In fine, during the pontificates of Sixtus and of Julius more was done for the encouragement of literature and arts, for the temporal extension of the papacy, and for the embellishment of its metropolis, than has ever been effected in any similar period. The combined reigns of the two Medicean popes have left no equal memorials. It cannot be doubted that the patronage bestowed by his ancestors on men of science and letters was liberally continued by Leo; yet it is as much to the zeal of partial historians, as to his own policy of success, that he stands indebted for the halo of glory which marks his as a golden age. In many instances he but followed out the aims of Julius, reaping their undivided glory; in others he fell sadly short of his predecessor in energy and comprehensive views. The bad seed which he freely scattered ripened into irreparable mischiefs under his vacillating nephew, and the sack of Rome, which we shall by and by describe, was their crowning calamity. After that event the proud city was once again left desolate and impoverished, the prey of barbarian spoilers; its population thinned, its court outraged, its glories gone. When the judgment of posterity has passed into a proverb it is too late to question its equity, or to appeal from its fiat, and the name of Leo the Tenth will thus remain identified with his age as the star whence its lustre was derived, although Italy was then brightened by not a few orbs of scarcely inferior brilliancy or less genial influence. BOOK SIXTH OF FRANCESCO MARIA DELLA ROVERE FOURTH DUKE OF URBINO CHAPTER XXXII Youth of Duke Francesco Maria I.--The League of Cambray--His marriage--His first military service--The Cardinal of Pavia's treachery--Julius II. takes the field. To the family della Rovere, whom we have traced in the preceding chapter, an heir was born on the 25th of March, 1490. His father, the Lord Prefect, acknowledged his arrival to be a divine blessing, and, as then usual, testified gratitude by the selection of his baptismal names. St. Francis was the established tutelary saint of the family, under whose guidance Sixtus IV. believed himself to have obtained the tiara, and to whom his brother the Prefect addressed his orisons for a male child. It came into the world on the fête of the Annunciation, and was immediately christened Francesco Maria,[*230] in honour of the saint and of the Madonna. In this, his only male offspring, centred the hopes and interests of the Lord of Sinigaglia; and after his death, in 1501, the boy was carried to the court of Urbino, where his progress was watched with almost paternal anxiety by Duke Guidobaldo. His mother occasionally visited there after her widowhood, although from motives of perhaps misplaced delicacy, she resided chiefly on her husband's fiefs of Sora and Arci in the Neapolitan territory. [Footnote *230: See MARCUCCI: _Francesco Maria I. della Rovere_ (Sinigaglia, 1903).]