Julius II, the pope of the Renaissance

Few characters have enjoyed more bad press than Julius II, pontiff from 1503 to 1513. Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote a satirical pamphlet on his death in which the deceased pope was denied access to heaven while for Luther Julius embodied all corruption and decadence of the Church in the sixteenth century. Again: Guicciardini and Machiavelli in their writings emphasized above all the political ambitions, which would have contributed to the ruin of the Italic Peninsula, which in the 16th century became a land of conquest by foreign powers. All these criticisms show us, however, how central was the pontificate of Julius II, a pontificate that occupied the ten most splendid and controversial years of the Renaissance period.

In fact, it was this pope of the Ligurian Della Rovere family who called the greatest artists of the time, Raphael, Bramante and Michelangelo, to the papal court, all gathered with a single purpose: to contribute with their art and their genius to the greatness of the papacy. Julius II, in fact, firmly believed in the mission of the Church and was willing to do anything to restore its ancient prestige, even to intrigues and wars against those who were in his way. A pope with great ideals, not just an ambitious one in search of personal power as his contemporaries wanted to describe him. In short, a great Renaissance prince and pontiff who is returned to us in all its complexity by Giulio Busi in his "Giulio II" (Mondadori, 2021, pp. 252, also e-book), a biography in which the other side emerges of the myth and black legend that accompanied the pontiff.

We then ask Giulio Busi what new elements emerged studying the figure of Julius II:

“The study of the documents of the time led me above all to review some judgments on this protagonist of the Renaissance. There is a critical line on Julius II which starts from Machiavelli and Guicciardini and reaches up to the Risorgimento and sees him as a violent, a bully, a bad politician and an enemy of Italy ".

It was not so?

“It is a partisan judgment, based on the opinions of people who were aligned and who looked to the interests of their side. Julius II anti-Italian? But who was in the interests of Italy in that period? Florence and the Florentines perhaps? Each state of the Peninsula had its own political agenda and pursued it to the detriment of the others, that's the truth ".

What, then, were the great merits of Julius II?

“First of all he had a great intuition in the choice of artists. He always made the best work and it was not easy to understand, a priori, which ones they were. Simple after having seen the famous Vatican Rooms to say that Raphael was a master superior to Pinturicchio ... Then he had a clear idea of having to strengthen the Church even before his own dynasty, a revolution if we think that Julius II comes after Alexander VI Borgia who worked mainly in favor of the family. Not that Giulio forgets the Della Rovere family, but he puts the papacy first and some of his reforms in the administration and organization of the papal state will last until the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century. "

The popes of the Renaissance are described as above all worldly popes. Was Julius II like this too?

“He was certainly a man and a pontiff of his time and we cannot look at him with the eyes with which we look today at the Church and the Pope. However, he was a man of faith, with his own spirituality and was also interested in the Reform of the Church, so much so as to call a council in the Lateran. Leo X was worse in worldliness, but he belonged to the Medici family and enjoyed a better press. Julius II belonged to a parvenu family and this did not help him ”.

Do the human and intimate aspects of Della Rovere's personality also emerge in the book? What kind of man was he?

“He was a man of strong passions, certainly with some features of arrogance. He was not one of the popes more inclined to nepotism but he had great fidelity in ties. He was always very close to his illegitimate daughter Felice, who he had following an affair with Lucrezia Normanni. We were not sure of this relationship, but in the preparation of my book I found a document that attests this link between Giuliano della Rovere, that is, Julius II, and Lucrezia. In general, he was very fond of the company of women when he was free from commitments ".

He was very faithful to ties and for this reason, as he explains in his book, he was often betrayed by relatives, allies… how did he react to betrayals?

“He was furious, but he knew he could do little to change things. The Italian elite of the time aimed only to save themselves, to pursue their own interests, even at the cost of bringing the foreigner home. In the end, even the pontiff had to navigate between Spain, the Empire and France. It was all a bit disappointing, but in the end what could he have done, alone and against everyone, in that situation? ”.