He ascended the steps
of St. Peter's chair without simony and amid general applause, and with
him ceased, at all events, the undisguised traffic in the highest
offices of the Church. Julius had favorites, and among them were some
the reverse of worthy, but a special fortune put him above the
temptation to nepotism. His brother, Giovanni della Rovere, was the
husband of the heiress of Urbino, sister of the last Montefeltro,
Guidobaldo, and from this marriage was born, in 1491, a son, Francesco
Maria della Rovere, who was at the same time Papal 'nipote' and lawful
heir to the duchy of Urbino. What Julius elsewhere acquired, either on
the field of battle or by diplomatic means, he proudly bestowed on the
Church, not on his family; the ecclesiastical territory, which he found
in a state of dissolution, he bequeathed to his successor completely
subdued, and increased by Parma and Piacenza. It was not his fault that
Ferrara too was not added the Church. The 700,000 ducats which were
stored up in the Castel Sant' Angelo were to be delivered by the
governor to none but the future Pope. He made himself heir of the
cardinals, and, indeed, of all the clergy who died in Rome, and this by
the most despotic means; but he murdered or poisoned none of them. That
he should himself lead his forces to battle was for him an unavoidable
necessity, and certainly did him nothing but good at a time when a man
in Italy was forced to be either hammer or anvil, and when per-
sonality was a greater power than the most indisputable right.
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