[Footnote 288: Guicciardini's _Storia d'Italia_ and Burchard's _Diarium_ are the chief authorities, supplemented by the dispatches of the Italian ambassadors. There is a slight and somewhat antiquated biography by M.A.J. Dumesnil (_Histoire de Jules II._, 1873) and an abler study by M. Brosch (_Papst Julius II._, 1878). J.F. Loughlin has a candid account, chiefly based on Brosch, of his early career in _The American Catholic Quarterly Review_. Special treatises will be noticed in the course of the chapter, but there is little dispute about the facts I give. Full references will be found in the very ample, if somewhat lenient, study of Dr. Pastor (vi.), and in the works of Creighton, Gregorovius, and von Reumont.] [Footnote 289: Pastor (vi., 244) quotes from the Vatican archives a letter in which Julius urges the Spanish commander at Naples to arrest Cæsar.] [Footnote 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.] [Footnote 291: See A. Schulte, _Kaiser Maximilian I. als Kandidat für den Papstlichen Stuhl_ (1906). The point is disputed.] [Footnote 292: Quoted by Brosch, p. 333.] [Footnote 293: Priuli (_Diario_, ii., 102) says that Romans spoke of his "Ganymedes."] CHAPTER XIV 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.