A new Medici is born amidst tragedy, Pope Leo struggles with the threats posed by France, Spain, and the Holy Roman and Ottoman empires and a deadly conspiracy close to home, and an obscure monk and university lecturer in Germany starts to inspire a bit of controversy.
Transcript
The last we saw Pope Leo X he had just betrayed his mentor and predecessor, Pope Julius, by ousting Julius’ nephew Francesco Maria from the duchy of Urbino and giving the duchy instead to Leo’s own nephew Lorenzo. But a few modern historians and Leo’s contemporaries agreed that he had also betrayed Julius by not doing enough to, as Julius would say, drive the barbarians out of Italy. But honestly while taking Urbino from its rightful duke was an undisputable blunder, I don’t think Leo can really be blamed for the rest of his foreign policy. He was stuck between a French rock and an imperial hard place, especially now that Spain and the Holy Roman Empire was practically ruled by the same family.
The Medici Podcast 