JULIUS II, the most powerful of the Popes of the Renaissance, had given the Holy See a firm and substantial basis by his re-establishment of the States of the Church. At the same time, by his generous patronage of art, he had given a prominence, hitherto unequalled, to the great position held by his predecessors in the field of culture. When he convened the Council of the Lateran, the patron of Bramante, Raphael, and Michael Angelo was on the verge of grappling with the greatest and most difficult task of the age—namely, the reformation of the Church—when death snatched him away.

The successor of the Rovere Pope was a member of the house of Medici, who represented, as it has been the lot of few to do, both the good and bad side of the Renaissance. True child of his people and of his age, Leo X was a rare mixture of glorious and inglorious qualities. A thorough Medici and a typical Florentine, he was a clever, not over scrupulous, and indefatigably active politician. At the same time he was an open-handed and appreciative admirer of learning, art, and music. Nevertheless he lacked the courage, greatness, and depth of his predecessor.

For over a century, a cry for the reform of both the Head and members of the Church had resounded from all parts of Europe. Some of the attempts to effect this reform were actuated by no pure motives, while others were made in an unlawful manner; but there is no doubt that many excellent men, moved by the best intentions, did concern themselves, in a lawful manner, with the reformation of abuses in ecclesiastical life and in the government of the Church ; though what was accomplished remained far behind both the expectations formed and the necessities of the time. Many pious, enlightened, and wise men, religious as well as laymen, rose up in response to the call, and tried to apply a remedy to the evils of the day. Many hands were laid to the difficult task, though no decisive results were obtained ; for even the best-intentioned efforts made but slight impression on the general deterioration of ecclesiastical discipline. The task was made the more difficult by the bad example of those belonging to the Roman Curia, which worked against the reformers.

With the dawn of the new century the cry for reform sounded louder and louder from both sides of the Alps, taking the shape of treatises, letters, poems, satires, and predictions, the theme of which was the corruption of the clergy, and especially the worldliness of the Roman Curia. To many the ancient Church seemed to be as rotten as the Holy Roman-Teutonic Empire; and many foretold the downfall of both these buttresses of the medieval system. The signs of the times became more and more threatening. To observant spectators it seemed as if, with the advent to power of the Medici, a heavy storm must break over the Church.

That a man who was not equal to the serious duties of his high office, who, in fact, knew scarcely anything about them, should be raised to the Chair of St. Peter at a moment so fraught with danger, was a severe trial permitted by God to overtake Christendom. With unprecedented optimism Leo X looked into the future without anxiety, and frivolously deluded himself as to the importance of the times. He never gave a thought to reform, on the grand scale which had become necessary. After the delusive results which followed the conclusion of the agreement with France, he gave himself over to a growing feeling of security in respect to the countries on the other side of the Alps

The Pope disregarded even the most serious warnings, such as those uttered by Aleander in respect to Germany in 1 516. He did not co-operate in the half-measures taken, nor in the superficial attempts made to carry out the salutary decrees of the Lateran Council. Therefore the Roman Curia, which had for a long time been held in contempt and made the object of the bitterest satires, remained as worldly as ever. While by many it was scorned for its love of money, equal condemnation fell on the unworthy, immoral conduct of the Roman courtiers, of high and low degree, which the Supreme Head of the Church was either unable or unwilling to check. Political transactions, especially those which concerned the maintenance of the States of the Church, with which the independence of the Holy See was so closely connected, absorbed Leo X more and more. Consequently, though most unnaturally, the concerns of the Church fell into the background, and were usually made subordinate to politics.

The approach of great catastrophes is usually heralded by the dark foreshadowing of future events. At that calamitous time prophetic utterances increased, and notes of solemn warning sounded from all quarters. Shortly before the close of the Lateran Council, the noble Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, in the presence of the Pope and the ecclesiastical assembly, delivered a famous oration relating to the reformation of morals in the Church. Nothing can reveal the necessity of reform in a more startling way than the wretched picture drawn so unflinchingly by this distinguished layman. We have heard a great deal about the making of laws, said he, in apology for his interference, but very little about their observance. Yet nothing could be more urgent. To prove this he described, by the aid of rhetorical antitheses, a picture, painted in the darkest colours, of the corruption which had made its way into the Church. He emphatically pointed out to the Pope that it was his strict duty to remove the crying abuses in ecclesiastical government. In conclusion, he added these words of warning: “If Leo leaves crime any longer unpunished, if he refuses to heal the wounds, it is to be feared that God Himself will no longer apply a slow remedy, but will cut off and destroy the diseased members with fire and sword”. In that very year this oracular prediction was fulfilled.

The most momentous event in modern history, the disruption of the Church in Western Christendom —anticipated and dreaded by many —took place. It was a judgment on all, but not least on the Head of the Church, who was absorbed in politics and worldly pleasures. A canon of Siena, Sigismondo Tizio, who was devoted to the Holy See, writes thus about the Pope : “Many were of opinion that it was bad for the Church that her Head should be absorbed in amusements, music, the chase, and buffoonery, instead of being occupied by the thought of the needs of his flock, and in bewailing its misfortunes. The salt of the earth has lost its savour, and nothing remains for it but to be cast out and trodden on by men”.

The danger of the anti-Papal movement which had broken out in Germany did not escape Leo X, but, absorbed as he was in politics and immersed in the excitements of a worldly life and aesthetic enjoyment, he completely lost sight of his primary duty, and was essentially the wrong man to check the storm at its beginning. He neither realized the full importance of the situation, nor did he understand the deeper causes which had led to the secession from Rome. He was incapable of comprehending that nothing short of a radical reformation in the Head and members of the Church could arrest the movement which had been in preparation for so long. Thus, at this, the most severe crisis which had met her in her fifteen hundred years of history, the right ruler was wanting to the Church. Instead of the Medici Pope, the Church needed a Gregory VII.

Leo’s successor, the noble Adrian VI, the last Pope of Teutonic race, grasped at once the one thing needful, which had been left undone by his predecessor. The pontificate of this distinguished man, though all too short, was rich in decrees for a thorough and trenchant disciplinary reform which covered nearly the whole area of ecclesiastical life. Unfortunately, however, the dry, sober-minded Dutch professor did not in the least understand the Italian temperament, so unlike his own ; nor did the Italians understand him. To the end he remained a foreigner on Roman soil. While in his immediate surroundings he called forth the strongest national antipathy, his trenchant reforms raised up many enemies. His death was, therefore, hailed by the Romans as a happy event.

Though, notwithstanding his good intentions, his clear powers of perception, and honest endeavours, Adrian VI did not succeed during his eighteen months’ pontificate in remedying the evils which were the accumulation of a century and a half, still he has the merit of being the first Pope who had the courage to place his finger on the wound, and indicate what had to be done in the future.

Another Medici followed him. Seldom have high expectations been so cruelly disappointed as they were in Clement VII. In spite of his many good qualities, his temperance, his abstemiousness and piety, and his patron age of literature and art, his pontificate was one of the most disastrous known to history. The chief cause of this is to be found in the inconceivable irresolution and pusillanimity of the Pontiff, who lost courage at once, and let the helm fall from his grasp. It needed the royal spirit, the bold determination the mighty strength of a Julius II. to look consequences in the face, take the lead in Italy’s fight for freedom, and wrest the Papacy from the dominion of Spain. It was obvious therefore that a small-minded, pusillanimous calculator, such as Clement VII, must fail. “This man”, says Guicciardini, “was raised to the Papal See by a wondrous stroke of fortune. But when he reached the summit, the misfortunes which attended him greatly outweighed his good fortune. For what prosperity can be put in the balance against the ignominy of his captivity, the misery of the sack of Rome, or the evil fate of bringing about the ruin of his native city?”

The Florentine historian does not mention what was the greatest misfortune of all. While Clement VII was so unhappy in his attempts to procure the freedom of Italy and the Holy See, as to end by sealing their dependence on Spain, the defection from Rome in the north assumed terrific proportions. When Clement died, nearly one-third of Europe had broken from the time-hallowed unity of the Catholic faith, which till then, in spite of political and national disturbances, had held all Christian people together.

The religious unity of the Western Church was rent ; the great, the blessed, the civilizing influence of Rome was destroyed in a considerable portion of Europe ; the common defence against the arch-enemy of Christianity was broken, and Christian civilization was rent asunder.

Neither of the Medici Popes had fulfilled his duty as regarded the great secession from Rome ; for that duty consisted above all things in the concentration of their energies on the work of ecclesiastical reform, with a total disregard for every consideration, whether worldly or national. Both these Popes were but too often unfaithful to their charge by subordinating their pastoral duty to politics, power, and love of possession. Both ignored what lay at the very root of the evil, and mistook throughout the only means to be taken for its removal.

In vain did the cry for help and salvation from ruin resound ; and one after another the hopes of better things were shattered. Pain and sorrow filled the souls of the noblest, who sadly asked themselves why it was that Divine Providence permitted the Church to fall into such confusion. But together with this grief over the evilness of the times and the disorders with which a worldly spirit had saturated the Church, there was mingled an angry indignation with the chief pastors who responded so badly to their great vocation. To many it seemed as if all were already lost.

Then help came. As in the days of Gregory VII, so now again salvation came from within the Church. She might be disfigured by hideous evils; she might be oppressed and trodden under foot by her enemies ; but it was now proved that the divine spark of life within her was not extinct.

Nearly the whole of the north, and a great part of central Europe, had broken the bonds of reverence and authority which had for so long united them to the Holy See, and had taken up with a new religion. But in the south there were raised up men who, imbued with the Divine Spirit, holding fast to the treasure of the ancient faith, and obedient to the lawful authority of the Church, worked with ardent zeal and untiring energy for their own sanctification as well as for a general and fundamental renewal and reformation of the life of the Church. Egidio Canisio of Viterbo, when speaking before the Lateran Council, had simply and succinctly summed up the theory of true Catholic reformation. “Men must be changed by religion”, said he, “and not religion by men.”

As in the 11th century the Cluniacs, in the 12th the Cistercians, and in the 13th the Franciscans and Dominicans had been raised up to be true reformers, and had stirred up and developed a devoted activity, so now did the noblest among men combine to work for the purification and renovation of the Church. Before the end of the pontificate of Leo X, the Oratory of Divine Love had been formed in Rome. This community grew under Clement VII, and the sack of Rome by the Imperial troops was the cause of its spread over a great part of Italy. The horrible catastrophe which overtook the capital of Christendom terminated the Renaissance. Con temporaries justly regarded it as a divine judgment, and for many it was the occasion of conversion and amendment of life. New Orders sprang into being under the two Medici Popes which corresponded to the needs of the time, and achieved most practical ends. Such were the Theatines, the Capuchins, the Clerks Regular o Somascha, the Barnabites, and, lastly, the most important instrument of all for the Catholic reformation and restoration, the Society of Jesus.

Saints, apostles and heroes sprang up, and by their mode of life introduced a new era for the regeneration of the Church, and solved the problem, already a century old, of ecclesiastical reform. Like most things that are really great, the reformation of the 16th Century grew out of small, hidden beginnings. It grew silently at the foot of the Curia, till at length it embraced those who bore the dignity of the Papacy. Having accomplished this, it made its way triumphantly in ever-widening circles, winning back a part of that which had been lost, and purifying and ennobling that which had remained faithful.

CRISTO RAUL.ORG

HISTORY OF THE POPES FROM THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES

BOOK 11

POPE LEO X

(1513-1521)

Raphael's Portrait of Leo X with cardinals Giulio de' Medici (later Pope Clement VII) and Luigi de' Rossi, his first cousins,

(Uffizi gallery, Florence)