m the title of cardinal and made him legate at Bologna.
During the reign of the pleasure-loving Leo, Cardinal Giulio had
practically the whole papal government in his hands and displayed all
the qualities of a good administrator; and when, on the death of Adrian
VI.--whose election he had done most to secure--he was chosen pope (Nov.
18, 1523), his accession was hailed as the dawn of a happier era. It
soon became clear, however, that the qualities which had made Clement an
excellent second in command were not equal to the exigencies of supreme
power at a time of peculiar peril and difficulty.

Though free from the grosser vices of his predecessors, a man of taste,
and economical without being avaricious, Clement VII. was essentially a
man of narrow outlook and interests. He failed to understand the great
spiritual movement which was convulsing the Church; and instead of
bending his mind to the problem of the Reformation, he from the first
subordinated the cause of Catholicism and of the world to his interests
as an Italian prince and a Medici. Even in these purely secular affairs,
moreover, his timidity and indecision prevented him from pursuing a
consistent policy; and his ill fortune, or his lack of judgment, placed
him, as long as he had the power of choice, ever on the losing side.

Clement's accession at once brought about a political change in favour
of France; yet he was unable to take a strong line, and wavered between
the emperor and Francis I., concluding a treaty of alliance with the
French king, and then, when the crushing defeat of Pavia had shown him
his mistake, making his peace with Charles (April 1, 1525), only to
break it again by countenancing Girolamo Morone's League of Freedom, of
which the aim was to assert the independence of Italy from foreign
powers. On the betrayal of this conspiracy Clement made a fresh
submission to the emperor, only to follow this, a year later, by the
Holy League of Cognac with Francis I. (May 22, 1526). Then followed the
imperial invasion of Italy and Bourbon's sack of Rome (May 1527) which
ended the Augustan age of the papal city in a horror of fire and blood.
The pope himself was besieged in the castle of St Angelo, compelled on
the 6th of June to ransom himself with a payment of 400,000 scudi, and
kept in confinement until, on the 26th of November, he accepted the
emperor's terms, which besides money payments included the promise to
convene a general council to deal wit