Proposal I This is a proposal. I have not yet completed the references but they will include Cesareo, Roscoe, Gregorovius, von Pastor, Vaughan, Paolo Giovio, Zimmerman, and Falconi. Links are to be added as appropriate. Comment on the talk page.
During the conclave that followed the death of Leo, anonymous allegations circulated at Rome in the form of pasquinades and mock epitaphs lampooning him as a sodomite.1 The received opinion expressed by Catholic and non-Catholic historians alike since William Roscoe writing in the early 19th century, is that these and other imputations of sexual immorality made against him after his death2 either do not (in the case of the lampoons) deserve to be credited or (in the case of the later imputations) are too vague to be credited.3 Indeed, Paolo Giovio, a contemporary who knew the pope, reprobated as malicious the scandalous rumours that circulated in the Court of Rome to the effect that inappropriate behaviour with his chamberlains in public reflected grosser liberties in private.4 A biography published in Italian in 1987 speculated, on the basis of inferences, that Leo had a sexual propensity towards male youths.5 Ridiculus mus (talk) 20:42, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
Proposal II (following my perusal of Strathern).
Sexual morality
editSince the late 18th century, historians both Catholic and non-Catholic have reviewed and given no credence to imputations of unchastity made against Leo in the years and decades following his death, or else have regarded them as unworthy of notice.[1] The few who stand outside this consensus fall short of concluding that Leo was unchaste.[2] These adverse imputations mostly comprise scabrous verse libels of the type known as pasquinades which were particularly abundant during the conclave which followed Leo's death in 1521,[3] and allusions either veiled and obscure or general and unparticularised in works by two contemporary historians.[4] Another contemporary, and eye-witness at Leo's Court, affirms that Leo was chaste all his life.[5] Ridiculus mus (talk) 05:49, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
- ^ Those who have rejected the evidence include:- Fabroni, Angelo, Leone X: Pontificis Maximi Vita, Pisa (1797) at p.165 with note 84; Roscoe, at pp.478-486; and Pastor, at pp.80f. with a long footnote. Those who have treated of the life of Leo at any length and ignored the imputations, or summarily dismissed them, include:- Gregorovius, Ferdinand, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages Eng. trans. Hamilton, Annie, London (1902, vol. VIII.1), p.243; Vaughan, p.280; Hayes, Carlton Huntley, article "Leo X" in The Encyclopedia Britannica, Cambridge (1911, vol. XVI); Creighton, Mandell, A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, London (new edn., 1919), vol. 6, pp. 192-195; Pellegrini, Marco, articles "Leone X" in Enciclopedia dei Papi, (2000, vol.3) and Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (2005, vol.64); and Strathern, Paul The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (a popular history), London (2003, pbk 2005), p.277. Of these, Pastor and Hayes are known to have been Catholic, and Roscoe, Gregorovius and Creighton are known not to have been.
- ^ The most recent biography of the pope speculates that his private life may have been marked by moral irregularity: Falconi, Carlo, Leone X, Milano (1987). Giovanni Dall'Orto, a self-described militant gay homosexual, gathered and reviewed the most relevant material (including Falconi, pp. 455-461) in an article in Wotherspoon & Aldrich, Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, Routledge, London and New York (2001), at p.264, arriving only at tentative and provisional conclusions as to Leo's putative sexual proclivities. In a polemically anti-Catholic work, Joseph McCabe accused Pastor of untruthfulness and Vaughan of lying in course of their treatment of the evidence, but himself went no further than saying that Giovio and Guicciardini "seem to share" a belief that Leo engaged in "unnatural vice" while pope: see, A History of the Popes, London (1939), p.409. Both Falconi and McCabe were ordained as Catholic priests but had ceased ministry long before writing the books cited here.
- ^ See, e.g., Cesareo, G.A., Pasquino e pasquinate nella Roma di Leone X, Roma (1938), pp.74f. and 78; see also references to lampoons in Roscoe, vol.4, p.464 (footnote; he also prints several in his appendix), and Pastor, vol 8, p.68.
- ^ Giovio, Paolo, De Vita Leonis Decimi Pont. Max., Firenze (1548, 4 vols), written for the Medici Pope Clement VII and completed in 1533; and (covering the years 1492 to 1534) Guicciardini, Francesco, Storia d'Italia, Firenze (1561, first 16 books; 1564 full edn. 20 books) written between 1537 and 1540, and published after his death in the latter year. For the characterisation of the relevant passages (few and brief) in these authors, see, e.g., Vaughan, p.280:- (". . a somewhat obscure passage in the Fourth Book of Jovius' Life of Leo X."), and Wyatt, Michael, "Bibbiena's Closet: Interpretation and the Sexual Culture of a Renaissance Papal Court", comprising chap. 2 of Cestaro, Gary P. (ed.), Queer Italia, London (2004) pp.35-54 at p.50:- " . . a somewhat reticent passage from Francesco Guicciardini". To these can be added Zimmerman, T.P., Paolo Giovio: The Historian and the Crisis of Sixteenth-Century Italy, Princeton University Press (1996), citing at p.23 Giovio's "disapproval of the pope's familiar banter with his chamberlains - handsome young men from noble families - and the advantage he was said to take of them." Two pages later Zimmerman notes Giovio's penchant for gossip.
- ^ Herculaneo, Matteo, publ. in Fabroni, Leonis X: Pontificis Maximi Vita at note 84, and quoted in the material part by Roscoe, vol.4, p.485 in a footnote.