upon the day of his election.

Thus, overreaching themselves, ended this pair of villains--the most
notable adventurers who ever played their part upon the stage of the
great world. The fruit of so many crimes and such persistent effort was
reaped by their enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, for whose benefit the
nobles of the Roman state and the despots of Romagna had been
extirpated.[1] Alexander had proved the old order of Catholicity to be
untenable. The Reformation was imperiously demanded. His very vices
spurred the spirit of humanity to freedom. Before a saintly Pontiff the
new age might still have trembled in superstitious reverence. The Borgia
to all logical intellects rendered the pretensions of a Pope to sway the
souls of men ridiculous. This is an excuse for dwelling so long upon the
spectacle of his enormities. Better than any other series of facts, they
illustrate, not only the corruption of society, and the separation
between morality and religion in Italy, but also the absurdity of that
Church policy which in the age of the Renaissance confined the action of
the head of Christendom to the narrow interests of a brood of parvenus
and bastards.

[1] Cesare, it must be remembered, had ostensibly reduced the
cities of Lombardy, Romagna, and the March, as Gonfalonier of
the Church.

Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alexander, no account
need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. Whatever
opinion may be formed of him considered as the high-priest of the
Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II. was one of the
greatest figures of the Renaissance, and that his name, instead of that
of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of
arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful
personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's
and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter's, that
materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the
Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal
Rome, was his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no
flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, stain his pontificate. His
one purpose was to secure and extend the temporal authority of the
Popes; and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians,
who threatened to absorb Romagna, by reducing Perugia and Bologna to the
Papal sway, by annexing Parma and