# CHAPTER 27 — Men Very Rarely Know How to Be Entirely Good or Entirely Bad

When he went to Bologna in 1505 to expel from that state the Bentivogli family which had held the principality of that city for a hundred years, Pope Julius II * also wanted to remove Gio-vampagolo Baglioni * from Perugia, where he was ruler, just as the pope had conspired against all those rulers who held lands belonging to the church. And having arrived in the vicinity of Perugia with this purpose and intention, which were known to everyone, Julius did not wait for his own army, which was protecting him, but entered the city unarmed, notwithstanding the fact that Giovampagolo was inside with many of the people he had gathered around him for his defence. Thus, carried away by that wild enthusiasm with which he governed all his affairs, Julius placed himself with no one other than his bodyguard in the hands of his enemy whom he then led away with him, leaving a governor in that city to render justice in the name of the church. The prudent men * who were with the pope noted the audacity of Julius and the cowardice of Giovampagolo, and they could not understand why Giovampagolo had not in a single stroke crushed his enemy, thereby gaining everlasting fame, and enriched himself with his wealthy prey, since all the cardinals and their luxurious belongings were with the pope. Nor were they able to believe that he had refrained from doing so either out of goodness or scruples that held him back, because in the heart of such a vicious man who kept his sister as his mistress and had his cousins and nephews put to death in order to rule, no pious concern could be aroused, but they concluded that men clearly do not know how to be honourably bad or perfectly good, and that when an evil deed contains in itself some grandeur or some generosity, they do not know how to carry it out.

Thus, Giovampagolo, who felt no concern about being guilty of incest or public parricide, did not know how, or to put it better, did not dare—having the perfect opportunity for doing so— to perform a feat for which everyone would have admired his courage and which would have secured him eternal renown as being the first man to have shown these priests how little there is to value in those who live and rule as they do, and he would have performed a deed the greatness of which would have surpassed all the infamy and all the danger that could possibly have come from it.