Pope Leo X
1475 CE–1521 CE · Florence
Born Giovanni de' Medici, second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, he was made a cardinal as a teenager and steeped in Florentine humanism. As Leo X he presided over a brilliant, lavish Roman court, patronizing Raphael and countless scholars, but his vast spending—partly to finance St. Peter's—drove the sale of indulgences. This was the spark for Martin Luther's 1517 protest; Leo's bull Exsurge Domine (1520) and Luther's subsequent excommunication failed to contain the Reformation. Often faulted for underestimating the crisis, he is remembered for cultural splendor and political maneuvering even as Western Christendom began to fracture during his reign.
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FlorenceItaly
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About Florence
Florence is the capital of Tuscany in central Italy. A leading city of the Italian Renaissance under the Medici, it hosted the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439), which briefly reunited the Latin and Greek churches, was the city of the Dominican friar Savonarola, and produced several Medici popes. Galileo became court mathematician and philosopher to the Medici grand duke in 1610, spent his last years under house arrest at Arcetri on the city's edge, and is buried in Santa Croce. Its Jewish community was confined to a ghetto created by Cosimo I de' Medici in 1571 until emancipation in 1848, and its Great Synagogue was completed in 1882.
In Florence at the same time
Across the traditions, in Florence at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Leo X’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
Pope Alexander VI, Pope Pius III, Pope Julius II, Girolamo Savonarola, Pope Paul III, Pope Paul IV, Pope Clement VII, Martin Luther, Pope Julius III
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Leo X’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
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