Pope Julius II

Biography

Giuliano della Rovere waited a decade for the papacy while he loathed the Borgias, took it in 1503, and immediately did what no pope had done: he put on armour and led armies in the field. Contemporaries called him *Il Papa Terribile*. Erasmus, who saw him ride into Bologna at the head of his troops, wrote a savage satire imagining him refused entry to heaven. His politics were pure expediency in service of one aim — a papacy strong enough that no foreigner could dictate to it. He assembled the League of Cambrai to destroy Venice in 1509, then, having succeeded, reversed his alliances entirely and built the Holy League to expel the French he had brought in, and adopted the cry *fuori i barbari*. He gained and lost allies at a speed that made him almost impossible to negotiate with. He also commissioned the Sistine ceiling from a sculptor who insisted he was not a painter, tore down the old St. Peter's to build the current basilica, hired Raphael for the Stanze, and founded the Swiss Guard in 1506 — the same Guard that would die almost to a man at the Sack of Rome twenty-one years later. He paid for the building with indulgences, and the indulgences helped produce Martin Luther.

Key Battles