The Life of Pope Leo X in Four Books

In a free and most abusive city, he could scarcely hope that he would be able to sustain himself with his dignity intact for much longer, given the envy that was being stirred up against him here and there in the crowds of citizens and in the meeting places. For with the treasury exhausted, it was necessary that the war be waged indeed with public faith but with private wealth, which was heavy and very bitter to everyone, even to his closest friends, since it appeared to be undertaken not to preserve the liberty of the Republic but rather to protect and nourish the power of one man. For Xystus and Ferdinandus, so that they might increase the envy against Laurentius more and more, declared that they had by no means brought war to oppress the Florentine Republic, which they desired not only to be safe but flourishing, but rather to recall their former liberty once the Tyrant was ejected. A very atrocious and sudden pestilence also brought great difficulties in administering the war, which was ravaging the city with diseases spread by the slightest contact and with the frequent funerals of many, as the citizens were afflicted with a double danger, those who neither dared to escape into the countryside of a milder and freer climate to protect their health because of the terror of war spread widely and with the enemy nearby, nor dared to remain in the city, defiled by the contagion of that deadly disease, in fear of the supreme crisis. The hopes of aid that were owed to him by the allies were also diminished. For he saw the Milanese affair, which was then ruled by the weak and unstable mind of the boy Ioannes Galeacius and his mother Bona, greatly disturbed by the sudden defection of the Ligurians and the domestic contentions of the Sforza brothers, and the Venetians, in accordance with their inveterate custom, were deciding on sending aid with very slow deliberations, so that they might be spectators rather than allies or helpers in that war. For which reasons, when he wanted to flee into the harbor of leisure from so many military and internal storms, he took counsel from the magnitude of his mind, both wholesome for the fatherland and citizens and necessary and useful for himself, and soon most glorious in its success itself. For having easily obtained a two-month truce through the winter, he signaled to King Ferdinandus that he, relying on the conscience of good deeds, would come to Naples immediately and would be in his power so that in settling matters he might use no other judgment than the king’s, which he hoped would be not at all alien to humanity and equity. Therefore, having shared his plan with a few, he chose magistrates from those most faithful to him, commended the Republic to Thomas Soderinus, a man of outstanding prudence, but he took his son with him to be a hostage of faith, and having set out for Pisa under the pretense of visiting an estate, he traveled from there by sea in two triremes to Naples. While he was loosening the ropes from the shore, he wrote to the Senate that he had not hesitated to call his own safety into danger for the sake of public quiet and the love of the citizens; that he was therefore setting out to an enemy king so that, peace having been sought on some tolerable condition, he might free both himself from envy and the city from the fear of war, or at least, if the Gods were hostile to his most just counsels...