If
despite all his high-sounding 'Away with the barbarians! ' he
nevertheless contributed more than any man to the firm settlement of
the Spaniards in Italy, he may have thought it a matter of indifference
to the Papacy, or even, as things stood, a relative advantage. And to
whom, sooner than to Spain, could the Church look for a sincere and
lasting respect, in an age when the princes of Italy cherished none but
sacrilegious projects against her? Be this as it may, the powerful,
original nature, which could swallow no anger and conceal no genuine
good-will, made on the whole the impression most desirable in his
situation--that of the 'Pontefice terribile.' 26 He could even, with
comparatively clear conscience, venture to summon a council to Rome,
and so bid defiance to that outcry for a council which was raised by
the opposition all over Europe. A ruler of this stamp needed some great
outward symbol of his conceptions; Julius found it in the
reconstruction of St. Peter's. The plan of it, as Bramante wished to
have it, is perhaps the grandest expression of power in unity which can
be imagined. In other arts besides architecture the face and the memory
of the Pope live on in their most ideal form, and it is not without
significance that even the Latin poetry of those days gives proof of a
wholly different enthusiasm for Julius than that shown for his
predecessors.
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