Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D
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became one of his cardinals. From the collections of art, and the
conversations about art, in or around his father's palace he imbibed
that taste for the beautiful which was almost a religion to him in his
mature years. From his father, perhaps, he learned the profuse and
sometimes reckless generosity, and the gay, almost epicurean, manner
of life, which were to distinguish his cardinalate and his
pontificate, with far-reaching results to the Christian world. At
thirteen he entered the university that his father had
re-established at Pisa; there, for three years, he studied
philosophy and theology, canon and civil law. When, at sixteen, he was
allowed openly to join the college of cardinals in Rome, Lorenzo
sent him off (March 12, 1492) with one of the most interesting letters
in history:
-
You, and all of us who are interested in your welfare, ought to
esteem ourselves highly favored by Providence, not only for the many
honors and benefits bestowed on our house, but more particularly for
having conferred upon us, in your person, the greatest dignity we have
ever enjoyed. This favor, in itself so important, is rendered still
more so by the circumstances with which it is accompanied, and
especially by the consideration of your youth and of our situation
in the world. The first thing that I would therefore suggest to you
is, that you ought to be grateful to God, and continually to recollect
that it is not through your merits, your prudence, or your solicitude,
that this event has taken place, but through His favor, which you
can only repay by a pious, chaste, and exemplary life; and that your
obligations to the performance of these duties are so much the
greater, as in your early years you have given some reasonable
expectation that your riper age may produce such fruits....
Endeavor, therefore, to alleviate the burden of your early dignity
by the regularity of your life, and by your perseverance in those
studies which are suitable to your profession. It gave me great
satisfaction to learn that in the course of the past year you had
frequently, of your own accord, gone to communion and confession;
nor do I conceive that there is any better way of obtaining the
favor of heaven than by habituating yourself to a performance of these
and similar duties....
I well know that as you are now to reside at Rome, that sink of
all iniquity, the difficulty of conducting yourself by these
admonitions will be increased. The influence of example is itself
prevalent; but you will probably meet with those who will particularly
endeavor to corrupt and incite you to vice; because, as you may
yourself perceive, your early attainment to so great a dignity is
not observed without envy, and those who could not prevent your
receiving that honor will secretly endeavor to diminish it, by
inducing you to forfeit the good estimation of the public; thereby
precipitating you into that gulf into which they have themselves
fallen; in which attempt the consideration of your youth will give
them a confidence of success. To these difficulties you ought to
oppose yourself with the greater firmness as there is at present
less virtue amongst your brethren of the college. I acknowledge indeed
that several of them are good and learned men, whose lives are
exemplary, and whom I would recommend to you as patterns of your
conduct. By emulating them you will be so much the more known and
esteemed, in proportion as your age, and the peculiarity of your
situation, will distinguish you from your colleagues. Avoid,
however,... the imputation of hypocrisy; guard against all
ostentation, either in your conduct or in your discourse; affect not
austerity, nor even appear too serious. This advice you will, I
hope, in time understand and practise better than I can express it.
Yet you are not unacquainted with the great importance of the
character which you have to sustain, for you well know that all the
Christian world would prosper if the cardinals were what they ought to
be; because in such a case there would always be a good pope, upon
which the tranquillity of Christendom so materially depends.
Endeavor then to render yourself such that if all the rest resembled
you we might expect this universal blessing. To give you particular
directions as to your behavior and conversation would be a matter of
no small difficulty. I shall therefore only recommend that in your
intercourse with the cardinals and other men of rank your language
be unassuming and respectful.... On this your first visit to Rome it
will, however, be more advisable for you to listen to others than to
speak much yourself....
On public occasions let your equipage and dress be rather below than
above mediocrity. A handsome house and a well ordered family will be
preferable to a great retinue and a splendid residence.... Silk and
jewels are not suitable for persons in your station. Your taste will
be better shown in the acquisition of a few elegant remains of
antiquity, or in the collecting of handsome books, and by your
attendants being learned and well bred rather than numerous. Invite
others to your house oftener than you receive invitations. Practise
neither too frequently. Let your own food be plain, and take
sufficient exercise, for those who wear your habit are soon liable,
without great caution, to contract infirmities.... Confide in others
too little rather than too much. There is one rule which I would
recommend to your attention in preference to all others: Rise early in
the morning. This will not only contribute to your health, but will
enable you to arrange and expedite the business of the day; and as
there are various duties incident to your station, such as the
performance of divine service, studying, giving audience, etc., you
will find the observance of this admonition productive of the greatest
utility.... You will probably be desired to intercede for the favors
of the Pope on particular occasions. Be cautious, however, that you
trouble him not too often; for his temper leads him to be most liberal
to those who weary him least with their solicitations. This you must
observe, lest you should give him offense, remembering also at times
to converse with him on more agreeable topics; and if you should be
obliged to request some kindness from him, let it be done with that
modesty and humility which are so pleasing to his disposition.
Farewell. `05182
-
Lorenzo died less than a month later, and Giovanni had hardly
reached the "sink of iniquity" when he hurried back to Florence to
support his elder brother Piero in a precarious inheritance of
political authority. It was one of Giovanni's rare misfortunes that he
was again in Florence when Piero fell. To escape the indiscriminate
wrath of the citizens against the Medici family he disguised himself
as a Franciscan friar, made his way unrecognized through hostile
crowds, and applied for admission to the monastery of San Marco, which
his forebears had lavishly endowed, but which was at the time under
the command of his father's enemy, Savonarola. The friars refused
him admission. He hid for a time in a suburb, and then made his way
over the mountains to join his brothers in Bologna. Disliking
Alexander VI, he avoided Rome; for six years he lived as a fugitive or
an exile, but apparently never out of funds. With his cousin Giulio
(later Clement VII) and some friends he visited Germany, Flanders, and
France. Finally, reconciling himself to Alexander, he took up his
residence in Rome (1500).
Everybody there liked him. He was modest, affable, and
unostentatiously generous. He sent substantial gifts to his old
teachers Politian and Chalcondyles. He collected books and works of
art, and even his ample income hardly sufficed for his aid to poets,
artists, musicians, and scholars. He enjoyed all the arts and graces
of life; nevertheless Guicciardini, who lost no love on the popes,
described him as "having the reputation of a chaste person, and of
unblameable manners"; `05183 and Aldus Manutius complimented him on
his "pious and irreproachable life." `05184
His vicissitudes were resumed when Julius II appointed him papal
legate to govern Bologna and the Romagna (1511). He accompanied the
papal army to Ravenna; walked unarmed amid the battle, encouraging the
soldiers; stayed too long on the field of defeat, administering the
sacraments to the dying; and was captured by a Greek detachment in the
service of the victorious French. Taken as a prisoner to Milan, he was
pleased to note that even the French soldiers paid little attention to
the schismatic cardinals and their peregrinating council, but came
eagerly to him for his blessing, his absolution, perhaps his purse. He
escaped from his lenient captors, joined the Spanish-papal forces that
sacked Prato and took Florence, and shared with his brother Giuliano
in the restoration of the Medici to power (1512). A few months later
he was called to Rome to take part in selecting a successor to Julius.
He was still only thirty-seven, and could hardly have expected
that he himself would be chosen pope. He entered the conclave in a
litter, suffering from an anal fistula. `05185 After a week of debate,
and apparently without simony, Giovanni de' Medici was elected
(March 11, 1513), and took the name of Leo X. He was not yet a priest,
but this defect was remedied on March 15.
Everybody was surprised and delighted. After the dark intrigues of
Alexander and Caesar Borgia, and the wars and turbulence and
tantrums of Julius, it was a relief that a young man already
distinguished for his easygoing good nature, his tact and courtesy,
and his opulent patronage of letters and art, was now to lead the
Church, presumably in the ways of peace. Alfonso of Ferrara, so
relentlessly fought by Julius, had no fear in coming to Rome. Leo
reinvested him with all his ducal dignities, and the grateful prince
held the stirrup as Leo mounted a horse to ride in the coronation
procession of March 17. These inauguration ceremonies were lavish
beyond any precedent, costing 100,000 ducats. `05186 The banker
Agostino Chigi provided a float on which a Latin inscription
proclaimed hopefully: "Once Venus" (Alexander) "reigned, then Mars"
(Julius), "now Pallas" (Wisdom) "rules." A pithier epigram ran the
rounds: "Mars was, Pallas is, I, Venus, will always be." `05187 Poets,
sculptors, painters, goldsmiths rejoiced; humanists promised
themselves a revival of the Augustan Age. Never had a man mounted
the pontifical chair under more favorable auspices of public
approbation.
Leo himself, if we may believe the scribblers of the time, said
pleasantly to his brother Giuliano: Godiamoci il papato, poiche Dio
ci l'ha dato - "Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to
us." `05188 The remark, possibly apocryphal, indicated no irreverence,
but a blithe spirit, ready to be generous as well as happy, and
ingenuously unaware, amid its good fortune, that half of Christendom
was swelling with revolt against the Church.
II. THE HAPPY POPE
-
He began with excellent measures. He forgave the cardinals who had
staged the anticouncil of Pisa and Milan; that threat of schism ended.
He promised- and kept his promise- to refrain from touching the
estates left by cardinals. He reopened the Lateran Council, and
welcomed the delegates in his own graceful Latin. He effected some
minor ecclesiastical reforms, and reduced taxes; but his edict calling
for larger reforms (May 3, 1514) encountered so much opposition from
the functionaries whose incomes it would abate that he made no
strenuous effort to enforce it. `05189 "I will think the matter over,"
he said, "and see how I can satisfy everybody." `051810 This was his
character, and his character was his fate.
Raphael's portrait of him (Pitti), painted between 1517 and 1519
is not as well known as that of Julius, but that was partly Leo's
fault: there were in this case less depth of thought, heroism of
action, and worth of inner soul to give majesty to the outward face
and frame. The representation is merciless. A massive man, of more
than medium height, and much more than medium weight- the indignity of
obesity concealed under a fur-trimmed robe of velvet white and cape of
scarlet red; hands soft and flabby, here shorn of the many rings
that normally adorned them; a reading glass to help shortsighted eyes;
round head and plump cheeks, full lips and double chin; large nose and
ears; some lines of bitterness from the nose to the corners of the
mouth; heavy eyes and slightly frowning brow: this is the Leo
disillusioned with diplomacy, and perhaps soured with the unmannerly
Reformation, rather than the lighthearted hunter and musician, the
generous patron, the cultivated hedonist whose accession had so
gladdened Rome. To do him justice the record must be added to the
picture. A man is many men, to divers men and times; and not even
the greatest portraitist can show all these features in one moment's
face.
The basic quality in Leo, born of his fortunate life, was good
nature. He had a pleasant word for everybody, saw the best side of
everybody except the Protestants (whom he could not begin to
understand), and gave so generously to so many that even this
profuse philanthropy, involving heavy drafts on Christian purses,
shared in causing the Reformation. We hear much of his courtesy, his
tact, his amiability, his cheerful temper even in sickness and pain.
(His fistula, repeatedly operated upon, always returned, and sometimes
made locomotion an agony.) So far as he could, he let others lead
their own lives. His initial moderation and kindliness yielded to
severity when he discovered some cardinals plotting against his
life. At times he was relentlessly hard, as with Francesco Maria della
Rovere of Urbino and Gianpaolo Baglioni of Perugia. `051811 He could
lie like a diplomat when he had to, and now and then bettered the
instruction of the treacherous statesmanship that enmeshed him. More
often he was humane, as when he forbade (in vain) the enslavement of
American Indians, and did his best to check the Inquisitorial ferocity
of Ferdinand the Catholic. `051812 Despite his general worldliness
he fulfilled conscientiously all his religious duties, observed the
fasts, and recognized no inherent contradiction between religion and
gaiety. He has been charged with saying to Bembo: "It is well known to
all ages how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us"; but
the sole authority for this is a violent polemic work, The Pageant of
Popes, written about 1574 by an obscure Englishman, John Bale; and
the freethinking Bayle and the Protestant Roscoe alike reject the
story as itself a fable. `051813
His enjoyments ranged from philosophy to buffoons. He had learned at
his father's table to appreciate poetry, sculpture, painting, music,
calligraphy, illumination, textiles, vases, glass- all the forms of
the beautiful except perhaps their source and norm, woman; and
though his enjoyment of the arts was too indiscriminate to be a
guide to taste, his patronage of artists and poets carried on in
Rome the magnanimous traditions of his ancestors in Florence. He was
too easygoing to take philosophy to heart; he knew how precarious
all conclusions are, and did not bother his head with metaphysics
after his college days. At meals he had books read to him, usually
of history, or he listened to music. There his taste was sure; he
had a good ear and a melodious voice. He kept several musicians at his
court, and paid them lavishly. The improvisatore Bernardo Accolti
(called Unico Aretino because of his birth in Arezzo and his unequaled
facility in impromptu poetry and music) was able, with the fees that
Leo paid him, to buy the little duchy of Nepi; a Jewish lute player
earned a castle and the title of count; the singer Gabriele Merino was
made an archbishop. `051814 Under Leo's care and encouragement the
Vatican choir reached an unprecedented degree of excellence. Raphael
rightly pictured the Pope as reading a book of sacred music. Leo
collected musical instruments for their beauty as well as their
tone. One was an organ adorned with alabaster, and judged by
Castiglione to be the loveliest that he had ever seen or heard.
Leo liked also to keep at his court a number of jesters and
buffoons. This accorded with the custom of his father and of
contemporary kings, and did not altogether shock a Rome that loved
laughter only next to wealth and venery; to our hindsight it seems
offensive that jests light or coarse should have echoed through the
papal court while the Reformation raged in Germany. It amused Leo to
see one of his monk buffoons swallow a pigeon at a mouthful, or
forty eggs in succession. `051815 He received with pleasure from a
Portuguese embassy a white elephant- brought from India- which
genuflected thrice on meeting His Holiness. `051816 To bring him a
person whose wit, deformity, or imbecility could refresh his mirth was
an open sesame to his heart. `051817 He seems to have felt that to
indulge in such diversions now and then would distract him from
physical pain, relieve his mind of cosmic worries, and prolong his
life. `051818 There was something disarmingly childlike about him.
Occasionally he would play cards with cardinals, allow the public to
sit in as spectators, and then distribute gold pieces to the crowd.
Above all other amusements he loved to hunt. It controlled his
tendency to corpulence, and allowed him to enjoy the open air and
the countryside after being a prisoner of the Vatican. He kept a large
stable, with a hundred grooms. It was his custom to devote nearly
all of October to the chase. His physicians highly approved of his
addiction, but his master of ceremonies, Paris de Grassis,
complained that the Pope kept his heavy boots on so long that "no
one can kiss his feet"- at which Leo laughed heartily. `051819 We
get a kindlier view of the Pope than in Raphael's picture when we read
how the peasants and villagers would come to greet him as he passed
along their roads, and would offer him their modest gifts- which
were so handsomely returned by the pontiff that the people eagerly
awaited his hunting trips. To the poor girls among them he gave
marriage dowries; he paid the debts of the sick or aged, or the
parents of large families. `051820 These simple folk loved him more
sincerely than the 2000 persons who made up his menage at the
Vatican. *05047
But Leo's court was no mere focus of amusement and hilarity. It
was also the meeting place of responsible statemen, and Leo was one of
them; it was the center of the intellect and wit of Rome, the place
where scholars, educators, poets, artists, and musicians were welcomed
or housed; the scene of solemn ecclesiastical functions, ceremonious
diplomatic receptions, costly banquets, dramatic or musical
performances, poetical recitations, and exhibitions of art. It was
without question the most refined court in the world at that time. The
labors of popes from Nicholas V to Leo himself in the improvement
and adornment of the Vatican, in the assemblage of literary and
artistic genius, and of the ablest ambassadors in Europe, made the
court of Leo the zenith not of the art (for that had come under
Julius) but of the literature and brilliance of the Renaissance. In
mere quantity of culture history had never seen its equal, not even in
Periclean Athens or Augustan Rome. `051822
The city itself prospered and expanded as Leo's gathered gold flowed
along its economic arteries. In thirteen years after his accession,
said the Venetian ambassador, ten thousand houses were built in
Rome, chiefly by newcomers from northern Italy following the migration
of the Renaissance. Florentines in particular crowded in to pick plums
from a Florentine pontificate. Paolo Giovio, who moved in Leo's court,
estimated the population of Rome at 85,000. `051823 It was not yet
so fair a city as Florence or Venice, but it was now by common consent
the hub of Western civilization; Marcello Alberini, in 1527, called it
"the rendezvous of the world." `051824 Leo, amid amusements and
foreign affairs, regulated the importation and price of food,
abrogated monopolies and "corners," reduced taxes, administered
justice impartially, struggled to drain the Pontine marshes,
promoted agriculture in the Campagna, and continued the work of
Alexander and Julius in opening or improving streets in
Rome. `051830 Like his father in Florence, he provided circenses
as well as panem - engaged artists to plan gorgeous pageants,
encouraged the masked festivities of Carnival, even allowed Borgian
bullfights to be staged in St. Peter's square. He wished the people to
share in the happiness and jollity of the new Golden Age.
The city took its cue from the Pope, and let joy be unconfined.
Prelates, poets, parasites, panders, and prostitutes hurried to Rome
to drink the golden rain. The cardinals- dowered by the pontiffs,
and above all by Leo, with innumerable benefices that sent them
revenues from all parts of Latin Christendom- were now far richer than
the old nobility, which was sinking into economic and political decay.
Some cardinals had an income of 30,000 ducats a year
($375,000,). `051831 They lived in stately palaces manned by as many
as three hundred servants `051832 and adorned with every art and
luxury known to the time. They did not quite think of themselves as
ecclesiastics; they were statemen, diplomats, administrators; they
were the Roman Senate of the Roman Church; and they proposed to live
like senators. They smiled at those foreigners who expected of them
the abstinence and continence of priests. Like so many men of their
age, they judged conduct not by moral but by esthetic standards; a few
commandments might be broken with impunity if it was done with
courtesy and taste. They surrounded themselves with pages,
musicians, poets, and humanists, and now and then dined with courtly
courtesans. `051833 They mourned that their salons were normally
womanless; "all Rome," according to Cardinal Bibbiena, "says that
nothing is wanting here but a Madonna to hold a court." `051834 They
envied Ferrara, Urbino, and Mantua, and rejoiced when Isabella
d'Este came to spread her robes and feminine graces over their
unisexual feast.
Manners, taste, good conversation, appreciation of art were now at
their height, and patronage was opulent. There had been cultivated
circles in the smaller capitals, and Castiglione preferred the quiet
coterie of Urbino to the cosmopolitan, noisier, flashier
civilization of Rome. But Urbino was a tiny island of culture; this
was a stream, a sea. Luther came and saw it, and was shocked and
repelled; Erasmus came and saw it, and was charmed to ecstasy. `051835
A hundred poets proclaimed that the Saturnia regna had returned.
III. SCHOLARS
-
On November 5, 1513, Leo issued a bull uniting two impoverished
institutions of learning: the Studium sacri palatii - the College
of the Holy Palace, i.e., the Vatican- and the Studium urbis , or
City College; these now became the University of Rome, and were housed
in a building soon known as the Sapienza. `051836 These schools had
prospered under Alexander but languished under Julius, who diverted
their funds to war, and preferred a sword to a book. Leo supported the
new University handsomely until he too was enmeshed in the expensive
game of competitive destruction. He brought in a bevy of devoted
scholars, so that soon the institution had eighty-eight professors-
fifteen in medicine alone- receiving from fifty to 530 florins ($625
to $6625?) a year. Leo, in these early years of his pontificate, did