Pope Julius II
Pope Julius II was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 1503 to his death, in February 1513. Nicknamed the Warrior Pope, the Battle Pope or the Fearsome Pope, it is often speculated that he had chosen his papal name not in honor of Pope Julius I but in emulation of Julius Caesar. One of the most powerful and influential popes, Julius II was a central figure of the High Renaissance and left a significant cultural and political legacy. As a result of his policies during the Italian Wars, the Papal States increased their power and centralization, and the office of the papacy continued to be crucial, diplomatically and politically, during the entirety of the 16th century in Italy and Europe.
In 1506, Julius II established the Vatican Museums and initiated the rebuilding of the St. Peter's Basilica. The same year he organized the famous Swiss Guard for his personal protection and commanded a successful campaign in Romagna against local lords. The interests of Julius II lay also in the New World, as he ratified the Treaty of Tordesillas, establishing the first bishoprics in the Americas and beginning the Catholicization of Latin America. In 1508, he commissioned the Raphael Rooms and Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine Chapel.
Pope Julius II allowed people seeking indulgences to donate money to the Church, which would be used for the construction of Saint Peter's Basilica. He was fiercely satirized after his death by Erasmus of Rotterdam in Julius Excluded from Heaven, in which the drunken pope, denied entry to heaven by St. Peter, justifies his worldly life and plots to create a rival abode from which to conquer heaven.
Overview of the Italian politics of his reign
Julius II became pope in the context of the Italian Wars, a period in which the major powers of Europe fought for primacy in the Italian Peninsula. Louis XII of France controlled the Duchy of Milan, previously held by the Sforzas, and French influence had replaced that of the Medici in the Republic of Florence. The Kingdom of Naples was under Spanish rule. Maximilian I of Austria was hostile to France and Venice, and desired to descend into Italy in order to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope. The conclave capitulation preceding his election included several terms, such as the opening of an ecumenical council and the organization of a crusade against the Ottoman Turks. Once crowned, Julius II proclaimed instead his goal to centralize the Papal States and "free Italy from the barbarians".In his early years as pope, Julius II targeted the members of the House of Borgia, exiling them or destroying their influence. Cesare Borgia, Duke of Romagna, shared the same fate and lost his possessions.
File:Burgkmair Julius II.jpg|thumb|Woodcut by Hans Burgkmair
He joined an anti-Venetian League of Cambrai, formed in December 1508, with the goal of capturing the coast of Romagna from the Venetian Republic. Having achieved this goal during the early stages of the War of the League of Cambrai, he reconciled with Venice, and formed the Holy League in order to eliminate the French presence in Italy. His main goal was now again to "expel the barbarians". Julius II brought king Ferdinand II of Aragon into the alliance, declaring Naples a papal fief and promising a formal investiture.
Having previously declared that the imperial election was sufficient for Maximilian to style himself as Holy Roman Emperor, he succeeded in distancing the emperor from the king of France. Julius II personally led the papal armed forces at the victorious Siege of Mirandola and, despite subsequent defeats and great losses at the Battle of Ravenna, he ultimately forced the French troops of Louis XII to retreat behind the Alps after the arrival of Swiss mercenaries from the Holy Roman Empire.
At the Congress of Mantua in 1512, Julius II ordered the restoration of Italian families to power in the vacuum of French rule: the Imperial Swiss led by Massimiliano Sforza restored Sforza rule in Milan, and a Spanish army led by Giovanni de Medici restored Medici rule in Florence. The Venetians regained their territories lost to France, and the Papal States annexed Parma and Modena. The conciliarist movement promoted by foreign monarchs was crushed, and Julius II affirmed ultramontanism at the Fifth Lateran Council. This is often presented in traditional historiography as the moment in which Renaissance Italy came the closest to unification after the end of the Italic League of the 15th century. However, Julius II was far away from the possibility to form a single Italian kingdom, if that was his goal at all, since foreign armies were largely involved in his wars and the French were preparing new campaigns against the Swiss for Milan. Naples, even if recognized as a papal fief, was still under Aragon and in fact Julius II was planning to end Spanish presence in the south. Nevertheless, by the end of his pontificate, the papal objective to make the Church the main force in the Italian Wars was achieved. At the Roman Carnival of 1513, Julius II presented himself as the "liberator of Italy".
Julius planned to call for a crusade against the Ottoman Empire in order to retake Constantinople, but died before making official announcements. His successor, Pope Leo X, along with Emperor Maximilian, would re-establish the status quo ante bellum in Italy by ratifying the treaties of Brussels and Noyon in 1516; France regained control of Milan after the victory of Francis I at the Battle of Marignano.
Early life
Giuliano della Rovere was born in Albisola near Savona in the Republic of Genoa. He was of the House of della Rovere, a noble but impoverished family, the son of Raffaello della Rovere and Theodora Manerola, a woman of Greek ancestry. He had three brothers: Bartolomeo, a Franciscan friar who then became Bishop of Ferrara ; Leonardo; and Giovanni, Prefect of the City of Rome and Prince of Sora and Senigallia. He also had a sister, Lucina. Giuliano was educated by his uncle, Fr. Francesco della Rovere, O.F.M., among the Franciscans, who took him under his special charge. He was later sent by this same uncle, to the Franciscan friary in Perugia, where he could study the sciences at the university.Della Rovere, as a young man, showed traits of being rough, coarse and inclined to bad language. During the late 1490s, he became more closely acquainted with Cardinal de’ Medici and his cousin Giulio de’ Medici, both of whom would later become Pope,. The two dynasties became uneasy allies in the context of papal politics. Both houses desired an end to the occupation of Italian lands by the armies of France. He seemed less enthused by theology; rather, Paul Strathern argues, his imagined heroes were military leaders such as Frederic Colonna.
Cardinalate
After his uncle was elected Pope Sixtus IV on 10 August 1471, Giuliano was appointed Bishop of Carpentras in the Comtat Venaissin on 16 October 1471. In an act of overt nepotism he was immediately raised to the cardinalate on 16 December 1471, and assigned the same titular church as that formerly held by his uncle, San Pietro in Vincoli. Guilty of serial simony and pluralism, he held several powerful offices at once: in addition to the archbishopric of Avignon he held no fewer than eight bishoprics, including Lausanne from 1472, Coutances, Catania.In 1474, Giuliano led an army to Todi, Spoleto, and Città di Castello as papal legate. He returned to Rome in May in the company of Duke Federigo of Urbino, who promised his daughter in marriage to Giuliano's brother Giovanni, who was subsequently named Lord of Senigallia and of Mondovì. On 22 December 1475, Pope Sixtus IV created the new Archdiocese of Avignon, assigning to it as suffragan dioceses the Sees of Vaison, Cavaillon, and Carpentras. He appointed Giuliano as the first archbishop. Giuliano held the archdiocese until his later election to the papacy. In 1476 the office of Legate was added, and he left Rome for France in February. On 22 August 1476 he founded the Collegium de Ruvere in Avignon. He returned to Rome on 4 October 1476.
In 1479, Cardinal Giuliano served his one-year term as Chamberlain of the College of Cardinals. In this office he was responsible for collecting all the revenues owed to the cardinals as a group and for the proper disbursements of appropriate shares to cardinals who were in service in the Roman Curia.
Giuliano was again named Papal Legate to France on 28 April 1480, and left Rome on 9 June. As Legate, his mission was threefold: to make peace between King Louis XI and the Archduke Maximilian of Austria; to raise funds for a war against the Ottoman Turks; and to negotiate the release of Cardinal Jean Balue and Bishop Guillaume d'Haraucourt. He reached Paris in September, and finally, on 20 December 1480, Louis gave orders that Balue be handed over to the Archpriest of Loudun, who had been commissioned by the Legate to receive him in the name of the Pope. He returned to Rome on 3 February 1482. Shortly thereafter the sum of 300,000 ecus of gold was received from the French in a subsidy of the war.
On 31 January 1483 Cardinal della Rovere was promoted suburbicarian Bishop of Ostia, in succession to Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville who had died on 22 January. It was the privilege of the Bishop of Ostia to consecrate an elected pope a bishop, if he were not already a bishop. This actually occurred in the case of Pius III, who was ordained a priest on 30 September 1503 and consecrated a bishop on 1 October 1503 by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere.
Around this time, in 1483, an illegitimate daughter was born, Felice della Rovere.
On 3 November 1483, Cardinal della Rovere was named Bishop of Bologna and Papal Legate, succeeding Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, who had died on 21 October. He held the diocese until 1502. On 28 December 1484, Giuliano participated in the investiture of his brother Giovanni as Captain-General of the Papal Armies by Pope Innocent VIII.
By 1484 Giuliano was living in the new palazzo which he had constructed next to the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles, which he had also restored. Pope Sixtus IV paid a formal visit to the newly restored building on 1 May 1482, and it may be that Giuliano was already in residence then.