Editing Pope Leo X (section)

==Death and legacy==

===Death===
Pope Leo X died suddenly of pneumonia at the age of 45 on 1 December 1521 and was buried in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.<ref name="Pope Leo X">{{Cite web | url=https://reformation500.csl.edu/bio/pope-leo-x/ |title = Pope Leo X|date = 7 February 2014 |website=Reformation 500 |publisher=[[Concordia Seminary]]}}</ref> His death came just 10 months after he had excommunicated [[Martin Luther]], the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, who was accused of 41 errors in his teachings.<ref name="Pope Leo X"/>

===Failure to stem the Reformation===
Possibly the most lasting legacy of the reign of Pope Leo X was the perception that he did not simply fail to stem the Reformation, but actually fuelled it.<ref name="Pope Leo X"/> A key issue was that his pontificate failed to bring about the reforms decreed by the [[Fifth Council of the Lateran|Fifth Lateran Council]] (held between 1512 and 1517) which aimed to deal with many of their political problems as well as to reform Christendom, specifically relating to the papacy, cardinals, and curia. Some believe enforcing these decrees may have been enough to dampen support for radical challenges to church authority. But instead under his leadership, Rome's fiscal and political problems were deepened. A major contributor was his lavish spending (especially on the arts and himself) which led the papal treasury into mounting debt and his decision to authorize the sale of indulgences. The exploitation of people and corruption of religious principles linked to the practice of selling indulgences quickly became the key stimulus for the onset of the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther's ''[[95 Theses]]'', otherwise entitled "Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", was posted on a Church door in Wittenberg, Germany in October 1517 just seven months after the Lateran V was completed. But Pope Leo X's attempt to prosecute Luther's teaching on indulgences, and to eventually excommunicate him in January 1521, did not get rid of Lutheran doctrine but had the opposite effect of further splintering the Western church.<ref name="Pope Leo X"/>

===Excessive spending===
Leo was renowned for spending money lavishly on the arts; on charities; on benefices for his friends, relatives, and even people he barely knew; on dynastic wars, such as the [[War of Urbino]]; and on his own personal luxury. Within two years of becoming Pope, Leo X spent all of the treasure amassed by the previous Pope, the frugal Julius II, and drove the Papacy into deep debt. By the end of his pontificate in 1521, the papal treasury was 400,000 ducats in debt.<ref name="Pope Leo X"/> This debt contributed not only to the calamities of Leo's own pontificate (particularly the sale of indulgences that precipitated [[Protestantism]]) but severely constrained later pontificates (Pope [[Adrian VI]]; and Leo's beloved cousin, [[Clement VII]]) and forced austerity measures.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.sgira.org/hm/pope_hadrian_6.htm|title=Pope Hadrian VI|website=www.sgira.org|access-date=30 May 2018|archive-date=1 April 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220401090054/http://www.sgira.org/hm/pope_hadrian_6.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Leo X's personal spending was likewise vast. For 1517, his personal income is recorded as 580,000 ducats, of which 420,000 came from the states of the Church, 100,000 from [[annates]], and 60,000 from the composition tax instituted by Sixtus IV.{{CN|date=July 2023}} These sums, together with the considerable amounts accruing from indulgences, jubilees, and special fees, vanished as quickly as they were received. To remain financially solvent, the Pope resorted to desperate measures: instructing his cousin, [[Cardinal Giulio de' Medici]], to pawn the Papal jewels; palace furniture; tableware; and even statues of the apostles. Additionally, Leo sold cardinals' hats; memberships to a fraternal order he invented in 1520, the ''Papal Knights of St. Peter and St. Paul''; and borrowed such immense sums from bankers that upon his death, many were ruined.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.knightsofstpeterandstpaul.com/history.html|title=History|website=Knights of St. Peter and St. Paul}}</ref>

At Leo's death, the Venetian ambassador Gradenigo estimated the number of the Church's paying offices at 2,150, with a capital value of approximately 3,000,000 ducats and a yearly income of 328,000 ducats.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web |title=Luminarium Encyclopedia: Pope Leo X (1475-1521) |url=https://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/leo10.htm |access-date=22 September 2023 |website=www.luminarium.org}}</ref>

===Patron of learning===
Leo X raised the Church to a high rank as the friend of whatever seemed to extend knowledge or to refine and embellish life. He made the capital of [[Christendom]], Rome, a centre of [[European culture]]. While yet a cardinal, he had restored the church of Santa Maria in Domnica after Raphael's designs; and as pope he had [[San Giovanni dei Fiorentini]], on the [[Via Giulia]], built, after designs by [[Jacopo Sansovino]]<ref>{{cite book|last1=Heydenreich |first1=L. |last2=Lotz |first2=W.|chapter=Architecture in Italy 1400–1600|title=Pelican History of Art|year= 1974|pages=195–196}}</ref> and pressed forward the work on St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican under [[Raphael]] and [[Agostino Chigi]]. Leo's constitution of 5 November 1513 reformed the Roman university, which had been neglected by Julius II. He restored all its faculties, gave larger salaries to the professors, and summoned distinguished teachers from afar;<ref>{{cite web |title=La storia {{!}} Sapienza Università di Roma |url=https://www.uniroma1.it/it/pagina/la-storia |website=www.uniroma1.it |access-date=29 December 2021}}</ref> and, although it never attained to the importance of [[Padua]] or [[Bologna]], it nevertheless possessed in 1514 a faculty (with a good reputation) of eighty-eight professors.

[[File:Leo X Rubens.jpg|thumb|302x302px|1610s portrait of Leo X by [[Peter Paul Rubens]]]]

Leo called [[Janus Lascaris]] to Rome to give instruction in Greek, and established a Greek printing press from which the first Greek book printed in Rome appeared in 1515. He made Raphael custodian of the classical antiquities of Rome and the vicinity, the ancient monuments of which formed the subject of a famous letter from Raphael to the pope in 1519.<ref> [[Hart, Vaughan]], Hicks, Peter, ''Palladio’s Rome''. Translation of Andrea Palladio’s ''L’Antichita di Roma'' and ''Descritione de le chiese…in la città de Roma,'' (1554) including as an appendix Raphael’s famous Letter to Leo X concerning Rome's ancient monuments, Yale University Press, London and New Haven, 2006.</ref> The distinguished Latinists [[Pietro Bembo]] and [[Jacopo Sadoleto]] were papal secretaries,<ref>{{cite book|author=Paolo Giovio|title=Vita Leonis Decimi, pontifici maximi: libri IV|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VrVQAAAAcAAJ|year=1551|publisher=officina Laurentii Torrentini|location=Florentiae|language=la|page=67}}</ref> as well as the famous poet [[Bernardo Accolti]]. Other poets, such as [[Marco Girolamo Vida]],<ref>Lancetti, Vencenzo (1831). ''Della vita e degli scritti di Marco Girolamo Vida'' (in Italian). Milano: Giuseppe Crespi. pp. 30–31</ref> [[Gian Giorgio Trissino]]<ref>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15061a.htm Ford, Jeremiah. "Giangiorgio Trissino." The Catholic Encyclopedia] Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 2 January 2020{{PD-notice}}</ref> and Bibbiena, writers of ''novelle'' like [[Matteo Bandello]], and a hundred other ''literati'' of the time were bishops, or papal scriptors or [[abbreviators]], or in other papal employs.

{{quote|Under his pontificate, Latin Christianity assumed a pagan, Greco-Roman character, which, passing from art into manners, gives to this epoch a strange complexion. Crimes for the moment disappeared, to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste, such as those indulged in by [[Alcibiades]] and sung by [[Catullus]]. —[[Alexandre Dumas|Alexandre Dumas ''père'']]<ref>Celebrated Crimes, Vol. I. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, pp. 361–414 [https://www.angelfire.com/mn3/mixed_lit/dumas_cenci.htm]</ref>}}

=== Statesman ===
Several minor events of Leo's pontificate are worthy of mention. He was particularly friendly with King [[Manuel I of Portugal]] as a result of the latter's missionary enterprises in [[Asia]] and [[Africa]]. Pope Leo X was granted a large embassy from the Portuguese king furnished with goods from Manuel's colonies.<ref>{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Emanuel I.|volume=9|page=305}}</ref> His concordat with Florence (1516) guaranteed the free election of the clergy in that city.{{CN|date=January 2022}}

His constitution of 1 March 1519 condemned the King of Spain's claim to refuse the publication of papal bulls. He maintained close relations with [[Crown of the Kingdom of Poland|Poland]] because of the Turkish advance and the Polish contest with the Teutonic Knights. His bull of July 1519, which regulated the discipline of the [[Catholic Church in Poland|Polish Church]], was later transformed into a concordat by [[Clement VII]].<ref name="auto"/>

Leo showed special favours to the [[Jews]] and permitted them to erect a Hebrew [[printing]]-press in Rome. Under [[Daniel Bomberg]], that press produced manuscripts of the [[Talmud]]<ref name=":6">{{Cite journal|last=Heller|first=Marvin J|date=2005|title=Earliest Printings of the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein|url=http://www.jewishhistory.com/PRINTINGTHETALMUD/essays/7.pdf|journal=Yeshiva University Museum|page=73|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160815204146/http://www.jewishhistory.com/PRINTINGTHETALMUD/essays/7.pdf|archive-date=15 August 2016}}</ref> and [[Mikraot Gedolot]] with Leo's approval and protection.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia Judaica|last=Habermann|first=Abraham Meir|publisher=Keter|year=1971|page=1195}}</ref>

He approved the formation of the [[Oratory of Divine Love]], a group of pious men in Rome which later became the [[Theatines|Theatine Order]], and he canonized [[Francis of Paola]].<ref>Flesch, Marie. "“That spelling tho”: A Sociolinguistic Study of the Nonstandard Form of Though in a Corpus of Reddit Comments." ''of the 6th Conference on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Social Media Corpora (CMC-corpora 2018)''.</ref>