CHAPTER I.

MEDICEAN ROME.

The idea of a great reformation of the Church in both head and members had arisen since the beginning of the thirteenth century, and was the less likely to fade from the mind of nations since complaints of the evils of Church government were growing daily more serious and well-grounded and one hope of improvement after another had been wrecked. No means of bringing about this reform was neglected; all had failed. Francis of Assisi had opposed to the growing materialism and worldliness of the Church the idea of renunciation and poverty. But Gregory IX had contrived to win over the Order founded by the Saint to the cause of the Papacy, and to set in the background the Founder's original purpose. Thrust into obscurity in the inner sanctuary of the Order, this purpose, tinged by a certain schismatic colouring, developed in the hands of the Spirituelles into the Ecclesia Spiritualis as opposed to the Ecclesia Carnalis, which stood for the official Church. Traces of this thought are to be found in Dante ; we may even call it the starting-point, whence he proceeds to contrast his Monarchia with the political Papacy of the fourteenth century, and as a pioneer to develop with keen penetration and energy the modern idea of the State. The opponents of the Popes of Avignon in reality only fought against their politics without paying any attention to the moral regeneration of Christendom. Theological science in the fifteenth century raised the standard of reform against the dependence of the Papacy, the triple Schism, and the disruption of the Church. But she too succumbed, her projects foiled, at the great ecclesiastical conferences of Constance and Basel. Asceticism, politics, theology had striven in vain ; the close of the Middle Ages on both sides of the Alps was marked by outbursts of popular discontent and voices which from the heart of the nations cried for reform, prophesying the catastrophe of the sixteenth century. None of these voices was mightier than Savonarola's, or left a deeper echo. He was the contemporary and opponent of the men who were to give their name to this epoch in Rome's history.

Such a scheme of conciliation meantime made its appearance in Florence, not without the co-operation and probably the encouragement of the Medici. It was connected with the introduction of Platonism, which since the time of the Council of Florence in 1438 was represented in that city by enthusiastic and learned men like Bessarion, and was zealously furthered by Cosimo, the Pater Patriae, in the Academy which he had founded. From the learned societies started for these purposes come the first attempts to bring not only Plato's philosophy but the whole of classical culture into a close and essential connexion with Christianity. Platonism seemed to them the link which joined Christianity with antiquity. Bessarion himself had taught the internal relationship of both principles, and Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola made the explanation of this theory the work of their lives. If both of them went too far in their youthful enthusiasm and mysticism, and conceived Christianity almost as a continuation of Attic philosophy, this was an extravagance which left untouched the sincerity of their own belief, and from which Marsilio, when he grew older, attempted to free himself. Giovanni and Giulio de' Medici, son and nephew of Lorenzo, were both Marsilio's pupils. Both were destined to wear the tiara and took a decided part in the scheme for conciliating these contrasts, which Julius II set forth by means of Raflaelle's brush.

Savonarola's distrust of humanism and his harsh verdict on the extreme realism of contemporary art were not extinguished with his life. A'few years later we find his thoughts worked out, or rather extended and distorted in literature. Castellesi (Adriano di Corneto), formerly secretary to Alexander VI and created Cardinal May 81, 1503, wrote là» De vera philosophia ex quattuor doctoribus Ecclesiae, in direct oppo-sition to the Renaissance and humanism. The author represents every scientific pursuit, indeed all human intellectual life, as useless for salvation, and even dangerous. Dialectics, astronomy, geometry, music, and poetry are but vainglorious folly. Aristotle has nothing to do with Paul, nor Plato with Peter ; all philosophers are damned, their wisdom vain, since it recognised but a fragment of the truth and marred even this by misuse. They are the patriarchs of heresy ; what are physics, ethics, logic compared with the Holy Scriptures, whose authority is greater than that of all human intellect?

The man who wrote these things, and at whose table Alexander VI contracted his last illness, was no ascetic and no monkish obscurantist. He was the Pope's confidant and quite at home in all those political intrigues which later under Leo X brought ruin upon him. His book can only be regarded as a blow aimed at Julius II, Alexander's old enemy, who now wore the tiara and was preparing to glorify his pontificate by the highest effort of which Christian art was capable. Providence had granted him for the execution of his plans three of the greatest minds the world of art has ever known : never had a monarch three such men as Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raffaelle at once under his sway. With their help Julius II resolved to carry out his ideas for the glory of his pontificate and the exaltation of the Church. What Cardinal Castellesi wanted was a downright rebellion against the Pope ; if he, with his following of obscurantists, were acknowledged to be in the right, all the plans of the brilliant and energetic ruler would end in failure, or else be banned as worldly, and Julius II would lose the glory of having united the greatest and noblest achievement of art with the memory of his pontificate and the interests of Catholicism.

His own mausoleum gives proof how deeply Julius II was convinced that the chief part in this development fell to the Papacy in general, and to himself, Giuliano della Rovere, in particular. The instruction which he gave to Michelangelo to represent him as Moses can bear but one interpretation : that Julius set himself the mission of leading forth Israel (the Church) from its state of degradation and showing it- though he could not grant possession-the Promised Land at least from afar, that blessed land which consists in the enjoyment of the highest intellectual benefits, and the training and consecration of all faculties of man's mind to union with God. He bade Michelangelo depict on the roof of the Sistine Chapel (1508-9), how after the fall of our first parents mankind was led from afar towards this high goal ; symbolising that shepherding of the soul to Christ, which Clement the Alexandrine had already seen and described. When we see the Sibyls placed among the Patriarchs and Prophets, we know what this meant in the language of the theologians and religious philosophers of that time. Not only Judaism, but also Grseco-Roman paganism, is an antechamber to Christianity ; and this antique culture gave not merely a negative, but also a positive preparation for Christ. For this reason it could not be considered as a contradiction of the Christian conception : there was a positive relationship between classical antiquity and Christianity.

These compositions are the highest to which Christian art has attained, and the thoughts which they express are one of the greatest achievements of the Papacy. The principle elsewhere laid down is here reaffirmed : that the reception of the true Renaissance into the circle of ecclesiastical thought points to a widening of the limited medieval conception into universality, and indicates a transition to entire and actual Catholicity, like the great step taken by Paul, when he turned to the Gentiles and released the community from the limits of Judaistic teaching.

The Medici had not stood aloof from this evolution, which reached its highest point under Julius II. Search has been made for the bridge by means of which the ideas of Marsilio and his fellow thinkers were brought from Florence to Rome. But there is no real need to guess at definite personages. Hundreds of correspondents had long since made all Italy familiar with this school of thought. Among those who frequented the Court of Rome, Castiglione, Bibbiena, Saéoleto, Inghirami, and Beroaldus had been educated in the spirit of Marsilio. His old friend and correspondent Raffaelle Riario was now, as Cardinal of San Giorgio and the Pope's cousin, one of the most influential personages in the Vatican. But before all we must remember Giovanni de' Medici and his cousin Giulio, the future Popes. They were Marsilio's pupils, and after the banishment of their family he remained their friend and corresponded with them, regarding them as the true heirs of Lorenzo's spirit ; Raffaelle has represented the older cousin Giovanni standing near Julius II in the Bestowed of Spiritual Laws.

It was a kingdom of intellectual unity, which the brush of the greatest of painters was commissioned to paint on the walls of the Camera della Segnatura ; the same idea which Julius caused to be proclaimed in 1512, in the opening speech of Aegidius of Viterbo at the Lateran Council, referring to the classical proverb: "haplûs ho mýthos tês alétheias éfy-simplex sermo veritatis.'" The world of the beautiful, of reason and science, of political and social order, had its place appointed in the kingdom of God upon earth. A limit was set to the neglect of secular efforts to explore nature and history, to the disregard of poetry and art, and its rights were granted to healthy human reason organised in the State ; Gratiae et Musae a Deo sunt atque ad Deum referendae, as Marsilio had said.

Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici came forth from the conclave summoned on March 4, 1513, as Pope Leo X. Since Piero had been drowned on the 9th of December, 1503, Giovanni had become the head of the House of Medici. He was only 38 years of age at the election, to which he had had himself conveyed in a litter from Florence to Rome, suffering from fistula. The jest on his shortsightedness, "multi coed Cardinales creavere caecum decimum Leonem," by no means expressed public opinion, which rejoiced at his accession. The Possesso, which took place on April llth, with the great procession to the Lateran, was the most brilliant spectacle of its kind that Christian Rome had ever witnessed. What was expected of Leo was proclaimed in the inscription which Agostino Chigi had attached to his house for the occasion :

But other expectations were not wanting and a certain goldsmith gave voice to them in the line :

The favourable opinion entertained of Leo X by his contemporaries long held the field in history. His reign has been regarded as at once the zenith and cause of the greatest period of the Renaissance. His wide liberality, his unfeigned enthusiasm for the creations of genius, his unprejudiced taste for all that beautifies humanity, and his sympathy for all the culture of his time have been the theme of a traditional chorus of laudation. More recent criticism has recognised in the reign of Leo a period of incipient decline, and has traced that decline to the follies and frailties of the Pontiff.

With regard to the political methods of Leo some difference of opinion may still be entertained. Some have seen in him the single-minded and unscrupulous friend of Medicean Florence, prepared to sacrifice alike the interests of the Church and of the Papacy to the advancement of his family. To others he is the clear-sighted statesman who, perceiving the future changes and difficulties of the Church, sought for the Papacy the firm support of a hereditary alliance.

Truth may lie midway between these two opinions. If we view Leo as a man, similar doubts encounter us. Paramount in his character were his gentleness and cheerfulness, his good-nature, his indulgence both for himself and others, his love of peace and hatred of war. But these amiable qualities were coupled with an insincerity and a love of tortuous ways which grew to be a second nature. Nor must we overlook the fact that Leo's policy of peace was a mere illusion ; his hopes and intentions were quite frustrated by the actual course of affairs. On his personal character the great blot must rest that he passed his life in intellectual self-indulgence and took his pleasure in hunting and gaming, while the Teutonic North was bursting the bonds of reverence and authority which bound Europe to Rome. Even for the restoration of the rule of the Medici in Florence the Medicean Popes made only futile attempts. Cosimo I was the first to accomplish it. Leo had absorbed the culture of his time, but he did not possess the ability to look beyond that time. A diplomatist rather than a statesman, his creations were only the feats of a political virtuoso, who sacrificed the future in order to control the present.

The harshness and violence of Leo's greater predecessor, Julius, brought down on him the hatred of his contemporaries and won for his successor an immense popularity without further effort. The spiritual heir of Lorenzo U Magnifico, Rome and all Italy acclaimed Leo pools restauratorem, jfettcissimum litteratorum amatorem ; and Erasmus proclaimed to the world that "an age, worse than that of iron, was suddenly transformed into one of gold." And there can be no doubt that when Leo X was greeted on his accession, like Titus, as the deliciae generis humani he made every disposition to respond to these expectations and prove himself the most liberal of patrons. The Pope, however, did not long keep this resolution ; his weakness of purpose, his inclination to luxury, enjoyment, and pleasures, soon quenched his sense of the gravity of life and all his higher perceptions ; so that a swift and sad decline followed on the first promise.

On Leo's accession he found a number of great public buildings in progress which had been begun under his great predecessor but were still unfinished. Among them were the colossal palace planned by Bramante in the Via Giulia, St Peter's also begasn by him, and his work of joining the Vatican with the Belvedere, besides the loggie and buildings in Loreto. Leo, who was not in the least affected by the passion of building-il mal di pietra-did not carry on these undertakings. He even hindered Michelangelo from finishing the tomb of Julius II, so little reverence had he for the memory of the Pope to whom he owed his own position. Only the loggie were finished, since they could not remain as Bramante had left them. Even after Bramante's death there was no lack of architects who could have finished St Peter's. Besides Raffaelle, who succeeded to his post as architect, Sangallo and Sansovino, Peruzzi and Giuliano Leno waited in vain for commissions. While Raffaelle in a letter relates that the Pope had set aside 60,000 ducats a year for the continuation of the building, and talked to Fra Giocondo about it every day, he might soon after have told how Leo went no further, but stopped at the good intention. As a matter of fact work almost entirely ceased because the money was not forthcoming. There is therefore no reason to reproach Raffaelle with the delay in building. On the contrary, by not pressing Leo to an energetic prosecution of the work, Raffaelle probably did the building the greatest service ; since the Pope's mind was full of plans, for which Bramante's great ideas would have been entirely forsaken. No one could see more clearly than Raffaelle the harm which would have thus resulted.

Sculpture had flourished under Pius II in the days when Mino of Fiesole and Paolo Romano were in Rome; it could point to very honourable achievements under Alexander VI and Julius II (Andrea Sansovino's monuments of the Cardinals Basso and Sforza in Santa Maria del Popolo) ; but this art also declined under Leo X ; for the work done by Andrea Sansovino in Loreto under his orders falls in the time of Clement VII, after whose death in 1534 the greater part of the plastic ornament of the Santa Casa was executed. The cardinals and prelates who died in Rome between 1513 and 1521 received only poor and insignificant monuments, and Leo's colossal statue in Ara Celi, the work of Domenico d' Amio, can only be called a soulless monstrosity.

All this taken together brings us to the conclusion that Leo's one real merit was his patronage of Raffaelle. Despite the noble and generous way in which his reign began the Pope soon fell into an effeminate life of self-indulgence spent among players and buffoons, a life rich in undignified farce and offensive jests, but poor in every kind of positive achievement. The Pope laughed, hunted, and gambled ; he enjoyed the papacy. Had he not said to his brother Giuliano on his accession : " Godiamoci il papato poichè Dio ci l'ha dato ? " Though he himself has not been accused of sensual excesses the moral sense of the Pope could not be delicate when he found fit "to amuse himself with indecent comedies like La Calandria, and on April 30, 1518, attended the wedding of Agostino Chigi with his concubine of many years' standing, himself placing the ring on the hand of the bride, already mother of a large family.

Nor can Leo's reign, apart from his own share in it, be regarded as the best period of the Renaissance. The great masters had done their best work before 1513. Bramante died at the beginning of Leo's pontificate, Michelangelo had painted the Sistine Chapel from 1508 to 1512, Leonardo the Cena in 1496, Raffaelle the Stanza délia Segnatura, 1508-11. The later Stanze are far inferior to that masterpiece; the work of his pupils comes more to the fore in the execution of the paintings. And in his own work, as also in that of Michelangelo, the germ of decadence is already visible, and a slight tendency to barocco style is to be seen in both. The autumn wind is blowing, and the first leaves begin to fall.

It has been in like manner represented that literature passed through a golden age under Leo X ; but considerable deductions must be made from the undiscriminating eulogies of earlier writers.

Erasmus has reflected in his letters the great impression made by Rome, the true seat and home of all Latin culture. Well might Cardinal Raffaelle Riario write to him : " Everyone who has a name in science throngs hither. Each has a fatherland of his own, but Rome is a common fatherland, a foster-mother, and a comforter to all men of learning." It is long since these words were written-far too long for the honour of Catholicism and of the Papacy. But at that time, under Julius II, they were really true. A circle of highly cultured cardinals and nobles, Riario, Grimani, Adriano di Corneto, Farnese, Giovanni de1 Medici himself in his beautiful Palazzo Madama, his brother Giuliano U Magnifico, and his cousin Giulio, afterwards Clement -VII, gathered poets and learned men about them, that dotta compagnia of which Ariosto spoke; to them they opened their libraries and collections. Clubs were formed which met at the houses of Angelo Colocci, Alberto Rio di Carpi, Goritz, or Savoja. The poets and pamphleteers, to whom Arsilli dedicated his poem De Poetis Urbanis, gave vent to their wit on Pasquino or on Sansovino's statue in Sant' Agostino. They met in the salons of the beautiful Imperia, in the banks described by Bandello, among them Beroaldo the younger, who sang the praises of that most celebrated of modern courtesans ; Fedro Inghirami, the friend of Erasmus and Raffaelle ; Colocci, and even the serious Sadoleto. It is characteristic of this time, which placed wit and beauty above morals, that when Imperia died at the age of twenty-six she received an honourable burial in the chapel of San Gregorio, and her epitaph praised the " Cortisana Romana quae, digna tanto nomine, rarae inter homines Jbrmae specimen dedif.'" And although women no longer played so prominent a part at the papal Court as they had done under Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, yet, as Bibbiena wrote to Giuliano de1 Medici, the arrival of noble ladies was extremely welcome as bringing with it something of a corte de' donne.

Nothing could be more unjust than to deny that Giovanni de' Medici himself had a highly cultured mind and an excellent knowledge of literature. It may be that Lorenzo had destined him for the Papacy from his birth ; certainly he gave him the most liberal education. He gave him Poliziano, Marsilio, Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Argyro-poulos, Gentile d' Arezzo for his teachers and constant companions, and, to teach him Greek, Demetrius Chalcondylas and Petrus Aegineta. Afterwards Bernardo di Dovizi (Bibbiena) was his best known tutor. In belles lettres Giovanni had made an attempt with Greek verses, none of which have survived. Of his Latin poems the only examples handed down to us are the hendecasyllables on the statue of Lucrezia and an elegant epigram, written during his pontificate, on the death of Celso Mellini, well known for his lawsuit in 1519 and his tragic death by drowning.

From all this data the conclusion has been drawn that Leo X was by no means a Maecenas of the fine arts and sciences; that the high enthusiasm for them shown in his letters, as edited by Bembo and Sadoleto, betrays more of the thoughts of his clever secretary than his own ideas ; and that his literary dilettantism, was lacking in all artistic perception, and all delicate cultivation of taste. Leo has been thought to owe his undeserved fame to the circumstance that he was the son of Lorenzo, and that his accession seemed at the time destined to put an end to the sad confusions and wars of the last decades. Moreover, throughout the long pontificate of Clement VII, and equally under the pressure of the ecclesiastical reaction in the time of Paul IV, no allusion was allowed to the wrongdoing of this Leonine period ; till at last the real circumstances were so far forgotten, that the fine flower of art and literature in the first twenty years of the sixteenth century was attributed to the Medicean Pope.

But there are points to be noted on the other side. Even if we discount much of the praise which Poliziano lavishes on his pupil in deference to his father, we cannot question the conspicuous talent of Giovanni de' Medici, the exceptionally careful literary education which he had enjoyed, and his liberal and wise conduct during his cardinalship. We must also esteem it to his credit that as Pope he continued to be the friend of Raffaelle, and that in Rome and Italy at least he did not oppress freedom of conscience, nor sacrifice the free and noble character of the best of the Renaissance. Nor can it be overlooked that his pontificate made an excellent beginning, though certainly the decline soon set in ; the Pontiff's good qualities became less apparent, his faults more conspicuous, and events proved that, as in so many other instances, the man's intrinsic merit was not .great enough to bear his exaltation to the highest dignity of Christendom without injury to his personality.

In a word, despite the best intentions, despite clear insight, Adrian was not adequate to his task. The moment demanded a Pope who could reconcile and unite all the great and valuable elements of the Italian Renaissance, the ripened fruit of the modern thought sprung from Dante and Petrarch, with the conceptions and conscience of the Germanic world. Both the German professors who now posed as leaders of Christendom, Adrian Dedel and Martin Luther, were lacking in the historic and aesthetic culture which would have enabled them to understand the value of Roman civilisation. Erasmus saw further than either of them, but the discriminating critic lacked the unselfish nobility of soul and the impulse which can only be given by a powerful religious excitement, an unswerving conviction, the firm faith in a personal mission confided by Providence. He too, despite his immense erudition, his deep insight, left the world to its own devices when it required a mediator; for a gentle and negative criticism of human folly is, taken by itself, of little value.

Adrian could neither gain the mastery over Luther's Reformation, nor succeed in reforming even the Roman Curia, to say nothing of the whole Church. The luxurious Cardinals went on with their pleasant life ; when he came to die they demanded his money and treated him, as the Duke of Sessa expressed it, like a criminal on the rack. The threat of war between France and the German Empire lay all the while like an incubus on his pontificate. With heavy heart the most peace-loving of all the Popes, reminded by Francis I of the days of Philip the Fair, was at last obliged to enter into a treaty with England and Germany. Adrian survived to see war break out in Lombardy; he died on the day when the French crossed the Ticino, September 14, 1523. Giovio and Guicciardini relate that some wag wrote on the door of his physician, "To the deliverer of the Fatherland, from the senate and people of Rome." Little as the people were delighted with the pontificate of this last German Pope, he was no better pleased with it himself. He spoke of his throne as the chair of misery, and said in his first epitaph, that it was his greatest misfortune to have attained to power. The epitaph written for his tomb in Santa Maria dell' Anima by his faithful servant, the Datary .and Cardinal Enckenvoert, was certainly the best motto for this man and his pontificate : " Proh dolor ! quantum ref'ert in quae tempora vel optiml cuiusque virtus incidat.'"

Cardinal Wolsey once again made all kinds of offers, but there was now a feeling against all foreigners. During the night of the 18th-19th of November Giulio de' Medici was elected. He was the son of Giuliano, who fell in the Pazzi conspiracy. A certain Fioretta, daughter of Antonia, is mentioned as his mother ; little or nothing was known in Florence about her and her child. Lorenzo took the orphan into his house and had him brought up with his sons. In 1494 Giulio, then sixteen years of age, followed them into exile. Living for some time in Lombardy, but mostly with Giovanni, on his cousin's rise in power he too was quickly promoted. Leo nominated him Archbishop of Florence, having specially dispensed him from the canonical hindrance of his illegitimate birth. At his very first creation of Cardinals on September 23, 1513, the Pope bestowed on him the title of Cardinal of Santa Maria in Dominica and made him Legate of Bologna, witnesses having first sworn to the virtual marriage of his father Giuliano with Fioretta. During Leo's reign, as we have already seen, Cardinal Giulio had almost all the business of government in his own hands. He secured the election of Adrian, but left Rome and the Pope on October 13,1522, in the company of Manuel, the imperial envoy, in order to retire to Florence. A difference with Francesco Soderini brought him back in the following April to the Eternal City. He entered it with two thousand horse, and already greeted as the future Pope kept great state in his palace. A few days later Francesco Soderini, accused of high treason, disappeared into the Castle of St Angelo ; he was released during the next Council. With the new reign a return of happier times was expected-una Corte florida e un buon Pontefice ; the restoration of literature, fled before the barbarians ; " est enim Medlceae familiae déçus favère Miisis."" And indeed many things seemed to point to a fortunate pontificate. The new Pope was respected and rich, and now of a staid and sober life. He had ruled Rome well in Leo's day, and as Archbishop of Florence had used his power successfully. He was cautious, economical, but not avaricious ; though not an author himself, an admirer of art and science ; a lover of beautiful buildings, as his Villa Madama gave proof, and free from his cousin's unfortunate liking for the company of worthless buffoons. He did not hunt, but he was fond of good instrumental music, and liked to amuse himself at table with the conversation of learned men.

Clement's participation in the league against Charles and the Empire had favoured the spread of the Lutheran Reformation in Germany. Unwittingly the Pope had become Luther's best ally at the very moment when for Catholicism everything depended on strengthening the Emperor's opposition to the Reformation, which had the hour in its favour. Even after the Sack the Pope was not chiefly concerned for the preservation and improvement of the Church, or for the reparation of the evil done to Rome. What absorbed his attention were the dynastic interests of his own House, which had once more been expelled from Florence, and the restoration of the Papal State. The Emperor could have ended the Temporal Power with a stroke of the pen had he not feared the immense influence of the clergy and the threatening voice of the Inquisition, which did not hesitate to cross the threshold even of the most mighty. Charles needed the Pope, since a lasting enmity with him would have cut the ground from under his feet both in Spain and Germany. He needed him in order to keep his hold on Italy, and by his influence to divide the League. And so the Treaty of Barcelona was brought about (June 29, 1529), whereby the Emperor acknowledged the power of Sforza in Milan, gave the Papal State back to the Pope, undertook to restore Florence to the Medici by force of arms, and as a pledge of friendship to give his illegitimate daughter Margaret to Alessandro de' Medici. The Imperial coronation was moreover to take place in Italy. The "Ladies' Peace" of Cambray (August 5, 1529) confirmed Spanish rule in Italy. Clement crowned Charles Emperor on February 24, 1530, in Bologna, having come thither with sixteen Cardinals. The Emperor left for the diet at Augsburg on June 15. The Pope returned to Rome on April 9 ; and on August 12 Florence fell after a heroic death-struggle, burying the honour of the Pope in its fall, since he had not hesitated to hand over the freedom of his native town to his family. The republican constitution of the town was formally annulled on April 27,1532, and Alessandro de' Medici was proclaimed Duke of Florence.

Clement was negotiating with France, who did her utmost to draw the Papacy from the embrace of Spain. Francis I proposed the marriage of his second son Henry with Catharine, daughter of Lorenzo de1 Medici the younger, and did his very best to help Clement to prevent an assemblage of the Council, as we now know from the disclosures of Antonio Soriano. The marriage of Catharine de' Medici, through whom her House attained to royal honour, was celebrated with great solemnity at Marseilles in October, 1533. Clement himself had come to witness the triumph of his family in the person of his great-niece. The young girl, scarcely more than a child, whom he handed over to the royal House of France, proved a terrible gift to the land ; for some thirty-eight years later she contrived the Massacre of St Bartholomew. The jewels which Filippo Strozzi counted over to the French as forming part of the dowry of the little princess,-Genoa, Milan, Naples,-never came into the possession of France, and Henry was forced in the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis to yield all the gains of the French policy of annexation in Italy.

Clement was back in Rome by December 10, 1533, and in the following March annulled Thomas Cranmer's declaration that the marriage of Henry VIII with his cousin Catharine of Aragon was void. The Pope threatened the King with excommunication if he did not re-establish the marriage. The King's answer was the separation of England from the obedience of Rome. Shortly before this the articles of the League of Schmalkalden had recorded the desertion of a considerable part of South Germany to the Reformation. The Council which was to have restored unity to the Church had not come into being. Clement certainly raised hopes of it in the near future at Bologna (January 10, 1533), but only for the sake of appearances. In reality he had every reason to prevent all discussion by a Council of his personal and dynastic policy, and he attained his end by excuses and means which led the Emperor's confessor, Cardinal Garcia de Loaysa (May, 1530), to write to Charles V that this Pope was the most mysterious of beings, that he knew more ciphers than anyone else on earth, and that he would not hear of a Council at any price.

Even the last act of the dying Pope leaves a painful impression. On September 23, 1534, he wrote a long letter to the Emperor, to recommend to his care, not the welfare of the Church or of Italy, but the preservation of the rule of the Medici in Florence, and the protection of his two beloved nephews, the Cardinal Ippolito and Alessandro, whom Clement had appointed to be his heirs.

The harmonious union of medieval with modern thought, the organic arrangement of the ideas brought by the Renaissance in the system of Christian Ethics, the inner development of Catholicism on the basis of this harmony as planned in the scheme of the Camera della Segnatura ; all this miscarried, and was bound to do so, since the acting powers, on whom devolved the accomplishment of this great scheme, conceived in the true spirit of the Apostle Paul, lacked the ability and enthusiasm necessary for the execution of so enormous a task. The preceding paragraphs have shown to what extent these acting powers were incapable of fulfilling the mission set before them.

The powers at work were two in chief, the Papacy and the Italian nation. We have seen the Papacy of Medicean Rome swayed by political, by worldly considerations, guided in all its actions and decisions by the dynastic interests of its rulers. The religious and moral point of view was ignored in this domain of worldly aims and ideas. The pontificate of Adrian VI, that came as an interlude between those of Leo X and Clement VII, certainly was representative of religious Catholicism,-honourable, wise, sincere. But on the one hand it was of too short a duration to ripen any of its fruits, and on the other it failed, not only because of Italian corruption and the general dislike to foreigners, but also because the last Teutonic Pope could not comprehend the development of Italian culture, the right of the Latin world to its own characteristics, and the aesthetic interests swaying all minds south of the Alps. The predominance of the worldly and sensuous elements in life, in science, and even in art came into play ; they did their part in preventing the victory of idealistic views.

After Raffaelle's death ideas were no longer made the subject of paintings; the world of enjoyment, sweet, earthly, sensual enjoyment, was now depicted before art declined into a chilly mannerism and the composite falseness of eclecticism. A time which is no longer able to give an artistic rendering of ideas is incapable of resolution and of great actions. Not only the Muses and the Graces wept by Raffaelle's grave, the whole Julian epoch was buried with him. During Leo's reign he had undertaken with feverish activity to conjure up not only ancient Rome but the antique ideals. In vain. His unaided force was not enough for the task, and he saw himself deserted by those whom he most needed and on whom he relied. And then came the Sack of Rome; it was the tomb of all this ideal world of the Renaissance period. From the smoking ruins of the Eternal City rose a dense, grey fog, a gloomy, spiritless despotism, utterly out of touch with the joyous spring of the mind of the Italian people whose harbinger was Dante. Under its oppression the intellectual life of the nation soon sank asphyxiated.

The programme of 1510 demanded in the first place a reformation of the Church, both in its head and its members. Let us consider the attitude of Rome under the Medici with regard to this question.

The reformations attempted by the Councils of Constance and Basel had utterly failed. Since Martin V had returned to Rome the Papacy could consider nothing beyond the governing of the Papal State, and since Calixtus III it was involved in dynastic intrigue. ./Eneas Silvius had stated with the utmost clearness thirteen years before he became Pope that no one in the Curia any longer thought of reformation. Then Savonarola appeared ; France and Germany cried out for reform. At the synods of Orleans and Tours (1510) the French decided on the assembling of an Ecumenical Council. In view of the decree Frequens of the Council of Constance, the dilatoriness of the Pope, and the breaking of the oath he had sworn in conclave, the Second Synod of Pisa was convoked (May 16, 1511). It was first and foremost a check offered to Julius II by French politicians, but was also intended to obtain a general recognition by the Church of the principles of the Pragmatic Sanction of 1438 drawn from the articles of the Basel and Constance conventions. This pseudo-synod was attended only by a few French prelates and savants. Meantime the Emperor Maximilian had conferred with the leading theologians of his Empire, such as Geiler von Kaisersberg, Wimpheling, Trithemius, Johann Eck, Matthäus Lang, and Conrad Peutinger, about the state of the Church. In 1510 he commissioned the Schlettstadt professor, Jakob Wimpheling, to draw up a plan of reform, which the latter published in his Gravamina Germanicae Nationis cum remedüs et avisamentis ad Caesaream Maiestatem. It is composed of an extract from the Pragmatic Sanction, an essay on the machinations of courtiers, another on the ten grievances, with their remedies, notifications for the Emperor, and an excursus concerning legates. The ten gravamina are the same which Martin Mayr had mentioned as early as 1457 in his epistle to ./Eneas Silvius.

It was a good omen for the Council that the best and most pious man of intellect then in Rome made the opening speech. Aegidius of Viterbo as Principal of the Augustinian Order had worked energetically at the reform of his own Order ever since 1508. Bembo and Sadoleto praised his intellect and his learning, and the latter wrote to the former that, though humanity and the artes Jiumanitatis had been lost to mankind, yet Aegidius alone and unaided could have restored them to us. In his opening speech Aegidius uttered some earnest truths and deep thoughts. He touched on the real source of decadence in the Church, when, perhaps in allusion to Dante's words about the donation of Constantine, he said, "Ita ferme post Constantini tempora, quae ut sacris in rebus multum adiecere splendoris et ornamenti, ita morum et vitae severitatem non parum eneroarunt ; qtioties a Synodis habendis cessatum est, toties vidimus sponsam a sponso derelictam.'"

The eleventh sitting was occupied with the complaints of the Bishops against the Regulars, whom Aegidius of Viterbo defended (December 19, 1516). It was declared unlawful to foretell coming misfortunes from the pulpit with any reference to a definite date ; this was probably a retarded censure on Savonarola. The bull Pastor Aeternus was issued, which proclaimed the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction. Leo declared it null and void, and confirmed the decision of the bull Unam Sanctam issued by Boniface VIII, that all Christians are subject to the Pope. At this point the ordinances for the clergy and their privileges were read. At the twelfth sitting Giovanni Francesco Pico délia Mirandola presented his Oratio de Reformandis Moribus to the Pope. In it he announces to Leo that should the Pope delay healing the wounds of society, He whose representative the Pope was would cut off the corrupted members with fire and sword, and scatter them abroad, sending a terrible judgment on the Church. Christ, he said, had cast out the doves and pigeons that were sold in the Temple ; why should not Leo exile the worshippers of the many Golden Calves, who had not only a place, but a place of command in Rome ? This again was a reminiscence of Savonarola's sermons. Pico had constituted himself his biographer and apologist. It was strange that the flaming words of the prophet should rise once more from the grave at the moment when their terrible prophecy was to be fulfilled in Germany.

The government of the Church was entirely in the hands of Italians ; the Curia could count scarcely more than one or two Germans or English in their number. Terrible retribution was at hand. Leo X had seen no trace of the coming religious crisis, although its forerunners Reuchlin and Erasmus, Wimpheling and Hütten, and the appearance of Obscurorum Virorum Epistolae might well have opened his eyes. His announcement in the midst of all this ferment of the great Absolution for the benefit of St Peter's was a stupendous miscalculation, due to the thoughtless and contemptuous treatment vouchsafed to German affairs in Rome. Instead of directing his most serious attention to them Leo had meantime made his covenant with Francis I at Bologna (December, 1515), on which followed directly the French treaty of 1516. At Bologna the King had renounced the Pragmatic Sanction, in return for which the Pope granted him the right of nomination to bishoprics, abbeys, and conventual priories. It was the most immoral covenant that Church history had hitherto recorded, for the parties presented each other with things that did not belong to them. The French Church fell a victim to an agreement which delivered over her freedom to royal despotism; in return Francis I undertook that the Pope's family should rule in Florence, and as a pledge of the treaty gave a French Princess to the Pope's nephew Lorenzo in marriage.

The hour in which this compact was made was the darkest in Leo's pontificate. North of the Alps this act undermined all confidence in him or in his cousin Clement VII. No further reform of the Church was expected of two Popes who cared more for their dynasty than for the welfare of Christendom. The short interregnum of Adrian VI was, as we have seen, not equal to the task of carrying out the reformation. But it must be remembered that in his reign the worthiest representative of the Church's conscience during the Medicean era came forward once more with a plea for reform. The great document, laid before the Pope at his command, by Aegidius of Viterbo, revealed the disease, when it pointed to the misuse of papal power as the cause of all the harm, and demanded a limitation to the absolutism of the Head of the Church. This tallied with the Pope's ideas, and the celebrated instruction issued to the Nuncio Chieregato (1522), which announced that the disease had come from the head to the members, from the Pope to the prelates, and confessed, " We have all sinned, and there is not one that doeth good."

The last Pope of the Renaissance, as we must call Farnese, left as the brightest memory of his reign the record of an effort, which proved fruitless, to unite the last and noblest supporters of the Renaissance who still survived in the service of the Church, for an attempt at reformation. This is celebrated as the Consultum delectorum Cardina-lium et alwrum prelatorum de emendanda Ecclesia, and bears the signatures of Contarini, Caraffa, Sadoleto, Reginald Pole, Federigo Fregoso, Giberti, and Cortese. Contarini must be acknowledged to have been the real soul of the movement, which aimed at an inward reconciliation with the German party of reform. All these ideas had root in the conception represented by the scheme of Julius II. The greater number of those who worked at the Consultum of 1538 must be regarded as the last direct heirs of this great inheritance. The Religious Conference of Ratisbon in 1541 forms the crisis in the history of this movement : it was wrecked, not, as Reumont states, by the incompatibility of the principle of subjective opinion with that of authority, but quite as much, if not more so, by the private aims of Bavaria and France. So ended the movement towards reconciliation, and another came into force and obtained sole dominion. This regarded the most marked opposition to Protestantism as the salvation of the Church, and to combat it summoned not only the counter-reformation of the Tndentlnum, but every means in its power, even the extremest measures of material force, to its assistance. The representatives of the conciliatory reform movement, Contarini, Sadoleto, Pole, Morone, became suspect and, despite their dignity of Cardinal, were subject to persecution. Even noble ladies like Vittoria Colonna and Giulia Gonzaga were not secure from this suspicion and persecution.

What comparisons must have forced themselves on Michelangelo as all the events since the days of Lorenzo il Magnified, his first patron, whom he never forgot, passed in review before his great and lonely spirit, now sunk in gloom. We know from Condivi that the impressions Buonarotte had received in his youth exercised a renewed power over his old age. Dante and Savonarola were once his leaders, they had never entirely forsaken him. Now the favole del mondo, as his last poems bear witness, fell entirely into the background before the earnest thoughts that had once filled his mind at the foot of the pulpit in San Marco. His Giudizio Universale sums up the account for his whole existence, and is at the same time the most terrible reckoning, made in the spirit of Dante, with his own nation and its rulers. All that Italy might have become, had she followed the dictates of Dante and Savonarola, floated before his eyes as his brush created that Judge of all the world •whose curse falls on those that have exiled and murdered His prophets, neglected the Church, and bartered away the freedom of the nation. His Last Judgment was painted at the bidding of the Pope. Paul III can scarcely have guessed how the artist was searching into the consciences of that whole generation, which was called to execute what Julius had bidden Raffaelle and Michelangelo depict for all Christendom, and which had ignored and neglected its high office.