LEO X., Giovanni de' Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was born at Florence in December 1475. From his cradle he was destined to the ecclesiastical career. His education was entrusted to the ablest scholars of the age; and through the influence of his father with Pope Innocent VIII. he was created cardinal at the unprecedented age of thirteen years, in 1488. In the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, after the death of Lorenzo, the young cardinal was included, and he used the occasion as an opportunity for foreign travel. He was employed as legate by Julius II.; and during the war with the French he was taken prisoner in the battle of Ravenna, but soon afterwards effected his escape. On the death of Julius II., in 1513, Cardinal de' Medici was chosen pope at the early age of thirty-seven, under the name of Leo X. His first appointment of the two great scholars Bembo and Sadoleto as his secretaries was a pledge of the favour towards learning which was the characteristic of his pontificate; but he did not neglect the more material interests of the church and the Roman see. He brought to a successful conclusion the fifth Council of the Lateran (see COUNCIL) and the schism which was threatened by the rival Council of Pisa. He concluded a concordat with Francis I. of France, which continued to regulate the French church till the Revolution. In the political relations of the Roman see he consolidated and, in some degree, extended the re-conquests of his warlike predecessor, Julius II., although he also used his position and his influence for the aggrandisement of his family. His desertion of the alliance of Francis I. for that of his rival, Charles V., although the subject of much criticism, was dictated by a sound consideration of the interests of Italy. But it is most of all as a patron of learning and art that the reputation of Leo has lived with posterity. Himself a scholar, he loved learning for its own sake; and his court was the meeting-point of all the scholars of Italy and the world. He founded a Greek college in Rome, and established a Greek press, which he endowed munificently (see RENAISSANCE). In the encouragement of art he was no less munificent. Painting, sculpture, architecture were equally favoured; and it is to his vast project for the rebuilding of St Peter's, and to the step to which he had recourse for procuring the necessary funds—his permitting the preaching of an indulgence, one of the conditions of obtaining which was the contribution to this work—that the first rise of the Reformation in Germany is ascribed. He himself seems to have regarded the movement as of little importance, describing it as 'a squabble among the friars;' and though he condemned the propositions of Luther, and issued a commission to inquire into his doctrines, his measures on the whole were not marked by much severity. His personal habits were in keeping with his taste—splendid and munificent in the highest degree; but in his moral conduct he maintained a strict propriety, and his character, although not free from the stain of nepotism, the vice of that age, and more modelled on the ideal of an enlightened prince than on that of a zealous and ascetic churchman, was beyond all imputation of unworthiness or irregularity. His death, which occurred rather suddenly on 1st December 1521, during the public rejoicings in Rome for the taking of Milan, was by some ascribed to poison; but there seems no solid reason for the suspicion.
See Roscoe, Life and Pontificate of Leo X. (1805); Audin, Histoire de Léon X. (6th ed. 1886); Hergenröther,
Leonis X. Regesta (1884 et seq.); Ranke, History of the Popes; Symonds, Renaissance in Italy (1875-86); M. Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Period of the Reformation (vols. iii.-v. 1887-91).
LEO XIII., the 258th Roman pontiff, was born at Carpineto, the son of Count Ludovico Pecci, 2d March 1810. Educated first at the Jesuit College of Viterbo and the schools of the Collegio Romano, he proceeded to the College of Noble Ecclesiastics. He greatly signalised himself in mathematics, physics, and philosophy. In 1830 he sustained a public disputation in the last-named branch of learning, and carried off the first prize. He also frequented the schools of the Roman University to learn canon and civil law. Having become Doctor of Laws, he was appointed by Pope Gregory XVI. a domestic prelate and Referendary of the Segnatura in 1837. He then took holy orders, received from the pope the title of prothonotary apostolic, and was appointed in succession apostolic delegate at Benevento, Perugia, and Spoleto. He was a vigorous administrator, and while at Benevento put a stop to brigandage. Sent to Belgium as nuncio in 1843, he was created archbishop of Damietta to qualify him for the office. Three years later he was nominated archbishop of Perugia, and in the consistory of December 19, 1853, he was created a cardinal by Pius IX. He was a member of several of the congregations of cardinals—including those of the Council of Rites and of Bishops and Regulars—and in September 1877 he was selected by the pope to fill the office of Cardinal Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. In that important capacity he had control of all business except foreign affairs. Upon the death of Pius IX. in 1878 Cardinal Pecci was elected as the representative of the Moderates. He assumed the title of Leo XIII., and adopted an opposite policy to that of his predecessor. He restored the hierarchy in Scotland, and composed the religious difficulty with Germany, so that when a dispute arose in 1885 between Germany and Spain as to the ownership of the Caroline Islands he was requested by Prince Bismarck to act as arbitrator. In political matters Leo has permitted the Irish bishops to indulge their own views. In May 1888 the pope issued a decree denouncing the methods adopted in the Irish Plan of Campaign. He has manifested enlightened views in many directions, but on questions affecting the church and his own status as pontiff he has held staunchly to his rights. He regards himself as the despoiled sovereign of Rome, and as a prisoner at the Vatican; has refused the income voted him by the Italian parliament; and persistently declines to recognise the law of guarantees. He has protested against heresy and 'godless' schools, and in his encyclicals has affirmed that the only solution of the socialistic problem is the influence of the papacy. He constrained the French clergy and the French monarchists to accept the republic, but encouraged the Hungarian Catholics to oppose the civil marriage law (1894). In 1883 he opened the archives of the Vatican for historical investigations, and he has made himself personally known as a poet, chiefly in the Latin tongue. The jubilee of his episcopate in 1893 was celebrated with even greater pilgrimages to Rome, congratulatory addresses, &c., than that of his priesthood in 1887. In 1896 he issued an encyclical pronouncing Anglican orders null and void.
See Leonis XIII. Pont. Max. Carmina (1883), and the Lives by De Waal (Münster, 1878), Vidien (Paris, 1879), O'Reilly (Cologne, 1887), Serclaes (Paris, 1894), Jeyes (1896), M'Carthy (1896), Narfon (trans. 1899); see also his Addresses, &c., in The Pope and the People (1895).