ade in history
without meeting with some corroboration of that modest, pious, grand
truth. On the 21st of February, 1513, ten months since Gaston de Foix,
the victor of Ravenna, had perished in the hour of his victory, Pope
Julius II. died at Rome at the very moment when he seemed invited to
enjoy all the triumph of his policy. He died without bluster and without
disquietude, disavowing nought of his past life, and relinquishing none
of his designs as to the future. He had been impassioned and skilful in
the employment of moral force, whereby alone he could become master of
material forces; a rare order of genius, and one which never lacks
grandeur, even when the man who possesses it abuses it. His constant
thought was how he might free Italy from the barbarians; and he liked to
hear himself called by the name of liberator, which was commonly given
him. One day the outspoken Cardinal Grimani said to him that,
nevertheless, the kingdom of Naples, one of the greatest and richest
portions of Italy, was still under the foreign yoke; whereupon Julius
II., brandishing the staff on which he was leaning, said, wrathfully,
"Assuredly, if Heaven had not otherwise ordained, the Neapolitans too
would have shaken off the yoke which lies heavy on them." Guicciardini
has summed up, with equal justice and sound judgment, the principal
traits of his character: "He was a prince," says the historian, "of
incalculable courage and firmness; full of boundless imaginings which
would have brought him headlong to ruin if the respect borne to the
Church, the dissensions of princes and the conditions of the times, far
more than his own moderation and prudence, had not supported him; he
would have been worthy of higher glory had he been a laic prince, or had
it been in order to elevate the Church in spiritual rank and by processes
of peace that he put in practice the diligence and zeal he displayed for
the purpose of augmenting his temporal greatness by the arts of war.
Nevertheless he has left, above all his predecessors, a memory full of
fame and honor, especially amongst those men who can no longer call
things by their right names or appreciate them at their true value, and
who think that it is the duty of the sovereign-pontiffs to extend, by
means of arms and the blood of Christians, the power of the Holy See
rather than to wear themselves out in setting good examples of a
Christian's life and in reforming manners and customs pernicious to