²⁹⁴ Guicciardini’s Hist, of Italy, 1. 12. The King of France promised to aid the pontiff in the acquisition of the kingdom, of Naples, either for the church or for Giuliano his brother.
After being leagued with the king of France, Francis I. to compel the emperor Charles V. to relinquish the kingdom of Naples, incompatible, he said, with the empire, the pope formed an alliance against the French with this same Charles, whose menaces terrified him to that degree, that he acceded in his favour to the re-union of the two crowns. Leo took into his pay a body of Swiss troops, and vowed thenceforward so violent a hatred to the French, that, when he had heard of their repulsion from the Milanese territory, he almost instantly expired, as is asserted from joy. He was but forty-six years of age; and notwithstanding the errors into which pontifical policy led him, we must regret that he did not live to protect for a longer period the advancement of the fine arts. He encouraged them like a man worthy of cultivating them; he cherished them with a sincere and constant love, with which they never inspire bad princes. His interior administration merited the gratitude of the Romans:²⁹⁵ their grief when deprived of him was profound; and, a few years before, equally pure homage was rendered to him when he escaped a conspiracy similar to that of the Pazzi, and in which the same Cardinal Riario, one of the accomplices in the former with Sixtus IV. was concerned. Guicciardini and other writers have judged too hastily of Leo X. For what pope can obtain approbation, if it be not due to him, who has done more for Rome than any of his predecessors since Leo IV. and who did in Europe but a part of the mischief which tradition and example had bequeathed to him.
²⁹⁵ They have erected a statue to him with this inscription: Optimo, principi. Leoni. X. Joan. Med. Pont. Max. ob. restitutam. restauratamque. urbem. aucta. sacra, bonasq. artes. adscitos. patres, sublatum, vectigal. datumq. congiarium. S.P.Q.R.P.
The expense which the building the church of St. Peter exacted, obliged Leo to have recourse to the sale of indulgences. The clamours of Luther against this traffic were the prelude of a great revolution in Christendom. Leo X. excommunicated Luther and his followers. Bossuet²⁹⁶ thinks with reason, that the heresies and schisms of this century might have been prevented, if necessary reformations had not been neglected. But, in the history of this pontificate, what most relates to the present subject is, the concordat concluded between Leo X. and Francis I. in 1516.