Pope Leo X

 


Beginnings

For the church, he received the tonsure at the age of six and was soon loaded with rich benefices and preferments. His father prevailed on his relative Innocent VIII to name him cardinal-deacon of Santa Maria in Domnica in March 1489, although he was not allowed to wear the insignia or share in the deliberations of the college until three years later. Meanwhile he received a careful education at Lorenzo's brilliant humanistic court under such men as Angelo Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and Bernardo Dovizio Bibbiena. From 1489 to 1491 he studied theology and canon law at Pisa under Filippo Decio and Bartolomeo Sozzini.

On 23 March 1492 he was formally admitted into the sacred college and took up his residence at Rome, receiving a letter of advice from his father which ranks among the wisest of its kind. The death of Lorenzo on the following April 8, however, called the seventeen-year-old cardinal to Florence. He participated in the conclave of 1492 which followed the death of Innocent VIII, and opposed the election of Cardinal Borgia. He made his home with his elder brother Piero at Florence throughout the agitation of Savonarola and the invasion of Charles VIII of France, until the uprising of the Florentines and the expulsion of the Medici in November 1494. While Piero found refuge at Venice and Urbino, Cardinal Giovanni travelled in Germany, in the Netherlands and in France.

In May 1500 he returned to Rome, where he was received with outward cordiality by Alexander VI, and where he lived for several years immersed in art and literature. In 1503 he welcomed the accession of Julius II to the pontificate; the death of Piero de' Medici in the same year made Giovanni head of his family. On 1 October 1511 he was appointed papal legate of Bologna and the Romagna, and when the Florentine republic declared in favour of the schismatic Pisans Julius II sent him against his native city at the head of the papal army. This and other attempts to regain political control of Florence were frustrated, until a bloodless revolution permitted the return of the Medici. Giovanni's younger brother Giuliano was placed at the head of the republic, but the cardinal actually managed the government.

Giovanni was elected Pope on 9 March 1513, and this was proclaimed two days later. On the 15 March he was ordained priest, and consecrated as bishop on the 17th. He was crowned Pope on 19 March at the age of 37.

...and then he went gay...

Several historians have suggested the likelihood that Leo may have been homosexual. In particular they have drawn upon the account of Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540). Writing in 1525 only a few years after Leo’s death, Guicciardini declared, At the beginning of his pontificate most people deemed him very chaste; however, he was afterwards discovered to be exceedingly devoted - and every day with less and less shame - to that kind of pleasure that for honour's sake may not be named. The precise description around Leo’s behaviour set out by Guicciardini, suggests that contemporaries would clearly have recognised the charge. Libellous tracts of the time again reiterated Leo’s predilection towards sodomy – naming Count Ludovico Rangone and Galeotto Malatesta among his lovers.

Wotherspoon and Aldrich have also drawn upon the evidence presented by Leo’s modern biographer, Cesare Falconi. In particular, Falconi has used the story of the Venetian noble Marc'Antonio Flaminio (1498-1550) to illustrate Leo’s infatuation with younger men. In 1514 at the age of sixteen, Marc’Antonio was taken to Rome by his father. Gian Antonio had been keen to encourage the Pope to declare a new crusade against the Turks; but instead Leo is said to have fallen in love with Marc’Antonio and desired to arrange the best education that could be offered for the time. Suspecting ulterior motives, Gian Antonio had his son sent speedily to Bologna to study philosophy at the university, and away from the unwanted attentions of the Pope. Leo intervened, through the office of his secretary Beroaldo, and arranged a position for Marc’Antonio close to him in the papal secretariat. Falconi has observed that the doors to a career, to which many better educated and more powerful men aspired, effortlessly opened to a 17 year old youth.


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