LEÃO X: SUCESSO OU FRACASSO?

Abstract

Was Leo X (Giovanni dei Medici) a success or a failure? By which criteria is he to be judged? By following the advice given to him by his father Lorenzo the Magnificent, he succeeded in restoring the Medici to power in Florence and secured his own election as pope. To a remarkable degree he accomplished the goals set for his pontificate in the election capitularies of 1513 and guided the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-17) to issue decrees that fulfilled most of the ends set for the council by his predecessor Julius II. By ending the Pisan Schism and replacing the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges with the Concordat of Bologna he defeated conciliarism. His efforts to bring about church reform by personal example and conciiliar legislation were eventually seen as inadequate due to a failure of implementation. The personal rivalries among Charles von Habsburg, Francis de Valois, and Henry Tudor frustrated his plans for establishing a permanent peace among Christian princes and launching a crusade against the Turks. As head of the Medici family, he maintained its dominance in Florence, secured for its lay members duchies and royal marriages, and for its clerical members and clients high church offices. By his patronage of artists and writers he made Rome the center of the High Renaissance. His attempt to provide financing for the rebuilding of the Basilica of St. Peter (an obligation mandated in his election capitularies) by means of an indulgence led to Luther’s 95 Theses and the beginnings of the Protestantism, a movement whose suppression he thought he had secured by the Edict of Worms (1521). In his own eyes and those of contemporary leaders in the Roman and Florentine worlds he inhabited, Leo X was a success. But this view was not shared by the rest of the world in a time of momentous crisis.