Giulio di Medici and Pompeo Colonna had equal claims to succeed him.  As both were skilful politicians, experienced courtiers, and moreover of real and almost equal merit, neither of them could obtain a majority, and the Conclave was prolonged almost indefinitely, to the great fatigue of the cardinals.  So it happened one day that a cardinal, more tired than the rest, proposed to elect, instead of either Medici or Colonna, the son, some say of a weaver, others of a brewer of Utrecht, of whom no one had ever thought till then, and who was for the moment acting head of affairs in Spain, in the absence of Charles the Fifth.  The jest prospered in the ears of those who heard it; all the cardinals approved their colleague’s proposal, and Adrien became pope by a mere accident.

He was a perfect specimen of the Flemish type, a regular Dutchman, and could not speak a word of Italian.  When he arrived in Rome, and saw the Greek masterpieces of sculpture collected at vast cost by Leo X, he wished to break them to pieces, exclaiming, “Suet idola anticorum.”  His first act was to despatch a papal nuncio, Francesco Cherigato, to the Diet of Nuremberg, convened to discuss the reforms of Luther, with instructions which give a vivid notion of the manners of the time.

“Candidly confess,” said he, “that God has permitted this schism and this persecution on account of the sins of man, and especially those of priests and prelates of the Church; for we know that many abominable things have taken place in the Holy See.”

Adrien wished to bring the Romans back to the simple and austere manners of the early Church, and with this object pushed reform to the minutest details.  For instance, of the hundred grooms maintained by Leo X, he retained only a dozen, in order, he said, to have two more than the cardinals.

A pope like this could not reign long:  he died after a year’s pontificate.  The morning after his death his physician’s door was found decorated with garlands of flowers, bearing this inscription:  “To the liberator of his country.”

Giulio di Medici and Pompeo Colonna were again rival candidates.  Intrigues recommenced, and the Conclave was once more so divided that at one time the cardinals thought they could only escape the difficulty in which they were placed by doing what they had done before, and electing a third competitor; they were even talking about Cardinal Orsini, when Giulio di Medici, one of the rival candidates, hit upon a very ingenious expedient.  He wanted only five votes; five of his partisans each offered to bet five of Colonna’s a hundred thousand ducats to ten thousand against the election of Giulio di Medici.  At the very first ballot after the wager, Giulio di Medici got the five votes he wanted; no objection could be made, the cardinals had not been bribed; they had made a bet, that was all.

Thus it happened, on the 18th of November, 1523, Giulio di Medici was proclaimed pope under the name of Clement VII.  The same day, he generously paid the five hundred thousand ducats which his five partisans had lost.