On Innocent’s death, Alexander VI. had been raised to St. Peter’s throne, which he strengthened by his own political genius, adorned by his magnificent liberality to the artistic genius of others, and disgraced by his monstrous depravity. ♦1494♦ Under Alexander’s reign Italy witnessed the invasion of Charles VIII. of France, an event which inaugurated a period of turmoil, and turned the country into a battle-ground for foreign princes. Rome alone escaped the consequences of this deluge. The Pope, alarmed at the king’s approach, offered terms of peace, which the French monarch finally accepted. Independence was secured at the cost of dignity, and Alexander VI. was enabled to steer safely amid the storms that raged over the rest of the peninsula. He died in 1503, regretted by a few, execrated by most of his contemporaries. Pius III. reigned for a few months, and was, in his turn, succeeded by Julius II., who proved himself one of the most energetic, warlike, and worldly statesmen that had ever wielded St. Peter’s sceptre. He died in 1513, and in his stead was elected Giovanni de Medici, under the name of Leo X. Born in 1475, a year after Ariosto, Giovanni was the second son of Lorenzo de Medici, chief of the Italian Platonists of the time. In his father’s house and among his father’s friends young Giovanni heard a great deal more of Pagan poetry and philosophy than of Christian theology. But while his contemporary, Ariosto, nourished in a similar school of thought, denounced the rapacity of the Roman Court and derided the papal pretensions to temporal power--laughingly dismissing the fabled gift of Constantine the Great to Pope Silvester to the realms of the moon--Giovanni devoted his life to the service of a Church whose doctrines he did not believe, and to her defence against heresies which he did not detest. His pontificate, accordingly, was distinguished by the elegant frivolities of a cultured gentleman far more than by the piety of a clergyman. Leo’s artistic taste and genial sense of the ludicrous were among his chief virtues; his love of the chase his greatest vice. Abstemious in his own diet, he delighted in providing for, and laughing at, the gluttony of others. But Leo’s principal title to the grateful remembrance of posterity lies in his munificent encouragement of art and letters. He died in 1521.