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Søren Rasmussen's avatar

LOL, a blast from the past.

Interestingly, in a column that starts with Julius Caesar, goes on to mention Cesare Borgia and then goes to the Treaty of Tordesillas, it may be fun to note that the treaty, while created in 1494, was not ratified until 1506. And the man who ratified the treaty was the Battle Pope Julius II. Aside from having a wickedly cool papal moniker, Julius was suspected of selecting the name Julius not out of admiration for the uninteresting Pope Julius I, but instead out of regard for, you guessed it, Julius Caesar.

And who was the mortal enemy of Pope Julius II? Why, none other than Cesare Borgia, back before his head needed preservation. Of course, Cesare was a bastard son of a pope himself, another testament to how wacky popes used to be.

And we should maybe note that old Battle Pope was not averse to a bit of madcap hijinks, in that it was he who on a lark decided to grant a dispensation to King Henry VIII to marry his brother Arthur's widow Catherine of Aragon. Alas, Henry later soured on that alliance and then tried to get a later pope to annull Julius' dispensation, claiming that old Julius must clearly have been quite mad to grant Henry the dispensation in the first place. ("How dare he give in to my request, the knave!")

This novel argument failed to win much papal approval and from this the Anglican Church saw its origin.

Also, Julius II seems to have on some level been aware of Harry Lime's famous saying about Italy, the Borgias, the Renaissance and Swiss cuckoo clocks, because he decided that he needed a professional bodyguard and when you need armed men around you, it is vitally important that they be trustworthy and slightly dull and unimaginative. And so, making as big a contrast to the Borgias that he could, he inevitably created the Swiss Guard.

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