Jacopo Sadoleto (1477–1547) were papal secretaries, as well as the famous poet Bernardo Accolti (d.1534). Writers of poetry like Vida (1490–1566), Trissino (1478–1550), and Bibbiena (1470–1520), writers of novelle like Bandello, and a hundred other literati of the time were bishops, or papal scriptors or abbreviators, or in other papal employ. Leo’s lively interest in art and literature, to say nothing of his natural liberality, his nepotism, his political ambitions and necessities, and his immoderate personal luxury, exhausted within two years the hard savings of Julius II., and precipitated a financial crisis from which he never emerged and which was a direct cause of most of the calamities of his pontificate. He created many new offices and shamelessly sold them. He sold cardinals’ hats. He sold membership in the “Knights of Peter.” He borrowed large sums from bankers, curials, princes and Jews. The Venetian ambassador Gradenigo estimated the paying number of offices on Leo’s death at 2150, with a capital value of nearly 3,000,000 ducats and a yearly income of 328,000 ducats. Marino Giorgi reckoned the ordinary income of the pope for the year 1517 at about 580,000 ducats, of which 420,000 came from the States of the Church, 100,000 from annates, and 60,000 from the composition tax instituted by Sixtus IV. These sums, together with the considerable amounts accruing from indulgences, jubilees, and special fees, vanished as quickly as they were received. Then the pope resorted to pawning palace furniture, table plate, jewels, even statues of the apostles. Several banking firms and many individual creditors were ruined by the death of the pope.
In the past many conflicting estimates were made of the character and achievements of the pope during whose pontificate Protestantism first took form. More recent studies have served to produce a fairer and more honest opinion of Leo X. A report of the Venetian ambassador Marino Giorgi bearing date of March 1517 indicates some of his predominant characteristics:—“The pope is a good-natured and extremely free-hearted man, who avoids every difficult situation and above all wants peace; he would not undertake a war himself unless his own personal interests were involved; he loves learning; of canon law and literature he possesses remarkable knowledge; he is, moreover, a very excellent musician.” Leo was dignified in appearance and elegant in speech, manners and writing. He enjoyed music and the theatre, art and poetry, the masterpieces of the ancients and the wonderful creations of his contemporaries, the spiritual and the witty—life in every form. It is by no means certain that he made the remark often attributed to him, “Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us,” but there is little doubt that he was by nature devoid of moral earnestness or deep religious feeling. On the other hand, in spite of his worldliness, Leo was not an unbeliever; he prayed, fasted, and participated in the services of the church with conscientiousness. To the virtues of liberality, charity and clemency he added the Machiavellian qualities of falsehood and shrewdness, so highly esteemed by the princes of his time. Leo was deemed fortunate by his contemporaries, but an incurable malady, wars, enemies, a conspiracy of cardinals, and the loss of all his nearest relations darkened his days; and he failed entirely in his general policy of expelling foreigners from Italy, of restoring peace throughout Europe, and of prosecuting war against the Turks. He failed to recognize the pressing need of reform within the church and the tremendous dangers which threatened the papal monarchy; and he unpardonably neglected the spiritual needs of the time. He was, however, zealous in firmly establishing the political power of the Holy See; he made it unquestionably supreme in Italy; he successfully restored the papal power in France; and he secured a prominent place in the history of culture.
Authorities.—The life of Leo X. was written shortly after his death by Paolo Giovio, bishop of Nocera, who had known him intimately. Other important contemporary sources are the Italian History of the Florentine writer Guicciardini, covering the period 1492–1530 (4 vols., Milan, 1884); the reports of the Venetian ambassadors, Marino Giorgi (1517), Marco Minio (1520) and Luigi Gradenigo (1523), in vol. iii. of the 2nd series of Le Relazioni degli ambasciatori Veneti, edited by Alberi (Florence, 1846); and the Diarii of the Venetian Marino Sanuto (58 vols., 1879–1903). Other materials for the biography are to be found in the incomplete Regesta edited by Joseph Cardinal Hergenröther (Freiburg-i-B., 1884 ff.); in the Turin collection of papal bulls (1859, &c.); in Il Diario di Leone X. dai volumi manoscritti degli archivi Vaticani della S. Sede connote di M. Armellini (Rome, 1884); and in “Documenti risguardanti Giovanni de’ Medici e il pontifice Leone X.,” appendix to vol. 1 of the Archivio storico Italiano (Florence, 1842).
See L. Pastor, Geschichte der Päpste im Zeitalter der Renaissance u. der Glaubensspaltung von der Wahl Leos X. bis zum Tode Klemens VII. part 1 (Freiburg-i.-B., 1906); M. Creighton, History of the Papacy, vol. 6 (1901); F. Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, trans. by Mrs G. W. Hamilton, vol. viii., part 1 (1902); L. von Ranke, History of the Popes, vol. i., trans. by E. Foster in the Bohn Library; Histoire de France, ed. by E. Lavisse, vol. 5, part 1 (1903); Walter Friedensburg, “Ein rotulus familiae Papst Leos X.,” in Quellen u. Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven u. Bibliotheken, vol. vi. (1904); W. Roscoe, Life and Pontificate of Leo X. (6th ed., 2 vols., 1853), a celebrated biography but considerably out of date in spite of the valuable notes of the German and Italian translators, Henke and Bossi; F. S. Nitti, Leone X. e la sua politica secondo documenti e carteggi inediti (Florence, 1892); A. Schulte, Die Fugger in Rom 1495–1523 (2 vols., Leipzig, 1906); and H. M. Vaughan, The Medici Popes (1908). (C. H. Ha.)
Leo XI. (Alessandro de’ Medici) was elected pope on the 1st
of April 1605, at the age of seventy. He had long been archbishop
of Florence and nuncio to Tuscany; and was entirely pro-French
in his sympathies. He died on the 27th day of his pontificate,
and was succeeded by Paul V.
See the contemporary life by Vitorelli, continuator of Ciaconius, Vitae et res gestae summorum Pontiff. Rom.; Ranke, Popes (Eng. trans., Austin), ii. 330; v. Reumont, Gesch. der Stadt Rom. iii. 2, 604; Brosch, Gesch. des Kirchenstaates (1880), i. 350.
Leo XII. (Annibale della Genga), pope from 1823 to 1829, was born of a noble family, near Spoleto, on the 22nd of August 1760. Educated at the Accademia dei Nobili ecclesiastici at Rome, he was ordained priest in 1783, and in 1790 attracted favourable attention by a tactful sermon commemorative of the emperor Joseph II. In 1792 Pius VI. made him his private secretary, in 1793 creating him titular archbishop of Tyre and despatching him to Lucerne as nuncio. In 1794 he was transferred to the nunciature at Cologne, but owing to the war had to make his residence in Augsburg. During the dozen or more years he spent in Germany he was entrusted with several honourable and difficult missions, which brought him into contact with the courts of Dresden, Vienna, Munich and Württemberg, as well as with Napoleon. It is, however, charged at one time during this period that his finances were disordered, and his private life not above suspicion. After the abolition of the States of the Church, he was treated by the French as a state prisoner, and lived for some years at the abbey of Monticelli, solacing himself with music and with bird-shooting, pastimes which he did not eschew even after his election as pope. In 1814 he was chosen to carry the pope’s congratulations to Louis XVIII.; in 1816 he was created cardinal-priest of Santa Maria Maggiore, and appointed to the see of Sinigaglia, which he resigned in 1818. In 1820 Pius VII. gave him the distinguished post of cardinal vicar. In the conclave of 1823, in spite of the active opposition of France, he was elected pope by the zelanti on the 28th of September. His election had been facilitated because he was thought to be on the edge of the grave; but he unexpectedly rallied. His foreign policy, entrusted at first to Della Somaglia and then to the more able Bernetti, moved in general along lines laid down by Consalvi; and he negotiated certain concordats very advantageous to the papacy. Personally most frugal, Leo reduced taxes, made justice less costly, and was able to find money for certain public improvements; yet he left the finances more confused than he had found them, and even the elaborate jubilee of 1825 did not really mend matters. His domestic policy was one of extreme reaction. He condemned the Bible societies, and under Jesuit influence reorganized the educational system. Severe ghetto laws led many of the Jews to emigrate. He hunted down the Carbonari and the Freemasons; he took the strongest measures against political agitation in theatres. A well-nigh ubiquitous system of espionage, perhaps most fruitful when directed against official corruption, sapped the foundations of public confidence. Leo, temperamentally stern, hard-working in spite of bodily infirmity, died at Rome on the 10th of February
