Julius II: the warrior pope (review)

Reviews 111 contorted developments of the Exclusion crisis. Seaward traces the Civil War roots of the spectrum of attitudes on Exclusion, whUe emphasizing the fluidity of these groupings under the twin pressures of anti-popish hysteria and fears of revived popular insurrection. In the end government propaganda managed to play on the latter to defuse the former, but James's naive fostering of Catholic political power engineered an unlikely alliance between Anglican tory loyalists and dissenters and exclusionists which brought in William of Orange, atfirstto re-establish traditional freedoms but eventually through the pressure of war to create a government with more pervasive authority than ever the Ancient Constitution had envisaged. Englishmen in the 1690s were probably more amazed by all these developments than Seaward's account suggests. Glyn Parry Department of History Victoria University of Wellington Shaw, Christine, Julius II: the warrior pope, Oxford and Cambridge Mass., Blackwell, 1993; cloth, pp. viii, 360; 23 plates; R.R.P. A U S $59.95 [distributed in Austtalia by AUen & Unwin], Giuliano deUa Rovere became a cardinal in 1474 through the nepotism of his uncle, Pope Sixtus IV. However, as a result of his rather mediocre accomplishments as papal legate and therivalryof other papal nipoti, the future pope never enjoyed a commanding position of influence during his uncle's pontificate His influence increased under the next pope, Innocent VIII, but then plummeted during the pontificate of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, which he spent for the most part as an exile in France. After the short pontificate of Pius III, Giuliano became pope in 1503, talcing the name Julius II. As pope his primary concern was the restoration of the temporal power of the papacy in Italy. A successful restoration meant confrontation,firstwith the ruling families of semi-independent papal cities, and secondly with Venice, which continued to nibble at papal possessions in the Marche and the Romagna. As a result Julius became the warrior pope. He confronted the Baglioni of Perugia and the Bentivoglio of Bologna in 1506 and joined the League of Cambrai against Venice in 1508. After peace with Venice in 1510 he turned against his former ally, France, and joined the Holy League in 1511 for the purpose of driving the 'barbarians' from Italy. Following his death in 1513 Guicciardini condemned him for his 172 Reviews willingness to spill Christian blood to increase the temporal power of the papacy; however, the world is probably willing to forgive the patron of Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Christine Shaw states that because of his patronage of the arts, his attention to Italian politics, and his neglect of spiritual matters, Julius II was the epitome of a Renaissance Pope. Shaw's biography Is sympathetic toward Julius II without being an apology for him. It is competent and readable, but at times the detail is overwhelming. It is not a book for the novice. She plunges into the intricacies of papal politics and diplomacy and does not surface until midway through the book with two excellent chapters on the papal court and Julius's patronage of the arts. After this breather, she plunges on anew until his death, almost ending in mid-sentence. A bare two pages of assessment serve as a conclusion. Her greatest contribution is her archival work that reveals many aspects of Giuliano della Rovere's career as a cardinal. This part of the biography comprises 120 pages of the text while the pontificate receives less than 200 pages. The dust jacket states that Shaw's biography of Julius is thefirst'in any language to be based on an extensive use of archival sources'. This is misleading, for volume VI of Ludwig Pastor's 40volume History of the Popes devotes 400 pages to the pontificate of Julius II, including 150 on his patronage of the arts. Shaw's biography is a valuable contribution, but it is not yet time to discard a treasured set of Pastor. A. Lynn Martin Department of History The University of Adelaide Wolfe, Michael, The conversion of Henri TV: politics, power and religious belief in early modern France, Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1993; pp.x, 253; R.R.P. US$39.95. It will be...