Il papa guerriero examines the propaganda, both positive and negative, surrounding Julius II (r. 1503–13). As Stinger, Rowland, Starn, Patridge, and other scholars have shown, Julian publicists like Raphael, Michelangelo, and Egidio of Viterbo devoted the full force of Renaissance art and oratory to portraying the pontiff as larger than life. He was the bringer of a golden age, a second Caesar, and the liberator of Italy and the Church. In part 1, Rospocher demonstrates that these representations of Julius were not confined to the elite; they were familiar in public spaces, especially in Bologna and Rome. Masterfully deploying examples, Rospocher cites poetry in the volgare, woodcuts, widely disseminated papal bulls, and ceremonies to establish the pervasiveness of the image of Julius as the long-awaited restorer of the Church Militant. Yet popular writers recognized the contradictions inherent in the triumphalist image of Julius, and when their political loyalties shifted, they could easily turn their praise of the warrior pope to mockery.

In part 2, Rospocher examines the antipapal propaganda that spread throughout the Italian Peninsula. Partisans of the Bentivoglio accused the pontiff of homosexuality and claimed that, far from saving Rome, the pope had prostituted her. Although the Ferrarese initially praised Julius, when the pope attacked in 1510, his forces became Jews, and Julius an enemy of religion. However, it was the Venetians who offered the most virulent attacks of the Della Rovere pontiff. Chapter 8, which may be the book’s high point, demonstrates the facility with which poets and politicians turned their praise of Julius to vilification, to celebration, and then to vilification again as political relations between the pontiff and the Serenissima shifted. Rospocher demonstrates that popular denunciations of Julius (such as a letter written by Christ to the erring pope) drew on official Venetian propaganda and that the patrician government supported — even if it did not commission — popular texts. Yet the political agendas of the city’s patricians did not always align with the sentiments of the piazzas, and the senate punished those who spoke out against its authority. The severity of the punishments meted out to popular critics by both Julius and his enemies provides some of Rospocher’s most convincing evidence of Cinquecento authorities’ cognizance of and concern with popular opinion.

In part 3, Rospocher moves his focus north of the Alps, examining French anti-Julian propaganda and English defenses of the pope. Here, the political elite had firmer control over popular political discourse, but Rospocher argues that the ideological justifications for and against war were often the same used by Julius and his publicists. Even as French theologians sought canonical limitations to papal power, popular authors took advantage of the comic potential of pitting Julius against Saint Peter on stage and in vernacular texts. In England, conversely, priests, friars, and allegorical poetry promised total remission of the penalties of purgatory to those who fought for six months in the pope’s holy war against the heretical and tyrannical Louis XII.

Throughout Il papa guerriero, Rospocher claims that he has two goals: to elucidate the development of Julius II’s image among his contemporaries and to explain the nature of early Cinquecento political communication. Not surprisingly, he is more successful in his first goal than his second. Positive and negative images of Julius and their interrelationship appear in vivid detail thanks to Rospocher’s huge body of evidence and strategic use of quotations, illustrations, and analysis. But if Rospocher shines a dazzling light on Julius’s image, the workings of Cinquecento politics remain murky. It is not clear who was producing popular works in praise of Julius, and while Rospocher often names the pope’s detractors, he does not elucidate how popular works may have impacted political policy. But if Rospocher does not manage to explain how discourse happens or to show the birth of the public sphere, he provides a vivid case study of popular media, demonstrating that oral, manuscript, print, vernacular, and Latin cultures interrelated and cross-pollinated in the early sixteenth century. Thus, this book will be of great interest not only to students of the papacy, but to all those who study early modern popular culture, political culture, book culture, and communication more generally.