LEO X
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LEO X
Medici, and the Florentines, and that both Lorenzo and Giuliano should receive commissions in the French ser- vice, with pay and pensions. If there had been danf,'er to the Medici government in Florence, it threatened from the side of France, but that danger they escaped by this new alliance, brought about, in a great measure, by the sympathy whioh the two parties felt for each other.
At a meeting which these new allies subsequently held at Bologna (December, 1515) a marriage was agreed uj)on between Lorenzo, the pope's nephew, and Made- leine de Boulogne, niece of Francis de Bourbon, duke of Vendome, from which marriage Catharine de' Medici, after\\-ards queen of France, was born, and thus the un- ion of the French and Florentine interests became more closely cemented. But iu ecclesiastical affairs also new measures were taken by a concordat, only abrogated by the French Revolution, which regulated the appoint- ment to the sees and livings in the French kingdom. Listead of capitular election, the king was to nominate, the pope to collate to episcopal sees. Annates were re- stored to the pope, who also received a small stipulated patronage in place of his indefinite prerogative of re- serving benetices. It is true the Parliament and Uni- versity of Paris both opposed this concordat, but the king and the pope each secured what they desired. To the king thus fell the real power and the essential pat- ronage of the Church ; by the pope the recognition of his own authority was obtained. The two, as Reichel {See of Borne in the Middle Ages, p. 538) has aptly said, by this new measure, " shared between them the ancient liberties of the Galilean Church. Tlie rising freedom of the laity was thereliy crushed ; the pope recovered most of his ancient power." Nothing could seem bright- er now than the Medicean prospects and the future of the papacy. There was only one more thing to be im- mediately accomplished — to make Lorenzo a sovereign prince ''by grace of God, or, at all events, clearly by grace of God's vicegerent on earth." L'pon the most Hagrant of pretences, the duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria della Kevcre, Avas deposed, and upon Lorenzo fell the mantle of the duchy's sovereignty, and at last the measure of Leo's ambition was nearly full. (In 1519, upon the death of Lorenzo, the duchy of Urbino was add- ed to the territory of the Church.) This family ambi- tion, however, by no means found pleasure in the eyes of the Koman people, while the Florentines were flattered by the advance of their " first citizens" to the position of lirince and pope. Prominent among the enemies of the IVIedici was the house of Petrucci, headed by the cardi- nal of that name, who wa^s led into a conspiracy to mur- der the pope by the latter's expatriation of his brother from Sienna. Not satisfied with the acquisition of the duchy of L^rbino, Leo longed also for the possession of the free state of Sienna, lying between the territories of the Church and those of the republic of Florence, and to this end sent Borghesi, its governor, into exile. At first Borghesi's brother, cardinal Petrucci, formed the mad design of stabbing Leo on their first meeting, but he finally abandoned this enterprise as too daring, and a conspiracy was formed instead to cause the death of Leo X by poison. Fortunately for Leo, the plot to take his life was timely discovered, and the cardinal expiated the intended crime with his life by secret strangling, while many others of like social standing suffered abasement and othgr punishment. To secure himself against a second attempt of the kind, Leo now (in 1517) created a whole host of able and experienced Florentines cardinals — no less than thirty-one of them altogether.
It was about this time also that the Lateran Council ap- proached itsclose, and that the measures were inaugurated which resulted so unfavorably to the cause of the papacy and the Church of Rome, and have made the year 1517 forever memorable in the ecclesiastical annals for the foundation and commencement it gave to the revolution in the Church, commonly known by the name of the Reformation (q. v.). One of the greatest desires of Leo