Pope Julius II

• 1. Introduction

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  Pope Julius II died on the night of the 20th to the 21st of February 1513, after months of slow decline he had predicted with unsettling clarity. The previous spring, as he lay ill, his master of ceremonies Paris de Grassis had noted that some cardinals were remarking on how well the pope appeared. Julius cut them off. "They are flattering me," he said. "I know better; my strength diminishes from day to day and I cannot live much longer." He was right. What kind of man speaks that plainly about his own death, and then goes on attending Mass, granting audiences, and personally directing the fate of Italian kingdoms for another eight months? The man who chose to name himself after Julius Caesar, who grew the first papal beard in a thousand years as an act of political defiance, who laid the foundation stone of a new St. Peter's Basilica and then commanded armies on the same day he debated theology. Born Giuliano della Rovere on the 5th of December 1443 near Savona in the Republic of Genoa, he would become one of the most consequential popes of the Renaissance, a figure who shaped the physical city of Rome, reorganized the map of Italian politics, and generated enough controversy in his own lifetime that Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote a savage satire imagining him turned away at the gates of heaven.

• 2. From Savona to the Cardinalate

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  Giuliano della Rovere's family was noble but impoverished, a detail the source is careful to note alongside his house's name. His father was Raffaello della Rovere; his mother, Theodora Manerola, was of Greek ancestry. The family was large: three brothers, including Bartolomeo, who became Bishop of Ferrara, and Giovanni, who would serve as Prefect of the City of Rome and later as Prince of Sora and Senigallia. A sister, Lucina, produced Cardinal Sisto Gara della Rovere. Giuliano's education came through the Franciscans, supervised by his uncle Francesco, who held him under special charge and sent him to study at the university attached to the Franciscan friary in Perugia. Those who knew the young Giuliano described a rough, coarse character with a taste for bad language. His imagined heroes, according to the historian Paul Strathern, were military leaders such as Frederic Colonna. Theology did not inspire him the way martial command did.

  The decisive turn in his fortunes came on the 10th of August 1471, when his uncle Francesco was elected Pope Sixtus IV. Within weeks, Giuliano was appointed Bishop of Carpentras. Within months, on the 16th of December 1471, he was raised to the cardinalate and assigned the same titular church his uncle had once held, San Pietro in Vincoli. The sources are frank about the transaction: it was overt nepotism. What followed was serial simony and pluralism. Giuliano held no fewer than eight bishoprics simultaneously, including Lausanne from 1472, and the archbishopric of Avignon, which Sixtus IV created specifically for him on the 22nd of December 1475. He also held a string of legateships. In 1474 he led a military force to Todi, Spoleto, and Città di Castello. In 1480 he was dispatched to France with three distinct missions: to broker peace between King Louis XI and Archduke Maximilian of Austria, to raise crusade funds, and to free two imprisoned churchmen. On the 20th of December 1480, he secured the release of Cardinal Jean Balue. A list of cardinals' incomes compiled for a later crusade appeal shows that Cardinal della Rovere ranked second in wealth among all the cardinals, with an annual income of 20,000 ducats.

• 3. A Decade in Exile

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  The death of Sixtus IV on the 12th of August 1484 transformed Giuliano's position inside the church. His successor, Innocent VIII, proved far more malleable. Florentine and Ferrarese ambassadors both noted that della Rovere had no influence under his uncle, but under Innocent obtained whatever he wished. That confidence led to the disastrous episode known as the Conspiracy of the Barons: a scheme, launched in 1485, to pit the papacy against King Ferdinand I of Naples. The barons' grievances centered on heavy taxation and Ferdinand's drive to centralize the kingdom. The conspiracy failed, Ferrante had its leaders arrested and eventually executed, and the della Rovere family's prestige suffered serious damage.

  When Pope Innocent died and the Conclave of 1492 convened, Giuliano was a strong candidate. France reportedly deposited 200,000 ducats into a bank account on his behalf; Genoa deposited another 100,000 ducats. It was not enough. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia outmaneuvered him through a secret agreement and simony with Cardinal Ascanio Sforza and was elected as Alexander VI. Giuliano, according to the sources, was jealous and angry, and came to hate Borgia for being elected over him. He withdrew after Christmas 1492 to his fortress at Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, and then fled further. On the 23rd of April 1494, he took ship from Ostia, placing the fortress in his brother Giovanni's hands, and travelled to meet King Charles VIII at Lyons. They reached an agreement: Charles would take Italy back from the Borgias by force. The king entered Rome with his army on the 31st of December 1494, with Giuliano della Rovere riding at his side. The campaign ultimately failed at the Battle of Fornovo on the 5th of July 1495, and French forces withdrew; by November 1496 their presence had ended, though Ostia remained in French hands until March 1497.

  In March 1497, Alexander formally deprived Giuliano of his benefices, declaring him an enemy of the Apostolic See, over the vigorous objections of the other cardinals. By August 1498, after a nominal reconciliation, his benefices were restored. In June 1502, Alexander attempted something more drastic: he sent his secretary Francesco Troche and Cardinal Amanieu d'Albret to Savona to seize Giuliano by stealth and deliver him to the pope. The kidnapping party returned to Rome on the 12th of July without him.

• 4. The Election of November 1503

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  Giuliano della Rovere was elected pope on the 1st of November 1503, and the vote took only a few hours. Securing that outcome required, in the words of the historian Ludwig von Pastor, not only promises but open bribery. The two votes Giuliano did not receive were his own and the one cast by Georges d'Amboise, the French monarchy's preferred candidate. The most consequential vote he won was that of Cesare Borgia, whom he brought over with promises of money and continued papal support for Borgia's policies in the Romagna.

  On the day of his election, Julius II issued a damnatio memoriae against his predecessor. The text, as quoted in the source, reads: "I will not live in the same rooms as the Borgias lived. He desecrated the Holy Church as none before. He usurped the papal power by the devil's aid, and I forbid under the pain of excommunication anyone to speak or think of Borgia again." The Borgia Apartments were stripped of their purpose. Julius also moved immediately to eliminate the Borgias' grip on the Papal States. Cesare Borgia, Duke of Romagna, lost his possessions and was driven into exile. Julius then used his influence to reconcile the Orsini and Colonna families, two powerful Roman clans whose street fighting had destabilized Rome.

  In December 1503, barely weeks after his election, Julius issued a dispensation allowing the future Henry VIII of England to marry Catherine of Aragon. Some twenty years later, Henry's effort to annul that marriage, on the grounds that the dispensation should never have been granted, would become a central crisis of European religious history. Pope Clement VII refused to retract it.

• 5. Warrior and Builder

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  Julius II personally led papal troops on at least two major campaigns. The first, stretching from the 17th of August 1506 to the 23rd of March 1507, expelled Giovanni Bentivoglio from Bologna with the assistance of Urbino. The second, running from the 1st of September 1510 to the 29th of June 1512, attempted to recover the Duchy of Ferrara. He refused to shave when French-backed cardinals convened a rebel council at Pisa in November 1511 demanding his deposition, wearing his beard as a sign of utter contempt. In a confrontation at the Siege of Mirandola, Julius commanded the papal armed forces in person. Paris de Grassis recorded that his master de Grassis "hardly ever jested" and was "generally absorbed in deep and silent thought." Yet he marched.

  The same years that produced military campaigns produced the most enduring structures of Renaissance Rome. In 1506, Julius founded the Swiss Guard as a permanent protective corps. That same year, he established the Vatican Museums. On the 18th of April 1506, he laid the foundation stone of the new St. Peter's Basilica, commissioning the design from Donato Bramante and authorizing the demolition of the Constantinian basilica that had stood for more than 1,100 years. He also commissioned Bramante to cut two new straight streets through Rome: the Via Giulia on the left bank of the Tiber and the Via della Lungara on the right. In 1508, he commissioned Raphael to decorate what became the Raphael Rooms, and he gave Michelangelo the commission for the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Julius had begun cultivating artists long before his papacy: as a cardinal, he had spent years in 1484 trying to persuade the Marquis of Mantua to release Andrea Mantegna to come to Rome, a negotiation that bore fruit in 1488.

  The indulgences Julius allowed donors to purchase in support of the St. Peter's construction project would become, after his death, one of the central provocations of the Reformation. Martin Luther's challenge began in 1517, four years after Julius died.

• 6. The Italian Wars and the Congress of Mantua

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  The League of Cambrai, formed in December 1508, brought together Julius, King Louis XII of France, Emperor Maximilian I, and King Ferdinand II of Aragon against the Republic of Venice. Each party had a different territorial appetite: Julius wanted Venetian Romagna, Maximilian wanted Friuli and Veneto, Louis wanted Cremona, Ferdinand wanted the Apulian ports. At the Battle of Agnadello on the 14th of May 1509, Venice's dominion in Italy was practically destroyed in a single engagement. Julius then recalculated. Having achieved his aim, he reconciled with Venice in 1510 and formed the Holy League in 1511, turning the same coalition machinery against France. On the 4th of October 1511, the Holy League was formalized, drawing in the Venetians and Ferdinand of Aragon; King Henry VIII of England joined shortly after.

  The French still won the Battle of Ravenna on the 11th of April 1512, a catastrophe in which over 20,000 men fell. Julius responded by sending a young Cardinal Medici south with a Spanish army, which retook Florence on the 1st of September 1512, ousting Piero Soderini and restoring Medici rule. Julius hired Swiss mercenaries in May 1512, which forced the French army back across the Alps into Savoy. The Papal States gained Parma and Piacenza.

  At the Congress of Mantua in 1512, Julius ordered the restoration of the old Italian dynasties. The Imperial Swiss, led by Massimiliano Sforza, reinstalled Sforza rule in Milan. The Venetians recovered their territories. Traditional historiography marks this moment as the closest Renaissance Italy came to unification since the Italic League of the previous century. Julius appeared at the Roman Carnival of 1513 calling himself the liberator of Italy. He died three weeks later, on the 21st of February, before a planned crusade against the Ottoman Empire could be officially announced.

• 7. Appearance, Character, and Controversy

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  The most recognizable image of Julius II is the celebrated portrait by Raphael, whom Julius first met in 1509. That portrait shows the pope bearded. The beard, however, covered only a brief period: from the 27th of June 1511 to March 1512, Julius wore it as a sign of mourning for the loss of Bologna to the Papal States. In growing it, he became the first pope since antiquity to wear facial hair, breaking a canonical prohibition that had stood since the 13th century. All his immediate successors returned to a clean-shaven face; but Pope Clement VII grew a beard when mourning the Sack of Rome, and after that, every pope wore a beard until the death of Innocent XII in 1700.

  His character drew sharply divided verdicts. Paris de Grassis, who observed him daily, described a man who rarely jested and was usually absorbed in deep, silent thought. Ludwig von Pastor recorded that Julius treated subordinates very badly and was rough in manner. Many historians, balancing those accounts, described him as manly and courageous, an energetic man of action whose endurance of the physical hardships of campaigning exceeded what most popes could have sustained. The era set the bar low: Alexander VI was widely perceived as evil and despotic, and Julius reportedly survived multiple assassination attempts during those years.

  His personal life generated accusations he could not suppress. He had a daughter, Felice della Rovere, born to Lucrezia Normanni in 1483, after he had already been made a cardinal. Felice survived into adulthood. Julius arranged for Lucrezia to marry Bernardino de Cupis, Chamberlain to his cousin Cardinal Girolamo Basso della Rovere. Accusations of homosexual relations were also circulated, though the sources treat these as a weapon wielded by enemies, the "common currency of insult and innuendo" in Renaissance papal politics. Erasmus sharpened his satire in Julius Excluded from Heaven, written in 1514, in which a drunken pope is refused entry by Saint Peter and plots to conquer heaven by force. The French Protestant writer Philippe de Mornay, writing decades later, named Julius specifically in a broader charge against Italian morality. These accusations persisted in Protestant polemical literature long after Julius was gone.

• 8. Legacy and Afterlife

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  Michelangelo's famous tomb for Julius II, now in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, is actually a radically reduced version of what was originally planned. The project was not completed until 1545, more than thirty years after Julius died. Julius himself was buried in St. Peter's Basilica, his remains placed alongside those of his uncle, Pope Sixtus IV. Both sets of remains were desecrated during the Sack of Rome in 1527. Today a simple marble tombstone marks their location on the floor in front of the monument to Pope Clement X.

  Niccolò Machiavelli used Julius as a significant figure in The Prince, published in 1532, presenting him both as an antagonist of Cesare Borgia and as an example of an ecclesiastical prince who exercises authority by following Fortuna. Barbara Tuchman, in The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, offered a strongly negative assessment, tracing the Protestant Reformation partly to the abuses of Julius and his Renaissance predecessors. In the 1965 film The Agony and the Ecstasy, Rex Harrison portrayed Julius as a soldier-pope alongside Charlton Heston's Michelangelo, drawing on Irving Stone's 1961 novel of the same name. Television dramatizations of the Borgia period have returned to Julius repeatedly: Alfred Burke played him in the 1981 BBC series, Colm Feore in Neil Jordan's 2011 series, and Dejan Cukic in Tom Fontana's 2011 production.

  On the 30th of November 2003, Cardinal Angelo Sodano presided at a Mass in the Cathedral Basilica of Savona commemorating the fifth centenary of Julius's election, acting as legate on behalf of Pope John Paul II. Sodano asked two questions of the gathered congregation: how could anyone fail to think of Julius when contemplating the grandeur of St. Peter's Basilica, and how could anyone forget that it was Julius who created the Swiss Guard Corps in 1506 with the characteristic uniform still worn today. He called Julius a pope who strove to serve the Church and sacrifice himself for her until the Lord called him at the age of 72.