CHAPTER VIII

I

Leo X. expired upon the 1st day of December 1521.  The vacillating game he played in European politics had just been crowned with momentary success.  Some folk believed that the Pope died of joy after hearing that his Imperial allies had entered the town of Milan; others thought that he succumbed to poison.  We do not know what caused his death.  But the unsoundness of his constitution, over-taxed by dissipation and generous living, in the midst of public cares for which the man had hardly nerve enough, may suffice to account for a decease certainly sudden and premature.  Michelangelo, born in the same year, was destined to survive him through more than eight lustres of the life of man.

Leo was a personality whom it is impossible to praise without reserve.  The Pope at that time in Italy had to perform three separate functions.  His first duty was to the Church.  Leo left the See of Rome worse off than he found it:  financially bankrupt, compromised by vague schemes set on foot for the aggrandisement of his family, discredited by many shameless means for raising money upon spiritual securities.  His second duty was to Italy.  Leo left the peninsula so involved in a mesh of meaningless entanglements, diplomatic and aimless wars, that anarchy and violence proved to be the only exit from the situation.  His third duty was to that higher culture which Italy dispensed to Europe, and of which the Papacy had made itself the leading propagator.  Here Leo failed almost as conspicuously as in all else he attempted.  He debased the standard of art and literature by his ill-placed liberalities, seeking quick returns for careless expenditure, not selecting the finest spirits of his age for timely patronage, diffusing no lofty enthusiasm, but breeding round him mushrooms of mediocrity.

Nothing casts stronger light upon the low tone of Roman society created by Leo than the outburst of frenzy and execration which exploded when a Fleming was elected as his successor.  Adrian Florent, belonging to a family surnamed Dedel, emerged from the scrutiny of the Conclave into the pontifical chair.  He had been the tutor of Charles V., and this may suffice to account for his nomination.  Cynical wits ascribed that circumstance to the direct and unexpected action of the Holy Ghost.  He was the one foreigner who occupied the seat of S. Peter after the period when the metropolis of Western Christendom became an Italian principality.  Adrian, by his virtues and his failings, proved that modern Rome, in her social corruption and religious indifference, demanded an Italian Pontiff.  Single-minded and simple, raised unexpectedly by circumstances into his supreme position, he shut his eyes absolutely to art and culture, abandoned diplomacy, and determined to act only as the chief of the Catholic Church.  In ecclesiastical matters Adrian was undoubtedly a worthy man.  He returned to the original conception of his duty as the Primate of Occidental Christendom; and what might have happened had he lived to impress his spirit upon Rome, remains beyond the reach of calculation.  Dare we conjecture that the sack of 1527 would have been averted?