aggressive, and successfully detached from the Pope the Houses of
Colonna and Savelli; (the last, until their dynasty became extinct, held
the office of Hereditary Marshal of the Holy Roman Church.) Colonna and
Savelli then collected their retainers and menaced the Eternal City. On
the eighteenth of September Don Fabrizio Colonna recaptured Ostia, and
held it in the name of its renegade Cardinal-Bishop. French galleys
transporting troops anchored in the mouth of Tiber. Crippled Naples
dared not to advance on Milan leaving Rome unprotected. Then Madonna
Caterina Sforza-Riario, countess and witch, (daughter of the great
Francesco, and widow of the infamous Count Girolamo Riario of the Pazzi
Conspiracy,) declared for France in her citadel of Imola, and made
things worse for Naples and the Papacy by showing them that an enemy was
in their midst. In this strait, and having no sovereign friend in Europe
save the Majesty of Naples, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI applied to the
Great Turk, the Sultán Bajazet. That wily oriental agreed to help, on
condition that his brother and rival, the Sultán Djim, long years held
hostage by the Papacy, should be delivered to his tender mercies. This
the Pope’s Holiness refused, not caring to connive at fratricide; and so
completed the isolation of Himself and King Don Alonso II.
On the sixth of October, the Supreme Pontiff thundered from the Vatican
a demand for the restitution of Ostia, (held by Don Pierfrancesco
Colonna (?)) on pain of the Greater Excommunication. He “fills a great
place in history because he so blended his spiritual and temporal
authority as to apply the resources of the one to the purposes of the
other.” (_North British Review._) At the same time, having intelligence
of a Colonna plot to capture the Sultán Djim on behalf of France, He
moved His mysterious ward from the Vatican by way of Lo Andare to the
Mola of Hadrian on Tiber; and sent the Lord Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini,
Cardinal of Siena, as Apostolic Envoy to the Majesty of France. But the
Christian King would not receive him, saying that he was coming to Rome
to see the Pope Himself.[28]
* * * * *
The Sultán Djim was a Mystery—the Fifteenth Century equivalent for the
Man in the Iron Mask. The brother and rival of the Great Turk, the
Sultán Bajazet, who reigned at Constantinople, he was given as a hostage
to the Knights of Rhodes at a time when Bajazet wished to win the good
graces of the Christian Powers, and to rid himself of a dangerous menace
to his throne’s security. The Great Turk offered to pay forty thousand
ducats every year, so long as the Sultán Djim was kept away from
Byzantium; and he sent also the celebrated emerald, on which is carved
an Image of our Divine Redeemer, to the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII. After a
long detention, Frère Pierre d’Aubusson, Grand Master of the Knights of
Rhodes and Cardinal-Deacon of Sant’ Adriano, transferred this valuable
hostage to the Pope for greater security. The Sultán Djim was accorded
apartments in the Vatican Palace, and kept a court of his own there in
oriental luxury. The crumpled roseleaf of his existence was his constant
fear lest his brother should envenom him; and envoys from the Great Turk
were only allowed to enter his presence when rigorous and ceremonial
precautions had been taken;—for example, an envoy bringing a letter from
Bajazet was compelled to lick it all over, outside and inside, under
Djim’s own eyes, before the last would touch it. The Lord Innocent P.P.
VIII, and His successor the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, regarded the Sultán
Djim as a precious guarantee for the good conduct of the Great Turk. “As
long as Djim is in Our hands, Bajazet continually will be uneasy, and
neither raise armies, nor molest the Christians;” wrote the Lord
Innocent P.P. VIII. Later, the Great Turk conceived an alarm lest his
discontented mamelukes should depose him in favour of his brother; and
he proposed to pay a hundred and twenty thousand ducats to the Pope for
the restoration of the Sultán Djim: undoubtedly intending to put him out
of the way according to the methods observed by oriental potentates in
reference to their rivals. But the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII refused to
have art or part in crime, though He would have been very glad of the
money for His family; and the Sultan Djim continued to remain in Rome.
The same policy was pursued by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI,
notwithstanding that the Great Turk had ceased to send the yearly forty
thousand ducats, thus making his brother the pensioner, as well as the
ward, of the Papacy. Then in October 1494, when the Eternal City was
about to be the scene of war and tumult, the Pope’s Holiness placed His
ward for safety in the Mola of Hadrian, the fortress tomb which also was
His own refuge.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Charles VIII of France_]
On the same day when Admiral Don Federigo de Aragona fled with the
Neapolitan fleet from Rapallo to Naples, the Christian King followed his
army across the Alps. Being but a shallow-pated Frenchman, enervated
with the most horrible of all diseases, he already was in a quandary: he
had no money wherewith to pay his troops; his march for some weeks would
lie through friendly territory, and, until he reached the pontifical
states, he could find no cities to sack for the appeasing and
encouragement of his mercenaries. To meet him, hurried Don Ludovico
Maria Sforza-Visconti, also in a quandary: he was an usurping regent,
with his legitimate sovereign under lock and key; and he was going to
meet a legitimate sovereign-regnant. Whether Don Ludovico Maria would
complete a little loan, was the question agitating the mind of the
Christian King. Whether the Majesty of France would want to champion his
Order, to release his brother sovereign and place him on his throne, and
to behave severely and unpleasantly to an usurping regent, was the
difficulty of Don Ludovico Maria. The two met at Asti. The Christian
King at once broached his trouble; and Don Ludovico Maria, with his
capacious Sforza brain-pan and his determined Sforza jaw, instantly
perceived that he could recommend himself by being useful. He advised
France rapidly to advance southward through the Romagna where rich
spoils awaited him. And he found the means. Of the man who will lend
money at the very moment when it is urgently required, none but the very
best opinion can be formed. The Christian King was quite prepared to
accept Don Ludovico Maria’s own estimation of himself, now. It was even
safe to let him see the pathetic sovereign of Milan in his prison.
After being detained a few weeks by that which Italians call the French
disease, because it was introduced into Italy by this Christian King,
Charles VIII dawdled on to Pavia; and visited Duke Giangaleazzo
Sforza-Visconti. The condition of that luckless prince was scandalous in
the extreme. He was of the age of five and twenty years. He had been a
prisoner during fifteen years. He was decrepid of body, helpless and
dull of mind. His only joy in life was in his Duchess Isabella and in
his four-year-old son, for whose protection he piteously entreated the
Christian King. France put on a sympathetic aspect—it was perhaps the
most gracious moment in the little creature’s life—; the nostrils of his
ham-shaped nose wore an air of disgust at Duke Giangaleazzo’s suffering;
the glare of his boiled eyes in their congenital flush, and the severe
fat line of his mouth, horrified the usurping Regent. Had the money of
Don Ludovico Maria been in the coffers of any one just then except the
Christian King’s, undoubtedly right would have been done by the might of
France. But, with promises to return, with excellent intentions to
attend to the affairs of Milan when Naples should have been reduced with
Milan’s money, the Christian King was persuaded to hasten on to
Piacenza.
There, on the twenty-first of October, news came to him that the prince
whom he had left in his prison, Duke Giangaleazzo Sforza-Visconti, was
dead; and that Don Ludovico Maria had proclaimed himself, and had been
accepted as, Duke of Milan. It was also said that the uncle had
envenomed the nephew, having observed him to have gained the sympathy of
France, and fearing lest that sympathy should restore him to his throne.
It may have been so: but there is no evidence whatever on the subject
beyond the mere assertion. But it equally might have been the effect of
concentrated despair, at seeing deliverance come and pass away, acting
on a body, naturally weak, worn by passion and imprisonment, which
killed Duke Giangaleazzo Sforza-Visconti of Milan. The Fifteenth Century
(and also the first decades of the Sixteenth) was so radically ignorant
of the art and science, as well of venoms, as of their practical
exhibition, that, unless direct in addition to circumstantial evidence
be forthcoming, mere unproved charges based on “on dit,” “aiunt,”
“fertur,” or “dicant,” may be disregarded and a natural cause of death
assigned.
* * * * *
Florence, capital city of Tuscany and ancient friend of France, was in a
critical condition. Lorenzo de’ Medici was just dead. His son, Don Piero
had succeeded him. Don Piero’s brother Messer Giovanni, raised to the
purple at the age of thirteen years, red-hatted at seventeen, was a
Cardinal of Rome. The genius of the great Lorenzo had made him disguise
his power. He had married at his own mother’s bidding Madonna Clarice
Orsini, a patrician of Rome. His sons, educated by Canon Angelo
Ambrogini (detto Poliziano), had grown up intellectual, grand, and gay,
with an overweening sense of their own consequence; and, when the
sceptre fell into his young inexperienced hands, Don Piero forgot his
father’s advice, “Remember that thou art but a citizen of Florence, even
as am I;” and he behaved autocratically, despotically, independently, to
the immense antipathy of the Lily-City.
When the Majesty of France began his interference with Italian politics,
Don Piero de’ Medici and Florence, being contracted to the Regno,
declined the offer of a French alliance. The Christian King retorted by
banishing Florentine merchants from France. This gave occasion for the
enemies, (which, in common with all great Houses, Medici had) to
blaspheme, muttering of the evils of a tyranny, of the advantages of a
republic: and Don Piero’s cousins, Don Giovanni and Don Lorenzino, fled
to the Christian King at Piacenza; saying that not Florence, but Don
Piero only, was the foe of France.
Fra Girolamo Savonarola, friar of the Religion of St. Dominic, became a
prominent and responsible figure in this imbroglio. Ecclesiastically he
was a subject of the Dominican Congregation of Lombardy, who was led to
desire independence and a pied à terre in Florence. Don Piero de’
Medici, seeing naught amiss, supported his application to Rome for the
separation of the Tuscan Dominicans from allegiance to the Lombard
Congregation; for, it was urged, the erection of a separate Congregation
for Lombardy would add to the dignity of Florence, and would be a slight
to Milan. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, when the case was laid before Him
in 1493, was inclined to favour Milan on account of the
Vicechancellor-Cardinal who was brother to the usurping Regent: but, on
the advice of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, who officially had examined the
matter on its merits, and who reported in favour of Don Piero de’ Medici
and the weird friar, the Pope’s Holiness issued the Bull of Separation
on the twenty-second of May that same year. Fra Girolamo Savonarola then
transferred himself to the new Tuscan Congregation, was elected Prior of
San Marco and Vicar-General; and so became the absolute ruler of the
Dominicans in Florence, and subject only to the General of the Religion
of St. Dominic, and to the Pope, in Rome.
He was a truly pious man, of the hard ascetic type, and very masterful.
He used his independence rigorously to reform his Convent of San Marco,
with, for a wonder, the complete concurrence of his friars; and so he
formed a centre of the exclusively religious life. He would make no
compromise whatever. He would have God entirely served; and countenanced
no paltering with Mammon. He utterly spat upon and defied the World. He
burned every pretty worldly thing. Lewd lovely Florence executed a quick
change, and followed him in sackcloth and ashes. The alluring melody of
Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Canti Carnaleschi was drowned in the chaunting of
the _Miserere mei Deus_ and the Seven Penitential Psalms with Litanies;
while disciplines and scourges in the public streets fell like flails on
youth’s white flesh. Fra Girolamo preached penance in the Advent of
1493. In the Lent of 1494, he preached from the book of Genesis. When he
arrived at Noe’s Ark, he dwelled upon it; his subject fascinated him;
each plank, each nail, became a symbol: but the moral of his allegory
was, “Enter the Ark of Salvation that ye may escape the wrath to come.”
Florence was disturbed by expectation of the French invasion; which,
said Fra Girolamo, (mixing his metaphors in the only way that the
vulgar really understand) was the Scourge of God for the Purification
of the Church. In September, he preached again. Visions came to him;
and he preached of them in parables. His success, his ever-growing
power, produced in him an effect like inebriation. Not yet having lost
his self-control, he was able to see his danger. He made an effort,
and ceased to preach. His brain was in a ferment; sleeplessness gnawed
the remnant of his physical strength. Again he mounted the pulpit of
San Marco, and thundered like a prophet, like a seer, not his own
words now, but “Thus saith The Lord.” He claimed εἰσπνοή—Divine
Afflatus—Inspiration. Humanly speaking, he had gone out of his
mind—was mad.
The excitement of Florence became a frenzy. “Behold,” Fra Girolamo
Savonarola tremendously declaimed, “Behold I bring a flood of waters on
the earth!” And the French army entered Italy.
Florence was half-dead with terror, terror of the French, terror of the
Wrath to Come. She had exasperated the Christian King, was disunited in
herself, and she had no troops. Yet—she might resist. On her frontier
were the strong fortresses of Sarzanella and Pietrasanta. A few resolute
patriots might hold the mountain-passes on the road through Lunigiana;
and an initial check which ruined French prestige would restore
self-confidence to Florence. This was the time of the trial of the stuff
of Don Piero de’ Medici; who, being in three minds, failed to stand.
First, he sent his brother-in-law, Don Paolo Orsini, to garrison
Sarzanella. Secondly, he quavered, because the Florentines appeared
sulkily to him. Thirdly, he dallied with the notion of submission to the
Christian King. From the fortress of Pietrasanta he whined for a
safe-conduct. Arrived in the French camp he collapsed: lying prostrate
at the twelve-toed feet of the Majesty of France, he implored pardon for
his impertinence in thinking to defend his fatherland; and he offered
reparation. He assented to the French demand for the withdrawal of the
Tuscan army from the Romagna; for the castles of Sarzana, Sarzanella,
Pietrasanta, Pisa, and Livorno, to be held as pledges until Naples
should capitulate; for a forced-loan of two hundred thousand ducats; the
pledges immediately to be delivered and a treaty signed at Florence. The
French had never dreamed that the road should open to them as though by
miracle; and by simplest Induction they said that God was on their side.
Florence was dismayed. Don Piero de’ Medici stayed with the French: his
brothers were in the vast Medici Palace (now Palazzo Riccardi) at the
corner of Via Larga, which Michellozzo built for mighty Cosmo. “It is
time to make an end of this government by children and to recover our
liberty,” said the grave and sterling Don Piero Capponi; and the
Signoria sent out an embassage to undo the mischief. There were five
ambassadors, including Fra Girolamo Savonarola whom Florence loved, and
Don Piero Capponi whom she admired. They left the city on the sixth of
November with plenary powers to modify the disgraceful conditions of
surrender. On the seventh, they found the Christian King at Lucca; and
followed him to Pisa. He received them very coldly, saying that he would
arrange no terms except in Florence. To diseased France the degenerate
Fra Girolamo forthwith prophesied, “Know thyself for an instrument in
the hands of the Lord, Who hath sent thee to heal the woes of Italy and
to reform the prostrate Church. But if thou dost not shew thyself just
and pitiful, if thou respectest not Florence and her people, if thou
forgettest the work for which the Lord hath sent thee, then He will
choose another in Thy place, and in His Wrath engulph thee. I speak in
the name of the Lord.” (_Savonarola’s Compendium Revelationum._)
On the eighth of November, Don Piero de’ Medici reappeared in Florence.
The City of Lilies knew that Don Paolo Orsini held the Porta di San
Gallo for him, with troops disposed about the district; and suspected
that he would summon her citizens and force himself upon them as
Dictator. On the ninth, suspicion redoubled, because he went with an
imposing retinue to the Palace of the Signoria where the magistrates
were in conclave. The door was shut: a voice bade him enter by the
postern, but alone. Don Piero de’ Medici turned away. A partisan of
Medici in the Signoria followed him, and brought him back. In attempting
the little gate, there was some scuffle, some dispute; and the gate was
slammed upon him in a gathering crowd which cried “Away—away—and leave
the Signoria in peace.” In a storm of hissing where stones were flying
Don Piero de’ Medici flashed out his sword,—and—irresolutely—let it
fall. His escort closed him in, and hurried him to old Cosmo’s palace,
where all of the few Medici were arming. Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici,
not nineteen years of age, risked his sacred person—risked, because a
Florentine mob had flung an archbishop in pontificals (Archbishop
Salviati of Pisa) at a rope’s end from a window; and bleached with
mortal terror the visage of a boy-cardinal (the Lord Rafaele Galeotto
Sanzoni-Riario Cardinal-Deacon of San Giorgio _in Velum Aureum_, aet
16,) not sixteen years before,—his sacred person, because he who
_suadente diabolo_ lifts hand against the person of one tonsured _ipso
facto_ incurs the Greater Excommunication,—he risked his sacred person
among a Florentine mob, endeavouring to rouse them as of old to follow
Medici with the war-cry “Palle—Palle—Palle.”[29] All was in vain.
The well-worn cry had lost magnetic virtue; and none in Florence now
dared to own himself a friend of Medici. Don Piero rushed to the Porta
di San Gallo, where Medici had never cried in vain. None answered him.
His courage left him there. He infected with fear Don Paolo Orsini and
his bands; and all fled to Bologna. At night Cardinal Giovanni and his
sixteen-year-old cousin, Messer Giuliano Knight of St John of Jerusalem
of Malta, escaped in the frocks of Friars Minor; and from Bologna these
three Medici journeyed on to Venice where Italian exiles always found a
home: while Florence sacked the Medici Palace, plundered the priceless
Medici Library of Manuscripts, and set a price upon the head of
Lorenzo’s son Don Piero.
This revolt was the work of Fra Girolamo Savonarola. For sixty years
Florence had enjoyed prosperity under Medici. She was the centre of
learning, the mediating power of Italy with influence in every state; in
fact, as the Lord Boniface P.P. VIII said on receiving the Orators of
the Powers in Rome at the Jubilee of 1300, “_i fiorentini sono il quinto
elemento_.” But the Dominican Friar had roused in Her those moral
aspirations which Medici had lulled to atrophy; and the contemptible
blunders of Don Piero had proved a final exasperation. The newly-formed
republic set up Donatello’s statue of Judith with the Head of Holofernes
on a pedestal before Palazzo Vecchio, with this inscription for the
benefit of budding despots, EXEMPLUM SALUTIS PUBLICAE CIVES POSUERE
MCCCCXCV. And on the day of the expulsion of the Medici, little Pisa
revolted also, and threw off the yoke of Florence.
* * * * *
The fortune of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI appeared to be in serious
danger. The French unhindered were advancing, and sedition was sown in
Rome. One more overture the Supreme Pontiff made, sending Cardinal
Raymond Perrauld, a creature of His Own, to treat with the Christian
King, who with no difficulty persuaded the French Cardinal to turn
traitor to the Pope. A Brief, appealing to the Elect-Emperor Maximilian
for help proved ineffectual. The forces of Colonna beleaguered the
Eternal city. Within the walls, three disaffected cardinals, the Lords
Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti, Friderico Sanseverini, and Bernardino de’
Lunati, were interned with the Pope in the Mola for the sake of safety.
When the pontifical citadel of Civita Vecchia fell, the loyalists became
yet more disheartened. Orsini turned its coats and joined the French.
Cesarini alone of all the patricians of Rome continued to be staunch and
true. Resistance was useless, things being as they were; and the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI gave leave to the Christian King to enter Rome. He
came. He humanly was master of the City and of the situation, face to
face with the Holiness of the Pope, practically having His person in his
power. The Majesty of France demanded the calling of a General Council;
and God’s Vicegerent opposed him with a blunt and unconditional _Non
Possumus_. Whenever the World has driven the Church against the wall,
She has become inexorably invincible.
The year 1495 opened with Rome in panic and disorder, in the clutch of a
foreign army bringing desolation and a new disease. The Christian King,
who had come to accomplish the conquest of the Regno by means of the
deposition of the Pope, found the way completely blocked. He had
strutted on his twelve-toed feet to Rome, prepared to crow so very
gallically. The decree of deposition actually was prepared, and only
required confirmation by a competent authority. Inflated with gigantic
megalomaniacal illusions, he had believed that an evil conscience would
have made the Lord Alexander P.P. VI obedient to him. He thought by the
threat of a General Council (which he intended to convoke at Ferrara,)
to blackmail the Pope into conceding the investiture of Naples. He
ineffectually had battered the defences of the Pope with cannon. And now
his Frenchmen would fight no longer, as some say; but others, like
Briçonnet and de Commines, assert that it was the king who blenched. At
last, with his shallow mind congested with half-thought thoughts and
uncompleted facts like these, he became aware that a General Council was
not a General council unless it had the Pope’s authority, which last he
was not likely to obtain; and that, without some means of bending the
pontifical will, he could not hope to win the crown of Naples.
Evidently, he could not depose the Pope. He might, however, conquer
Naples by force of arms; and, perhaps, the question of investiture by
the Ruler of the World, the Father of princes and of kings, the Earthly
Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour, which he realized to be imperative,
would wear a different aspect when he should ask for it as a conqueror
with the Regno in his hand.
While the Christian King was stumbling to these conclusions, the
invincible Lord Alexander P.P. VI remained with His little court in the
Mola of Hadrian where He had His hostages secure, viz., the Sultán Djim,
earnestly desired by France as a weapon against the Great Turk, and the
renegade cardinals, friends of Colonna and the French. Here, He was
practically impregnable. The Papal States might go to wrack and ruin:
Rome Herself might be crushed by an alien heel, but from the Mola of
Hadrian a Pope, surrounded by His faithful few, could, and often did,
defy blockade as long as provisions held out; could, and often did,
launch the lightnings of the Church, censures, excommunications,
interdicts; and force acknowledgment, and reluctant obedience, from
rebellious sovereigns who, after all, believed and admitted Him to be
Ruler of the World, Father of princes and of kings, Earthly Vicar of
Jesus Christ our Saviour, titles, in defence of which (so very glorious
are they) Pontiffs of these clear ages did not hesitate to court the
death, admitting of no compromise of no rebate. Our potency, said they,
if worth having, is worth fighting for, is worth dying for. And, as
invariably is the case, when a man shews that he wishes nothing better
than to lose his life for a cause, he saves both cause, and life.
From the Mola of Hadrian then, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI deigned to
make these terms with the Christian King:—The French army was to be
withdrawn from Rome. The Pope’s Holiness would not interfere; and would
lend to France as hostages for six months, the Sultán Djim with whom to
menace the Great Turk Bajazet, and Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia). The
question of the investiture of Naples was not even named. Having secured
Himself by this agreement, in which He had conceded neither of the two
French claims, the Supreme Pontiff received in formal audience the
Christian King, who shortly after marched his troops southward along the
Appian Way by Albano, Ariccia, and Genzano, toward the Neapolitan
frontier.
* * * * *
At the Third Consistory of the sixteenth of January 1495, the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI named one cardinal, who was the Lord Guillaume
Briçonnet, Overseer of the Treasury to the Christian King Charles VIII,
editor of a book of prayers dedicated to the said king (Encheiridion
precum); Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Pudentiana.
* * * * *
At Velletri there lived a certain Don Pietro Gregario Borgia, son of
that Don Niccolo Borgia of the Junior Branch, Regent of Velletri and
Familiar of King Don Alonso V, by his marriage with the Noble Giovanna
Lamberti. In 1495 this Don Pietrogorio was about the age of twenty-one
years (the age in fact of Cardinal Cesare;) and, when the French king
halted for the night at Velletri, he found means to exchange habits with
the said Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) and to help him to disappear,
remaining as hostage in his place. It was a daring act, and soon
discovered: but the cardinal was safe in Rome concerting new schemes
with the Pope. The Majesty of France grave instant orders for the
hanging of Don Pietrogorio and for the firing of the city; and hurried
on to Naples. But the king’s first secretary, who had been commissioned
to execute his master’s vengeance, out of sheer admiration for the
courage of Velletri’s Regent’s son, gave him a swift horse and leave to
reclaim his own clothes from Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) in Rome; nor
did he give Velletri to the flames.
Immediately on hearing of the French approach, King Don Alonso II
abdicated in favour of his son Don Ferrandino de Aragona. Envoys from
the Catholick King Don Hernando of Spain embarrassed the Christian King
Charles VIII of France with remonstrances on his invasion of the
territories of the House of Aragon: but the latter was not to be
rebuffed. The fortress of Monte San Giovanni capitulated to him. His
march through the Regno was a series of victories; and, in the capital,
he announced his intention altogether to relinquish the Crusade, and to
add Naples as a fief to France.
But three causes prevented this from becoming more than a French
boast:—the action of the Pope, the action of the Powers, the action of
Providence. Directly after the French had quitted Rome, the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI retired to the pontifical castle of Viterbo, a mighty
fortress in a cool air, and pleasant as a summer residence; where He was
joined by Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) with Don Pietro Gregorio Borgia
(now the last Most Worshipful Lord’s lieutenant and standard-bearer);
and whence He commenced vigorous diplomatic negotiations directed
against the French.
The Powers of Italy had taken alarm. It had never been contemplated that
France would meet submission all along the line, and actually become
arbiter of the whole country. Milan, Florence the Papal States, and now
the Regno, had fallen: with the French in France in the north, and the
French in Naples in the south, these intermediate duchies, states and
republics found themselves in the position of an uncracked nut in a
monkey’s jaw: wherefore Italy gave way to fear. Also, Spain was the
enemy of France, so was the Holy Roman Empire; and the Elect-Emperor
Maximilian and the Catholic King realized the arrival of a unique
opportunity for invading France by south and east, seeing that the
French army was in Naples, cut off from its base by the Italian states.
All these circumstances and considerations, skilfully perceived and
engineered by the Pope’s Holiness from His eyrie at Viterbo, quite
naturally resulted in the conclusion of a Holy League, consisting of the
Papacy, the Empire, Spain, and the Italian Powers, against France.
His position having become untenable, the Christian King resolved upon
retreat. Half his army he left in Naples; and marched northward with the
rest. His coming had been a triumphal procession. His going was a flight
through hostile territory. A second time he entered Rome with the hope
of retrieving his lost prestige: but the Pope again retired, this time
to Orvieto, and refused to meet him. Enraged by the slight, the polite
chivalry of France to pain the Pope avenged itself on women, pillaging
the house of Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei, and making Madonna Giulia
Orsini (nata Farnese) a prisoner. Onward, northward, went the Christian
King, conferring with the mattoid Fra Girolamo Savonarola at Poggibonzi;
fighting a desperate battle at Fornuovo, where he lost his army stores;
reaching France with his forces disgraced and in disorder; and he
himself disabled by the sentence of the Greater Excommunication which
the thoroughly angry and triumphant Pontiff fulminated after him.
* * * * *
In Florence, Fra Girolamo ceased not to labour on behalf of the
Christian King, sowing seeds of political discord, and preparing the
germs of certain calumnies which, in later years were used by Florentine
friends of France. His sermons were French manifestoes, and
denunciations of Medici. He had stepped from the pulpit of the pastor to
the platform of the politician. His power was admirable and admired, his
sincerity unquestionable; and earnest efforts were made to reclaim him
from the doubtful practices in which he was embarked. The Lord Alexander
P.P. VI summoned him by a kindly and paternal Brief to Rome; saying that
He wished to hear him personally, and to confer with him as to the
methods which he advocated. How revoltingly inconsistent are the writers
who rail against the Pope for His treatment of this degenerate friar!
Leaving out of the question matters of dogma, articles of Faith, in
reference to which the Founder of Christianity definitely promised to
permit no error, it must be admitted that, regarding ordinary affairs of
government and discipline, a Pope-well-advised is superior to a
Pope-ill-advised. Well, here is the Pope having heard many hard things
of Savonarola, definitely and gently offering to hear that madman’s own
defence, definitely trying every means, every most intimate and
stringent means, to render Himself well-advised before proceeding to
judgment. If the subsequent actions of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI
deserve to be called ill advised, it is not He Who should be blamed, but
Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who with inconsequent evasion, excused himself
and continued his traitorous machinations against the peace of his
country, in defiance of the law, and in contempt of the powers that be.
Order issued from Rome, inhibiting him from public preaching, and
placing his Convent of San Marco again under the rule of the Lombard
Congregation. Then, Fra Girolamo professed ready obedience to the Pope;
but begged for the independence of his convent, a prayer which he
supported with such arguments as to obtain a favouring response, though
the inhibition was repeated. Before the formal Brief arrived Don Piero
de Medici attempted to return to Florence from Venetian exile; being
foiled solely by a violent diatribe in which Fra Girolamo denounced him.
As time passed, the friar intrigued with Ferrara, gained over and
cultivated many influential Florentines; and then the Signoria took up
his cause and formally appealed to Rome for the removal of his
inhibition.
* * * * *
The passage of the French through the Papal States, like a blight of
caterpillars, brought famine into the country districts. In the
Fifteenth Century, armies were not encumbered by a commissariat. They
robbed right and left, living on the produce of the land in which they
were, paying for nothing, and invariably leaving utter desolation and
destitution in their rear. Distress and discontent ravaged Rome. Winter
storms brought Tiber down in flood and the City was under water. So the
year 1495 ended.
At the beginning of the new year, Don Virginio Orsini joined the French
in Naples, against the King Don Ferrandino II, the Pope and Venice. At
Atella the French were defeated, and the Holy League grew powerful.
England joined it. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, who, with His magnificent
ability for doing many things, had been superintending the decoration of
the quire of Santa Maria _del Populo_ by the Flaminian Gate which opens
on the great north road, (the nearest gate to England), went, with a
solemn cavalcade, to hold a papal chapel for publishing the Bull of
Alliance with King Henry VII Tudor. France had no friend save Florence,
where the Signoria had taken upon itself to remove the inhibition from
Fra Girolamo Savonarola. That incontinent friar preached a course of
Lenten sermons defending himself, violently denouncing Rome,
particularizing certain vices which everywhere were general. His
incorrigible attitude appears like “the rage of a man who knows that he
has chosen the lower when he might have chosen the higher.” He was in
open revolt, not against the Catholic Faith, but against the laws of the
land, and the Rule of the Religion of St Dominic to which, voluntarily,
under no compulsion whatever, he had chosen to swear allegiance on the
Sacrament of the Lord’s Body. To make things easy for him, the Pope’s
Holiness proposed to erect a new Dominican Congregation which he might
be willing to obey, under Cardinal Carafa who already had given evidence
of his sympathy with the friar. But Fra Girolamo intractably refused to
hear: and it must be said that the minacity and violence, with which he
attacked his superiors, form a bitter contrast to the patience and
moderation which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI extended to him, in this—and
let this be noted—the third year of his disgraceful extravagance and
disloyalty.
* * * * *
At the Fourth Consistory of the twenty-first of January 1496, the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI named one cardinal, who was
The Lord Philippe de Luxembourg; Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of
San Marcellino e San Pietro.
* * * * *
The condition of the country improved as the year 1496 expanded. An
ill-advised attempt of the Elect-Emperor Maximilian to revive the waning
Imperial power by a progress through the Italian realms, was averted by
the opposition of Venice and the remonstrances of the Sovereign Pontiff.
The Elect-Emperor having withdrawn into the Tyrol, the Lord Alexander
P.P. VI was free to deal with the Pontifical States. The Regno
flourished under the young King Don Ferrandino II, and the French
occupation was becoming a thing of the past. Only the rebellious vassals
of the Holy See remained; and, of these, Colonna and Savelli appear to
have made their submission; but the Orsini were still in arms, and
Malatesta, Riario, Manfredi, and Sforza, were fortified at Cesena, Imola
and Forli, Faenza and Pesaro.
* * * * *
At the Fifth Consistory of the nineteenth of February 1496, the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI named four Spanish cardinals, who were
(α) The Lord Don Bartolomeo Martino, Bishop of Segovia;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Sant’ Agata _in Suburra_:
(β) The Lord Don Juan de Castro, Prefect of Santangelo, Bishop of
Girgenti, (Άκραγαντῖνος) in Sicily; Cardinal-Presbyter of the
Title of Santa Prisca:
(γ) The Lord Don Juan Lopez, Canon of the Vatican Basilica, Apostolic
Datary; Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Maria _in
Trastevere, tit. Callisto_:
(δ) The Lord Giovanni Borgia (detto Giuniore), a Pontifical Nephew,
Bishop of Melfi; Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Maria
_in Via Lata_.
* * * * *
Appointing His bastard, Don Juan Francisco de Lançol y Borja, as
Captain-General of the pontifical army, and assisted by the Majesty of
Naples, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI proceeded to reduce Orsini. At the
opening of the campaign, Don Virginio Orsini was captured by the
Neapolitans; but when Orsini’s stronghold of Bracciano was relieved by
Don Vitellozzo Vitelli of Città di Castello, the papal condottieri were
forced to raise the siege. And before the end of the year the Pope lost
His ally King Don Ferrandino II, who died at the age of twenty-eight
“worn out with fatigue and with the pleasures of his marriage to his
aunt Joanna whom he loved too passionately.” (Symonds, Renascence, I.
513.) The year 1497 began with the defeat of the papal troops by Orsini
at the battle of Soviano, a reverse which was counterbalanced by the
success of Don Gonsalvo de Cordova. This captain was at the head of a
band of mercenaries sent by Spain in aid of the Papacy; he took the
fortress of Ostia from Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, whose five years
of treachery and recalcitrancy were now punished by the Holiness of the
Pope, with deprivation of his benefices (which took from him the “sinews
of war”) and the deposition of his brother, Don Giovanni della Rovere,
from the Prefecture of Rome. As for the French Orators who made protest
at this unaccountably long-delayed act of precautionary
justice,—unaccountably-long-delayed, except on the hypothesis of this
Pope’s singular patience, long-suffering, and dislike of proceeding to
extremities,—the Supreme Pontiff contemptuously remarked that they were
come from an Excommunicated King; and that it was well for them that
Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) did not hear them. This, by the bye, is
the first instance of the amazing influence which that young Porporato
was beginning to attain, an influence which within the next few years
increased by leaps and bounds until the name of Cesare (detto Borgia)
stood among the most important names in Europe.
Further to emphasize the slight to France by shewing His appreciation of
Spain’s support, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI decorated His bastard, Don
Juan Francisco de Lançol y Borja Duke of Gandia and Prince of Teano and
Tricarico, as representing the Spanish branch of His House, with the
titles of Count of Chiaramonte, Lauria, and Cerignuola, Tyrant of
Benevento and Tarracina, and Grand Constable of Naples.
* * * * *
In honour of her son’s good fortune, Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei gave a
supper at her villa by San Pietro _ad Vincula_, where were present the
young Duke of Gandia of the age of twenty-two years, and Cardinal Cesare
(detto Borgia) his senior by a year. Their sister Madonna Lucrezia, who
had had much unpleasantness with her husband, Don Giovanni Sforza the
Tyrant of Pesaro, had left him; and was living in the Convent of San
Sisto in Rome, as noble ladies do who wish to guard their reputations in
delicate circumstances.
When supper was over, and the night advancing, the Cardinal advised
Don Juan that it was time to return to the Vatican where they lodged.
In view of the popular delusions concerning this occurrence, it may be
advisable to refer to the fact that sunset was taken to end a
twenty-four hours day; that “one hour of the night,” _i.e._, one hour
after sunset, was the fashionable supper-time, which at this time of
the year (the fourteenth of June) would be about 9 P.M. Before
midnight then, at a generous computation, the Cardinal and the Duke of
Gandia mounted their horses and rode through Rome together as far as
the palace of the Vicechancellor attended by a small escort. It is
worth noting that the palace of the Vicechancellor was not the
Cancelleria, the palace of the Chancery at San Lorenzo _in Damaso_,
perhaps the most beautiful palace in the world, which Messer Bramante
Lazzari built for the white-faced Cardinal Rafaele Galeotto
Sanzoni-Riario: but the new palace built by Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol
y Borja, and given by him after His election to the Supreme
Pontificate, to the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria
Sforza-Visconti; (now Palazzo Sforza-Cesarini on Banchi Vecchi).
There, the ardent Duke (he already was married to a princess of Spain,
and the father of two children,) said to the Cardinal that, before going
home, he wanted to amuse himself somewhere; and, taking leave of the
said Most Worshipful Lord, and dismissing his suite with the exception
of a certain bully whom he kept, he took on his crupper an unknown man
in a mask who waited there, and who daily during a month had come to see
him at the Vatican, as well as on this very night during the supper in
the garden of his mother. Then he turned his horse in the direction of
the Jews’ Quarter, (there was no Ghetto till 1556), and disappeared in
the twilight of a midsummer night. He never again was seen alive.
When the City awoke in the morning, (Romans always were early risers,)
the Duke of Gandia’s bully was found on Piazza Giudei, wounded by the
steel of an assassin; and all efforts to obtain information from him
proved futile. He died without having spoken.
The news trickled into the Vatican, and was mentioned to the Pope; who
thought that perhaps Don Juan was staying with some courtesan, wishing
out of consideration for his Father to avoid the scandal of being seen
to issue from such a house in open day. But when night came again, and
the Duke did not appear, the Pope’s Holiness took alarm; and ordered an
inquisition and the usual dragging of Tiber. The wags of Rome instantly
said that, notwithstanding all that Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had
alleged concerning the election of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI as being
simoniacal, it was now certain that He was a true Successor of St. Peter
as a Fisher of men.
Among other bearers of news, there came to the inquisitors a certain
Giorgio, of the Schiavoni, a waterman, asserting that, while guarding
his boat on Tiber during the night, he had seen two men, who came to the
shore to look whether any one was there; behind them came two others
making the same inspection. He, the speaker, being in the shadow of his
beached boat escaped all notice. When these four had assured themselves
that the place was empty, there came one on a white horse, conveying
behind him a dead man, whose feet and arms hung down, held by two
foot-men. Having come to the water’s edge, they turned the crupper of
the horse to the river; and, lifting the corpse, swung it into the
stream. The rider looked on: but seeing a dark object which floated,—it
was the dead man’s cloak,—he ordered the others to throw stones at it
until it sank.
After hearing this tale, the Pope groaned, and reproached the waterman
in that he did not give immediate notice to the bargelli (police) of the
crime which he had witnessed. The man impudently answered that he had
seen such sights a thousand times: but never had he known of any one who
cared to hear about them.
The Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti wrote to his
brother the Duke of Milan, relating the deposition of Giorgio the
waterman, and the disquietude of the Pope.
Later, the corpse was found in Tiber, completely clothed in the
sumptuous garments of the Duke of Gandia, the dagger in its sheath, the
pouch intact adorned with jewels of great value. Eleven—some say
fourteen—wounds, of which an enormous one was in the throat, were the
cause of death. The unfortunate young Duke was buried at Santa Maria del
Popolo. (_Maricont._) That, actually, is all that is known of the murder
of the Duke of Gandia.
The only person, except the murderer or murderers, who could give any
salient information, was the bully; and he expired without uttering a
word. The mystery of the unknown man in a mask has never been solved
(nor the archives of a Roman patrician House published); and, for a
time, the matter rested there.
* * * * *
The effect upon the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was terrible. He had loved
Don Juan Francisco with a very great love. Notwithstanding the fact that
Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) was a year older than the Duke of Gandia,
the Pope had always treated the latter as His heir[30]; and had foreseen
in his vigorous manlihood the foundation of a dynasty of Grandees of
Spain who would render more illustrious the House of Borja. The founding
of a family has always been an object very near to the hearts of great
men.
And now the irruption of hideous and ruthless Death turned the Pope’s
Holiness, for a moment, from a spiritual and temporal sovereign and
despot into a very human man. At such a moment, when man most poignantly
is reminded of the Inevitable Universal waiting in the background, he
feels his utter helplessness, his entire unworthiness, and would
appease, make satisfaction. Broken-hearted, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI
spoke of abdication, and a change of life; as other famous men have
done, whom trouble, or fear, have driven to La Trappe. He made good
resolutions. He gave munificent gifts to churches; for His revived piety
manifested itself in practical form. He appointed a Commission of six
cardinals, including Cardinals Carafa and Costa, to reform
ecclesiastical abuses. He named Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) as
Apostolic Legate for the pacification of Umbria. By way of restoring
unity to Italy, He endeavoured to persuade Florence to annul her
alliance with excommunicate France: in which admirable intent He was
thwarted solely by the indescribable efforts of Fra Girolamo Savonarola,
who, during the Lent of this year, had preached in favour of unswerving
subservience to the Christian King. The Powers of Europe, especially
England, the Holy Roman Empire, Venice, Naples, and Spain, who formed
the Holy League with the Papacy, on receiving official intimation of the
Pope’s bereavement and His bitter sorrow, sent Orators with suitable
expressions of condolence.
During summer and autumn, which should have been occupied in drafting
the Bull of Reform (a task subsequently performed by the Council of
Trent,) the Reform Commission had to study, and deal with, and advise
the Pontiff in, the more urgent case of the friar of Florence. Riots and
affrays between the partisans and opponents of Fra Girolamo Savonarola
disgraced the Lily-City of Tuscany: and, at last, after more than four
years forbearance, all gentler measures having failed, he was placed
under sentence of excommunication.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) proceeded to Naples as
Apostolic Ablegate for the coronation of King Don Federigo de Aragona.
(The Sword of State which was borne before His Worship on this occasion
is in possession of Caïetani Duke of Sermoneta: but the scabbard of
embossed leather is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.)
* * * * *
In September 1497 the Lord Alexander P.P. VI published the creation of
one cardinal, whose name, for political reasons, He had reserved _in
petto_ since the Second Consistory of September 1493, who was
The Lord Don Luis de Aragona, son of King Don Ferrando I;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Maria _in Cosmediv_. (He
was commonly called “The Cardinal of Aragon.”)
* * * * *
At the incoming of winter arrived an opportunity for the enemies of the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI to blaspheme.
Madonna Lucrezia Borgia was living in the Convent of San Sisto,
separated from her husband, Don Giovanni Sforza the Tyrant of Pesaro;
and seeking a decree of nullity of marriage, alleging a canonical
impediment. This young man was cousin to the Duke of Milan, very
handsome in person, and intelligent. He already had been married to
Madonna Maddalena Gonzaga, who in 1490 had died _di cattivo parto_
(Gregorovius). In 1493, being then in his twenty-sixth year, he had
married Madonna Lucrezia, from whose Father he held his Tyranny of
Pesaro by way of fief, consolidating the alliance of Sforza and Borgia.
He had most of the advantages of life, illustrious birth, rank, youth,
health, a splendid position, intimate relationship with his feudal lord,
and a wife acknowledged by all contemporaries as the most beautiful
woman of her time: and now, after little more than three years, he was
to be held up to the derision of all by the annulment of his marriage on
the score of αδῆνᾶμία.
Nothing, at any time is more certain to enrage a man than this; and, in
the Fifteenth Century, the Century of the Discovery of Man, when ἀvδpeίa
was prized and worshipped, a charge which made him look ridiculous in
the estimation of his species, which struck at the very root of his
manlihood, was sure to be furiously resented. When his wife left him to
enter her petition, Don Giovanni Sforza sped to Milan invoking the
support of his kin, the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria
Sforza-Visconti and the Duke Ludovico Maria (detto Il Moro). On news
reaching them to the effect that evidence had been given before the
legal tribunal in Rome, which proved the marriage to lack consummation
and Madonna Lucrezia to be παρθένος ἀδμήτη, he violently protested, and
with unrestrained rancour. Don Beltrando Costabili, the Orator of
Ferrara, writing from Milan to his government, asserted that Don
Giovanni said to Duke Ludovico Maria, “Anzi haverla conosciuta infinite
volte, ma chel Papa non gliela tolta per altro se non per usare con
lei.” It is most improbable that a reigning sovereign would admit a
foreign ambassador to a discussion of his family affairs; and unless
Costabili actually heard those words, they can only be accepted as a
piece of gossip reported, not as legal evidence. Duke Ludovico Maria
ingenuously proposed to Don Giovanni an ordeal which, in that naive age,
was usual in similar cases, of submitting formally and publicly to the
judgment of a jury of men of bonafides and the papal legate: and, on his
refusal, his own relations, the Duke and the thin-faced clear-witted
Vicechancellor-Cardinal, obtained from him a written confession that
Madonna Lucrezia was justified in her petition, and advised him to let
the law take its course. The case of a man temporarily άδύνατος at the
age of Don Giovanni physiologically is no uncommon one. Much has been
made of the circumstances under which his first wife died, and of the
fact that his third, Madonna Ginevra de’ Tiepoli, bore him a son, Don
Costanzo Sforza, eight years later (1505). As for the infernal calumny
against the Pope’s Holiness, Don Giovanni Sforza was its inventor, says
the Orator of Ferrara, and the mortifying humiliation of a libidinous
laughing-stock its proximate occasion. On the twentieth of December
1497, the decree of nullity of the marriage was published in Rome, the
Tyrant of Pesaro refunded the lady’s dowry of thirty thousand ducats;
and Madonna Lucrezia Borgia was free.
* * * * *
The cause of the visit to Milan of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio
Maria Sforza-Visconti, at this time, was that he had come under most
undeserved suspicion of having been connected with the murder of the
Duke of Gandia. Bitter as it must have been to the Pope’s Holiness to
suspect his oldest friend, at least the latter’s recent treachery with
Colonna made estrangement unavoidable. The Vicechancellor retired to
Gennazano by Praeneste, (Palestrina), a fief of Colonna, ostensibly to
worship Madonna of Good Counsel. An investigation of his Roman palace
during his absence was without fruit; and, angered at the suspicion, he
had retired to Milan, where his unprejudiced and straightforward action
in the matter of the nullity, at a time when he naturally went in
disgust of Borgia, should go a long way in favour, not only of his own
bonafides, but also of that of the Lord Alexander P. P. VI.
* * * * *
Savonarola’s attitude toward the sentence of excommunication that had
been launched against him, was incorrigible. His influence caused the
Signoria of Florence unsuccessfully to appeal to the Pope’s Holiness for
the withdrawal of the Brief; and the friar accompanied this appeal with
an open defiance. On Christmas Day he sang the three high masses at San
Marco, and announced the resumption of his frenzied discourses. The
physiognomy of this mattoid is the key to the secret of his
misbehaviour. He was cast in the mould of the animal-man. He had the
long head with immense hinder development, the great thick nose, the
enormous lower lip, coarse mouth, and heavy jowl, of a ram. Above all,
in him the little lateral muscles of the nose-root were of opulent
growth, a sign which is unmistakable. But, contrariwise, the narrow
temples with their overhanging brows pointed in the middle, struck the
note of ideality, and conquered the animalism of the man. It was this
cataclysmal violence of difference, this trenchant contrast, that made
him what he was. In him there were two inimical characters, the
character of the saint, the character of the ram. That of the saint
vanquished that of the ram: but the poignant struggle overthrew the
mental balance of the saint. His proper place was not the Convent of San
Marco in Florence: but the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Rome.[31]
So in sorrow, in anger, in horrid uncertainty, the year 1497 ended.
* * * * *
After the coronation of Don Federigo de Aragona as King of Naples,
Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) announced a determination which he had
nourished since the murder of the Duke of Gandia. Whether he was the
Pope’s bastard or another’s, it was his pose to aggrandise the House of
Borgia; moreover he was young, only twenty-four years of age, and of an
ardent and forceful habit of mind and body. Don Gioffredo Borgia was
occupied with his wife Madonna Sancia de Aragona and his principality of
Squillace; and his age of seventeen years did not render him a capable
representative of his illustrious House. Cardinal Cesare felt that his
scarlet hat debarred him from the pursuits for which Nature had devised
him. The foes of Borgia were active on all sides: the territories of the
Holy See were a hot-bed of revolt. Sforza sulked in Milan; Orsini, never
forgetful of injury, entrenched themselves in their strongholds; their
fierce brigands ravaged the country far and wide: and there was no
Borgia to hold them in check. Wherefore Cardinal Cesare requested leave
to renounce his cardinalate, to receive secular rank, to marry a royal
princess, that he might be free to adopt a military career, and to
perpetuate the Borgia dynasty. It was an extraordinary plan: but, though
it presented advantages of high political value, it was opposed and
shelved by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, whose behaviour to Cardinal
Cesare was never that of a father, but of a patron and benefactor who
patronized, and benefited, him for the sake of another than himself.
Yet, though the attitude of the Pope to the Cardinal was one of
life-long distinct antipathy, He set immense value on his advancement,
and incurred peril and made sacrifices to promote it. What was the
motive of conduct which presents such contradictory features? Is it
possible that Cardinal Cesare was the son of Madonna Giovanna de’
Catanei, not by Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, but by the eternal
rival of the last, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere? It is extremely
possible and extremely probable. Cardinal Rodrigo undoubtedly had loved
Madonna Giovanna very greatly since 1474. She undoubtedly was the mother
of Cardinal Cesare, who was born in 1474. She had had relations with
Cardinal Giuliano before that. And Cardinal Rodrigo never acknowledged
the paternity of Cardinal Cesare, although he never denied it. The
theory, which lacks not some proof (to be given in a proper place),
would explain the unconquerable malice of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere
towards the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Who had deprived him of his mistress
as well as of the triregno, the object of his ultimate ambition; and the
loathing of the Pope’s Holiness for His enemy’s bastard, whom He, at the
same time held as a hostage to be used against Cardinal Giuliano in an
extremity, feared for his incorrigible and antipathetic disposition, and
advanced and enriched for the love which He had borne to his mother.
That is the only rational explanation of certain mysteries which,
otherwise, remain inexplicable.
The proposal of Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) had many recommendations.
The lax and feeble government of the late Pope, the Lord Innocent P.P.
VIII, had played havoc with order in the vast domain of Umbria, of the
Mark of Ancona, of the Romagna, that splendid realm in north-eastern
Italy verging on the Adriatic Sea. A few strong men, tyrants of petty
fiefs, threw off allegiance to the Pope as their Over-Lord. Don
Oliverotto da Fermo, a brigand of the worst kind, made himself Tyrant of
Fermo by the simple process of assassinating his uncle, Don Giovanni
Fogliani, and all the chief citizens, at a banquet. Don Vitellozzo
Vitelli garrisoned Citta di Castello, Don Paolo Orsini was fortified at
Sinigaglia, Madonna Caterina Sforza-Riario at Imola and Forli, the Oddi
and Baglioni at Perugia, the Manfredi at Faenza, the Varani at Camerino,
the Bentivogli at Bologna. Safe in their strongholds these Tyrants paid
no dues, no feudal tribute to their Lord Paramount. From time to time
they sallied forth with armed condottieri to replenish their stores from
the pillage of towns and villages. The province was ravaged from end to
end by their excesses. In the Library of San Marco at Venice may be read
letters (Lat. Cl. x. 176) which report on the condition of Umbria when
the Lord Alexander P.P. VI began His reign; a condition of horror
unspeakable, which He was determined to abolish.
To this end, He had sent Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) as Apostolic
Legate into Umbria, in the summer of 1497, just a month after the murder
of the Duke of Gandia. The Legate went unarmed save by his sacred
office, and with too small an escort for offence. The idea was to test
the moral authority of the Suzerain of Umbria, the Roman Pontiff, in a
place where the civil power practically was helpless, and where a man’s
life depended only on the fear which he inspired.
On the day of his arrival at Narni, the sixteenth of July 1497, Cardinal
Cesare already had formed an opinion which he communicated to the Pope’s
Holiness in these words: “It is very necessary to provide me with an
army against these kakodaimones; for they go not out by holy water.”[32]
The brigand Don Bartolomeo d’Alviano seized a town belonging to the Pope
in despite of the Legate, and sacked it before his face. Cardinal Cesare
summoned him to keep the peace: he refused; and matters went from bad to
worse.
“They offend as they did at first, and will not hearken unto my
commandments”;[33] he wrote to the Pope eleven days later.
The inhabitants of Todi fled from their town to save their lives.
Brigandage was in its hey-day. “Your Holiness can well understand that
the only remedy for these evils lies in the coming of men of arms, whose
delay has caused Todi to be desolated and the city, from my departure
till now, totally derelict and left empty.”[34] At Perugia, the Legate
took the bull by the horns in a singularly daring manner and with
singular success; putting the more uproarious of the ringleaders under
the ban of expulsion, “which thing was done with such obedience and calm
that nothing better could be desired.”[35]
But he did better than that. He caught a murderer in flagrante delicto.
“I captured two robbers and murderers; and with no tumult, but to the
delight of the people, they were put in gaol—a thing long unknown in
this city—and this morning I hanged one.”[36]
’Twas immense. There was no tumult, and the people were pleased. That a
murderer should pay a penalty for his crime was a charming and fantastic
novelty to Perugia. The strong arm of the law struck the city with
consternation, and deeds of violence ceased as though by magic. In this
manner Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) gave a taste of his quality; and
came before the world, for the first time, in the rôle which Nature
intended him to fill, with his splendid personality, and swift unerring
pitiless masterfulness of action.
The prosecution of this work was prevented by the condition of affairs
in Rome. It was impossible for the Holiness of the Pope to gather an
army while the marriage of Madonna Lucrezia was before the courts, and
the frenzy of Fra Girolamo Savonarola before the Reform Commission.
Cardinal Cesare, also, was required for other service.
But now, at the beginning of 1498, after the coronation of King Don
Federigo, at the close of his legation to Naples, Cardinal Cesare
reverted to the work begun the year before; and preferred his petition
for leave to doff the scarlet of an ecclesiastic, and to embark on a
secular career. The news was bruited about Rome on the eighth of
February. Four days later, on the twelfth, the Ferrarese Orator at
Venice heard it said that Cardinal Cesare was the murderer of the Duke
of Gandia, and that His Worship and Madonna Lucrezia Borgia were seeking
matrimonial alliances with the Royal House of Naples. Four days would be
exceedingly quick travelling for a piece of gossip from Rome to Venice,
when news was carried by mounted couriers, or a-foot, and would have to
pass through the Romagna hell: and it is also most important to note
that this suspicion was not published till eight months after the
murder; and, then, in Venice. No evidence was offered to support it. It
emanated from the numerous Orsini whom Venice sheltered, and who said
that Cardinal Cesare had killed the Duke in order that he might take his
place as the Pope’s soldier-son. Once started, the accusation was
repeated by Cappello the twenty-eighth of September 1500; and by Don
Silvio Savelli in November 1501; three and four years after the event:
nor does it lack repetition by cheap and showy panderers to a guileless
public fond of having its flesh made to creep at the present day. All
that is known of the murder already has been set down here. But one
vital consideration remains to be stated, one new point of view to be
described; and it is due to the rumour of Orsini invention mentioned
above.
According to Monsignor Hans Burchard the Caerimonarius, Cardinal Cesare
and the Duke of Gandia parted, on the night of the fourteenth of June
1497, by the Vicechancellor’s palace (Palazzo Sforza-Cesarini) on Banchi
Vecchi; whence the latter, saying that he was going to amuse himself,
etc., went in the direction of the Jews’ Quarter with his two
attendants, the bully, and the unknown mask who undeniably had come by
appointment.
Rome of 1497 was divided for purposes of government into fourteen
Regions (Rioni) ruled by captains (caporioni) under a prior. The
Vicechancellor’s palace on Banchi Vecchi is in the Region called Ponte,
which extends from the church of San Giovanni de’ Fiorentini to the
Region called Santangelo after the church of that dedication in the
Fishmarket (Pescheria). Now this Region of Ponte was inhabited chiefly
by the Orsini faction; as the region of Trevi and the Region of Ripa
were inhabited by the Colonna and Savelli factions respectively. In this
Region of Ponte lived also Jews: it was the quarter of the bankers and
the money-changers, as well as of the prisons, public and private
torture-chambers, (no evidence was taken from commoners except under
torture,) all under the official protection of the House of Orsini. Here
is Cord Lane (Vicolo della Corda), where the ordinary Question or
Torture of the Cord[37] was applied. Here is Old Pillory Square, (Piazza
della Berlèna Vecchia.) Here is Executioner Lane, (Vicolo dello Mastro.)
And here were four Orsini fortresses, Monte Giordano, Tor Millina, Tor
Sanguigna, and Torre di Nona. The Region of Santangelo, also, almost
exclusively was inhabited by Jews under the protection of Orsini who
held yet another palace-fortress here in the Theatre of Marcellus,
(formerly the stronghold of the great mediæval Jewish House of
Pierleoni,) near by the site on which the Ghetto was built in 1556 under
the Lord Paul P.P. IV, and abolished in 1890 under the Lord Leo P.P.
XIII.
These topographical facts appear to point in one direction. A conclusion
may be reached by the following degrees.
(α) The Duke of Gandia took eleven (or fourteen) wounds.
(β) His pouch with its precious jewels was intact.
(γ) He had parted from Cardinal Cesare before witnesses in Banchi
Vecchi.
(δ) He said that he was going to amuse himself.
(ε) He went towards the Jews’ Quarter.
(ζ) Cardinal Cesare returned to the Vatican.
(η) Banchi Vecchi is in Ponte, the Region of Jews and of Orsini.
(θ) The Jews’ Quarter _stricte dicte_ was in Santangelo, a Region also
dominated by Orsini.
(ι) The Orsini were in mortal strife with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI,
Who had visited them with appalling disaster, Who was likely to
cause them infinite loss of life and spoil in the near future,
Whose favourite son, heir, _and military right hand_, was the
Duke of Gandia.
(κ) It was Orsini who started the rumour, eight months later, that
Cardinal Cesare (of whom Orsini went in horrid fear by reason of
his exploits in the Romagna) had murdered the Duke of Gandia.
The human and natural conclusion would seem to be that Don Juan
Francisco de Lançol y Borja, Duke of Gandia, Prince of Teano and of
Tricarico, Count of Chiaramonte of Lauria of Cerignuola, Tyrant of
Benevento of Tarracina, Grand Constable of Naples, _and Captain-General
of the pontifical army against Orsini_, living apart from his wife Doña
Maria de Aragona who was with his two children at his duchy in Spain,
being a handsome pleasure-loving youth of twenty-two years, went to keep
an assignation on that night of the fourteenth of June 1497; and fell by
the furious dagger of one of Orsini’s Jews, a rival? a father? an
outraged husband?—or by the vengeful poignards of his own and his
Father’s deadly foes, the Orsini.
The great number of his wounds, the safety of his valuables, may be thus
accounted for. The unknown mask would be the decoy, disguised as pandar.
The murder of the bully speaks of more assassins than one.
Then, did not Orsini strike at the heart of the Pope in the slaughter of
His eldest son?
At all events, no formal accusation of the guilt of this most foul and
treacherous crime has ever been laid against Cardinal Cesare (detto
Borgia.) There is absolutely no evidence against him—only suspicion,
rumour and conjecture. And the three spring from a tainted source—the
lair of the Bear—Orsini.
* * * * *
Plans for the settlement of the Romagna had to be set aside. The affair
of Fra Girolamo Savonarola monopolized the attention of the moment.
That friar began the year 1498 by preaching a fierce defence of his
disobedience to the inhibition and to the sentence of excommunication;
and by a frenetic onslaught on the Roman as distinguished from the
Tuscan clergy. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, the acknowledged Head of the
Christian Church, (indeed He was the _only_ representative of
Christianity in Authority at that time) found Himself in the position of
a commander-in-chief dealing with a mutinous mad sergeant whom captains,
colonels, and generals have failed to reduce to order. The Pope’s
moderation and long-suffering, prior to his allowing the law to take its
course, are perfectly marvellous. Fra Girolamo had been in a state of
mutiny for more than four years. Preaching the duty of obedience, he
would not practise it. He was totally insensible to the many graces with
which he had been indulged; and he met all overtures for peace with
evasion or with insolence. After all, he was “a man under authority,”
under authority to which voluntarily he had vowed, and refused,
submission while admitting the right of that authority to claim it:—an
anomalous position, illogical, scandalous,—the position of a mad man. To
the Signoria of Florence, then, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI issued a
Brief commanding the withdrawal of support from the excommunicated
friar; threatening Florence with an Interdict (a hideous lash that
invariably brought curs to heel) if His commandment were disobeyed: but,
at the same time, offering to absolve the rebellious son of St. Dominic,
upon submission. The Signoria replied, defending Savonarola; and the
Pope’s Holiness replied that, either he must be imprisoned, or be sent
to Rome: a decision which was explained at greater length to the
Signoria by the Florentine Orator in Rome, who also described the Pope’s
natural feelings of embitterment at finding His reasonable demands so
spurned and set aside. Half measures only were taken. The Lord Alexander
P.P. VI justly was dissatisfied when the Signoria simply forbade the
friar to preach. His Holiness commanded, then, the entire vindication of
His supreme authority.
Here, Fra Girolamo Savonarola committed his final sin. He joined in the
stale howl appealing to the Powers of Europe for the convocation of a
General Council; and he redoubled his treacherous intrigues with the
Christian King Charles VIII: completing the exasperation of the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI.
Events moved swiftly then. Defying the commands of his acknowledged
superior, the Pope, as well as the injunctions of the Signoria, he fell
on disrepute. His influence in Florence waned and withered; his
prophecies fell thick and fast on no believers: and then the Signoria
insisted on his submission to the Pope.
He replied by demanding the Ordeal Of Fire; offering to walk through a
blazing furnace with one of the many who opposed him, the person who
should take no hurt from that Ordeal to be adjudged innocent and under
the special protection of God.
Fra Francesco of Apulia a Friar Minor (a Religion always bitterly
antipathetic to the Religion of St. Dominic) accepted the challenge thus
thrown down. He said that he knew that both parties to the Ordeal would
be burned to death: but it would be better so, than that one heresiarch
should be left free to carry on his treasons to Christ’s Church and
State.
Again Fra Girolamo Savonarola put forth an evasion. He refused, after
challenging—he refused the Ordeal in his proper person: but he offered
one of his friars of San Marco, one Fra Domenico, as his representative.
From Rome the practical common sense of the Pope’s Holiness fulminated
disapproval: but the Ordeal went on. Faggots were piled in the great
square of Florence, and set in flame. The skin of the faces of the crowd
grew hot and scarlet and crackled in the glare. The Friar Minor came
forward in readiness to die for the good of the people. Fra Girolamo
made delays—delays—he said that Fra Domenico must bear our
Lord-in-the-Sacrament, the Sacred Host, Gesù Sagramentato, in an
ostensorium through the raging flames. The pious simple souls of the
Signoria knew this for irreverence, for sacrilege; retired to discuss
the point; returned; refused permission. Fra Girolamo persisted while
the fire burned lower. The long slow day was passing. Already his
dictatorship, the day when he ruled Florence with a word, had passed.
The fire was dying: and then, finally, except upon his own mad terms,
Fra Girolamo refused the Ordeal which he had challenged, evaded,
delayed, denied.
[Illustration: _Fra Girolamo Savonarola_]
All faith in him was gone. Objurgated by a thousand raucous throats,
torn at by a thousand furious hands, the people’s broken idol sought
refuge in his Convent of San Marco. Florence rose in riot, blood was
shed, the blood of Francesco Valori in cold murder. The Convent of San
Marco suffered storm; and the friars with their mattoid Prior were cast
in prison.
In the interests of justice and of mercy, the Pope’s Holiness strove to
have their trial held in Rome: but events had roused the Signoria to
vindicate the honour of Florence “to satisfy the people who so long had
been duped and trained in sacrilege and rebellion.” Wherefore, from Rome
came Commissioners for the trial of Fra Girolamo Savonarola and his
accomplices. Put to the legal torture, he confessed himself charlatan
and criminal. He and his lieutenants, Frati Domenico and Silvestro, were
found guilty as heretics, schismatics, and rebels against the Holy See,
of political fanaticism amounting to high treason and mutiny against his
lawful rulers. Handed to the secular judges for sentence, he was
condemned, with the two friars, to death by hanging and the burning of
their bodies after death. Handed back to the ecclesiastical power the
three were degraded from their priesthood, to enable them to undergo the
death penalty, avoiding the sacrilege of violence to the persons of
those tonsured and anointed. At the very last, by the express
commandment of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI there was offered to the
condemned a Plenary Indulgence-in-the-article-of-death, with release
from all Canonical Censures and Excommunications. Gratefully,
thankfully, it was accepted; and the prisoners paid the legal
retribution of their crimes.
Had he been an Englishman of the Twentieth Century, instead of a
Florentine of the Fifteenth, Fra Girolamo Savonarola would not have been
hanged or burned: but censured; suspended, from the exercise of
sacerdotal functions, by ecclesiastical authority; and, at last, by
medical authority, interned at Broadmoor during the Pleasure of the
King’s Majesty, as a criminal lunatic.
* * * * *
This year 1498, was born Don Giovanni Borgia, called “Infans Romanus”;
who was said to be a bastard of Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) by “a
Roman spinster.”
This year also, died the twelve-toed chin-tufted excommunicated little
Christian King Charles VIII of France; and was succeeded by his cousin
Louis XII, a thin man with a fat neck and lip, and an Ethiopic nose, and
exquisite attire, who immediately made two startling claims—for the
nullification of his marriage with Madame Jeanne de Valois, and for the
confirmation of his claim to the Duchy of Milan. The Lord Alexander P.P.
VI always preferred friends to enemies; and, now that Charles VIII was
gone to his own place, He gladly welcomed an opportunity of winning the
allegiance of France. A commission of jurists went from Rome, who, on
the legal facts, declared the marriage between the King and Madame
Jeanne to be null and void. A papal dispensation legalized the marriage
of the Christian King Louis XII and Queen Anne, his predecessor’s widow,
whereby her duchy of Bretagne was retained to the crown of France. The
claim to the Duchy of Milan was a matter which required consideration.
* * * * *
At the Sixth Consistory of the twelfth of September 1498, the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI named one cardinal, who was
the Lord Georges d’Amboise, Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the
Christian Kings Charles VIII and Louis XII; Cardinal-Presbyter of
the Title of San Sisto.
* * * * *
At last, the Pope’s Holiness consented to allow Cardinal Cesare (detto
Borgia) to renounce the scarlet cardinalitial hat and the sapphire
cardinalitial ring, for a secular duchy, a royal wife, and a military
career; saying that his presence among the clergy was sufficient to
prevent reformation.[38] A marriage was proposed for him with Doña
Carlotta de Aragona Princess of Naples; but rejected by King Don
Federigo, who at the same time favoured the marriage which took place
between Madonna Lucrezia Borgia and Don Alonso de Aragona Prince of
Bisceglia. The plan of Cardinal Cesare was aided by fresh outbreaks at
the pontifical baronage, especially by a new league of Colonna and
Orsini on behalf of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. Now, no more time
was lost. Don Cesare (detto Borgia) renounced his cardinalate in full
consistory; and journeyed into France to cultivate the friendship of the
Christian King on behalf of the Papacy. New alliances were in the air.
King Louis XII saw no reason why he should remain in the ridiculous and
paralysing isolation which the braggadocio of his predecessor had won.
The Pope’s Holiness was by no means secure with Naples whose King Don
Federigo, though owing all to Him, was inclined to be obstreperous and
to show contempt, and to whose dominions the Catholic King and Queen
were reaching. An alliance with the Papacy would suit the plans of
France. An alliance with France would be of eminent service to the
Papacy, at this moment when Colonna and Orsini were on the war-path, and
the Muslim Infidel stirring the East. So, the mission of Don Cesare
(detto Borgia) met with great success; a working understanding was
arranged by his diplomacy; and the Christian King conferred on him the
French Duchy of Valentinois.
It became evident that Milan must cede to France, the new ally of the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI; and this signified the final rupture of the
alliance of Borgia and Sforza. First, firm friends; next, strong
supporters of the House of Borgia; then, indifferent neutrals; later,
declared traitors; last, negligeable quantities; the conduct of the
House of Sforza was influenced by one idea—loyalty to their name. It was
the head of the House who was responsible, Duke Ludovico Maria
Sforza-Visconti, a coward, a scoundrel, a traitor, a murderer in
intention, the wretch who brought invading Frenchmen into Italy to aid
his usurpation of the throne of Milan—to him be all the blame. The
Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti and all the Sforza
of Pesaro, Santafiora, Chotignuola, Imola and Forli, followed the head
of their House; and, as he led them astray, so he must be decried.
Sforza has produced cardinals a many; but never a Pope. Sforza was never
nearer to the pontificate than in this reign. Ascanio was more than
likely to succeed the Lord Alexander—far more likely than the diabolical
plebeian who did succeed. But Sforza followed the head of its House;
committing political suicide. Loyalty in any age is rare: under all
circumstances it is heroic, admirable.
From the Catholic King and Queen of Spain, Don Hernando and Doña
Isabella, came the sometime pontifical captain Don Gonsalvo de Cordoba,
charged to scold the Holiness of the Pope because of His new alliance
with France. A very old weapon again was refurbished, and Catholic
Spain, in fear or envy, menaced a Spanish Pontiff, Who had given her the
New World, with Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere’s stupid General Council.
So, in the shuffling of the cards, misery made strange bed-fellows
acquainted.
Then the Orient blazed with sudden war, and the Muslim Infidel began
hostilities with Venice. Christendom had lost Lepanto[39]; the Turks
were intoxicated with success; and in Rome the Lord Alexander was deep
in the scheme of a new Crusade when the year 1498 died.
* * * * *
Naples looked with sallow eyes on the amicable relations of the Papacy
and France. The Christian King Louis XII married Duke Cesare de
Valentinois to Madame Charlotte, daughter of Sieur Alain d’Albret and
sister of King Jean of Navarre; and then entered into a treaty with the
Venetian Senate for the partition of the duchy of Milan. These acts were
discomfiting to the Regno, which could only regard the triumph of its
enemy and the ruin of its friend as auguries of evil fortune. For Duke
Cesare de Valentinois undoubtedly was the enemy of Naples now after the
rejection of his suit to Doña Carlotta de Aragona, and in despite of the
fact that his mother’s daughter, Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, was allied by
marriage to the Neapolitan Prince Don Alonso of Bisceglia. The fruit of
this last union was a son, born in November 1499, baptized in the
Xystine Chapel by the name Roderico after the August Father of Madonna
Lucrezia.
Troubles were brewing for the Sforza. The Vicechancellor-Cardinal left
Rome, and the French invaded his brother’s duchy of Milan, driving Duke
Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti (detto Il Moro) to ignominious flight.
Ever ready to take advantage of the weakness of another Power, also ever
ready to be jealous of another Power’s success, Europe eyed the triumph
of France with apprehension and disgust. And when the Lord Alexander
P.P. VI shewed pleasure at the fall of Milan, Spain and Portugal in
their chagrin sent Orators to annoy His Holiness with invectives against
His morals,[40] (as Satan sometimes denounces Sin,) and the validity of
His election,[41] demanding impossible reforms, and a General Council at
the Lateran. These petty incidents met the fate which they deserved. The
Lord Alexander P.P. VI magnificently and magnanimously received the
envoys in a public consistory, and made no efforts to prevent them from
reciting their lessons. His Holiness invariably treated personalities
with good-humoured scorn; and bore the vented spleen of kings as a mere
essential inconvenience of His rank, to be brushed away and forgotten
with the little muscarial nuisances of a Roman summer.
* * * * *
The year 1499, being the penultimate year of the Fifteenth Century, was
occupied as far as the City was concerned with preparations for the
Jubilee; that curious ceremony wherewith the Church affords an
opportunity to the faithful to cleanse their souls from stain of sin by
penitence and pious works. Penitence is an affair entirely personal, to
be entreated of between a sinner and his Judge: but the Church, who
(according to the Thirty Nine Articles) “hath power to ordain its rites
and ceremonies,” prescribes the ceremonial works to be performed. In
brief, these works consist in certain visits to certain basilicas of
Rome, which must be entered by certain doors, and where certain prayers
must be prayed. The Church, being a system, is systematic. In return for
these works always supposing them to be accompanied by the appropriate
penitence, She promises, from the infinite treasury of the Merits of our
Divine Redeemer remission of the canonical punishment incurred, during
his past life, by the sinner now penitent and purposing amendment. This
Complaisance on the part of the Church technically is called an
Indulgence; and the Jubilee Indulgence is in high esteem and eager
acceptation. It is not in any sense a licence to sin; as, by a
singularly silly misconception of its name,[42] it has been supposed to
be: but, absolutely, a formal wiping of the slate, a ceremonial enabling
of the soul to start anew. The Jubilee begins on Christmas Day with the
opening, by the Supreme Pontiff, of a certain door in the Vatican
Basilica, which remains an ingress until the Christmas Day of the
century-end; and vast pilgrimages are used to flock into the City at
such times. The year 1499 saw erected accommodation for visitors in the
Borgo Nuovo, and numerous improvements on the Vatican side of Tiber.
Churches were restored and furbished, the Mola of Hadrian strengthened;
and the new wing of the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican called the
Borgia Tower, which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI had built, was decorated
in fresco by the brush of Messer Bernardino Betti (detto Il
Pinturicchio).
In his book on the lives of artists which Giovanni Vasari wrote half a
century later it is said that Il Pinturicchio painted on a wall of the
Borgia Tower a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary before whom the Borgia
Pontiff kneels in adoration. Vasari also says that the painter used, as
his model for Deipara, Madonna Giulia Orsini (nate Farnese) who was the
Pope’s mistress: and this statement is repeated by many, to this day,
including the German historian Herr Gregorovius (who pretends to have
been guided by documents and by documents alone), as an example of the
flagitious profligacy and profanity of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI.
Painters of the Fifteenth Century, in the manner of painters of the
Twentieth, took their models as they found them. If the perpetuation of
the world’s loveliness be no sin,—and on that point there are
diversities of human opinion, and one Law,—then the person who is graced
with natural beauty incurs, not disgrace, but honour in allowing it to
be preserved by painting or by sculpture. Perfect beauty does not seek
concealment, but simply admits the world to share its joy, without
emotion of vanity or shame, without regard to rank or dignity. Pauline
Buonaparte Princess Borghese was the model for Canova’s Venus. Bernini
modelled his David (in Villa Borghese) from his own yυμνότης, while
Cardinal Barberini (afterwards the Lord Urban PP. VIII) held the mirror.
That amiable rake Messer Rafael Sanzio da Urbino painted his baker’s
daughter as Madonna. Messer Jacopo Sansovino sculptured his Dionusos
from a lad called Lippo Fabri, who, from long posing bare, took cold and
died of fever; and, in his last delirium, continually leaped from his
bed to pose as the god to whom his life was sacrificed. Messer
Michelangelo Buonarroti, lost in admiration of his model the son of
Messer Francesco Raibolini of Bologna (detto Il Francia), with his naif
and customary depreciation of his brother-painters, told the boy that
his father made better men by night than by day. Messer Andrea
Verrocchio did his slim lean David from one of his alert apprentices.
Messer Luca Signorelli painted his own dead son. Messer Rafaele Sanzio
himself, times without number, sat for his master Il Pinturicchio. The
beautiful Simoneta of Florence was the Venus of Messer Alessandro
Filipepi (detto Botticelli); and the sons of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’
Medici (two of whom in after years wore the Triregno) did not disdain to
sit as models for this master. All the works of art of the Borgian Era,
representing saints and sinners, gods and demigods, eudaimones and
kakadaimones, all obviously were portraits; the very imperfections,
which the century of the Discovery of Man was too eager and too
unsophisticated to plane away to fit arbitrary conventions, shew this:
and volumes might be written of the models of great masters, who let
their youth or beauty be set down for all time, and then achieved fame
as Rafaele did, or Messer Simone Fiorentini’s (detto Donatello) nitid
David or superb Saint George, or Messer Andrea del Sarto’s wistful Young
Saint John.
Wherefore, not only may it be admitted, but defended, that Madonna
Giulia Orsini (nata Farnese), who had come to share with Madonna
Lucrezia Borgia the distinction of being the fairest young mother in
Rome, sat as model to Il Pinturicchio for the Θεοτόκος of the Borgia
Tower.
But, in proof of the ghastly ignorance or devilish malice which has
sought to introduce an element of lubricity into this affair, it is
necessary that three important facts should not go unconsidered. They
are
(α) that the Borgia Tower contained three or four large halls:
(β) that the portrait of Madonna Giulia Orsini (nata Farnese), detta
La Bella, in the character of the Blessed Virgin Mary with her
Child, is a round picture over the door of the third hall; She
is encircled by angels, and there are no other figures in the
composition:
(γ) that the portrait of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI is a square
picture in the second hall; and the Holiness of the Pope is
presented in His pontifical habits but bare-headed and without
the triregno, devoutly kneeling before the Apparition of our
Divine Redeemer Who rises from the tomb.
That is the little matter of the calumny, in support of which the German
historian with others of like mind have solved the problem of the
squaring of the circle![43]
* * * * *
Now that the French alliance was secure, with the help of the Christian
King Louis XII, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI proceeded with the conquest
of the Romagna and the reduction of the rebellious vassals of the Holy
See. Duke Cesare de Valentinois was named Generalissimo of the
pontifical army; and a Papal Bull declared the fiefs of Rimini, Pesaro,
Imola, Forli, Camerino, Faenza, etc., to have forfeited their rights
until they should have made satisfaction, paying the arrears of annual
tribute into the chancery of their paramount lord. The fact was fully
realised that it was useless to attempt to pacify “these kakodaimones”
with “holy water”; as, as a last resort, after seven years forbearance,
force was to be used against Sforza of Pesaro, Sforza-Riario of Imola
and Forli, Manfredi of Faenza and the rest. The glowing splendour of the
personality of Duke Cesare de Valentinois, without emotion and without
remorse, fitted him for his task. He was a perfect egoist, splendidly
indifferent to all the world. During his life, his enormous talents, his
swift success, his summary acts gained him the reputation of being
superhuman, inevitable as Fate. On the eleventh of November 1499, he
left Rome with four thousand condottieri and three hundred lancers. His
lieutenant and standard-bearer was the same noble and vigorous knight,
Don Pietro Gregorio Borgia, of the Veliternian Branch, who had changed
clothes with him in 1495, enabling him to cheat the Christian King. On
the seventeenth of December, he stormed and captured Imola, whence
Madonna Caterina Sforza, widow of Count Girolamo Riario, had fled,
refusing obedience or tribute to her suzerain, and anew entrenching
herself at Forli, her other fief. She left at Imola such an odious
memory of her rule, that in after years the citizens would blush for
shame of it, while blessing Duke Cesare de Valentinois, who, as the
minister of Divine Justice, made an end.
The encounter between Madonna Caterina and Duke Cesare caused
extraordinary exhibitions of vigour and agility on both sides. When a
desperate unscrupulous woman struggles with a strong and ruthless man,
she will do much damage: but, in the end, she must succumb. Directly
after the fall of Imola, Duke Cesare received letters from Rome
announcing that the Pope’s Holiness narrowly had escaped violent death:
for Madonna Caterina, to save herself and her fiefs, believing that Duke
Cesare would be compelled to relinquish his expedition if the Pope were
dead, had tried to slay the Holy Father by means of venom. To this end,
she had sent two Orators charged with proposed conditions of peace; and
also she sent a letter (enclosed in a hollow stick, say some) which
would cause the Supreme Pontiff to fall dead as soon as He should open
it. When the plot was discovered, Tommaso da Forli, a papal chamberlain
who had brought the missive, admitted his guilt; (under the Question
guilt was commonly admitted); and said that he hoped, by the death of
the Pope, to raise the siege of Imola and Forli. This extraordinary
story is recorded by several chroniclers, including Monsignor Hans
Burchard the Caerimonarius, the dull and stupid defamer of the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI. The name of the chamberlain gives rise to curious
speculations. Tommaso da Forli presumably might be a bastard of the city
of Forli of insufficient birth to warrant the adoption of the
appellation of his unknown father or mother; and who might very well
have taken the name of his native city with the preposition “da” (not
“de’,” be it noted) as a surname. Papal chamberlains are nothing more
than pontifical flunkeys, and “Thomas from Forli,” being a lackey with
access to the Pontifical Person, might have been employed by Madonna
Caterina to stab the Pope. That is not unlikely: but the story of the
envenomed letter obviously is false; and interesting only as shewing the
trend of men’s minds in 1499; and as a proof, perhaps, that if, as has
been alleged in the purest ignorance, the envenoming of its foes was a
custom of the House of Borgia, at least one other Italian court indulged
in the same horrible habit upon occasion.
Madonna Caterina’s second recorded act of treachery took place after she
had surrendered the city of Forli to Duke Cesare. She retained
possession of the castle, and refused to give it up. As soon as the
pontifical artillery began to bombard her fortress on Christmas Day, she
flew, from one of the fortalices, a banner bearing the Lion of St. Mark,
to make believe that she was leagued with Venice, a republic then at
peace with the Holy See. It was a Venetian attached to the staff of Duke
Cesare who exposed the ruse, with the affirmation that his Senate had no
alliance with Madonna Caterina. The day following, she gave signs of
weakening; and requested a parley with her beleaguerer. When Duke Cesare
approached, and just was about to put his foot on the drawbridge over
the moat by which the castle was surrounded, suddenly and without
warning the machine swung up and in. Madonna Caterina indignantly
disclaimed any perfidious intent, and threw all blame on the castellan,
Don Giovanni Casale: but all beholders were aware of a deliberate
attempt to capture and hideously to kill the Generalissimo, which only
had failed through too eager precipitancy. No parley took place; the
siege continued; and, in time, this audacious war-wife was compelled to
capitulate. Duke Cesare sent her to Rome as a prisoner-of-state, with
every chivalrous consideration for her sex as well as for her
illustrious birth as daughter of the great Duke Francesco
Sforza-Visconti of Milan: and on her arrival in the City she was lodged
in the Belvedere Apartment of the Vatican, whence, after a futile
attempt at escape, she was transferred to honourable captivity in the
Mola of Hadrian.
During the siege of Forli an event occurred, of secondary importance,
except as evidence of the mystery surrounding the paternity of Duke
Cesare. The Most Worshipful Lord Giovanni Borgia (detto Giuniore)
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Maria _in Via Lata_ died at
Urbino. He was one of the bastards of that beautiful splendid sneak and
coward Don Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borgia, (Duke of Spoleto, younger
brother of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, who had been named Prefect of
Rome and Castellan of Santangelo by his Uncle, the Lord Calixtus P.P.
III, and who died in his flight from Rome in 1458). The said Most
Worshipful Lord Cardinal Giovanni Giuniore had been Bishop of Melfi
since 1492. In 1496, he was elevated to the Sacred College, and given
command of the condottieri which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was
preparing against France; and, when Duke Cesare renounced his scarlet
early in 1499, he had ceded to this cardinal his Metropolitan
Archbishopric of Valencia. The Lord Giovanni Giuniore had held Legations
to Umbria, Bologna, Ravenna and France, and was acting as Legate to
Umbria when he died at Urbino. Duke Cesare himself announced this death
to the Pope in a letter written from Forli, and dated the sixteenth of
January 1500, in these words: “I have news of the death of Cardinal
Borgia, _my brother_, who died at Urbino.” Duke Cesare wrote a kind of
Latin neither Golden nor Silvern but particular to himself, as also was
his Italian and there is no known instance of his using “frater” or
“fratello” in the tertiary sense of “cousin.” If the dead Cardinal and
the Duke were uterine brothers, then Don Pedro Luis was their father;
and Duke Cesare was not the son, but the nephew, of the Lord Alexander
P.P. VI. The death of the Cardinal, however, has been alleged by some
chroniclers to have been caused by venom administered by Duke Cesare.
The charge is essentially absurd. There was no motive; for Cardinal and
Duke were comrades, _brothers-in-arms_, equally engaged in the reduction
of the rebellious Romagna; there could have been no jealousy, for they
occupied separate and independent ranks, (of which Duke Cesare had
chosen his,) the Cardinal Giovanni Giuniore as Legate, being the older
man (41), and Duke Cesare the younger (26) as Generalissimo: nor was the
Cardinal rich enough to make his death desirable. But, at all events, it
was impossible that Duke Cesare should envenom him for the simple
reasons that the two were many miles apart during seventeen days before
the death, and that no venom of slow action was known to the Fifteenth
Century any more than it is to the Twentieth.
* * * * *
At the Seventh Consistory of the sixteenth (or twentieth) of March 1500,
the Lord Alexander P.P. VI named three cardinals, who were
(α) the Lord Don Didaco Hurtado de Mendoza, a Spaniard;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina: (he was
afterwards called “The Cardinal of Spain:”)
(β) the Lord Amaneus (Amanateus) d’Albret, of Navarre; Cardinal-Deacon
of San Niccolo _in Carcere Tulliano_:
(γ) the Lord Don Pedro Luis de Borja, a Pontifical Nephew, brother of
the Cardinal of Monreale (Giovanni Seniore); succeeded his
deceased cousin Cardinal Giovanni Giuniore as Cardinal-Deacon of
Santa Maria in _Via Lata_.
* * * * *
The Christian King Louis XII, now calling himself the “Second Caesar,”
was not idle during this year 1500. Duke Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti
certainly recovered his duchy of Milan; but, after the Triumph given to
Duke Cesare de Valentinois in Rome on his return from the Romagna with
Madonna Caterina Sforza-Riario as his prisoner-of-war, the prestige of
the Papacy was so increased that the French took heart and gained a
notable victory at Novara, capturing Duke Ludovico Maria and his brother
the Vicechancellor, who then were incarcerated safely in France.
* * * * *
In July, Don Alonso de Aragona, Prince of Bisceglia, Quadrata, and
Salerno, and husband of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia was murdered; and the
opinion carefully and carelessly has been cultivated that this was one
of the crimes of Duke Cesare de Valentinois and the Lord Alexander P.P.
VI.
According to the account of Don Paolo Cappello the Orator of Venice, as
given by Herr Gregorovius, Prince Don Alonso, going to the Vatican at
eleven o’clock at night on the fifteenth of July, was assaulted on the
steps of St. Peter’s by masked men armed with poignards, and wounded in
the head and arms and thighs. Weak from loss of blood, he dragged
himself into the Apostolic Palace, where his wife Madonna Lucrezia
swooned at the sight of him. He was carried into one of the rooms; and a
cardinal, believing him to be in the article of death, imparted the
usual absolution. But his youthful vigour enabled him to progress on the
road to recovery, under the nursing of his wife and of his sister-in-law
Madonna Sancia, who, with their own hands, prepared his food (they were
royal princesses), while the Pope’s Holiness provided a body-guard of
men-at-arms. No one knew who had wounded the prince: but gossip said
that it was the same hand that had slain the Duke of Gaudia. Duke Cesare
de Valentinois had issued an edict forbidding any one bearing arms to
pass between the Mola of Hadrian and the Vatican. Don Paolo Cappello
further records that Duke Cesare had said, “I did not wound the prince:
but, if I had “done so, he had well deserved it.” Duke Cesare was not
ashamed to visit the invalid; and, in coming away, he had said, “That,
which is not done at noon, can be done at sunset.” More than a month
later, at nine o’clock on the night of the eighteenth of August, Duke
Cesare again visited Prince Don Alonso; and, having driven Madonna
Sancia and Madonna Lucrezia from the room, he introduced his captain Don
Michelotto who strangled the wounded man. After this, Duke Cesare
publicly declared that he had killed the Prince of Bisceglia, because
the latter had tried to murder him by setting an archer to shoot him
silently in the Vatican gardens:—so far Don Paolo Cappello.
Monsignor Hans Burchard the Caerimonarius says, that, at eleven o’clock
on the night of the fifteenth of July, Prince Don Alonso the husband of
Madonna Lucrezia Borgia was found on the steps of St. Peter’s, wounded
by assassins in the head, the knee, and the right arm. After the
assault, the assassins were escorted by forty knights beyond the
City-gate called Porta Pertusa. Prince Don Alonso lived near the Vatican
in the palace of the Cardinal of Santa Maria _in Portico_; but, owing to
the serious nature of his wounds, he was carried into the pontifical
palace, and lodged in a room of the Borgia Tower. When King Don Federigo
heard of the attempt upon his nephew, he sent Messer Galieno his own
leech to cure him. Later the prince was strangled; and the leeches with
a certain hunchback servant were put to the Question in the Mola of
Hadrian, and afterwards released as innocent.
A chronicle of Pavia of much later date says that Duke Cesare killed
Prince Don Alonso at a time when he was in bed with his own wife Madonna
Lucrezia.
Before examining the divergences of this evidence, it may as well be
said that the original despatches of Don Paolo Cappello the Orator of
Venice are not attainable. Many years later, a learned patrician of
Venice, Don Marino Sanuto, wrote the History of the Venetian Republic
from 1496 to 1533 in fifty-six folio volumes. He cited the
state-archives, despatches of orators, etc., and his work is
marvellously well done: but when all is said, the fact remains that the
despatches of Don Paolo Cappello, with those of many others, have been
edited by a stranger to the writers, and to the circumstances under
which they wrote. Monsignor Burchard held an important office at the
Vatican. He was German, and inimical to Borgia. On matters connected
with his office of Caerimonarius, _i.e._, the superintendence of public
functions, he might speak with some authority: but beyond that he is an
inveterate gossip and scandalmonger. In his case, also, it is impossible
to know what he really wrote, because the original holograph of his
Diarium (with the Diarium of Infessura and other similar works) even now
awaits discovery by students of ancient archives.
What charges lie against Duke Cesare de Valentinois? It is Cappello who
states that he drove away the women, and caused Prince Don Alonso to be
strangled by Don Michelotto. Burchard appears ignorant of these details.
It is Cappello who states that Duke Cesare admitted and defended the
murder. Of this Burchard says nothing: he relates that the prince was
strangled; and, from his mention of the interrogation of the leeches and
of the hunchback, it would appear that others beside Duke Cesare were
suspected. Cappello says that the prince was poignarded in head, arms,
and thighs; Burchard, in head, right arm, and knee. Cappello speaks of a
guard appointed by the Pope to watch the wounded man. Burchard does not
record this. There are discrepancies between the two accounts; some, of
reasonable importance: _e.g._, Burchard’s account of the forty knights
who escorted the assassins from the City; and of the sending of the
royal leech without mentioning any suspicions on the part of King Don
Federigo. But nowhere can be found a proved accusation against Duke
Cesare de Valentinois, or against the Holiness of the Pope.
From a study of the various statements, (derisable though to some extent
they be,) and of known facts, a reasonable enough history of the affair
may be compiled, and one which happens to be exculpatory of Borgia.
Don Alonso de Aragona Prince of Bisceglia, Salerno, etc., was a nephew
of King Don Federigo of Naples. At the age of nineteen, he married
Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, on political grounds to consolidate friendly
relations then existing between Papacy and Regno. All accounts agree
that this was a genuine love-match as well; and the chronicler Talini
says of the prince, “he was the most beautiful youth that I have ever
seen in Rome.”
A year after the marriage Madonna Lucrezia bore him an heir, Don
Roderico; who immediately was provided-for with the duchy of Sermoneta.
The young Prince and Princess of Bisceglia lived in the palace of the
Cardinal of Sante Maria _in Portico_ by the Vatican, in order to be near
to the Pope.
In the year 1500, the relations of Papacy and Regno had undergone a
change. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI was now allied with France, the old
and still-distrusted enemy of Naples; and King Don Federigo had joined
the unmitigable handful of men who were blackmailing the Pope’s Holiness
with threats of a General Council. The Prince of Bisceglia as a
Neapolitan, therefore, would not be persona gratissima to the supporters
of Borgia.
When it was desired to reward and exalt a subject, the sovereigns of the
Borgian Era had the naïve habit of dispossessing one of their enemies,
and conferring the vacated fief on their new protégé. In order to enrich
Prince Don Alonso with the principality of Salerno, the Majesty of
Naples had deprived the noble Neapolitan House of Sanseverini. In order
to enrich His grandson the baby Don Roderico with the duchy of
Sermoneta, the Holiness of the Pope had despoiled the noble Roman House
of Caïetani. And it readily will be understood that Caïetani and
Sanseverini were extremely likely to view these losses with anything but
resignation.
Regarding the edict of Duke Cesare de Valentinois, that none should go
armed between the Mola and the Vatican, it must be admitted that this
was only a very ordinary precautionary measure. The district named is
the immediate precincts of the pontifical palaces of peace and war,
which were connected by the fortified gallery-passage, through the
Region of Borgo, called Lo Andare; and the baring of arms within the
presence of royalty was, at all times, and in all courts, a capital
crime. Duke Cesare as Generalissimo was responsible for the maintenance
of order; and he was no laggard in any official capacity. If then, the
truth of the stabbing on the steps of St. Peter’s and the strangulation
in the Borgia Tower be granted, they might be defended as an execution
of the death penalty prescribed for a breach of the law, such as the
fiery Neapolitan prince is extremely likely to have committed. Royal or
patrician criminals were frequently done to death in private, by
quasi-assassination, to avoid the degradation of the touch of the public
carnifex.
Again, granting the said stabbing and strangling, and regarding them as
an act of private vengeance on the part of Duke Cesare against the
prince; it should be remembered that people had the custom of defending
their lives by slaughtering an enemy who set archers to shoot at them in
the garden.
But, during the pontificate of the Lord Julius P.P. II (Giuliano della
Rovere) the eternal enemy of the House of Borgia, (whose not mean
portrait by Messer Rafaele Sanzio da Urbino may be seen at the National
Gallery,) the captain Don Michelotto, who is supposed to have strangled
the Prince of Bisceglia by order of Duke Cesare, was seized and put to
the Question in the usual manner. It was attempted to find out, by means
of this rigour, the truth about the various crimes which he was said to
have committed for his master; and particularly the murder of Prince Don
Alonso. But although he was in the hands of a ruthless despot, who,
legally could have broiled him alive like a forger or could have broken
with iron bars every bone of every limb of his body on the Wheel, with
none to hinder, Don Michelotto soon was set at liberty as having given
no evidence of guilt, either on his own part or of that of Duke Cesare.
It will appear from this fairly convincing test that there is a strong
reason for regarding the story of strangulation as a piece of fiction.
As a last contribution to the theory, it is suggested that contortions
caused by _tetanus_, which might have set in by reason of the poignard
wounds, may have simulated, to the ignorant and casual observer, the
appearance of strangulation. The bacillus of tetanus is of earth origin,
and every one knows the vulgar method of wiping a dagger. Otherwise the
strangulation theory may be dismissed.
Of the stabbing on the steps of St. Peter’s there is no such room for
doubt. The discrepancy between Cappello (edited by Sanuto, understood,)
and Burchard, (a copy of him by an unknown hand, also understood,) as to
the position of the wounds has no material significance. Head, arms, and
thighs, says Cappello; head, right arm, and knee, says Burchard. It is
quite clear that the unfortunate youth (he was just of the age of
twenty-one years) wore beneath his doublet one of the fashionable
mail-shirts of the day, strong enough to turn a tempered blade at
closest quarters and yet so fine that it could be hidden in two hands;
and which caused him to be wounded anywhere except in his handsome
trunk.
The number of wounds and their wide distribution speak of more than one
occasion. The frightful loss of blood (the wound in the thigh), the
delusions of Fifteenth Century chirurgeons, the elementary condition of
the pharmacopœia, the time of year—Sol in Leone—when Rome fizzles in
fevers and insanitary stenches, preclude possibility of recovery: and it
is only reasonable to conceive that Prince Don Alonso died, after a
month’s lingering weakness and fever, of the poignard wounds and the
attentions of the leeches, unassisted by a problematic noose, or the
compression of his windpipe by strong thumbs.
Then who were the masked men with poignards, and who is responsible for
them?
In this connection, Duke Cesare de Valentinois has not been named. The
Pope’s Holiness did not alter His behaviour to him. He found him
antipathetic as always: some said He was afraid of him.[44] But He did
not cease to use him, to allow him access to His person, to decorate him
with titles; and the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was far too magnificently
invincible and too conscious of His power, not to have resented the
murder of the beloved husband of His charming and favourite daughter. A
Pontiff Who could, and did, crush reigning sovereigns at His will, was
not likely to fear a mere duke. The clergy treated Duke Cesare, as
always, with profound respect. And—Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, until the
very end of his life, maintained friendly relations with him; and it was
to her that the death of the Prince of Bisceglia brought most grievous
trouble. Evidently the people most intimately concerned with Duke Cesare
did not look upon him as an assassin: at any rate, the legend of his
guilt subsequently emanated, not from them but, from his foes.
There was a total absence of motive on the part of Duke Cesare, unless
the theory of legal but private execution, or the theory of justifiable
homicide, be maintained. And for want of proof of strangulation, these
can be dismissed with deserved contempt.
But—there was a very strong motive for the stabbing present in the
Neapolitan House of Sanseverini, and in the Roman House of Caïetani, who
had suffered loss of the principality of Salerno, and of the duchy of
Sermoneta, in order to the enrichment of Prince Don Alonso of Bisceglia
and Salerno and his infant son Duke Roderico of Sermoneta. Is it
probable that great barons of the Fifteenth Century, or of any other
century, calmly would submit to deprivation of their choicest fiefs,
without at least an attempt to gain satisfaction of one or another kind?
It may be concluded, then, that in all human probability Prince Don
Alonso was the victim of a vendetta. His assassination was a private
affair. The assassins were professionals in the pay of Sanseverini, or
Caïetani, or both together; who, when the deed apparently was done,
(here Burchard recording probability is valuable,) were surrounded by
forty knights (Sanseverini or Caïetani of course) and escorted out of
the City by the nearest gate, Porta Pertusa behind St. Peter’s, (the
nearest gate to avoid attracting the attention of the bargelli in Borgo
or Trastevere), whence, by a short circuit to the south, they would
attain the Via Portuense, sixteen miles of which would bring them to
Porto on the right bank of Tiber, opposite to the fortress at Ostia on
the left bank belonging to Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere.
* * * * *
At the Eighth Consistory of the twenty-eighth of September 1500, the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI named ten cardinals, who were,
(α) the Lord Don Jaime Serra, a Catalan, Vicegerent of Rome;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Vitale:
(β) the Lord ... Bacocz, an Hungarian, Chancellor of Hungary;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Martino _ai Monti_:
(γ) the Lord Don Pedro Isualles, a Sicilian; Cardinal-Presbyter of the
Title of San Ciriaco _alle Terme Diocleziane_:
(δ) the Lord Don Francisco de Borja, bastard of the Lord Calixtus P.P.
III; who had lived obscurely from his birth in 1441 until now;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Lucia _in Silice_ alias
_in Orfea_:
(ε) the Lord Don Juan Vera, a Spaniard, Archbishop of Saliterno;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Balbina:
(ζ) the Lord Alois Podachatarios, a noble of Cyprus, the Pontifical
Greek Secretary; Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Sant’ Agata
_in Suburra_:
(η) the Lord Giovantonio Trivulzio, a noble of Milan, elevated to
oblige the Christian King Louis XII; Cardinal-Presbyter of the
Title of Santa Anastasia:
(θ) the Lord Giambattista Ferrari, Bishop of Modena;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Crisogono:
(κ) the Lord Gianstefano Ferreri, Abbot of San Stefano di Vercello;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Sergio e San Bacco:
(ι) the Lord Marco Cornaro, brother of Madonna Caterina Cornaro, Queen
of Cyprus; Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Portico_.
* * * * *
In view of the danger looming in the near East, the Lord Alexander P.P.
VI issued a Bull proclaiming a new Crusade; and addressed a Brief in the
same sense to the Christian King Louis XII. Venice being in serious and
immediate peril received His help in the shape of money and troops.
Nevertheless though Modon fell to the Muslim Infidel, even this
disaster, giving point to the Pope’s exordium, failed to arouse the
Christian Princes of Europe from their disgraceful apathy. The Lord
Alexander P.P. VI now imposed a graduated crusade tax on the revenues of
the Sacred College, each cardinal being mulcted on the value of his
benefices. This, though a righteous and elevating ensample, was looked
upon with extreme disgust; for, like other men, cardinals are very
sensitive in the pouch. Cardinal Raymond Perauld, forgiven for his
treachery with Charles VIII, was named Apostolic Ablegate to Germany
charged with authority to reform the abuses, which avarice and ambition
on the part of German prelates were causing, to the shame of all
right-minded men. But the Elect-Emperor Maximilian—(who, in a picture by
Albrecht Durer in the British Museum, modestly is styled _Imperator
Caesar Divus Maximilianus Pius Felix Augustus_;[45] and, in another, on
vellum in the same collection, bears, after the imperial titles, the
styles of all sovereigns of Europe, including _Rex Angliæ_, in despite
of King Henry VII Tudor then happily reigning,)—the Elect-Emperor
Maximilian remembered that in 1496 his ill-advised advance into Venetia
had been opposed and not received with obsequious adulation; and he now
refused to allow the Papal Ablegate to enter his Empire. In such
pettiness did the Holy Roman Emperor of the Habsburg House of Austria
have continual joy.
This year in Rome was the Holy Year, the last of the Fifteenth Century,
the year of Jubilee. The Holy Father extended the privilege to
Christendom; and huge pilgrimages of persons of rank and distinction
from all Christian countries save Germany and Switzerland flocked to the
Eternal City throughout the year. The pilgrims’ alms considerably added
to the papal treasury; and, by order of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI,
these exclusively were set aside for the pacification of the States of
the Church in the Romagna; a magnificent example of the political
foresight which secured the temporal possessions of the Holy See during
three hundred and seventy years, till 1870. Before the end of the year
1500 the splendour of Duke Cesare de Valentinois was increased by the
title of Gonfaloniere of the Holy Roman Church: and, with the ample
funds of the Jubilee, he had enlarged his army by the acquisition of
several squadrons of French mercenaries, for a new expedition into the
rebellious provinces.
During the first year of the Sixteenth Century, A.D. 1501, the Apostolic
Ablegate Cardinal Raymond Perauld came to an agreement with the Diet at
Nürnberg: and the project of a Crusade was improved by the formation of
a new league of the Papacy with Venice and Hungary, (the two countries
which lay at the mercy of the Muslim Infidel;) and by some naval
successes with the conquest of Santa Maura by Bishop Giacopo da Pesaro.
* * * * *
In the spring, Duke Cesare marched his reinforced army to beleaguer
Faenza. There, the citizens had constructed a bastion during the winter
at the convent of the Friars Minor-of-the-Observance outside the walls.
On the twelfth of April, this defence was taken by Duke Cesare, who
installed a park of artillery to breach the citadel. The brave Faenzesi
made sorties from their city for grain and cattle: but the effect of
famine soon began to tell. (This account of the siege is Canon
Sebastiano di Zaccaria’s.) The rich shared their bread and wine with the
poor. When money for paying the soldiers failed, the priests and monks
gave the sacred vessels. Women took part in the defence, throwing stones
from the walls, or strengthening the gabions with earthworks; while the
most daring fought, with casque and pike and harquebus, when their men
slept. Matrons prayed in the churches. Barefooted boys and girls ran
about the streets praying for Divine Assistance for their fathers on the
ramparts. On the eighteenth of April, the sixth day of siege, the
assault was made. Duke Cesare had advised the neighbouring princes; and
Don Alfonso d’Este, heir of Ferrara, with his heraklean brother the
athletic young Cardinal Ippolito were come post-haste to see the sight.
(It is worth noting that advantage was taken of this visit to plan a
marriage between the young widow Madonna Lucrezia Borgia and Don Alfonso
d’Este.) The assault lasted from one o’clock in the afternoon till four.
The assailants severely suffered from harquebuses, and flaming darts,
and showers of stones, with which the beleaguered greeted them,
intrepidly fighting on the smoking débris of their walls. Nothing was
seen to equal Faenza’s valour: but Duke Cesare’s condottieri also gave
signal proof of bravery. Don Taddeo della Volpe of Imola, on being
struck in the eye by an arrow, tore it out and went on fighting, saying
that he was fortunate enough to see but half the danger now. Duke Cesare
conceived so great an admiration for the courage of his enemies, as to
say that, with an army of Faenzesi, he cheerfully would undertake the
conquest of all Italy. During seven hours on the twenty-first of April,
artillery bombarded the citadel, which now was little more than a heap
of ruins. Every night, some of the beleaguered slid over the walls, and
escaped into the camp of Duke Cesare, worn by famine and the fatigue of
the siege. On the night of the twenty-second, one Bartolomeo Grammante,
a dyer, fled from a fortalice where he was on guard and came to the
Duke, saying that there was mutiny in Faenza, that ammunition was
exhausted, and offering to point out a moment favourable for assault.
Incontinently Duke Cesare hanged this traitorous felon near the
city-wall, out of respect for the brave Faenzesi and their admirable
resistance. Three days later, the end came. The conqueror offered most
honourable terms: complete liberty for the Tyrant Don Astorgio Manfredi,
and his relations, to go and come at will; the integrity of his property
and payment of his debts; confirmation of all rights and privileges for
the citizens.
On the twenty-sixth of April, the municipal officers came to the convent
of the Observantines where Duke Cesare lodged; and swore between his
hands the feudal oath of fidelity to the over-lord, the Holiness of the
Pope. At three o’clock in the afternoon, came also Don Astorgio Manfredi
with his kin. This unfortunate youth was only of the age of sixteen
years, the servant of his own subjects, and an orphan whose father, Don
Galeotto Manfredi, had been murdered by his mother, Madonna Francesca
Bentivogli. A Venetian chronicler says of him that he was “a sickly lad
(_puto mal san_) but beautiful fair and rosy,” obviously rotten with
struma; and as such he appears in his portrait in the Palazzo
Zauli-Naldi of Faenza, wearing an expression of profound melancholy. The
young Tyrant and his bastard brother, Don Gianevangelista Manfredi, (who
was of the age of fourteen years, and had had a command during the
siege,) received so courteous a reception from Duke Cesare that they
decided to remain with him. So far, the behaviour of the Generalissimo
appears to have been inspired by noble magnanimity.
And here, there is a lacuna. The history of Don Astorgio becomes blank.
Research so far has failed to discover any trace of him for months.
Some time after his capitulation, Don Astorgio and his brother were
found incarcerated in the Mola of Hadrian, in the royal apartment which
Madonna Caterina Sforza-Riario had vacated on going into exile in
France: and of this, also, there has been no explanation yet discovered.
It is permissible to suppose that after Duke Cesare generously had
granted their unconditional liberty, some imperious political necessity
intervened; such as that Don Astorgio and Don Gianevangelista, held as
hostages, would guarantee the tranquillity of Faenza, preventing further
rebellion. Duke Cesare’s apparent breach of faith is not without its
parallels in ancient, modern, and contemporary history; a political
crime, perhaps necessary, but for which there is neither extenuation nor
excuse.
But later still, the story ends in tragedy. The two boys are said to
have been killed, and their bodies cast in Tiber. The only two
chronicles which have the slightest value are those of Don Antonio
Giustiniani the Orator of Venice, who was in Rome; and of Monsignor Hans
Burchard the Papal Caerimonarius, who might have been there: though the
originals of these chronicles, be it remembered, are yet to seek.
The former wrote to his government,
“_They say_ that this night those two young lords of Faenza with their
steward have been slain and thrown in Tiber.”
The latter records in his journal,
“There were found in Tiber, suffocated and dead, the lord of Faenza, a
youth of about the age of eighteen years, beautiful and well-shaped,
with a stone at his neck; and two youths bound together by the arms,
the one of fifteen and the other of twenty-five years; and near them a
certain woman, and several others.”