Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/45

 before us developed in all its fulness and freedom. One may indeed doubt whether all the meaning of this contrast was quite clear to the mind of Julius II; but after all that is a matter of secondary importance. For it is not the individual who decides in such matters; without being aware of it he is borne on by his time and must execute the task that history has laid upon him. Great men of all times are those who have understood the cry from the inmost heart of a whole nation or generation, and, consciously or unconsciously, have accomplished what the hour demanded.

It has been in like manner represented that literature passed through a golden age under Leo X; but considerable deductions must be made from the undiscriminating eulogies of earlier writers.

Erasmus has reflected in his letters the great impression made by Rome, the true seat and home of all Latin culture. Well might Cardinal Raffaelle Riario write to him: "Everyone who has a name in science throngs hither. Each has a fatherland of his own, but Rome is a common fatherland, a foster-mother, and a comforter to all men of learning." It is long since these words were written—far too long for the honour of Catholicism and of the Papacy. But at that time, under Julius II, they were really true. A circle of highly cultured cardinals and nobles, Riario, Grimani, Adriano di Corneto, Farnese, Giovanni de' Medici himself in his beautiful Palazzo Madama, his brother Giuliano U Magnifico, and his cousin Giulio, afterwards Clement VII, gathered poets and learned men about them, that dotta compagnia of which Ariosto spoke; to them they opened their libraries and collections. Clubs were formed which met at the houses of Angelo Colocci, Alberto Rio di Carpi, Goritz, or Savoja. The poets and pamphleteers, to whom Arsilli dedicated his poem De Poetis Urbanis, gave vent to their wit on Pasquino or on Sansovino's statue in Sant' Agostino. They met in the salons of the beautiful Imperia, in the banks described by Bandello, among them Beroaldo the younger, who sang the praises of that most celebrated of modern courtesans; Fedro Inghirami, the friend of Erasmus and Raffaelle; Colocci, and even the serious Sadoleto. It is characteristic of this time, which placed wit and beauty above morals, that when Imperia died at the age of twenty-six she received an honourable burial in the chapel of San Gregorio, and her epitaph praised the "Cortisana Romana quae, digna tanto nomine, rarae inter homines formae specimen dedit." And although women no longer played so prominent a part at the papal Court as they had done under Innocent VIII and Alexander VI, yet, as Bibbiena wrote to Giuliano de' Medici, the arrival of noble ladies was extremely welcome as bringing with it something of a corte de' donne.

The activity of the greater number of literary men and wits, whose names have most contributed to the glory of Leo's pontificate, dates back to Giulio's time; so for instance Molza, Vida, Giovio, Valeriano, whose dialogue De Infelicitate Litteratorum tells of the fate of many of