Giulio dei' Medici, nephew of the great Lorenzo, devoted from his earliest years to the ecclesiastical profession, a politician trained in the same school with Macchiavelli, and accepting the papacy as the natural culmination of his ambition, was precisely the kind of man to rally all the resources of the Church in defence of its imperilled traditions. In that rally, at this perilous crisis, no half-way allegiance could be useful. Whatever hopes might have been placed upon Erasmus by Leo and Adrian were by this time pretty effectually dissipated. The kind of sledge-hammer blows which the papacy of 1525 needed to have struck in its defence were certainly not to come from such an arm as this. Yet there occurred no official breach with any of the great Catholic powers. On the accession of Clement VII. Erasmus sent him an early letter of congratulation. He almost repeats the language of similar addresses to former popes. Things have been going badly enough, but now the right man for the emergency has come. Especially the cause of learning may well expect the greatest things from a Medicean pope. He has resisted all pressure to take sides against the papacy, and yet Stunica is raging against him in Italy unpunished, to the disgrace of Rome and the injury of the papal name. "[159]Believe me, most holy Father, whoever is hiring that play-actor, a man born for this kind of trickery, is doing a very poor service to the papacy or to the cause of the public peace; he is simply serving some private hatred and to that end making use of another's folly.... I have always submitted myself and all my works to the judgment of the Roman Church, not intending to resist, even if it should give a verdict unfavourable to me. For I will suffer everything rather than be a rebel; and therein I place my confidence that your Holiness' sense of justice will not permit me to be given up to the mad hatred of a few men.... The Emperor and the Lady Margaret are calling me back to Brabant. The French king is inviting me with mountains of gold to come to him. But nothing shall tear me from Rome but death,--or the gravel more cruel than death,--if only I can be sure that your justice will protect me against false accusations." [159] iii.¹, 783-E.