WHEN CARDINAL GIOVANNI de’ Medici set about restoring Medici rule in Florence, he followed the example established by his father Lorenzo the Magnificent: a series of celebrations was organised. Pageants, which had been banned since Savonarola’s time, were staged in the Piazza della Signoria, and tables dispensing free cakes and wine were set up in the Via Larga, outside the newly reoccupied Palazzo Medici. At the same time, a sweeping political transformation was also put in place: the likes of Machiavelli were systematically dismissed from their government posts and replaced by Medici men, and the republic’s standing army was disbanded. The gonfaloniere’s term of office was reduced to one year and there was a reversal of foreign policy, with Florence joining Julius II’s Holy League.
Yet in February 1513, within six months of the Medici reinstatement, news reached Florence that Pope Julius II was dying. By this time Cardinal Medici’s health, never good at the best of times, had undergone a severe relapse as a result of his uncharacteristic exertions. He had begun suffering from a stomach ulcer, and still had an exceedingly painful anal fistula caused by his long period in the saddle during his military campaigns. Despite these disabilities, the cardinal knew that his presence in Rome was imperative if he was to have any influence on the conclave of cardinals that would be called to elect the pope’s successor. He ordered that he be carried on a litter and was rushed in great pain along the bumpy 150-mile road to Rome, only to discover on his arrival in early March that Julius II had already died. However, by now Cardinal Medici was too ill to do anything but retire to bed for a week.
Meanwhile the conclave of cardinals that met to choose the next pope had already begun its traditional proceedings. In order that no outside influence could be exerted, the cardinals retired to sealed quarters, which they were not permitted to leave until they had reached their decision; even the windows were sealed, and only meals were allowed into the conclave. As the days passed, and the heat rose in the sealed chambers, the atmosphere and the need for a change of clothes became ever more conducive to an end to the bickering. When the proceedings became even more extended, the quality and quantity of the meals were reduced. By the time Cardinal Medici was admitted, the assembly of twenty-five stout cardinals in their malodorous red robes was down to one meal a day, of similar quality to that served to the novices in the strictest monasteries.
Throughout Cardinal Medici’s earlier years in Rome, he had assiduously cultivated the friendship of the many powerful cardinals around Julius II. His cultured fun-loving nature, his great generosity and evident intelligence, as well as his closeness to the source of power, had stood him in good stead. Many of these friends were now willing to vote for him as a compromise candidate, while others were willing to vote for him for two main reasons. Despite his heroic efforts during papal campaigns, it was generally understood that Cardinal Medici was not by nature a belligerent character, and would therefore not involve the papacy in another endless series of military adventures, like Julius II. Many of those present had fond memories of the days when Cardinal Medici’s father, Lorenzo the Magnificent, had done so much to maintain peace in Italy. The second point in Cardinal Medici’s favour was that he was vastly overweight and quite obviously very ill; if choosing him did turn out to be a mistake, he would probably be dead in a couple of years anyway. But these arguments were implacably opposed by a faction headed by Cardinal Francesco Soderini, the brother of the deposed gonfaloniere of Florence, Piero; and despite the deteriorating domestic conditions, to say nothing of the increasingly meagre diet, the deadlock could not be broken. The conclave bickered and pleaded around the table, while secret horse-trading was attempted in the reeking latrines.
During an interval from the table, Cardinal Medici quietly approached Cardinal Soderini and began exercising his considerable charm. Evidence of the power of this can be seen in the fact that Cardinal Soderini finally decided to support Cardinal Medici’s candidacy, though this charm had required the backing of certain promises. Piero Soderini, the exiled former gonfaloniere, would be recalled from his exile in Ragusa; and although Cardinal Medici was insistent that Piero would not be allowed to return to Florence, he would be permitted to settle in Rome, where he would be generously provided for until the end of his days. Also, Cardinal Medici’s young nephew Lorenzo (son of Piero the Unfortunate) – a possible future ruler of Florence – was promised in marriage to one of Cardinal Soderini’s nieces; in this way the Soderini family would be joined to the new rulers of Florence, and would be united to the family of the new pope, thus holding a position of considerable power and influence for the future.
To the great relief of the assembled long-suffering cardinals, Cardinal Medici was finally elected as the next pope. In keeping with the warlike names taken by his predecessors (Alexander VI, after Alexander the Great; Julius II, after Julius Caesar), he decided to take on the name Leo X. This was intended to show lion-like qualities of courage and magnanimity; it was also, as all citizens of Florence would have understood, a reference to the city’s mascots, who still inhabited their cage in the Via dei Leoni.
According to a report that reached the Venetian ambassador, the new Pope Leo X exclaimed to his young brother Giuliano: ‘God has given us the Papacy. Let us enjoy it.’ This certainly set the mood of the new papacy, and such feelings quickly spread further afield. When Giuliano de’ Medici, who now ruled Florence in his brother’s absence, arrived home in the wake of the news, the city embarked on a series of celebrations that were to last several days. Though these were doubtless encouraged by Giuliano, there is little doubt that they were for the most part genuinely felt; Leo X was the first pope to have come from Florence, and as such brought great honour to his native city. To cries of ‘Palle! Palle!’ and ‘Papa Leone!’ (‘Lion Pope’), bonfires were lit in the piazzas and cannons sounded, while the night sky was set ablaze withfuochi d’artificio (fireworks), which had arrived from China a century or so previously as a largely military device, but whose celebratory potential was now beginning to be exploited to the full in Italy.
The papacy that Leo X inherited had essentially three separate functions. Firstly, the pope was the successor to St Peter, the disciple whom Christ had chosen to fulfil his mission on earth, and as such the pope was the ultimate arbitrator, interpreter and creator of Christian doctrine. It is ironic that this duty should fall to a man whose belief in God was far from being a central part of his life; indeed, his faith appears to have been of such a tenuous nature that, with some justification, it has been suggested that he was agnostic. His early education was humanist, concentrating on the pagan ancient classics, and this had been conducted by Poliziano, who showed little sign of any belief in God at this time; similarly, the young future pope’s later exposure to the preaching of Savonarola had no positive religious effect whatsoever, and may even have tipped the balance the other way. If, as seems likely, Leo X was agnostic, he would surprisingly have been the first pope for whom the existence of the deity was not a matter of certainty. Villains like Alexander VI, and many roguish predecessors, were far too spiritually primitive and superstitious to think of questioning the existence of God; their hypocrisy was as ingrained as their orthodoxy in belief – in their view, heretic popes went to Hell. Leo X, on the other hand, was highly intelligent, yet well educated enough to know the rules; he went through the observances in a pious manner, and in public his personal behaviour exhibited many of the Christian virtues. Unlike some of his predecessors, the first agnostic pope was also an expert theologian, and fully understood what was required in doctrinal matters; it was only the strength of his faith in such doctrines that was lacking. In this aspect at least, he fitted the ethos of Machiavellian rule, and his papacy would be none the worse for it.
The second aspect of the papacy that Leo X inherited was his princely power as ruler of the Papal States, which now effectively occupied a large region of the Romagna. In Leo X’s case, this temporal power also extended to the Florentine Republic, which he continued to govern despite his younger brother Giuliano de’ Medici’s nominal rule. All pretence of Medici subterfuge was now abandoned, and Leo X created his brother ‘Captain General of the Florentine Republic’. Paradoxically, the pope’s external rule of Florence was the main guarantee of the republic’s continuing independence, for without him Florence would not have survived as a separate state.
In recent times, Florence had been most seriously threatened by Cesare Borgia, acting for the pope; Leo X’s accession ensured not only that there would be no threat from the papacy, but that it could rely on the backing of the papacy. To ensure that this connection was reinforced, Leo X appointed his illegitimate cousin Giulio, his closest and most trusted confidant, as Archbishop of Florence.
The third aspect of the pope’s rule was as head of the Catholic Church, an administration that spanned virtually all of Christendom. The Orthodox Church had survived the fall of Constantinople only in Russia and pockets of the Balkans, whilst Roman Catholic Christendom had by this stage expanded far beyond Europe to include the Americas, and would soon include dioceses in Africa, India and the Far East. Appointments, clerical dues and taxation now brought the papacy vast incomes from a world-wide domain.
Leo X quickly followed the administrative example of his predecessors by appointing members of the Medici family to lucrative posts, whose grateful occupants could then be relied on for support. Such apppointments were not limited to the Church; Leo X’s nephew Lorenzo was created Duke of Urbino, with the intention that he would one day rule over a Medici kingdom to be created in the Romagna. Having risen to the papacy, the Medici would now begin to reveal even greater ambitions, the blueprint of which had surely been laid down by Lorenzo the Magnificent, the first Medici to take on a central role in Italian politics and thus understand its mechanisms from the inside. Here his huge ambitions curiously mirrored Machiavelli’s ideas: power should be expanded by whatever means possible, where necessary by planning far in advance and using the utmost deviousness. Lorenzo the Magnificent must have passed on these ideas to his sons, though Piero the Unfortunate had been unable to fulfil them, owing to circumstances and character. Yet Lorenzo may well have foreseen such an eventuality, and have felt that he was in fact entrusting the fate of the Medicis to Giovanni, the future Leo X – to such an extent that Lorenzo the Magnificent’s agenda may be regarded as the secret guiding hand of Leo X’s political policy.
In the light of this, even seemingly minor examples of Leo X’s policy can become illuminated as part of a grand strategy. Leo X had promised his cousin Giulio, the new Archbishop of Florence, that if he became pope he would make him a cardinal. Unfortunately, this was not possible on account of Giulio’s illegitimacy; technically children born out of wedlock could not become cardinals. Admittedly, Alexander VI had made his illegitimate son Cesare Borgia a cardinal, but this had remained open to later dispute. For reasons that will only gradually emerge, Leo X wished there to be no grounds for dispute whatsoever in Giulio’s case. He therefore set up a special Papal Commission to ‘investigate’ the matter of Giulio’s illegitimacy; the implicit message was plain, and within a short time the commission returned with its finding that Giulio’s father and mother had in fact been married in secret’ at the time of his conception. As a result Giulio de’ Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s beloved murdered brother, received his promised cardinal’s hat. And as we shall see, this seemingly trivial act of nepotism would in the years to come have repercussions that changed the course of European history.
Other promises by Leo X regarding members of the family were not always kept. Piero Soderini was recalled from his exile in Ragusa, but Cardinal Francesco Soderini waited in vain to hear of his niece’s betrothal to Leo X’s nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici. The pope had other more ambitious plans for Lorenzo, which make it plain that he never had any intention of keeping the promise that brought him the papacy. Away in lowly exile in a farmhouse outside Florence, Machiavelli could only watch in silent envy.
Such were the matters within Leo X’s political control, though he was quickly to be made aware that several important political matters lay far beyond his control. Within months of assuming the papacy, he was approached by emissaries of the powerful Ferdinand I of Spain (who now controlled Naples) and the English king Henry VIII, with the aim of forming an alliance against the French. Not wishing to upset Louis XII, Leo X diplomatically decided against this offer. No sooner had he done so than Louis XII crossed the Alps at the head of the French army to assert his long-standing claim to the Dukedom of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples. Once again, the whole of Italy was under threat. Leo X now demonstrated political skills of which his father would have been proud. Without officially joining the Milanese, who together with soldiers of the Spanish and English alliance now faced the advancing French army, Leo X succeeded in turning the balance entirely in their favour. Quickly and quietly he despatched the equivalent of 34,000 golden florins to the Milanese commander, so that he could hire an army of crack Swiss troops. At the ensuing Battle of Novara, twenty miles west of Milan, the French army was put to flight. Shortly afterwards, Leo X took the seemingly bizarre move of signing a new treaty with France, though it will become clear as events unfold that this too was part of Leo X’s Machiavellian strategy for the advancement of the Medici.
Then on 1 January 1515 the fifty-three-year-old Louis XII died, and was succeeded by the twenty-one-year-old Francis I, a young man of considerable intellect and verve who had been brought up on chivalrous tales of French conquest in Italy. Inspired by dreams of glory, Francis I immediately began assembling a huge army in preparation for a full-scale invasion of Italy; in consternation, Leo X turned to his advisers.
One result of this was that Machiavelli’s opinion was sought; the previous allusion to Machiavelli following Leo X’s political activities in silent envy was no figure of speech, Machiavelli’s expert opinion was still quietly sought on occasion. But apparently this only depressed him still further, emphasising how distant he was from the actual events taking place on the political stage where he himself had once played his part. His advice was never acknowledged, and seldom followed. On this occasion he advised that Leo X’s only hope was to seek an alliance with the French, in an attempt to avoid any invasion of Florentine or the papal territories. The young Francis I could be persuaded that such diversions would only detract from his real purpose. But Machiavelli’s advice was once again ignored; Leo X decided the only chance to save Italy was to form an alliance with the Spanish and the Holy Roman Emperor, and resist any invasion.
In the summer of 1515 Francis I crossed the Alps with an army of 100,000 men, the largest yet seen in Italy. They were confronted, at the Battle of Marignano just outside Milan, by the forces of the Papal Alliance, supported by the formidable Swiss. Francis I fearlessly charged into battle, leading the cavalry at the head of his vast army, and the opposing forces were simply swept aside. Leo X swiftly despatched a note to Francis I, suggesting an alliance, and it was arranged that they should meet for talks in Bologna.
On his way to Bologna, Leo X passed through Florence, where the new pope’s first visit to his home city would be greeted with the greatest pageant the city had yet staged. Indeed, so magnificent were the planned festivities that when the pope arrived at the city gates, he was informed that the preparations were not yet complete. Would it be possible for him to retire to a villa at the nearby village of Marignolle for a couple of days, and wait? Leo X graciously acquiesced – while his younger brother Giuliano, Captain General of the Florentine Republic, frantically berated his citizens to finish their preparations.
Some days later, the pope in his bejewelled white robes and glittering tiara rode in triumph into the city, accompanied by his train of scarlet-clad cardinals and a procession of German papal troops in gleaming armour bearing their double-bladed axes. As the papal train passed beneath the succession of magnificent triumphal arches decorated by the city’s leading artists, the rotund, beaming Leo X gazed about him at the cheering crowds, squinting at them through his eyeglass. The height of the procession was a display containing a statue of his father Lorenzo the Magnificent, with the motto ‘Hie est filius meus dilectus’ (‘Here is my beloved son’). When Leo X raised his eyeglass and read this he was seen to be moved to tears. According to the diarist Landucci: ‘He ordered silver money to be thrown to the people as he passed through the streets.’ The magnificence of the show, to say nothing of its cost, defied belief. ‘Several thousand men laboured for more than a month beforehand, working days and holidays alike.’ In all there were no fewer than fifteen triumphal arches: the fourth, by no means the most spectacular, occupied ‘the whole Piazza di Santa Trinità, and made a circular building like a castle, with 22 square pillars round it, and in the spaces between were hangings of tapestry, and above the pillars was a cornice all round, with certain inscriptions in the frieze’. Landucci asserted: ‘a cost of 70,000 florins or more was mentioned, all for things of no duration’. He reflected that for a similar sum ‘a splendid temple might have been built in honour of God and to the glory of the city’. Landucci was probably right when he claimed: ‘It is unimaginable that any other city or state in the world could have been capable of making such preparations.’
The procession was followed by a grand feast and a pageant, the central feature of which was a young boy painted in gold standing on a pedestal. This was intended to symbolise the rebirth of the golden age of Florence, but it was to be followed by an ominous and equally symbolic devlopment; no sooner had the curtain fallen than the boy was gripped by a sudden mysterious illness and died, inadvertently suffocated by the gold paint covering his body.
What Lorenzo the Magnificent had begun as displays to distract the people and keep them happy had now expanded into a display worthy of a Roman emperor. In Lorenzo’s time, the likes of Botticelli and Michelangelo, Leonardo and Poliziano had all worked on such pageants; indicatively, the only celebrated artist who worked on this overblown display was Sansovino. What had once been the joie de vivre of genius had now descended into vulgar opulence. The leading poets and philosophers that Cosimo’s Florence had nurtured were now dead; the ensuing great artists whom the Medici had sponsored were now only visitors to the city; the leading figures of the Renaissance and even its present godfather lived elsewhere.
Leo X’s subsequent arrival at Bologna was a very different matter from his triumphal entry into his home city. The young and vigorous Francis I was not impressed by the waddling middle-aged pope, who took his place before him breathing heavily through his permanently open mouth. But the pope was wise enough to let himself be judged by appearances, whilst quietly exercising his political guile to ensure that this potentially disastrous meeting ended amicably. Leo X opened by baldly denying the ‘rumour’ that he was in the habit of financing the Swiss army to fight against the French, and Francis I appeared cautiously to accept this (though he knew otherwise). The alliance between France and Leo X was then confirmed, but Francis I extracted a heavy price. Leo X was reluctantly forced to concede to the French king the right to make senior church appointments in his own country, a concession that meant a large loss in papal revenue and influence; the man who had almost become Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence at the age of nine felt humiliated, but decided to put a brave face on it. With a show of magnanimity he appointed the king’s tutor a cardinal, whereupon Francis I was so impressed that he made Leo X’s brother Giuliano de’ Medici the Duke of Nemours. Once again, a seemingly fortuitous result of Leo X’s policy would one day have huge repercussions, for a member of the Medici had become aristocracy, and the family now had a foothold in the nobility of France. It is difficult not to see this apparent accident as part of Leo X’s covert grand strategy for the family, which it was now becoming clear relied heavily on an alliance with France.
Leo X returned to Rome, and during the next few years he would establish a papacy that was very much a reflection of his remarkable if flawed personality. The city that had overtaken Florence as the centre of the Italian Renaissance would now enter a golden age such as it had not experienced since Ancient Roman times. What in Florence had given way to a grandiose, somewhat tinsel display would become artistic substance in Rome.
Julius II had instigated the large-scale rebuilding of Rome, driving so many wide streets through the ramshackle medieval dwellings that he became known as ‘Ruinante’ (‘The Wrecker’). The centrepiece of this new Rome was to be St Peter’s, whose foundation stone was laid by Julius II in 1506; meanwhile the Urbino-born Donato Bramante had been appointed as architect, and had designed a suitably imposing basilica to house the tomb of St Peter. This was intended to be the papal place of worship, the central church of Christendom, the final destination of all those who set out on the pilgrimage to the Eternal City, and none but the finest artists would be commissioned to decorate its interior. It would also be the largest church in Christendom, a Renaissance masterpiece that was consciously intended to surpass and supersede the great medieval Gothic cathedrals of northern Europe.
Julius II’s notorious impatience had forced Bramante to cut a few corners, but in doing so he had liberated architecture from some of its previous restraints. The use of moulded stucco, for instance, replaced painstakingly carved stone. In achieving this liberation, Bramante would found the architectural style now known as Roman High Renaissance – where in earlier years Renaissance architecture had consciously modelled itself on ancient classical buildings, with their restraint of line and form, it now began to develop a sense of confidence and bravura all its own.
When Bramante died in 1514, Leo X appointed the artist Raffaello Sanzio, now better known as Raphael, to succeed him. Raphael, another product of Federigo da Montefeltro’s Urbino, would become the leading artist of the Roman High Renaissance. He would receive papal commissions to paint works in the Sistine Chapel, and would transform the art of portraiture. His portrait of Leo X would succeed in the difficult achievement of evoking a profound and serious likeness of its unprepossessing subject, at the same time managing both to gloss over his more preposterous physical features, yet still hint at their existence (see colour plates).
Raphael had been deeply influenced by Michelangelo, but his sunnier temperament softened the tortured muscularity of Michelangelo’s style, giving his figures a relaxed poise and clarity of line that were unmistakably his own. His art would go beyond Botticelli’s Platonic embodiments to a new level of humanist self-realisation. In his masterpiece The School of Athens, the Ancient Greek philosophers are pictured going about their business amidst the arched grandeur of a distinctly Roman Athens. Yet far from being overwhelmed by this imposing architecture, his figures appear completely at home, their physical strength and spiritual presence resonating with their surroundings. Raphael succeeds in making the philosophers utterly human, but at the same time possessed of a dignity which echoes the profundity of their thought.
Raphael would quickly become Leo X’s favourite artist, and as the new architect of St Peter’s he would transform Bramante’s original Greek-cross structure, with four equal aisles, changing it to the present Latin-cross design, a T-shape with three aisles. These would meet at the central altar, beneath which lay the supposed tomb of St Peter; and above this would rise the magnificent soaring dome, a direct descendant of Brunelleschi’s original Renaissance dome in Florence. This new dome would both outspan its predecessor and achieve a baroque grace of line that far outshone it.
Leo X and the urbane Raphael appear to have had a temperamental affinity, which cannot be said of his relations with the difficult Michelangelo, with whom he had grown up in the Palazzo Medici. When Leo X became pope, Michelangelo was still at work on Julius II’s grandiose tomb; he would refer to this monumental waste of his time, which occupied him on and off for thirty years, as ‘the tragedy of the tomb’. Later Leo X, encouraged by his cousin Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, would commission Michelangelo to create a suitably impressive tomb for the Medici, in the family church of San Lorenzo in Florence. This would result in the domed Medici Chapel, with its two pairs of Michelangelo’s sculptures, representing ‘Day and Night’ and ‘Dawn and Dusk’. Michelangelo intended the group as a whole to represent ‘time, which consumes all things’; and these superb, if somewhat overwrought reclining statues, are filled with that terrihilità that characterises so much of his best work.
Yet in effect Leo X did little to encourage Michelangelo’s work; nor did he appear to appreciate the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. According to a story recounted by Vasari, Leo X gave Leonardo a commission, but when the artist immediately began preparing his varnishes and oils, the pope exclaimed: ‘What can be expected of a man who attends to the finishing before he even begins his work?’ After this there were no further commissions for Leonardo, and he was only employed on an ambitious but abortive scheme to drain the Pontine marshes. The sad fact is that Leo X, one of the greatest patrons amongst the Renaissance popes, had a rather shallow artistic taste.
In the Medici tradition he collected manuscripts, and added considerably to the Vatican Library, which until this time had remained a poor copy of the Medici Library back home in Florence. Leo X had a deep interest in the classics, and in imitation of his father he also dabbled in poetry; yet most of all he inherited his father’s delight in extravagant display – but with a difference. Lorenzo the Magnificent’s penchant for display appears as the overflow of a remarkable Renaissance man: here was the largesse of an exceptional human being who strove to emulate the humanist ideal. Leo X had many of his father’s qualities – ambition, intellect, bouts of unsuspected energy – yet he was also cursed with an exaggeration of his father’s flaws. What in Lorenzo appeared as the foibles of greatness, appeared in Leo X as ridiculous extravagances; he not only looked absurd, but he often behaved in a manner to match.
His extravagances were legendary, and were indulged on an imperial Roman scale, perhaps best exemplified by his favourite dish, which was peacocks’ tongues. He enjoyed great banquets where the guests would be entertained by singers, jesters, tumbling dwarfs, even jousters, while the centrepiece feast would consist of dozens of courses, each served and eaten off different sets of silver and golden platters. Some of the dishes also incorporated trivial spectacles – nightingales flying from pies, young boys dressed as cherubs emerging from puddings. Curiously, these extravagances do not seem to have involved sexual misdemeanours; Leo X enjoyed watching the show, rather than taking part in it. He would clap his podgy hands in delight at the sight of revellers dancing in fancy dress beneath the light of a thousand candles at a masked carnival ball, unworried by the fact that many of the masked couples were cardinals dancing with their courtesans. Leo X particularly liked to go hunting, an activity for which he was especially ill-equipped; he may have been a skilled and fearless rider, but unfortunately he could not see where he was going. Eventually a wild boar would be netted and dragged towards him, whereupon Leo X would ride in for the kill, brandishing his pike in one hand, with the other holding his eyeglass pressed to his squinting eye.
Leo X’s good-natured but distinctly overblown character is best illustrated by his relationship with his favourite pet: an Indian elephant called Hanno. This animal caused a great stir, being the first of its kind seen in Italy since Hannibal’s invasion more than one and a half millennia previously. Hanno had been sent to Leo X as a present by the King of Portugal, along with several exotic birds, two leopards and a number of Persian stallions, all of which had been transported from Asia to Europe by Portugal’s merchant-explorers, who were now opening up trade to the Far East. The pope was said to have loved his pet elephant dearly, being particularly touched by the fact that when it entered his presence it would kneel down and trumpet loudly. When Hanno fell ill, Leo X was filled with sorrow; he summoned doctors, and offered to pay the equivalent of 4,000 golden florins to anyone who could cure him. In the end, the ailing Hanno was administered an elephantine purgative, which was said to have weighed 400 ounces, but this had no effect and he soon died, much to the distress of Leo X, who grieved deeply. A vast grave was dug, and the pope commissioned Raphael to paint a full-size portrait of Hanno on the wall above it, while Leo X himself composed a heartfelt Latin epitaph, which was incorporated in the painting.
Yet this good-natured buffoonery was deceptive, for when threatened Leo X was capable of swift and ruthless action. In 1517 a number of cardinals, led by the powerful Cardinal Petrucci and including the resentful Cardinal Soderini, hatched a plot to murder the pope. The intended method of assassination was particularly devilish and painful: the renowned surgeon Battista da Vercelli was hired to poison the bandages used to dress Leo X’s anal fistula. In order to establish his innocence, Cardinal Petrucci then left Rome, but Leo X’s spies intercepted one of his letters, which hinted at a plot. Vercelli was arrested and put to the rack, where he soon revealed what Cardinal Petrucci had intended; Leo X then sent for Petrucci, guaranteeing him safe conduct, on the honour of the Spanish ambassador. The moment Cardinal Petrucci presented himself before the pope, he was seized by armed men; shrieking curses at the pope’s treachery, he was hauled off and flung into the dungeons of Castel Sant’Angelo. The Spanish ambassador, who had been present at Petrucci’s seizure, protested loudly and furiously at this outrage to his honour. But Leo X presented a theological argument to defend his action: the pope’s promise could not be valid on a guarantee of safe conduct, if this guarantee did not specifically mention that its bearer had intended to murder him. The Spanish ambassador was not impressed by this spurious argument, but was deterred from further comment by the pope’s visibly mounting anger.
Leo X now summoned a meeting of his cardinals in full consistory; shouting at the assembled cardinals, he demanded the names of the other conspirators. By now his rage was all but uncontrollable: no one had ever seen the pope display such uncharacteristic passion before – though some present remained unconvinced, feeling that his behaviour was so out of character that it must have been an act. One by one the cardinals were made to step forward and swear, in the name of God, that they were innocent. When it came to Cardinal Soderini, he at first denied all knowledge of the plot, but when Leo X angrily questioned him further, he eventually gave way to tears and confessed, flinging himself to the ground at the pope’s feet, begging for mercy and beseeching Leo X to spare his life.
Upon witnessing this abject display, the other guilty cardinals reluctantly came forward and confessed. To the surprise of many, Leo X decided to be magnanimous, and the assembled cardinals were merely ordered to pay a large fine, being required to raise a sum equivalent to 20,000 golden florins.
The grateful cardinals departed, and between them found little difficulty in raising such a sum – only to be informed that there seemed to have been a misunderstanding, for they were required to pay 20,000 florins each This news was greeted with widespread consternation: some grudgingly paid up, while others fled in fear of bankruptcy. The total collected sum was then used to pay off the mounting debts that Leo X’s extravagances had incurred. But lest there be any further misunderstandings, the ringleader Cardinal Petrucci was strangled in the dungeons by the pope’s Muslim executioner, who was specifically retained for such duties (no Christian executioner would have risked his soul by executing a cardinal). The surgeon Vercelli was protected by no such niceties: gobbets of flesh were wrenched from his body by red-hot pincers, before he was dragged by horses through the streets to be hanged from a gallows on the bridge of Castel Sant’Angelo.
In order to secure his position, Leo X then took the unprecedented step of creating thirty new cardinals, all relations or proven Medici supporters. Those amongst the new cardinals who could afford it were expected to contribute lavishly to the papal exchequer, whose funds remained alarmingly low, despite the enforced contributions from their guilty predecessors, who had all been stripped of office to make way for the new Medici cardinals. Yet by this stage there were other family matters that needed Leo X’s attention: his younger brother Giuliano de’ Medici, created Duke of Nemours, had died without producing any legitimate heir. The Medici connection to the French nobility, which Leo X had seen as essential to his master plan, had taken a severe blow. The pope now turned his attentions to his nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino, who had succeeded Giuliano as Leo X’s proxy ruler of Florence. The young Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, had begun to assume airs and graces to go with his title; he was the first Medici ruler of Florence to require the deference shown to a ruling prince – the gonfaloniere and his Signoria were expected to doff their caps and bow in his presence. The new Captain General of the Florentine Republic seemed to go out of his way to offend the republican sensibilities of his subjects: he even wore a beard, the mark of an aristocrat in the rest of Italy, an affectation which was scorned in Florence. His older and wiser cousin Cardinal Giulio, the Archbishop of Florence, tactfully counselled him to change his ways, but the Duke of Urbino was not interested in the advice of his illegitimate relative.
Regardless of Lorenzo’s character, Leo X was forced to accept that the future of the Medici family lay with this arrogant young man. The senior members of the family – Leo X himself, and Cardinal Giulio – were both men of the Church, and as such unable to have recognisable legitimate heirs. There was even a danger that the line might die out, for although the Duke of Urbino was only twenty-five, he had already begun to suffer from tuberculosis and was rumoured to have contracted syphilis. Leo X opened negotiations with his French ally Francis I, and a marriage was arranged: Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, would take the hand of the Bourbon princess Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, who was Francis I’s cousin. This meant that Medici were now marrying into royal blood; but it soon became clear that there might be a last-minute hitch to Leo X’s plans. When Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino returned from France with his new young bride, it was evident that he was mortally ill, and Princess Madeleine too appeared frail and far from well.
In April 1519, Madeleine, Duchess of Urbino, died in childbirth, and within days her husband too had succumbed – yet their child survived and was christened Caterina. This babe-in-arms succeeded to the Duchy of Urbino, and might have succeeded as the infant ruler of Florence, if the Medici had been intent upon founding a strictly hereditary dynasty. But Leo X decided that the time was not right for this, and Cardinal Giulio, the Archbishop of Florence, took over the reins of power in the city. Caterina was brought to Rome; the Medici now had a child of royal blood, and their ambitions had received a powerful boost.
When Leo X had acceded to the papacy, he had inherited the Fifth Lateran Council, which had been summoned in 1511 by his predecessor Julius II. This council had been intended to combat the rival council of French cardinals at Pisa, which had been called by the French king with the object of deposing Julius II. It was widely recognised at the Fifth Lateran Council that the pervasive decadence of the Church put it in great need of reform. Certain measures were discussed over the years as the Lateran Council dragged on, but Leo X showed little interest in these; he was more concerned with papering over the schism which had threatened to develop with the French cardinals, and when this matter was dealt with the council was finally dissolved in 1517. At the council’s closing ceremony a missive from the pope was read out announcing a solemn excommunication of anyone who questioned, or put forward their own interpretations of, the findings of the council, without the pope’s special permission. Any ‘interpretations’ that might have allowed for reform were stopped in their tracks.
The papal exchequer was by this stage practically empty, with the finances of the holy see rapidly spiralling beyond control. All the pope’s exorbitant entertainments, generous gifts, gambling debts and expensive artistic patronage had to be paid for somehow; yet when the need arose, Leo X would simply sell off a few more ecclesiastical appointments, or call in his bankers and demand another loan. By now even the papal bankers were becoming worried: the papacy appeared to be heading for bankruptcy. In order to cover further loans, the bankers soon began demanding rates of interest up to 40 per cent, to which Leo X blithely signed up, then continued as before.
But there was one project that the papal bankers could not continue financing: the cost of building St Peter’s was proving enormous, ruinous even by papal standards. Julius II had realised that the only way to pay for such a vast project was through the widespread sale of indulgences, and now Leo X decided to embark on a further sales initiative in this sphere, on a massive scale. Soon papal agents and licensed priests were journeying from town to town throughout Europe, cajoling and bullying the faithful into paying out hard cash for the scrolls of paper that constituted indulgences. The purchase of such a scroll reduced the various terrors and agonies of Purgatory, through which all Christian souls had to pass in order that their sins be ‘purged’ so that they could enter Heaven. Indulgences were sold on a sliding scale according to the magnitude of sins; and the higher the price paid, the less time spent in Purgatory.
Indulgences touched a deep nerve throughout Christendom. During the medieval era the notions of Hell and Purgatory, of fearful punishment in the afterlife, had become very real to all Christians. Hideous scenes from these nether regions were depicted in churches, dramatised in holy plays and horrifically evoked in sermons. The prospect of hellfire, or the torments of Purgatory, were a secret fear in every heart, and this was very much a part of the deep psychological hold which the Christian faith exercised over the whole of Europe.
Indulgences both exploited this fear, and at the same time trivialised it, as the notorious call of the indulgence-seller, with his metal collecting bowl, soon became known to all:
As the coin in the basin rings,
The soul to Heaven springs!
Indulgence-sellers became the object of widespread resentment; many saw their faith cheapened by such unscrupulous practices – which all knew went to support a church hierarchy whose extravagances had become the tattle of Christendom. In the end, one young German priest decided that he could tolerate it no longer and determined to take action. His name was Martin Luther, and on 31 October 1517 he nailed to the door of Wittenberg Castle church ninety-five Theses demanding reform of the Church.