Il papa guerriero. Giulio II nello spazio pubblico europeo by Massimo Rospocher (review)

In writing this book, Massimo Rospocher aimed to provide not just a study of the representations of the policies and the personality of Pope Julius II in Italy and elsewhere in Europe but also a study of the dissemination of political news and opinions during a period of transition, when the printing press was coming into its own as an important medium of mass communication. He has succeeded in both his aims. Based on wide-ranging research, his book is also well written, with admirably clear exposition of the texts and the arguments based on them, mercifully free from jargon, and enhanced by many illustrations.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Rospocher’s demonstration of the common themes to be found in both learned Latin treatises and sermons, and in the ballads and cheap broadsheets sold in the streets. Themes of the golden age revived by the triumphant pope, and the identification of Julius II with Julius Caesar, for instance, appeared in humanist tracts and in doggerel verses that would have been sung and sold by street performers. The Roman Curia, he argues, actively participated in the promotion of the ideal of the “renovatio Imperii” (renewal of the empire) of the Roman Church as heir to the Roman Empire, recovering its rightful political and religious authority under Julius II. He sees this as “auto-promozione papale” (papal self-promotion, p. 106), assuming that Julius approved, even instigated, such propaganda. Although there were clear instances of Julius appealing to public opinion, as when he ordered hundreds of copies of his anathema against Venice to be printed, it is harder to prove that he knew and approved of the contents of street ballads, even if they did laud him as “Papa Iulio secondo che redriza tuto el mondo” (Pope Julius II who puts all the world to rights, p. 160).

What emerges clearly from the many texts discussed here and the contexts in which they appeared is the essentially political nature of the praise or criticism of the pope, even if it was expressed in ecclesiastical or theological terms. Propaganda in Venice, Bologna, and Ferrara, when these cities were threatened by papal troops, blamed Julius’s alleged thirst for power, for increased temporal dominions, and for war, as being incompatible with the pope’s role as the vicar of Christ. In France, the same authors who justified war against Venice in 1509 as being in defense of the Church, condemning Venetian contempt for the papacy, shortly afterward became fiercely critical of Julius and his authority as pope. In England, when Henry VIII was striking a pose as the defender of the papacy at the beginning of his reign, war against France was presented as a holy war and Louis XII as a rebel against the authority of the pope. The arguments of a learned treatise by James Whytstons, De iusticia et sanctitate belli per Iulium pontificem secundum, which refuted criticisms of Julius by Italian and French authors, were turned into allegorical verses in English, The Gardyners Passetaunce: Touching the outrage of Fraunce, aimed at a broader public that needed to be encouraged to support and pay for the war.

This valuable book is concerned with the content of propaganda and the means of its diffusion and communication, rather than its reception, but the wealth of material it provides raises questions about how far the broader public in Europe distinguished between criticisms of an individual pope and of the papacy as an institution, between the political and the religious implications of the propaganda that was so widely disseminated.