Joseph McCabe (1867-1955) was one of the most prolific authors of all time. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic, worked on Latin documents, and made himself very well-informed about Christianity, but turned against it. But he was extremely naive about Jews; bear this in mind.
Click for Detailed notes on McCabe - scroll down for selections from A Rationalist Encyclopaedia (1948).
Here's the full A Rationalist Encyclopaedia (about 1.3 MBytes; Word format; includes notes on some of its limits)
Click for Detailed notes on McCabe - scroll down for selections from A Rationalist Encyclopaedia (1948).
Here's the full A Rationalist Encyclopaedia (about 1.3 MBytes; Word format; includes notes on some of its limits)
Julius II (ruled 1503-13), Pope.
J. McCabe, Rationalists Encyclopaedia
Giuliano della Rovere was one of the peasant nephews, and a Franciscan friar, whom Pope Sixtus IV (himself a high Franciscan official and one of the "good Popes") brought from their monasteries to share his new wealth in Rome. One of the nephews, Pietro Riario, killed himself in a few years by his scandalous extravagance and exotic vices. Giuliano, though at once raised to the cardinalate, preferred military service and hunting, and led the Papal armies. He was notoriously immoral, and no one questions that he had three acknowledged daughters, gambled heavily, and swore and drank like any other soldier; but Catholic historians refuse to admit the charge of one of the leading nobles of the time, that be was addicted to unnatural vice. From 1484 onward he maintained a murderous and very corrupt rivalry with Cardinal Borgia for the Papacy, which he secured in 1503 by gorgeous promises to the cardinal electors which he repudiated when he got the tiara. It was, Julius who, raising funds by even worse simony than his predecessors had practised, adorned Rome with its magnificent edifices, and this artistic splendour is now used to overshadow the very grave defects of his character as Pope. He was a thoroughly unprincipled secular monarch - "as revolting as the frank unscrupulousness of Alexander VI," the lenient Bishop Creighton says - trying to win back the Papal States, still drinking and cursing deeply, by a lifetime of fighting. His rage and intemperance were notorious to the end. We have to resent the modern practice of implying that Papal vice ended with Alexander VI. Roman corruption continued for more than a century [See Counter-Reformation] The best biography is still M. Brosch's Papst Julius II (1878) but a summary, with contemporary authorities will be found in McCabe's Crises in the History of the Papacy (1916) Ch XIIIBack to Joseph McCabe extracts
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