Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

with the building of St. Peter's in angering Germany. `05176 He

managed his revenues well, financed war and art simultaneously, and

left Leo a surplus in the treasury. In Rome he restored social

order, which had declined in Alexander's later years, and he

governed the States of the Church with wise appointments and policies.

He allowed the Orsini and the Colonna to reoccupy their castles, and

sought to tie these powerful families to loyalty by marriages with his

relatives.

When he came to power he found the States of the Church in

turmoil, and half the work of Alexander and Caesar Borgia undone.

Venice had seized Faenza, Ravenna, and Rimini (1503); Giovanni

Sforza had returned to Pesaro; the Baglioni were again sovereign in

Perugia and the Bentivogli in Bologna; the loss of revenues from these

cities threatened the solvency of the Curia. Julius agreed with

Alexander that the spiritual independence of the Church required her

continued possession of the Papal States; and he began with

Alexander's mistake by asking the help of France- and of Germany and

Spain to boot- against his Italian enemies. France consented to send

eight thousand men in exchange for three red hats; Naples, Mantua,

Urbino, Ferrara, and Florence pledged small detachments. In August,

1506, Julius left Rome at the head of his own modest force- four

hundred cavalry, his Swiss guards, and four cardinals. Guidobaldo, the

restored Duke of Urbino, was in military command of the papal

troops, but the Pope rode at their head in person- a sight not seen in

Italy for many centuries past. Gianpaolo Baglioni, calculating that he

could not defeat such a coalition, came to Orvieto, surrendered to the

Pope, and asked forgiveness. "I forgive your mortal sins," growled

Julius, "but the first venial sin you commit, I will make you pay

for them all." `05177 Trusting to his religious authority, Julius

entered Perugia with only a small guard, and before his soldiers could

reach the gates; Baglioni might have ordered his men to arrest him and

close the gates, but he dared not. Machiavelli, who was on hand,

marveled that Baglioni should lose a chance "to do a deed which

would have left an eternal memory. He might have been the first to

show priests how little a man is esteemed who lives and rules as

they do. He would have done a deed whose greatness would have

outweighed all its infamy and all the danger which might have

followed." `05178 Machiavelli, like most Italians, objected to the

temporal power of the papacy, and to popes who were also kings. But

Baglioni valued his neck, and possibly his soul, more than his

posthumous fame.

Julius spent little time in Perugia; his real goal was Bologna. He

led his little army over the rough roads of the Apennines to Cesena,

and then turned upon Bologna from the east while the French attacked

it from the west. Julius reinforced the attack by issuing a bull of

excommunication against the Bentivogli and their adherents, and

offering a plenary indulgence to any man who should kill any of

them; this was a new brand of war. Giovanni Bentivoglio fled, and

Julius entered the city borne in a litter on men's shoulders, and

hailed by the people as a liberator from tyranny (Nov. 11, 1506). He

bade Michelangelo make a colossal statue of him for the portal of

San Petronio, and then returned to Rome. There he rode through the

streets in a triumphal car, and was greeted as a victorious Caesar.

But Venice still held Faenza, Ravenna, Rimini, and failed to

estimate properly the martial spirit of the Pope. Risking Italy to get

the Romagna, Julius invited France, Germany, and Spain to help him

subdue the Queen of the Adriatic. We shall see later how vigorously

they responded in the League of Cambrai (1508)- seeking not to help

Julius but to dismember Italy; in joining them Julius allowed his

justifiable resentment against Venice to overcome his love of Italy.

While his allies attacked Venice with armies, Julius aimed at her

one of the most forthright bulls of excommunication and interdict in

history. He won; Venice restored the stolen cities to the Church,

and accepted the most humiliating terms; her envoys received

absolution, and the removal of the interdict, in a long ceremony

that sorely tried their knees (1510). Regretting his invitation to the

French, Julius now reversed his policy to expelling them from Italy,

and convinced himself that God was reversing the divine policy

accordingly. When the French ambassador announced to him a French

victory over the Venetians, and added, "God willed it," Julius angrily

retorted, "The devil willed it!" `05179

Now he turned his martial eye to Ferrara. Here was an acknowledged

papal fief, but through Alexander's concessions at Lucrezia's

betrothal it paid only a token tribute to the papacy; moreover Duke

Alfonso, after joining in war against Venice at the Pope's behest,

refused to make peace at his behest, and remained an ally of France.

Julius resolved that Ferrara must become wholly a papal state. He

began his campaign with another bull of excommunication (1510), by

which the son-in-law of one pope became to another a "son of

iniquity and a root of perdition." Without much difficulty Julius,

with Venetian aid, took Modena. While his troops were resting there

the Pope made the mistake of going to Bologna. Suddenly news came to

him that a French army, instructed to help Alfonso, was at the

gates. The papal forces were too distant to help him; within Bologna

were only nine hundred soldiers; and the people of the city, who had

been oppressed by the papal legate Cardinal Alidosi, could not be

relied upon to offer resistance to the French. Sick abed with fever,

Julius for a moment despaired, and thought of drinking poison; `051710

he was about to sign a humiliating peace with France when Spanish

and Venetian reinforcements arrived. The French retreated, and

Julius sped them on their way with a lusty excommunication for one and

all.

Meanwhile Ferrara had armed itself so strongly that Julius judged

his forces inadequate to take it. Not to be cheated of military glory,

he led his troops in person to besiege Mirandola, a northern outpost

of the Ferrara duchy (1511). Though now sixty-eight he tramped through

deep snow, violated precedent by campaigning in winter, presided

over councils of strategy, directed operations and the placement of

cannon, inspected his troops, relished the life of a soldier, and

let no man surpass him in martial oaths and jests. `051711 Sometimes

the troops laughed at him; more often they applauded his courage. When

enemy fire killed a servant at his side, he moved to other quarters;

when these too were reached by Mirandola's artillery, he returned to

his first station, shrugging his bent shoulders at the danger of

death. Mirandola surrendered after two weeks of resistance. The Pope

ordered that all French soldiers found in the city should be put to

death; perhaps by mutual arrangement none was found. He protected

the city from pillage, and preferred to feed and finance his army by

selling eight new cardinalates. `051712

He sought rest in Bologna, but there he was soon again besieged by

the French. He fled to Rimini, and the French restored the

Bentivogli to power. The people cheered the return of their ousted

despots; they demolished the castle that Julius had built, threw

down the statue that Michelangelo had made of him, and sold it as

bronze scrap to Alfonso of Ferrara; the grim Duke cast it into a

cannon, which he christened La Giulia in honor of the Pope. Julius

launched another bull, excommunicating all who had shared in the

overthrow of papal authority at Bologna. The French troops responded

by retaking Mirandola. At Rimini Julius found affixed to the door of

San Francesco a document signed by nine cardinals, which summoned a

general council to meet at Pisa on September 1, 1511, to examine

into the conduct of the Pope.

Julius returned to Rome broken in health, overwhelmed with disaster,

but not bowing to defeat. Says Guicciardini:

-

Though the Pontiff found himself so grossly deceived by his

flattering hopes, yet he seemed in his deportment to resemble what the

fabulous writers have reported of Antaeus, who, as often as he was

disabled by the force of Hercules, on touching the ground recovered

still greater strength and vigor. Adversity had the same effect on the

Pope; for when he seemed to be most depressed and most dejected, he

recovered his spirits, and rose again with greater firmness and

constancy of mind, and with more pertinacious resolution. `051713

-

To counter the disaffected cardinals, he published a call for a

general council to meet at the Lateran Palace on April 19, 1512. He

labored night and day to build a formidable alliance against France.

He was approaching success when he was seized with a severe illness

(August 17, 1511). For three days he hovered near death; on August

21 he remained unconscious so long that the cardinals prepared for a

conclave to choose his successor; at the same time Pompeo Colonna,

Bishop of Rieti, appealed to the Roman people to rise against papal

rule of their city, and re-establish Rienzo's republic. But on the

22nd Julius regained consciousness; overruling his doctors, he drank a

substantial draft of wine; he surprised all, and disappointed many, by

recovering; the republican movement faded away. On October 5 he

announced that he had formed a Holy League of the papacy, Venice,

and Spain; on November 17 Henry VIII joined it for England. So

reinforced, he deposed from their dignities the cardinals who had

signed the summons to Pisa, and forbade such a council to meet. At the

command of the French king the Florentine Signory gave permission

for the banned council to meet at Pisa; Julius declared war upon

Florence, and plotted to restore the Medici. A group of twenty-seven

ecclesiastics, with representatives of the king of France and some

French universities, met at Pisa (November 5, 1511); but the

inhabitants were so threatening, and Florence so reluctant, that the

council retired to Milan (November 12). There, under the protection of

the French garrison, the schismatic councilors could bear in timid

safety the taunts of the people.

Having won this battle of the bishops, Julius turned again to war.

He purchased the alliance of the Swiss, who despatched an army to

attack the French at Milan; the attack failed, and the Swiss

returned to their cantons. On Easter Sunday, April 11, 1512, the

French under Gaston de Foix, decisively helped by Alfonso's artillery,

overwhelmed the composite army of the League at Ravenna; practically

all the Romagna passed under French control. Julius' cardinals

begged him to make peace; he refused. The council at Milan

celebrated the victory by proclaiming the Pope deposed; Julius

laughed. On May 2 he was carried in his litter to the Lateran

Palace, where he opened the Fifth Lateran Council. He soon left it

to its own slow development while he hurried back to battle.

On May 17 he announced that Germany had joined the Holy League

against France. The Swiss, repurchased, entered Italy through the

Tirol, and advanced to meet a French army disorganized by victory

and the death of their leader. Now outnumbered, the French abandoned

Ravenna, Bologna, even Milan; and the schismatic cardinals retreated

to France. Once more the Bentivogli fled, and Julius was master of

Bologna and the Romagna. He seized the opportunity to take also

Parma and Piacenza; and now he could hope to win Ferrara, which

could no longer rely on aid from France. Alfonso offered to come to

Rome and ask for absolution and terms of peace if the Pope would

give him a safe-conduct. Julius did, Alfonso came, and was

graciously absolved; but when he refused to exchange Ferrara for

little Asti, Julius pronounced his safe-conduct invalid, and

threatened him with imprisonment and arrest. Fabrizio Colonna, who had

conveyed the safe-conduct to the Duke, felt that his own honor was

involved; he helped Alfonso to escape from Rome; after arduous

adventures Alfonso made his way back to Ferrara, and there resumed the

arming of his forts and walls.

And now at last the demonic energy of the warrior Pope ran out. Late

in January, 1513, he took to his bed with a complication of

ailments. Merciless gossip said that his trouble was an aftermath of

the "French disease"; others that it came from immoderate eating and

drinking. `051714 When no treatment availed to reduce his fever, he

reconciled himself to death, gave instructions for his funeral,

urged the Lateran Council to go on with its work without interruption,

confessed himself a great sinner, bade farewell to his cardinals,

and died with the same courage with which he had lived (February 20,

1513). All Rome mourned him, and an unprecedented throng came to bid

him good-by, and to kiss the feet of the corpse.

We cannot estimate his place in history until we have studied him as

the liberator of Italy, as the builder of St. Peter's, and as the

greatest patron of art that the papacy has ever known. But his

contemporaries were right in viewing him chiefly as a statesman and

a warrior. They feared his incalculable energy, his terribilita, his

curses and apparently unappeasable wrath; but they sensed behind all

his violence a spirit capable of compassion and love. *05044 They

saw him defending the Papal States as unscrupulously and ruthlessly as

the Borgias, but with no view to aggrandize his family; all but his

enemies applauded his aims, even when they shuddered at his language

and mourned his means. He did not govern the reclaimed states as

well as Caesar Borgia had done, for he was too fond of war to be a

good administrator; but his conquests were lasting, and the Papal

States remained henceforth loyal to the Church until the revolution of

1870 ended the temporal power of the popes. Julius sinned- like

Venice, Lodovico, Alexander- by calling foreign armies into Italy; but

he succeeded better than his predecessors and successors in freeing

Italy from these powers when they had served his turn. Perhaps he

weakened Italy in saving it, and taught the "barbarians" that they

might fight out their quarrels on the sunny plains of Lombardy.

There were elements of cruelty in his greatness; he was misled by

acquisitiveness in attacking Ferrara and in taking Piacenza and Parma;

he dreamed not only of preserving the legitimate possessions of the

Church but of making himself the master of Europe, the dictator to

kings. Guicciardini condemned him for "bringing empire to the

Apostolic See by arms and the shedding of Christian blood, rather than

troubling himself to set an example of holy life"; `051716 but it

could hardly be expected of Julius, in his place and age, that he

should abandon the Papal States to Venice and other assailants, and

risk the survival of the Church on purely spiritual grounds, when

all the world about him recognized no rights but those that armed

themselves with power. He was what he had to be in the circumstances

and atmosphere of his time; and his time forgave him.

II. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE: 1492-1513

-

The most lasting part of his work was his patronage of art. Under

him the Renaissance moved its capital from Florence to Rome, and there

reached its zenith in art, as under Leo X it would reach its peak in

literature and scholarship. Julius did not care much for literature;

it was too quiet and feminine for his temperament; but the

monumental in art accorded well with his nature and life. So he

subordinated all other arts to architecture, and left a new St.

Peter's as an index of his spirit and a symbol of the Church whose

secular power he had saved. That he should have financed Bramante,

Michelangelo, Raphael, and a hundred more, as well as a dozen wars,

and have left 700,000 florins in the papal treasury, is one of the

wonders of history, and one of the causes of the Reformation.

No other man ever brought so many artists to Rome. It was he, for

example, who invited Guillaume de Marcillat from France to set up

the fine stained-glass windows of Santa Maria del Popolo. It was

characteristic of his vast conceptions that he should try to reconcile

Christianity and paganism in art as Nicholas V had done in letters;

for what are the stanze of Raphael but a pre-established harmony

of classic mythology and philosophy, Hebrew theology and poetry,

Christian sentiment and faith? And what could better represent the

union of pagan and Christian art and feeling than the portico and

dome, the interior columns, statuary, paintings, and tombs of St.

Peter's? Prelates and nobles, bankers and merchants, now crowding into

an enriched Rome, followed the Pope's lead, and built palaces with

almost imperial splendor in opulent rivalry. Broad avenues were cut

through or from the chaos of the medieval city; hundreds of new

streets were opened; one of them still bears the great Pope's name.

Ancient Rome rose out of its ruins, and became again the home of a

Caesar.

St. Peter's aside, it was, in Rome, an age of palaces rather than of

churches. Exteriors were uniform and plain: a vast rectangular

facade of brick or stone or stucco, a portal of stone usually carved

in some decorative design; on each floor uniform rows of windows,

topped with triangular or elliptical pediments; and almost always a

crowning cornice whose elegant configuration was a special test and

care of the architect. Behind this unpretentious front the

millionaires concealed a luxury of ornament and display seldom

revealed to the jealous popular eye: a central well, usually

surrounded or divided by a broad staircase of marble; on the ground

floor, simple rooms for transacting business or storing goods; on

the first (our second) floor, the piano nobile, the spacious halls

for reception and entertainment, and galleries of art, with

pavements of marble or sturdy colored tile; the furniture, carpets,

and textiles of exquisite material and form; the walls strengthened

with marble pilasters, the ceilings coffered in circles, triangles,

diamonds, or squares; and on walls and ceilings paintings by famous

artists, usually of pagan themes- for fashion now decreed that

Christian gentlemen, even of the cloth, should live amid scenes from

classical mythology; and on the upper floors the private chambers

for lords and ladies, for liveried lackeys, for children and nurses,

tutors and governesses and maids. Many men were rich enough to have,

besides their palaces, rural villas as refuges from the city's din

or summer heat; and these villas too might conceal sybaritic glories

of ornament and comfort, and mural masterpieces by Raphael, Peruzzi,

Giulio Romano, Sebastiano del Piombo.... This palace and villa

architecture was in many ways a selfish art, in which the wealth drawn

from unseen and countless laborers and distant lands vaunted itself in

gaudy decoration for a few; in this respect ancient Greece and

medieval Europe had shown a finer spirit, devoting their wealth not to

private luxury but to the temples and cathedrals that were the

possession, pride, and inspiration of all, the home of the people as

well as the house of God.

Of the architects outstanding at Rome in the pontificates of

Alexander VI and Julius II two were brothers, and a third was their

nephew. Giuliano da Sangallo began as a military engineer in the

Florentine army; passed to the service of Ferrante of Naples; and

became a friend of Giuliano della Rovere in the early days of the

latter's cardinalate. For Giuliano, the cardinal, Giuliano the

architect turned the abbey of Grottaferrata into a castle-fortress;

probably at Alexander's behest he designed the great coffered

ceiling of Santa Maria Maggiore, and gilded it with the first gold

brought from America. He accompanied Cardinal della Rovere into exile,

built a palace for him in Savona, went with him to France, and

returned to Rome when his patron at last became pope. Julius invited

him to submit plans for the new St. Peter's; when those of Bramante

were preferred the old architect reproached the new Pope, but Julius

knew what he wanted. Sangallo outlived both Bramante and Julius, and

was later appointed administer et coadiutor to Raphael in the

building of St. Peter's; but he died two years later. Meanwhile his

younger brother Antonio da Sangallo had also come from Florence, as

architect and military engineer for Alexander VI, and had built the

imposing church of Santa Maria di Loreto for Julius; and a nephew,

Antonio Picconi da Sangallo, had begun (1512) the most magnificent

of the Renaissance palaces of Rome- the Palazzo Farnese.

The greatest name in the architecture of this age was that of Donato

Bramante. He was already fifty-six when he came from Milan to Rome

(1499), but his study of the Roman ruins fired him with youthful

zeal to apply classical forms to Renaissance building. In the court of

a Franciscan convent near San Pietro in Montorio he designed a

circular Tempietto, or Little Temple, with columns and cupola so

classical in form that architects studied and measured it as if it had

been a newly discovered masterpiece of ancient art. From that

beginning Bramante passed through a succession of chefs-d'oeuvre:

the cloister of Santa Maria della Pace, the elegant cortile of San

Damaso... Julius overwhelmed him with assignments, both as architect

and as military engineer. Bramante laid out the Via Giulia, finished

the Belvedere, began the Loggie of the Vatican, and designed a new St.

Peter's. He was so interested in his work that he cared little for

money, and Julius had to command him to accept appointments whose

revenue would maintain him; `051717 some rivals, however, accused

him of embezzling papal funds and using shoddy materials in his

buildings. `051718 Others described him as a jovial and generous soul,

whose home became a favorite resort of Perugino, Signorelli,

Pinturicchio, Raphael, and other artists in Rome.

The Belvedere was a summer palace built for Innocent VIII, and

situated on a hill some hundred yards away from the rest of the

Vatican. It took its name from the beautiful view ( bel vedere )

that extended before it; and it gave its name to various sculptures

that were housed in it or its court. Julius had long been a

collector of ancient art; his prize possession was an Apollo

discovered during the pontificate of Innocent VIII; when he became

Pope he placed it in the cortile of the Belvedere, and the Apollo

Belvedere became one of the famous statues of the world. Bramante

gave the palace a new facade and garden court, and planned to

connect it with the Vatican proper by a series of picturesque

structures and gardens, but both he and Julius died before the plan

could be carried out.

If we attribute the Reformation proximately to the sale of

indulgences for the building of St. Peter's, the most momentous

event in the pontificate of Julius was the demolition of the old St.

Peter's and the beginning of the new. According to the received

tradition the old church had been built by Pope Sylvester I (326) over

the grave of the Apostle Peter near the Circus of Nero. In that church

many emperors, from Charlemagne onward, had been crowned, and many

popes. Repeatedly enlarged, it was, in the fifteenth century, a

spacious basilica with nave and double aisles, flanked with smaller

churches, chapels, and convents. But by the time of Nicholas V it

showed the wear of eleven centuries; cracks veined its walls, and

men feared that it might at any moment collapse, perhaps upon a

congregation. So in 1452 Bernardo Rossellino and Leon Battista Alberti

were commissioned to strengthen the edifice with new walls. The work

had hardly begun when Nicholas died; and succeeding popes, needing

funds for crusades, suspended it. In 1505, after considering and

rejecting various other plans, Julius II determined to tear down the

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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