[289] Pastor (vi., 244) quotes from the Vatican archives a letter in which Julius urges the Spanish commander at Naples to arrest Cæsar.
[290] The date was fixed by the astrologers, but Burchard says that, in order to show his contempt for their science, Julius unceremoniously entered the town on the previous day. He acted more probably from sheer impatience. More than one event during his Pontificate, including his coronation on November 26, 1503, was arranged by the astrologers.
[291] See A. Schulte, Kaiser Maximilian I. als Kandidat für den Papstlichen Stuhl (1906). The point is disputed.
[292] Quoted by Brosch, p. 333.
[293] Priuli (Diario, ii., 102) says that Romans spoke of his "Ganymedes."
LEO X. AND THE DANCE OF DEATH
When Julius II. made his last survey of the world in which he had played so vigorous a part, he must have concluded that he had placed the Papacy on a foundation more solid than any that had yet supported it. The Conciliar movement, its most threatening enemy in the mind of the Popes, had been discredited by the failure of its latest effort and by the naked ambitions of those who supported it. The princes of the world had proved less stubborn than in the days of the early Emperors, and the Papacy had now a broad and strong base of secular power. The new culture had been, to a great extent, wooed and won by the Pope's princely patronage of art and embellishment of Rome; and the Inquisition, in one form or other, could silence the intractable. There was still, among the dour and distant northerners, much cavilling at the avarice and luxury of Rome, but, if the succeeding Popes used the Lateran Council to ensure some measure of reform, it would diminish; it had, in any case, not yet proved dangerous. Neither Julius nor any other had the least suspicion that the Papacy was within five years of the beginning of an appalling catastrophe.