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Tumblr crosspost (18 May 2020)
Feb. 9th, 2022 07:12 amShout-out to my man Erasmus for his take on Giuliano della Rovere/Pope Julius II, c. 1517:
But when nations and their rulers have been carrying on riotous raids and counter-raids for years on end, what happens then to the papal authority, once second only to that of Christ himself? It might be exercised even here, if the popes were not held in the grip of the same passions. Let the pope call for war, he is obeyed at once; when he calls for peace, why isn’t he obeyed the same way? If the princes were so eager for peace, why did they obey Julius in his belligerent outbursts yet pay hardly any attention to Leo when he spoke out for peace? If the pope’s authority is sacred, it ought to be particularly so whenever he urges the same things as Christ originally proposed. The princes who listened to Julius when he called for that awful war but then couldn’t hear Leo when he called for Christian concord were practically admitting that, while using the church as a smoke-screen, they were really serving their own appetites.
