The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [65]
The Pope enjoyed contests of impromptu versifying, gambling at cards, prolonged banquets with music and especially every form of theatricals. He loved laughter and amusement, wrote a contemporary biographer, Paolo Giovio, “either from a natural liking for this kind of pastime or because he believed that by avoiding vexation and care, he might thereby lengthen his days.” His health was a major concern because, although only 37 when elected, he suffered from an unpleasant anal ulcer which gave him great trouble in processions, although it aided his election because he allowed his doctors to spread word that he would not live long—always a persuasive factor to fellow cardinals. Physically he hardly resembled the Renaissance ideal of noble manhood that Michelangelo embodied in the figure of his brother for the Medici Chapel, even though that too bore small resemblance to the original. (“A thousand years from now,” said the artist, “who will care whether these were the real features?”) Leo was short, fat and flabby, with a head too heavy and legs too puny for his body. Soft white hands were his pride; he took great care of them and adorned them with sparkling rings.
He loved hunting accompanied by retinues of a hundred or more, hawking at Viterbo, stag-hunting at Corneto, fishing in the Lake of Bolsena. In winter, the Papal Court enjoyed musical programs, poetry readings, ballets and plays, including the risqué comedies of Ariosto, Machiavelli, and La Calandria by Leo’s former tutor, Bernardo da Bibbiena, who accompanied the Pope to Rome and was made a Cardinal. When Giuliano de’ Medici came to Rome with his wife, Cardinal Bibbiena wrote to him, “God be praised, for here we lack nothing but a court with ladies.” A clever, cultivated Tuscan and skilled diplomatist of great wit, high spirits and earthy tastes, Bibbiena was the Pope’s close companion and adviser.
Leo’s taste for the classical and the theatrical filled Rome with endless spectacles in a strange mixture of paganism and Christianity: pageants of ancient mythology, carnival masquerades, dramas of Roman history, spectacles of the Passion played in the Colosseum, classical orations and splendid Church feasts. None was more memorable than the famous procession of the white elephant bearing gifts to the Pope from the King of Portugal to celebrate a victory over the Moors. The elephant, led by a Moor with another riding on his neck, carried under a jeweled howdah a chest decorated with silver towers and battlements and containing rich vestments, gold chalices and books in fine bindings for Leo’s delight. At the bridge of Sant’ Angelo, the elephant, on command, bowed three times to the Pope and sprinkled the assembled spectators with water to their screams of glee.
On occasion, paganism invaded the Vatican. In the course of one of the Sacred Orations, the speaker invoked the “immortals” of the Greek pantheon, causing both laughter and some anger in the audience, but the Pope listened complacently and tolerated the blunder “in keeping with his nature.” He liked the sermons to be above all learned, reflecting classical style and content.
In political affairs Leo’s lax attitude accomplished no triumphs and undid some of Julius’. His principle was to avoid trouble as far as he could and accept the inevitable when he had to. His method followed Medici statecraft, which allowed, not to say prescribed, arrangements with both sides. “Having