Paus Julius II

Julius II, nama asli Giuliano della Rovere, (lahir 5 Desember 1443, Albisola, Republik Genoa — meninggal pada 21 Februari 1513, Roma), pelindung seni terbesar dari garis kepausan (memerintah 1503–13) dan salah satu yang paling terkenal. penguasa kuat seusianya. Meskipun ia memimpin upaya militer untuk mencegah dominasi Prancis di Italia, Julius paling penting untuk persahabatan dekatnya dengan Michelangelo dan untuk perlindungannya terhadap artis lain, termasuk Bramante dan Raphael. Dia menugaskan Michelangelo "Musa" dan lukisan-lukisan di Kapel Sistine dan lukisan-lukisan dinding Raphael di Vatikan.

Masa muda

Giuliano adalah putra Rafaello della Rovere yang miskin, satu-satunya saudara lelaki Paus Sixtus IV. Pada 1468 ia menjadi seorang Fransiskan, dan pada 1471 Sixtus IV membuatnya menjadi kardinal. Di kantor ini Giuliano memperlihatkan semua atribut cupiditas dan korupsi seorang pangeran Renaissance yang tidak bermoral. Paus mencurahkan kepadanya enam keuskupan di Prancis dan tiga di Italia bersama dengan banyak biara kaya dan manfaat. Kardinal, yang tidak memiliki minat dalam pencarian spiritual, menjadi pelindung seni yang luar biasa. Dia ditunjukkan dengan anak didiknya di lukisan luar biasa Sixtus IV karya Melozzo da Forlì di Museum Vatikan.

Setelah kematian Sixtus IV, untuk siapa Giuliano menugaskan sebuah kuburan perunggu oleh Antonio Pollaiuolo, sekarang di Gua Vatikan Santo Petrus, kandidat Kardinal, Innocent VIII yang lemah, dipilih melalui penyuapan. Ketika Rodrigo Borgia, terpilih sebagai paus Alexander VI pada 1492, merencanakan pembunuhan Giuliano, Giuliano melarikan diri pada 1494 ke pengadilan Charles VIII dari Perancis. Dia menemani raja Prancis dalam ekspedisinya melawan Naples dengan harapan bahwa Charles juga akan menggulingkan Alexander VI. Setelah menemani Charles dalam pemulangan paksa ke Prancis, Giuliano mengambil bagian dalam invasi Louis XII ke Italia pada 1502. Alexander VI dua kali berusaha untuk merebutnya.

Setelah kematian paus Borgia pada 1503, Giuliano kembali ke Roma, setelah 10 tahun di pengasingan, dan, setelah kepausan singkat Pius III, dengan bantuan simony yang liberal, terpilih sebagai Paus Julius II pada Oktober 1503. Segera setelah itu Pemilu ia memutuskan bahwa semua pemilihan kepausan simoniakal di masa depan akan tidak sah dan dikenakan hukuman.

Kegiatan politik

Julius II viewed as the main task of his pontificate the restoration of the Papal States, which had been reduced to ruin by the Borgias. Large portions of it had been appropriated by Venice after Alexander VI’s death. As a first step as pope, Julius subjugated Perugia and Bologna in the autumn of 1508. Then, in March 1509, he joined the League of Cambrai, an anti-Venetian alliance formed in December 1508 between Louis XII, who then ruled Milan, Emperor Maximilian I, and Ferdinand II of Spain, who had been king of Naples since 1503. The league troops defeated Venice in May 1509 near Cremona, and the Papal States were restored.

Having become an exponent of Italian national consciousness, Julius II proposed to drive the French from Italy, but his second war, which lasted from September 1510 to May 1511, was unsuccessful. Several cardinals defected to Louis XII and called a schismatic council, to which Julius responded by summoning the fifth Lateran Council. After concluding an alliance with Venice and Ferdinand II of Spain and Naples in October 1511, he opened the council in May 1512 at the Lateran Palace. Louis XII had defeated the troops of the alliance at Ravenna in April 1512, but the situation changed when Swiss troops were sent to the Pope’s aid. The territories in northern Italy occupied by the French revolted, the French left the country, and the Papal States were augmented by the acquisition of Parma and Piacenza. Toward the end of his life, he viewed with concern the replacement of French by Spanish efforts to attain supremacy in Italy. Julius II was Italy’s saviour.

Patron of the arts

The enduring impact of the life of Julius II stemmed from his gift for inspiring great artistic creations. His name is closely linked with those of such great artists as Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo. With his wealth of visionary ideas, he contributed to their creativity. Following an overall plan, he added many fine buildings to Rome and laid the groundwork in the Vatican Museum for the world’s greatest collection of antiquities. Among the innumerable Italian churches that benefitted from his encouragement of the arts was Sta. Maria del Popolo in Rome, for which he commissioned Andrea Sansovino to create sepulchres for a number of cardinals and Pinturicchio to paint the frescoes in the apse. Donato Bramante became the architect of Julius’ fortifications in Latium, of the two galleries that form the Belvedere Court, and of other Vatican buildings. Around 1503 the Pope conceived the idea of building a new basilica of St. Peter, the first model of which Bramante created. Its foundation stone was laid on April 18, 1506.

The Pope’s friendship with Michelangelo, begun in 1506, was enduring despite recurrent strains imposed on their relations by the two overly similar personalities. Their relationship was so close that the Pope became, in fact, Michelangelo’s intellectual collaborator. Of Julius’ tomb only the “Moses” in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome, was completed; the Pope is, however, not interred there but in St. Peter’s, along with the remains of Sixtus IV. The famous bronze statue of the Pope for the church of S. Petronio in Bologna, completed in 1508, was destroyed in 1511. In 1508 Michelangelo was prevailed upon by Julius to begin his paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which were unveiled in October 1512. The paintings, which represent a climax in Western art, were, in form and conception, a product of the artistic symbiosis of Michelangelo and the Pope.

By 1509 Raphael, introduced to Julius, had begun his masterpieces for the Pope, the frescoes in three rooms of the Vatican. Spiritual references to the person and the pontificate of Julius II are evident in one of the rooms (the Stanza della Segnatura), where earthly and celestial wisdom are juxtaposed in the “School of Athens” and the “Disputa,” while the beauty of creativity is represented in the “Parnassus.” The theme of another room (the Stanza d’Eliodoro), which could be called a transcendental “political” biography of the Pope, is still more personal. “The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple” symbolizes the expulsion of the French and the subjugation of all the church’s enemies, with Julius II depicted witnessing the scene from his portable throne. Closely related to this is the “Liberation of St. Peter,” in which light and darkness serve to symbolize the historic events of the pontificate. The third great fresco in this room, the “Mass of Bolsena,” shows the Pope kneeling, rather than enthroned, in commemoration of his veneration of the corporale (communion cloth) of Bolsena in the cathedral of Orvieto. In addition to these fresco portraits, there is one by Raphael in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, one of the masterpieces of portraiture, which shows the Pope not as the victorious Moses springing to his feet, as Michelangelo portrayed him, but as a resigned, pensive old man at the end of an adventurous, embattled life. Michelangelo’s chalk drawing of the Pope in the Uffizi gallery approaches it in quality.

As cardinal, Julius II fathered at least one illegitimate daughter, Felice. He made four members of the Della Rovere family cardinals, only one of whom achieved any importance. From the marriage of the Pope’s only brother, Giovanni, to the daughter and heiress of Duke Federigo of Montefeltro descended the dukes of Urbino.

The Pope added wisely to the church’s treasures. Although he had little of the priest in him, he was concerned toward the end only with the church’s grandeur. He wished for greatness for the papacy rather than for the pope, and he wished for peace in Italy. The Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt called him the “saviour of the papacy,” because Alexander VI had greatly endangered its existence for the sake of his family interests.