Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III. RAPHAEL UNDER JULIUS II. (1508-1513.) JAPHAEL was now entering upon a wider sphere in the service of a prince who united great intelligence in temporal things to the most energetic mind. Besides being a great sovereign and an illustrious general, Julius II. also paid much honour to the arts and sciences. He raised the state of morals,1 so depraved under Alexander VI., and brought back peace, which Rome had not enjoyed for a long time. His artistic enterprises, especially, were magnificent. He was not permitted to see them completed; but he impressed on them all, by the assistance of the talents which he had recognized and chosen, the stamp of his own governing mind. It was he who carried out the vast project of Nicholas V., of enlarging the Vatican to the proportions of a sort of pontifical town, where there would not merely be room for the pope and his suite, and for all the high clergy and guests of distinguished rank, but also for all the clerical administrations; and thus, in reality, to make of this palace a centre of Christianity. He it was, also, who conceived the idea of restoring the old Basilica 1 See the Lectures of Uberto Fogliatta:
Clarorum Ligurum Elogia, p. 28;
Oldoino al Ciaconio, iii. col. 249, and Tomaso Inghirami, Orat. p. 82. P. Bembo, B. Castiglione, and Lod. Ariosto, in their Histories of Julius II. also praise his endeavours to restore the state of morals as well as his courage and love of justice. of St. Peter in such a manner as to make it worthy the honour of being called the first Christian temple. The monument intended to serve as a tomb for himself he entrusted to Michael Angelo, and he wished it to be stamped with the imposing character he himself desired to bear in history.1 He also commanded the pow…
