Historic Boys: Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times

by Elbridge S. Brooks

VIII.

GIOVANNI OF FLORENCE, THE BOY CARDINAL.

(Afterward Pope Leo the Tenth.)

[a.d. 1490.]

It was one of the wild carnival days of 1490. From the great Gate of San Gallo to the quaint old Bridge of the Goldsmiths, the fair city of Florence blazed with light and rang with shout and song. A struggling mass of spectators surged about the noble palace of the Medici, as out through its open gate-way and up the broad street known as the Via Larga streamed the great carnival pageant of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the head of the house of Medici.

"Room for the noble Abbot of Passignano! room for my Lord Cardinal!" shouted a fresh young voice from the head of the grand staircase that led from the loggia of the palace to the great entrance-hall below.

"So; say'st thou thus, Giulio?" another boyish voice exclaimed. "Then will I, too, play the herald for thee. Room," he cried, "for the worthy Prior of Capua! room for the noble Knight of St. John!" And down the broad staircase, thronged with gallant costumes, brilliant banners, and gleaming lances, the two merry boys elbowed their way.

Boys? you ask. Yes, boys—both of them, for all their priestly and high-sounding titles. In those far-off days, as we shall see, honors were distributed not so much for merit as from policy; and when royalty married royalty at ten and twelve to serve the ends of state, there was nothing so very wonderful in a noble prior of eleven or a lord cardinal of thirteen.