JULIUS II THE WARRIOR POPE IN HISTORY AND LEGEND

Nicknamed "the Terrible" for his fiery temperament and great physical strength (which he preserved throughout the ten years of his reign as pope, from 1503 to 1513), Pope Julius II was known not only as a devious politician and the "swordsman pope," but also as a great patron of the arts and enthusiastic discoverer of some of the most important ancient statuary we have today, such as the Laocoön, the Hercules torso, the Tiber River (now in the Vatican Museum), the Sleeping Ariadne and many others.

Having summoned the three most important artists of the time to his court, Julius II adorned Rome with some of the greatest masterpieces of Renaissance art. He entrusted Bramante with the remodelling of the Vatican Palace and the rebuilding of St. Peter's, had Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel and sculpt his funerary monument in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, and commissioned Raphael to fresco certain rooms (the "Stanze") in Pope Nicholas V's palace.

A Pope who "had a genius for great things," as Stendhal wrote, not hesitating to compare him to Napoleon for the impeccable way he undertook the rebuilding of St. Peter's; Julius II himself laid the cornerstone on April 18,1506.

His intention was to illustrate religion through majestic works of art: "We believe it our duty to promote the divine cult not only by statutes, but also by good example."

His construction of the new basilica of St. Peter was tangible evidence of his ambitious aims.The Pope's love for the Savona area, in Liguria, where he was born did not prevent him from having a passion for the Alban Hills, particularly for Grottaferrata, set below the hills of ancient Tusculum, between of Frascati and Marino.

He loved its wholesome climate, beautiful landscape and especially the splendid Abbey founded in 1004 by St. Nilus of Rossano (hence the name by which it is commonly known) In 1472, a year after he was raised to the rank of Cardinal, Giuliano della Rovere was made Commendator Abbot of St. Nilus's. Since it had been seriously damaged over the decades, first by the Duke of Calabria's troops, then by those of the Orsini and Colonna families, Giuliano decided to defend the abbey against possible future attacks.

The fortifications he built still stand intact. Giuliano had been made Cardinal of San Pietro in Vincoli by his uncle, Pope Sistus IV, as a reward for having put down a rebellion in Umbria and defeated Niccolò Vitelli, the tyrant of Città del Castello.

Nineteen years and three popes after his uncle's death, Giuliano was elected pope himself. Goodness and humility, traits one might expect to find in a pope, were not as strong in Julius II as his military bent: he was a soldier,a "warrior pope." Indeed,his choice of the name Julius was not so much in homage to pope Julius I, who had fought energetically against the Arians, as in admiration for Julius Caesar.

"But those times had need of such a Pope," wrote Rohrbacher, a French priest and Church historian,in the mid-19th century,referring to the corruption and nepotism, the undermining of papal authority, both spiritual and temporal, that held sway at the time Julius II ascended the throne of Rome.The great 19th-century historian Jacob Burckhardt was of the same opinion: "The times were such that one had to be either anvil or hammer, and Julius II, in order to preserve his State and restore the power of the Church, he acted as a hammer."

Historians have reported many anecdotes about the Pope's energetic temperament. For instance, it is said that when Michelangelo was making a sketch for Julius of a statue that was to be raised in his honour in Bologna,he drew the pope's right hand raised in benediction, then asked "What shall the left hand do? Shall it hold a book?" To which Julius responded: "A book? Me? Are you treating me like a schoolboy? I want a sword!" Girolamo Lippomano, the Venetian ambassador to the Holy See, recounted that in the cold of January 1511, the nearly seventy-year-old Pope, just recovered from a very high fever, joined his army as it was besieging French troops holed up in the town of Mirandola,in Emilia: "Julius II appeared against everybody's expectations. He seems to have recovered completely, he strides around the camp in the swirling snow; he fears neither wind nor rain, he has a giant's fibre. Yesterday and today it snowed without interruption; the snow is knee-high, yet the pope stays in camp."

And legend has it that, when he became pope, Julius threw St. Peter's keys into the Tiber, keeping only St. Paul's sword.Whether these events actually happened or not doesn't really matter; what really counts for us is that this pope, a passionate lover of art and beautiful things, chose to spend time in our splendid territory, leaving behind him an everlasting sign of his passage: the crenellated ramparts, massive towers and moat of the Abbey of St. Nilus, priceless jewel of the Roman Hills.