The Cenci | Page 5

could command them absolutely. As he
was in a moribund condition and could make no use of them for
himself, he sold them to Giuliano della Rovere, and Giuliano della
Rovere was elected pope, under the name of Julius II. To the Rome of
Nero succeeded the Athens of Pericles.

Leo X succeeded Julius II, and under his pontificate Christianity
assumed a pagan character, which, passing from art into manners, gives
to this epoch a strange complexion. Crimes for the moment disappeared,
to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste, such
as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by Catullus. Leo X died
after having assembled under his reign, which lasted eight years, eight
months, and nineteen days, Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Leonardo da
Vinci, Correggio, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, Giulio
Romano, Ariosto, Guicciardini, and Macchiavelli.
Giulio di Medici and Pompeo Colonna had equal claims to succeed him.
As both were skilful politicians, experienced courtiers, and moreover of
real and almost equal merit, neither of them could obtain a majority,
and the Conclave was prolonged almost indefinitely, to the great
fatigue of the cardinals. So it happened one day that a cardinal, more
tired than the rest, proposed to elect, instead of either Medici or
Colonna, the son, some say of a weaver, others of a brewer of Utrecht,
of whom no one had ever thought till then, and who was for the
moment acting head of affairs in Spain, in the absence of Charles the
Fifth. The jest prospered in the ears of those who heard it; all the
cardinals approved their colleague's proposal, and Adrien became pope
by a mere accident.
He was a perfect specimen of the Flemish type a regular Dutchman,
and could not speak a word of Italian. When he arrived in Rome, and
saw the Greek masterpieces of sculpture collected at vast cost by Leo X,
he wished to break them to pieces, exclaiming, "Suet idola anticorum."
His first act was to despatch a papal nuncio, Francesco Cherigato, to
the Diet of Nuremberg, convened to discuss the reforms of Luther, with
instructions which give a vivid notion of the manners of the time.
"Candidly confess," said he, "that God has permitted this schism and
this persecution on account of the sins of man, and especially those of
priests and prelates of the Church; for we know that many abominable
things have taken place in the Holy See."
Adrien wished to bring the Romans back to the simple and austere
manners of the early Church, and with this object pushed reform to the
minutest details. For instance, of the hundred grooms maintained by
Leo X, he retained only a dozen, in order, he said, to have two more
than the cardinals.

A pope like this could not reign long: he died after a year's pontificate.
The morning after his death his physician's door was found decorated
with garlands of flowers, bearing this inscription: "To the liberator of
his country."
Giulio di Medici and Pompeo Colonna were again rival candidates.
Intrigues recommenced, and the Conclave was once more so divided
that at one time the cardinals thought they could only escape the
difficulty in which they were placed by doing what they had done
before, and electing a third competitor; they were even talking about
Cardinal Orsini, when Giulio di Medici, one of the rival candidates, hit
upon a very ingenious expedient. He wanted only five votes; five of his
partisans each offered to bet five of Colonna's a hundred thousand
ducats to ten thousand against the election of Giulio di Medici. At the
very first ballot after the wager, Giulio di Medici got the five votes he
wanted; no objection could be made, the cardinals had not been bribed;
they had made a bet, that was all.
Thus it happened, on the 18th of November, 1523, Giulio di Medici
was proclaimed pope under the name of Clement VII. The same day, he
generously paid the five hundred thousand ducats which his five
partisans had lost.
It was under this pontificate, and during the seven months in which
Rome, conquered by the Lutheran soldiers of the Constable of Bourbon,
saw holy things subjected to the most frightful profanations, that
Francesco Cenci was born.
He was the son of Monsignor Nicolo Cenci, afterwards apostolic
treasurer during the pontificate of Pius V. Under this venerable prelate,
who occupied himself much more with the spiritual than the temporal
administration of his kingdom, Nicolo Cenci took advantage of his
spiritual head's abstraction of worldly matters to amass a net revenue of
a hundred and sixty thousand piastres, about f32,000 of our money.
Francesco Cenci, who was his only son, inherited this fortune.
His youth was spent under popes so occupied with the schism of Luther