THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE.
The Papacy between 1447 and 1527--The Contradictions of the Renaissance
Period exemplified by the Popes--Relaxation of their hold over the
States of the Church and Rome during the Exile in Avignon--Nicholas
V.--His Conception of a Papal Monarchy--Pius II.--The
Crusade--Renaissance Pontiffs--Paul II.--Persecution of the
Platonists--Sixtus IV.--Nepotism--The Families of Riario and Delia
Rovere--Avarice--Love of Warfare--Pazzi Conspiracy--Inquisition in
Spain--Innocent VIII.--Franceschetto Cibo--The Election of Alexander
VI.--His Consolidation of the Temporal Power--Policy toward Colonna and
Orsini Families--Venality of everything in Rome--Policy toward the--
Sultan--The Index--The Borgia Family--Lucrezia--Murder of Duke of Gandia
Cesare and his Advancement--The Death of Alexander--Julius II.--His
violent Temper--Great Projects and commanding Character--Leo X.--His
Inferiority to Julius--S. Peter's and the Reformation--Adrian VI.--His
Hatred of Pagan Culture--Disgust of the Roman Court at his
Election--Clement VII.--Sack of Rome--Enslavement of Florence.
In the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth centuries the
authority of the Popes, both as Heads of the Church and as temporal
rulers, had been impaired by exile in France and by ruinous schisms. A
new era began with the election of Nicholas V. in 1447, and ended during
the pontificate of Clement VII. with the sack of Rome in 1527. Through
the whole of this period the Popes acted more as monarchs than as
pontiffs, and the secularization of the See of Rome was earned to its
utmost limits. The contrast between the sacerdotal pretensions and the
personal immorality of the Popes was glaring; nor had the chiefs of the
Church yet learned to regard the liberalism of the Renaissance with
suspicion. About the middle of the sixteenth century the Papal States
had become a recognized kingdom; while the Popes of this later epoch
were endeavoring by means of the inquisition and the educational orders
to check the free spirit of Italy.
The history of Italy has at all times been closely bound up with that of
the Papacy; but at no period has this been more the case than during
these eighty years of Papal worldliness, ambition, depotism, and
profligacy, which are also marked by the irruption of the European
nations into Italy and by the secession of the Teutonic races from the
Latin Church. In this short space of time a succession of Popes filled
the Holy Chair with such dramatic propriety--displaying a pride so
regal, a cynicism so unblushing, so selfish a cupidity, and a policy so
suicidal as to favor the belief that they had been placed there in the
providence of God to warn the world against Babylon. At the same time
the history of the Papal Court reveals with peculiar vividness the
contradictions of Renaissance morality and manners. We find in the Popes
of this period what has been already noticed in the despots--learning,
the patronage of of the arts, the passion for magnificence, and the
refinements of polite culture, alternating and not unfrequently combined
with barbarous ferocity of temper and with savage and coarse tastes. On
the one side we observe a Pagan dissoluteness which would have
scandalized the parasites of Commodus and Nero; on the other, a seeming
zeal for dogma worthy of S. Dominic. The Vicar of Christ is at one time
worshiped as a god by princes seeking absolution for sins or liberation
from burdensome engagements; at another he is trampled under foot, in
his capacity of sovereign, by the same potentates. Undisguised
sensuality; fraud cynical and unabashed; policy marching to its end by
murders, treasons, interdicts, and imprisonments; the open sale of
spiritual privileges; commercial traffic in ecclesiastical emoluments;
hypocrisy and cruelty studied as fine arts; theft and perjury reduced to
system--these are the ordinary scandals which beset the Papacy. Yet the
Pope is still a holy being. His foot is kissed by thousands. His curse
and blessing carry death and life. He rises from the bed of harlots to
unlock or bolt the gates of heaven and purgatory. In the midst of crime
he believes himself to be the representative of Christ on earth. These
anomalies, glaring as they seem to us, and obvious as they might be to
deeper thinkers like Machiavelli or Savonarola, did not shock the mass
of men who witnessed them. The Renaissance was so dazzling by its
brilliancy, so confusing by its rapid changes, that moral distinctions
were obliterated in a blaze of splendor, an outburst of new life, a
carnival of liberated energies. The corruption of Italy was only equaled
by its culture. Its immorality was matched by its enthusiasm. It was
not the decay of an old age dying, so much as the fermentation of a new
age coming into life, that bred the monstrous paradoxes of the fifteenth
and the sixteenth centuries. The contrast between mediæval Christianity
and renascent Paganism--the sharp conflict of two adverse principles,
destined to fuse their forces and to recompose the modern world--made
the Renaissance what it was in Italy. Nowhere is the first effervescence
of these elements so well displayed as in the history of those Pontiffs
who, after striving in the Middle Ages to suppress humanity beneath a
cowl, are now the chief actors in the comedy of Aphrodite and Priapus
raising their foreheads once more to the light of day.
The struggle carried on between the Popes of the thirteenth century and
the House of Hohenstauffen ended in the elevation of the Princes of
Anjou to the throne of Naples--the most pernicious of all the evils
inflicted by the Papal power on Italy. Then followed the French tyranny,
under which Boniface VIII. expired at Anagni. Benedict XI. was poisoned
at the instigation of Philip le Bel, and the Papal see was transferred
to Avignon. The Popes lost their hold upon the city of Rome and upon
those territories of Romagna, the March, and S. Peter's Patrimony which
had been confirmed to them by the grant of Rodolph of Hapsburg (1273).
They had to govern their Italian dependencies by means of Legates,
while, one by one, the cities which had recognized their sway passed
beneath the yoke of independent princes. The Malatesti established
themselves in Rimini, Pesaro, and Fano; the house of Montefeltro
confirmed its occupation of Urbino; Camerino, Faenza, Ravenna, Forli,
and Imola became the appanages of the Varani, the Manfredi, the
Polentani, the Ordelaffi, and the Alidosi.[1] The traditional supremacy
of the Popes was acknowledged in these tyrannies; but the nobles I have
named acquired a real authority, against which Egidio Albornoz and
Robert of Geneva struggled to a great extent in vain, and to break which
at a future period taxed the whole energies of Sixtus and of Alexander.
[1] See Mach. _Ist. Fior_. lib. i.
While the influence of the Popes was thus weakened in their states
beyond the Apennines, three great families, the Orsini, the Savelli, and
the Colonnesi, grew to princely eminence in Rome and its immediate
neighborhood. They had been severally raised to power during the second
half of the thirteenth century by the nepotism of Nicholas III.,
Honorius IV., and Nicholas IV. This nepotism bore baneful fruits in the
future; for during the exile at Avignon the houses of Colonna and Orsini
became so overbearing as to threaten the freedom and safety of the
Popes. It was again reserved for Sixtus and Alexander to undo the work
of their predecessors and to secure the independence of the Holy See by
the coercion of these towering nobles.
In the States of the Church the temporal power of the Popes, founded
upon false donations, confirmed by tradition, and contested by rival
despots, was an anomaly. In Rome itself their situation, though
different, was no less peculiar. While the factions of Orsini and
Colonna divided the Campagna and wrangled in the streets of the city,
Rome continued to preserve, in form at least, the old constitution of
Caporioni and Senator. The Senator, elected by the people, swore, not to
obey the Pope, but to defend his person. The government was ostensibly
republican. The Pope had no sovereign rights, but only the ascendency
inseparable from his wealth and from his position as Primate of
Christendom. At the same time the spirit of Arnold of Brescia, of
Brancaleone, and of Rienzi revived from time to time in patriots like
Porcari and Baroncelli, who resented the encroachments of the Church
upon the privileges of the city. Rome afforded no real security to the
members of the Holy College. They commanded no fortress like the
Castello of Milan, and had no army at their disposition. When the people
or the nobles rose against them, the best they could do was to retire to
Orvieto or Viterbo, and to wait the passing of the storm.
Such was the position of the Pope, considered as one of the ruling
princes of Italy, before the election of Nicholas V. His authority was
wide but undefined, confirmed by prescription, but based on neither
force nor legal right. Italy, however, regarded the Papacy as
indispensable to her prosperity, while Rome was proud to be called the
metropolis of Christendom, and ready to sacrifice the shadow of
republican liberty for the material advantages which might accrue from
the sovereignty of her bishop. How the Roman burghers may have felt upon
this point we gather from a sentence of Leo Alberti's, referring to the
administration of Nicholas: 'The city had become a city of gold through
the jubilee; the dignity of the citizens was respected; all reasonable
petitions were granted by the Pontiff. There were no exactions, no new
taxes. Justice was fairly administered. It was the whole care of the
Pontiff to adorn the city.'[1] The prosperity which the Papal court
brought to Rome was the main support of the Popes as princes, at a time
when many thinkers looked with Dante's jealousy upon the union of
temporal and spiritual functions in the Papacy.[2] Moreover, the whole
of Italy, as we have seen in the previous chapters, was undergoing a
gradual and instinctive change in politics; commonwealths were being
superseded by tyrannies, and the sentiments of the race at large were by
no means unfavorable to this revolution. Now was the proper moment,
therefore, for the Popes to convert their ill-defined authority into a
settled despotism, to secure themselves in Rome as sovereigns, and to
subdue the States of the Church to their temporal jurisdiction.
[1] See history of Porcari's Conspiracy (Muratori, vol. xxv.).
[2] Lorenzo Valla's famous declamation against the Donation of
Constantine, which appeared during the pontificate of Nicholas,
contained these reminiscences of the 'De Monarchiá': 'Ut Papa
tantum vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Cæsaris ... tune Papa et
erit et dicetur pater sanctus, pater omnium, pater ecclesæ.'
The work was begun by Thomas of Sarzana, who ascended the Chair of S.
Peter, as Nicholas V., in 1447. One part of his biography belongs to the
history of scholarship, and need not here be touched upon. Educated at
Florence, under the shadow of the house of Medici, he had imbibed those
principles of deference to princely authority which were supplanting the
old republican virtues throughout Italy. The schisms which had rent the
Catholic Church were healed; and finding no opposition to his spiritual
power, he determined to consolidate the temporalities of his See. In
this purpose he was confirmed by the conspiracy of Stefano Porcari, a
Roman noble who had endeavored to rouse republican enthusiasm in the
city at the moment of the Pope's election, and who subsequently plotted
against his liberty, if not his life. Porcari and his associates were
put to death in 1453, and by this act the Pope proclaimed himself a
monarch. The vast wealth which the jubilee of 1450 had poured into the
Papal coffers[1] he employed in beautifying the city of Rome and in
creating a stronghold for the Sovereign Pontiff. The mausoleum of
Hadrian, used long before as a fortress in the Middle Ages, was now
strengthened, while the bridge of S. Angelo and the Leonine city were so
connected and defended by a system of walls and outworks as to give the
key of Rome into the hands of the Pope. A new Vatican began to rise, and
the foundations of a nobler S. Peter's Church were laid within the
circuit of the Papal domain. Nicholas had, in fact, conceived the great
idea of restoring the supremacy of Rome, not after the fashion of a
Hildebrand, by enforcing the spiritual despotism of the Papacy, but by
establishing the Popes as kings, by renewing the architectural
magnificence of the Eternal City, and by rendering his court the center
of European culture. In the will which he recited on his death-bed to
the princes of the Church, he set forth all that he had done for the
secular and ecclesiastical architecture of Rome, explaining his deep
sense of the necessity of securing the Popes from internal revolution
and external force, together with his desire to exalt the Church by
rendering her chief seat splendid in the eyes of Christendom. This
testament of Nicholas remains a memorable document. Nothing illustrates
more forcibly the transition from the Middle Ages to the worldliness of
the Renaissance than the conviction of the Pontiff that the destinies of
Christianity depended on the state and glory of the town of Rome. What
he began was carried on amid crime, anarchy, and bloodshed by successive
Popes of the Renaissance, until at last the troops of Frundsberg paved
the way, in 1527, for the Jesuits of Loyola, and Rome, still the Eternal
City, cloaked her splendor and her scandals beneath the black pall of
Spanish inquisitors. The political changes in the Papacy initiated by
Nicholas had been, however, by that date fully accomplished, and for
more than three centuries the Popes have since held rank among the kings
of the earth.
[1] The bank of the Medici alone held 100,000 florins for the
Pope. Vespasiano, _Vit, Nic. V._
Of Alfonso Borgia, who reigned for three years as Calixtus III., little
need be said, except that his pontificate prepared for the greatness of
his nephew, Roderigo Lenzuoli, known as Borgia in compliment to his
uncle. The last days of Nicholas had been imbittered by the fall of
Constantinople and the imminent peril which threatened Europe from the
Turks. The whole energies of Pius II. were directed towards the one end
of uniting the European nations against the infidel. Æneas Sylvius
Piccolomini, as an author, an orator, a diplomatist, a traveller, and a
courtier, bears a name illustrious in the annals of the Renaissance. As
a Pope, he claims attention for the single-hearted zeal which he
displayed in the vain attempt to rouse the piety of Christendom against
the foes of civilization and the faith. Rarely has a greater contrast
been displayed between the man and the pontiff than in the case of Pius.
The pleasure-loving, astute, free-thinking man of letters and the world
has become a Holy Father, jealous for Christian proprieties, and bent on
stirring Europe by an appeal to motives which had lost their force three
centuries before. Frederick II. and S. Louis closed the age of the
Crusades, the one by striking a bargain with the infidel, the other by
snatching at a martyr's crown. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini was the mirror
of his times--a humanist and stylist, imbued with the rhetorical and
pseudo-classic taste of the earlier Renaissance. Pius II. is almost an
anachronism. The disappointment which the learned world experienced when
they discovered that the new Pope, from whom so much had been expected,
declined to play the part of their Mæcenas, may be gathered from the
epigrams of Filelfo upon his death[1]:--
Gaudeat orator, Musæ gaudete Latinæ;
Sustulit e medio quod Deus ipse Pium.
Ut bene consuluit doctis Deus omnibus æque,
Quos Pius in cunctos se tulit usque gravem.
Nunc sperare licet. Nobis Deus optime Quintum
Reddito Nicoleon Eugeniumve patrem.
and again:--
Hac sibi quam vivus construxit clauditur arca
Corpore; nam Stygios mens habet atra lacus.
Pius himself was not unconscious of the discrepancy between his old and
his new self. _Æneam rejicite, Pium recipite_, he exclaims in a
celebrated passage of his Retractation, where he declares his heartfelt
sorrow for the irrevocable words of light and vain romance that he had
scattered in his careless youth. Yet though Pius II. proved a virtual
failure by lacking the strength to lead his age either backwards to the
ideal of earlier Christianity or forwards on the path of modern culture,
he is the last Pope of the Renaissance period whom we can regard with
real respect. Those who follow, and with whose personal characters,
rather than their action as Pontiffs, we shall now be principally
occupied, sacrificed the interests of Christendom to family ambition,
secured their sovereignty at the price of discord in Italy, transacted
with the infidel, and played the part of Antichrist upon the theater of
Europe.
[1] Rosmini, _Vita di Filelfo_, vol. ii. p. 321.
It would be possible to write the history of these priest-kings without
dwelling more than lightly on scandalous circumstances, to merge the
court-chronicle of the Vatican in a recital of European politics, or to
hide the true features of high Papal dignitaries beneath the masks
constructed for them by ecclesiastical apologists. That cannot, however,
be the line adopted by a writer treating of civilization in Italy during
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He must paint the Popes of the
Renaissance as they appeared in the midst of society, when Lorenzo de'
Medici called Rome 'a sink of all the vices,' and observers so competent
as Machiavelli and Guicciardini ascribed the moral depravity and
political decay of Italy to their influence. It might be objected that
there is now no need to portray the profligacy of that court, which, by
arousing the conscience of Northern Europe to a sense of intolerable
shame, proved one of the main causes of the Reformation. But without
reviewing those old scandals, a true understanding of Italian morality,
and a true insight into Italian social feeling as expressed in
literature, are alike impossible. Nor will the historian of this epoch
shrink from his task, even though the transactions he has to record seem
to savor of legend rather than of simple fact. No fiction contains
matter more fantastic, no myth or allegory is more adapted to express a
truth in figures of the fancy, than the authentic well-attested annals
of this period of seventy years, from 1464 to 1534.
Paul the Second was a Venetian named Pietro Barbi, who began life as a
merchant. He had already shipped his worldly goods on board a trading
vessel for a foreign trip, when news reached him that his uncle had been
made Pope under the name of Eugenius IV. His call to the ministry
consisted of the calculation that he could make his fortune in the
Church with a Pope for uncle sooner than on the high seas by his wits.
So he unloaded his bales, took to his book, became a priest, and at the
age of forty-eight rose to the Papacy. Being a handsome man, he was fain
to take the ecclesiastical title of Formosus; but the Cardinals
dissuaded him from this parade of vanity, and he assumed the tiara as
Paul in 1464. A vulgar love of show was his ruling characteristic. He
spent enormous sums in the collection of jewels, and his tiara alone was
valued at 200,000 golden florins. In all public ceremonies, whether
ecclesiastical or secular, he was splendid, delighting equally to sun
himself before the eyes of the Romans as the chief actor in an Easter
benediction or a Carnival procession. The poorer Cardinals received
subsidies from his purse in order that they might add luster to his
pageants by their retinues. The arts found in him munificent patron. For
the building of the palace of S. Marco, which marks an abrupt departure
from the previous Gothic style in vogue, he brought architects of
eminence to Rome, and gave employment to Mino da Fiesole, the sculptor,
and to Giuliano da San Gallo, the wood-carver. The arches of Titus and
Septimius Severus were restored at his expense, together with the statue
of Marcus Aurelius and the horses of Monte Cavallo. But Paul showed his
connoisseurship more especially in the collection of gems, medals,
precious stones, and cameos, accumulating rare treasures of antiquity
and costly masterpieces of Italian and Flemish gold-work in his
cabinets. This patronage of contemporary art, no less than the
appreciation of classical monuments, marked him as a Mæcenas of the true
Renaissance type.[1] But the qualities of a dilettante were not
calculated to shed luster on a Pontiff who spent the substance of the
Church in heaping up immensely valuable curiosities. His thirst for gold
and his love of hoarding were so extreme that, when bishoprics fell
vacant, he often refused to fill them up, drawing their revenues for his
own use. His court was luxurious, and in private he was addicted to
sensual lust.[2] This would not, however, have brought his name into bad
odor in Rome, where the Holy Father was already regarded as an Italian
despot with certain sacerdotal additions. It was his prosecution of the
Platonists which made him unpopular in an age when men had the right to
expect that, whatever happened, learning at least would be respected.
The example of the Florentine and Neapolitan academies had encouraged
the Romans to found a society for the discussion of philosophical
questions. The Pope conceived that a political intrigue was the real
object of this club. Nor was the suspicion wholly destitute of color.
The conspiracy of Porcari against Nicholas, and the Catilinarian riots
of Tiburzio which had troubled the pontificate of Pius, were still fresh
in people's memories; nor was the position of the Pope in Rome as yet by
any means secure. What increased Paul's anxiety was the fact that some
scholars, appointed secretaries of the briefs (Abbreviatori) by Pius and
deprived of office by himself, were members of the Platonic Society.
Their animosity against him was both natural and ill-concealed. At the
same time the bitter hatred avowed by Laurentius Valla against the
temporal power might in an age of conjurations have meant active malice.
Leo Alberti hints that Porcari had been supported by strong backers
outside Rome; and one of the accusations against the Platonists was that
Pomponius Lætus had addressed Platina as Holy Father. Now both Pomponius
Lætus and Valla had influence in Naples, while Paul was on the verge of
open rupture with King Ferdinand. He therefore had sufficient grounds
for suspecting a Neapolitan intrigue, in which the humanists were
playing the parts of Brutus and Cassius. Yet though we take this trouble
to construct some show of reason for the panic of the Pope, the fact
remains that he was really mistaken at the outset; and of the stupidity,
cruelty, and injustice of his subsequent conduct there can be no doubt.
He seized the chief members of the Roman Academy, imprisoned them, put
them to the torture, and killed some of them upon the rack. 'You would
have taken Castle S. Angelo for Phalaris' bull,' writes Platina; 'the
hollow vaults did so resound with the cries of innocent young men.' No
evidence of a conspiracy could be extorted. Then Paul tried the
survivors for unorthodoxy. They proved the soundness of their faith to
the satisfaction of the Pope's inquisitors. Nothing remained but to
release them, or to shut them up in dungeons, in order that the people
might not say the Holy Father had arrested them without due cause. The
latter course was chosen. Platina, the historian of the Popes, was one
of the _abbreviatori_ whom Paul had cashiered, and one of the Platonists
whom he had tortured. The tale of Papal persecution loses, therefore,
nothing in the telling; for if the humanists of the fifteenth century
were powerful in anything it was in writing innuendoes and invectives.
Among other anecdotes, he relates how, while he was being dislocated on
the rack, the inquisitors Vianesi and Sanga held a sprightly colloquy
about a ring which the one said jestingly the other had received as a
love-token from a girl. The whole situation is characteristic of Papal
Rome in the Renaissance.
[1] See _Les Arts à la Cour des Papes pendant le XV. et le XVI.
Siècles_, E. Müntz, Paris, Thorin, 2me Partie. M. Müntz has
done good service to æsthetic archæology by vindicating the
fame of Paul II. as an employer of artists from the wholesale
abuse heaped on him by Platina. It may here be conveniently
noticed that even the fierce Sixtus IV. showed intelligence as
a patron of arts and letters. He built the Sistine Chapel, and
brought the greatest painters of the day to Rome--Signorelli,
Perugino, Botticelli, Cosimo, Rosselli, and Ghirlandajo.
Melozzo da Forlì worked for him. One of that painter's few
remaining masterpieces is the wall-picture, now in the Vatican,
which represents Sixtus among his Cardinals and Secretaries--a
magnificent piece of vivid portraiture. Sixtus again threw the
Vatican library open to the public, and In his days the
Confraternity of S. Luke was founded for the encouragement of
design. Rome owes to him the hospital of S. Spirito, a severe
building, by Baccio Pontelli, and the churches of S. Maria del
Popolo and S. Maria della Pace. Innocent VIII. added the
Belvedere to the Vatican after Antonio del Pollajuolo's plan,
and commenced the Villa Magliana. Alexander VI. enriched the
Vatican with the famous Borgia apartments, decorated by
Pinturhicchio. He also began the Palace of the University, and
converted the Mausoleum of Hadrian into the Castle of S.
Angelo. These brief allusions must suffice. It is not the
object of the present chapter to treat of the Popes as patrons;
but it should not be forgotten that, having accepted a place
among the despots of Italy, they strove to acquit their debt to
art and learning in the spirit of contemporary potentates.
[2] Corio sums up his character thus: 'Fu costui uomo alla
libidine molto proclivo; in grandissimo precio furono le gioie
appresso di lui. Del giorno faceva notte, e la notte ispediva
quanto gli occorreva.' Marcus Attilius Alexius says: 'Paulus
II. ex concubiná domum replevit, et quasi sterquilinium facta
est sedes Barionis.' See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. vii. p.
215, for the latter quotation.
Paul did not live as long as his comparative youth led people to
anticipate. He died of apoplexy in 1471, alone and suddenly, after
supping on two huge watermelons, _duos prægrandes pepones_. His
successor was a man of base extraction, named Francesco della Rovere,
born near the town of Savona on the Genoese Riviera. It was his whim to
be thought noble; so he bought the goodwill of the ancient house of
Rovere of Turin by giving them two cardinals' hats, and proclaimed
himself their kinsman. Theirs is the golden oak-tree on an azure ground
which Michael Angelo painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in
compliment to Sixtus and his nephew Julius. Having bribed the most venal
members of the Sacred College, Francesco della Rovere was elected Pope,
and assumed the name of Sixtus IV. He began his career with a lie; for
though he succeeded to the avaricious Paul who had spent his time in
amassing money which he did not use, he declared that he had only found
5,000 florins in the Papal treasury. This assertion was proved false by
the prodigality with which he lavished wealth immediately upon his
nephews. It is difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions which
were cast upon the birth of two of the Pope's nephews and upon the
nature of his weakness for them. Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered
the most monstrous stories plausible, while his public treatment of
these men recalled to mind the partiality of Nero for Doryphorus.[1] We
may, however, dwell upon the principal features of his nepotism; for
Sixtus was the first Pontiff who deliberately organized a system for
pillaging the Church in order to exalt his family to principalities. The
weakness of this policy has already been exposed[2]: its justification,
if there is any, lies in the exigencies of a dynasty which had no
legitimate or hereditary succession. The names of the Pope's nephews
were Lionardo, Giuliano, and Giovanni della Rovere, the three sons of
his brother Raffaello; Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the two sons of his
sister Jolanda; and Girolamo, the son of another sister married to
Giovanni Basso. With the notable exception of Giuliano della Rovere,[3]
these young men had no claim to distinction beyond good looks and a
certain martial spirit which ill suited with the ecclesiastical
dignities thrust upon some of them. Lionardo was made prefect of Rome
and married to a natural daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. Giuliano
received a Cardinal's hat, and, after a tempestuous warfare with the
intervening Popes, ascended the Holy Chair as Julius II. Girolamo Basso
was created Cardinal of San Crisogono in 1477, and died in 1507.
Girolamo Riario wedded Catherine, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Sforza.
For him the Pope in 1473 bought the town of Imola with money of the
Church, and, after adding to it Forli, made Girolamo a Duke. He was
murdered by his subjects in the latter place in 1488, not, however,
before he had founded a line of princes. Pietro, another nephew of the
Riario blood, or, as scandal then reported and Muratori has since
believed, a son of the Pope himself, was elevated at the age of
twenty-six to the dignities of Cardinal, Patriarch of Constantinople,
and Archbishop of Florence. He had no virtues, no abilities, nothing but
his beauty, the scandalous affection of the Pope, and the extravagant
profligacy of his own life to recommend him to the notice of posterity.
All Italy during two years rang with the noise of his debaucheries. His
official revenues were estimated at 60,000 golden florins; but in his
short career of profligate magnificence he managed to squander a sum
reckoned at not less than 200,000. When Leonora of Aragon passed through
Rome on her way to wed the Marquis of Ferrara, this fop of a Patriarch
erected a pavilion in the Piazza de' Santi Apostoli for her
entertainment.[4] The square was partitioned into chambers communicating
with the palace of the Cardinal. The ordinary hangings were of velvet
and of white and crimson silk, while one of the apartments was draped
with the famous tapestries of Nicholas V., which represented the
Creation of the World. All the utensils in this magic dwelling were of
silver--even to the very vilest. The air of the banquet-hall was cooled
with punkahs; _ire mantici coperti, che facevano continoamemte vento_,
are the words of Corio; and on a column in the center stood a living
naked gilded boy, who poured forth water from an urn. The description of
the feast takes up three pages of the history of Corio, where we find a
minute list of the dishes--wild boars and deer and peacocks, roasted
whole; peeled oranges, gilt and sugared; gilt rolls; rosewater for
washing; and the tales of Perseus, Atalanta, Hercules, etc., I wrought
in pastry--_tutte in vivande_. We are also told how masques of Hercules,
Jason, and Phædra alternated with the story of Susannah and the Elders,
played by Florentine actors, and with the Mysteries of _San Giovan
Battista decapitato_ and _quel Giudeo che rosfi il corpo di Cristo_. The
servants were arrayed in silk, and the seneschal changed his dress of
richest stuffs and jewels four times in the course of the banquet.
Nymphs and centaurs, singers and buffoons, drank choice wine from golden
goblets. The most eminent and reverend master of the palace, meanwhile,
moved among his guests 'like some great Cæsar's son.' The whole
entertainment lasted from Saturday till Thursday, during which time
Ercole of Este and his bride assisted at Church ceremonies in S.
Peter's, and visited the notabilities of Rome in the intervals of games,
dances, and banquets of the kind described. We need scarcely add that,
in spite of his enormous wealth, the young Cardinal died 60,000 florins
in debt. Happily for the Church and for Italy, he expired at Rome in
January 1474, after parading his impudent debaucheries through Milan and
Venice as the Pope's Legate. It was rumored, but never well
authenticated, that the Venetians helped his death by poison.[5] The
sensual indulgences of every sort in which this child of the
proletariat, suddenly raised to princely splendor, wallowed for
twenty-five continuous months, are enough to account for his immature
death without the hypothesis of poisoning. With him expired a plan which
might have ended in making the Papacy a secular, hereditary kingdom.
During his stay at Milan, Pietro struck a bargain with the Duke, by the
terms of which Galeazzo Maria Sforza was to be crowned king of Lombardy,
while the Cardinal Legate was to return and seize upon the Papal
throne.[6] Sixtus, it is said, was willing to abdicate in his nephew's
favor, with a view to the firmer establishment of his family in the
tyranny of Rome. The scheme was a wild one, yet, considering the power
and wealth of the Sforza family, not so wholly impracticable as might
appear. The same dream floated, a few years later, before the
imagination of the two Borgias; and Machiavelli wrote in his calm style
that to make the Papal power hereditary was all that remained for
nepotism in his days to do.[7] The opinion which had been conceived of
the Cardinal of San Sisto during his two years of eminence may be
gathered from the following couplets of an epigram placed, as Corio
informs us, on his tomb:--
Fur, scortum, leno, moechus, pedico, cynædus,
Et scurra, et fidicen cedat ab Italiâ:
Namque illa Ausonii pestis scelerata senatûs,
Petrus, ad infernas est modo raptus aquas.
After the death of Pietro, Sixtus took his last nephew, Giovanni della
Rovere, into like favor. He was married to Giovanna, daughter of
Federigo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, and created Duke of Sinigaglia.
Afterwards he became Prefect of Rome, upon the death of his brother
Lionardo. This man founded the second dynasty in the Dukedom of Urbino.
The plebeian violence of the della Rovere temper reached a climax in
Giovanni's son, the Duke Francesco Maria, who murdered his sister's
lover with his own hand when a youth of sixteen, stabbed the Papal
Legate to death in the streets of Bologna at the age of twenty, and
knocked Guicciardini, the historian, down with a blow of his fist during
a council of war in 1526.
[1] The infamous stories about Sixtus and Alexander may in part
be fables, currently reported by the vulgar and committed to
epigrams by scholars. Still the fact remains that Infessura,
Burchard, and the Venetian ambassadors relate of these two
Popes such traits of character and such abominable actions as
render the worst calumnies probable. Infessura, though he
expressed horror for the crimes of Sixtus, was yet a dry
chronicler of daily events, many of which passed beneath his
own eyes, Burchurd was a frigid diarist of Court ceremonies,
who reported the rapes, murders, and profligacies of Alexander
with phlegmatic gravity. The evidence of these men, neither of
whom indulges in satire strictly so called, is more valuable
than that of Tacitus or Suetonius to the vices of the Roman
emperors. The dispatches of the Venetian ambassadors, again,
are trustworthy, seeing they were always written with political
intention and not for the sake of gossip.
[2] See ch. iii. p. 113.
[3] As Julius II., by far the greatest name in his age. Yet
even Giuliano did not at first impress men with his power.
Jacobus Volaterranus (Mur. xxiii. 107) writes of him: 'Vir est
naturæ duriusculæ, ac uti ingenii, mediocris literaturæ.'
[4] For what follows read Corio, _Storia di Milano_, pp.
417-20.
[5] Mach. _1st. Fior_. lib. vii.; Corio, p. 420.
[6] See Corio, p. 420. Corio hints that the Venetians poisoned
the Cardinal for fear of this convention being carried out.
[7] _1st. Fior_, lib. i. vol. i. p. 38.
Sixtus, however, while thus providing for his family, could not enjoy
life without some youthful protégé about his person. Accordingly in 1463
he made his valet, a lad of no education and of base birth, Cardinal and
Bishop of Parma at the age of twenty. His merit was the beauty of a
young Olympian. With this divine gift he luckily combined a harmless
though stupid character.
With all these favorites to plant out in life, the Pope was naturally
short of money. He relied on two principal methods for replenishing his
coffers. One was the public sale of places about the Court at Rome, each
of which had its well-known price.[1] Benefices were disposed of with
rather more reserve and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be
considered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held no privilege
within his pontifical control on which he was not willing to raise
money: 'Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, our
heaven, our very God, are purchasable!' exclaims a scholar of the time;
while the Holy Father himself was wont to say, 'A pope needs only pen
and ink to get what sum he wants.'[2] The second great financial
expedient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal States.
Fictitious dearths were created; the value of wheat was raised to famine
prices; good grain was sold out of the kingdom, and bad imported in
exchange; while Sixtus forced his subjects to purchase from his stores,
and made a profit by the hunger and disease of his emaciated provinces.
Ferdinand, the King of Naples, practiced the same system in the south.
It is worth while to hear what this bread was like from one of the men
condemned to eat it: 'The bread made from the corn of which I have
spoken was black, stinking, and abominable; one was obliged to consume
it, and from this cause sickness frequently took hold upon the
State.'[3]
[1] The greatest ingenuity was displayed in promoting this
market. Infessura writes: 'Multa et inexcogitata in Curia
Romana officia adinvenit et vendidit,' p. 1183.
[2] Baptista Mantuanus, _de Calamitatibus Temporum_, lib. iii.
Venalia nobis
Templa, sacerdotes, altaria, sacra, coronæ,
Ignes, thura, preces, coelum est venale, Deusque.
Soriano, the Venetian ambassador, ap. Alberi ii. 3, p. 330,
writes: 'Conviene ricordarsi quello che soleva dire Sisto IV.,
che al papa bastava solo la mano con la penna e l'inchiostro,
per avere quella somma che vuole.' Cp. Aen. Sylv. Picc. _Ep_.
i. 66: 'Nihil est quod absque argento Romana Curia dedat; nam
et ipsæ manus impositiones et Spiritus Sancti dona venduntur,
nec peccatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur.'
[3] Infessura, _Eccardus_, vol. ii. p. 1941: 'Panis vero qui ex
dicto frumento fiebat, erat ater, foetidus, et abominabilis; e
ex necessitate comedebatur, ex quo sæpenumero in civitate
morbus viguit.'
But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not merely the spectacle of a Pope who
trafficked in the bodies of his subjects and the holy things of God, to
squander basely gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The peace of Italy
was destroyed by desolating wars in the advancement of the same
worthless favorites, Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions of
Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but the House of Este, firmly
planted for centuries, and connected by marriage or alliance with all
the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose lust for blood and broils
was only equaled by his avarice and his libertinism,[1] rushed with wild
delight into a project which involved the discord of the whole
Peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all
the passions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called
the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when finally, tired of fighting
for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he
died of rage in 1484. The Pope did actually die of disappointed fury
because peace had been restored to the country he had mangled for the
sake of a favorite nephew.
[1] This phrase requires support. Infessura (loc. cit. p. 1941)
relates the savage pleasure with which Sixtus watched a combat
'a steccato chiuso.' Hearing that a duel to the death was to be
fought by two bands of his body-guard, he told them to choose
the Piazza of S. Peter for their rendezvous. Then he appeared
at a window, blessed the combatants, and crossed himself as a
signal for the battle to begin. We who think the ring, the
cockpit, and the bullfight barbarous, should study Pollajuolo's
engraving in order to imagine the horrors of a duel 'a steccato
chiuso.' Of the inclination of Sixtus to sensuality, Infessura
writes: 'Hic, ut fertur vulgo, et experientia demonstravit,
puerorum amator et sodomita fuit.' After mentioning the Riarii
and a barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo nunc alia,
quæ circa hoc possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo.' It
was not, perhaps, a wholly Protestant calumny which accused
Sixtus of granting private indulgences for the commission of
abominable crimes in certain seasons of the year.
The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the corruption of the
Papacy in his age remains still to be told. This was the sanction of the
Pazzi Conjuration against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. In the year
1477 the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes of the Pazzi
family from the magistracy at Florence and otherwise annoying them, had
driven Francesco de' Pazzi in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his
banker in the place of the Medicean Company. He became intimate with
Girolamo Riario, and was well received at the Papal Court. Political
reasons at this moment made the Pope and his nephew anxious to destroy
the Medici, who opposed Girolamo's schemes of aggrandizement in
Lombardy. Private rancor induced Francesco de' Pazzi to second their
views and to stimulate their passion. The three between them hatched a
plot which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, another private
foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista Montesecco, a captain well
affected to the Count Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators was
to lure the brothers Medici to Rome, and to kill them there. But the
young men were too prudent to leave Florence. Pazzi and Salviati then
proceeded to Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church to succeed
in murdering their two enemies together. Bernardo Bandini, a man of
blood by trade, and Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to assassinate
Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dispose of Lorenzo.[1]
The 26th of April 1478 was finally fixed for the deed. The place
selected was the Duomo.[2] The elevation of the Host at Mass-time was
to be the signal. Both the Medici arrived. The murderers embraced
Giuliano and discovered that this timid youth had left his secret coat
of mail at home. But a difficulty, which ought to have been foreseen,
arose. Monteseoco, cut-throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo before
the high altar: at the last moment some sense of the _religio loci_
dashed his courage. Two priests were then discovered who had no such
silly scruples. In the words of an old chronicle, 'Another man was
found, who, _being a priest_, was more accustomed to the place and
therefore less superstitious about its sanctity.' This, however, spoiled
all. The priests, though more sacrilegious than the bravos, were less
used to the trade of assassination. They failed to strike home.
Giuliano, it is true, was stabbed to death by Bernardo Bandini and
Francesco de' Pazzi at the very moment of the elevation of Christ's
body. But Lorenzo escaped with a slight flesh-wound. The whole
conspiracy collapsed. In the retaliation which the infuriated people of
Florence took upon the murderers, the Archbishop Salviati, together with
Jacopo and Francesco de' Pazzi and some others among the principal
conspirators, were hung from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico. For
this act of violence to the sacred person of a traitorous priest,
Sixtus, who had upon his own conscience the crime of mingled treason,
sacrilege, and murder, ex-communicated Florence, and carried on for
years a savage war with the Republic. It was not until 1481, when the
descent of the Turks upon Otranto made him tremble for his own safety,
that he chose to make peace with these enemies whom he had himself
provoked and plotted against.
[1] His 'Confession,' printed by Fabroni, _Lorenzi Medicis
Vita_, vol. ii. p. 168, gives an interesting account of the
hatching of the plot. It is fair to Sixtus to say that
Montesecco exculpates him of the design to murder the Medici.
He only wanted to ruin them.
[2] It is curious to note how many of the numerous Italian
tyrannicides took place in church. The Chiavelli of Fabriano
were murdered during a solemn service in 1435; the sentence of
the creed 'Et incarnatus est' was chosen for the signal. Gian
Maria Visconti was killed in San Gottardo (1412), Galeazzo
Maria Sforza in San Stefano (1484). Lodovico Moro only just
escaped assassination in Sant' Ambrogio (1484). Machiavelli
says that Lorenzo de' Medici's life was attempted by Batista
Frescobaldi in the Carmine (see _1st. Fior._ book viii. near
the end). The Bagliani of Perugia were to have been massacred
during the marriage festival of Astorre with Lavinia
Colonna(1500). Stefano Porcari intended to capture Nicholas V.
at the great gate of S. Peter's (1453). The only chance of
catching cautious princes off their guard was when they were
engaged in high solemnities. See above, p. 168.
Another peculiarity in the Pontificate of Sixtus deserves special
mention. It was under his auspices in the year 1478 that the Inquisition
was founded in Spain for the extermination of Jews, Moors, and
Christians with a taint of heresy. During the next four years 2,000
victims were burned in the province of Castile. In Seville, a plot of
ground, called the Quemadero, or place of burning--a new Aceldama--was
set apart for executions; and here in one year 280 heretics were
committed to the flames, while 79 were condemned to perpetual
imprisonment, and 17,000 to lighter punishments of various kinds. In
Andalusia alone 5,000 houses were at once abandoned by their
inhabitants. Then followed in 1492 the celebrated edict against the
Jews. Before four months had expired the whole Jewish population were
bidden to leave Spain, carrying with them nothing in the shape of gold
or silver. To convert their property into bills of exchange and movables
was their only resource. The market speedily was glutted: a house was
given for an ass, a vineyard for a suit of clothes. Vainly did the
persecuted race endeavor to purchase a remission of the sentence by the
payment of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdinand
and his consort, raising the crucifix, and crying: 'Judas sold Christ
for 30 pieces of silver; sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for
the same to God!' The exodus began. Eight hundred thousand Jews left
Spain[1]--some for the coast of Africa, where the Arabs ripped their
bodies up in search for gems or gold they might have swallowed, and
deflowered their women--some for Portugal, where they bought the right
to exist for a large head-tax, and where they saw their sons and
daughters dragged away to baptism before their eyes. Others were sold as
slaves, or had to satisfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the
bodies of their children. Many flung themselves into the wells, and
sought to bury despair in suicide. The Mediterranean was covered with
famine-stricken and plague-breeding fleets of exiles. Putting into the
Port of Genoa, they were refused leave to reside in the city, and died
by hundreds in the harbor.[2] Their festering bodies, bred a pestilence
along the whole Italian sea-board, of which at Naples alone 20,000
persons died. Flitting from shore to shore, these forlorn specters, the
victims of bigotry and avarice, everywhere pillaged and everywhere
rejected, dwindled away and disappeared. Meanwhile the orthodox
rejoiced. Pico della Mirandola, who spent his life in reconciling Plato
with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: 'The sufferings of
the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so
extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration.' With these words
we may compare the following passage from Senarega: 'The matter at first
sight seemed praiseworthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion;
yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as
beasts, but as men, the handiwork of God.' A critic of this century can
only exclaim with stupefaction: _Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!_
Thus Spain began to devour and depopulate herself. The curse which fell
upon the Jew and Moor descended next upon philosopher and patriot. The
very life of the nation, in its commerce, its industry, its free
thought, its energy of character, was deliberately and steadily
throttled. And at no long interval of time the blight of Spain was
destined to descend on Italy, paralyzing the fair movements of her
manifold existence to a rigid uniformity, shrouding the light and color
of her art and letters in the blackness of inquisitorial gloom.
[1] This number is perhaps exaggerated. Limborch in his
_History of the Inquisition_ (p. 83) gives both 800,000 and
400,000; he also speaks of 170,000 _families_ as one
calculation.
[2] Senarega's account of the entry of the Jews into Genoa is
truly awful. He was an eye-witness of what he relates. The
passage may be read in Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_,
chapter 17.
Most singular is the attitude of a Sixtus--indulging his lust and pride
in the Vatican, adorning the chapel called after his name with
masterpieces,[1] rending Italy with broils for the aggrandizement of
favorites, haggling over the prices to be paid for bishoprics, extorting
money from starved provinces, plotting murder against his enemies,
hounding the semi-barbarous Swiss mountaineers on Milan by indulgences,
refusing aid to Venice in her championship of Christendom against the
Turk--yet meanwhile thinking to please God by holocausts of Moors, by
myriads of famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and avaricious
Ferdinand the title of Catholic, endeavoring to wipe out his sins by the
blood of others, to burn his own vices in the _autos da fé_ of Seville,
and by the foundation of that diabolical engine the Inquisition to
secure the fabric his own infamy was undermining.[2] This is not the
language of a Protestant denouncing the Pope. With all respect for the
Roman Church, that Alma Mater of the Middle Ages, that august and
venerable monument of immemorial antiquity, we cannot close our eyes to
the contradictions between practice and pretension upon which the
History of the Italian Renaissance throws a light so lurid.
[1] Musing beneath the Sibyls and before the Judgment of
Michael Angelo, it is difficult not to picture to the fancy the
arraignment of the Popes who built and beautified that chapel,
when the Christ, whose blood they sold, should appear with His
menacing right arm uplifted, and the prophets should thunder
their denunciations: 'Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow
yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock, for the
days of your slaughter and your dispersions are accomplished.'
[2] The same incongruity appears also in Innocent VIII., whose
bull against witchcraft (1484) systematized the persecution
directed against unfortunate old women and idiots. Sprenger, in
the _Malleus Maleficarum_, mentions that in the first year
after its publication forty-one witches were burned in the
district of Como, while crowds of suspected women took refuge
in the province of the Archduke Sigismond. Cantù's _Storia
della Diocesi di Como_ (Le Monnier, 2 vols.) may be consulted
for the persecution of witches in Valtellina and Val Camonica.
Cp. Folengo's _Maccaronea_ for the prevalence of witchcraft in
those districts.
After Sixtus IV. came Innocent VIII. His secular name was Giambattista
Cibo. The sacred College, terrified by the experience of Sixtus into
thinking that another Pope, so reckless in his creation of scandalous
Cardinals, might ruin Christendom, laid the most solemn obligations on
the Pope elect. Cibo took oaths on every relic, by every saint, to every
member of the conclave, that he would maintain a certain order of
appointment and a purity of election in the Church. No Cardinal under
the age of thirty, not more than one of the Pope's own blood, none
without the rank of Doctor of Theology or Law, were to be elected, and
so forth. But as soon as the tiara was on his head, he renounced them
all as inconsistent with the rights and liberties of S. Peter's Chair.
Engagements made by the man might always be broken by the Pope. Of
Innocent's Pontificate little need be said. He was the first Pope
publicly to acknowledge his seven children, and to call them sons and
daughters.[1] Avarice, venality, sloth, and the ascendency of base
favorites made his reign loathsome without the blaze and splendor of the
scandals of his fiery predecessor. In corruption he advanced a step
even beyond Sixtus, by establishing a Bank at Rome for the sale of
pardons.[2] Each sin had its price, which might be paid at the
convenience of the criminal: 150 ducats of the tax were poured into the
Papal coffers; the surplus fell to Franceschetto, the Pope's son. This
insignificant princeling, for whom the county of Anguillara was
purchased, showed no ability or ambition for aught but getting and
spending money. He was small of stature and tame-spirited: yet the
destinies of an important house of Europe depended on him; for his
father married him to Maddalena, the daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, in
1487. This led to Giovanni de' Medici receiving a Cardinal's hat at the
age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest in Rome was founded; in
the course of a few years the Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and
by their ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains of Florence
fast.[3] The traffic which Innocent and Franceschetto carried on in
theft and murder filled the Campagna with brigands and assassins.[4]
Travelers and pilgrims and ambassadors were stripped and murdered on
their way to Rome; and in the city itself more than two hundred people
were publicly assassinated with impunity during the last months of the
Pope's life. He was gradually dozing off into his last long sleep, and
Franceschetto was planning how to carry off his ducats. While the Holy
Father still hovered between life and death, a Jewish doctor proposed to
reinvigorate him by the transfusion of young blood into his torpid
veins. Three boys throbbing with the elixir of early youth were
sacrificed in vain. Each boy, says Infessura, received one ducat. He
adds, not without grim humor: 'Et paulo post mortui sunt; Judæus quidem
aufugit, et Papa non sanatus est.' The epitaph of this poor old Pope
reads like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism: 'Ego autem in
Innocentiâ meâ ingressus sum.'
[1] 'Primus pontificum filios filiasque palam ostentavit,
primus eorum apertas fecit nuptias, primus domesticos hymenæos
celebravit.' Egidius of Viterbo, quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_,
vol. vii. p. 274, note.
[2] Infessura says he heard the Vice-chancellor, when asked why
criminals were allowed to pay instead of being punished,
answer: 'God wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that
he should pay and live.' Dominico di Viterbo, Apostolic Scribe,
forged bulls by which the Pope granted indulgences for the
commission of the worst scandals. His father tried to buy him
off for 5,000 ducats. Innocent replied that, as his honor was
concerned, he must have 6,000. The poor father could not scrape
so much money together; so the bargain fell through, and
Dominico was executed. A Roman who had killed two of his own
daughters bought his pardon for 800 ducats.
[3] Guicciardini, i. 1., points out that Lorenzo, having the
Pope for his ally, was able to create that balance of power in
Italy which it was his chief political merit to have maintained
until his death.
[4] It is only by reading the pages of Infessura's Diary
(Eccardus vol. ii. pp. 2003-2005) that any notion of the mixed
debauchery and violence of Rome at this time can be formed.
Meanwhile the Cardinals had not been idle. The tedious leisure of
Innocent's long lethargy was employed by them in active simony. Simony,
it may be said in passing, gave the great Italian families a direct
interest in the election of the richest and most paying candidate. It
served the turn of a man like Ascanio Sforza to fatten the golden goose
that laid such eggs, before he killed it--in other words, to take the
bribes of Innocent and Alexander, while deferring for a future time his
own election. All the Cardinals, with the exception of Roderigo
Borgia,[1] were the creatures of Sixtus or of Innocent. Having bought
their hats with gold, they were now disposed to sell their votes to the
highest bidder. The Borgia was the richest, strongest, wisest, and most
worldly of them all. He ascertained exactly what the price of each
suffrage would be, and laid his plans accordingly. The Cardinal Ascanio
Sforza, brother of the Duke of Milan, would accept the lucrative post of
Vice-Chancellor. The Cardinal Orsini would be satisfied with the Borgia
Palaces at Rome and the Castles of Monticello and Saviano. The Cardinal
Colonna had a mind for the Abbey of Subbiaco with its fortresses. The
Cardinal of S. Angelo preferred the comfortable Bishopric of Porto with
its palace stocked with choice wines. The Cardinal of Parma would take
Nepi. The Cardinal of Genoa was bribable with the Church of S. Maria in
Via Lata. Less influential members of the Conclave sold themselves for
gold; to meet their demands the Borgia sent Ascanio Sforza four mules
laden with coin in open day, requesting him to distribute it in proper
portions to the voters. The fiery Giuliano della Rovere remained
implacable and obdurate. In the Borgia his vehement temperament
perceived a fit antagonist. The armor which he donned in their first
encounters he never doffed, but waged fierce war with the whole brood of
Borgias at Ostia, at the French Court, in Romagna, wherever and whenever
he found opportunity.[2] He and five other Cardinals--among them his
cousin Raphael Riario--refused to sell their votes. But Roderigo Borgia,
having corrupted the rest of the college, assumed the mantle of S. Peter
in 1492, with the ever-memorable title of Alexander VI.
[1] Roderigo was the son of Isabella Borgia, niece of Pope
Calixtus III., by her marriage with Joffré Lenzuoli. He took
the name of Borgia, when he came to Rome to be made Cardinal,
and to share in his uncle's greatness.
[2] The marriage of his nephew Nicolo della Rovere to Laura,
the daughter of Alexander VI. by Giulia Bella, in 1505, long
after the Borgia family had lost its hold on Italy, is a
curious and unexplained incident.
Rome rejoiced. The Holy City attired herself in festival array,
exhibiting on every flag and balcony the Bull of the house of Borgia,
and crying like the Egyptians when they found Apis:--
Vive diu Bos! Vive diu Bos! Borgia vive!
Vivit Alexander: Roma beata manet.