Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
First of all, what monstrous new fashion is this, to wear the dress of a priest on top, while underneath it you're all bristling and clanking with blood-stained armor?
Thus St Peter begins his indictment in the Julius Exclusus of the late Pope Julius II (1503–13) for his engagement in war, particularly his campaigns to impose effective rule in the Lands of St Peter. Peter lodges many other charges as well, but this above all: that Julius, his putative successor, has waged war and befouled his priestly raiment. For this reason he is to be barred from heaven forever. The author of this Senecan parody, first published anonymously in 1517, was long thought to have been Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466–1536), with whose Latin style and pacifist views the Julius seems to be entirely consonant. (Erasmus always disavowed the authorship, which the English humanist and cleric Richard Pace always claimed and for which Pace has recently begun to receive the recognition he deserved; the fact that Erasmus was thought for nearly five-hundred years to be the author is the historically crucial point.) As one of the most distinguished and influential of Renaissance humanists, Erasmus has ever since informed the attitudes of educated westerners. Regardless of his genius as a patron of the arts, Julius' reputation has never recovered from this literary bill of attainder, and it helps explain why Julius was one of the last warrior popes.
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