He died in 1532, leaving Maria della Rovere a widow. She was the niece of Julius II., and bore Sinibaldo a numerous family. He was buried, wrapped in silk cloth of gold, in the vault of his fathers, in our cathedral, and Ugo Partenopeo pronounced his funeral oration.
The eldest son of Sinibaldo was that Gianluigi, whose career we are about to describe. But in order to pronounce a just opinion of his actual character, we believe it important to speak at some length of the condition of Italy and the Republic of Genoa when he appeared on the political stage. A great man is, in our opinion, the expression of a social want; he embodies and expresses the ideas of the times wherein he is born, and therefore is a compendious symbol of the people among whom he lives.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE ITALIAN STATES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
Leo X., and his false glories—Desperate condition of the Italian states in the sixteenth century—Their aversion to the Austrian power—The Sack of Rome—Wars and Plagues—Charles V. and Francis I.—The Despotism of Christian powers causes Italian powers to desire the yoke of the Turks—The Papal theocracy renews with the empire the compact of Charlemagne.
The age of Leo X., in painting whose meretricious splendours, our historians have rivalled each other, was one of the most unfortunate in the history of Italy. Let others call the age of Valentine and Charles V. the age of gold; Raphael, Titian, and Michael Angelo cannot make us forget Leyva, Baglioni, and the barbarians who overran Italy, bringing in plague, famine, and intestine war. Swiss and French in Lombardy, French and Spaniards in Naples, Swiss and Germans in Venetia rendered every region desolate and every government despotic. Julius II. spoke falsehood when he boasted that he had expelled the Ultramontanes from Italian soil; he merely drove out one foreigner by the help of another, and the last invaders filled the people with desperate longing for the old oppressors. After his death the Papal dignity was conferred on Leo de’ Medici, whose name has a false lustre in letters and arts.
It was a grave delusion or a sychophantic flattery to attribute to him the impulse that revived liberal studies. The great intellects who flourished under his pontificate had risen to fame before his time. He covered them with wealth and honours out of no sympathy with their pursuits, but to emasculate their independent spirits and stifle the groans of the nation in whose bosom the spirit of independence began to react under the hammer of incessant misfortune.
The manners of Leo were wholly corrupt and his religion atheism. The Lutheran doctrines which spread in his time owed their success to the trade in indulgences, the profits of which he conferred before collection upon his sister Magdalene Cybo, to repay her family for the princely receptions they gave him in Genoa.