ght never have taken
place. If the Pope was to rely on his spiritual weapons, there was no
need of temporal states at all. In their existing extent and position,
they were simply the heel of Achilles, the vulnerable spot, through
which secular foes might wound the Vicar of Christ. France threatened
him from the north and Spain from the south; he was ever between the
upper and the nether mill-stone. Italy was the cockpit of Europe in
the sixteenth century, and the eyes of the Popes were perpetually bent
on the worldly fray, seeking to save or extend their dominions.
Through the Pope's temporal power, France and Spain exerted their (p. 229)
pressure. He could only defend himself by playing off one against the
other, and in this game his spiritual powers were his only effective
pieces. More and more the spiritual authority, with which he was
entrusted, was made to serve political ends. Temporal princes were
branded as "sons of iniquity and children of perdition," not because
their beliefs or their morals were worse than other men's, but because
they stood in the way of the family ambitions of various popes. Their
frequent use and abuse brought ecclesiastical censures into public
contempt, and princes soon ceased to be frightened with false fires.
James IV., when excommunicated, said he would appeal to Prester John,
and that he would side with any council against the Pope, even if it
contained only three bishops.[653] The Vicar of Christ was lost in the
petty Italian prince. _Corruptio optimi pessima_. The lower dragged
the higher nature down. If the Papal Court was distinguished from the
courts of other Italian sovereigns, it was not by exceptional purity.
"In this Court as in others," wrote Silvester de Giglis from Rome,
"nothing can be effected without gifts."[654] The election of Leo X.
was said to be free from bribery; a cardinal himself was amazed, and
described the event as _Phoenix et rara avis_.[655] If poison was not
a frequent weapon at Rome, popes and cardinals at least believed it to
be. Alexander VI. was said to have been poisoned; one cardinal was
accused of poisoning his fellow-cardinal, Bainbridge; and others were
charged with an attempt on the life of Leo X.[656] In 1517, Pace (p. 230)
described the state of affairs at Rome as _plane monstra, omni
dedecore et infamia plena; omnis fides, omnis honestas, una cum
religione, a mundo abvolasse videntur_.[657] Ten years later, the
Emperor himself declared that