Pope Julius II - Warrior Pope

He is the sanctimonious crusader against the corruption of Pope Alexander VI in The Borgias, but Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, later Pope Julius II, was a pontiff with a record every bit as chequered as his more famous predecessor. Della Rovere is cast as a pious contrast to the loose moralled Rodrigo Borgia, but in truth had a track record of corruption in securing the election of Innocent VIII; Borgia’s predecessor. Having amassed great wealth from holding a succession of lucrative sees during his career, della Rovere had a string of palaces filled with sumptuous artwork and had fathered at least three children. There are rumours too of a homosexual affair with one Francesco Alidosi, a favourite whose corrupt governance of Bologna resulted in the city revolting against Papal rule. He was, in short, no saint.

Della Rovere, having survived various assaults upon his person during the pontificate of his bitter rival Borgia, was elected to the supreme office in 1503. His election as Pope Julius II followed the death of Alexander’s short lived successor Pius III, who had reigned for a mere 26 days. Della Rovere had no qualms about imitating Borgia’s methods in securing his own election through bribery. Having done so, he then issued a hypocritical bull against simony.

Pope Julius II by Raphael

Julius II had swiftly secured the imprisonment and exile of the infamous Cesare Borgia but the removal of the former Gonfaloniere had created a vacuum in which those princes who had been divested of their territory by the Borgias, now sought to regain it with Venetian support.

This brought Julius into confrontation with Venice, not-withstanding the fact that he owed his election in large part to Venetian backing. Demanding the return of those territories which Venice had appropriated, Julius embarked on a long running feud with the Venetian Republic that would have grievous consequences for Italy.

In 1508 Pope Julius concluded the formation of the League of Cambrai, by which he intended to dismember the Venetian Empire; inviting the Kings of France, Spain and Hungary and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian to descend upon the Italian Peninsula and carve up the territories currently under Venetian control; excommunicating the Doge and placing the city itself under Papal interdict in the following year.

The Venetians suffered a major defeat at the hands of King Louis XII at Agnadello and despite heroically defending Pavia against the combined forces of the League, nevertheless submitted unconditionally to Papal authority in a humiliating ceremony on the steps of St Peters in 1510.

The genie could not so easily be put back in the bottle however. Those forces which the Pope had invited into Italy with the promise of easy territorial pickings continued their depredations. In one infamous incident, civilians fleeing the sack of Vicenza had sought refuge in a network of caves only to be asphyxiated when the pursuing French soldiers elected to smoke them out.

Realising his error, Julius now turned against the French and their ally the Duke of Ferrara; the husband of Lucrezia Borgia whom he detested and whose lands he coveted. He concluded an alliance against them which included Spain, England, the Emperor Maximilian and even Venice. A fresh round of bloodshed was therefore visited upon Italy, in which Julius took a full and active part. Here was the warrior Pope; personally taking charge of the siege of the castle of Mirandola in the depths of winter 1511; supervising the siting of the cannons and enduring the freezing conditions encamped in a wooden hut within range of the defenders’ guns. On one occasion two of his cooks were killed by a shot from the ramparts much to his fury. The French relief army was delayed in coming to the assistance of the besieged garrison after their commander the hapless Seigneur de Chaumont was injured by a snowball in the face of all things and later fell off of his horse into a river. When the garrison finally surrendered, Julius allegedly quibbled over their request that he should spare their lives.

The war culminated in the Battle of Ravenna in 1512; one of the bloodiest encounters of the period. The French, although victorious in this encounter, suffered such losses as to force their withdrawal from Italy, threatened as they were by an invasion mounted in support of the Pope by the young King Henry VIII of England, although not before they had put Ravenna to the sack.

 

Battle of Ravenna

Julius now presided over the Congress of Mantua which aimed to settle the territorial disputes arising from the war but the continuing animosity between the Pope and the Venetians and his refusal to allow Venice to keep any of the territory she had thought to regain through allying herself with the Pope ultimately drove the Republic into the arms of the King of France.



When Julius II died from a fever early in 1513 he left Italy once more threatened by a French invasion and a fresh round of mayhem and bloodshed proved to be his political legacy. This Pope then, should be remembered as a warmonger and man of blood. Julius, legend has it, once complained to Michelangelo that a statue to be raised in Bologna in his honour held a bible in its hand and insisted instead that it should hold a sword. The statue, torn down by the people of Bologna when they revolted against the exactions of Alidosi, was sold to the Duke of Ferrara who melted it down and  made it into a canon which he named Julius.

The art-loving Julius’ patronage of Michelangelo, who at times feared for his life from the Pope’s wrath, nevertheless has left us with the incredible artistic legacy of the Sistine chapel and for that, I suppose, we can forgive him a lot.

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Life of Julius II

http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/julius2.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2003/apr/30/artsfeatures

 

Statue of Julius II                                                                      

http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Post/1016331

 

Sistine Chapel

http://www.loyaltybindsme.org/2012/11/the-sistine-chapel-ceiling.html

The Hippodrome - Constantinople's Theatre of Dreams

Ah the hippodrome! Just imagine it; the roar of the crowd, the thunder of hooves, the rattle of wheels and the flying dust; charioteers risking life and limb for a moment’s fleeting glory.

With the demise of gladiatorial combat as the Roman Empire under Constantine embraced Christianity, the sport of chariot racing was left as the principle source of public entertainment for the Roman masses. In Constantine’s new capital the construction of the new hippodrome was a signature project. Constructed between 324 and 330 AD on the site of an earlier structure created in the reign of Septimius Severus, Constantine’s hippodrome was 450 metres long and had seating for some 30,000 spectators. It was a structure intended to impress and would provide the setting for imperial pageantry as well as popular entertainment.

Artistic treasures from around the Roman Empire were plundered for the beautification of Constantinople and no monument of the pagan past was considered sacred by the new Christian Emperor. The Hippodrome’s central spina; a raised structure around which the chariots would race, featured at its centre the serpent column; a victory monument looted from the ancient sanctuary of Delphi. The column depicted three serpents intertwined who balanced upon their heads a votive tripod dedicated to Apollo in celebration of the Greek victory at Plataea in 479 BC. More ancient still was the obelisk of pink Aswan granite brought from Karnak on the orders of Constantine’s successor Constantius II and eventually erected on the spina in 390 AD under the emperor Theodosius I. This monument was already eighteen centuries old when it was brought to Constantinople and its inscriptions told of the Syrian victories of Tuthmosis III.

 

 A medieval depiction of the Hippodrome's surviving monuments

These two monuments and a second obelisk which was originally clad in bronze and may have served as a giant sundial are all that remain of the sumptuous decoration of the spina. The plinth which supports the so-called column of Theodosius depicts the Kathisma or imperial pavilion which stood on the eastern side of the hippodrome and had a direct link via a tunnel with the imperial palace. Here the emperor attended by a throng of silken toadies would appear before masses to share in the entertainment or to preside over grand occasions of state and sometimes even executions. A new emperor was not considered to be truly crowned until he had received the traditional acclamation of the factions in the hippodrome.

 Under Justinian I (527-565 AD) the hippodrome saw some of its most dramatic events. None more so than the Nika Riots which broke out in 532. Chariot races were contested by four  teams of which by this time only two were of any real importance; the Blues and the Greens. Their supporters formed rival factions whose detestation of each other knew no bounds and whose political and religious affiliations were often also at odds. Blues and Greens often took to breaking each other’s heads but when Justinian executed leading trouble makers from both factions he succeeded in uniting them against him. Whipped up into frenzy, the mob stormed from the hippodrome and embarked on an orgy of looting, burning and destruction which left much of the city a blackened ruin. Justinian, having contemplated fleeing the city, ultimately decided to send in the army and some thirty thousand rioters who had gathered in the hippodrome to call for the emperor’s overthrow were put to the slaughter.

 The factions were not always so unruly. Their leaders were appointed by the state and they carried out ceremonial functions and even formed a militia for the defence of the city in times of crisis.

 Three years after the Nika Riots with the city rebuilt, the general Belisarius returned triumphant from the reconquest of North Africa which had been under Vandal rule for a century. He had won crushing victories, liberated Carthage and captured the Vandal King Gelimer. He was permitted  a triumphal procession which culminated in the hippodrome where Gelimer groveled on his knees before Justinian who looked down imperiously upon him before pardoning him to a life of comfortable exile. Amongst the captured treasures that were paraded around the arena, was no less venerable an object than the seven branched candlestick looted from the temple of Jerusalem by Titus and thence from Rome by the Vandals.

 

So much then for the politics, what about the racing?

 

 

Four charioteers would contest each race, one for each faction; Blues, Greens, Whites and Reds. The chariots were drawn by four horses. Before the start competitors would draw lots for starting positions. The horses would be released from the starting pens or carceres at the northern end of the hippodrome and would race anticlockwise around the stadium. Races generally lasted for seven laps and a single day’s racing could comprise up to fifty races, divided into morning and afternoon sessions. Sometimes rival charioteers would swap teams from morning to afternoon in an arrangement known as diversium in order to settle for once and all who was the better man or for a particularly dominant charioteer to demonstrate that it was not to his horses alone that he owed his victories. One charioteer named Constantine is recorded as winning all twenty five races of the morning session and then going on to claim victory in twenty one races in the afternoon with a rival’s team of horses.

The most celebrated charioteer of all was named Porphyrius, who was active during the late Fifth Century AD and into the Sixth, continuing to race into his sixties. Porphyrius is described on the bases of two surviving monuments erected in his honour on the spina as having won hundreds of races and was unique in being the only charioteer to be permitted such a monument whilst he was still racing. Even more incredibly, Porphyrius boasts monuments which were erected by both the Green and the Blue factions, having changed his allegiance in mid-career.

A monument to Porphyrius

Porphyrius may have had as many as eleven bronze statues raised in his honour on the spina. These were most likely destroyed and melted down when Constantinople fell to the forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and the city was systematically looted. The most famous monument of all to survive from the Hippodrome were the four bronze horses which had stood atop the carceres and which were also looted in 1204. These thankfully were not melted down but on the orders of Doge Enrico Dandolo who led the attack on the city, were transported back to Venice and would for centuries grace St Marks, where they continue to reside to this day.

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