against Francis I in 1515, alongside inventor Leonardo da Vinci. Achievements Cardinal Giulio's other endeavors on behalf of Pope Leo X were similarly successful, such that "he had the credit of being the prime mover of papal policy throughout the whole of Leo's pontificate." In 1513, he was member of the Fifth Lateran Council, assigned the task of healing the schism caused by conciliarism. In 1515, his "most significant act of ecclesiastical government" regulated prophetic preaching in the manner of Girolamo Savonarola. He later organized and presided over the Florentine Synod of 1517, where he became the first member of the Church to implement the reforms recommended by the Fifth Lateran Council. These included prohibiting priests from carrying arms, frequenting taverns, and dancing provocatively – while urging them to attend weekly confession. Similarly, Cardinal Giulio's artistic patronage was admired (e.g., his commissioning Raphael’s Transfiguration and Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel, among other works), particularly for what goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini later called its "excellent taste". Gran Maestro of Florence Cardinal Giulio governed Florence between 1519 and 1523, following the death of its civic ruler, Lorenzo II de Medici, in 1519. There "he was permitted to assume almost autocratic control of State affairs," and "did very much to place public interests upon a firm and practical basis." U.S. President John Adams later characterized Giulio's administration of Florence as "very successful and frugal." Adams chronicles the cardinal as having "reduced the business of the magistrates, elections, customs of office, and the mode of expenditure of public money, in such a manner that it produced a great and universal joy among the citizens." On the death of Pope Leo X in 1521, Adams writes there was a "ready inclination in all of the principal citizens [of Florence], and a universal desire among the people, to maintain the state in the hands of the Cardinal de’ Medici; and all this felicity arose from his good government, which since the death of the Duke Lorenzo, had been universally agreeable." Under Pope Adrian VI When Pope Leo X died on 1 December 1521, Cardinal Giulio was "widely expected to succeed him"—but instead, during the conclave of 1522, the College of Cardinals elected a compromise candidate, Adrian VI of the Netherlands. Of why this happened, historian Paul Strathern writes, "it was common knowledge that [Cardinal Giulio] had been Leo X's most able adviser, as well as manager of the pope's