Leo X

Italian pope (1513-1521)

• Born: December 11, 1475
• Birthplace: Florence (now in Italy)
• Died: December 1, 1521
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

As a patron of the arts, Leo X turned Rome into the cultural center of the Western world. As pope, he engaged in secular politics and presided over the period in Catholic Church history that witnessed the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

Early Life

Pope Leo X was born Giovanni de’ Medici, the second son of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his wife, Clarice Orsini. Though brought up in the lap of Renaissance luxury, he was groomed for a career in the Catholic Church from an early age. Tonsured at age seven, he was appointed a cardinal at age thirteen, although he did not receive the insignia and the privileges of that office until 1492. As a youth, he was tutored by the famous Humanists Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who imparted to him a love of literature and the arts, which characterized his entire life.

From 1489 until 1491, Giovanni studied theology and canon law at the University of Pisa. Then, in 1492, he moved to Rome and assumed the responsibilities of a cardinal. He served on the conclave, which in that year elected Pope Alexander VI, although Giovanni did not vote for him.

After the death of his father in 1492, Giovanni returned to Florence, where he lived with his elder brother Pietro until the Medici family was exiled from their native city in 1494 during Girolamo Savonarola’s reign of virtue. For the next six years, Giovanni traveled in France, the Netherlands, and Germany, and then returned in May of 1500 to Rome, where, for the next several years, he immersed himself in literature, music, and particularly the theater, interests that were the great loves of his life, taking precedence even over hunting, of which he was extremely fond.

When his elder brother died in 1503, Giovanni became the head of the Medici family, and much of his energy and his revenues from his many church benefices was expended in the ensuing years in his efforts to restore his family to prominence in Florence. After a bloodless revolution in that city in September of 1512, the Medicis were allowed to return, and Giovanni became the de facto ruler of Florence, although the nominal ruler would be his younger brother Giuliano. Then, when Pope Julius II died in February of 1513, the seven-day conclave that followed elected Giovanni his successor. Giovanni was crowned Pope Leo X on March 19.

Life’s Work

The portrait of Leo by Raphael, which hangs in the Pitti Palace in Florence, depicts the pope as an unattractive man, with a fat, shiny, effeminate countenance and weak, bulging eyes. Yet, according to contemporaries, his kind smile, well-modulated voice, kingly bearing, and sincere friendliness ingratiated him with everyone he met. While his manner of life was worldly, he was unfeignedly religious and strictly fulfilled his spiritual duties he knew how to enjoy life but not at the expense of piety. He heard Mass and read his Breviary every day and fasted three times a week. Contemporaries report that there was scarcely a work of Christian charity that he did not support, as he contributed more than six thousand ducats per month to worthy causes. He enjoyed banquets and spent lavishly on them but never over-indulged himself. Though his personal morality was impeccable, he sometimes attended scandalous theatrical presentations and seemed to enjoy the absurd and vulgar jokes of buffoons. Even during the very troubled period of 1520-1521, he amused himself during the Roman carnivals with masques, music, and theatrical performances.

Since Leo’s love of literature and the arts was well known, soon after his elevation to the Papacy, Rome was flooded with Humanists, poets, musicians, painters, sculptors, and other talented individuals seeking the pope’s patronage. The greatest among them, as well as the lesser accomplished, were not disappointed. Beneficiaries of his largess as patron were the Humanists Pietro Bembo and Jacopo Sadoleto, the artists Raphael and Michelangelo, the architectDonato Bramante, and hundreds of others. Leo collected books, manuscripts, and gems without regard to price. The construction of St. Peter’s Basilica was greatly accelerated. So splendid was the cultural life of Rome during this period that it has been called the Leonine Age, for its patron. Leo is said to have spent 4.5 million ducats during his reign, leaving the papal treasury a debt of 400,000 ducats.

Although Leo showed little interest in theological matters, he did reconvene the Fifth Lateran Council , which had first opened its doors under Julius II but had adjourned without accomplishment. Its objectives were to promote peace within the Christian world, proclaim a Crusade against the Turks, and reform the Church. The council was poorly attended, and most of the councillors were Italians so that it was not representative of Christendom as a whole. At its conclusion in March, 1517, the council issued decrees calling for stricter regulation of the conduct of cardinals and other members of the Curia and denouncing abuses such as pluralism and absenteeism; these decrees would largely be ignored in practice, however, even by Leo himself. Leo did preach a Crusade against the Turks in 1518, but the monarchs of Europe showed little interest.

As secular ruler of the Papal States and protector of the Medici interests in Florence, Leo found it necessary to engage in the balance-of-power politics characteristic of the age; it is for his political role that he is most severely criticized by modern writers. In this political capacity, he was frequently guilty of treachery and duplicity. For example, when he began his pontificate, he was part of an alliance aimed at thwarting the French king’s territorial ambitions in Italy. After Francis I’s smashing victory at Marignano (September, 1515), however, Leo secretly deserted his allies, met with Francis, and negotiated the Concordat of Bologna (1516), whereby, in return for guarantees of the integrity of Leo’s territory in Italy, Francis was granted the right to nominate all the bishops, abbots, and priors within his realm, a right French kings would retain until the French Revolution.

Leo’s capriciousness in political affairs was again demonstrated when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I died in January of 1519. The two leading contenders for this position were Francis and Charles I , king of Spain. Leo at first supported Francis, since he feared the territorial ambitions of Charles in both northern and southern Italy; because Francis had similar claims in Italy, however, Leo attempted to persuade Frederick the Wise of Saxony to be a candidate. When Frederick refused, Leo reverted to his support of Francis. When Charles was eventually elected in June of 1519, Leo moved quickly to establish a papal alliance with him. In May of 1521, Leo secretly concluded a treaty with Charles, in which the pope agreed to join Charles in a renewed effort to drive the French from Milan, in return for which Charles promised to close the meeting of the Imperial Diet at Worms with the outlawing of the excommunicate Martin Luther .

Like most Renaissance popes, Leo was guilty of nepotism. In order to provide his nephew Lorenzo with a title, Leo, in 1516, declared the duke of the small papal state of Urbino deposed and conferred the duchy on his nephew. To carry out the deposition, Leo had to raise an army and commit it to an arduous winter campaign against the former ruler. Leo then supported Lorenzo, duke of Urbino, as the unofficial ruler of Florence. Among Leo’s several relatives who enjoyed church appointments under that pontiff was his cousin, Giulio, whom Leo made a cardinal almost as soon as he himself had mounted the papal throne. Giulio would later be elevated to the Papacy as Clement VII .

Despite Leo’s irenic disposition, he made enemies, and he did not shrink from retaliation against those who threatened him. In 1517, when a conspiracy aimed at poisoning the pope was uncovered, one of the leaders, Cardinal Petrucci, was executed, several other cardinals were imprisoned and heavily fined, and Leo appointed thirty-one new cardinals in rapid succession so that the pope would have a college in which the majority of cardinals would be loyal to him.

The greatest crisis that Leo faced as pope came toward the end of his pontificate, and he died without really understanding its severity. Leo’s predecessor, Julius II, had promulgated a plenary Jubilee indulgence in an effort to raise money for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The indulgence had not sold well, and its sale was discontinued until its revival by Leo in March of 1515. Arrangements had been made with Albrecht of Brandenburg for the sale of the indulgence in his archdioceses of Mainz and Magdeburg. When the sale of these indulgences by the Dominican Friar Johann Tetzel began in 1517, it was not long before the matter came to the attention of a young German monk, Martin Luther, who lodged a protest.

Pope Leo did not realize the seriousness of the protest and was preoccupied with the preparation for the upcoming imperial election and with his other worldly pursuits, and so the situation was allowed to deteriorate. In June of 1520, Leo issued the bull Exsurge Domine, in which Luther was accused of forty-one counts of heresy and ordered to recant on pain of excommunication. Luther’s refusal to recant, together with his public burning of the bull, led to his formal excommunication on January 3, 1521. Within a short time after these events, Lutheranism had begun to win adherents among some of the northern German princes as well as in Denmark. Before the extent of the schism could be appreciated, Leo died, on December 1, 1521, from bronchitis.

Significance

In early accounts of Leo X’s reign, he was alleged to have remarked at the time of his coronation: “Let us enjoy the Papacy since God has given it to us.” While there is strong evidence that Leo never actually said this, this remark does seem to reflect his attitude toward his high office. Within two years in office, Leo had exhausted the full treasury left him by Julius II, and, despite the additional revenues generated by the sale of church offices and papal favors as well as indulgences, Leo’s extravagance bequeathed a debt of 400,000 ducats to his successor. While Roman cultural life had never been so splendid as it was during his pontificate, Leo’s devil-may-care attitude and his capricious political activities, coupled with his failure to understand the religious intensity of men such as Luther or to respond to it, help to explain Protestantism’s early success.

Leo’s accession to the papal throne was accompanied by much celebration. Of his passing, a contemporary observed, “Never died Pope in worse repute.” While it is no longer contended that he was the victim of poisoning, the circumstances of his burial were severe. The candles used in his obsequies were those left over from another funeral, and no monument was erected to his memory until the time of Paul III. With Leo’s death, the age of the Renaissance popes was nearly at an end.

Bibliography

Bedini, Silvio A. The Pope’s Elephant. Nashville, Tenn.: J. S. Sanders, 1998. Original, offbeat, and illuminating study; uses Hanno the elephant, a gift to Leo from King Manuel I of Portugal, as a lens through which to explore Leo and his place in Renaissance history.

Chamberlin, E. R. The Bad Popes. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 2003. Leo’s excesses and profligacy are portrayed in this study of papal corruption across the six hundred years leading up to the Reformation. Includes photographs, illustrations, genealogical tables, bibliographic references, and index.

Creighton, Mandell. A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome. 6 vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1897. Provides a comprehensive survey of the pontificate of Leo. While Creighton gives recognition to Leo’s importance as a patron of the arts, he is critical of Leo’s reckless spending and his indifference toward spiritual matters. Concludes that Leo left a bitter heritage for his successors.

Mee, Charles L. White Robe, Black Robe. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972. Presents an account of the early Reformation period through an examination of the lives, careers, and ideas of Leo and Luther, vividly contrasting the two protagonists. While it presents little new information on either figure, the work skillfully blends discussion of the political background to the Reformation with that of its theological significance. Contains a useful bibliography.

Pastor, Ludwig. Leo X (1513-1521). Vol. 8 in The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. Reprint. Wilmington, N.C.: Consortium, 1978. The entirety of this volume of this classic, monumental study of the modern Papacy is devoted to the pontificate of Leo. Provides an extensive treatment of the cultural life of Rome under Leo’s patronage. Includes footnotes and English translations of many previously unpublished documents in the appendices.

Roscoe, William. The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth. 6th ed. Rev. by Thomas Roscoe. 2 vols. London: H. G. Bohn, 1853. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1973. An excellent general history of the period of Leo’s pontificate. Includes extensive notes and English translations of numerous documents relevant to the text. While mainly sympathetic to Leo, Roscoe maintains that criticism of Leo by contemporary and later writers is largely the result of Leo’s duplicity and treacherousness as a political figure.

Rowe, Colin, and Leon Satkowski. Italian Architecture of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. Contains a study of Leo’s architectural projects and legacy. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Schevill, Ferdinand. The Medici. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949. Reprint. New York: Harper, 1960. The chapter on Leo emphasizes how strongly he was motivated in most of his policies by his desire to advance the fortunes of the Medici family, both in Florence and in Italy as a whole. Schevill is critical of the artistic patronage of Leo, believing that he made poor use of the many talented persons in the papal employ.

Stinger, Charles L. The Renaissance in Rome. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Leo is a central figure in this study of the resurgence of Rome’s cultural, religious, and political importance in the Renaissance. Includes maps, illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Vaughan, Herbert M. The Medici Popes. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908. This work is primarily devoted to an examination of the personal character and the strengths and weaknesses of Leo. The work’s attention to unimportant details to the exclusion of the political realities faced by Leo necessitates consulting other works on the pontiff.