Leo died in December, as I have stated, leaving to his successor the terrible legacy of his frivolity in face of a grave calamity. In his last two years he apprehended, to some extent, the magnitude of the German trouble, but he plainly proposed to answer the just demand of reform only by the burning of a few heretics. His entirely dishonourable diplomacy and his costly indulgence of tastes which ill befitted a successor of Leo I. imposed the last unendurable burden on the patience of Europe. For him the Papacy was a principality, and the religious nature of its financial sources makes more contemptible the use to which he put his wealth. Even that artistic splendour which casts a glow over the Papacy before the breaking of the great storm owed to him comparatively little. The middle or secular phase of the development of the Papacy came to an end in the tawdry luxuries and unscrupulous measures of a Pope who has been treated with singular favour at the bar of Catholic history. FOOTNOTE: [Footnote 294: F. Nitti, _Leo X. e la sua politica_ (1892), seeks to defend Leo against the charge of excessive nepotism. He strains the evidence at times, and quite admits that duplicity was the essential feature of the Pope's policy. See also his _Documenti ed osservazioni riguardanti la politica di Leone X._ (1893). A biography of Leo was written by the contemporary Bishop of Nocera, Paolo Giovio, but this _Vita Leonis X._ is the work of a courtier. Guicciardini (_Storia d'Italia_), Sanuto (_Diarii_), and Bembo (_Opere_) are more critical, and the letters of the Roman ambassadors are valuable. P. de Grassis, Master of Ceremonies at the Papal Court under Julius and Leo, wrote a _Diary of Leo X._, but there seems to be some reluctance to publish it. The work published by Armellini (_Il diario di Leone X._, 1884) is merely a discreet compendium of it. Fabroni's _Leonis X. Vita_ is too ancient (1797), and _The Medici Popes_ (1908) by H.M. Vaughan, is an excellent popular work. Roscoe's stately _Life and Pontificate of Leo X._ (1805) is too flattering to its hero and is discredited in places by more recent research.] [Footnote 295: Sanuto, _Diarii_, xviii.] [Footnote 296: Guicciardini, xii. There is a copy of his Spanish treaty in the State archives at Florence.] [Footnote 297: The instruction is reproduced by Nitti, p. 61. As the document adds that Leo will not allow any prince, "even were it his own brother," to hold "both the head and the tail of Italy" (Milan and Naples), Nitti and Pastor claim that it shows that nepotism was not the key-note of Leo's policy. It seems strange that, in view of all his admitted duplicity, they can take seriously this phrase of the Pope's. We may admit, however, that the security of the Papal States was the Pope's first consideration.]