Having broken the power of Cesare Borgia, he moved on to neutralize the feuding baronial factions of Rome by judicious marriages of della Rovere relatives to Orsinis and Colonnas. He reorganized and stiffened the papal administration, improved order in the city by stern measures against bandits and the paid assassins and duelists who had flourished under Alexander. He hired the Swiss Guard as the Vatican’s protectors and conducted tours of inspection through the papal territories.
His program to consolidate papal rule began with a campaign against Venice to regain the cities of the Romagna, which Venice had seized from the Holy See, and in this venture he brought France to his aid in alliance with Louis XII. Negotiations streamed from him in local and multi-national diplomacy: to neutralize Florence, to engage the Emperor, to activate allies, to dislocate opponents. In their common if conflicting greeds, all participants in the Italian wars had designs on the expanded possessions of Venice, and in 1508 the parties coalesced in a liquid coalition called the League of Cambrai. The wars of the League of Cambrai over the next five years exhibit all the logical consistency of opera librettos. They were largely directed against Venice until the parties shifted around against France. The Papacy, the Empire, Spain and a major contingent of Swiss mercenaries took part in one permutation of alliance after another. By masterful manipulation of finances, politics and arms, aided by excommunication when the conflict grew rough, the Pope succeeded ultimately in regaining from Venice the estates of the patrimony it had absorbed.
In the meantime against all cautionary advice, Julius’ pugnacity extended to the recovery of Bologna and Perugia, the two most important cities of the papal domain, whose despots, besides oppressing their subjects, virtually ignored the authority of Rome. Announcing his intention of taking personal command, and overriding the shocked objections of many of the cardinals, the Pope stunned Europe by riding forth at the head of his army on its march northward in 1506.
Years of belligerence, conquests, losses and violent disputes engaged him. When in the normal course of Italian politics Ferrara, a papal fief, changed sides, Julius in his rage at the rebellion and the dilatory progress of his punitive forces, again took physical command at the front. In helmet and mail, the white-bearded Pope, lately risen from an illness so near death that arrangements for a conclave had been made, conducted a snow-bound siege through the rigors of a severe winter. Making his quarters in a peasant’s hut, he was continually on horseback, directing deployment and batteries, riding among the troops, scolding or encouraging and personally leading them through a breach in the fortress. “It was certainly a sight very uncommon to behold the High Priest, the Vicar of Christ on earth … employed in person in managing a war excited by himself among Christians … and retaining nothing of the Pontiff but the name and the robes.”
Guicciardini’s judgments are weighted by his scorn for all the popes of this period, but to many others besides himself the spectacle of the Holy Father as warrior and instigator of wars was dismaying. Good Christians were scandalized.
Julius was carried forward in this enterprise by fury against the French, who through a long series of disputes had now become his enemies and with whom Ferrara had joined. The aggressive Cardinal d’Amboise, as determined to be Pope as Julius before him, had persuaded Louis XII to demand three French cardinalships as the price of his aid. Against his will, Julius had complied for the sake of French support, but relations with his old rival were embittered and new disputes arose. The Pope’s relations with the League, it was said, depended on whether his hatred of d’Amboise proved greater than his enmity for Venice. When Julius supported Genoa in its effort to overthrow French control, Louis XII, needled by d’Amboise, made enlarged claims of Gallican rights in appointment of benefices. As the area of conflict spread, Julius realized that the Papal States would never be firmly established while the French exercised power in Italy. Having once been the “fatal instrument” of their invasion, he now bent every effort upon their expulsion. His reversal of policy, requiring a whole new set of alliances and arrangements, awed his compatriots and even his enemy. Louis XII, reported Machiavelli, then Florentine envoy in France, “is determined to vindicate his honor even if he loses everything he possesses in Italy.” Vacillating between moral and military procedure, the King threatened at times “to hang a Council around [the Pope’s] neck” and at other times, with d’Amboise pressing at his elbow, “to lead an army to Rome and himself depose the Pope.” A vision of not merely succeeding but replacing the Pope lured Cardinal d’Amboise. He too had become infected by the virus of folly—or ambition, its large component.
In July 1510 Julius ruptured relations with Louis, closing the Vatican door to the French Ambassador. “The French in Rome,” gleefully reported the envoy of Venice, “stole about looking like corpses.” Julius, on the contrary, was invigorated by visions of himself winning glory as the liberator of Italy. Thereafter Fuori i barbari! (Out with the barbarians!) was his battle cry.
Bold in his new cause, he executed a complete about-face to join with Venice against France. Joined also by Spain, ever eager to drive the French out of Italy, the new combination, designated the Holy League, was given a fighting edge by the addition of the Swiss. Recruited by Julius on terms of a five-year annual subsidy, their commander was the martial Bishop of Sion, Matthäus Schinner. A kindred spirit to the Pope, Schinner hated his overbearing neighbors, the French, even more than Julius hated them and was dedicated in his heart, soul and talents to their defeat. Gaunt, long-nosed, limitless in energy, he was an intrepid soldier and spellbinding orator, whose eloquence before battle moved his troops “as the wind moves the waves.” Schinner’s tongue, complained the next King of France, Francis I, gave the French more trouble than the formidable Swiss pikes. Julius made him a Cardinal on his entering the Holy League. In later days in battle against Francis I, Schinner rode to war wearing his cardinal’s red hat and robes after announcing to his troops that he wished to bathe in French blood.
The addition of another martial cleric, Archbishop Bainbridge of York, whom Julius made a Cardinal at the same time he elevated Schinner, deepened the impression of a Papacy addicted to the sword. “What have the helmet and mitre in common?” asked Erasmus, clearly referring to Julius although prudently waiting until after his death to do so. “What association is there between the cross and the sword, between’ the Holy Book and the shield? How do you dare, Bishop who holds the place of the Apostle, school your people in war?” If Erasmus, always so adept at ambiguity, could say as much, many others were made yet more uncomfortable. Satiric verses referring to the armored heir of Saint Peter appeared in Rome and caricatures and burlesques in France, instigated by the King, who used Julius’ warrior image for propaganda against him. He was said to “pose as a warrior but only looks like a monk dancing in spurs.” Serious churchmen and cardinals were antagonized and begged him not to lead armies in person. But all arguments about exciting the world’s disapproval or supplying added reason to those agitating for his removal were in vain.
Julius pursued his aims with an absolute disregard of obstacles that helped to make him irresistible, but his pursuit disregarded the primary purpose of the Church. Folly, in one of its aspects, is the obstinate attachment to a disserviceable goal. Giovanni Acciaiuoli, Florentine Ambassador in Rome at this time, sensed that affairs were out of control. Schooled in the Florentine theory of political science based on rational calculations, the Ambassador found in the wild swings of Julius’ policy and in his often demonic behavior disturbing evidence that events were proceeding “outside of all reason.”
As a builder and sponsor of the arts the Pope was as passionate and arbitrary as in his policies. He aroused many against him by deciding to demolish the old basilica of St. Peter’s for replacement by a grander edifice suitable to a greater Holy See and a Rome that he would make the world’s capital. More than that, it was to house his own tomb, to be built in his lifetime from a design by Michelangelo which surpassed, in Vasari
’s words, “for beauty and magnificence, abundance of ornament and richness of statuary, every ancient and imperial mausoleum.” Thirty-six feet high, adorned by forty larger-than-life statues, surmounted by two angels supporting the sarcophagus, it was expected by the artist to be his masterpiece and by the client his apotheosis. According to Vasari, the design for the tomb preceded the design of the new church and so excited the Pope that he conceived the plan of a new St. Peter’s as suitable housing for it. If the motive of his Papacy, as his admirers claim, was the greater glory of the Church, he identified it with the greater glory of the Supreme Pontiff, himself.
His decision was widely deplored, not because men did not want a handsome new church, said a critic, “but because they grieved that the old one should be pulled down, revered as it was by the whole world, ennobled by the sepulchres of so many saints and illustrious for so many things that had been done in it.”
Ignoring disapproval as always, Julius plunged ahead, commissioning the architectural design by Bramante and pressing the work so vehemently that 2500 laborers were employed at one time in demolishing the old basilica. Under the pressure of his impatience, the accumulated contents of centuries—tombs, paintings, mosaics, statues—were discarded without inventory and lost beyond recall, earning Bramante the title il minante. If Julius shared in the title, he cared not at all. In 1506 he climbed down a ladder to the bottom of a steep shaft constructed for a pier of the new building, there to lay the foundation stone for the “world’s cathedral,” which was inscribed of course with his name. The cost of construction far exceeded papal revenues and had to be met by a device of fateful consequence, the public sale of indulgences. Extended to Germany in the next pontificate, it completed the disillusion of one angry cleric, precipitating the most divisive document in Church history.
In Michelangelo the Pope had recognized an incomparable artist from the time of his first sculpture in Rome, the Pietà, a requiem in marble which no one from that day to this can view without emotion. Finished in 1499 on commission from a French cardinal who wished to present a great work to St. Peter’s on his departure from Rome, it made Michelangelo famous at 24 and was followed within five years by his overpowering David for the cathedral of his native Florence. Clearly the supreme Pope had to be glorified by the supreme artist, but the temperaments of the two terribili clashed. After Michelangelo had spent eight months cutting and transporting the finest marble from Carrara for the tomb, Julius suddenly abandoned the project, refused to pay or speak with the artist, who returned to Florence in a rage, swearing never to work for the Pope again. What had taken place inside the dark truculence of the della Roveran mind no one can say, and his arrogance would not permit him to offer any explanation to Michelangelo.
When Bologna was conquered, however, the triumph had to have a monument by no other hand. After repeated and stubborn refusals and through the persistent efforts of intermediaries, Michelangelo was eventually won back and consented to model a huge statue of Julius three times life size as ordered by Julius himself. When it was viewed by the subject while still in clay, Michelangelo asked whether he should place a book in the left hand. “Put a sword there,” answered the warrior Pope, “I know nothing of letters.” Cast in bronze, the colossal figure was toppled and melted down when the city changed hands during the wars, and made into a cannon derisively named La Giulia by papal enemies.
In the Renaissance spirit, Julius’ Papacy, carrying on the work of his uncle Sixtus IV, poured energies and funds into the renovation of the city. Everywhere laborers were building. Cardinals created palaces, enlarged and restored churches. New and rebuilt churches—Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Pace—arose. Bramante built the sculpture garden of the Belvedere and the loggias connecting it to the Vatican. Major painters, sculptors, carvers and goldsmiths were called on for ornamentation. Raphael exalted the Church in frescoes for the papal apartments, newly occupied by Julius because he refused to inhabit the same suite as his late enemy Alexander. Michelangelo, dragooned against his will by the importunate Pope, painted the Sistine ceiling and, caught by his own art, worked alone on a scaffold for four years, allowing no one but the Pope to inspect his progress. Climbing a ladder to the platform, the aging Pope would criticize and quarrel with the painter, and lived just long enough to see the unveiling, when “the whole world came running” to gaze and acknowledge the marvel of a new masterpiece.
Art and war absorbed papal interest and resources to the neglect of internal reform. While the exterior bloomed, the interior decayed. A strange reminder of ancient folly appeared at this time: the classic marble Laocoon was rediscovered, as if to warn the Church—as its prototype had once warned Troy. It was dug up by a householder named Felice de Fredi when clearing his vineyard of ancient walls in the vicinity of the former Baths of Titus, built over the ruins of Nero’s Golden House. Although the find was broken into four large and three smaller pieces, every Roman knew a classical statue when he saw one. Word was immediately sent to the Pope’s architect, Giuliano de Sangallo, who set out at once on horseback with his son riding behind him and accompanied by Michelangelo, who happened to be visiting his house at the moment. Taking one look at the half-buried pieces as he dismounted, Sangallo cried, “It is the Laocoon that Pliny describes!” The observers watched in anxiety and excitement as the earth was carefully scraped away and then reported to the Pope, who bought the statue at once for 4140 ducats.
The ancient earth-stained Laocoon was welcomed like royalty. Transported to the Vatican amid cheering crowds and over roads strewn with flowers, it was reassembled and placed in the Belvedere sculpture garden along with the Apollo Belvedere, “the two first statues of the world.” Such was the éclat that de Fredi and his son were rewarded with an annual pension for life of 600 ducats (derived from tolls of the city gates), and the finder’s role was recorded by him on his tombstone.
From the antique marvel sprang new concepts of art. Its tortured motion profoundly influenced Michelangelo. Leading sculptors came to examine it; goldsmiths made copies; a poetic Cardinal wrote an ode to it (“… from the heart of mighty ruins, lo!/Time once more has brought Laocoon home.…”); Francis I tried to claim it as a prize of victory from the next Pope; in the 18th century it became the centerpiece of studies by Winckelmann, Lessing and Goethe; Napoleon seized it in transitory triumph for the Louvre, whence, on his downfall, it was returned to Rome. The Laocoon was art, style, virtue, struggle, antiquity, philosophy, but as a voice of warning against self-destruction it was not heard.
Julius was no Alexander, but his autocracy and bellicosity had aroused almost as much antagonism. Dissident cardinals were already moving into the camp of Louis XII, who was determined to oust Julius before Julius drove him from Italy. The ouster had become an accepted objective, as if the awful example of the last century’s Schism had never happened. Secularization had worked too well; the aura of the Pope had shriveled until he was, in political if not in popular eyes, no different from prince or sovereign, and subject to handling on those terms. In 1511, Louis XII in association with the German Emperor and nine dissident cardinals (three of whom later denied their consent) summoned a General Council. Prelates, orders, universities, secular rulers and the Pope himself were called upon to attend in person or through delegations for the stated purpose of “Reform of the Church in Head and Members.” This was everywhere understood as a euphemism for war on Julius.
He was now in the same position as he had once tried to place Alexander, with French troops advancing and a Council looming. Deposition and Schism were openly discussed. The French-sponsored Council, with the schismatic cardinals taking the position that Julius had failed to carry out his original promise to hold a Council, convened at Pisa. French troops re-entered the Romagna; Bologna fell once more to the enemy. Rome trembled and felt the approach of doom. Worn out by his exertions at the front, tired and ill at 68, his territory and authority both under attack, Julius, as a last resort, took the one measure he and
his predecessors had so long resisted: he convoked a General Council under his own authority to meet in Rome. This was the origin, in desperation rather than in conviction, of the only major effort in religious affairs by the Holy See during this period. Though carefully circumscribed, it became a forum for, if not a solution of, the issues.
The Fifth Lateran Council, as it was named, convened at St. John Lateran, the first-ranking church of Rome, in May 1512. In the history of the Church the hour was late, and there were many who recognized it as such, with an urgency close to despair. Three months earlier, the Dean of St. Paul’s in London, John Colet, scholar and theologian, preaching to a convention of clergy on the need for reform, had cried, “never did the state of the Church more need your endeavors!” In all the rushing after revenues, he said, in “the breathless race from benefice to benefice,” in covetousness and corruption, the dignity of priests was dishonored, the laity scandalized, the face of the Church marred, her influence destroyed, worse than by the invasion of heresies because when worldliness absorbs the clergy, “the root of all spiritual life is extinguished.” This was indeed the problem.
A savage defeat in the Romagna, just before the convening of Lateran V, reinforced the sense of crisis. On Easter Sunday, the Swiss having not yet taken the field, the French, with the help of 5000 German mercenaries, overpowered the papal and Spanish armies in a sanguinary and terrible triumph at Ravenna. It was an ill omen. In a treatise addressed to the Pope on the eve of the Council, a Bolognese jurist warned, “Unless we take thought and reform, a just God himself will take terrible vengeance, and that before long!”