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Updated: June 21, 2025
For Milan he received the homage of Sforza. The Medici pope, whose family he had restored in Florence, was now his ally. Charles visited Italy for the first time in 1529 to view his territories, and at Bologna received from the pope's hands the ancient iron crown of Lombard Italy and the imperial crown of Rome. It was the last papal coronation of a ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.
Italy then, as now, was divided into many independent states, and distracted by civil and religious dissensions. The duchy of Milan was ruled by Ludovico Moro, son of the celebrated Francis Sforza. Naples, called a kingdom, had just been conquered by the French. Florence was under the sway of the Medici. Venice, whose commercial importance had begun to decline, was controlled by an oligarchy of nobles. The chair of St. Peter was filled by pope Alexander
Giuliano received a Cardinal's hat, and, after a tempestuous warfare with the intervening Popes, ascended the Holy Chair as Julius II. Girolamo Basso was created Cardinal of San Crisogono in 1477, and died in 1507. Girolamo Riario wedded Catherine, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Sforza.
There was nothing rosse, non-moral about the Renaissance Italian. The women were strongly tempered. I love to believe the story told by Machiavelli and Muratori of Catherine Sforza in the citadel of Forli. "Surrender or we slay your children which we hold as hostages," cried the besiegers. "Kill them if you like. I can breed more to avenge them." It is the speech of a giant nature.
The Government, it is true, took measures of alleviation which were also adopted by other Italian despots, such as Galeazzo Maria Sforza: in time of famine, corn was brought from a distance and seems to have been distributed gratuitously; but in ordinary times it compensated itself by the monopoly, if not of corn, of many other of the necessaries of life fish, salt, meat, fruit and vegetables, which last were carefully planted on and ne ar the walls of the city.
This was exactly what happened: Sforza, uneasy about his duchy, resolved to threaten Ferdinand's kingdom. Nothing could be easier: he knew the warlike nations of Charles VIII, and the pretensions of the house of France to the kingdom of Naples.
The Sforza brothers soon found their position intolerable, and the intervention of a friendly neighbour, the Marquis of Mantua, was necessary before they could obtain any recognition of their right.
This was in so far justifiable as Romagna, with its princes and civic despots, threatened to shake off the papal supremacy altogether, and ran the risk of shortly falling a prey to Sforza or the Venetians, when Rome interfered to prevent it.
Sforza, in consequence, took part with Eugenius, and defeated Fortebraccio at Tivoli; but in the meantime a general insurrection broke out in Rome itself.
After the accession of his old enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, to the papal throne, Cardinal Sforza once more attained a high degree of honour and prosperity, and when he died, in 1505, Julius II. raised the magnificent monument in the church of S. Maria del Popolo to his memory.
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