Yet although the Florentines were to be left in no doubt that they now had a master, Cardinal Giovanni appeared ready to reassure them that his rule would not be severe, nor would their burdens be heavy. The significance of his personal device – an ox-yoke – was unmistakable; but the motto beneath it was ‘Jugum enim meum suave est’ – ‘Truly my yoke is easy’. Indeed, from the beginning, the Cardinal was careful to persuade the Florentines that the restoration of the Medici would lead to a return to the happy days of his father, not to the dismal interregnum of Savonarola. Entertainments and pageants were to be encouraged; the carnival songs, which Lorenzo had so much enjoyed and which Savonarola had so rigorously denounced, were now once more to be heard in the streets; and the presence in the city of the Cardinal’s kindly brother, Giuliano de’ Medici, was to be a pledge that the government would be understanding and humane.
Less than six months after his family had been returned to power in Florence, the Cardinal was informed that his benefactor, Pope Julius II, was dying. Giovanni, now aged thirty-seven, was himself ill; but in order to attend the enclave he gave orders that he should be carried south to Rome in a litter.
Exhausted by the journey, in great pain from a stomach ulcer and troubled by an anal fistula, he arrived in Rome on 6 March 1513. Weeping women, mourning the death of their patriotic Pope, were kissing the pontifical feet which had been left protruding from the grille of the mortuary chapel. The Cardinal had missed the opening ceremonies of the conclave, including the Mass of the Holy Spirit which, since St Peter’s was being reconstructed, was sung in the chapel of St Andrew, where the wind had howled through the cracks in the walls repeatedly extinguishing the candles on the altar. For several days Giovanni was too ill to get out of bed, submitting gloomily to the painful ministrations of his doctor, while the other cardinals, in little groups, argued and plotted. After a week, in order to force them to a decision, their daily meal was reduced to a single unappetizing dish which, combined with the stale air of the building whose doors were locked and whose windows were sealed as custom directed, soon led to a decision.
In the early discussions the name of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici had been little mentioned but as time went by he was admitted to be notably papabile. He was amiable and well liked, tactful, gregarious and approachable. He was relatively young, but had been a cardinal for over twenty years and so was not inexperienced. He took his religious duties seriously and fasted twice a week. He was evidently prepared to be ruthless when the interests of his family were threatened; but how many popes were not? Moreover, he was not in good health, so if his election proved ill-considered his Papacy might well be of no lengthy duration. The younger cardinals from ruling families such as Ippolito d’Este of Ferrara, Ghismondo Gonzaga of Mantua and Alfonso Petrucci of Siena were all anxious for the election of a man like themselves, rather than another rough peasant like Julius II who might march them off again on some tiresome campaign. Cardinal Francesco Soderini, Piero’s brother, naturally did not favour him; but Giovanni’s secretary, Bernardo Dovizi, gradually won Cardinal Soderini over by suggesting the possibility of a marriage between the Medici Cardinal’s nephew, Lorenzo, and some young lady from the Soderini palace. So, on 11 March, when the votes were taken out of the urn and counted by Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici himself as Senior Deacon, he was able to announce his own nomination. He did so with becoming modesty, announcing that he would, if the Sacred College approved the choice, be known as Leo X.
The news of the election of a Medici pope was greeted by the Palleschi in Florence with the wildest excitement. For four days the celebrations continued to the constant clanging of bells, the explosion of fireworks and crackers, the boom of cannon fired from the surrounding hills, the lighting of bonfires fuelled with the furniture of former Piagnoni, the repeated drunken shouts of ‘Palle! Palle! Papa Leone I Palle! Palle!’ ‘In the Mercato Nuovo youths tore boards and planks from the establishments of the silk-merchants and the bankers, so that by next morning every single roof belonging to them was burned. If the authorities had not intervened, no doors or roofs in the whole area would have remained.’ On the ringhiera of the Palazzo della Signoria the citizens were offered sweet white wine from rows of gilded barrels; and in front of the Medici Palace trestle tables were piled with food to welcome a procession bearing the miraculous statue of the Virgin, arrayed in cloth of gold, from Impruneta.1
In Rome the celebrations were more controlled, though the Sacro Possesso, the formal entry into the Vatican, was as splendid an occasion as the new Pope, who delighted in pageantry, could possibly have hoped for. It had to be admitted that Leo himself did not cut a very imposing figure. As he rode in the procession sitting side-saddle on a white Arab horse, it was noticed how his face, almost purple with the heat, ran with sweat despite the canopy of embroidered silk which was held over his head by eight Romans of distinguished birth. It was noticed, too, how corpulent he was, how vast his paunch, how fleshy his short neck, how fat the rolls beneath his chin, how bulging his weak eyes. Those whose duties brought them close to him were also distatesfully aware of the smell that now and again was emitted from the huge bottom on the saddle. Yet there was something endearing about the pleasure he so obviously took in the pageant; the nods of satisfaction he gave when his attendants read out to him the inscriptions on the triumphal columns which his own eyes did not enable him to see; the amiable expression with which he regarded the cheering onlookers to whom his chamberlains flung coins from their money-bags; the friendly smiles bestowed upon them when he gave them his papal benediction, raising the plump yet shapely white hands of which he was so proud though they were now encased in perfumed gloves sewn with pearls. His contentment was so transparent as to be infectious. The days of exile and poverty were over and he was about to enjoy the benefits of power and riches.’ God has given us the Papacy,’ he is reported to have said to his brother, Giuliano. ‘Let us enjoy it.’
Pope Leo’s determination to enjoy the Papacy did not, however, interfere with his equally determined ambition not only to make the House of Medici once more a dominating influence in Italian politics but also to drive the foreigner from Italian soil. To achieve the first of these aims he intended to form central Italy into a single strong state by uniting the duchies of Ferrara and Urbino, and by joining to them the cities of Parma, Modena and Piacenza. This new unified state was intended eventually to be placed under the rule of the Medici, perhaps under that of the Pope’s nephew, Lorenzo, Piero’s son, an ambitious, good-looking, energetic young man, who was now at the age of twenty sent to Florence as Leo’s representative in company with a secretary whose orders were to send daily reports to Rome upon his youthful master’s progress. At the same time, by diplomacy rather than by war, the Spaniards, who had helped the family to regain power in Florence, were to be driven out of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples. It might even be that the Kingdom of Naples would subsequently be given to Giuliano de’ Medici who, after his brother’s election as Pope, had been recalled from Florence to be created Gonfaloniere of the Church and who seemed prepared to embark on greater enterprises.