Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/51

 was seriously afraid that some day the Pope would follow the supposed example of Gregory, and have all the heathen statues broken and used as building stones for St Peter's.

In a word, despite the best intentions, despite clear insight, Adrian was not adequate to his task. The moment demanded a Pope who could reconcile and unite all the great and valuable elements of the Italian Renaissance, the ripened fruit of the modern thought sprung from Dante and Petrarch, with the conceptions and conscience of the Germanic world. Both the German professors who now posed as leaders of Christendom, Adrian Dedel and Martin Luther, were lacking in the historic and aesthetic culture which would have enabled them to understand the value of Roman civilisation. Erasmus saw further than either of them, but the discriminating critic lacked the unselfish nobility of soul and the impulse which can only be given by a powerful religious excitement, an unswerving conviction, the firm faith in a personal mission confided by Providence. He too, despite his immense erudition, his deep insight, left the world to its own devices when it required a mediator; for a gentle and negative criticism of human folly is, taken by itself, of little value.

Adrian could neither gain the mastery over Luther's Reformation, nor succeed in reforming even the Roman Curia, to say nothing of the whole Church. The luxurious Cardinals went on with their pleasant life; when he came to die they demanded his money and treated him, as the Duke of Sessa expressed it, like a criminal on the rack. The threat of war between France and the German Empire lay all the while like an incubus on his pontificate. With heavy heart the most peace-loving of all the Popes, reminded by Francis I of the days of Philip the Fair, was at last obliged to enter into a treaty with England and Germany. Adrian survived to see war break out in Lombardy; he died on the day when the French crossed the Ticino, September 14, 1523. Giovio and Guicciardini relate that some wag wrote on the door of his physician, "To the deliverer of the Fatherland, from the senate and people of Rome." Little as the people were delighted with the pontificate of this last German Pope, he was no better pleased with it himself. He spoke of his throne as the chair of misery, and said in his first epitaph, that it was his greatest misfortune to have attained to power. The epitaph written for his tomb in Santa Maria dell' Anima by his faithful servant, the Datary and Cardinal Enckenvoert, was certainly the best motto for this man and his pontificate: "Proh dolor! quantum ref'ert in quae tempora vel optimi cuiusque virtus incidat."

A Conclave of thirty-three electors assembled on the 1st of October, 1523. Some sided with the Emperor, some with the French, but the imperial party was also divided. Pompeo Colonna made an enemy of the future Pope by opposing his candidature, and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in vain offered the ambassadors of both sides 200,000 ducats.