Pope Julius II

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(1 Nov. 1503 — 21 Feb. 1513)
Born on 5 Dec. 1443 of poor parents at Albissola, near Savona, and originally intended for commerce, Giuliano della Rovere was educated, through his uncle Francesco's influence, by the Franciscans at Perugia, and took orders. When his uncle became Sixtus IV (1471), he named Giuliano bishop of Carpentras and (16 Dec. 1471) cardinal priest of S. Pietro in Vincoli; he soon acquired other bishoprics, abbacies, and benefices, including the bishopric of Avignon, shortly afterwards converted to an archbishopric, and the cardinal bishopric of Sta Sabina. As legate in France in 1480 — 82 he successfully mediated between Louis XI (1461 — 83) and Maximilian I of Austria (1486 — 1519) over the latter's Burgundian inheritance. He was prominent under Innocent VIII, whose election he managed, but an enemy of Alexander VI. Fearing assassination, he fled in 1494 to France, where he encouraged Charles VIII (1483 — 98) to undertake the conquest of Naples. He accompanied the king on his campaign (1494 — 5), but his efforts to get his backing for a council to depose Alexander for simony were foiled by the wily pope. Although he negotiated Cesare Borgia's marriage with a French princess in 1499, he was lucky to escape Alexander's plots and remained in hiding until his death. At the ensuing conclave he was not chosen, but Pius III reigned only 26 days; on his death Giuliano at last attained his ambition, and with the help of lavish promises and bribes was unanimously elected pope at a conclave lasting a single day.

A forceful ruler, ruthless and violent, Julius eschewed family aggrandizement and strove, with all diplomatic and military means available, to restore and extend the papal state, which the Borgias had alienated, and to establish a strong, independent papacy in an Italy free from foreign domination. First, having dexterously got rid of the still dangerous Cesare Borgia (1507) by making Italy too hot for him, he vainly urged Venice to evacuate those parts of Romagna she had occupied earlier in 1503. Then, having allied himself with France and Germany, he won back all Romagna from her except Rimini and Faenza in 1504. In 1506, in a brilliant campaign led by himself in full armour, he wrested Perugia and Bologna from their petty tyrants: he commissioned from Michelangelo a statue of himself to commemorate his victory over Bologna. In Mar. 1509 he joined the League of Cambrai formed in 1508 between France, Germany, and Spain, excommunicated Venice on 27 Apr., and in May defeated her so disastrously that she was forced to surrender Rimini and Faenza and also the control of church appointments and taxation rights that she had usurped. He had no wish, however, unduly to weaken Venice, indispensable in any war with the Turks, and now decided that France, powerfully established in the north, was the real danger to Italy and must be driven out. He therefore made peace with Venice and, to win the support of Spain, enfeoffed Ferdinand II of Aragón (1476 — 1516) with Naples (3 July 1510) in disregard of France's claims.

Julius first attacked Ferrara, an ally of France and the only vassal state still unsubdued. His troops seized Modena in 1510 and captured Mirandola in Jan. 1511, with himself at their head. He failed, however, to win Ferrara, and had to see Bologna fall temporarily to the French; he himself narrowly escaped capture. Meanwhile Louis XII of France (1498 — 1515) counterattacked by holding a synod at Tours (Sept. 1510) which renewed the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and by calling, in the name of a group of rebel cardinals, for a council to meet at Pisa on 1 Sept. 1511 to depose the pope. It assembled on 1 Oct., held several sessions, and decreed the suspension of Julius. To meet the threat, especially as Emperor Maximilian I favoured the Pisan council, Julius now summoned the fifth Lateran council to meet in Rome in 1512. On the political plane he formed (Oct. 1511) the Holy League with Venice and Spain for the defence of the papacy; Henry VIII of England (1509 — 47) joined it later in the year. The League's armies were severely defeated at Ravenna (11 Apr. 1512), but its fortunes changed with the arrival of Swiss troops, and before the end of 1512 the French had to quit Italian soil, taking with them the fathers of the Pisan council. Parma, Piacenza, and Reggio Emilia were added to the papal state, of which Julius could claim to be the re-founder.

Politics and wars dominated Julius' reign; Erasmus in his Praise of Folly (1509) caricatured his military ardour, and the Florentine historian Guicciardini remarked that there was nothing of the priest about him except the dress and the name. His strictly church activities were largely routine: in 1503, for instance, he issued the dispensation which enabled Henry VIII later to marry his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragón. Nevertheless, he published a bull (dated 14 Jan. 1505) declaring papal elections nullified by simony, and founded the first bishoprics in South America. He opened on 3 May 1512 the fifth Lateran (Eighteenth General) council (1512 — 17), being gratified at the third session by the adhesion of Emperor Maximilian; but the five sessions held in his lifetime were concerned mainly with condemning the schismatic Pisan council (1511 — 12) and the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. His most enduring achievement was as the patron and inspirer of artists, notably Michelangelo, who completed the ceiling of the Sistine chapel in Julius' lifetime, the youthful Raphael, and Bramante. The last he commissioned in spring 1505 to prepare plans for the new St Peter's, assisting at the laying of the foundation stone on 18 Apr. 1506, and arranging for the cost to be defrayed by the sale of indulgences (later to be bitterly criticized by the Protestant reformers). In spite of expensive wars and building projects he was a frugal administrator who, having inherited an empty treasury, left it more than full. As a man he was headstrong, irascible, sensual (as cardinal he fathered a daughter), and was nicknamed 'll terribile'; as pope he had policies which were at least disinterested and intelligible even if they aimed no higher than making the papal state the first power in Italy. When he died of fever, he was mourned as the liberator of Italy from foreign domination, and has subsequently been saluted as the promoter of its unification.

Previous (chronologically): Pius III, Alexander VI, Innocent VIII
Next (chronologically): Leo X, Hadrian VI, Clement VII

Julius II (1443-1513), who was pope from 1503 to 1513, was a noted Renaissance patron of the arts. A warrior pope, he failed to bring Italy under papal control. His costly concern with the arts and politics alienated northern Europe and helped pave the way for the Reformation.

Giuliano della Rovere, who became Pope Julius II, was born in December 1443 in Albissola near Savona, Italy. He was elevated to the cardinalate in December 1471 by his uncle Pope Sixtus IV. Giuliano rapidly became an influential member of the College of Cardinals and servant to both Sixtus IV and his successor, Innocent VIII. In 1492 Innocent VIII died, and Cardinal della Rovere was considered Innocent's logical successor. However, because of the greater wealth of the Spaniard Cardinal (Rodrigo) Borgia to purchase votes, the College of Cardinals elected Borgia, and he assumed the title Alexander VI.

The Borgias were vassals of Ferdinand of Aragon, and during Alexander's reign Giuliano resented this foreign influence in Italy and also opposed Alexander's nepotism. Because of his opposition to the Pope, Giuliano underwent much hardship. During most of Alexander's pontificate Giuliano felt it safer to absent himself from Rome.

Alexander VI died in August 1503, and his elderly successor, Pius III, died in October. In November Giuliano was elected pope and assumed the title Julius II.

First Conflicts

From the start of his pontificate it became clear that Julius intended to make the papacy the dominant political and military force in Italy and to drive all rivals of papal authority out of the peninsula. In 1503 there were three rivals to papal authority. The first was Cesare Borgia, the son of Alexander VI and conqueror of the richest of the Papal States, the Romagna, in northern Italy. The other rivals were Venice and France. France controlled several important cities in northern Italy, among them Florence and Pavia.

In 1504 Julius confiscated the landholdings of Cesare Borgia in Italy and ordered his arrest. In the absence of Cesare Borgia and his military forces in the Romagna, Venice occupied the area, including the cities of Rimini, Faenza, Forli, and Cesena. Julius knew the defeat of this second rival to papal authority would require force of arms. In order to raise the money necessary to equip an army, Julius ordered the Dominicans in Germany to sell indulgences. In 1505 Julius marched out of Rome with a small army.

En route to the Romagna, Julius captured the cities of Perugia and Bologna in 1506. Julius then led his troops into Cesena and Forli, which had been evacuated by the Venetians in the face of a threat by Julius to lay an interdict upon Venice. However, Venice adamantly refused to evacuate Faenza and Rimini. Meanwhile, in 1507 the Genoese revolted against their overlord, Piero Soderini, ruler of Florence and a political puppet of France. The French believed Julius had engineered the revolt in order to force their withdrawal from Italy, and the French king, Louis XII, dispatched an army to smash the insurrection. This threat forced Julius to abandon his campaign against Venice and return to Rome.

The enmity between Louis XII and Julius increased when the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I announced his intention of journeying to Rome in order to be crowned by the Pope. Louis XII feared that Julius had invited the Germans into Italy to participate in another effort to drive France from the peninsula. Since the Venetians also felt threatened by what they believed to be a papal-German alliance, France and Venice formed an alliance. In 1508 war broke out between the Germans and the Franco-Venetian alliance, and before the end of the year the alliance defeated the Germans.

League of Cambrai

Because of its assistance in this war, France expected to receive territory in northern Italy from Venice, but Venice relinquished no lands. Louis XII also realized Julius had not invited Maximilian into Italy. France, therefore, abandoned its alliance with the Venetians.

Julius took advantage of the Venetian isolation and created the military League of Cambrai to drive Venice from Faenza and Rimini. France and a number of independent city-states in northern Italy joined the league. Maximilian joined in order to revenge his defeat and win back territory in northern Italy which he had lost to the Venetians. Spain, which controlled the kingdom of Naples, also participated in order to drive the Venetians from Adriatic seaports which they held in that kingdom. In 1509 Julius placed an interdict on Venice, and the League of Cambrai declared war on the city-state.

Venice suffered a number of disastrous defeats on land and sea. The French insisted upon the total destruction of Venice as a power in Italy. But this would have upset the balance of power in northern Italy and would have removed a major obstacle to French domination of that area. Therefore, in 1510 Julius negotiated a separate peace with Venice. By the terms of the settlement, Venice surrendered the Romagna to the Pope, the Apulian seaports to the Spanish, and most of its possessions in northern Italy to the other members of the League of Cambrai. Because of this separate peace the members of the League of Cambrai ended hostilities against Venice. Thus, Julius saved the republic of Venice from annihilation.

War with France

Julius now had to deal with the final threat to papal supremacy in Italy, the French. In August 1510 Louis XII called all French prelates to a synod at Orléans. Here, Louis declared that papal authority extended only over spiritual matters. He proclaimed his right as a prince and protector of the Church on earth to call a council in order to punish a worldly pope such as Julius and reform the Church. Louis thus hoped to frighten Julius into abandoning his plans to drive France from Italy.

In 1511 Louis XII issued the call for a Church council. By May a small number of cardinals had gathered at Pisa. Louis promised these cardinals rich rewards for their participation. Support for the council also came from Germany, where the 16th-century voices of reform assailed the worldliness of a papacy which seemed more concerned with Italian politics than with religion. The Germans resented the financial burdens placed upon them by the Pope in order to pay for his wars in Italy.

In the face of disaster Julius acted with characteristic audacity. He issued the call for Western Christendom to gather in ecumenical council at the Lateran Basilica in Rome. This bold action won for Julius the religious and political support of the Spanish and the English. These powers, along with the Swiss and the Venetians, in 1511 joined Julius in the Holy League. In fear of this new military alliance, Louis XII withdrew his support of the schismatic Council of Pisa, and at the beginning of 1512 the council ended in failure.

In June 1512 the Holy League attacked the French in northern Italy. The Swiss captured the French-controlled city of Pavia, and the Spanish captured Florence. By the end of the summer the league drove the French out of Italy.

The defeat of the French was a Pyrrhic victory for Julius, for now the Spanish were in control of much of northern Italy. Julius began preparing new alliances to drive them from Italy. But the energy expended through long years of warfare and in manipulating the complicated balance of power in Italy physically and mentally overtaxed Julius. On February 21, 1513, Julius II died.

During his pontificate Julius hired the costly services of the greatest artists of the Renaissance to embellish the papal apartments. Above the protests of most of Western Christendom he ordered the demolition of the ancient and crumbling Basilica of St. Peter. He hired the services of the architect Donato Bramante, who designed and began the construction of the present Basilica. Julius hired Michelangelo to design and execute a tomb for the Pontiff and to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. All of this and his wars and political escapades in Italy, Julius financed in large part by the sale of ecclesiastical offices and indulgences in northern Europe.

Further Reading

The best account in English of Julius II is still that contained in Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes: From the Close of the Middle Ages (trans., 40 vols., 1938-1968).

Additional Sources

Shaw, Christine, Julius II, the warrior pope, Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell 1993.

Julius II, 1443-1513, pope (1503-13), an Italian named Giuliano della Rovere, b. Savona; successor of Pius III. His uncle Sixtus IV gave him many offices and created him cardinal. Innocent VIII, successor to Sixtus IV, was entirely under Cardinal della Rovere's influence, and it was in reaction to the cardinal's power that the rest of the cardinals elected (1492) his bitter enemy, Rodrigo Borgia, as Pope Alexander VI. Giuliano went into voluntary exile and had little to do with ecclesiastical affairs until Alexander's death (1503). Pius III succeeded for less than a month, and Giuliano succeeded him. Pope Julius showed himself first of all a warrior, and he ably completed the work, begun by his enemy Cesare Borgia, of restoring the Papal States to the church. Having joined the League of Cambrai, he was at war with Venice until 1509 and won back Ravenna, Rimini, and Faenza. He then formed (1510) the anti-French Holy League. The resultant struggle was a draw (see Italian Wars). In 1512 he assembled the Fifth Lateran Council, which condemned the Gallicanism of the church in France and abolished simony in the college of cardinals. Julius was a great patron of art, and Raphael (who painted his portrait), Michelangelo, and Bramante enjoyed his favor. He laid the cornerstone of St. Peter's. Worldly as Julius was, he was one of the first to suppress nepotism and to try, albeit feebly, to break the hold of corruption on Rome. He was succeeded by Leo X.

Julius II (POPE) (Giuliano della Rovere; 1443–1513; reigned 1503–1513), Italian pope. Born at Albissola near Savona in 1443, Giuliano was a vigorous man, suited to a life of action, not contemplation, and destined for an ecclesiastical career under the aegis of his uncle, Francesco della Rovere, who became a cardinal in 1467. Like him, Giuliano was a Franciscan; he studied at a Franciscan friary in Perugia.

The election of his uncle to the papal throne as Sixtus IV (reigned 1471–1484) was swiftly followed in December 1471 by his own promotion to cardinal. Important benefices were bestowed on him, including the see of Avignon, as well as the major curial office of Grand Penitentiary. He welcomed the opportunities for action, including participation in military campaigns, offered by legations to Umbria in 1474 and to France in 1480–1482. His wealth, energy, increasing experience, and taste for politics made him one of the most powerful figures in the College of Cardinals; he was an influential adviser to Pope Innocent VIII (reigned 1484–1492) and a leader of the opposition to the Borgia pope, Alexander VI (reigned 1492–1503). Justifiably fearing arrest, he went into exile in France in 1494, and, after accompanying King Charles VIII of France (ruled 1483–1498) on his campaign to conquer the kingdom of Naples in 1494 to 1495, he did not return to Rome during Alexander's lifetime. He was elected pope on 31 October 1503, taking the title Julius II.

His choice of title has been seen as a desire to identify himself and the papacy with the imperial traditions of ancient Rome, an ambition that is often associated with his artistic commissions as pope. Although there is no direct evidence for this link, Julius II was undoubtedly one of the most important cultural patrons of Renaissance Italy. Among the major artists who worked for him were Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564), from whom he commissioned the Sistine Chapel ceiling and his own tomb, Raphael Sanzio (1483–1520), who decorated Julius's apartments in the Vatican and painted his portrait, and Donato Bramante (1444–1514), whose projects for the pope included the Vatican courtyard and the new St. Peter's, which replaced the crumbling old basilica.

His most consistent political aim as pope was to bring the Papal States more firmly under the control of the papacy; he took personal command of some of the military operations that these aims involved. His efforts to prevent the Venetians from extending their influence in the northern Papal States brought him to participate in the League of Cambrai of 1509, and the subsequent war against Venice in 1509–1510. Having achieved his aims, he made peace with Venice and turned his attention to reducing the power in Italy of his former ally, Louis XII of France (ruled 1498–1515); he was a member of the coalition that drove the French out of the duchy of Milan in 1512.

Julius's initiatives in Italian politics and his personal participation in military campaigns shaped his reputation, both among his contemporaries and posthumously. He has been criticized by some patriotic Italians for his part in the war against Venice and lauded by others for his reputed determination to expel the "barbarians" from Italy. In practice, he was prepared to ally himself with the "barbarians" of France, Spain, and Germany when it suited his purposes, but he did not want them to form independent links with his own subjects. His penchant for military life was seen as unfitting for a pope, although his resolution and physical courage were admired by some. The image of Julius leading an army to the gates of heaven to demand entrance and being turned away by St. Peter, in the c. 1513 satirical dialogue Julius Exclusus 'Julius Excluded from Heaven' attributed to Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536), has had an enduring influence.

Julius himself regarded the recovery of the territory of the church and the defense of the independence of the Papal States, by war if need be, as prime duties of the pope. Although his outbursts of rage and heavy drinking attracted ridicule, he was conscious of the dignity of his office and careful to fulfill his religious duties. Nevertheless, his behavior gave Louis XII and the Emperor Maximilian I (ruled 1493–1519) an opportunity to seek his deposition from the papacy. They used dissident cardinals to call a general council of the church that opened in Pisa in 1511; this attracted little support. The summons by Julius of the Fifth Lateran Council may have been a riposte to this, but once it assembled in 1512, he insisted that it should give serious consideration to the reform of the church. Julius died during the night of 20 February 1513.

Bibliography

Primary Source

Sowards, J. Kelley, ed. The Julius Exclusus of Erasmus. Bloomington, Ind., 1968.

Secondary Sources

Partridge, Loren, and Randolph Starn. A Renaissance Likeness: Art and Culture in Raphael's "Julius II." Berkeley, 1980.

Shaw, Christine. Julius II: The Warrior Pope. Oxford, 1993.

—CHRISTINE SHAW

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