to raise suspicion that a Pope had been elected who would deserve the
execration of succeeding centuries. In Roderigo Borgia the people only
saw, as yet, a man accomplished at all points, of handsome person, royal
carriage, majestic presence, affable address. He was a brilliant orator,
a passionate lover, a demigod of court pageantry and ecclesiastic
parade--qualities which, though they do not suit our notions of a
churchman, imposed upon the taste of the Renaissance. As he rode in
triumph toward the Lateran, voices were loud in his praise. 'He sits
upon a snow-white horse,' writes one of the humanists of the century,[1]
'with serene forehead, with commanding dignity. As he distributes his
blessing to the crowd, all eyes are fixed upon him, and all hearts
rejoice. How admirable is the mild composure of his mien! how noble his
countenance! his glance how free! His stature and carriage, his beauty
and the full health of his body, how they enhance the reverence which he
inspires!' Another panegyrist[2] describes his 'broad forehead, kingly
brow, free countenance full of majesty,' adding that 'the heroic beauty
of his whole body' was given him by nature in order that he might 'adorn
the seat of the Apostles with his divine form in the place of God.' How
little in the early days of his Pontificate the Borgia resembled that
Alexander with whom the legend of his subsequent life has familiarized
our fancy, may be gathered from the following account:[3] 'He is
handsome, of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with
honeyed and choice eloquence; the beautiful women on whom his eyes are
cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more
powerfully than the magnet influences iron.' These, we must remember,
are the testimonies of men of letters, imbued with the Pagan sentiments
of the fifteenth century, and rejoicing in the advent of a Pope who
would, they hoped, make Rome the capital of luxury and license.
Therefore they require to be received with caution. Yet there is no
reason to suppose that the majority of the Italians regarded the
elevation of the Borgia with peculiar horror. As a Cardinal he had given
proof of his ability, but shown no signs of force or cruelty or fraud.
Nor were his morals worse than those of his colleagues. If he was the
father of several children, so was Giuliano della Rovere, and so had
been Pope Innocent before him. This mattered but little in an age when
the Primate of Christendom had come to be regarded as a secular
potentate, less fortunate than other princes inasmuch as his rule was
not hereditary, but more fortunate in so far as he could wield the
thunders and dispense the privileges of the Church. A few men of
discernment knew what had been done, and shuddered. 'The king of
Naples,' says Guicciardini, 'though he dissembled his grief, told the
queen, his wife, with tears--tears which he was wont to check even at
the death of his own sons--that a Pope had been made who would prove
most pestilent to the whole Christian commonwealth.' The young Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, again, showed his discernment of the situation by
whispering in the Conclave to his kinsman Cibo: 'We are in the wolf's
jaws; he will gulp us down, unless we make our flight good.' Besides,
there was in Italy a widely spread repugnance to the Spanish
intruders--Marrani, or renegade Moors, as they were properly called--who
crowded the Vatican and threatened to possess the land of their adoption
like conquerors. 'Ten Papacies would not suffice to satiate the greed of
all this kindred,' wrote Giannandrea Boccaccio to the Duke of Ferrara in
1492: and events proved that these apprehensions were justified; for
during the Pontificate of Alexander eighteen Spanish Cardinals were
created, five of whom belonged to the house of the Borgias.
[1] See Michael Fernus, quoted by Greg. _Lucrezia Borgia_, p.
45.
[2] Jason Mainus, quoted by Greg, _Stadt Rom._ p. 314, note.
[3] Gasp. Ver., quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom._ p. 208, note.
It is certain, however, that the profound horror with which the name of
Alexander VI. strikes a modern ear was not felt among the Italians at
the time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with which he was
afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his
Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son
Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life,
which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the sixteenth century.
This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the date
of his death. In course of time, when the attention of the Northern
nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the
glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his
conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend which, like
all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects.
Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and
to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the
Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two
conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. The
Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual
insolence in their autocracy. What they desired of strange and sweet and
terrible in the forbidden fruits of lust, they had enjoyed. The Popes of
the Middle Ages--Hildebrand and Boniface--had displayed the extreme of
spiritual insolence in their theocracy. What they desired of tyrannous
and forceful in the exercise of an usurped despotism over souls, they
had enjoyed. The Borgia combined both impulses toward the illimitable.
To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as
unrestrained as Nero's, were relieved against the background of flame
and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is
justifiable. His spiritual tyranny, that arrogated Jus, by right of
which he claimed the hemisphere revealed by Christopher Columbus, and
imposed upon the press of Europe the censure of the Church of Rome, was
rendered ten times monstrous by the glare reflected on it from the
unquenched furnace of a godless life. The universal conscience of
Christianity is revolted by those unnamable delights, orgies of blood
and festivals of lust, which were enjoyed in the plenitude of his green
and vigorous old age by this versatile diplomatist and subtle priest,
who controlled the councils of kings, and who chanted the sacramental
service for a listening world on Easter Day in Rome. Rome has never been
small or weak or mediocre. And now in the Pontificate of Alexander 'that
memorable scene' presented to the nations of the modern world a pageant
of Antichrist and Antiphysis--the negation of the Gospel and of nature;
a glaring spectacle of discord between humanity as it aspires to be at
its best, and humanity as it is at its worst; a tragi-comedy composed by
some infernal Aristophanes, in which the servant of servants, the
anointed of the Lord, the lieutenant upon earth of Christ, played the
chief part. It may be objected that this is the language not of history
but of the legend. I reply that there are occasions when the legend has
caught the spirit of the truth.
Alexander was a stronger and a firmer man than his immediate
predecessors. 'He combined,' says Guicciardini, 'craft with singular
sagacity, a sound judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; and
to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability and pains beyond
belief.'[1] His first care was to reduce Rome to order. The old
factions of Colonna and Orsini, which Sixtus had scotched, but which had
raised their heads again during the dotage of Innocent, were destroyed
in his Pontificate. In this way, as Machiavelli observed,[2] he laid the
real basis for the temporal power of the Papacy. Alexander, indeed, as a
sovereign, achieved for the Papal See what Louis XI. had done for the
throne of France, and made Rome on its small scale follow the type of
the large European monarchies. The faithlessness and perjuries of the
Pope, 'who never did aught else but deceive, nor ever thought of
anything but this, and always found occasion for his frauds,'[3] when
combined with his logical intellect and persuasive eloquence, made him a
redoubtable antagonist. All considerations of religion and morality were
subordinated by him with strict impartiality to policy: and his policy
he restrained to two objects--the advancement of his family, and the
consolidation of the temporal power. These were narrow aims for the
ambition of a potentate who with one stroke of his pen pretended to
confer the new-found world on Spain. Yet they taxed his whole strength,
and drove him to the perpetration of enormous crimes.
[1] It is but fair to Guicciardini to complete his sentence in
a note: 'These good qualities were far surpassed by his vices;
private habits of the utmost obscenity, no shame nor sense of
truth, no fidelity to his engagements, no religious sentiment;
insatiable avarice, unbridled ambition, cruelty beyond the
cruelty of barbarous races, burning desire to elevate his sons
by any means: of these there were many, and among them--in
order that he might not lack vicious instruments for effecting
his vicious schemes--one not less detestable in any way than
his father.' _St. d'It._ vol. i. p. 9. I shall translate and
put into the appendix Guicciardini's character of Alexander
from the _Storia di Firenze_.
[2] In the sentences which close the 11th chapter of the
_Prince_.
[3] Mach. _Prince_, ch. xvii. In the Satires of Ariosto (Satire
i. 208-27) there is a brilliant and singularly outspoken
passage on the nepotism of the Popes and its ruinous results
for Italy.
Former Pontiffs had raised money by the sale of benefices and
indulgences: this, of course, Alexander also practiced--to such an
extent, indeed, that an epigram gained currency: 'Alexander sells the
keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to
sell them.' But he went further and took lessons from Tiberius. Having
sold the scarlet to the highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with
rich benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he poisoned him,
laid hands upon his hoards, and recommenced the game. Paolo Capello, the
Venetian Ambassador, wrote in the year 1500: 'Every night they find in
Rome four or five murdered men, Bishops and Prelates and so forth.'
Panvinius mentions three Cardinals who were known to have been poisoned
by the Pope; and to their names may be added those of the Cardinals of
Capua and of Verona.[1] To be a prince of the Church was dangerous in
those days; and if the Borgia had not at last poisoned himself by
mistake, he must in the long-run have had to pay people to accept so
perilous a privilege. His traffic in Church dignities was carried on
upon a grand scale: twelve Cardinals' hats, for example, were put to
auction in a single day in 1500.[2] This was when he wished to pack the
Conclave with votes in favor of the cession of Romagna to Cesare Borgia,
as well as to replenish his exhausted coffers. Forty-three Cardinals
were created by him in eleven promotions: each of these was worth on an
average 10,000 florins; while the price paid by Francesco Soderini
amounted to 20,000 and that paid by Domenico Grimani reached the sum of
30,000.
[1] See the authorities in Burckhardt, pp. 93, 94.
[2] Guicc. _St. d'It._ vol. iii. p. 15.
Former Popes had preached crusades against the Turk, languidly or
energetically according as the coasts of Italy were threatened.
Alexander frequently invited Bajazet to enter Europe and relieve him of
the princes who opposed his intrigues in the favor of his children. The
fraternal feeling which subsisted between the Pope and the Sultan was to
some extent dependent on the fate of Prince Djem, a brother of Bajazet
and son of the conqueror of Constantinople, who had fled for protection
to the Christian powers, and whom the Pope kept prisoner, receiving
40,000 ducats yearly from the Porte for his jail fee. Innocent VIII. had
been the first to snare this lucrative guest in 1489. The Lance of
Longinus was sent him as a token of the Sultan's gratitude, and
Innocent, who built an altar for the relique, caused his own tomb to be
raised close by. His effigy in bronze by Pollajuolo still carries in its
hand this blood-gift from the infidel to the High Priest of Christendom.
Djem meanwhile remained in Rome, and held his Moslem Court side by side
with the Pontiff in the Vatican. Dispatches are extant in which
Alexander and Bajazet exchange terms of the warmest friendship, the Turk
imploring his Greatness--so he addressed the Pope--to put an end to the
unlucky Djem, and promising as the price of this assassination a sum of
300,000 ducats and the tunic worn by Christ, presumably that very
seamless coat over which the soldiers of Calvary had cast their
dice.[1] The money and the relique arrived in Italy and were intercepted
by the partisans of Giuliano della Rovere. Alexander, before the bargain
with the Sultan had been concluded by the murder of Djem, was forced to
hand him over to the French king. But the unlucky Turk carried in his
constitution the slow poison of the Borgias, and died in Charles's camp
between Rome and Naples. Whatever crimes may be condoned in Alexander,
it is difficult to extenuate this traffic with the Turks. By his appeal
from the powers of Europe to the Sultan, at a time when the peril to the
Western world was still most serious, he stands attained for high
treason against Christendom, of which he professed to be the chief;
against civilization, which the Church pretended to protect; against
Christ, whose vicar he presumed to style himself.
[1] See the letters in the 'Preuves et Observations,' printed
at the end of the _Mémoires de Comines_.
Like Sixtus, Alexander combined this deadness to the spirit and the
interests of Christianity with zeal for dogma. He never flinched in
formal orthodoxy, and the measures which he took for riveting the chains
of superstition on the people were calculated with the military firmness
of a Napoleon. It was he who established the censure of the press, by
which printers were obliged, under pain of excommunication, to submit
the books they issued to the control of the Archbishops and their
delegates. The Brief of June 1, 1501, which contains this order, may be
reasonably said to have retarded civilization, at least in Italy and
Spain.
Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this Pope throughout his
life.[1] This, together with his almost insane weakness for his
children, whereby he became a slave to the terrible Cesare, caused all
the crimes which he committed. At the same time, though sensual,
Alexander was not gluttonous. Boccaccio, the Ferrarese Ambassador,
remarks: 'The Pope eats only of one dish. It is, therefore, disagreeable
to have to dine with him.' In this respect he may be favorably
contrasted with the Roman prelates of the age of Leo. His relations to
Vannozza Catanei, the titular wife first of Giorgio de Croce, and then
of Carlo Canale, and to Giulia Farnese,[2] surnamed La Bella, the
titular wife of Orsino Orsini, were open and acknowledged. These two
sultanas ruled him during the greater portion of his career, conniving
meanwhile at the harem, which, after truly Oriental fashion, he
maintained in the Vatican. An incident which happened during the French
invasion of 1494 brings the domestic circumstances of a Pope of the
Renaissance vividly before us. Monseigneur d'Allegre caught the ladies
Giulia and Girolama Farnese, together with the lady Adriana de Mila, who
was employed as their duenna, near Capodimonte, on November 29, and
carried them to Montefiascone. The sum fixed for their ransom was 3,000
ducats. This the Pope paid, and on December 1 they were released.
Alexander met them outside Rome, attired like a layman in a black jerkin
trimmed with gold brocade, and fastened round his waist by a Spanish
girdle, from which hung his dagger. Lodovico Sforza, when he heard what
had happened, remarked that it was weak to release these ladies, who
were 'the very eyes and heart' of his Holiness, for so small a
ransom--if 50,000 ducats had been demanded, they would have been paid.
This and a few similar jokes, uttered at the Pope's expense, make us
understand to what extent the Italians were accustomed to regard their
high priest as a secular prince. Even the pageant of Alexander seated in
S. Peter's, with his daughter Lucrezia on one side of his throne and his
daughter-in-law Sancia upon the other, moved no moral indignation; nor
were the Romans astonished when Lucrezia was appointed Governor of
Spoleto, and plenipotentiary Regent of the Vatican in her father's
absence. These scandals, however, created a very different impression in
the north, and prepared the way for the Reformation.
[1] Guicciardini (_St. Fior._ cap. 27) writes: 'Fu
lussoriosissimo nell' uno e nell' altro sesso, tenendo
publicamente femine e garzoni, ma più ancora nelle femine.' A
notion of the public disorders connected with his dissolute
life may be gained from this passage in Sanuto's Diary
(Gregorovius, _Lucrezia Borgia_, p. 88): 'Da Roma per le
lettere del orator nostro se intese et etiam de private persone
cossa assai abominevole in le chiesa di Dio, che al papa erra
nato un fiolo di una dona romana maritata, ch' el padre l'
havea rufianata, e di questa il marito invitò il suocero a la
vigna e lo uccise tagliandoli el capo, ponendo quello sopra uno
legno con letere che diceva questo è il capo de mio suocero che
a rufianato sua fiola al papa, et che inteso questo il papa
fece metter el dito in exilio di Roma con taglia. Questa nova
venne per letere particular; etiam si godea con la sua spagnola
menatali per suo fiol duca di Gandia novamente li venuto.'
[2] Her brother Alexander, afterwards Paul III., owed his
promotion to the purple to this liaison, which was, therefore,
the origin of the greatness of the Farnesi. The tomb of Paul
III. in the Tribune of S. Peter's has three notable family
portraits--the Pope himself in bronze; his sister Giulia, naked
in marble, as Justice; and their old mother, Giovanna Gaetani,
the bawd, as Prudence.
The nepotism of Sixtus was like water to the strong wine of Alexander's
paternal ambition. The passion of paternity, exaggerated beyond the
bounds of natural affection, and scandalous in a Roman Pontiff, was the
main motive of the Borgia's action. Of his children by Vannozza, he
caused the eldest son to be created Duke of Gandia; the youngest he
married to Donna Sancia, a daughter of Alfonso of Aragon, by whom the
boy was honored with the Dukedom of Squillace. Cesare, the second of
this family, was appointed Bishop of Valentia, and Cardinal. The
Dukedoms of Camerino and Nepi were given to another John, whom Alexander
first declared to be his grandson through Cesare, and afterwards
acknowledged as his son. This John may possibly have been Lucrezia's
child. The Dukedom of Sermoneta, wrenched for a moment from the hands of
the Gaetani family, who still own it, was conferred upon Lucrezia's son,
Roderigo. Lucrezia, the only daughter of Alexander by Vannozza, took
three husbands in succession, after having been formally betrothed to
two Spanish nobles, Don Cherubino Juan de Centelles, and Don Gasparo da
Procida, son of the Count of Aversa. These contracts, made before her
father became Pope, were annulled as not magnificent enough for the
Pontiff's daughter. In 1492 she was married to Giovanni Sforza, Lord of
Pesaro. But in 1497 the pretensions of the Borgias had outgrown this
alliance, and their public policy was inclining to relations with the
Southern Courts of Italy. Accordingly she was divorced and given to
Alfonso, Prince of Biseglia, a natural son of the King of Naples. When
this man's father lost his crown, the Borgias, not caring to be
connected with an ex-royal family, caused Alfonso to be stabbed on the
steps of S. Peter's in 1501; and while he lingered between life and
death, they had him strangled in his sick-bed, by Michellozzo, Cesare's
assassin in chief. Finally Lucrezia was wedded to Alfonso, crown-prince
of Ferrara, in 1502.[1] The proud heir of the Este dynasty was forced by
policy, against his inclination, to take to his board and bed a Pope's
bastard, twice divorced, once severed from her husband by murder, and
soiled, whether justly or not, by atrocious rumors, to which her
father's and her brother's conduct gave but too much color. She proved a
model princess after all, and died at last in childbirth, after having
been praised by Ariosto as a second Lucrece, brighter for her virtues
than the star of regal Rome.
[1] Her dowry was 300,000 ducats, besides wedding presents, and
certain important immunities and privileges granted to Ferrara
by the Pope.
History has at last done justice to the memory of this woman, whose long
yellow hair was so beautiful, and whose character was so colorless. The
legend which made her a poison-brewing Mænad has been proved a lie--but
only at the expense of the whole society in which she lived. The simple
northern folk, familiar with the tales of Chriemhild, Brynhild, and
Gudrun, who helped to forge this legend, could not understand that a
woman should be irresponsible for all the crimes and scandals
perpetrated in her name. Yet it seems now clear enough that not hers,
but her father's and her brother's, were the atrocities which made her
married life in Rome a byword. She sat and smiled through all the
tempests which tossed her to and fro, until she found at last a fair
port in the Duchy of Ferrara. Nursed in the corruption of Papal Rome,
which Lorenzo de' Medici described to his son Giovanni as 'a sink of all
the vices,' consorting habitually with her father's concubines, and
conscious that her own mother had been married for show to two
successive husbands, it is not possible that Lucrezia ruled her conduct
at any time with propriety. It is even probable that the darkest tales
about her are true. The Lord of Pesaro, we must remember, told his
kinsman, the Duke of Milan, that the assigned reasons for his divorce
were false, and that the fact was what can scarcely be recorded.[1]
Still, there is no ground for supposing that, in the matter of her
first husband's divorce and the second's murder, she was more than a
passive agent in the hands of Alexander and Cesare. The pleasure-loving,
careless woman of the Renaissance is very different from the Medea of
Victor Hugo's romance; and what remains most revolting to the modern
conscience in her conduct is complacent acquiescence in scenes of
debauchery devised for her amusement.[2] Instead of viewing her with
dread as a potent and malignant witch, we have to regard her with
contempt as a feeble woman, soiled with sensual foulness from the
cradle. It is also due to truth to remember that at Ferrara she won the
esteem of a husband who had married her unwillingly, attached the whole
state to her by her sweetness of temper, and received the panegyrics of
the two Strozzi, Bembo, Ariosto, Aldo Manuzio, and many other men of
note. Foreigners who saw her surrounded by her brilliant Court
exclaimed, like the French biographer of Bayard: 'J'ose bien dire que,
de son temps, ni beau coup avant, il ne s'est point trouvé de plus
triomphante princesse; car elle était belle, bonne douce, et courtoise à
toutes gens.'
[1] The whole question of Lucrezia's guilt has been ably
investigated by Gregorovius (_Lucrezia Borgia_, pp. 101,
159-64). Charity suggests that the dreadful tradition of her
relation to her father and brothers is founded less upon fact
than upon the scandals current after her divorce. What Giovanni
Sforza said was this: '_anzi haverla conosciuta infinite volte,
ma chel Papa non gelha tolta per altro se non per usare con
lei_.' This confession of the injured husband went the round of
all the Courts of Italy, was repeated by Malipiero and Paolo
Capello, formed the substance of the satires of Sannazaro and
Pontano, crept into the chronicle of Matarazzo, and survived in
the histories of Machiavelli and Guicciardini. There was
nothing in his words to astonish men who were cognizant of the
acts of Gianpaolo Baglioni and Sigismondo Malatesta; while the
frantic passion of Alexander for his children, closely allied
as this feeling was in him to excessive sensuality, gave them
confirmation. Were they, however, true; or were they a
malevolent lie? That is the real point at issue. Psychological
speculation will help but little here. It is true that Lucrezia
in after-life showed all the signs of a clear conscience. But
so also did Alexander, whose buoyancy of spirits lasted till
the very day of his death. Yet he was stained with crimes foul
enough to darken the conscience of any man, at any period of
life, and in any position.
[2] See Burchard, ed. Leibnitz, pp. 77 and 78.
Yet even at Ferrara tragedies which might remind her of the Vatican
continued to surround her path. Alfonso, rude in manners and devoted to
gun-foundry, interfered but little with the life she led among the wits
and scholars who surrounded her. One day, however, in 1508, the poet
Ercole Strozzi, who had sung her praises, was found dead, wrapped in his
mantle, and pierced with two-and-twenty wounds. No judicial inquiry into
this murder was made. Rumor credited both Alfonso and Lucrezia with the
deed--Alfonso, because he might be jealous of his wife--Lucrezia,
because her poet had recently married Barbara Torelli. Two years earlier
another dark crime at Ferrara brought the name of Borgia before the
public. One of Lucrezia's ladies, Angela Borgia, was courted by both
Giulio d' Este and the Cardinal Ippolito. The girl praised the eyes of
Giulio in the hearing of the Cardinal, who forthwith hired assassins to
mutilate his brother's face. Giulio escaped from their hands with the
loss of one of his eyes, and sought justice from the Duke against the
Cardinal in vain. Thereupon he vowed to be revenged on both Ippolito and
Alfonso. His plot was to murder them, and to place Ferdinand of Este on
the throne. The treason was discovered; the conspirators appeared before
Alfonso: he rushed upon Ferdinand, and with his dagger stabbed him in
the face. Both Giulio and Ferdinand were thrown into the dungeons of the
palace at Ferrara, where they languished for years, while the Duke and
Lucrezia enjoyed themselves in its spacious halls and su ny loggie
among their courtiers. Ferdinand died in prison, aged sixty-three, in
1540. Giulio was released in 1559 and died, aged eighty-three, in 1561.
These facts deserve to be recorded in connection with Lucrezia's married
life at Ferrara, lest we should pay too much attention to the flatteries
of Ariosto. At the same time her history as Duchess consists, for the
most part, in the record of the birth of children. Like her mother
Vannozza, she gave herself, in the decline of life, to works of charity
and mercy. After this fashion the bright and baleful dames of the
Renaissance saved their souls.
But to return to the domestic history of Alexander. The murder of the
Duke of Gandia brings the whole Borgia family upon the scene. It is
related with great circumstantiality and with surprising sangfroid by
Burchard, the Pope's Master of the Ceremonies. The Duke with his brother
Cesare, then Cardinal Valentino, supped one night at the house of their
mother Vannozza. On their way home the Duke said that he should visit a
lady of their acquaintance. He parted from Cesare and was never seen
again alive. When the news of his disappearance spread abroad, a
boatman of the Tiber deposed to having watched the body of a man thrown
into the river on the night of the Duke's death, the 14th of June; he
had not thought it worth while to report this fact, for he had seen 'a
hundred bodies in his day thrown into the water at the said spot, and no
questions asked about them afterwards.' The Pope had the Tiber dragged
for some hours, while the wits of Rome made epigrams upon this true
successor of S. Peter, this new fisher of men. At last the body of the
Duke of Gandia was hauled up: nine wounds, one in the throat, the others
in the head and legs and trunk, were found upon the corpse. From the
evidence accumulated on the subject of the murder it appeared that
Cesare had planned it; whether, as some have supposed, out of a jealousy
of his brother too dreadful to describe, or, as is more probable,
because he wished to take the first place in the Borgia family, we do
not know exactly. The Pontiff in his rage and grief was like a wild
beast driven to bay. He shut himself up in a private room, refused food,
and howled with so terrible a voice that it was heard in the streets
beyond his palace. When he rose up from this agony, remorse seemed to
have struck him. He assembled a Conclave of the Cardinals, wept before
them, rent his robes, confessed his sins, and instituted a commission
for the reform of the abuses he had sanctioned in the Church. But the
storm of anguish spent its strength at last. A visit from Vannozza, the
mother of his children, wrought a sudden change from fury to
reconcilement. What passed between them is not known for certain;
Vannozza is supposed, however, to have pointed out, what was
indisputably true, that Cesare was more fitted to support the dignity of
the family by his abilities than had been the weak and amiable Duke of
Gandia. The miserable father rose from the earth, dried his eyes, took
food, put from him his remorse, and forgot together with his grief for
Absalom the reforms which he had promised for the Church.
Henceforth he devoted himself with sustained energy to building up the
fortunes of Cesare, whom he released from all ecclesiastical
obligations, and to whose service he seemed bound by some mysterious
power. Nor did he even resent the savageness and cruelty which this
young hell-cat vented in his presence on the persons of his favorites.
At one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the Pope's minion, with his own
hand, when the youth had taken refuge in Alexander's arms: the blood
spirted out upon the priestly mantle, and the young man died there.[1]
At another time he employed the same diabolical temper for the
delectation of his father. He turned out some prisoners sentenced to
death in a court-yard of the palace, arrayed himself in fantastic
clothes, and amused the papal party by shooting the unlucky criminals.
They ran round and round the court crouching and doubling to avoid his
arrows. He showed his skill by hitting each where he thought fit. The
Pope and Lucrezia looked on applaudingly. Other scenes, not of
bloodshed, but of groveling sensuality, devised for the entertainment of
his father and his sister, though described by the dry pen of Burchard,
can scarcely be transferred to these pages.
[1] The account is given by Capello, the Venetian envoy.
The history of Cesare's attempt to found a principality belongs properly
to another chapter.[1] But the assistance rendered by his father is
essential to the biography of Alexander. The vision of an Italian
sovereignty which Charles of Anjou, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and Galeazzo
Maria Sforza had successively entertained, now fascinated the
imagination of the Borgias. Having resolved to make Cesare a prince,
Alexander allied himself with Louis XII. of France, promising to annul
his first marriage and to sanction his nuptials with Ann of Brittany, if
he would undertake the advancement of his son. This bribe induced Louis
to create Cesare Duke of Valence and to confer on him the hand of
Charlotte of Navarre. He also entered Italy and with his arms enabled
Cesare to subdue Romagna. The system adopted by Alexander and his son in
their conquests was a simple one. They took the capitals and murdered
the princes. Thus Cesare strangled the Varani at Camerino in 1502, and
the Vitelli and Orsini at Sinigaglia in the same year: by his means the
Marcscotti had been massacred wholesale in Bologna; Pesaro, Rimini, and
Forli had been treated in like manner; and after the capture of Faenpza
in 1501, the two young Manfredi had been sent to Rome; where they were
exposed to the worst insults, drowned or strangled.[2] A system of equal
simplicity kept their policy alive in foreign Courts. The Bishop of
Cette in France was poisoned for hinting at a secret of Cesare's (1498);
the Cardinal d'Amboise was bribed to maintain the credit of the Borgias
with Louis XII.; the offer of a red hat to Briçonnet saved Alexander
from a general council in 1494. The historical interest of Alexander's
method consists of its deliberate adaptation of all the means in his
power to one end--the elevation of his family. His spiritual authority,
the wealth of the Church, the honors of the Holy College, the arts of an
assassin, the diplomacy of a despot, were all devoted systematically and
openly to the purpose in view. Whatever could be done to weaken Italy by
foreign invasions and internal discords, so as to render it a prey for
his poisonous son, he attempted. When Louis XII. made his infamous
alliance with Ferdinand the Catholic for the spoliation of the house of
Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave it his sanction. The two kings
quarreled over their prey: then Alexander fomented their discord in
order that Cesare might have an opportunity of carrying on his
operations in Tuscany unchecked. Patriotism in his breast, whether the
patriotism of a born Spaniard or the patriotism of an Italian potentate,
was as dead as Christianity. To make profit for the house of Borgia by
fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment of nations, was the Papal
policy.
[1] See Chapter VI.
[2] Their father, Galeotto Manfredi, had been murdered in 1488
by their mother, Francesca Bentivogli. Of Astorre's death
Guicciardini writes: 'Astorre, che era minore di diciotto anni
e di forma eccellente ... condotto a Roma, saziata prima
(secondo che si disse) la libidine di qualcuno, fu occultamente
insieme con un suo fratello naturale privato della vita.' Nardi
(_Storie Florentine_, lib. iv. 13) credits Cesare with the
violation and murder of the boy. How far, we may ask, were
these dark crimes of violence actuated by astrological
superstition? This question is raised by Burckhardt (p. 363)
apropos of Sigismondo Malatesta's assault upon his son, and
Pier Luigi Farnese's violation of the Bishop of Fano. To a
temperament like Alexander's, however, mere lust enhanced by
cruelty, and seasoned with the joy of insult to an enemy, was a
sufficient motive for the commission of monstrous crime.
It is wearisome to continue to the end the catalogue of his misdoings.
We are relieved when at last the final crash arrives. The two Borgias,
so runs the legend of their downfall, invited themselves to dine with
the Cardinal Adriano of Corneto in a vineyard of the Vatican belonging
to their host. Thither by the hands of Alexander's butler they
previously conveyed some poisoned wine. By mistake, or by the
contrivance of the Cardinal, who may have bribed this trusted agent,
they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim. Nearly all
contemporary Italian annalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio,
and Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the tragedy, which became
the common property of historians, novelists, and moralists.[1] Yet
Burchard who was on the spot, recorded in his diary that both father and
son were attacked by a malignant fever; and Giustiniani wrote to his
masters in Venice that the Pope's physician ascribed his illness to
apoplexy.[2] The season was remarkably unhealthy, and deaths from fever
had been frequent. A circular letter to the German Princes, written
probably by the Cardinal of Gurk, and dated August 31, 1503, distinctly
mentioned fever as the cause of the Pope's sudden decease, _ex hoc
seculo horrendâ febrium incensione absorptum_.[3] Machiavelli, again,
who conversed with Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his career,
gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son and father being
simultaneously prostrated by disease.
[1] The story is related by Cinthio in his _Ecatommithi_,
December 9, November 10.
[2] The various accounts of Alexander's death have been
epitomized by Gregorovius (_Stadt Rom_, vol. vii.), and have
been discussed by Villari in his edition of the Giustiniani
Dispatches, 2 vols. Florence, Le Monnier. Gregorovius thinks
the question still open. Villari decides in favor of fever
against poison.
[3] Reprinted by R. Garnett in _Athenæum_, Jan. 16, 1875.
At this distance of time, and without further details of evidence, we
are unable to decide whether Alexander's death was natural, or whether
the singularly circumstantial and commonly accepted story of the
poisoned wine contained the truth. On the one side, in favor of the
hypothesis of fever, we have Burchard's testimony, which does not,
however, exactly agree with Giustiniani's, who reported apoplexy to the
Venetian senate as the cause of death, and whose report, even at Venice,
was rejected by Sanudo for the hypothesis of poison. On the other side,
we have the consent of all contemporary historians, with the single and,
it must be allowed, remarkable exception of Machiavelli. Paolo Giovio
goes even so far as to assert that the Cardinal Corneto told him he had
narrowly escaped from the effects of antidotes taken in his extreme
terror to counteract the possibility of poison.
Whatever may have been the proximate cause of his sickness, Alexander
died, a black and swollen mass, hideous to contemplate, after a sharp
struggle with the venom he had absorbed.[1] 'All Rome,' says
Guicciardini, 'ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men
could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent
who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every
demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of
avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had
filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished for some days on a sick
bed; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he
recovered, to find his claws cut and his plans in irretrievable
confusion. 'The state of the Duke of Valence,' says Filippo Nerli,[2]
'vanished even as smoke in air, or foam upon the water.'
[1] 'Morto chel fu, il corpo cominciò a bollire, e la bocca a
spumare come faria uno caldaro al focho, assì perseverò mentre
che fu sopra terra; divenne anchor ultra modo grosso in tanto
che in lui non apparea forma di corpo humano, ne dala larghezza
ala lunghezza del corpo suo era differenzia alcuna' (letter of
Marquis of Mantua).
[2] _Commentari_, lib, v.
The moral sense of the Italians expressed itself after Alexander's death
in the legend of a devil, who had carried off his soul. Burchard,
Giustiniani, Sanudo, and others mention this incident with apparent
belief. But a letter from the Marquis of Mantua to his wife, dated
September 22, 1503, gives the fullest particulars: 'In his sickness the
Pope talked in such a way that those who did not know what was in his
mind thought him wandering, though he spoke with great feeling, and his
words were: _I will come; it is but right; wait yet a little while_.
Those who were privy to his secret thought, explained that, after the
death of Innocent, while the Conclave was sitting, he bargained with the
devil for the Papacy at the price of his soul; and among the agreements
was this, that he should hold the See twelve years, which he did, with
the addition of four days; and some attest they saw seven devils in the
room at the moment that he breathed his last.' Mere old wives' tales;
yet they mark the point to which the credit of the Borgia had fallen,
even in Italy, since the hour when the humanists had praised his godlike
carriage and heroic mien upon the day of his election.
Thus, overreaching themselves, ended this pair of villains--the most
notable adventurers who ever played their part upon the stage of the
great world. The fruit of so many crimes and such persistent effort was
reaped by their enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, for whose benefit the
nobles of the Roman state and the despots of Romagna had been
extirpated.[1] Alexander had proved the old order of Catholicity to be
untenable. The Reformation was imperiously demanded. His very vices
spurred the spirit of humanity to freedom. Before a saintly Pontiff the
new age might still have trembled in superstitious reverence. The Borgia
to all logical intellects rendered the pretensions of a Pope to sway the
souls of men ridiculous. This is an excuse for dwelling so long upon the
spectacle of his enormities. Better than any other series of facts, they
illustrate, not only the corruption of society, and the separation
between morality and religion in Italy, but also the absurdity of that
Church policy which in the age of the Renaissance confined the action of
the head of Christendom to the narrow interests of a brood of parvenus
and bastards.
[1] Cesare, it must be remembered, had ostensibly reduced the
cities of Lombardy, Romagna, and the March, as Gonfalonier of
the Church.
Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alexander, no account
need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. Whatever
opinion may be formed of him considered as the high-priest of the
Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II. was one of the
greatest figures of the Renaissance, and that his name, instead of that
of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of
arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful
personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's
and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter's, that
materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the
Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal
Rome, was his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no
flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, stain his pontificate. His
one purpose was to secure and extend the temporal authority of the
Popes; and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians,
who threatened to absorb Romagna, by reducing Perugia and Bologna to the
Papal sway, by annexing Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the
heritage bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia. At his death he transmitted
to his successors the largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. But
restless, turbid, never happy unless fighting, Julius drowned the
peninsula in blood. He has been called a patriot, because from time to
time he raised the cry of driving the barbarians from Italy: it must,
however, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal di San
Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; it was he
who stirred up the League of Cambray against Venice, and who invited the
Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy; in each case adding the weight of the
Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his country. Julius,
again, has been variously represented as the saviour of the Papacy, and
as the curse of Italy.[1] He was emphatically both. In those days of
national anarchy it was perhaps impossible for Julius to magnify the
Church except at the expense of the nation, and to achieve the purpose
of his life without inflicting the scourge of foreign war upon his
countrymen. The powers of Europe had outgrown the Papal discipline.
Italian questions were being decided in the cabinets of Louis,
Maximilian, and Ferdinand. Instead of controlling the arbiters of Italy,
a Pope could only play off one against another.
[1] 'Fatale instrumento e allora e prima e poi de' mali
d'Italia,' says Guicciardini, _Storia d'Italia_, vol. i. p. 84.
'Der Retter des Papstthums,' says Burckhardt, p. 95.
Leo X. succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief of the Romans,
wearied with the continual warfare of the old _Pontifice terribile_. In
the gorgeous pageant of his triumphal procession to the Lateran, the
streets were decked with arches, emblems, and inscriptions. Among these
may be noticed the couplet emblazoned by the banker Agostino Chigi
before his palace:
Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora; tempora Mavors
Olim habuit; sua nunc tempora Pallas habet.
'Venus ruled here with Alexander; Mars with Julius; now Pallas enters on
her reign with Leo.' To this epigram the goldsmith Antonio di San Marco
answered with one pithy line:
Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero:
'Mars reigned; Pallas reigns; Venus' own I shall always be.'
This first Pope of the house of Medici enjoyed at Rome the fame of his
father Lorenzo the Magnificent at Florence. Extolled as an Augustus in
his lifetime, he has given his name to what is called the golden age of
Italian culture. As a man, he was well qualified to represent the
neo-pagan freedom of the Renaissance. Saturated with the spirit of his
period, he had no sympathy with religious earnestness, no conception of
moral elevation, no aim beyond a superficial polish of the understanding
and the taste. Good Latinity seemed to him of more importance than true
doctrine: Jupiter sounded better in a sermon than Jehovah; the
immortality of the soul was an open topic for debate. At the same time
he was extravagantly munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his
zeal for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what was reasonable in
the man was ridiculous in the pontiff. There remained an irreconcilable
incongruity between his profession of the Primacy of Christianity and
his easy epicurean philosophy.
Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, was a bad financier.
His reckless expenditure contributed in no small measure to the
corruption of Rome and to the ruin of the Latin Church, while it won the
praises of the literary world. Julius, who had exercised rigid economy,
left 700,000 ducats in the coffers of S. Angelo. The very jewels of
Leo's tiara were pledged to pay his debts, when he died suddenly in
1521. During the heyday of his splendor he spent 8,000 ducats monthly
on presents to his favorites and on his play-debts. His table, which
was open to all the poets, singers, scholars, and buffoons of Rome,
cost half the revenues of Romagna and the March. He founded the
knightly Order of S. Peter to replenish his treasury, and turned the
conspiracy of the Cardinal Petrucci against his life to such good
account--extorting from the Cardinal Riario a fine of 5,000 ducats, and
from the Cardinals Soderini and Hadrian the sum of 125,000--that Von
Hutten was almost justified in treating the whole of that dark business
as a mere financial speculation. The creation of thirty-nine Cardinals
in 1517 brought him in above 500,000 ducats. Yet, in spite of these
expedients for getting gold, the bankers of Rome were half ruined when
he died. The Bini had lent him 200,000 ducats; the Gaddi, 32,000; the
Ricasoli, 10,000; the Cardinal Salviati claimed a debt of 80,000; the
Cardinals Santi Quattro and Armellini, each 150,000.[1] These figures
are only interesting when we remember that the mountains of gold which
they denote were squandered in æsthetic sensuality.
When the Pope was made, he said to Giuliano (Duke of Nemours): 'Let us
enjoy the Papacy since God has given it us--_godiamoci il Papato, poichè
Dio ce l' ha dato_.[2]' It was in this spirit that Leo administered the
Holy See. The keynote which he struck dominated the whole society of
Rome. At Agostine Chigi's banquets, prelates of the Church and Apostolic
secretaries sat side by side with beautiful Imperias and smooth-cheeked
singing-boys; fishes from Byzantium and ragouts of parrots' tongues were
served on golden platters, which the guests threw from the open windows
into the Tiber. Masques and balls, comedies and carnival processions
filled the streets and squares and palaces of the Eternal City with a
mimicry of pagan festivals, while art went hand in hand with luxury. It
seemed as though Bacchus and Pallas and Priapus would be reinstated in
their old realm, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself Christian.
The hoarse rhetoric of friars in the Coliseum, and the drone of
pifferari from the Ara Coeli, mingled with the Latin declamations
of the Capitol and the twang of lute-strings in the Vatican. Meanwhile,
amid crowds of Cardinals in hunting-dress, dances of half-naked girls,
and masques of Carnival Bacchantes, moved pilgrims from the North with
wide, astonished, woeful eyes--disciples of Luther, in whose soul, as in
a scabbard, lay sheathed the sword of the Spirit, ready to flash forth
and smite.
[1] See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, book xiv. ch. 3.
[2] 'Relazione di Marino Giorgi,' March 17, 1517. Alberi,
series ii. vol. iii. p. 51.
A more complete conception may be formed of Leo by comparing him with
Julius. Julius disturbed the peace of Italy with a view to establishing
the temporal power of his see. Leo returned to the old nepotism of the
previous Popes, and fomented discord for the sake of the Medici. It was
at one time his project to secure the kingdom of Naples for his brother
Giuliano, and a Milanese sovereignty for his nephew Lorenzo. On the
latter he succeeded in conferring the Duchy of Urbino, to the prejudice
of its rightful owners.[1] With Florence in their hands and the Papacy
under their control, the Medici might have swayed all Italy. Such plans,
however, in the days of Francis I. and Charles V. had become
impracticable; nor had any of the Medicean family stuff to undertake
more than the subjugation of their native city. Julius was violent in
temper, but observant of his promises. Leo was suave and slippery. He
lured Gianpaolo Baglioni to Rome by a safe-conduct, and then had him
imprisoned and beheaded in the Castle of S. Angelo. Julius delighted in
war and was never happier than when the cannons roared around him at
Mirandola. Leo vexed the soul of his master of the ceremonies because he
would ride out a-hunting in topboots. Julius designed S. Peter's and
comprehended Michael Angelo. Leo had the wit to patronize the poets,
artists and historians who added luster to his Court; but he brought no
new great man of genius to the front. The portraits of the two Popes,
both from the hand of Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius,
bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic
temperament; though the brand is hoar with ashes and more than half
burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed,
dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fiber
of a sensualist.
[1] He would have given it to Giuliano, but Giuliano was an
honest man and remembered what he owed to the della Rovere
family. See the 'Relazione' of Marino Giorgi (_Rel. Ven._ ser.
ii. vol. iii. p. 51).
It has often been remarked that both Julius and Leo raised money by the
sale of indulgences with a view to the building of S. Peter's, thus
aggravating one of the chief scandals which provoked the Reformation.
In that age of maladjusted impulses the desire to execute a great work
of art, combined with the cynical resolve to turn the superstitions of
the people to account, forced rebellion to a head. Leo was unconscious
of the magnitude of Luther's movement. If he thought at all seriously of
the phenomenon, it stirred his wonder. Nor did he feel the necessity of
reformation in the Church of Italy. The rich and many-sided life of Rome
and the diplomatic interests of Italian despotism absorbed his whole
attention. It was but a small matter what barbarians thought or did.
The sudden death of Leo threw the Holy College into great perplexity. To
choose the new Pope without reference to political interests was
impossible; and these were divided between Charles V. and Francis I.
After twelve days spent by the Cardinals in conclave, the result of
their innumerable schemes and counter-schemes was the election of the
Cardinal of Tortosa. No one knew him; and his elevation to the Papacy,
due to the influence of Charles, was almost as great a surprise to the
electors as to the Romans. In their rage and horror at having chosen
this barbarian, the College began to talk about the inspiration of the
Holy Ghost, seeking the most improbable of all excuses for the mistake
to which intrigue had driven them. 'The courtiers of the Vatican and
chief officers of the Church,' says an eyewitness, 'wept and screamed
and cursed and gave themselves up to despair.' Along the blank walls of
the city was scrawled: 'Rome to let.' Sonnets fell in showers, accusing
the cardinals of having delivered over 'the fair Vatican to a German's
fury.'[1] Adrian VI. came to Rome for the first time as Pope.[2] He knew
no Italian, and talked Latin with an accent unfamiliar to southern ears.
His studies had been confined to scholastic philosophy and theology.
With courts he had no commerce; and he was so ignorant of the state a
Pope should keep in Rome, that he wrote beforehand requesting that a
modest house and garden might be hired for his abode. When he saw the
Vatican, he exclaimed that here the successors, not of Peter, but of
Constantine should dwell. Leo kept one hundred grooms for the service of
his stable; Adrian retained but four. Two Flemish valets sufficed for
his personal attendance, and to these he gave each evening one ducat for
the expenses of the next day's living. A Flemish serving woman cooked
his food, made his bed and washed his linen. Rome, with its splendid
immorality, its classic art and pagan culture, made the same impression
on him that it made on Luther. When his courtiers pointed to the Laocoon
as the most illustrious monument of ancient sculpture, he turned away
with horror, murmuring: 'Idols of the Pagans!' The Belvedere, which was
fast becoming the first statue-gallery in Europe, he walled up and never
entered. At the same time he set himself with earnest purpose, so far as
his tied hands and limited ability would go, to reform the more patent
abuses of the Church. Leo had raised about three million ducats by the
sale of offices, which represented an income of 348,000 ducats to the
purchasers, and provided places for 2,550 persons. By a stroke of his
pen Adrian canceled these contracts and threw upon the world a crowd of
angry and defrauded officials. It was but poor justice to remind them
that their bargain with his predecessor had been illegal. Such attempts,
however, at a reformation of ecclesiastical society were as ineffectual
as pin-pricks in the cure of a fever which demands blood-letting. The
real corruption of Rome, deeply seated in high places, remained
untouched. Luther meanwhile had carried all before him in the North, and
accurate observers in Rome itself dreaded some awful catastrophe for the
guilty city. 'This state is set upon the razor-edge of peril; God grant
we have not soon to take flight to Avignon or to the ends of the ocean.
I see the downfall of this spiritual monarchy at hand. Unless God help,
it is all over with us.'[3] Adrian met the emergency, and took up arms
against the sea of troubles by expressing his horror of simony,
sensuality, thievery and so forth. The result was that he was simply
laughed at. Pasquin made so merry with his name that Adrian vowed he
would throw the statue into the Tiber; whereupon the Duke of Sessa
wittily replied: 'Throw him to the bottom, and, like a frog, he'll go on
croaking.' Berni, again, wrote one of his cleverest Capitoli upon the
dunce who could not comprehend his age; and when he died, his doctor's
door was ornamented with this inscription: _Liberatori patriæ Senatus
Populusque Romanus_.
[1] See Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp. 382, 383. The details
about Adriano are chiefly taken from the _Relazioni_ of the
Venetian embassadors, series ii. vol. iii. pp. 75-120.
[2] His father's name was Florus or Flerentius, of the Flemish
family, it is supposed, of Dedel. Berni calls him a
carpet-maker. Other accounts represent him as a ship's
carpenter. The Pope's baptismal name was Adrian.
[3] See the passage quoted from the _Lettere de Principi_,
Rome, March 17, 1523, by Burckhardt, p. 99, note.
Great was the rejoicing when another Medici was made Pope in 1523.
People hoped that the merry days of Leo would return. But things had
gone too far toward dissolution. Clement VII. failed to give
satisfaction to the courtiers whom his more genial cousin had delighted:
even the scholars and the poets grumbled.[1] His rule was weak and
vacillating, so that the Colonna faction raised its head again and drove
him to the Castle of S. Angelo. The political horizon of Italy grew
darker and more sullen daily, as before some dreadful storm. Over Rome
itself impended ruin--
as when God
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air.[2]
At last the crash came. Clement by a series of treaties, treacheries,
and tergiversations had deprived himself of every friend and exasperated
every foe. Italy was so worn out with warfare, so accustomed to the
anarchy of aimless revolutions and to the trampling to and fro of
stranger squadrons on her shores, that the news of a Lutheran troop,
levied with the express object of pillaging Rome, and reinforced with
Spanish ruffians and the scum of every nation, scarcely roused her
apathy. The so-called army of Frundsberg--a horde of robbers held
together by the hope of plunder--marched without difficulty to the gates
of Rome. So low had the honor of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of
Ferrara, by direct aid given, and the Duke of Urbino, by counter-force
withheld, opened the passes of the Po and of the Apennines to these
marauders. They lost their general in Lombardy. The Constable Bourbon,
who succeeded him, died in the assault of the city. Then Rome for nine
months was abandoned to the lust, rapacity, and cruelty of some 30,000
brigands without a leader. It was then discovered to what lengths of
insult, violence, and bestiality the brutal barbarism of Germans and the
avarice of Spaniards could be carried. Clement, beleaguered in the
Castle of S. Angelo, saw day and night the smoke ascend from desolated
palaces and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women and the
groans of tortured men mingle with the jests of Lutheran drunkards and
the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming its galleries and leaning from
its windows he exclaimed with Job:[3] '_Quare de vulvâ eduxisti me? qui
utinam consumptus essem, ne oculus me videret_.' What the Romans,
emasculated by luxury and priest rule, what the Cardinals and prelates,
lapped in sensuality and sloth, were made to suffer during this long
agony, can scarcely be described. It is too horrible. When at last the
barbarians, sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, glutted with gold,
and decimated by pestilence, withdrew, Rome raised her head a widow.
From the shame and torment of that sack she never recovered, never
became again the gay licentious lovely capital of arts and letters, the
glittering gilded Rome of Leo. But the kings of the earth took pity on
her desolation. The treaty of Amiens (August 18, 1527), concluded
between Francis I. and Henry VIII. against Charles V., in whose name
this insult had been offered to the Holy City of Christendom, together
with Charles's own tardy willingness to make amends, restored the Papacy
to the respect of Europe.
[1] See, for instance, Berni's sonnets. In one of these, Berni
very powerfully describes the vacillation and irresolution of
Clement's state-policy.
[2] See Varchi's picture of the state of Rome, _St. Fior._ ii.
[3] So Luigi Guicciardini in his account of the sack of Rome
relates.
It is well known that at this crisis the Emperor seriously thought of
putting an end to the State of the Church. His councilors advised him to
restore the Pope to his original rank of Bishop, and to make Rome again
the seat of Empire.[1] But to have done this would have been impossible
under the political conditions of the sixteenth century, and in the face
of Christendom still Catholic. His deliberations, therefore, cost Rome
the miseries of the sack; but they were speedily superseded by the
determination to strengthen the Papal by means of the Imperial
authority in Italy. Florence was given as a make-peace offering to the
contemptible Medici; and it remains the worst shame of Clement that he
used the dregs of the army that had sacked Rome for the enslavement of
his mother-city.
[1] See the authorities in Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. pp.
569, 575.
Internally, the Papal State had learned by its misfortunes the necessity
of a reform. Sadoleto, writing in the September of that memorable year
to Clement, reminds him that the sufferings of Rome have satisfied the
wrath of God, and that the way was now open for an amelioration of
manners and laws.[1] No force of arms could prevent the Holy City from
returning to a better life, and proving that the Christian priesthood
was not a mere mockery and sham.[2] In truth the Counter-Reformation may
be said to date historically from 1527.
[1] It was universally recognized in Italy that the sack of
Rome was a punishment inflicted by Providence upon the godless
city. Without quoting great authorities like Sadoleto or the
Bishop of Fossombrone, one of whose letters gives a really
awful picture of Roman profligacy (_Opere di M.G. Guidiccioni_,
Barbera, vol. i. p. 193), we find abundant testimony to this
persuasion regarding the intolerible vice of Rome, even in men
devoid of moral conscience. Aretino (_La Cortegiana_, end of
Act i. Sc. xxiii.) writes: 'Io mic redeva che il castigo, che
l' ha dato Cristo per mano degli Spagnuoli, l'avesse fatta
migliore, et è più scellerata che mai.' Bandello (_Novelle_,
Parte ii. xxxvii.) alluding to the sack, remarks in a
parenthesis, 'benche i peccati di quella città meritassero
esser castigati.' After adducing two such witnesses, it would
weaken the case to cite Trissino or Vettori, both of whom
expressed themselves with force upon the iniquities of Papal
Rome.
[2] Compare _Lettere de' Princ._ ii. 77; Cardinal Cajetanus,
and other testimonies quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii.
pp. 568, 578.