men, who for many years had enjoyed no such favour in the Holy See. He would have made an ideal Pope had he added to these qualities some knowledge of the things of religion, and a little more inclination to piety, both of them things for which he cared little."
The favourable opinion entertained of Leo X by his contemporaries long held the field in history. His reign has been regarded as at once the zenith and cause of the greatest period of the Renaissance. His wide liberality, his unfeigned enthusiasm for the creations of genius, his unprejudiced taste for all that beautifies humanity, and his sympathy for all the culture of his time have been the theme of a traditional chorus of laudation. More recent criticism has recognised in the reign of Leo a period of incipient decline, and has traced that decline to the follies and frailties of the Pontiff.
With regard to the political methods of Leo some difference of opinion may still be entertained. Some have seen in him the single-minded and unscrupulous friend of Medicean Florence, prepared to sacrifice alike the interests of the Church and of the Papacy to the advancement of his family. To others he is the clear-sighted statesman who, perceiving the future changes and difficulties of the Church, sought for the Papacy the firm support of a hereditary alliance.
Truth may lie midway between these two opinions. If we view Leo as a man, similar doubts encounter us. Paramount in his character were his gentleness and cheerfulness, his good-nature, his indulgence both for himself and others, his love of peace and hatred of war. But these amiable qualities were coupled with an insincerity and a love of tortuous ways which grew to be a second nature. Nor must we overlook the fact that Leo's policy of peace was a mere illusion; his hopes and intentions were quite frustrated by the actual course of affairs. On his personal character the great blot must rest that he passed his life in intellectual self-indulgence and took his pleasure in hunting and gaming, while the Teutonic North was bursting the bonds of reverence and authority which bound Europe to Rome. Even for the restoration of the rule of the Medici in Florence the Medicean Popes made only futile attempts. Cosimo I was the first to accomplish it. Leo had absorbed the culture of his time, but he did not possess the ability to look beyond that time. A diplomatist rather than a statesman, his creations were only the feats of a political virtuoso, who sacrificed the future in order to control the present.
Even the greatness of the Maecenas crumbles before recent criticism. The zenith of Renaissance culture falls in the age of Julius II. Ariosto's light verses, Bibbiena's prurient La Calandria, the paintings in the bath-room of the Vatican, the rejection of the Dante monument planned by Michelangelo, the misapplication of funds collected for the Crusade to purposes of mere dynastic interest, Leo's political double-dealing, which disordered all the affairs of Italy, and indeed of Christendom;
