To Pius II. succeeded Barbo, a Venetian, so handsome and so vain, that he was templed to assume the name of Formosa:²⁸⁶ he contented himself with that of Paul II. His efforts to league the Christian sovereigns against the Turks, and to have the abrogation of the pragmatic registered by the parliament of Paris, were equally unsuccessful; other interests occupied the former, and the parliament of Paris was obstinate. In vain Cardinal Balne obtained from Louis the deprivation of the solicitor general John de Saint Romain: the university united with the magistrates in an appeal to a future council. In the mean time letters are discovered which prove to Louis that he is betrayed by Balne. The cardinal is already cast into prison; but Paul pretends to be the sole legitimate judge of a prince of the church, and Balne, after a long detention in an iron cage, is finally liberated. ²⁸⁶ Art of verifying Dates, vol. i, p. 337.—‘ Formosus’ implies ‘handsome.’ Paul also vainly endeavoured to make himself master of Rimini: in vain he armed the Venetians against Robert Malatesti who occupied this place: Robert, aided by the Medicis, opposed a formidable army to the Venetians, and which, under the command of the Duke d’Urbino, put that of the pope to flight²⁸⁷ His holiness received such conditions as his conquerors dictated; he loaded the Medicis with invectives, and no longer made war but with men of letters;²⁸⁸ he condemned many of these to horrible tortures to extort from them the avowal of heresies which they never professed; and when their constancy in refusing to make false confessions, when all the evidence, all the witnesses proclaimed their innocence, the holy father declared they could not leave their dungeons until they had completed in them an entire year, having at the time of their arrest made a vow not to release them before the expiration of this term. ²⁸⁷ Muratori’s Annals of Italy, vol., ix. p. 508. ²⁸⁸ Art of verifying Dates, vol. i. p. 327. Platina, one of Paul’s victims, has compiled a history of the popes in which, this pontiff is not spared: Platina is doubtlessly here a suspicious testimony; but as the reverend Benedictine fathers judiciously observe,: “his relation is supported by the evidence of James “Piccolomini, cardinal bishop of Pavia, a respect− “able writer, who, both in his commentaries, in “the letter he wrote to Paul himself a short time “after his exaltation, and in that addressed to the “cardinals who had elected him, draws a very un− “favourable portrait of this pope.”