countered on his extensive travels. Some
of his music includes daring harmonies
and strange chromatic melodies that were
unknown among other Renaissance com-
posers (with the exception of Carlo
Gesualdo). All of his music was written
for voice and, as far as music historians
know, he wrote no purely instrumental
music at all. He published hundreds of his
own compositions during his lifetime, a
rare achievement for any Renaissance com-
poser. Many of his sixty masses were based
on secular compositions, including bawdy
popular songs, that he adapted for the tra-
ditional Latin text of the Catholic Mass.
His last work, theTears of St. Peter, was a
group of twenty-one madrigals, and re-
mains his most famous work.
SEEALSO: Gesualdo, Carlo; music; Pal-
estrina, Giovanni
Leo X .............................................
(1475–1521)
Pope and patron of the Italian Renais-
sance, Leo X was born as Giovanni de’
Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnifi-
cent of Florence. His powerful and wealthy
family secured important posts for him at
a young age: head of rich abbeys in France
and Italy and appointment as a cardinal of
the church in 1489, at the age of thirteen.
He was educated by the leading humanists
of the Italian Renaissance, including Pico
della Mirandola and Marcilio Ficino, and
studied at the prestigious University of
Pisa.
After the election of Alexander VI, a
member of the rival Borgia family of
Spain, he left Rome for Florence. When a
rebellion expelled the Medici rulers from
Florence in 1494, he escaped the city dis-
guised as a monk. He returned in 1512
when the family returned to power. In the
next year, on the death of Julius II, he was
elected pope.
Leo was a generous patron of the arts
and literature, and made his papal court a
center of learning and amusement. The
pope hosted lavish banquets staged elabo-
rate plays and pageants, and hired musi-
cians and entertainers for the pleasure of
himself and his guests. He supported
charitable institutions in Rome and gave
alms to the poor and crippled. He invited
poets to Rome and lavished them with of-
ficial titles and generous salaries. He
founded the Medicean Academy in Rome
to pursue the study of the Greek classics
and sent collectors to the four corners of
Europe to find and return unknown vol-
umes of ancient Greek and Roman writ-
ers, who were collected in the Vatican Li-
brary.
Leo also took the painter Raphael un-
der his wing, keeping the artist at the Vati-
can until Raphael’s death in 1520. Raphael
became the dean of artists at the Vatican,
and completed his most famous works un-
der Leo’s patronage, including the decora-
tion of the Vaticanstanze, or halls, theSis-
tine Madonna, and cartoons for the
tapestries of the Sistine Chapel. The great
expenses, however, quickly drained the
treasury, and to raise money Leo ordered
the sale of church offices and indulgences,
in which people simply paid money to
have their sins officially forgiven.
Under Leo’s reign the Papacy was em-
broiled in political and military conflict
with France, which Leo pursued by mak-
ing and breaking alliances all over Europe
and running up a huge debt for the Vati-
can treasury. In the end, the pope and King
Francis I signed a Concordat in 1516, in
which the pope conceded the authority of
thekingoverchurchpropertyinFrance.
These events helped to keep France a
Catholic nation even as Germany andLeo X