it was full of the Orsini. The Clerk of the Ceremonies tells us that, on the 29th of October, he was sent to warn all the cardinals that the Conclave would begin on the following day. And "on that same day the Cardinal of St. Pietro ad Vincula (Guiliano della Rovere, nephew of Sixtus IV., who was about to become Pope as Julius II.) had an interview with the Duca Valentino (Cesare Borgia) in the Vatican Palace; and, together with the Spanish cardinals of his party, came to certain terms of agreement between them, among which, besides many others which cannot be told, the Cardinal San Pietro promised the Duke that if he were elected Pope by his (the Duke's) means, he would create him Gonfaloniere and General of the Holy Church. And the Duke, on the other hand, promised many things to the Cardinal. And all the cardinals present promised and obliged themselves by oath to give their votes to the said Cardinal of St. Peter." In Conclave an agreement was at once come to as to what they were going to do, and "I," says the Clerk of the Ceremonies, "went to his cell to congratulate him, and he promised me the church of Orti, and his mule with its trappings, and his cope and rochet." And when, after the unanimous election, the new Pope was, according to custom, divested of his robes, our friend George tells us that "his Holiness was disrobed of his rochet and cassock, which I took for myself, despite the opposition of the Sacristan."

In the whole list of the Conclaves, there is not one more decidedly and notoriously black with simony than this of Julius II. Guicciardini, though strongly prepos

sessed in favour of Julius, and writing favourably of him, yet speaks of his simoniacal elevation to the Papacy as a notorious thing-which, however, Guicciardini was not a man to have deemed any very serious accusation. But the defence put forward by the recent writer of his Life is not a little amusing. "It would suffice for his disculpation," says this very naïf defender, "to cite the constitution, cum tam divino, which the Pope published against the simoniacal election of a Pope!" It is perfectly true that Julius II. thundered against simony in the Conclave as loudly, or more so, than any Pontiff on the list. His Holiness knew well what he was talking of, and, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, was certainly so far the right man in the right place. His conduct in the matter reminds one of those apostles of universal peace and liberty who demand a little war and sharp coercion as a preliminary means for enabling them to enter on their mission. Julius felt that a scruple respecting a little simony ought not to be allowed to stand in the way of the election of one minded to enforce such salutary reforms.

Julius, a great Pope in his way, though that was a way more fitted for a lay than an ecclesiastical ruler, reigned nine years and three months; and then another Conclave elected Leo X., the great Mecenas of the arts and of literature, to whom literature and the arts have been more than sufficiently grateful-the jovial Pope, who, as soon as he felt the tiara on his head, expressed his sense of the tremendously awful nature of the position to which he had been raised by ejaculating, "Since

* Moroni, vol. xxxi. p. 161.

God has given us the Papacy, let us enjoy it!"—and proceeded to do so accordingly.

Julius II. left thirty-two Cardinals in the Sacred College, of whom twenty-five entered Conclave on the 4th of March, 1513. But some days passed before the first scrutiny was held, during which their Eminences were engaged in settling various matters of regulation for the internal management of the Conclave, and especially the rights and privileges of the body of conclavists. The majority of these, who in this Conclave must have been at least fifty, held several meetings of their own, in which they drew up a statement of their demands, especially as to their presentation to certain benefices, all which were agreed to by the cardinals. They also arranged among themselves, by legally executed instrument, that the conclavist of the cardinal who should be elected Pope should pay to the others, his comrades, the sum of 1,500 ducats as the price of their share of the contents and furniture of his patron's cell, which had hitherto been scrambled for in a tumultuous manner. All that the cell of the Pope elect contained was in consideration of this payment to be the sole and legitimate property of the new Pope's conclavist.

Other abuses of the Conclave seem to have engaged the attention of their Eminences before they began their scrutinies, for we learn that the Cardinal Camerlengo, and the Cardinals of Aragon and Farnese, made a searching examination of all the cells and every part of the locality of the Conclave, for the purpose of assuring themselves that there were none present save the cardinals and their conclavists. Nor do I find any mention

of those other officers and functionaries who, by subsequent regulation, made a recognised part of the Conclave world. Perhaps, however, these, or the more important among them, were not mentioned by the writers as having been there as a matter of course. It is noted, however, that the Cardinal de' Medici required the presence of a surgeon, one Giacomo di Brescia, in the Conclave for the performance of an operation on an imposthume; and that the said Giacomo, despite his urgent entreaties, was not permitted to leave the Conclave until its conclusion.

It was not till the 10th that the first scrutiny took place; and then, before proceeding to the votation, the recent Bull of Julius against all simoniacal practices in the election of the Pontiff was solemnly read. Then all the conclavists were turned out, and the cardinals remained alone for the transaction of their all-important business. At the first scrutiny the "Cardinal Alborense" had thirteen votes. It was probably perfectly well known that he would not be elected. But the number of votes given to him seems to have somewhat startled those who had the management of the Conclave mainly in their hands. And immediately after dinner (on one dish apiece only, those charged with the custody of the Conclave on the outside appearing to have adhered on this occasion to the rules provided on that subject) the work of secret conversing and bargaining became very active throughout the Conclave. In the evening the Cardinals De' Medici and Raffaello Riario, the nephew of Sixtus IV., were seen in close conversation in the great hall. But though the fact of their taking counsel

together was patent enough, it was even more impossible to overhear any syllable of what passed between them than if they had had their interview in the cell of either of them; for as they walked together in the ample space of the hall, it was impossible for the sharpest ears of the most enterprising conclavist to catch even a tone of their cautious voices. And it was in that conversation that the Pope was made, and that "the age of Leo X.," with all its manifold and interminable series of consequences, was from a potentiality made into an actuality.

Those who were, with anxious and understanding eyes, watching that colloquy, in which two of the most intensely worldly and unspiritual-minded men on earth were deciding the spiritual conditions of unborn millions, well knew the decisive nature of such a combination of forces. And it was assumed as certain that one of those two was to be the Pope. And the older cardinals, we are told, were in much dismay, for the influences which it was felt would suffice to make one of those two the new Pope lay mainly among the younger men. The Cardinal de' Medici himself was only thirty-seven. The intrigues among the latter, however, had been conducted so secretly, that the few older and more prominent cardinals were mystified, and felt that they had been left out in the cold. The result of the all-important colloquy in the great hall was soon, however, allowed to leak out; and it became known throughout the Conclave that night that De' Medici was to be Christ's Vicar on earth! And all the cardinals thronged to his cell to congratulate him, prostrate themselves before him, and