§ 56. LEO X. 1513-1521. 491
mitted.^ An account given of one of these plays by the ambassador of Ferrara, Paolucci, represented a girl pleading with Venus for a lover. At once, eight monks appeared on the scene in their gray mantles. Venus bade the girl give them a potion. Amor then awoke the sleepers with his arrow. The monks danced round Amor and made love to the girl. At last they threw aside their monastic garb and all joined in a moresca. On the girl's asking what they could do with their arms, they fell to fighting, and all succumbed except one, and he received the girl as the prize of his prowess. ^ And Leo was the high-priest of Christendom, the professed successor of Peter the Apostle!
Festivities of all sorts attracted the attention of the goodnatured po^e. Witli 14 cardinals he assisted at the marriage of the rich Sienese banker, Agostino Chigi, to his mistress. The entertainment was given at Chigi's beautiful house, the Farnesina. This man was considered the most fortunate banker of his day in Rome. The kings of Spain and France and princes of Germany sent him presents, and sought from him loans. Even the sultan was said to have made advances for his friendship. His income was estimated at 70,000 ducats a year, and he left behind him 800,000 ducats. This Crresus was only fifty-five when death separated him from his fortune. At one of his banquets, the gold plates were thrown through the windows into the Tiber after they were used at the table, but fortunately they were saved from loss by being caught in a net which had been prepared for them. On another occasion, when Leo and 13 cardinals were present, each found his own coat-of-arms on the silver dishes he used. At Agostino's marriage festival, Leo held the bride's hand while she received the ring on one of her fingers. The pontiff then baptized one of Chigi's illegitimate children. Cardinals were not ashamed to dine with representatives of the demi-monde, as at a banquet given by the banker Lorenzo Strozzi.^ But in
1 Vaughan, p. 177. 2 See Reumont, III, Part II., 134 sq.
8 Sanuto, as quoted by Pastor, IV. 384. For some of the entertainments given by Cardinal Riario Cornaro, see Vaughan, p. 186 sqq. At one of the banquets given by Cardinal Cornaro, sixty-five courses were served, three
492 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
scandals of this sort Alexander's pontificate could not well be outdone.
With the easy unconcern of a child of the world, spoiled by fortune, the light-hearted de' Medici went on his way as if the resources of the papal treasury were inexhaustible. Julius was a careful financier. Leo's finances were managed by incompetent favorites. 1 In 1517 his annual income is estimated to have been nearly 600,000 ducats. Of this royal sum, 420,000 ducats were drawn from state revenues and mines. The alum deposits at Tolfa yielded 40,000; Ravenna and the salt mines of Cervia, 00,000 ; the river rents in Rome, 60,000 ; and the papal domains of Spoleto, Ancona and the Romagna, 150,000. According to another contemporary, the papal exchequer received 160,000 ducats from ecclesiastical sources. The vendable offices at the pope's disposal at the time of his death numbered 2,150, yielding the enormous yearly income of 328,000 ducats.2
Two years after Leo assumed the pontificate, the financial problem was already a serious one. All sorts of measures had to be invented to increase the papal revenues and save the treasury from hopeless bankruptcy. By augmenting the number of the officials of the Tiber — porzionari di ripa — from 141 to 012, 286,000 ducats were secured. The enlargement of the colleges of the cuhiculari and scudieri, officials of the Vatican, brought in respectively 90,000and 112,000 ducats more. From the erection of the order of the Kniglits of St. Peter, — cavalieri di Scm Pietro, — with 401 members, the considerable sum of 400,000 ducats was realized, 1,000 ducats from each knight. The sale of indulgences did not yield what it once did, but the
dishes to each course, and all served on silver. Such devices as a huge pie, from which blackbirds or nightingales flew forth, or dishes of peacocks' tails, or a construction of pastry from which a child would emerge to say a piece, — these were some of tlie inventions prepared for the amusement of guests at the tables of members of the sacred college.
1 Vettori, a contemporary, as quoted by Villari, IV. 4, says, "It was no more possible for his Holiness to keep 1,000 ducats than it is for a stone to fly upwards of itself." Villari, IV. 45, gives a list of Leo's enormous debts.
2 These two lists of figures are taken from the Venetian ambassadors, Giorgi and Gradenlgo. Schulte, Die Fuyger, p. 97 scj., gives many cases of the payment of annates and the survitia through the Fuggers.