Leo X's papacy

The papacy of Leo X de’ Medici lasted from 1513 till 1521. Giovanni de’ Medici was born in Florence in 1475. He was made a cardinal when he was only thirteen by Pope Innocent VIII and lived, before being elected Pope, between Rome, Urbino, the Netherlands, Germany and France. After the death of Julius II della Rovere he was elected Pope at a very brief conclave on 9 March 1513. His papacy distinguished itself for a policy of greater equilibrium as compared to his predecessor’s. In the conflict between France and Spain for hegemony over Italy he tried to keep equidistant even if his leanings were in general anti-French. He tried to stop the French from taking the Duchy of Milan but also the Spanish from taking the Reign of Naples. When Francis I descended upon Italy he joined the anti-French league, but after the French victory at Marignano, in 1515, which allowed it to take back Milan, he reached an agreement with the King of France at Viterbo and in Bologna, giving up Parma and Piacenza. In 1516, out of nepotistic interest, he expropriated the Duchy of Urbino, which, together with Pesaro and Senigallia, was to have become the personal domain of his nephew, Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici. The episode sparked off an anti-papal plot led by the young Cardinal Alfonso Petrucci, but the coup failed. During his papacy, on 31 October 1517 Luther stuck his famous 95 theses to the portal of the castle of Wittenberg, but the Pope would seem to have underestimated the subversive weight of Luther’s act. Leo X supported in 1519 the nomination of Charles V as supranational Christian emperor. Leo X’s papal court gave literature and the arts extraordinary impulse, with the expansion of the Vatican Library in Rome and the consolidation of the Laurentian Library in Florence, the study of Arab and Hebrew, and considerable humanistic studies. Leo X entertained intense relationships with intellectuals such as Bembo, Angelo Colocci, Jacopo Sannazzaro, and Marco Girolamo Vida.