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Summary
The already corrupt Papacy reached perhaps its ultimate depths during the reign of Rodrigo Borgia, who was elected in 1492 and assumed the name Pope Alexander VI. He had four acknowledged children, three sons and one daughter, and was known to be bent on his family’s political and material success to an even greater extent than Sixtus IV had been. For example, Lucrezia Borgia, Alexander VI’s daughter, was married three times in the pope’s efforts to create beneficial alliances. Even so, under Alexander VI, the Papacy continued to grow politically and economically strong, but the means by which it grew were much questioned throughout Italy.
Alexander VI died in 1503 and was succeeded by Pope Julius II. Under Julius II, both the city of Rome and the Papacy entered a Golden Age. Julius II continued the consolidation of power in the Papal States, encouraged the devotion to learning and writing begun by Pope Nicholas V, and, foremost, continued the process of rebuilding Rome physically. The most prominent project among many was the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica, one of the most sacred buildings in Christianity.
Artists flocked to Rome during the 15th and 16th centuries to study the ruins and contribute to the new structures of Rome, striving to connect the new with the style of the ancient. Many took architectural ideas gleaned from the study of ancient Rome to the cities of the North, and Florence, Milan, and Venice soon showed the signs of Roman influence.
Rome received its final push to renaissance glory from Pope Leo X, second son of Lorenzo de Medici. He came to the papal throne in 1513, following Julius II. He was a skilled diplomat and administrator, as well as an intelligent and generous patron of the arts. He encouraged scholarly learning, and supported theatre, an art form considered to be of ambiguous morality until that time. Most prominently, he supported painting and sculpture, and was well known for his patronage of Raphael, whose paintings played a large role in the redecoration of the Vatican. Under Leo X, the ruins of Rome began to be more effectively preserved, and so did the morality of the Papacy. When he died in 1521, Rome's Golden Age effectively ended, and the Renaissance as a whole began to fade.
Analysis
Rodrigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI, has assumed the role of the archetypical Renaissance pope. Historians cite him as representative of the nepotism and corruption that plagued the Papacy throughout the Renaissance period. Even in his own time, the Borgia family took on legendary status in Italy as cruel and manipulative. Many saw the rise of Rodrigo Borgia to the papal throne as a sign of impending demise for the Catholic Church. However, both Italy and the Catholic Church survived Alexander VI's reign, and his successors, Pope Julius II and Pope Leo X, even ushered in the Golden Age of Rome.
The main project Pope Julius II undertook was the destruction and rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, the oldest and most sacred building in all of Christianity. Many questioned the wisdom of the project, but Julius II insisted that the building was in desperate need of repair and should be replaced with a structure more worthy of the glory of its purpose, which was to house the tomb of Saint Peter and past popes. The destruction and rebuilding of St. Peter's soon became known throughout Italy as a symbol of the descent and resurrection of Rome.
Pope Leo X oversaw the Golden Age of Rome and was perhaps the closest thing to the enlightened princes of the northern Italian states that the Papacy saw during the Renaissance. However, despite being a gifted administrator and generous patron of the arts, he was also responsible for one of the Church’s greatest blunders. In an effort to finance the continued restoration of St. Peter’s Basilica, Leo X authorized the sale of indulgences, which promised pardons for sins in the afterlife. Their sale was the final act in a long string of offenses that triggered the Protestant Reformation, a movement which created a schism in Christianity so large that it dominated history for centuries and still affects the world to this day.
