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Julius had been a strong pope and is remembered, deservedly, for his patronage of Michelangelo. But like all the pontiffs in that troubled age, he was more sinner than sinned against. He was also a Della Rovere—hot-tempered, flamboyant, and impetuous; Italians spoke of his terribilità (awesomeness). For five years he and his allies fought Venice. This campaign was successful; he recovered Bologna and Perugia, papal cities which the Venetians had seized during the misrule of the Borgia pope. In his second war, an attempt to expel the French from Italy, he was less fortunate, though by all accounts he cut a spectacular figure in combat, taking command at the front, white bearded, wearing helmet and mail, swinging his sword and always on horseback.

In satirizing this formidable pontiff Erasmus neither sought notoriety nor welcomed it; he had tried to deflect personal controversy by presenting his new work anonymously, but that was a doomed hope. He had shown it to too many colleagues. Sir Thomas More stripped his friend’s disguise away in a careless moment, and the responsibility was fixed. Within the Catholic hierarchy, resentment against the author was deepened by what, even today, would be considered questionable taste. The year before the presentation of Erasmus’s work in Paris—it was a dialogue—Julius had died. Thus the Church was actually in mourning for the victim of Iulius exclusus. Yet this did not dampen the hilarity of the Parisian audience, to whom it was first presented as a skit, or the multitude of readers in the months and years to come. In his onslaught on the papacy, Erasmus had struck a nerve; his followers thought the blow long overdue.

Julius is one character in the dialogue; Saint Peter is the other. Both stand at the gates of heaven, where the pope has presented himself for admittance. Peter won’t let him in. Beneath the applicant’s priestly cassock he notes “bloody armor” and a “body scarred with sins all over, breath loaded with wine, health broken by debauchery.” To him the waiting pontiff is “the emperor come back from hell.” What, he asks, has Julius “done for Christianity?”

Heatedly the applicant replies that he has “done more for the Church and Christ than any pope before me.” He cites examples: “I raised the revenue. I invented new offices and sold them. … I set all the princes of Europe by the ears. I tore up treaties, and kept great armies in the field. I covered Rome with palaces, and left five millions in the treasury behind me.”

To be sure, he concedes, “I had my misfortunes.” Some whore had afflicted him with “the French pox.” He had been accused of showing one of his sons favoritism. (“What?” asks Peter, astounded. “Popes with wives and children?” Julius, equally surprised, replies, “No, not wives, but why not children?”) Julius acknowledges that he had also been accused of simony and pederasty, but is evasive when asked if his plea is Not guilty, and after Peter, bearing in, inquires, “Is there no way of removing a wicked pope?” Julius snorts: “Absurd! Who can remove the highest authority of all? … He cannot be deposed for any crime whatsoever.” Peter asks: “Not for murder?” Julius replies: “Not for murder.” Under questioning he adds that a pontiff cannot lose his miter even if guilty of fornication, incest, simony, poisoning, parricide, and sacrilege. Peter concludes that a pope may be “the wickedest of men, yet safe from punishment.” The audience howled, knowing that was precisely Rome’s position.

There is no way Peter is going to let this man into paradise. Julius, apoplectic, tells him that the world has changed since the time “you starved as a pope, with a handful of poor hunted bishops about you.” When that line of reasoning is rejected, he threatens to excommunicate Peter, calling him “only a priest … a beggarly fisherman … a Jew.” Peter, unimpressed, replies, “If Satan needed a vicar he could find none fitter than you. … Fraud, usury, and cunning made you pope. … I brought heathen Rome to acknowledge Christ; you have made it heathen again. … With your treaties and your