In his general estimate of Leo, Vettori confirms all that we know about this Pope from other sources.  He insists more perhaps than other historians upon the able diplomacy by which Lodovico Canossa, Bishop of Tricarico, made terms with Francis after Marignano,[1] and traces Leo’s fatal alliance with Charles V. in 1520 to the influence of Jeronimo Adorno.[2] The secret springs of Leo’s conduct, when he was vainly endeavoring to steer to his own profit between the great rivals for power in Europe, are exposed with admirable precision at both of these points.  Of the prodigality which helped to ruin this Pope, and which made his two successors impotent, he speaks with sneering sarcasm.  ’It was as easy for him to keep 1,000 ducats together as for a stone to fly into the air by its own weight.’[3] When the news of the capture of Milan reached him on November 27, 1520, Leo was at the Villa Magliana in the neighborhood of Rome.[4] Whether he took cold at a window, or whether his anxiety and jealousy disturbed his constitution, Vettori remains uncertain.  At any rate, he was attacked with fever, returned to Rome, and died.  ’It was said that his death was caused by poison; but these stories are always circulated about men of high estate, especially when they succumb to acute disease.  Those, however, who knew the constitution and physical conformation of Leo, and his habits of life, will rather wonder that he lived so long.’  After summing up the vicissitudes of his career and passing a critique upon his vacillating policy, Vettori resumes:[5] ’while on the one hand he would fain have never had one care to trouble him; on the other he was desirous of fame and sought to aggrandize his kindred.  Fortune, to rid him of this ambition, removed his brother and his nephew in his lifetime.  Lastly, when he had engaged in a war against the King of France, in which, if he won, he lost, and was going to meet obvious ruin, fortune removed him from the world so that he might not see his own mischance.  In his pontificate at Rome there was no plague, no poverty, no war.  Letters and the arts flourished, and the vices were also at their height.  Alexander and Julius had been wont to seize the inheritance not only of the prelates but of every little priest or clerk who died in Rome.  Leo abstained entirely from such practices.  Therefore people came in crowds; and it may be said for certain that in the eight years of his papacy, the population of Rome increased by one third.’  Vettori prudently refuses to sum up the good and bad of Leo’s character in one decisive sentence.  He notes, however, that he was blamed for not keeping to his word:  ’it was a favorite expression with him, that princes ought to give such answers as would send petitioners away satisfied; accordingly he made so many promises; and fed people with such great expectations, that it became impossible to please them.’

    [1] P. 313.

    [2] P. 334.

    [3] P. 322.