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Note: "Papa Leone"
Tag(s): Italy, Medici, Papacy
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ON THE day that Soderini left Florence – 1 September 1512 – Cardinal Giovanni’s younger brother, Giuliano de’ Medici, entered it.
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This was an attitude quite contrary to his elder brother’s plans. The Cardinal had not gone to all this trouble just to find the Medici a home. He himself returned to Florence with 1,500 troops, and entered his former palace in the full panoply of his rank with the air of a man who had returned to his native city in order to rule it.
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power in Florence, the Cardinal was informed that his benefactor, Pope Julius II, was dying. Giovanni, now aged thirty-seven, was himself ill; but in order to attend the enclave he gave orders that he should be carried south to Rome in a litter.
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So, on 11 March, when the votes were taken out of the urn and counted by Cardinal Giovanni de’Medici himself as Senior Deacon, he was able to announce his own nomination. He did so with becoming modesty, announcing that he would, if the Sacred College approved the choice, be known as Leo X.
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‘God has given us the Papacy,’ he is reported to have said to his brother, Giuliano. ‘Let us enjoy it.’
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Spaniards, who had helped the family to regain power in Florence, were to be driven out of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples. It might even be that the Kingdom of Naples would subsequently be given to Giuliano de’ Medici who, after his brother’s election as Pope,
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The new French King, however, proved to be a far less pliable young man than the Pope had hoped. Tall, handsome and restless, Francis I was both intelligent and attractive, with a fixed determination to regain for France that influence in Italy which she had held for so short a time in the days of Charles VIII. Deeply
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Undeterred by this alliance, of which he professed himself contemptuous, King Francis crossed the Alps and marched down into Piedmont with an army of nearly 100,000
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The Pope left for Bologna by way of Florence. Here his nephew, Lorenzo, had now consolidated the Medici power.
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title of Captain General of the Florentine Republic which the Signoria had obediently bestowed upon him on his return. Thereafter he had become increasingly authoritarian, requiring councils to meet in the Medici Palace rather than in the public places of government, rejecting
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He graciously created the King’s tutor a cardinal, and expressed profound satisfaction when, in return, Francis created Giuliano de’ Medici Duke of Nemours.
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resulted in Lorenzo’s being so badly wounded by an arquebus that he was gradually to waste away both in body and in will. The Pope, however, was for the moment well satisfied. Lorenzo was proclaimed Duke of Urbino and Lord of Pesaro, and seemed well on the way to becoming master of that large, unified, Medici-dominated state in central Italy which Leo dreamed of creating.
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The Pope’s own dinners were noted for their rare delicacies, such as peacocks’ tongues, of which he himself, however, ate but sparingly. They were also noted for their jocularity, for such surprises as nightingales flying out of pies or little, naked children emerging from puddings. Dwarfs, buffoons and jesters were nearly always to be found at his table where the guests were encouraged to laugh at their antics and at the cruel jokes which were played upon them – as when, for instance, some half-witted, hungry dwarf was seen guzzling a plate of carrion covered in a strong sauce under the impression that he was being privileged to consume the finest fare.
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Yet Leo’s life was not entirely given over to frivolity. If he spent vast sums on entertainments, on French hounds and Cretan falcons, on furs and gold chains, and on his ever growing household, he lavished money, too, on the improvement and development of Rome. He built the Via Ripetta so as to provide a new outlet from the congested old town up towards the Piazza del Popolo; he restored the church of Santa Maria in Domnica and provided it with its splendid porticoed façade; above all, he enthusiastically continued the reconstruction of the Vatican Palace and the rebuilding of St Peter’s, retaining Julius II’s architect, Donato d’Angelo Lazzari, known as Bramante, who had begun work on the new church in 1505.
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Determined to make Rome the most cultured city in Europe, he offered numerous inducements to attract the most accomplished artists, writers and scholars to live there, making freely available to them his extensive library
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Michelangelo, who had been encouraged to come to Rome by Julius II, was gloomy, touchy, independent and self-absorbed, choosing to work in a locked room, quite unwilling to follow unquestioningly any patron’s brief or to undertake to finish a work in any given period. The Pope professed to feel a deep affection for him and would relate ‘almost with tears in his eyes’ how they had been brought up together as boys; but they never really got on well together.
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Leo far preferred to deal with the younger, more complaisant, unobtrusive and polite Raffaello Sanzio. Raphael, a native of Urbino, had already been set to work on the decoration of the official apartments of the apostolic palace by Julius II
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