Christopher - The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici

For years the Pope had been endeavouring to dismiss from his mind all thoughts of Luther and of German demands for reform in the Church, hoping that the problems would eventually resolve themselves in the pettifogging arguments of German monks. But Luther would not go away; and the Pope had been driven to excommunicate him. He now hoped that Charles V as a good Catholic would finally settle the matter for him by having the heretic tried and executed. The Emperor had no particular objections to doing so; but the German princes, who listened with some sympathy to Luther’s impassioned declarations, were of a different mind. Charles could overrule them, of course; and, so the Pope was informed, he would overrule them. There was, however, to be a quid pro quo : in exchange for the condemnation of Luther, the Emperor would require the Pope’s support in his intended attack upon France’s remaining possessions in Italy, including Milan. Leo agreed to this on condition that once the French had been divested of the occupied territories, the Papacy could not only take back from them the towns of Parma and Piacenza, which Francis I had declined to return at the conference at Bologna in 1515, but also receive Charles’s help in taking Ferrara. So the bargain was struck and the Emperor’s army prepared to march.

A dispatch from Cardinal Giulio with news of the Emperor’s victory over Francis I, the fell of Milan, and the flight of the French army towards the Alps was awaiting the Pope at Villa Magliana where, despite a recent operation on his anal fistula, he had gone for a day’s hunting. The day had been humid; the night was cold and windy; and as Leo sat in his bedroom in front of a blazing fire, with his back to an open window to which he moved from time to time to watch a celebratory bonfire blazing in the courtyard below, he caught a severe and feverish cold. Two days later he was carried back to Rome where he was told of the capture of Piacenza and Parma.

On Sunday, the first day of the month of December [1521] at about the seventh hour, Pope Leo expired of a violent chill without anyone warning him that his sickness was mortal, since the physicians all protested that he was but slightly indisposed owing to the cold he had taken at the Magliana.

Immediately on receipt of the news of the Pope’s sudden death, Cardinal Giulio hurried back for the conclave, which began on 28 December, evidently hoping to succeed his cousin. But Cardinal Francesco Soderini had also made haste for Rome and, having arrived first, had already succeeded, with the help of Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, in forming so strong an opposition to Giulio’s election that he decided to support the candidature of Charles V’s former tutor, an obscure, virtuous and ascetic Flemish cardinal, Adrian Dedel, of whom many members of the Sacred College had scarcely even heard. The subsequent election of this modest scholar, which had been engineered to thwart the ambitions of more powerful candidates such as Alessandro Farnese and Thomas Wolsey, caused no one more surprise and consternation than the new Pope himself, who received the news with horror. Choosing the title of Adrian VI – tardily to fulfil the prophecy of the soothsayer whose prognostications had so excited Cardinal Adriano Castellesi – the Pope reluctantly left for Rome where he contrived to live, spending a ducat a day, upon frugal meals served to him by an old Flemish harridan of whom he seemed unaccountably fond. The failure of his forlorn attempts to reform the Church, the struggle to make stringent economies in the papal household and the deep enmity of those whose previously enjoyable lives were transformed by his parsimony, all proved too much for him. He contracted a kidney disease, and this, combined, so it was inevitably said, with poison, resulted in his death in just over a year. The thankful citizens of Rome, who never since have been required to put up with a Pope who was not Italian, laid festive garlands at the door of his doctor, naming him their liberator.

Satisfied that Florence – where the bastards, Ippolito and Alessandro, as well as Caterina de’ Medici were all now living – was securely in the hands of the Medici party, Cardinal Giulio had set up house in Rome in the fine palace which had been wrested from Cardinal Riario for condoning the plot against the life of Leo X. Without undue ostentation he had lived there as a generous Medici was expected to live, a patron of artists and musicians, a protector of the poor, a lavish host. Neither his cold manner nor his saturnine appearance fitted him for such a part; but it was as well that he had played it, for in the tedious conclave which followed the death of Adrian VI he needed all the friends he could muster. At first it seemed impossible that he could win the election. The French were strongly opposed to him, and his other enemies were many and implacable, none more determined to thwart him than the powerful Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, who hoped to secure the election himself. Weeks passed; a month went by, two months; there were demonstrations and riots in Rome. There had never been a longer conclave in living memory. Then at last, after many bribes had changed hands, when many secret promises had been made, when Cardinal Colonna removed his objections for fear that in the impasse his rival, Cardinal Orsini, might be chosen, and when it was known that a Medici election was acceptable to both Charles V and to Henry VIII as well as to Francis I – who thought it unlikely that the Medici would remain loyal to the Emperor – Cardinal Giulio emerged from the conclave, after sixty days’ incarceration, as Pope Clement VII. He was twenty-five years old. Few of his opponents in the conclave had been converted to friendship, but there were many in Rome who wished him well and ‘trusted to behold again a flourishing court, a liberal Pontiff and a revival of the arts and letters which had been banished under the late barbarian rule of Adrian’.

Certainly Pope Clement did prove himself both a generous and a discriminating patron. He was not open-handed by nature, and far from convivial or gregarious: he preferred to spend his time listening to music or discussing theological and philosophical questions to the more ebullient pursuits of Leo X. But he understood the value and rewards of liberality. He was as munificent in his almsgiving as Leo, and quite as bountiful a patron. He continued his family’s patronage of Raphael, asking him to submit designs for a villa to be built on the cypress-covered slopes of Monte Mario. 1He gave several commissions to that most versatile, most quarrelsome and most boastful of Florentines, Benvenuto Cellini. He gave his encouragement to the Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Koppernigk, known as Copernicus. He put Giulio Romano and Gian Francesco Penni to work in the Vatican, where he had already arranged for Leonardo da Vinci to be provided with his own apartments. And he confirmed the commission which Leo X had already given to Michelangelo to design a chapel at San Lorenzo in Florence to house the tombs of their fathers, Giuliano and Lorenzo, and of their two cousins, Lorenzo Duke of Urbino, and Giuliano, Duke of Nemours. 2Michelangelo was also asked to design a library at San Lorenzo to which the family’s collection of books could one day be returned. 3

As Francis I had foreseen when withdrawing his objections to his election, Pope Clement soon proved himself a far from faithful ally of the Emperor; and towards the end of 1524, after many tortuous turns of policy, he had allied the Papacy once more with France, whose army was again on the march. No sooner had this decision been taken than Clement, more indecisive and irresolute with each passing month, began to regret it. He had due cause to do so, for in February 1525 news reached Rome that the Emperor, in alliance with the Duke of Milan, had defeated the French army at Pavia and that Francis I had been taken prisoner. The Pope, now virtually a prisoner of Charles himself, endeavoured to extricate himself from his unfortunate position not by openly coming to terms with the Emperor, as sensible men expected him to do, but by entering into secret negotiations with Francis who, released from imprisonment, determined to cross the Alps once more.