was back in France, and the great expedition was over, although it still remained for the allies to clear out the garrisons the king had left behind in the south, ten thousand men in all. It was not until July 1496 that the last of these surrendered, to the Spanish commander Gonsalvo of Cordova.

While the Spaniards were thus engaged, Alexander turned to punish the barons who had sided with the French. The chief of these were the Orsini. They were now excommunicated, and all their possessions declared confiscated. But the execution of the sentence was put into the hands of the pope's eldest son, the Duke of Gandia, and it proved a task beyond his powers. The main fortress, Bracciano, defied all his efforts, and sorties of the Orsini even descended as far as Rome, where the rebels joined forces with their supporters in the city. The fortress was still untaken when, on January 25, 1497, the Orsini completely routed the pope's army at Soriano. Alexander now had to make peace on their terms, and restore their castles. Then, for a moment, fortune smiled on the papal cause, and on March 9 the Spaniards drove the French from Ostia.

And now began a series of extraordinary events in the family life of the pope that kept Rome interested and alert for a year and a half. In Holy Week (March) 1497, Lucrezia's husband, Giovanni Sforza, suddenly disappeared from Rome. The question had been raised of declaring his marriage null, on the ground that he was impotent. Sforza had refused to let the case go against him undefended, and he now fled to his city of Pesaro to escape the anger of the pope. Lucrezia, it seems, stood by her husband. In May the pope created a third Borgia cardinal, another Juan Borgia, [1019] the son of one of his sisters and on June 7 he granted to the Duke of Gandia and his descendants for ever the Duchy of Benevento with Terracina and Pontecorvo; the next day Cesare was named legate for the coronation of the new King of Naples, Federigo. [1020] Then, on June 14, the Duke of Gandia mysteriously disappeared. For two days he was missing, and then his body, slashed with a score of wounds, the throat cut, was fished out of the Tiber. Was it the Orsini or some jealous lover or husband? The mystery has never been resolved, but the murder roused even the Rome of 1497, and it shook Alexander to the point that he solemnly promised to amend his life, and even named a commission to plan a complete reform of the curia and the Church.

It is after the murder of his elder brother that Cesare Borgia first comes into the public life of the reign. He returned from crowning the King of Naples meditating a dramatic change in his status. He now wished to break off his ecclesiastical career, and he thought an exchange might be arranged between himself and Jofre, his youngest brother. Cesare would be freed from all his obligations, and resign his archiepiscopal see of Valencia and his cardinal's hat; the marriage between Jofre and Sancia would be dissolved, on the ground that it had not been consummated; Cesare would marry Sancia and become a prince, while Jofre would succeed to his cardinalate and all his other benefices. Alexander was slow to agree, but by December he had got so far as to say that the change of status must be so arranged as not to give scandal. While the best way to do this was carefully considered, the other domestic problem, Lucrezia's marriage, was successfully solved. Her husband's long resistance ceased, and under pressure from his two kinsmen, the Duke of Milan and Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, Giovanni Sforza now swore that he had never consummated the marriage and that he was unable to do so, and on December 20, 1497, a decree of nullity was published. Lucrezia had broken with him in June, and in August negotiations were begun for her second marriage to a son of the Prince of Salerno. [1021]

Cesare's scheme still moved slowly, the first fantastic plan was abandoned, but a few months after the disgraceful tinkering with matrimonial justice on behalf of his sister, on April 7, 1498, the King of France, Charles VIII, died. He left no son to succeed him, and the crown passed to his cousin the Duke of Orleans, Louis XII. This change in the succession was, in time, to make all the difference to Cesare's future. The new king had a claim on Milan, as a descendant of the ancient Visconti dukes; he was as eager to distinguish himself in the field as his predecessor had been; a second invasion of Italy was, then, to be looked for soon. Meanwhile, Louis sought the annulment of his own marriage with Jeanne de Valois, sister of Charles VIII, a poor invalid and a cripple, his wife for many years but who had not borne him any family; and he also sought a dispensation to marry Anne, the widow of his predecessor, and Duchess of Brittany in her own right (June 1498). The grounds on which the annulment of the marriage was sought were that Louis had married her through fear of his terrible father-in-law, Louis XI, and that the marriage could not be consummated. While a new chapter in French -- and indeed in papal history -- was thus beginning, the Borgia family's matrimonial history was also enlarged. Lucrezia was married on July 21 to Alfonso of Bisceglia, a son of the late King of Naples, [1022] and an effort was made to secure Carlotta, daughter of the reigning king, for Cesare, when his several resignations should have been allowed. But the lady refused, afraid, so she said, of the time it would take her to live down what her husband had been; she did not want to be known as the cardinal's wife. But on August 17, 1498, Cesare was at last free of his ecclesiastical rank, his orders [1023] and their obligations. The French king -- his nullity suit not yet terminated -- was granted the dispensation to wed the Duchess of Brittany, should his marriage to Jeanne be declared null, and he soon agreed to find a wife for Cesare, whom he created Duke of Valentinois, from among the women of his own family. On October 1 the new duke set out for France, with an outfit that cost his father 100,000 ducats, and a vulgar parvenu display that brought amused smiles to the face of the parsimonious French king. Louis offered him the choice between two ladies, and Cesare chose Charlotte d'Albret, the sister of the King of Navarre. In December Louis XII's marriage with Jeanne was declared null, he was free to marry Anne and rivet Britanny anew to the crown of France. The Colonna might once more rise against Alexander, and combine with Naples against him; the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors might, to his face, reproach him for his evil worldliness, and utter threats; the King of France was now his fixed and most powerful ally, and even his kinsman. When next the French invaded Italy, they would come to conquer Alexander's enemies too. When the news reached Rome, on May 24, 1499, of Cesare's marriage, the pope's joy knew no bounds. His Italian policy was reversed, the full half circle, but this time to his certain profit. In July a French army again crossed the Alps.

The four years between the invasion of 1499, and Alexander's death, four years packed with incident, are wholly dominated by the pitiless craft and violence of Cesare Borgia. It had been agreed that Louis XII would aid his new cousin's campaign to subdue the Romagna. The pope issued a series of bulls declaring forfeited the fiefs of Rimini, Pesaro, Imola, Faenza, Forli, Urbino and Camerino, and in the autumn of this same year Imola and Forli fell to the Duke. In the spring of 1500 Louis' victory at Novara [1024] secured his hold on Milan and the North, and in the autumn Cesare opened his second campaign in the Romagna. The lords of Pesaro and Rimini did not await his attack; he took Faenza (April 1501) and had its lord and his heir murdered. The pope now created him Duke of Romagna; he and his descendants were to be lords of the finest province in the Papal State. Cesare next turned his power against the barons of the Campagna, and in June 1501 he forced the surrender of the Colonna fortresses and confiscated the possessions of the Savelli. When he threatened Florence the republic hastily bought him off with 36,000 ducats and an engagement not to hinder his attack on the maritime principality of Piombino. This, with its great fortress of Orbetello, fell to Cesare in September.

Alexander now divided the spoil. Piombino went to Cesare, and the Colonna lands were formed into two new duchies, Sermoneta, which went to Lucrezia's son Rodrigo, and Nepi, given to another tiny child of three or four, a Juan Borgia who may have been Cesare's son or perhaps Alexander's. [1025] Lucrezia herself was about to make a third marriage, [1026] to the heir to the Duchy of Ferrara, so that there also the future dukes would be Borgia. Practically the whole territory of the states of the Church had now been made hereditary in this family, and future popes, if all went well, would rule their states by grace of the descendants of Alexander VI.

Cesare's next objective was Tuscany, the republics of Siena and Florence, and the reduction of the great Romagna city of Bologna. In March 1502 he began his elaborate operations. But success, this time, was to be conditioned by the circumstance that the French king was no longer the sole great military power in Italy. Eighteen months before Cesare began his preparations for these new conquests Louis XII in November 1500, had had no alternative but to accept Ferdinand of Spain as a partner in the enterprise of conquering Naples. [1027] The two had agreed to partition the kingdom, and in the following June [1028] Alexander had ratified the treaty, and had obliged the partners by declaring the King of Naples, Federigo, deposed. Federigo, understanding perfectly that there was now no hope at all, abdicated in August. And now, six months later, the two robber powers were at issue over the spoil. In July 1502 war began between them, a momentous new war, the first of many, between France and Spain for the possession of Italy and fought on Italian soil.

By the time this war had begun, Cesare, drawing huge sums from the papal treasury for arms and munitions of war, had opened his own campaign in Central Italy. Such was the terror his cruelties inspired that, as his army advanced, the people fled, "as from a hydra". He was soon master of Spoleto, and of Urbino too, and of Camerino, and he began to plan the attack on Bologna. But now, October 1502, his captains conspired to put him out of the way, before he had murdered them. For a moment Cesare was in great danger. But the help of Louis XII, and his own craft and courage, saved him. He captured Sinigaglia, on the last day of the year, and massacred there those of the conspirators whom he had induced to desert. Then he made for Perugia to deal with the rest (January 1503).

In Rome, meanwhile, Alexander dealt with the Orsini. He had the Orsini cardinal arrested, and so many of the clan's supporters with him, that Rome was panic-stricken and the pope had to reassure the civil authorities personally that he meant to do no more. On February 22 the cardinal died; not improbably he was poisoned. In the country the Orsini, as always, made a good fight. They lost their fortress of Cere (April 4, 1503), but Bracciano held out once again. Alexander had to consent to an armistice. And while the pope and his son were thus striking down the last of their enemies, the Spaniards were beginning to defeat the pope's French ally in battle after battle. From the beginning Ferdinand's generals had profited from the traditional Aragonese command of the western Mediterranean. It was a great blow to Louis when, in March 1503, his fleet was destroyed in a great battle at sea. Then followed two more French defeats, at Seminara (April 20) and Cerignola (April 28), and on May 16 the Spaniards entered Naples, to be rulers there for the next two hundred years and more.

Cesare's fortune, built so far on the favour of the French, was gravely menaced. But he now planned to play off France against Spain. All he needed was a better army of his own and -- of course -- more money. One way to get the money was for Alexander to create, on March 29, eighty new court offices to be sold at 760 ducats apiece; another was to poison the extremely wealthy Venetian cardinal Giovanni Michele and seize his possessions (April 10); [1029] a third way was to repeat the iniquity of the consistory of 1500 [1030] and, by the creation of nine new cardinals for a consideration -- bring into the treasury some 120,000 ducats. Alexander began to negotiate, with the emperor, Cesare's nomination as sovereign of Pisa and Siena and Lucca, while the duke made himself master of Perugia. The future seemed once more secured. But though Alexander at seventy was, like Queen Elizabeth, just a hundred years later, active, gay and even frisky, his end was near. "Il papa sta benissimo, " a Mantuan correspondent told his sovereign in May. But ten weeks later he was dead (August 18, 1503) and Cesare, at the same time, so ill as to be in danger of death. For the circumstance of Alexander's death Cesare was prepared, and had, no doubt, his arrangements made. But, as he told Machiavelli later, [1031] the one contingency for which it had never crossed his mind he need prepare was, that when the pope died, he, too, would be at the point of death. This was surely the providence of God.

JULIUS II

Four weeks and a day after Alexander's death thirty-seven cardinals went into conclave. Two were French, there was a block of eleven Spaniards, and twenty-two very divided Italians. Had Cesare Borgia been able to act, he might have imposed a pope of his own choice. But the cardinals, aided by the ambassadors of France, Spain and the emperor, were able to induce the sick man to make terms. His army was but one of three in the neighbourhood of Rome, and, the cardinals guaranteeing him his possessions and a free passage to them with his forces, and the French and Spanish ambassadors pledging that the armies of their sovereigns would not move nearer to Rome while the conclave debated, this most dangerous enemy of religion left Rome on September 2, still so ill that he was carried in a litter. Two days later the solemnities of the late pope's funeral began. On September 5 Giuliano della Rovere came back to Rome, after his long exile, and on the sixteenth the conclave began.

Giuliano made no secret that he meant to be pope himself. Two other powerful men were equally determined to be elected; Ascanio Sforza and the French king's chief minister, Georges d'Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen. For the cardinals, after the disgraceful history of the last thirty years, to elect another Italian or Spaniard and disregard the wishes of Louis XII would, so the French considered, be an unbearable insult. "Our generals, said this French Wolsey, "are aware of these intrigues, and they will not patiently endure such a slight to their king. "

For five days the conclave was hopelessly deadlocked, despite Giuliano's success in winning the Spanish cardinals to his side. Then d'Amboise and Ascanio joined forces to propose a quiet, neutral man against whom none had a word to say, the senior member of the college, Francesco Piccolomini, the nephew of Pius II. The whole college rallied to him, and on September 22 he was proclaimed as Pius III. He was indeed a colourless personage, though not a weakling of the type of Innocent VIII, and he was a man of unblemished life. [1032] Hopes of reform accordingly ran high, especially when he promptly announced that he would summon a General Council. But Pius III, sixty-five years of age, and like his uncle a lifelong martyr to gout, was indeed a very feeble old man. The long ceremonies that followed his election -- his ordination (for he was only a deacon), [1033] his consecration as bishop and his coronation -- and the first rush of routine business, were too much for him. He very soon fell ill, and in less than four weeks after his election he was dead. In October 1503 the competitors of September took up again their round of busy intrigue and, this time, of bribery and simony too. Cesare Borgia had now returned to Rome. On the eve of the conclave he made his bargain with Giuliano della Rovere. The cardinal was to have the votes of the Spaniards, and he was to confirm Cesare in his possessions, and in his post of commander-in-chief. A short conclave of a few hours' duration sufficed to elect Giuliano, and on November 1 he was proclaimed as Julius II.

The new pope had reached just to the end of his sixtieth year. He was notoriously violent and self-willed, restless, a politician who, when not in office, had always been a rebel; and during the greater part of the reign of Alexander VI he had been the pope's most dangerous enemy. What his contemporaries saw in the election was the emergence of a strong pope, and they looked forward to a time of order, good government and peace. This last hope was not to be fulfilled, and Giuliano della Rovere was to show himself in a new role as Pope Julius II, for his immense energy was to work itself out in military expeditions quite as much as in diplomatic manoeuvres. There was, of course, little that was lamblike in such of the pope's contemporaries as Ferdinand of Spain, Louis XII of France, our own Henry VII, the Emperor Maximilian or the Venetian Senate. It was a world of hard lying, of perfidy, of cruelty and violence that the pope had known, and worked in, during the thirty years since, at the invitation of his uncle, Sixtus IV, he had left his Franciscan cell to become a cardinal and man of affairs. He did not propose to retire from that world now, nor to shrink from using in defence of his rights the only argument whose force that world would appreciate.

Julius II found Cesare Borgia installed as the actual ruler of the greater part of his state, a vassal more powerful than his suzerain; and what cities of the Romagna were not in Cesare's power, Venice, in these late disturbed years, had laid hands on. But, in fact, Cesare Borgia's position was critical. His French patron's star had declined; and he was not himself well established, as yet, with the Spaniards. When the terrible condottiere betook himself to Naples, as a first step towards making himself once again a reality in Italian politics, his admiring friend the viceroy, Gonsalvo de Cordova, was nevertheless compelled, by Ferdinand's instructions, to arrest him. When the pope now suggested to the King of Spain that Italy would be a happier place for all its princes were Cesare out of it, Ferdinand readily agreed, and under a strong guard the most dangerous of the Borgia returned in 1504 to his native land. Like many another of his kind he ceased to be terrible from the moment he came up against superior force and equal determination.

By this time Julius II had regained the most of the Romagna towns where Cesare Borgia had been lord. But the Venetians, with a polite kind of contempt, refused to take seriously the pope's repeated demands for a restoration of what they held, such great cities as Rimini, Faenza and Ravenna. And their intrigues to seduce from him the newly-acquired Romagna never ceased. The pope began to look round for allies; Venice was a power far beyond what his slight resources could hope to subdue. And the pope no longer looked to the other Italian states. Naples was now ruled by Spain, Milan by France. The new papal diplomacy must be international; the next war, if war there must be, would be a general European war. But while France and Spain were still at war about Naples, the pope's great schemes had to wait.

In the next two years (1504-1506) the pope secured from Venice a few small towns -- surrenders made in a manner that emphasised the Venetian determination to keep the main strongholds, and also the Venetian sense of the pope's helplessness -- and he took back the papal fiefs in the Campagna which Alexander VI had granted to the Borgia. Then, by three diplomatic marriages, he sought to bind to the Holy See the most turbulent of his own barons; one of his nieces married a Colonna, while, for a nephew and for one of his own daughters he arranged marriages with the Orsini. In October 1505 France and Spain finally came to an accord about Naples, [1034] the pope's diplomacy completed his alliances with the Italian states, [1035] his last preparations were made, and in the summer of 1506 he announced his plan. It was to reduce his own two cities of Perugia and Bologna, neither of which had ever been more than nominally subject to the popes. Despite the opposition of Venice, and of France, the expedition started, August 26, 1506, and Julius II led it in person. It was almost three years since his election. The remaining six years of his reign were to see almost continuous war.

The pope was absent from Rome for just seven months, and the event justified his courage. As had more than once happened in the days of the ruthless Cesare Borgia, the tyrants did not wait to try a fall with fate. While Julius halted at Orvieto (September 5-9), the Baglioni came in from Perugia to surrender at discretion. The pope took possession of the town four days later. He reached Imola by October 20, and while he planned there his last moves against Bologna, the news came that the tyrant -- Bentivoglio -- had fled. On November 10 Julius entered the city, the first pope to be really its lord. He remained at Bologna, reorganising the government, until after the New Year and returned to Rome on March 27, 1507. It was the eve of Palm Sunday, and the next day Julius made his ceremonial entry in the most magnificent procession known for years, under triumphal arches, and amid showers of flowers, with choirs singing in his honour the hymns from the day's great liturgy -- to the unconcealed scandal of the pope's master of ceremonies, who said openly to Julius that this was a scandalous way for a pope to begin Holy Week. [1036]

The next objective of the victorious pope was Venice. But a new obstacle now blocked the plan of a grand alliance. Ferdinand of Spain was introducing into his new kingdom of Naples that system of royal control over Church affairs which was one of the characteristics of his rule in Spain, where the king was all- powerful in appointments to sees, and where without his leave none dared, under pain of death, bring in any bulls or other documents from the Holy See. And while this trouble was yet unsettled Ferdinand, to the pope's chagrin, not only made his peace with Louis XII in a personal interview at Savona (June 1507), but refused to meet the pope. However, by the end of the next year, 1508, the needs of the Emperor Maximilian had brought about the long desired league against Venice. On December 10, 1508, the emperor and the King of France signed a pact of alliance at Cambrai -- a peace-treaty between the two powers and a league against the Turks. But secretly they had come to an agreement to attack Venice and to partition the republic's possessions on the European mainland, offering an appropriate share of the spoil to all interested. If the pope joined the league -- he was not represented at Cambrai -- he was to bring against Venice his spiritual powers also, and he would receive at the peace his own Romagna cities that Venice still detained. It was not until nearly four months later that Julius joined the league, until after the Venetians had repeatedly, and with their usual scorn, refused his new demands for the return of his territories. When the news came that the pope had joined the alliance they offered restitution. But Julius now stood by the pact, and on April 27 he laid an interdict on the republic.

The first act of the long war which followed was soon over. On May 14, 1509, the Venetian army was scattered like chaff at the battle of Agnadello. Venice was, for the moment, at the mercy of the league, and evacuating immediately the papal cities of Ravenna, Cervia, Rimini, and Faenza, the republic appealed to the pope for mercy. The envoys had a grim reception (July 1509), for almost the last act of Venice before the disastrous battle was to appeal against the pope to a future General Council. Before the pope would discuss the desired absolution from excommunication and interdict, the Venetians must accept his terms, promise to abandon their habit of installing bishops without the pope's consent, for example, or of levying taxes on the clergy. Moreover, the Venetians must restore. all their Italian conquests of the last eight years and more. While the pope held out, the fortunes of war suddenly changed; Venice, within a few weeks, had regained Padua and captured the pope's chief general. Julius, at the news, went off into one of his rages, throwing his biretta to the ground, cursing and swearing violently. The republic broke off the negotiations. And then the pope set them going once more. What brought the pope to approach Venice was a new fear of France, not only dominant now in northern Italy, but showing itself unpleasantly able to force from the pope new concessions in jurisdiction. On February 15, 1510, the pope made peace with Venice, and so deserted the league. The Venetians gave way on all points, and Julius reduced the humiliating ceremony of the reconciliation to a thin formality. But, in their hearts, the Venetians still held out. Nine days before the act of submission, the Council of Ten had drawn up a secret declaration that they would not hold themselves bound by what, so they declared, they only signed under compulsion. The gains of the war would be the pope's only so long as he had strength to keep them; and meanwhile he had mortally offended his allies, especially the French.

To Julius II this last particular was welcome rather than otherwise, for the pope now proposed to crown his career by driving the French out of Italy once and for all. If he did not actually utter the famous words "Out with the barbarians, " the sentiment was, from now, for ever on his lips. The year 1510 opened with the certainty of a speedy new war between the pope and France. He could not eat nor drink, nor sleep, he said, for the thought of the French. It was obviously the will of God that he should punish their ally, the Duke of Ferrara, and free Italy from their power. The first stage in the business was for the pope to destroy this powerful vassal, the Duke of Ferrara, who had disregarded the papal command to desert his French ally, and who was still harassing the Venetians. On August 9, 1510, Julius II excommunicated him, in a bull of staggering severity, and declared his fief forfeited. Then, at the end of the month, the pope once more left Rome at the head of an army marching north.

The French king had not passively awaited the pope's assault, but he was gravely handicapped by the loss of the shrewdest of his advisers, the cardinal Georges d'Amboise, [1037] whom a personal hatred of the pope stimulated to brave any extremity, and who was the one force that could keep the king's own vacillating will fixed and true to its purpose. And while the pope made an alliance that secured him the invaluable Swiss -- rightly reputed the finest soldiers of the day -- Louis XII fell into the abysmal mistake of attacking the pope through the spiritual arm. It was perhaps a natural kind of reprisal for Julius II's lavish use of excommunications to forward his plans. But all history was there to show how, in the hands of a Catholic prince, this weapon breaks sooner or later. To such contests there is but one end, submission and retraction on the part of the prince -- unless the prince turns heretic and leaves the Church, in which case all hope of dominating the Church is at an end.

But Louis XII was ill-advised, and Julius knew it. While the pope watched the French cardinals narrowly, imprisoning one of them and threatening to behead him, Louis, so Machiavelli, now Florence's ambassador in France, wrote home, was resolved to renounce obedience to the pope "and to hang a council round his neck. " Julius II was to be annihilated, in spirituals as well as in temporals, and another set in his place. This was on July 21, 1510, and nine days later the French king sent out to the bishops of France a summons to meet and arrange the preliminaries of the council. The technique for dealing with awkward popes invented by Philip the Fair, and by now a tradition with the French kings, was beginning to function. On August 16 a royal edict forbade French subjects to visit Rome, and in September, at a great meeting at Tours, the bishops gave Louis their support, and voted a generous subsidy to help the expedition that was to invade Italy once more and, this time, depose the pope.

By now Julius II was nearing Bologna, and there misfortunes crowded upon him. On October 17 he heard that five of his cardinals had gone over to Louis, and the next day the sickness, under which he had been labouring for some time, took a sudden turn for the worse. He fell into a delirium and raved that rather than fall into the hands of the French he would kill himself. The cardinals expected his death, and began to think of the conclave. Meanwhile the French were within ten miles of the city, and Cardinal Alidosi, the pope's favourite, was treasonably negotiating with them.

But the old pope recovered as speedily as he had collapsed. He managed to keep the French away by a feint of negotiations and then, as the Venetians and Spaniards arrived, the French fell back. By the end of the year 1510 the initiative had once again passed to the pope, his armies were besieging the fortresses of Concordia and Mirandola that were the keys to Ferrara, and, scorning the doctors, he pressed on to take his place in the front of the attack (January 2, 1511). Never was the fiery spirit of Julius II so satisfied as in these weeks. Since his dangerous illness the pope had grown a great beard, and wearing his armour he stamped through the deep snow before the walls of Mirandola, delighting the soldiers with his familiarity as he mixed with them round the camp fires, and by the blunt, coarse language in which, from time to time, he raged at the incompetence and over- cautiousness of his generals. Men were killed at his side and the roof of the farmhouse where he lodged was shot away as he sat there. But the pope hung on, promising the soldiers the sack of the city once they had taken it. On January 20 Mirandola fell, and Julius made his way in with the troops up the scaling ladders and through the newly-opened breach.

But soon the Duke of Ferrara had beaten the papal army in open battle (February 28), the French were once more masters in Bologna, and the pope only just got away in time to Ravenna. Here there were violent scenes between Julius and his nephew, the Duke of Urbino, whom the pope blamed for the loss of Bologna, and who in turn blamed the favourite Alidosi. On May 27 the duke and cardinal met in the streets and, as the cardinal smiled contemptuously at him, the passionate young man cut him down and finished him off with a dozen wounds. The pope had, however, no time to indulge his sorrow, or his rage, nor to repress the unconcealed delight of all his court and cardinals at the disappearance of the wretched traitor. He had now to fly to Rimini, and there he found, fixed to the doors of the church with due formality, a summons from the rebellious cardinals citing him to a council which would meet at Pisa in the coming September; and not only the King of France, but the emperor too, supported them. The glories of Mirandola were ended indeed, and with all possible speed the pope made his way back to Rome. [1038] It was a dark hour in his life; Julius II was isolated, and the coming council would no doubt "depose" him.

But the religious situation was not so bad as it seemed. Although, in France, the University of Paris was once again stirred up to popularise that theory of the pope's subordination to General Councils which had already done the French kings such service, and although, along with this, a campaign was organised, in the press and on the stage, of anti-papal calumny and ridicule, the scheme for a great council at Pisa died almost at birth. The emperor found it impossible to persuade Hungary and Poland to join him; the English held aloof, and so did Spain. But it was the reply which the pope made to the rebels that killed the movement. For, on July 25, 1511, just a month after his return to Rome, Julius II made the plan of the rebels his own, and summoned a General Council which should meet at Rome on April 19, 1512. And during the summer his diplomacy managed to knit a new combination against France -- the Holy League, for the protection and defence of the pope. This was signed on October 4. On November 17 the new young King of England, Henry VIII, joined it and in the first week of the New Year the war began again.

Meanwhile, on November 1, 1511, the four rebel cardinals arrived at Pisa, with a dozen or so French bishops in support, to find that no one in the town would lodge them and that the canons had locked up the cathedral. In the next fortnight they managed to hold three pretentious sessions, where, with a wealth of declamation, they reaffirmed the ideals of the famous fifth session of Constance, and then, all but chased out by the townsfolk, they declared the council transferred to Milan, where Louis XII still reigned as duke.

The new anti-French offensive opened well. The Venetians took Brescia (February 2, 1512) and the Spanish and papal army laid siege to Bologna (January 26). But there now appeared one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, Gaston de Foix, a kinsman of Louis XII, twenty-three years of age, and in a few brief weeks he all but destroyed the league. He managed to make his way into Bologna (February 5) and forced a raising of the siege. On February 18 he retook Brescia, and on April 11 -- Easter Sunday -- he inflicted on the Venetians and Spaniards the terrible defeat of Ravenna. It was the bloodiest battle fought in Italy for a thousand years. The vanquished lost 10,000 killed, and a vast horde of prisoners, among them the Papal Legate Cardinal de' Medici. But the victor was himself slain in the battle.

When the news of the defeat reached Rome there was universal panic. Even the pope' for a moment, gave way. The French were masters of the key' province of his state. How long would it be before Julius was in their hands? And at Milan the rebel cardinals, on April 21, declared him suspended from his office, that all his acts henceforth were void in law, his appointments also; and they explicitly forbade him to create any new cardinals.

The ultimately decisive event, however, was not the victory at Ravenna, but the death of Gaston de Foix. This the Cardinal Legate shrewdly foresaw, and he managed to send his cousin, Giulio de' Medici [1039] to the pope to impress upon him the difference this must make. While the emperor recalled the troops he had sent to serve under Gaston -- the German professional mercenaries who had been a main element in the victory -- the Swiss now descended on Verona. The French, utterly disordered, led now by a weak and incompetent commander, and beyond the reach of reinforcements, were forced to retreat or see their line of communications cut. The pope now looked on at the most amazing spectacle of a victorious army in full retreat. Like mist before the sun the great threat disappeared. The Romagna, Bologna, Pavia, Milan itself, were abandoned, and in ten weeks after the victory of Ravenna the victors were back in France, a broken remnant. Somewhere in the rout were the cardinals and bishops of the rebel council. " Papa Bernadin" [1040] was finished. Meanwhile, on May 3, only a fortnight after the appointed date, the General Council which the pope had summoned, assembled in the basilica of the Lateran.

In August the allies met at Mantua to regulate the future of Italy. Milan, now recovered from the French, was given back to the Sforza, and Florence to the Medici. But from Milan were detached Parma and Piacenza, handed over to the pope, who also received Reggio. One awkward question defied settlement, the claim of the emperor on Venice for Verona and Vicenza. The pope was most anxious to win Maximilian's support for the council and he now, for the third time in his short reign, reversed his policy. On November 19, 1512, he made a treaty with Maximilian against Venice, his late ally. The emperor was to support the council, and to hand over Modena to the pope -- whose new territories were thus linked to the old -- while Julius was to join in compelling Venice to give up the fiefs which the emperor claimed, and to use on behalf of his new ally spiritual weapons too. This treaty was made public on November 25. Its effect, of course, was to drive Venice to seek help from France, and in March 1513 a new alliance was negotiated between them and a new war began. But by that time Julius II was no more.

Towards the end of 1512 the pope -- he was close on seventy -- began to fail rapidly, and he was apparently the first to realise that, this time, it was the end. His last days were harassed by the realisation that while he had destroyed the hold of the French on Italy, the Spaniards had very effectively taken their place. "If God grants me life, " he had been heard to say, "I will free the Neapolitans from the yoke which is now upon their necks. " Whether such feats were a proper occupation for popes, whether indeed, Julius seriously meditated such a war, death found him still restless and anxious about the menace of Spain. One thing he impressed on the cardinals who stood round his bed, that they should observe the new law he had just made about simony in the conclave. In the night of February 20-21, 1513, he passed away.

Julius II had died at a critical moment in the complicated international life of which the pope was now a principal figure. There was no certitude that his successor, even if faithful to his ideals, would choose the same alliances through which to realise them. All Europe would watch the conclave with even more interest than usual. The dead pope was sincerely mourned by his subjects, a new feature of papal obsequies, and it was a testimony to his administration that, for the first time in fifty years, the cardinals assembled in a city of unbroken calm.

There were twenty-five of them, in all, to go into conclave on March 4, 1513. Those lately in active rebellion against the pope were excluded. There were no outstanding personalities among the cardinals, no intriguers of genius, and no well-defined groups. In a leisurely way they first drew up the usual pact to secure from the new pope what they thought their due share of money and offices and privileges. On March 7 the impatient guardians of the conclave reduced their rations of food, to hasten their deliberations, and reduced them still further three days later. The only line of conflict in the college was, seemingly, that of age, the older cardinals against the younger men, Riario Sansoni, a cousin of the late pope, against Giovanni de' Medici. It was evident that no Venetian could be chosen, still less a Frenchman. At the first ballot -- March 10 the votes were well scattered. Then Sansoni and Medici met, the son of the all-but-murdered Lorenzo de' Medici and the cardinal whom the murderers had used as a decoy and in whose presence the crime had been committed. The older man had too many personal enemies for his own election to be possible. He agreed that his friends should support Medici. A second scrutiny, pro forma, confirmed the pact, and on March 11 Medici was proclaimed as Pope Leo X, to the surprise of Rome and of the whole Christian world.

LEO X

The new pope was only thirty-seven, but a chronic invalid, operated on in the very conclave for a fistula, popular for his easy-going ways and his generosity, likely to strengthen the international position of the papacy for the next few years since he was virtually the ruler of Florence. Pomponius Laetus, Poliziano, and Marsilio Ficino had been his tutors, and in the wealthy cultural palaces of Lorenzo de' Medici he had been fashioned after all the literary and artistic ideals of the age. Though he was not yet a priest he had been a churchman from babyhood. At eight he had been given an archbishopric, [1041] at thirteen he was a cardinal. Then, when he was barely nineteen, the revolution of 1494 had driven his family from Florence, and the cardinal for some years wandered about France and Germany. Alexander VI's court he had only known in the last two or three years of the reign. To Julius II he had been of great political importance, once the Florence dominated by his family's enemies had supported the schismatical Council of Pisa. It was Julius II who had restored the Medici rule in Florence, and now Giovanni, the eldest surviving son of Lorenzo, was pope.

Only twelve days after the election the threatened alliance between France and Venice (against the new Papal-Imperial pact made by Julius II) was published. How would Leo X react? Muratori has well described his general line of conduct, saying that he always steered by two compasses. A more recent Italian scholar, more familiarly, sees him as an eel slippery beyond belief, ever writhing and twisting to escape the hand that would grasp it. Hardly ever, in fact, was Leo X to make an agreement with any power without simultaneously coming to an understanding with its rivals. He realised fully how weak in resources his state really was, and even at the last extremity he shrank from definitely committing himself to political action. Even in the last agonies of a crisis, he would decide and reverse his decision, and reverse yet again. Secretive, bland, affable, every one's friend, he strove to maintain himself by smiling in silence as the inevitable awkward questions were put.

So now, when Henry VIII and Maximilian formed a new league that would check the Franco-Venetian alliance, the pope did not join it at once, although he approved, and sent subsidies. Whichever side won he proposed to have claims on its gratitude. On June 6, 1513, the French were heavily defeated on that field where so many armies met, at Novara, and their armies were once more driven out of Italy. Leo exerted himself to prevent their foes from being too completely victorious. But the English also had invaded France. They had taken Terouanne and Tournai, and they had won the battle of Spurs, and also, against the French king's Scots allies, the bloody fight of Flodden. Then in the autumn, Louis XII made his peace with the pope, repudiated the schism and acknowledged the council in session at the Lateran (December 19, 1513).

But when Louis, exhausted now, proceeded to make with Spain a peace that was definitive, and to offer Ferdinand, as dowry with one of his daughters, the French claims on Milan and Genoa, and to renounce in his favour the French claim on Naples, the shock to the pope was paralysing. The sole result for him would be King Stork in place of King Log. The Spaniards would be masters of Italy in the North as well as in the South. Hence the eagerness of the pope, now, to see peace made between Louis and Henry VIII, his despatch to England and to France of the most experienced diplomatist in his service, [1042] and his joy at the treaty that followed, the peace sealed by the marriage of Henry's youngest sister to the French king. Louis was now tied to the English instead of to Spain (October 1514). But by this treaty of London the English king acknowledged his brother-in-law's rights in Italy ! So, once again, a new anxiety for the pope. Would Louis XII plan yet another invasion of Italy, with the security, this time, that the English would not attack his rear? However, on New Year's day, 1515, Louis XII died, killed by his endeavours to live up to the gaiety of a wife thirty years his junior; and it is on record that the superficial, short-sighted politician in the Vatican rejoiced. In the nature of things no relief could be more than momentary to so folly-ridden a ruler. Louis XII had no son, and so it was that, instead of that elderly broken man, Leo X had now to face a young king of twenty, valorous, ambitious, and capable, Francis I.

There is not space here to set out in detail all the sinuous writhings of the pontifical diplomacy in these years. The pope's chief confidant was Bernardo Dovizzi, called the Cardinal Bibbiena, his one-time tutor and secretary, a humanist of distinction, but utterly inexperienced in affairs of state, and as cocksure as he was incompetent. While Francis I was preparing a greater army than ever for the conquest of Italy the cardinal laughed at the news as mere gossip, and spoke of the lesson which his new league would soon be teaching the king. But when Francis moved, in July 1515, the pope, whose squandermania had already in two years exhausted the treasure Julius II had left behind, was soon at his wits' end. As to the league, Leo had at last brought himself to sign the pact, but would not have it published, in a desperate hope that he might still, somehow, charm away the advancing French. On August 12, however, by the victory of Villa Franca, they drove a wedge between the Swiss armies that were Italy's only hope. Ten days later Alessandria fell to them; and still the pope, while writing urgent commands to advance, to Bibbiena's twin in incompetence, the Cardinal Giulio de' Medici -- legate with the army -- was sending secret apologies to the French. First he sent an envoy to Francis, and then he hoped the legate would detain the envoy; and then the envoy, and his papers, fell into the hands of the pope's allies. Never was there such incompetent tergiversation since first priests set themselves to play the politician and the soldier.

But on September 8 the crushing victory of Francis I in the bloody two days' battle of Marignano tore these preposterous activities to shreds. All the north and centre of Italy lay at the mercy of the French, and the pope knew it. The king's terms were hard, but Leo had no choice. In December the two met at Bologna. What passed between them in their several long interviews has never transpired. But the pope lost all the conquests of Julius II, Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, and Modena. He had to forbid the Swiss to molest the king in his duchy of Milan, and he even offered the king a hope of the succession to Naples -- Ferdinand of Aragon lay dying at this moment [1043] -- Francis pledging himself to maintain the Medici in Florence; and the pope came to that arrangement about French ecclesiastical affairs, the Concordat of 1516, which practically placed at the king's mercy the whole system of appointments to abbeys and sees; that the pope also gave the king the right to tax the clergy -- a crusade tithe ! -- to the tune of 400,000 livres in two years is, beside this, a detail. To such disaster had the Medici finesse brought the Church in three short years. [1044]

Leo's own war was not yet over, however. His vassal the Duke of Urbino had failed to support him against the French, being in secret communication with Francis. At Bologna the victorious king had to leave him to the mercy of the pope. Leo -- despite the debt his family owed the duke, who had given them shelter in the days of their exile from Florence -- determined to destroy him, and to give the duchy to his nephew Lorenzo. The duke, Francesco Maria della Rovere, did not wait to be defeated by the combined forces of the pope and Florence, but fled to Mantua, where the duke his father-in-law took him in. By the end of June 1516, the Medici were lords of Urbino and Pesaro and Sinigaglia. The King of France had been too caught up with other affairs to be able to prevent it, but he warned Leo not to make any attempt on the other great papal vassal at Ferrara, reminding him that Reggio and Modena were to be surrendered to Ferrara. Then, in January, 1517 the dispossessed Duke of Urbino returned, with a force of Spanish and German mercenaries, unemployed since the recent general peace. Everyone helped him who hated the Medici, the French viceroy in Milan, the Gonzaga in Mantua, the Duke of Ferrara too. The pope was by now all but bankrupt, his army mutinous for lack of pay, and he had no real generals. Nor did Cardinal Bibbiena avail greatly as a peacemaker among the papal mercenaries. And at this moment, at Rome, a plot was discovered to murder the pope, and the chief plotters were cardinals.

Leo X had been pope now (April 1517) for a little more than four years; he was half-way through his reign. The whole spirit of the papal court had already, in that short time, been transformed. Under Julius II, if it had not been religious and spiritual, it had at least become decorous. The wild scandals of the previous twenty years had been checked, and the pope's understanding of the gravity of the tasks before him effected a certain seriousness everywhere. With the election of Giovanni de' Medici there was a rapid return to the days of Alexander VI, and the young pope led the rout. He had indeed been born, and he now showed it, one of the spoiled darlings of fortune. The years of wandering and exile that had followed upon his brilliant introduction to the high places of life, were now to find their compensation. "Everything unpleasant was removed as far as possible from him, for an insatiable thirst for pleasure was his leading characteristic." [1045] His chosen friends were the young cardinals who had brought about his election. Hardly one of them led a life that was not disreputable, and of the friends whom later he himself promoted to the Sacred College the greater part were, like himself, worldly triflers, wealth-devouring amusement hunters. [1046] Leo was passionately fond of music, and he loved equally that newest of cultural amusements, the theatre. In the Vatican the revels were indeed more seemly than in the heyday of the Borgia -- sexual irregularity was not among Leo's vices -- but the comedies performed before the pope could include such indecencies as the Mandragola of Machiavelli and the Calandria of Leo's bosom friend Cardinal Bibbiena. In the summer the pope would leave Rome for the country, and sport was now the all-absorbing occupation. To give, to scatter money indiscriminately to all who asked for it, was one of his greatest pleasures. Merit, well-studied needs, played little part in the directing of this largesse. Buffoons, comedians, the chance passer-by, the beggar who happened to move his sympathy, the servant who attracted his notice, all these were welcome to whatever the pope had in his pocket. And others too, with real claims upon the money, if they happened to be there at the lucky moment.

This was the setting against which the new papal game of false and double-dealing diplomacy was played which, to the great world of Christendom, was now the papacy in action. The pope, says Pastor, "was not a man of deep interior religion." This would seem likely. But he fasted three days each week, and if he said mass more rarely than, for generations now, has been the normal practice of all priests, he was careful to hear mass every day, and whenever he did celebrate he prepared himself by first making his confession.

The Petrucci conspiracy of 1517 is a violent reminder of the truth that morality is a single whole, and that to tamper with one particular precept is to risk bringing down the whole arch. . .One of the many mischievous novelties in papal practice since the election of Sixtus IV was the way in which the kinsmen of reigning princes were made cardinals simply as an act of favour to the prince. At the death of Alexander VI, in 1503, there was hardly a state in Italy whose ruler had not a son or brother who was a cardinal. Siena was one of the few states to lack such a court cardinal, and Julius II brought Siena into the system when, in 1512, he gave the red hat to Alfonso Petrucci, twenty years of age, the brother of the lord of Siena. Petrucci, a few months later, played a great part in the election of Leo X and he was soon one of the new pope's intimates. But Leo, who was nothing if not false, was soon intriguing to displace Petrucci's brother in Siena, and to instal in his place another member of the family, who would be less of a hindrance to the Medici ambitions. [1047] The revolution succeeded, and the cardinal turned against the pope (1516).

He began to intrigue with the dispossessed Duke of Urbino, and to express his mind to other cardinals already discontented with Leo X. In 1516 he left Rome for the country, but continued to keep his party together, it would seem, through his steward in Rome, Marco Nino. Suddenly the steward was arrested, suspected of being a link in intrigues with the Duke of Urbino. A letter in cipher was found on him, and when put to the torture the steward surrendered the key. Cardinal Petrucci, so it was alleged the cipher made known, was arranging with a physician to poison the pope. This doctor was, or claimed to be an expert in the treatment of fistula. He was to be introduced to the pope as a specialist and then make away with him. By a trick the pope now induced Petrucci to come back to Rome. He was immediately arrested and with him another cardinal, his friend Sauli, also young, and a one-time intimate of Leo. This was on May 19, 1517, and that same day the pope explained to the consistory what had happened and appointed three cardinals to study and report on the findings of the enquiry that would now open. The enquiry itself was in the hands of the pope's law officers.

Meanwhile Florence had obligingly arrested the physician and handed him over to the pope. He was speedily put to the torture, and so, it would seem, were the two cardinals. On May 29 there was a second consistory, to hear the interim report of the three cardinals; and now a third cardinal was arrested and thrown into St. Angelo. This was Riario Sansoni, that great-nephew of Sixtus IV whose life had already been so tragically interwoven with that of Leo X. Petrucci and Sauli had confessed that he was in the business too. Ten days later still, there was a third consistory. The pope had now before him fresh admissions from the prisoners, and the names of two more cardinals. He did not immediately announce these, but craftily tried by promises and threats and a general accusation -- "Some of you sitting here were in it too, and I know who," was the line he took -- to gain yet more information. None was forthcoming, however, and the names of the two new accused had to be read out. They were Soderini and Adriano de Castello, two cardinals of Alexander VI's last promotion in 1503. Soderini, with tears, confessed his guilt and asked for mercy. The other admitted that Petrucci had spoken to him of his wish to see the pope put out of the way, but said that from the way the young man spoke he had not taken it seriously. The three cardinals of the commission decided that these two should be fined, each of them, 12,500 ducats; and on their pledging themselves to pay this, and not to leave Rome until they had done so, the pope forgave them.

This seems an extraordinary way for a sovereign to deal with accessories in a plot to murder him. But still stranger was the fact that, when the cardinals paid the enormous fines, they were told that the pope now wanted as much again from each of them. This was on June 18, and two days later the two cardinals, no doubt unable to raise the new fines, fled from Rome.

On June 22, in a fourth consistory, the result was announced of the trial [1048] of the three cardinals imprisoned in St. Angelo. The pope declared that they had been found guilty of treason: for plotting during a pope's lifetime to make one of their number pope, for plotting the pope's murder, and for their dealings with the Duke of Urbino. The debates in the consistory were very long and stormy. For nine or ten hours pope and cardinals remained together, the sound of their voices, as they shouted and interrupted one another, heard by the attendants in the anticamera without. Finally the cardinals [1049] voted that the guilt of the three accused had been proved, and asked the pope to show them mercy. But Leo was inexorable, and confirmed the sentence demanded by the prosecution. Their goods were to be confiscated, they were to be degraded, and to be put to death.

Five days after this scene the lesser fry of the plot, the physician and the steward, were put to death, their flesh torn from their bones with red hot pincers at intervals during the procession to the place of execution, where finally they were hanged, drawn and quartered. On July 4 Petrucci was secretly put to death in St. Angelo, a Moor being employed for the purpose.

Now came another strange circumstance. The other two cardinals who lay under the same sentence were pardoned, and even restored to their dignities, and all in a generous, even lighthearted way, confessing their guilt and that they were even more guilty than they had told already, but agreeing to pay enormous fines cash down. Sauli paid 25,000 ducats; but Riario, one of the wealthiest of the cardinals -- as he was one of the most venerated -- entered into a bond to pay really staggering sums. There was a fine of 150,000 ducats [1050] -- 50,000 of it to be paid immediately and the rest within six months -- and a bail of like amount to be found that he would not leave Rome without the pope's permission. These bonds [1051] were signed on July 17 and in a consistory seven days later Riario was restored, Leo receiving him almost affectionately. But Riario was finished. He lingered on in a kind of chronic melancholia until he died, July 7, 1521. Five months later Leo also died, so deeply in debt, so well and truly plundered in the short interval between death and burial, that the only lights they could find to burn round his coffin were the remains of the candles that had served for Riario. [1052]

The conspiracy, and the judicial proceedings at Rome, extremely scandalous surely, have also this interest that they fall between the closing scenes of the General Council and the appearance of Luther. [1053] They are, indeed, almost the last thing to occupy the pope's attention before the Reformation came to force purely religious questions violently upon it. But one last political problem there was. It coincided with the beginnings of Luther's demonstration, and such was its importance that the politically- minded pope hoped, by solving it, to settle also the little matter of Luther. The problem was who should be emperor when Maximilian, old beyond his years and now obviously breaking up, should come to die. In many respects the high office had, for centuries now, been little more than a great ceremonial distinction. An emperor was effective just to the extent that he could persuade the myriad princes of Germany to support him. The dignity was not hereditary, but for the last eighty years it had remained in the family of Habsburg, which as yet was not of any great territorial importance. It was indeed so poor a family that the contrast between Maximilian's pretentions and his resources had been one of the jokes of Europe during all the time he reigned (1493-1519). His only son had died in 1506 and the old emperor greatly desired, and was actively working for, the election of his eldest grandson Charles. This was the young man of eighteen who, since 1506, had been Duke of Burgundy, ruler that is of the Low Countries and of Franche Comte, and since 1516 King of Spain and of Naples. Upon Maximilian's death he would inherit the German domains of the Habsburgs, not only Austria proper but provinces which, for a hundred miles or more, had a common frontier with Venice. Were a prince so splendidly dowered with hereditary possessions to become emperor, who could say what new reality might not be infused into the ancient title? And how could the future of Italy not lie entirely in his hands? No pope could be indifferent to such a possible menace, nor could the Medici pope be indifferent to the effect upon his family's precarious hold on Florence of the appearance of an emperor who was already such a power in Italy.

It was, then, inevitable that Leo X should work against the candidature of the young King of Spain. The event was a striking demonstration how weak was the pope's political influence. Maximilian died on January 20, 1519, there followed six months packed with diplomatic manoeuvre, and on June 28 Charles was unanimously elected. As the emperor Charles V he was to reign for thirty-seven momentous years.

In these manoeuvres Leo played his wonted part. The new King of France, Francis I, was also a candidate for the succession, and when, in April 1518, it became evident that there was some opposition in Germany to the election of the King of Spain, the pope began to negotiate with Francis and to persuade him to offer himself in opposition to Charles. On January 20, 1519, he made a treaty with Francis that was really a pledge of support; and, characteristically, he made a secret treaty, of the same kind, at the same time, with Charles. But from the moment when Maximilian's death made the matter urgent, Leo gave up his pretence and began strongly to oppose the King of Spain. He still, however, had a double game to play. The pope did not in reality wish to see the imperial prestige in the hands of France. This would have been as dangerous a combination as the other. The pope had a candidate of his own, the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, ever since, in September 1518, this prince had declared himself opposed to the election of Charles. And since that date Leo had been secretly working for him. He still, in the spring of 1519, worked for Francis, offering the cardinalate to two of the electors should the King of France be chosen, and a legateship for life to the third archbishop-elector -- the Archbishop of Mainz -- who was already a cardinal. He even went so far as to say that if they alone should vote for Francis -- three out of the seven electors - - he would recognise the election as valid. But he only received snubs from these ecclesiastical princes, who denied his power to interfere with the procedure of the election.

By the end of May the pope realised that there was no chance for Francis I. By now it was hardly safe for a Frenchman to show himself in Germany, and the pope's nuncio had to flee for his life from Mainz. Leo turned to work for his own candidate. On June 7 he wrote declaring that if the Elector of Saxony could persuade two others to vote for him, and would add to these his own vote, the pope would recognise him as emperor. The Elector was Luther's sovereign, and nine months before this he had firmly refused the pope's request to arrest Luther and send him to Rome. The imperial dignity was now to be his through the pope's intervention -- such was Leo's really childish plan -- and Frederick, in gratitude, would hand over the heresiarch. And to keep Frederick in good humour all these nine critical months, the pope had, to all seeming, let the business of Luther fall into the limbo of forgotten cases.

Nevertheless Frederick was not to be caught. By June 17 Leo understood how powerless he was. He would not, he said, run his head against a stone wall. He removed the long-standing papal prohibition -- it went back to Clement IV and the now far-off days of Charles of Anjou -- that his vassal the King of Naple