structural:scholar_edition, stylistic:style_transfer
Early life

Giuliano della Rovere was born in Albisola near Savona in the Republic of Genoa. He was of the House of della Rovere, a noble but impoverished family, the son of Raffaello della Rovere and Theodora Manerola, a woman of Greek ancestry. He had three brothers: Bartolomeo, a Franciscan friar who then became Bishop of Ferrara (1474–1494); Leonardo; and Giovanni, Prefect of the City of Rome (1475–1501) and Prince of Sora and Senigallia. He also had a sister, Lucina (later the mother of Cardinal Sisto Gara della Rovere). Giuliano was educated by his uncle, Fr. Francesco della Rovere, O.F.M., among the Franciscans, who took him under his special charge. He was later sent by this same uncle (who by that time had become Minister General of the Franciscans (1464–1469)), to the Franciscan friary in Perugia, where he could study the sciences at the University.

Della Rovere, as a young man, showed traits of being rough, coarse and inclined to bad language. During the late 1490s, he became more closely acquainted with Cardinal de’ Medici and his cousin Giulio de’ Medici, both of whom would later become Pope, (i.e. Leo X and Clement VII, respectively). The two dynasties became uneasy allies in the context of papal politics. Both houses desired an end to the occupation of Italian lands by the armies of France. He seemed less enthused by theology; rather, Paul Strathern argues, his imagined heroes were military leaders such as Frederic Colonna.