Background
Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici was born on December 11, 1475 in the Republic of Florence, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was head of the Florentine Republic.
Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici was born on December 11, 1475 in the Republic of Florence, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was head of the Florentine Republic.
He received an education at Lorenzo's 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.
On 23 March 1492, he was formally admitted into the Sacred College of Cardinals and took up his residence at Rome, receiving a letter of advice from his father.
From an early age he was destined for an ecclesiastical career. He received the tonsure at the age of seven and was soon granted rich benefices and preferments.
Leo X was pope from 1513 to 1521, was a lavish patron of the arts and an international political manipulator. The Reformation began during his reign. In the second half of the 15th century the Renaissance was in full swing in Italy. The glories of man had been rediscovered and were being reappreciated after the religious austerities of the Middle Ages. The classic art of ancient Greece had come back into style; the ornate Latin of early Rome was being mastered again. Life in this world had become more important, for those who could afford it, than life in the next. The princes of Italy's city-states fought and schemed to preserve their power and increase their wealth. He formally entered the ranks of the Roman Catholic clergy when he was 7 and was made a cardinal by Pope Innocent VIII at 13. As a churchman, he was entitled to receive the revenues from a number of wealthy churches in Florence and Rome, adding to his family's influence and fortune. Ecclesiastical Career In 1492, when he was 16, Giovanni took up residence in Rome as a full-fledged member of the College of Cardinals but returned to Florence when his father died later that same year. He helped his brother Pietro administer the affairs of their family and their city, until an uprising in 1494 forced the Medicis into exile. Because he had opposed the election of Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI, Giovanni was in disfavor and could not immediately go back to Rome. He used his time of exile to travel extensively throughout Europe. At Pietro's death in 1503 Giovanni became head of the Medici family. He gladly took up the work offered him by Pope Julius II in 1512, to lead a papal army against his family's enemies in Florence. The expedition was a disaster. His army was defeated and Giovanni was taken prisoner. Agents of the Medicis soon secured his release, and when his family was reestablished in Florence, Giovanni returned in triumph as ruler of the city. He was elected pope in February 1513. Giovanni left Florence in charge of his younger brother, Giuliano, as he himself assumed control of the Church, the city of Rome, and the Papal States. He was ordained a priest on March 15, consecrated a bishop on March 17, and enthroned as Pope Leo X on March 19. At the age of 37 he had at his disposal all of the wealth and the power of the papacy. Leo moved quickly to consolidate his political power. He joined with Emperor Maximilian I of Germany, King Ferdinand V of Spain, and King Henry VIII of England to drive the French out of northern Italy. When the French reinvaded, he agreed to return part of their former territory if they would give military support to the Medici family in Florence. Shortly afterward he signed an agreement with the French king, Francis I, allowing the king to control the selection of all the bishops in France, an agreement which was to last until the French Revolution. In his own kingdom of Rome, Leo placed his relatives in positions of power. His cousin Giulio became the cardinal archbishop of Florence and an official in the Pope's court. He named his nephew Lorenzo to rule Florence in place of his brother Giuliano, whom he married to a daughter of the French house of Savoy. When he discovered a plot in his own palace to poison him, Leo had one cardinal executed and another put in prison. To neutralize the power of the remaining officials, he created 31 new cardinals, all members of his own family or people he could otherwise trust. One of his last political moves was to form another alliance with Emperor Charles V and King Henry VIII of England to drive the French out of northern Italy again. Patron of the Arts While negotiating with kings and emperors for the future of Europe, Leo found time for the pleasures he loved. Artists, writers, and musicians came to Rome from all over Italy at his request. He created special projects to take advantage of the outstanding talents of the artist Raphael. He set up a Greek printing press in Rome and encouraged the Jewish community in the city to begin their own printing operation. Church positions were found for writers, poets, and translators, some of the more favored of whom he made bishops. Leo himself was a master of classical Latin and delighted in giving impromptu speeches in the style of Cicero. He commissioned plays and had them performed before his court. As a connoisseur of the arts, he was unequaled in Europe. While he was pope, Rome became the cultural center of the West. The Pope and his entourage beginning a chase was as much a show for the Roman people as a sport for the papal court. He would frequently attend Mass before he set out and would sometimes offer the Mass himself. But religion, although valuable, never interfered with what he considered the important demands of his position. When the papal finances began to show the strain of Leo's extravagant expenses, he unhesitatingly made use of his religious powers for added income. He demanded a fee from all new bishops and cardinals and authorized the selling of indulgences throughout Germany to obtain money for a grand rebuilding of Saint Peter's Basilica, Rome's most important church. The news in 1517 that a German monk had proclaimed 95 theses in opposition to many of the Church's practices, particularly the indulgence business, drew from Leo the remark that Martin Luther was "a drunken German who would soon be sober. " But Luther had touched a popular nerve. People, whose deep spiritual need was not being satisfied by Leo's kind of Church, supported him in large numbers, as did many German princes who had long resented the flow of money to Rome. Luther burned the document and was then formally excommunicated from the Church by the Pope. When, a year later, King Henry VIII of England wrote a treatise against Luther, Leo rewarded him with the title Defender of the Faith. However, Luther's Reformation gained irresistible momentum throughout northern Europe, while Pope Leo went back to his political intrigues in Italy. Last Years The military expedition against the French that Leo had set in motion by his last treaty with the Emperor and the King of England ended in November 1521, when the Emperor's forces captured Milan from the French and turned over four northern Italian provinces to the Pope's soldiers. Leo hardly had time to enjoy his victory. He died suddenly in his palace during the night of Dec. 1, 1521, just a few days before his forty-sixth birthday. Many suspected he had been poisoned. Throughout his Church career Leo had been concerned above all for the welfare of his own Medici family and then for the political power of the papacy. His sumptuous style of life reflected his upbringing in his father's Florentine court. As pope, Leo X was a superb Italian prince.
Quotations: After several years of unsuccessful negotiations, in 1520 Leo issued against Luther the decree Exsurge Domine, which began: "Arise, O Lord, and judge thine own cause. .. . A wild boar has invaded thy vineyard. "
Giovanni was an intelligent young man, deeply interested in literature and art, passionately devoted to his family, and reasonably religious by the standards of his time.
Leo's most recent biographer, Carlo Falconi, claims Leo hid a private life of moral irregularity behind a mask of urbanity. Scabrous verse libels of the type known as pasquinades were particularly abundant during the conclave which followed Leo's death in 1521 and made imputations about Leo's unchastity - implying or asserting homosexuality. Suggestions of homosexual attraction appear in works by two contemporary historians - Francesco Guicciardini and Paolo Giovio. Zimmerman notes Giovio's "disapproval of the pope's familiar banter with his chamberlains - handsome young men from noble families - and the advantage he was said to take of them. "
Leo particularly liked to hunt and did so in a grand style.
Pastor says that "From his youth Leo, who had a fine ear and a melodious voice, loved music to the pitch of fanaticism".
As pope he procured the services of professional singers, instrumentalists and composers from as far away as France, Germany and Spain. Next to goldsmiths, the highest salaries recorded in the papal accounts are those paid to musicians, who also received largesse from Leo's private purse. Their services were retained not so much for the delectation of Leo and his guests at private social functions as for the enhancement of religious services on which the pope placed great store. The standard of singing of the papal choir was a particular object of Leo's concern, with French, Dutch, Spanish and Italian singers being retained. Large sums of money were also spent on the acquisition of highly ornamented musical instruments, and he was especially assiduous in securing musical scores from Florence. He also fostered technical improvements developed for the diffusion of such scores. Ottaviano Petrucci, who had overcome practical difficulties in the way of using movable type to print musical notation, obtained from Leo X the exclusive privilege of printing organ scores (which, according to the papal brief, "adds greatly to the dignity of divine worship") for a period for 15 years from 22 October 1513. In addition to fostering the performance of sung Masses, he promoted the singing of the Gospel in Greek in his private chapel.