§ 5G. LEO X. 1513-1521. 485
deposition of Julius' nephew, he was invested with the duchy of Urbino. In 1518 he was married to Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, a member of the royal house of France. Leo's presents to the marital pair were valued at 300,000 ducats, among them being a bedstead of tortoise-shell inlaid with mother-of-pearl and precious stones. They took up their abode at Florence, but both husband and wife died a year after the marriage, leaving behind them a daughter who, as Catherine de' Medici, became famous in the history of France and the persecution of the Huguenots. With Lorenzo's death, the last descendant of the male line of the house founded by Cosimo de' Medici became extinct.
In 1513 Leo admitted his nephew, Innocent Cibo, and his cousin, Julius, to the sacred college. Innocent Cibo, a young man of 21, was the son of Franceschetto Cibo, Innocent VIII. 's son, and Maddelina de' Medici, Leo's sister. His low morals made him altogether unfit for an ecclesiastical dignity. Julius de' Medici, afterwards Clement VII., was the bastard son of Leo's uncle, who was killed in the Pazzi conspiracy under Sixtus IV., 1478. The impediment of the illegitimate birth was removed by a papal decree. 1 Two nephews, Giovanni Salviati and Nicolas Ridolfi, sons of two of Leo's sisters, were also vested with the red hat, 1517. On this occasion Leo appointed no less than thirty-one cardinals. Among them were Cajetan, the learned general of the Dominicans, ^gidius of Viterbo, who had won an enviable fame by his address opening the Lateran council, and Adrian of Utrecht, Leo's successor in the papal chair. Of the number was Alfonso of Portugal, a child of 7, but it was understood he was not to enter upon the duties of his office till he had reached the age of 14. Among the other appointees were princes entirely unworthy of any ecclesiastical office. ^
The Vatican was thrown into a panic in 1517 by a conspiracy
1 The investigation, started by Leo, resulted in making it appear that Julius' mother, Floreta, and his father had agreed to regard themselves as married, though a formal service was wanting.
2 Silvio Passerini, one of the fortunate candidates, was a prince of beneficehunters. Pastor, IV. 139, gives fifty-five notices of benefices bestowed on him from Leo's Regesta. He calls the list of the places he received as toahrhaft erschreckend, "something terrifying."
486 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
directed by Cardinal Petrucci of Siena, one of the younger set of cardinals with whom the pope had been intimate. Embittered byLeo'sinterference in his brother's administration of Siena and by the deposition of the duke of Urbino, Petrucci plotted to have the pope poisoned by a physician, Battesta de Vercelli, a specialist on ulcers. The plot was discovered, and Petrucci, who came to Rome on a safe-conduct procured from the pope by the Spanish ambassador, was cast into theMarroco, the deepest dungeon of S. Angelo. On being reminded of the safe-conduct, Leo replied to the ambassador that no one wassafe who was a poisoner. Cardinals Sauli and Riario were entrapped and also thrown into the castle-dungeons. Two other cardinals were suspected of being in the plot, but escaped. Petrucci and the physician were strangled to death ; Riario and Sauli were pardoned. Riario, who had witnessed the dastardly assassination in the cathedral of Florence 40 years before, was the last prominent representative of the family of Sixtus IV. Torture brought forth the confession that the plotters contemplated making him pope. Leo set the price of the cardinal's absolution high, — 150,000 ducats to be paid in a year, and another 150,000 to be paid by his relatives in case Riario left his palace. He finally secured the pope's permission to leave Rome, and died, 1521, at Naples.
One of the sensational pageants which occurred during Leo's pontificate was on the arrival of a delegation from Portugal, 1514,to announce to the pope the obedience of its king, Emmanuel. The king sent a large number of presents, among them horses from Persia, a young panther, two leopards and a white elephant. The popular jubilation over the procession of the wild beasts reached its height when the elephant, taking water into his proboscis, spurted it over the onlookers.^ In recognition of the king's courtesy, the pope vested in Portugal all the lands west of Capes Bojador and Non to the Indies.
The FiftliLateran resumed its sessionsin April, 1513^a month after Leo's election. The council ratified the concordat with France, and at the 8th session, Dec. 19, 1513, solemnly afiirmed
1 The elephant became the subject of quite an extensive literature, poets joining others in setting forth his peculiarities. See Pastor, IV. 62, Note.