accompanying Pope Julius, "O miserable churl! tell me, spirit are the bishops generally like this one?" The spirit replies, "Yes, a good part of them, but this is the chief, far and away." Peter closes the conversation with: "I am not surprised that so few apply now here (at the gate of Paradise) for admission, when the church has such rulers." This unheard-of piece of scurrility,directed against the acknowledged chief bishop of western Christendom, with his claims to an awful power, was so popular that it was brought on the public stage at Paris.* It may have been, probably was, grossly exaggerated; but it reflects the feelings with which many at that time regarded the greatest of the line of those secular Popes who reigned at the Vatican in the early years of the sixteenth century. Yet when this renowned warrior, statesman, and Pope died, in 1513, Rome, her turbulent, pleasure-loving citizens, her magnificent cardinals and nobles, unfeignedly mourned. "Men felt that a great man had passed away." actuated by the lofty aims and patriotic ambitions of their master, who loved Italy and Rome. Sceptics often at heart, they used the still mighty influence of the church for their own selfish ends. Such men were, alas! numerous among the cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops, and the higher clergy of the first quarter of the sixteenth century. "The most precious memorial of Julius II. is his portrait by Raffaele, on which many of us have gazed with curious admiration. It is a veritable revelation of his character. Seated in an arm-chair, with head bent downwards, the Pope is in deep thought. His furrowed brow and his deep-sunk eyes tell of energy and decision. The downdrawn corners of his mouth betoken constant dealings with the world. Raffaele has caught the momentary repose of a restless and passionate spirit." Alas! the spirit of the great Pope was that of a thoroughly worldly, not of a religious man. * successor to The cardinals chose as Julius II. one of their number well fitted to Pope Julius II. was a notable example carry on the now traditionary policy of the of an illustrious churchman, in those line of secular Popes. Cardinal Medici, the dark days when Christianity had well- moving spirit of the powerful and famous nigh vanished from the church. Such a Florentine house of that name, who ashead of the western church, in no slight sumed the title of Leo X., is perhaps the degree precipitated the great crash. The best known of these stately and magnificent life of the Pope was too faithfully copied pontiffs, whose lives and policy excited in by many of his subordinates in the minds like Luther's so intense a feeling of countries of northern and central Europe. sorrow and almost of despair. Leo X., He was imitated by lesser men, who poscardinal Medici, reigned some eight years, sessed the worldly tastes but were not A.D. 1513 to 1521, a period which included the early years of the revolt of Germany under the influence of Luther and his com *For these extracts also we are indebted to Mr. Froude's translations in the "Oxford Lectures' "Life and Letters of Erasmus." (Longmans & Co., 1895.) Bishop Creighton: "History of the Papacy during the Reformation," book v., chap. xvii. 1513-1521.] LEO X. AND ADRIAN VI. panions. (The theses of the reformer against the doctrine of indulgences were nailed to the Wittenberg church door in 1517.) The cardinals desired a kindly, magnificent Pope, perhaps less politically active than the dead Julius II., less bellicose, but still a pontiff who would maintain the secular dignity rather than the spiritual position of the chief pontiff. Such a man they found exactly in cardinal Medici. There was a story widely circulated, that one of the first sayings of the new Pope to his elder brother, Giulamo Medici, was, "Let us enjoy the Papacy, since God has given it to us." The reign of the Medici Leo X. was long looked back to in Rome and Italy as the golden age-as the period of its greatest glory. Under his rule Rome was the real capital of Italy, the centre of arts and letters. The court of Leo was magnificent, and considering the age and the lax code of its society, no especially glaring immorality disfigured it. The entertainments at the Vatican were numerous and splendid, and the guests not unfrequently numbered as many as two thousand. It was to supply means for all this lavish expenditure, that such devices as the sale of indulgences, which stirred the heart of Luther, were pressed, though the ostensible reason for the urgent need of money was the prosecution of the costly works in the new church of St. Peter's. His latest historian* tells us how Leo X. was also a keen sportsman, and that as soon as the summer heat began to abate, he withdrew from Rome and devoted a couple of months to field sports, including hawking, fishing, and the more active sport * Bishop Creighton. 7 of the chase of deer and wild boars. He was always the kindly and liberal patron of art and literature, and in his days. Rome was ever the favourite home of the great architects, painters, and sculptors, who made that eventful age in Italy so famous. In spite of all his devices to raise money, when he died his treasury was empty and his debts enormous. This was the pontiff who represented the medieval church at the time when its very existence was threatened by the German revolt; at the time when, in every country of Europe, men's minds were turned to the urgent necessity for a thorough reform in the church's doctrines and practices. Something of a reaction in the college. of cardinals, probably largely aided by the influence of the emperor Charles V., took place on the premature death of Leo X., and resulted in the election of the emperor's tutor, cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, a man sixty-three years old, with a wide reputation for piety. Pope Adrian VI. was no mean theologian, and was earnestly desirous of promoting a real reformation in the Papacy and in the church at large. He had, however, no sympathy whatever with the new learning, and he was bitterly hostile to Luther and his theological views. A curious change at once passed over the Vatican court. Instead of the lavish profusion and gorgeous magnificence of Leo X. and his predecessors, Alexander VI. (Borgia) and Julius II., the household of Adrian VI. was of the simplest description. An old Flemish woman presided over the kitchen, and the Pope was waited on at table by two Spanish pages. He pressed upon the luxurious cardinals the urgent need for reform in the church's manners, and called upon them to set the example of devotion and of a stern frugality. The result of these sharp measures was to win him much unpopularity, and even hatred, in Rome. Abroad he pursued the same measures of retrenchment, and pressed upon foreign churches the necessity of immediate change in their way of living and working. "The time is past," he wrote, "when God will connive at our faults. The age is changed, and popular opinion no longer thinks that the charges brought against us are partly false. The axe is laid at the foot of the tree, unless we choose to return to wisdom. Let the Pope and the curia do away their errors, by which God and man are justly offended; let them bring the clergy once more under discipline. If the Germans see this done, there will be no further talk of Luther. The root and the cure of the evil are alike in ourselves." It was, indeed, time that something should be done at headquarters if the church were to be saved. Personal profligacy had long surrounded the pontiff's throne; everything connected with Rome was rotten to the core, at home and abroad. The Tetzel scandal in the matter of indulgences was, in fact, repeated-perhaps with less coarseness and openness, but still repeated-in England in every great and small town, as well as in a thousand centres on the Continent. Everything connected with the supreme authority at Rome was sold legal justice and spiritual privileges, promotions, dispensations, pardons, indulgences; the very revenue of the holy see depended largely on simony; and at the same time all the officials, from the senior cardinal down to the lowest clerk in the chancery, were naturally averse to any inquiry, reform, or alteration in a system upon which their income for daily bread or daily luxury absolutely depended. Adrian VI., in his honest longing for reforms, looked round in vain for helpers in his formidable task. Alas! he soon died. He was, as has been well suggested, helped out of life, perhaps, by the hopelessness of his task. 1522 witnessed his election, the following year (1523) witnessed his obsequies. "He is," writes his biographer, "a pathetic figure in the annals of the Papacy. A man whose very virtues were vain, because he had not force to clothe his ideas with such a form that they appealed to men's imagination. He had no impressiveness, no fire, no attractiveness. The cynical diplomatists. and self-seeking ecclesiastics who were around him were never moved, even for a moment, by any consciousness that they stood before a man whose life was built higher than their own. All that he could do was to raise a barren protest, which created no sympathy on either side. He forgot that the old-fashioned conception of a pope, which he strove to restore, had entirely faded from men's minds, and his revival. was only a caricature. An old and feeble man, without resources, without a party, he hoped to convince a stubborn and distracted world by the mere force of an example of primitive piety." But Adrian died all too soon, perhaps of a broken heart. Still, he will ever shine out among that long line of secular dissolute popes as a noble, self-denying man, but who was *Bishop Creighton. 1523-1534.] CLEMENT VII. unequal to the great task to which he had set himself. 9 The Roman folk were full of joy, however, at the prospect of the restoration of Adrian VI. was succeeded by another cardinal of the powerful Medici house, who took the name of Clement VII. He was an Italian of the old school of worldly ecclesiastics, trained in the courts of Alexander VI. (Borgia) and Julius II. His election was mainly due to intrigues among the cardinals. He engaged to divide among the members of the college by lot the many benefices which he held. This simoniacal bargain gives some index to the character of the new pontiff, and to the spirit which actuated the cardinal princes in whose hands lay the all-important choice. Photo: Alinari. THE EXTERIOR OF ST. PETER'S, ROME. the brave days of Leo X., with a lavishly spending court. There was no longer any talk of reform or change; but things went |