I got “hep” to Pope Leo X–or “Leo Decimus” to his friends–in an unsystematic way. I wasn’t wading my way chronologically or even alphabetically through my Oxford Dictionary of Popes, I was perusing Robert Burton’s “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” cruising along at the rate of about ten pages a day, dog-earing pages as I went, when I was struck like Saul on the road to Damascus by a reference to “Leo Decimus, that scoffing Pope.”
Really? A pope who scoffs, instead of a year-and-a-half wonder (May 17, 884 to mid-September, 885) like Hadrian III, who had a widow whipped naked (and try saying that five times fast) through the streets of Rome. I had to look the guy up.
Leo X took “extraordinary delight in humouring of silly fellows, and to put gulleries upon them,” Burton wrote. He sounded like my kind of guy, so I read on: “he made . . . soft fellows stark noddies, & such as were foolish quite mad before he left them.”
Hadrian III: Fun guy.
Not only was Leo X a wise guy, he had his own sidekick, like Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson, or Abbott to Costello, Laurel to Hardy. A guy named Bibiena (sounds like the Michelin tire man, I know) but apparently he was a living, breathing straight man–in the 16th century, no less! Together Leo and Bibiena convinced a musician who was a “ninny” (Burton’s word, not mine) that he was “a man of most excellent skill,” and told him he could become even better if he tied down his strumming arm “to make him strike a sweeter stroke” on his lute. They convinced Baraballius of Gaeta that he was as good a poet as Petrarch and that they would name him poet laureate. When the guy invited all his friends to his installation party “some of his more discreet friends told him of his folly”–but they came thisclose to pulling off a poetry gag for the ages.
So I’m sitting in Quincy Market–ground zero of the New England singles scene–hoping that Leo will accept my humble invitation to grab a drink. Among his other accomplishments, he was the last man to be elected pope without being a priest first. I know, sounds crazy, doesn’t it, but Leo was a cardinal first, pope second, bishop third, and then and only then did he bother to become a priest. You have to admire somebody who, like Tammany Hall political boss George Washington Plunkitt, “seen his opportunities and took ’em.” Since I took the road more traveled in sixth grade–despite the pleadings of my nun-crush Sister Gabriella Marie–and didn’t become a priest, my only hope of becoming pope is to listen to and learn from a guy who pulled it off. Sort of like taking batting lessons from Ted Williams, the last man to hit over .400.
There’s a commotion at the door and as I turn to take in the scene I can see why–Leo is trying to jump the line in full papal regalia–red outfit, funny hat–and some other folks waiting in the cold don’t like it. He learned diplomatic skills as a junior member of the Medici clan, however (his father was Lorenzo the Magnificent, who was not, as one might assume, a magician), and starts throwing money around like cheap beads at Mardi Gras. Suddenly the grumbling of the plebes turns to cheers, and once he sees me holding a bar stool for him, he sits down.
“Thanks for coming,” I say.
“You’re welcome,” he says, not dropping the air of superiority that rests so heavily on his papal shoulders. “Buy me a drink.”
I’m a bit taken aback at his bluntness, so I decide to josh the scoffing pope. “Why should I? You haven’t told me any of your secrets yet.”
“I’ll knock a couple of millennia off your time in Purgatory for a single-malt scotch.”
I’d forgotten–Leo was the guy who turned the Vatican into a money-making machine, sort of like ITT in its go-go years, when it acquired more than 350 businesses. Leo boosted top-line revenues by selling indulgences, pawning the papal jewels, the palace furniture, tableware, even statues of the Apostles. He sold cardinals’ hats and invented a fraternal order–the Papal Knights of St. Peter and St. Paul–and sold memberships in it.
“What do you mean, a couple of millennia? I haven’t been that bad, have I?”
“You told somebody your girlfriend’s roommate had herpes, right?”
“I did that as a public service.”
“You never called back that woman Mimi, like you said you would.”
“Oh, come on–everybody does that.”
“And everybody burns in Purgatory until the end of time for it.”
The bartender arrives and Leo asks for the Scotch menu. He picks out a modestly-priced brand at $75 a shot, and the publican says “Very good, your eminence.” He’s thinking he may break the $10 tip barrier with that kind of base to start from.
“So tell me,” I say once Leo X has taken his first sip. “How, exactly, did you pull it off?”
“Pull what off?”
“The hedonism, the devil-may-care attitude while the Protestant Reformation snuck up on you, the high-living that drove the One True Church deeply into debt . . .”
“You consider 580,000 ducats a year a lot of money?”
“Does that include heath insurance and dental?”
“You better believe it. You know my motto.”
“What?”
“How profitable that fable of Christ hath ben to us and our companie.”
“Well it’s a helluva lot more than I make.”
“Then you need to run for pope,” he says as he nods at the bartender for another round, “and a bowl of pizza-flavored goldfish, please.”
“It looks like Francis is in for the long haul,” I say glumly.
He gives me a sidewise look. “You’ll never make pope thinking like that.”
“What would you suggest?”
“I dunno–sentence one of your enemies to death.”
“Is that . . . really a good idea?”
“Worked for me,” he says through a mouth of bar snacks. “Alfonso Petrucci was a bum, don’t let anybody tell you different.”
“Anything else less . . . violent?”
“You’ve got to be ruthless to be pope–or else be a lot of fun, like me.”
“I’m not very outgoing.”
“So I noticed,” he says, as he winks at a young couple passing by–and I’m not sure if this was intended for the boy or girl. “Maybe if you got some kind of outlandish pet.”
“Like Mike Tyson and his tigers?”
“Sure, or like my pet elephant, Hanno. Any time your U.S. presidents get in trouble, they trot out a White House dog or cat.”
“I’d need approval of my condo board to have an elephant.”
He turns his head and gives me a gimlet eye. “I’m not sure I can help somebody as timid as you.”
“I could spend my time getting the Vatican’s finances in order.”
“Or you could do what I did . . . and party.”
“Is that really appropriate for the Vicar of Christ on Earth?”
“You know what I always say.”
“What?”
“Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us.”