will kill all living creatures; “for what is venomous to one may serve
for the preservation of another, which comes not by reason of the
quality but of the distinct nature.” He gives a lengthy list of
substances with the animals to which they are fatal, _e.g._, wolfebane
kills wolves; henbane, hens; daffydillies, mice; black hellebore, oxen;
white hellebore, pigeons; ivy, bats; comfrey, eagles; pondweed, urchins;
mustard-seed, larks; vine-juice, cranes; willow, tom-tits;
pomegranate-churnels, falcons, vultures, sea-gulls, blackbirds; and nux
vomica, dogs. In regard to the last, it should be understood that the
Fifteenth Century called foxglove (_Digitalis purpurea_) nux vomica ;
and had not succeeded in extracting the vegetable alkaloid Strychnine,
in its modern isolated form, from the Javanese Στρύχνος _nux vomica_, of
which it is the active principle.
To complete the exposition of this typical Fifteenth Century man of
science, his chief Antidote to Venom is appended here.
“Take three pounds of old oil and two handfuls of St. John’s Wort,
(Balm of the Warrior’s Wound, _hypericum_.) Macerate for two months in
the sun. Strain off the old flowers, and add two ounces of fresh. Boil
in Balneo Mariae (a bain-marie) for six hours. Put in a close-stopped
bottle and keep in the sun for fifteen days. During July, add three
ounces of St. John’s Wort seed which gently has been stamped and
steeped in two glasses of white wine for three days. Add also two
drachms each of gentian, tormentil, dittany, zedoary, and carline,
(all of which must have been gathered in August,) sandal-wood and
long-aristolochie. Gently boil for six hours in Balneo Mariae. Strain
in a press. Add to the expression one ounce each of saffron, myrrh,
aloes, spikenard, and rhubarb, all bruised. Boil for a day in Balneo
Mariae. Add two ounces each of treacle and mithridate. Boil for six
hours in Balneo Mariae. And set it in the sun for forty days.
“In plague, or suspicion of venom, anoint the stomach, wrists, and
heart; and drink three drops in wine. It will work wonders,” says
Messer Giambattista della Porta.
* * * * *
The pharmacy of the Renascence, to quote the confession of the charlatan
Cagliostro, consisted _in herbs and words_, “in verbis et in herbis.”
The practice of medicine during the Borgian Era appears to have been
entirely empirical. Physicians experimented on the vile body of their
patient, trusting to luck, or chance, or faith, to work a cure. In
contracts it was expressly stated that physicians must have the
reputation of being _fortunate_ (felix). Chirugeons were totally unaware
of the circulation of the blood. So much stress here is laid upon the
art and craft and mystery of medicine and its exponents, because from
these, and from these alone, the knowledge and use of venoms could be
obtained; and, if the blind can lead the blind without both falling into
the same ditch, then there might be some foundation in fact for the
legend of the Borgia Venom. But while physicians and chirugeons and
apothecaries solemnly bought three little boys for a ducat each, drew
off their blood and sublimed it into a potion to save the life of a
senile pontiff; or did such monkey-tricks as Messer Juan de Vigo did to
the Lord Julius P.P. II a few years later, all with quite convincing
evidence of gravity and good faith, one must conclude that these mages
acted according to the very best of their knowledge and belief; but
that, in quantity as well as quality, their belief was vastly superior
to their knowledge. Nardaeus says[73]
“The famous chirugeon Juan de Vigo, perceiving that an ulcer of the
Lord Julius P.P. II became every day more stubborn, and that the Pope
persisted in refusing all manner of remedies, hit upon a new method of
cure: for he boiled together, in a brass kettle, for three hours, old
rags cut in pieces, crumbs of fine bread, plantain, and a fomentation
of arsenic sublimed in rosewater; after which, drying them, and
applying them by way of powder to the wound (to which he had sworn
that he would apply no more plaisters,) he cured the Pope in a very
short time, to the admiration of all concerned.”
Infantile as was the condition of medical science in regard to life, it
was not one jot more robust in its observations of death. The cases of
the suspicious demises of two cardinals, not during the reign of the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI, but a few years later, will illustrate this.
In 1508, during the reign of the eternal enemy of Borgia the Lord Julius
P.P. II, a nephew of His Holiness died, the Lord Galeotto Franciotto
della Rovere, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Pietro _ad
Vincula_. And, says Mgr. Paris de Grassis (Burchard’s inimical successor
as Caerimonarius,[74] “I saw on his face and on his body such spots as
seemed to be the effect of a dose of venom; and all the others formed
the same opinion.”
After autopsy, the chirugeons found no venom, but “certain bloody spots:
wherefore they judged him to have died of a superfluity of blood; and,
if he had been phlebotomized, he would have had no harm.”
The second case is that of the Lord Christopher Bainbridge,
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Prassede, and Orator of King
Henry VII Tudor at the Court of the Lord Leo P.P. X. He died in Rome, in
1514; and, says Mgr. Paris de Grassis the Caerimonarius, “when his death
was ascribed to venom” (—_this surely ought to prove that the suspicion
was habitual, and no more appropriate to the Borgia than to any other
family of this period_,—) “by command of the Pope he was eviscerated,
and it was found that his heart was diseased on the right side.”
Now this Cardinal Bainbridge, whose death obviously was due to organic
disease, has come down to posterity as a victim of venom; while Cardinal
Dellarovere, whose _salma_ presented far more suspicious, in fact
distinctly suspicious, symptoms, is reputed to have died a natural
death!
Of all the wonderful and subtile recipes for venoms which are believed
to have been possessed by European potentates about this time, only one
now is accessible: but it is dated 1540, exactly thirty-seven years
after the Lord Alexander P.P. VI died of his double-tertian fever. It is
a Venetian recipe, and comes from the Secret Archives of the Council of
Ten.[75] Arsenic, antimony, orpiment, and aconite, are to be subjected
to a long long process of preparation, similar to those wondrous stews
in which Messer Giambattista della Porta, in company with every other
respectable mage, had his continual joy; and, when all is done, the
ignorant inventor of this horrible venom says that he cannot guarantee
its success. Why? The dose of any single one of those four venomous
ingredients alone would have been fatal. Why should their combination
bring uncertainty? For the simple reason that the boiling and the
sun-baking, the sublimation and the distillation, which so prolongedly
was practised, set up chemical change, reaction, decomposition,
destroyed the virtue or the nature, and effectually altered or annulled
the venomous properties originally possessed by the subject of so much
empiricism. As simples, they certainly would have been veneficous. As
compounds, they might have caused grave inconvenience. But,
heterogeneously compounded with alien matter, boiled to disintegration
for weeks and months together, their effect surely could not be
predicted. They might have been dangerous; or they might not: there is
no knowing.
* * * * *
There is no defined charge against the House of Borgia of having
compassed their enemies’ deaths by means of venomous rings. The vulgar
conception of a venomous ring is not unconnected with a needle-point,
(or point,) projecting from the bezel, along which a minute drop of
deadly venom can be made to flow; and which pierces the hand that grasps
it, inducing syncope and death. Or, another kind conceals a small box in
the bezel, containing a tiny capsule of glass wherein venom innocuously
lurks, until the glass is broken on the lips.
At the Victoria and Albert Museum of South Kensington, and at the
University Galleries of Oxford, there are very splendid collections of
rings. Neither collection contains a ring having the legendary
needle-point, (or point:) but each collection has a ring which may have
been a proximate occasion of the vulgar belief.
Nº 916 at South Kensington is a massive ring of brass, 1⁷⁄₁₆ inches in
diameter; and has an octagonal bezel externally armed with a quincunx of
spikes. It belongs to the Eighteenth Century, and is of the kind worn by
Bavarian peasant-lads on the right middle finger at the present day.
Nº 385 at Oxford is an Italian ring of the Fourteenth Century, of gold
_niello_, very beautiful. The bezel projects, and ends in the revolving
rowel of a Fiery spur.
Both of these rings are weapons, intended hideously to scratch and tear
an adversary’s face. There is no hollow in them that might harbour
venom; and they are in no sense venomous rings according to the popular
specification: but they are rings,—means of violence of another
species—; and, (men being what they are,) these rings may have formed
the germ of the tradition.
However, at Oxford and South Kensington, there were rings labelled
_Poison Rings_, at the close of the Nineteenth Century.
Nº 479 in the Fortnum Collection at Oxford, is an Italian ring of the
Sixteenth Century, of gold, and having a tiny χερούβ carved in cameo
projecting from the high gold bezel. This bezel is hollow, pierced by
two pinholes. Its capacity is under an eighth of a cubic inch. The
hollow bezel may have been used to contain perfume, introduced through
the pinholes: but it is more reasonable to conjecture that the hollow is
due to a desire to economise the precious metal.
Nº 533 in the same collection, is a German ring of the Seventeenth
Century, of gold, and having a large rough pearl set _in_, not on, its
bezel. Minute examination with microscope and probe proves that there is
absolutely no room in this ring for any venom whatever; and that neither
this, nor the foregoing, deserves the designation “_Poison Ring_,”
which, however, discreetly is queried on the actual official labels.
Apparently, the said labels purely are a concession to the unreasoning
vulgar, who expect as a right to find at least a specimen of venomous
rings in every respectable museum.
At South Kensington there is a massive ring of iron, plated and
damascened with gold. It is Italian, of the Seventeenth Century, ¹¹⁄₁₂
of an inch in diameter. Its octagonal bezel is a tiny box having a
hinged lid. This might have held a relic. There is no ground for
supposing that it ever concealed venom.
Of these three so-called Poison Rings, the South Kensington specimen,
and Nº 533 at Oxford, belong to a period at least a hundred years after
the demise of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI and Duke Cesare (detto Borgia).
Only Nº 479 in the Fortnum Collection, by any exercise of imagination,
can be planted in the Borgian Era. It is labelled “_Sixteenth Century_”;
and the Lord Alexander P.P. VI reigned in Rome, as God’s Vicegerent,
during the first two years, seven months, seventeen days, of that
century. There is no earthly cause to connect His Holiness with that
ring: but, for the purpose of the argument, let it be granted that Nº
479 with its cameo χερούβ belonged to the Borgia Pontiff, that the
hollow bezel was used as a receptacle for venom, and not for perfume.
What then?
If the venom were a powder, the Pope’s Holiness would have to poke it in
with a pin, and close the two tiny holes with wax. Then, when the time
came for envenoming the usual cardinal, He assiduously would pick out
the wax, and, by violent jerks and shaking, induce the venom to present
itself for application. If the venom were a liquid, (M. Dumas’
bear-juice for example,) the same process of waxing up and pin-picking
would be necessary.
But there was no venom known to the Borgia, or to any other man or woman
of that era, which would kill, with as small a dose as would go in that
ring. The venoms of the Fifteenth Century were administered (when they
were administered) by the drachm, or by the ounce—not by the grain. The
recipes have been displayed here. To harbour a fatal dose of the known
venoms, such as Messer Giambattista della Porta describes, a monstrous
and vast ring would be needed, more gigantic than those bronze-gilt
_anuli_ used as credentials by the pontifical couriers of the Lord Pius
P.P. II (1458–1464), N^{os} 665 and 666 in the South Kensington
Collection, two and three-eighths, and two inches, respectively, in
diameter. The processes of brewing and stewing, so dear to the mages,
without any doubt were a direct disposition of Providence for the
security of human life; for they effectually withdrew the sting from
venomous substances, and made it perfectly impossible for would-be
murderers (and they were more than many) to kill, except accidentally,
or with enormous doses and the disadvantages coincident thereto.
No doubt the Twentieth Century still has a little to learn. No doubt
that wisdom would wait upon research among the mountains of documents
stored in the archives of the Italian patriciate and baronage, Colonna,
(not Orsini, whose papers were destroyed by fire in 1702), Savelli,
Poplicola di Santacroce, Sforza-Cesarini, Carafa, Caïetani,
Piccolhuomini, Borgia of Milan and Velletri, etc. No doubt in the
Vatican Secret Archives (the Lord Alexander P.P. VI left one hundred and
thirteen volumes in large folio of His acts,) infinite fields of
information are white for harvest. There is nothing to prevent the
reaping, but the lack of reapers. No doors are shut. No secrets are
reserved. “The Popes have need of nothing except the truth.”
Meanwhile, this only can be said.
The empirical methods of the Borgian Era preclude the possibility of
anything approaching artistic venenation.
Not one of the definite accusations against the Borgia have been proved.
On the contrary they are shewn to lack valid foundation.
There is no authentic evidence regarding the Venom that the Borgia are
said to have employed.
In fact, there was no Venom of the Borgia.
Pontifex Maximus Alexander VI et Princeps
In reviewing the Pontificate of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI notice must
be taken of the fashion which represents Him as having been in continual
fear of deposition on account of the simony by which He is alleged to
have bought the papal power. It already has been shewn that no law
existed, which made simony an annulment of election to ecclesiastical
benefices, until the reign of the Lord Julius P.P. II. It remains to be
considered whether the distribution of offices, with which the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI signalized his election, in any case would give colour
to the charge of simony.
The Conclave for the election of a Pope begins with the Mass of the Holy
Spirit chaunted in the Chapel of St. Gregory. Afterwards, the cardinals
go in procession, singing _Veni Creator Spiritus_, to take possession of
the cells which they will have to occupy. These cells are erected in a
hall of the Vatican, communicating with the Xystine Chapel. They are
mere frameworks of wood hung with fringed curtains of baize, green in
the cases of cardinals who are creatures of previous pontiffs; violet in
the cases of cardinals who are creatures of the pontiffs just deceased.
On the front of each cell is a curtained doorway over which the
armorials of the occupant are shewn, surmounted by a little swinging
window. Each cardinal has a bed, a table, and a chair. His attendants
support life in discomfort as best they may. Three hours after
avemmaria, all doors and windows communicating with the outer world are
walled up. Guards on the outside watch every avenue of access, under
command of the Hereditary Marshal of the Church, now Prince Chigi, then
Prince Savelli. To every cardinal are allowed two conclavists for his
attendants, a chaplain and an esquire. A cardinal-prince, or one aged
and infirm, may add a third. In addition to the cardinals and the
conclavists, there are enclosed a sacristan with his subsacristans, a
secretary with his undersecretaries, five masters of ceremonies, a
confessor, two physicians, a chirugeon, two barbers, an apothecary, with
their respective boys, a mason, a carpenter, and servants for menial
work. Great care is taken that none of these lay-persons should be
agents of the orators of the secular powers; and they are made to swear
a stringent oath of secrecy. As a matter of fact, they are not allowed
to know anything of the proceedings in the Xystine Chapel. Meals are
served at stated hours, through a revolving cupboard (ruota) in the
outer wall, supervised by cardinals-inspectors. Flagons are of bare
glass, lumps of bread or meat are cut open, that no messages from the
outer world may pass in by these means. Nor may any single thing pass
out. Urgent private letters written in the Conclave are subject to
cardinals-censors. Cardinals, who have need, may speak to visitors, but
in presence of witnesses; and all communication must be open, and in a
language that all can understand. These interviews take place at a
window, the cardinal being on the inside, his visitor on the outside:
but the conclavists and others are forbidden to approach the window on
any pretext whatever.
In the Xystine Chapel, at the moment of the election, the cardinals
alone are ocular and auricular witnesses of what takes place. Certainly
all proceedings are recorded in the Acts of the Conclave. But the
original acts of the Conclave that elected the Lord Alexander P.P. VI
are not forthcoming: they very likely were lost in the Sack of Rome in
1527, when the Catholic Catalans and Lutheran Goths of the Elect-Emperor
Don Carlos V gambled in the gutters for nuns and for the wives and
daughters of Roman citizens. This then is the situation. All accounts of
the Conclave of 1492, including the dispatches of Orators to their
respective governments, are based on hearsay, or popular rumour.
Historians have no other material; for there is none.
The cry of simony always is raised at every election of a Pope. It is
only an exemplification of the law that Attraction and Repulsion are
Primary Forces. That the Lord Alexander P.P. VI on His election did
strip Himself of His new palace, and of His multitudinous benefices,
cannot be denied. Why need it be denied? It always is done; for a
cardinal who is elected Pope has no more need of these things: he leaves
them with his scarlet and ermine cappamagna when He is endued with the
plain white frock of Christ’s Vicar. The giving away of His cast-off
goods and offices cannot be twisted into an act of simony, unless there
is a distinct stipulation that they are given and taken as the price of
a vote. And no such distinct stipulation is extant. It is difficult to
see why cardinals should be considered likely to be guilty of such
degeneration. As a class of men they stand high: they generally are
possessed of illustrious birth; they generally are possessed of such
enormous wealth as to place them beyond the range of pecuniary
temptation; and invariably they are men of merit, the fine flower of
their profession. As far as mundane honours go, they have tasted all the
glory that the world can offer, except one glory. No layman may kneel on
the same bench with a cardinal, unless he be a reigning sovereign. No
layman may make a fourth in a carriage containing three cardinals, not
even a reigning sovereign. Their rank places them far above peers or
princes. They are not eligible for the Athenæum Club, but nothing that
the world can offer will improve their position except the Papacy; yet
they are suspected, as a class, of intrigues and cabals of the basest
kind, mere financial operations; and rarely, very rarely, is there any
ground for the suspicion, the prize for which they are said to struggle
generally being beneath their notice, the petty advantage which they are
thought to desire being unworthy even of their contempt; for cardinals
are tired men, tired of splendour, tired of the earthly things; and they
are not invariably vile.
When, therefore, the absurd people who wish to prove simoniacal the
election of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, or the stupid craven Catholics
who fatuously think to conciliate by joining rabidly in the hue and cry
against a Pope, can show a definite declaration from one or more of the
cardinals-assistant of the Conclave of 1492, couched in some such terms
as these, “_I acknowledge and confess that, seduced by the dignities and
the money that he offered me_, (or, _intimidated by the menaces of
Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja_,) _I allowed myself to be corrupted;
and, against my will and better knowledge, I sold my vote to this
unworthy cardinal_: or, _I declare that I have resisted all his
promises, threats, and flatteries, and firmly have refused to sell my
vote to Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja_ : then, and only then, can
this silly or malicious calumny be said to have any foundation in
fact.[76]
One thing is perfectly certain. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Who really
was the last man in the world _à S’ encanailler_, never behaved as
though He had gained the Triregno by illegitimate means. Not when all
Europe yelped around His footstool did He blench or quail or shew a sign
of fear. The heathen raged; and the people imagined a vain thing. The
kings of the earth set themselves; and the rulers took counsel together.
The Monarchs of Naples nagged; the Catholic King and Queen denounced;
the Christian Kings minced, grimaced, and gibbered; Caesar Semper
Augustus protested; Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere raved and nursed
sedition; the barons of Rome revolted; the dukes and tyrants and
republics of Italy took up arms; the dominions of the Pope’s Holiness
were invaded; the Eternal City suffered violence; the sacrosanctity of
the pontifical person was in imminent danger: but the invincible Lord
Alexander P.P. VI magnificently retired into the Mola of Hadrian, the
only spot in all Christendom where His rule remained; and held His Own,
inflexibly, implacably, with an enormous dignity impossible in one who
was a mere usurper, a venal simoniac. So much is sure. The demeanour of
the Lord Alexander P.P. VI in direst straits, was the demeanour of a man
who had no doubt regarding his own integrity.
* * * * *
The so-called scandals of His private life are shewn to have been based
upon the malice or the idle gossip of His enemies. He sat in “the fierce
light that beats upon a throne.” He was the father of a family. He was
not the first or the last Pope Who has been the father of a family. His
immediate predecessor, the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII, admitted the
paternity of seven children. A successor, the Lord Paul P.P. III, also
used Himself in a similar manner: nor are these all. If this be vicious,
it was only vicious in the Lord Alexander P.P. VI because He was the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI; for in other men the same thing was, and is,
tolerated, accepted, applauded. A patrician or a plebeian may steal a
horse: but a Pope may not look over the wall. _Ille crucem sceleris
pretium tulit, hic diadema._[77] However, as a father, He exhibited an
illustrious example of paternal virtue. He was kind, loving,
affectionate to his children; solicitous and self sacrificing for their
welfare and advancement. That He employed His spiritual power, to build
up the temporalities of His family, was a temptation, to avoid which He
would need to have been more than human. It was the custom of the time.
It was an imperious necessity of the situation.
* * * * *
The murders and venenations of which He has been accused, in company
with Duke Cesare, fail of proof; and indeed His guiltlessness as
instigator, principal, or accomplice, appears in every case to be beyond
question.
The murder of Don Juan Francisco de Lançol y Borja, Duke of Gandia,
remains a mystery: but what evidence there is distinctly points to a
vendetta of Orsini directed against the Pope through His
Captain-General.
The murder of the Prince of Bisceglia is referable rather to a vendetta
of Sanseverini and Caïetani, than to the Pope or Duke Cesare (detto
Borgia).
The deaths of Don Astorgio and Don Gianevangelista Manfredi are
susceptible of the Venetian Orator’s explanation, _puto mal san_; there
positively is nothing to connect the Pope or the Duke with them.
The death of the Sultán Djim was due to natural causes, while he was in
the hands of the Christian King; and the Pope’s Holiness was a pecuniary
loser (to the extent of about £80,000 a year) by his death.
The death of Cardinal Orsini was due to natural causes, according to the
sworn testimony of physicians provided by the House of Orsini.
Fra Girolamo Savonarola Ο.P. was executed on a capital charge by due
process of law; and the Pope was an unwilling agent for the
administration of that law.
(The crime of Fra Girolamo really was that of intriguing with a foreign
power with which his country was at war. General Booth committing
treachery with Mr. Kruger, or Mr. Ira D. Sankey with the Son of Heaven
Kwang Su, would be Twentieth Century parallels of Savonarola and Charles
VIII.)
Cardinal Giovanni Borgia (detto Giuniore) died a natural death.
Messer Ramiro d’ Orco, Don Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Don Oliverotto da
Fermo had a legal trial by court-martial, and paid the legal penalty of
crime.
Don Paolo and Duke Francesco Orsini of Gravina suffered merited death,
due to the exigencies of civil war in which they and their House were
the aggressors.
There remain two other violent deaths to be accounted for, which were
not of sufficient importance to treat of in the history of this
pontificate, the case of Calderon Perotto, and that of Messer Francesco
Trocces.
It is said by Don Paolo Capello, the Orator of Venice, in his Diarium,
(or rather in that edition of the said Diarium which was prepared forty
years later by Don Marino Sanuto,) that Calderon Perotto was a Spanish
lad of eighteen years, one of the Pontifical pages; and that he was
stabbed by Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) at the Pope’s feet. The fact is
related without comment or explanation. It would not be safe to attach
much importance to the statement, because Don Paolo Capello’s original
document is not forthcoming and Don Marino Sanuto’s version of what he
wrote is the only version accessible. But the alleged murder of the page
Perotto is not, like other calumnies, a posthumous invention; for it is
mentioned in the atrocious _Letter to Silvio Savelli_ described on an
earlier page. The Pope is not, and was not blamed. The murder, if it
were a murder at all, is attributed to Duke Cesare (detto Borgia); and
it was not an unusual thing for a lord to slay a servant in the Borgian
Era. That was common enough; but to do it in the presence of the
Holiness of the Pope certainly was sacrilege; and this last circumstance
makes it probable that the whole story is a pure invention; for the
guilt of sacrilege lightly was not incurred even by the most bloody and
abandoned villains: and Duke Cesare was not of that species.
The other death, that of Messer Francesco Trocces is more probable, and
mentioned in several dispatches of Orators. He was a papal chamberlain
(confidential flunkey of the cloak and sword,—minor situation dear to
_petits maîtres_ of the English and Keltic bourgeoisie now;) and was
employed as governmental courier. The Republic of Venice was playing
fast and loose with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, disliking to see Duke
Cesare’s amazing success in the Romagna; and its Orator, Don Antonio
Giustiniani carried on relations of a doubtful kind with Messer
Francesco Trocces, in the usual manner of ambassadors who find that they
can buy state-secrets from a “crapule.” Suddenly, Messer Francesco fled
from Rome to Civita Vecchia. He had been complaining to the Venetians
about Duke Cesare; and all his treachery had come to light. The Duke’s
steel claws were far-reaching. The traitor was captured there and
brought to Rome, strangled, and his body hanged on Tor Savelli as an
example to others of his kind. Legally speaking he was executed for the
crime of high treason; and the formal exposure of his corpse gives the
lie to the idea of clandestine assassination. The practice of secret
trials and summary executions is odious to the Twentieth Century: but,
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth, not only all civilized governments, but
even barons who had power of life and death over their retainers, used
these means as a matter of course; and that alone should be sufficient
to exonerate the Borgia from blame.
It has been said of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI that He habitually
envenomed his cardinals, that He might have their goods. The following
story is given, not in this connection, by Mr. F. Marion Crawford, and
is here inserted on account of its frequent significance. At the corner
of the Via Lata in the Corso of Rome, is the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, a
typical Roman palace of the Borgian Era, two-thirds the size of the
Vatican Basilica, and able to accommodate a thousand inhabitants. It was
built by Cardinal Santorio (?), who bought the site from the Chapter of
Santa Maria _Maggiore_, and expended thousands of gold ducats in the
erection of a House Beautiful. All through the reigns of the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI and of the Lord Pius P.P. III, he remained in
unmolested possession: but during the pontificate of the Lord Julius
P.P. II (Giuliano della Rovere) the Pope’s Holiness said to him that his
palace was “more suitable for a secular duke than for a prince of the
Church”; and forced him to make Him a free gift of it for His Own nephew
Don Francesco della Rovere, whom He had created Duke of Urbino. The
unfortunate Cardinal Santorio died soon after of a broken heart. It was
not Borgia who caused _his_ death, in order to have his palace: but
Borgia’s eternal enemy.
* * * * *
As a secular sovereign, no contemporary of His even deserves to be named
in comparison with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. His reign broke the back
of the turbulent ambitious selfish baronage which had ravaged the papal
states for centuries. He was an independent Pope; willing to enter into
alliances, it is true, so long as they served His purpose: but just as
willing to throw over His allies and stand alone upon occasion. If His
interests leaned more in one direction than another, it may be taken
that He was a Sforza + Cesarini Pope, rather than a creature of Colonna
or Orsini as the custom was. His political policy entirely was directed
to the substitution of peace and order with security of life and
property, instead of the anarchy and desolation which He saw on His
accession. He fully lived up to His official title of RULER OF THE
WORLD; and the sovereigns of Europe at all times found Him sternly
rigorously just, amenable neither to fear nor flattery. He was an
admirable FATHER OF PRINCES AND OF KINGS. Notwithstanding all that
weakly has been said to the contrary, the Holy Roman Church and
Christendom owe a vast debt of gratitude to Him. He found feebleness and
war and tumult at His coming: at His going He left behind Him
differences removed, rebellions quelled, and a tradition of consolidated
strength. He was the Fosterer of Justice and of Peace. He was a great
and wise Princeps.
* * * * *
As Pontifex Maximus, EARTHLY VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST OUR SAVIOUR, He
merits reverent admiration. His habits and tastes were of the simplest
kind, in an age of singular luxury. He was temperate in His diet; and
the Orators of the Powers commented with disgust upon the fact that He
never had more than one dish upon His table. He slept but little. His
amusements occupied a mere fraction of His time: but, during recreation,
He unbent His awful dignity, and enjoyed Himself with the frank abandon
of a school boy. He was a patron of painters: but men of letters
incontinently drove their pens against Him; for the Lord Alexander P.P.
VI was confronted by the problem of dealing with a new enemy to Christ’s
flock and to civilization—He had to regulate the printing-press in the
interest of morals; and, as a duty of His office, He ordained the
censorship of printed books, He inaugurated the “Imprimatur,” He
“muzzled the printer’s devil.”
Yet He was a gentle and kindly-affectioned Shepherd. In 1492, the Jews
were expelled from Spain. He entertained them in security in Rome. In
1494, He was horrified by news of the diabolical atrocities of the Grand
Inquisitor of Spain; and, though He Himself was a Spaniard, He appointed
four assessors with equal power, to restrain the excesses of Torquemada.
The Spanish Inquisition never had the countenance of Rome, but Her
bitterest opposition. The wanton ingenious cruelty of that infamous
Tribunal was due to the fiendish strain of African black blood which
tinges and defiles the bluest blood of Spain; and was committed in
explicit defiance of the commands of God’s Vicegerent. It is true that
He gave America to Spain, and Africa to Portugal.[78] The Bulls of
Donation shew that He considered it to be the Pope’s duty to teach the
Gospel to all nations, and to compel the observance of natural laws. He
believed that, before the heathen could hear the Gospel, or observe
those laws, it was necessary to make them subjects of a Christian Power.
He knew that conquest makes more converts in one day, than preaching in
three hundred years. He took as abruptly practical and business-like a
view of things as though He had been fortunate enough to have been born
an Englishman. And He acted upon the extremely scriptural principle that
civil rights and civil authorities lawfully cannot obstruct the
propagation of the Faith. None knew better than He that the Treasure was
in an earthen vessel[79]: but, as the chief bishop of the Church far
above all principality and power and might and dominion,[80] He spoke,
exhorted, and rebuked, with an authority. Let no man despise Him.[81]
There was no other representative of Christianity; there was no other,
in all the world, who even claimed to be the representative of
Christianity, at that time. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, magnificent and
invincible, was the only one. Let no man despise Him.
As Pastor, He was merciful; as Judge, severe and just. His laws against
witchcraft and Black Magic were of the most stringent kind. He used the
means which every other sovereign of Europe also used. “East of Suez,
some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man being there
handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia—” the most
observant of modern English writers says. Men who have lived in the Far
East, where Christian influence is very feeble, will recognize the
singular correctness of Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s theory. Men, also, who at
first hand have studied modern recrudescences of devil-worship, modern
flirtations with kakodaimoniacal agencies, the Luciferianism of modern
France, will not mutter with patronizing superiority of superstitions
and old wives’ fables; but perfectly well will know that hideous
abnormity with which the Pope’s Holiness had to deal. Only the wilfully
ignorant deny the actuality of diabolic manifestations, called
witchcraft and Black Magic in the vulgar tongue. The ostrich who buries
her head in sand is like to these. By the side of high civilization
there always runs the impulse to savagery, the weird and radical
decadence which wanders on dark paths. Hellas and Rome pried into the
mysteries of Isis; Christendom entertains Turlupins, Rosicrucians,
Indian gumnosophists, and Mahatmas; the Borgian Era played with the
Roaring Lion; the Victorian Era with Sathanas and his sorrows.
“Perhaps”, “after all”, “audi alteram partem”,—hesitation, compromise,
want of defined principle, lack of courageous singleness of
mind,—amounting to Emasculation—is the mental note of the Twentieth
Century. The Fifteenth had not a tithe of the knowledge now possessed:
but it was awfully convinced, strong, and decisive, within its
limitations. Then, there was no place for the palterer—except against
the wall.
Other malefactors felt the flail which, like Osiris, He wielded equally
with the crook. Notaries of the Pontifical Briefs debauched by the
undisciplined rule of previous Popes, had become corrupt. In the absence
of restraint they habitually forged briefs nominating to benefices, not
only in Italy, but in all Christian countries. The ambition of German
clergy created the demand. The flagitious notaries managed the supply.
They sold their forged briefs privately to whoso would pay the price,
and they pocketed the proceeds of this nefarious traffic. In 1497, the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI found them out. Some promptly were broiled on
Campo di Fiori, the nineteenth of October; one, the Lord Archbishop of
Cosenza, and three secretaries, deprived of their benefices and degraded
from their clerical estate, solemnly were immured alive in the Mola of
Hadrian. These miserable criminals lived some years in their solitary
cells, as the custom was, literally feeding on the bread of tears and
the water of affliction until they died. (_Burchard_, _Diarium_.) One
has heard fables of nuns immured. Here is a fairly genuine case of an
immured archbishop. Immuration is the same punishment which the
Twentieth Century metes out in countries where capital punishment has
been abolished:—solitary confinement;—nothing more. The archbishopric of
Cosenza was conferred on Cardinal Francisco de Borja, bastard of the
Lord Calixtus P. P. III.
The assiduous attention to the duties of His office which the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI exhibited is perfectly astounding; and pregnant with
indubitable signification.
He reformed the monasteries of Austria, and the secular clergy of
Portugal. He confirmed the Rule of the Religion of Friars Minim, founded
by San Francesco da Paola. He approved the Rule of the Third Order of
Friars Minor, founded by San Francesco d’Assisi. He permitted Madame
Jean de Valois to found her Religion. In 1499, He confirmed the Rule of
the Jesnats of San Girolamo, a congregation of laymen leading a
religious communal life under the Rule of St. Aurelius Augustine,
nursing the sick, and distilling aquavitæ, (as Carthusians distil
Chartreuse, yellow and green, now.) He founded and confirmed in Rome the
Order of Military Knights of St. George, for the defence of Christendom
against the Muslim Infidel. He granted privileges to the College at
Windsor: (Chapter of St. George, or King Henry VI Plantagenet’s
Foundation at Eton?) He approved the Order of Praying Knights of St.
Michael in France. He reformed the Order of Military Knights of Christ
in Portugal. He canonized no saints. His personal piety was simple,
diligent, and real. He greatly revered the Deipara, the Blessed Virgin
Mary. In her honour, He ordained the bell which rings at sunset,
sunrise, and noon, for the _Angelus Domini_ in memory of The
Incarnation. On His death-bed, He said, “We always have had, and have, a
singular affection for the Most Holy Virgin.”
In the Secret Archives of the Vatican, (merely a technical term, for
they are open to all the world,) His original acts are preserved; the
veritable Briefs and Bulls which He laboured to utter during His reign.
They are bound in one hundred and thirteen large-folio volumes, each
tome containing about ten thousand separate documents.[82] To understand
what kind of thing is a Papal Bull or Brief, the Epistles of St. Peter,
which are easily accessible, may be mentioned as the best examples
extant;—earnest disquisitions, simple or scholarly, dealing
authoritatively with subjects the most vital. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI
is responsible for more than a million of these; and He only reigned
eleven years.
The days and nights appreciably were not longer then than now. WHERE,
THEN, DID THE LORD ALEXANDER P.P. VI FIND THE TIME TO ACCOMPLISH THE
MULTIFARIOUS TURPITUDES WITH WHICH HE HAS BEEN CHARGED?
He was the father of bastards. He was not the first or last,—plebeian,
patrician, potentate, or pontiff.
He was inflexible to foes. Was ever peace assured except by a stern
martinet?
The Lord Alexander P.P. VI was a very great Prince, a very faithful
Pastor, a very human Man.
By members of that Church, at least, which He so ably ruled, He should
be regarded as above and beyond criticism (so-called), amenable to no
judge, ecclesiastical, or secular.[83] For the rest—the dwellers in
glass houses....
* * * * *
Sparks that Die
“_A fire, that is kindled, begins with smoke and hissing, while it
lays hold on the faggots; bursts into a roaring blaze, with raging
tongues of flame, devouring all in reach, spangled with sparks
that die._”
On the death of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Duke Cesare de Valentinois
della Romagna was the most potent personage in Italy. Several of his
veteran legions under Don Michelotto held the Eternal City. Usually,
during the Novendiati after a Pope’s demise, armed bands of Colonna
and Orsini pervaded the streets, to intimidate the Conclave with their
war-cries _Column—Column—_, _Bear—Bear—_. In August and September
1503, the baronial partizans were dumb; and all Rome shouted
_Duca—Duca—Duca—_for Duke Cesare. He might have done anything that he
pleased.
Now, if Duke Cesare were the ambitious ruthless impious despot and
villain which a fashion has painted him, he must also have been a fool;
in that he did not force the Sacred College to raise another Borgia to
Peter’s Throne. There were three Borgia cardinals ready to his hand, all
quiet and malleable and inoffensive, and two of them aged men; viz.,
(α) the Lord Luis Juan de Mila y Borja, Cardinal-Prior-Presbyter of
the Title of Santi Quattro Coronati and Bishop of Lerida; first
cousin and contemporary of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI:
(β) the Lord Francisco de Borja, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of
San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo, Archbishop of Cosenza; bastard of
the Lord Calixtus P.P. III:
(γ) the Lord Pedro Luis de Borja y Lançol, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa
Maria in Via Lata; son of the late Pope’s sister Doña Juana de
Borja by her marriage with her cousin Don Guillelmo de Lançol.
The last was a young man, a contemporary of Duke Cesare himself, and
appears to have been of a modest and retiring disposition. Whether his
youth would have taken fire at being crowned with the Triregno, is an
open question. He was not elected, and is numbered with the sparks that
die. The Cardinal de Mila had resided nearly half a century at his
bishopric in Spain; and was completely out of touch with his Italian
relatives, as well as with the Sacred College.
But Cardinal Francisco de Borja seems to have been an ideal nominee for
the purpose of Duke Cesare. He owed his rank to the Lord Alexander P.P.
VI. He was of the age of sixty-two years, a gentle old gentleman of
placid nature, of sweet and lovable habits, easily plastic. If he had
been elected Pope by the influence of Duke Cesare, the consolidation of
the Borgia Dynasty would have been an accomplished fact. Theoretically,
it matters not a jot who may be the Pope, Caius or Balbus, Peter or
Paul. If there be any basis for the claims of the Holy Roman Church, Her
mission goes on till the world’s end, as well and as inevitably when
Borgia, as when Pecci, reigns; as well and as inevitably under Boys of
the age of twelve and eighteen years, like the Lord Benedict P.P. IX and
the Lord John P.P. XII, as under Saints, like the Lord St. Sylvester
P.P. and the Lord St. Fabian P.P. ; as well and as inevitably under a
Jew, like the Lord St. Peter P.P. as under an Englishman like the Lord
Hadrian P.P. IV. The personality of God’s Vicegerent is of no
consequence whatever to the purity of the Faith, or to the triumph of
the Holy Roman Church. These things being so, it is hard to understand
why Duke Cesare did not menace with his unconquerable army the Sacred
College, or assassinate samples of the cardinals who should decline to
vote at his direction; until, by ultimate intimidation, he should have
secured the election of his candidate. If he had been the godless wretch
that his enemies designated, he would have achieved some such
_colpo-di-stato_ as this.
But, in the _rôle_ of an unconscionable villain, Duke Cesare was a
failure—an accented failure. Contrariwise, he comported himself as
exemplarily as any good and pious Catholic. Most likely his fever, or
the murderous remedies of his physicians, was responsible for this.
There is no doubt but that the scheme for a Borgia Dynasty had been
adumbrated; and that this was the psychological moment for giving it
concrete expression: but the death of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, and
Duke Cesare’s own illness came with sobering effect to him; and his
course of action may be translated thus—that he resolved not to usurp
the prerogative of the Supreme Disposer of events. For a villain, the
resolve was weak: but it was what was to be expected of a splendid man
of sense.
Duke Cesare knew that he held his riches, his supremacy, his titles of
Duke of Romagna, Gonfalonier of the Holy Roman Church, and Castellan of
Santangelo, solely at the pleasure of the Pope; yet he made no effort to
secure the election of a Pope who would confirm his possession of them.
There is still in existence a ring of his, (they call it a “Poison
Ring”—but of that much has been said—) which bears the splendid motto
FAYS CEQUE DOYS AVIEN QUE POURRA
_Do thy duty, come what may._
That principle informed his action now. Duke Cesare did his duty.
He renewed his feudal oath of allegiance in the presence of the Sacred
College. He formally recognized the supremacy, during the interregnum,
of the Cardinal-Dean and the Cardinal-Chamberlain. He divested himself
of the semblance and reality of power, by relinquishing the Mola of
Hadrian (which impregnable fortress he held as Castellan of Santangelo,
and whence he could have overawed both the Vatican and Rome). Further,
finding that the mere presence of his army in the City was considered
disrespectful to the Conclave, he retired it to his province of the
Romagna; and he himself withdrew to France to his duchy of Valentinois.
So, the Conclave of 1503 met in absolute freedom; and elected, as
Successor of St. Peter, Ruler of the World, Father of Princes and of
Kings, and Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour, the Lord Francesco
de’ Piccolhuomini, Cardinal-Archdeacon of Sant’ Eustachio, Archbishop of
Siena, who deigned to be called the Lord Pius P. P. III, in memory of
His august uncle, the Lord Pius P. P. II[84] Who had reigned from 1458
to 1464.
Then momentous events came thick and fast. The new Pope, on His
coronation in St. Peter’s, graciously permitted Duke Cesare to return to
Rome. Such a mighty and splendid vassal as he was naturally inspired
fear and distrust among the clergy. Such a trenchant weapon as he
possessed in his unconquerable veteran army was described as a danger to
the papacy. It is always very hard to make the clergy understand that a
laic can be as sentimental and conscientious and self sacrificing as a
clerk. The word was put about that, seeing the Romagna to have been
reduced to order, the necessity for Duke Cesare’s army had ceased to be.
Naturally, the clergy could not be expected to understand the necessity
for an “army of occupation.” The first rumour speedily grew into the
statement that Duke Cesare’s army was to be disbanded.
Colonna and Orsini heard, in their ugly exile, in their battered
fortresses. Like the chained wolves on the Capitol who know when rust
makes thin their fetters, they lifted up their horrid heads and waited
till the ultimate link should part. If Duke Cesare’s army were
disbanded, thousands of condottieri would be at large, brigands ready to
take service under a new chief, under any banner. Why not under the
banners of the Column and the Bear? Colonna and Orsini in alliance,
reinforced by those same unconquerable mercenaries might recover their
old position, and once more become the strong right and left hands of a
feeble Pope of their own; and then the days of the hated Borgia would be
numbered. Colonna and Orsini, like their antipodes righteousness and
peace, forgot their ancient feud and each kissed other. Duke Cesare
indeed was in evil case.
And then, suddenly, after a pontificate of six and twenty days, the Lord
Pius P.P. III died.
This moment was the opportunity of the psychic epileptic, the Lord
Cardinal-Bishop Giuliano della Rovere, eternal enemy of the House of
Borgia. He had emerged from the exile, which his innumerable treasons
and malfeasances had merited, in time for the election of the Lord Pius
P.P. III during Whose short reign he had employed himself to his own
advantage. He had no friends. He gained the loathing of all with whom he
had to do. The Sacred College to a man was inimical to him. He was not
wealthy. He was thoroughly plebeian, he had no learning, no diplomatic
skill, no charm. And there, on the other hand, was the splendid Duke
Cesare, feared; yes: but admired also; and his unconquerable army was
within call. A second time the election appeared likely to depend on
him.
Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was a desperate man. The only advantage
that he possessed was, that at this time when all the other cardinals
were in a state of nervous perturbation at the unusual occurrence of the
deaths of two Popes in three months, he alone preserved his equanimity.
He alone knew what he wanted. His colleagues in the Conclave were
mentally collapsed: they shewed signs of a liability to come under the
influence of, to take advice, to take even direction from any one who
would tell them what they wanted; and chiefly from him who was the one
strong man of Italy, the man with the veteran army, Duke Cesare de
Valentinois della Romagna (detto Borgia). The strongest laic is no match
for an unscrupulous clerk when it comes to wits. Cardinal Giuliano della
Rovere saw that he could gain the Sacred College, by gaining Duke
Cesare. He concentrated all his crude rough desperate will on the one
point.
* * * * *
The historian Varillas, who writes as a violent upholder of the Papacy,
relates an extraordinary story; which, if true, is a veritable solution
of mysteries; which, in short, is so strange, that it very likely is not
fiction, historical or otherwise, but the blind and naked Truth emerging
from her well unabashed, luciferous, and, naturally, unwelcome.
He says that Duke Cesare proposed to the Second Conclave of 1503 to
elect a cardinal whom he should name: that Cardinal Giuliano della
Rovere, becoming aware of this, endeavoured to attract Duke Cesare’s
influence to himself: that to this end the said Cardinal privately
announced to the said Duke that he was his father after the manner of
men, further alleging this to have been the cause of his (the said
cardinal’s) enmity against the Lord Alexander P.P. VI deceased: that the
said Cardinal asked the said Duke to assist him, his father, to gain the
papal throne, promising, in return for such assistance, after his
coronation with the Triregno, publicly to acknowledge the said Duke as
his son, to confirm him in possession of his duchies and his conquests,
and to retain him in all the offices which he then held: that the said
Duke believed the said Cardinal, and by withdrawing from opposition, and
by exerting full influence in a filial manner, he had compassed the
election of the said Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere: that after his
election the said Cardinal had belied all his promises, deprived the
said Duke, of Umbria, and the Romagna, and all the fiefs which he had
won, and of all the situations which he enjoyed, and finally had
harassed, despoiled, and exiguously persecuted, all who bore the name
of, or were connected with, The Borgia.
This is an extremely probable tale. Certainly a part of it is true, and
perhaps the whole.
The identity of the father of Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) is involved in
mystery.
The Brief of the Lord Xystus P.P. IV[85] dated the first of October
1480, which dispenses Messer Cesare from the necessity of proving his
legitimacy, calls him “son of a cardinal bishop and a married woman,”
_de episcopo cardinali genitus et coniugata_.
The Brief of the Same, dated the sixteenth of August 1482, which makes
Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja administrator of Messer Cesare’s
estate, calls the boy “son of a cardinal bishop and a married woman,”
_de episcopo cardinali genitus et coniugata_.
The name of this “cardinal bishop” is not given in either Brief.
Most of the scribblers, diarists, chroniclers, orators, speak of Don
Cesare, Cardinal Cesare, and Duke Cesare, as the son of Cardinal Rodrigo
de Lançol y Borja (the Lord Alexander P.P. VI). Some, like Peter Martyr
and Fioramondo Brugnolo call him “nephew of a brother of our Lord the
Pope.” In his autograph letter to the Pope, dated the sixteenth of
January 1500, he himself speaks of Cardinal Giovanni Borgia (detto
Giuniore), (who was the son of Don Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borja, own
brother of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI) as “my brother.”
In no official document is he named as the son of Cardinal Rodrigo de
Lançol y Borja (the Lord Alexander P.P. VI): but the Venetian Senate, in
conferring on him the patriciate of that Republic in 1500, styled him
“nephew of Pope Alexander.”
The Lord Alexander P.P. VI never called him “son”: but, in an autograph
Brief of recommendation addressed to the Christian King Louis XII, He
introduced Duke Cesare as His “heart.”
Duke Cesare’s subscription of a letter, which he wrote to the Pope on
the twenty-eighth of January 1503, at the time of the Orsini revolt, is
very curious. He signed himself “The most humble servant and most
faithful handiwork of Your Holiness.” _Vestrae Sanctitatis humillimus
servus et devotissima factura._ As cardinal he might, and did, call
himself the Pope’s “creature,” _creatura_: that is the form. A son,
however, is not “handiwork” in any sense of the word: but a duke, who is
made by his sovereign’s signature of his patent, precisely is.
The authorities, who call Duke Cesare “nephew,” may be dismissed. Popes,
like other human beings, generally have nephews _stricte dicte vel
late_.
His own appellation of Cardinal Giovanni Giuniore is susceptible of the
meaning “comrade.”
And “factura” will bear reference to his duchy, gonfalonierate,
castellanship, etc.
Who then was the father of Duke Cesare?
Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei (wife of Don Giorgio della Croce, and,
after his death, of Don Carlo Canale,) was certainly his mother. Two
official inscriptions bear witness to this. The first, which was
published by Signor Gnoli in the _Nuova Antologia_ of the first of
February 1881, refers to a house on Campo di Fiori which she left as an
endowment for anniversary masses for the repose of the souls of herself
and her two husbands named. The deed is the work of Messer Andrea
Caroso, Notary Public, and is dated the fifteenth of January 1517. In it
she is called “Vanoza Catanea _madre del Duca Borge_.” The second is her
epitaph on her tomb in Santa Maria del Popolo (Forcella. Iscrizioni
delle chiese di Roma I. 335) shewing her natural pride at finding
herself the mother of two dukes, a prince duke, and a sovereign duchess.
“Faustiae Cathanae, _Caesare Valentiae_, Joannae Candiae,
Jufredo Scylatii, et Lucretia Ferrariae ducib. filiis nobili
Probitate insigni religioni eximia pari et aetate et
Prudentiae optime de xenodochio Lateranen. Meritae
Hieronimus Picus fidei commis. procur. ex test(amento) pos(uit).
Vix(it) ann. LXXVI m. IV d. XIII. Objit anno M.D.XVIII. XXVI Nov.”
In the absence of anything more authoritative than the foregoing, the
story of Varillas remains the most probable solution of the mystery. The
Lord Alexander P.P. VI never named, never treated, Duke Cesare as His
son; never shewed for him the paternal love and affection which He
shewed for his bastards, Don Pedro Luis, Madonna Girolama, Duke Juan
Francisco, Duchess Lucrezia, Prince Gioffredo, Madonna Laura, Duke
Giovanni. Yet Duke Cesare was splendid and superb; his abilities were
immense, and pre-eminently useful to the Pope. And the Pope used him on
all occasions as His most serviceable subject, rewarding him with lavish
generosity for the service which he rendered. Between the Duke and his
Sovereign Patron, there was a certain privileged and familiar
confidence: but never intimate relationship, or filial or paternal love.
The status of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere; his furious, blind,
instinctive, and eternal hatred of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI and of
every one connected with Him, is susceptible of an extremely human
explanation. It bears the strongest possible resemblance to that very
singular and very distinguishable passion of revengeful jealous rage
which consumes the vulgar man in regard to a superior (in rank,
breeding, or physique,) who shall have supplanted him in the favours of
a lady.
Cardinal Rodrigo and Cardinal Giuliano both were cardinals and bishops
at the time of the birth of Duke Cesare. Cardinal Rodrigo had wealth,
illustrious ancestry, incomparable charm of manner, a sumptuous aspect.
He was magnificent and invincible. Cardinal Giuliano as a boy had
peddled onions in a boat between Arbisola and Genoa, he had no money
except the revenues of a few benefices, he was of a saturnine habit of
mind, repulsive to his fellow creatures. His portraits, as cardinal on
his medal by Sperandio, as Pope by Il Caradosso (Ambrogio Foppa), shew
him as a hatefully ugly man with satyr-brows, sunken and bleared eyes,
fierce but haggard mien, and the animal appetites hugely predominant in
the lips, the back of the head, and the curious little muscles which
obliquely tend downward right and left in the region of the root of the
nose. In the age of the Discovery of Man, Cardinal Giuliano della
Rovere’s physique did not qualify him to gain, or retain, the fidelity
of any woman whom, inevitably, he would hunger to possess.
Nothing is known against the character of Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei
except that she was the mistress, first of Cardinal Giuliano della
Rovere, second of Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja. A woman who
indulges in systematic adultery _and sacrilege_ is liable to be as false
to her lovers, as she is to her husband and her God, at least until she
has repented of her crimes and sins, giving proof of her repentance by
surceasing from those same to lead a godly righteous and sober life, as
Madonna Giovanna did during the whole reign of the Lord Alexander P.P.
VI, and especially in, and after, 1508, when she was converted, together
with Madonna Fiametta, a leman of Duke Cesare’s, by hearing Frat’ Egidio
da Viterbo preach the Lent in Rome. But history and rumour agree in
this, that with the exception of these two separate intrigues lasting
from 1473 to 1481 Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei was “alioquin proba
mulier” as even the rascally Paulo Giovio says, (Vita Gonsalvi
212)—otherwise, an honest woman.
It is humanly probable that Duke Cesare was the son of Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere by Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei. He was born in 1474, “son
of a cardinal bishop and a married woman.” The following year, 1475, the
lady bore to Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, Don Juan Francisco; in
1478, Madonna Lucrezia; in 1481, Don Gioffredo. It is as humanly natural
that, after the birth of Duke Cesare, Cardinal Rodrigo should win the
mother from Cardinal Giuliano; as that in 1492 he should win the
Triregno from him in full conclave. The two prelates were antipathetic
from heel to crown. There was bound to be rivalry between them. The loss
of the papal throne in 1492 would have embittered Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere: but, by itself, hardly could have imparted that virulent
vicious smack to his revenge that made him agonize, during twenty years,
to dispossess and grind to powder the House of Borgia. The introduction
of the feminine element provides a key to the enigma of that pettiness.
The narration of Varillas, therefore, deserves consideration as a
contribution to the solving of the mysteries of the unquenchable hatred
of Dellarovere for Borgia, and of Duke Cesare’s relations with the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI.
Whatever the truth may be, it is circumstantially evident that to Duke
Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna, his advocacy or neutrality, his
influence exercised or his abstention from opposition, Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere owed his election in the Conclave of November 1503. He
chose to be called the Lord Julius P.P. II.; and He instantly set about
the ruin of the House of Borgia.
* * * * *
The three Borgia cardinals naturally did not vote for Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere. Cardinal Luis Juan de Mila y Borja did not deign to attend
the Conclave: but remained at his bishopric of Lerida in Spain. Cardinal
Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borja, immediately after the election, passed
into voluntary exile in the Regno without speaking to the Pope. Cardinal
Francisco de Borja followed the custom of his House in regard to the
voting: but he remained in Rome; and no doubt hoped with his charming
innocent good nature that the Lord Julius P.P. would be satisfied, would
be appeased, now that the world had nothing more to give Him. The
Cardinal was bitterly disappointed.
From Madonna Lucrezia’s little boy, Duke Roderico, His Holiness seized
the duchy of Sermoneta; and restored it to the Caïetani from whom it
originally had been taken, and who hold it still, A.D. 1901. (The
present Duke of Sermoneta also has the superb sword of state which
Maestro Ercole, the master-sword-smith of his age, had made to carry
before Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) when he officiated as Cardinal
Ablegate at the coronation of King Don Federigo of Naples in 1497. It is
a miracle of damascening and design, a lesson to Twentieth Century
makers of decorative swords who heap glories on hilt and scabbard, and
leave the blade to be hidden. Of this sword of Duke Cesare’s the blade
is the soul. The sheath of plain embossed leather is in the Victoria and
Albert Museum.)
Then, the Lord Julius P.P. II demanded of Duke Cesare the renunciation
of his duchy of the Romagna. That province was a fief of the Holy See;
and it was competent for the Holiness of the Pope to deal with it at His
pleasure: but, seeing that to Duke Cesare’s splendid services, the
Papacy practically owed the peace, the possession, the heftiness of the
Romagna, heretofore a hell of turbulent bandits, brigands and assassins
who defied their Over-lord to collect His revenues,—the demand of the
Lord Julius P.P. II at least was discouraging.
Duke Cesare, while willing to take the oath of allegiance of a feudal
vassal to the Prince, refused to relinquish the fortresses of the
Romagna which by conquest he had won, and garrisoned with his veteran
army, now disbanded by the Judas wiles of Cardinal Giuliano della
Rovere, and re-enlisted under alien banners.
[Illustration: _Julius P.P. II._]
Whether the Lord Julius P.P. II had made, or had not made, promises
before His election, He was now _de iure_ and _de facto_ Ruler of the
World, and absolutely despotic. He arrested Duke Cesare in Rome; and
imprisoned him as a rebel in the Borgia Tower. The utter and vacuous
helplessness of the Duke is in striking contrast to the masterful energy
of all his previous life. Some enormous mental shock might produce such
degeneration; the hideous treachery of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere as
related by Varillas, for example. Duke Cesare behaved, in his
misfortune, like a son staggered, struck breathless and speechless by a
revelation of a father’s iniquity. A Bull of Deprivation despoiled him
of all fiefs and dignities held from the Holy See, and confiscated all
his personal property. He literally was stripped naked. In 1504, he
escaped from Rome to Ostia in disguise, and thence to Naples. Here he
might have found a pied à terre; and, with the splendour of his past
achievements, have won an opportunity of recovering his lost estates by
war: but the Lord Julius P.P. II, conscious of the danger to His peace
that such an aggrieved and notable personality would be, had intrigued
with the Catholic King; and, on Duke Cesare’s arrival in the Regno, he
was re-arrested, and shipped to a new prison in the castle of Medina del
Campo in Spain.
* * * * *
The marriage of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia with Don Alfonso d’Este was a
most happy one. The sweet young bride had made herself beloved by all
Ferrara, from her husband’s father Duke Ercole to the meanest of his
subjects, by her beauty, her goodness, and her wonderfully able
versatility, three indispensable qualities in the wife of the heir to
the throne. Attired in “a mulberry satin gown embroidered with gold
fish-bones each two fingers broad,” with the lace-flounce worth thirty
thousand ducats (say £60,000) which, according to Giovanni Lucido, was
in her wedding-chest, she would amuse herself in the ducal palace by
witnessing performances of the _Casina_ or the _Miles Gloriosus_,
comedies of Plautus. Sometimes, (as Sanuto, the Venetian Orator at
Ferrara, informed his government,) she would remain all day in her
apartments, writing letters, and having her head washed: or she would
sit for hours and listen to the violin-music of her adept young husband.
On the Maundy Thursday of the first year of her marriage, she publicly
washed the feet of one hundred and sixty poor men. Her observance of
religious duties was as notable as the spirit of genuine piety which
pervades her many letters still extant.
On hearing of Duke Cesare’s _disgrazia_, Madonna Lucrezia earnestly
wrote to the Marquess of Mantua, and to her friend, sister-in-law, and
confidante, the Marchioness Isabella, begging them to use the influence
of their House of Gonzaga with the Lord Julius P.P. II to procure his
freedom. The times were out of joint for Este personally to interfere;
for Madonna Lucrezia was stricken down with the effects of an ἄμβλωσις,
and the old Duke Ercole was breathing his last sigh.
On the nineteenth of January 1505, the Lord Julius P.P. II issued His
notorious Bull against Simony; striking a new blow at the House of
Borgia, by the aspersion cast upon the memory of the Lord Alexander P.P.
VI.
Duke Alfonso d’Este and his Duchess Lucrezia ascended the throne of
their duchy in due course; and negotiations with the Holiness of the
Pope, for the enfranchisement of Duke Cesare, might have been, and would
have been instituted: but, early in the spring of the year Ferrara was
threatened by famine, and the hands of the young sovereigns were
entirely occupied. Had Duke Cesare been own brother to the Duchess
Lucrezia, perhaps more urgent steps would have been taken: but she never
seems to have regarded him otherwise than as a half-brother, who was her
Father’s most useful servant, and her mother’s shame. Duke Alfonso
proceeded to Venice to buy food stuffs in view of the famine, for the
patriarchal rule obtained in Ferrara; and left the Duchess Lucrezia as
Regent of his state. Her lovely womanly character may be seen in an
edict which she issued for the protection of Jews, who were attacked and
pillaged by Christians rioting for food; and in the sweet indignant
letter, abounding in mis-spelt words (as do all good and distinguished
women’s letters,) and enjoining the Podesta (mayor) to be energetic
about securing to the Jews protection of their lives and property
equally with the Christians.
When Duke Alfonso returned, after some months’ absence during which the
Duchess sent him periodical and frequent accounts of her regency,
addressed “To the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Lord, My Most
Honourable Lord and Consort, These, with speed—speed—speed—” the summer
brought plague on the heels of famine. The visitation was most severe.
The unselfish exertions of the Duke and Duchess were noble and untiring.
The health of the Duchess Lucrezia suffered; and before the year was
over she gave birth to a dead child.
In 1506, Duke Cesare de Valentinois escaped from his Spanish prison, and
made his way into the neighbouring realm of Navarre, where the King Jean
d’Albret was brother to his wife Madame Charlotte d’Albret, Duchess of
Valentinois. The events of the last three years had not broken his
splendid spirit. All his triumphs, all the results of his strenuous
energy and talent had been nullified for him. At the age of thirty-three
years he was despoiled of his life’s work, and was a ruined man. The
Romagna for ever was gone from him. His French duchy seems to have been
of small account. Still, he was not crushed, he had the courage to begin
again to carve out a career in a new country; and to this end he took
service in the army of his brother-in law King Jean of Navarre.
* * * * *
The Lord Julius P.P. II having decreed Himself and His Successors to be
the heir-at-law, next-of-kin, residuary and sole legatee, of all
cardinals, and of all clergy who die within the walls of Rome, an era of
sumptuous premortal cenotaphs and sepulchres set in among the
Illustrissimi Colendissimi ed Osservantissimi Porporati, as well as
among the lesser ecclesiastical dignitaries; to the end that as little
as possible of their riches, after their demise, should go to the
pontifical exchequer.
There is a codicil to the will of the Genoese mariner, Messer Cristoforo
Colombi of this date, the fourth of May 1506, by which the Inventor of
America bequeathed to his native Republic of Genoa “the prayer-book
which Pope Alexander gave him; and which, in prison, in conflict, and in
every kind of adversity, had been to him the greatest of comforts.” How
simply bright a light does this incident throw upon the relations of a
great and good man with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI!
The Lord Julius P.P. II was capable of doing without Duke Cesare in the
Romagna. The Pope’s Holiness Himself was a man of war, Who found it
consistent to wear cuirass and casque on battlefields equally with
pluviale and triregno in the Vatican Basilica. Men called Him _Il
Pontifice Terribile_. “Give Us in Our hands no stupid book, but a bare
blade,” He impatiently roared to the painter of His portrait, now in the
National Gallery. But Messer Rafaele Sanzio, despite all his
conventional macaronics, was for once in his life artist enough to omit
both book and blade, and to concentrate on the painting of the character
of those fierce vulgar insatiable empty hands gripping the arms of the
chair. And the Romagna found the whips of Duke Cesare to be preferred
before the scorpions of the Lord Julius P.P. II. Perugia was the seat of
the Baglioni. Twenty years before, in 1487, there had been an outbreak
of the feud of Baglioni and Oddi, months of continual rioting, the
gutters running blood, the city like a slaughterhouse; until Oddi was
driven away, and Baglioni turned the place into a fortress and the
churches into barracks. In 1491, in another outbreak, Baglioni hanged a
hundred and thirty conspirators from the windows of the Palazzo
Communale in a single day; and, (with the quick reversion from carnage
to piety which is a characteristic of the age,) incontinently erected
five and thirty altars in the public square, and caused continuous
masses to be said and processions to be performed, to purify the city
and to procure repose for the souls of the slain. Duke Cesare made a
marked impression on these brigands, who learned to give him little
trouble: but, when he was dispossessed and his long sword sealed in its
scabbard, Baglioni took the bit between their teeth and reared, refused
tribute to their sovereign Over-lord, and broke out in rebellion in the
customary manner. The Lord Julius P.P. II promptly raised an army which
He led in person; and reduced Perugia. Without precautions for His
safety, trusting to the moral effect of His presence for the
inviolability of His sacrosanct person, He adventured Himself in the
heart of the rebel city, and beat Don Giampaolo Baglioni to his knees.
In a man of sensibility this hardihood would indicate a very dare-devil:
in the case of the Supreme Pontiff a distinction must be made between
courage and mere plebeian callousness. Messer Niccolo Machiavelli
sneered at this miserable Don Giampaolo Baglioni, because he lacked the
boldness to strangle his unwelcome visitor, the Lord Julius P.P. II, and
so crown his life of crime with a signal act of “Magnanimità”! Certainly
a man would need some boldness to strangle the Pope, the Ruler of the
World, the Father of Princes and of Kings, the Earthly Vicar of Jesus
Christ our Saviour! Certainly, a man who would strangle in cold blood
the Sovereign Pontiff coming to him as his guest, unarmed, under a flag
of truce, would win fame, or infamy, for endless ages. But that such a
deed should deserve the epithet “magnanimous,” should be considered to
be indicative of greatness of soul, is a matter of opinion. Evidently
the Twentieth Century considerably has curtailed and straitened the
signification and the application which the word Magnanimity bore in the
Fifteenth. Now, we call a man magnanimous who, at huge self-sacrifice,
does noble deeds. Then, Messer Niccolo Machiavelli thought that
startling actions, good, or bad, proclaimed the greatness of their
agent’s soul!
The Lord Julius P.P. II was not without His flatterers. No man is, if he
can pay. Literary petits maîtres like Messer Baltassare Castiglioni
found it profitable to address the Terrible Pontiff in terms like these:
“O Pater, O Pastor populorum, O “O Father, O Shepherd of the
Maxime mundi people, O Supreme
Arbiter, humanum qui genus omne Master of the world, Who rulest all
regis; the human race;
Iustitiae pacisque Dator Giver of Justice, Peace, and
placidaeque quietis, tranquil Ease,
Credita Cui soli est vita salusque Thou to Whom alone is committed the
hominum; life and salvation of men;
Quem Deus Ipse Erebi fecit caelique Whom God Himself has made Lord of
potentem, heaven and hell,
Ut nutu pateant utraque regno Tuo;— That either realm might open at Thy
nod—
“When the spiritual authority of the Popes came thus to be expressed
in Latin verse, it was impossible not to treat them as deities. The
temptation to apply to them the language of Roman religion was too
great; the double opportunity of flattering their vanity as pontiffs,
and their ears as scholars, was too attractive to be missed.”[86]
The Terrible Pontiff, however, was no scholar, but an unadulterated
plebeian. It is true that He, as Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, bought that
vastly over-rated piece known as the Apollo of the Belvedere, when first
it was discovered at Porto d’Anzio (Antium). It is true that He bought,
in 1506, for six hundred gold crowns (?) the Laocoon, (which Messer
Michelangelo Buonarroti saw unearthed in the Baths of Titus,) to the
supreme disgust of his “art-adviser” who declared that the two sons of
the Thymbraian priest were not boys, but little men. It is true that He
bought the Ariadne (which He called Cleopatra), the Torso of Herakles,
and the Commodus, unearthed on Campo di Fiori, and now in the Vatican.
He did these things because they were modish things to do in 1506. One
gained more κῦδος in the pose of a Sixteenth Century Maecenas, than as
Successor of the Galilean Fisherman. The plebeian pontiff of the
Sixteenth Century was ashamed of His plebeian predecessor of the First.
The times were changed, he argued, as the faithful vainly argue to
excuse prelatical vagaries now. He preferred competition with “men of
the world” to the cure of souls. He was quite unable to appreciate
intellect. He was congenitally incapable of appreciating the delicacy,
or the validity, of Letters. The plebeian chiefly is touched by way of
the sense of sight; and the Lord Julius P.P. II understood naked
statues, things which He could see: wherefore He bought Apollo and
Laocoon and the rest. There is not the slightest credit due to Him for
discrimination in His purchases, or for a deliberate choice of what was
beautiful. Men happened to dig up those marbles in Roman territory just
then. Any one could see them to be beyond the ordinary. Any one could
see them to be antiques. It was the fashion to buy antiques; and the
Terrible Pontiff bought—bought as retired grocers buy, who buy their
libraries by the cwt. Also, He had Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti at His
ankle, with whose advice it would have been difficult for a sardonic
goat to commit an artistic blunder. They were a pair, those two, the
artist and the pontiff, _uomini terribili_, terrible men, both. Messer
Michelangelo had been educated at the expense of Lorenzo de’ Medici in
the Palazzo Medici of Florence and the Villa Medici of Fiesole. There,
at the suggestion of Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano), he had
sculptured his Battle of Herakles with the Centaurs, while listening to
Fra Girolamo Savonarola and Messer Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
surnamed the Phoenix of Genius (_Fenice degli iugegni_.) Could any man
but Poliziano have suggested a more admirable subject for Michelangelo
than this of weird muscular gigantic energy? In 1500, in the reign of
the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, he had carved his lily-pure Pietà of the
Vatican Basilica, the most divinely pure presentment of God’s Maiden
Mother, of the Μητροπάρθενος, save those of Alessandro Filipepi (detto
Botticelli) since Byzantine art had faded. Now, he was in Rome,
“art-adviser” to the Terrible Pontiff, eating his own heart in
inactivity, burning and yearning to work with his own hands, with all
the passionate excruciating torture suffered by every artist who may not
put his talent “out to the exchangers.” It was the lust of creation in
Michelangelo that made him terrible to his fellow men. His incivilities
to his colleagues are proverbial. “Goffo nell’ arte” he flung with
contemptuous scorn to Messer Pietro di Cristoforo Vanucci of città della
Pieve (detto Perugino) who had a picture-shop at Florence, and bought
estates with the proceeds of his smooth and stony saints and seraphs,
stencilled by his pupils on the canvases, and touched by himself in his
workshop or picture-factory at Perugia, at the very time when Oddi and
Baglioni each were tearing the other’s throats to tatters outside his
door. Then in 1508 the Lord Julius P.P. II ordered Messer Michelangelo
to paint the ceiling of the Xystine Chapel. The gods on high Olympos
never allow a man to do the thing that he wants to do: they are jealous
lest a man should create a god. Messer Michelangelo wanted to practise
sculpture; wherefore he was told to paint a ceiling. “I’m not a
painter!” (Nè io pittore!) he roared to the Terrible Pontiff, who
fulminated and thundered in reply. They both were terrible men; and they
unrestrainedly spoke with perfect frankness as between man and man,
using no set form whatever.
The Terrible Pontiff, like all clerical patrons, was an infernal
nuisance to the Terrible Painter, who well-nigh killed himself by years
of ceaseless toil, lying on his back upon a scaffold in the filthy air
that hangs about a ceiling. He would have no assistant save a boy or
two. He lived, and ate, and slept on the scene of his labour. Many times
the Terrible Pontiff came to see what was being done; and every time the
Terrible Painter instructed Him in the art and mystery of anathema, and
drove Him away. At last the Lord Julius P.P. II threatened to have
Messer Michelangelo flung down, and the scaffold pulled about his ears:
but this was when the work was done. The Terrible Painter had the
scaffold removed, and invited his patron to view the sumptuous ceiling.
The Terrible Pontiff came; and saw; and suggested that the scaffold
should be reerected so that the work might be touched up
with—ultramarine and gold-leaf!
* * * * *
In Ferrara, the year 1506 was marked by one of those tragical
expositions of naked human passion which afflict humanity in every age.
Madonna Angela de Borja y Lançol, a cousin of the Duchess Lucrezia—being
the daughter of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI’s sister, Doña Juana, by her
marriage with Don Guillelmo de Lançol, and sister to Cardinal Juan de
Borja y Lançol (detto Giovanni Seniore), Archbishop of Monreale, and
Cardinal Pedro Luis de Borja y Lançol,—was a maid-of-honour attached to
the suite of the Duchess of Ferrara. She was very beautiful, and is
called in the chronicle “a most elegant damsel”—_damigella
elegantissima_. Two younger brothers of Duke Alfonso, the athletic
Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, and Don Giulio d’Este (bastard of the old Duke
Ercole) fell in love with her. Madonna Angela favoured the Bastard
Giulio whose lovely eyes she unreservedly admired—consequently, as the
manner was, his rival the Cardinal hired four professionals to put out
those eyes. Naif unpaltering straightforwardness of the Sixteenth
Century! The operation failed of execution, for the Bastard Giulio,
being forewarned, escaped with his eyes unharmed. But such conduct does
not make for the peace of a state, brawling royalties affording
disedification to the mob. The laws of Ferrara, paternal in character,
ordained a scale of penances graduated to the rank of culprits: for
example, a working man, who obscenely swore, would pay a fine; a
swearing burgess paid a double fine and a swearing noble was mulcted of
a triple fine. Therefore Duke Alfonso put the ban on his brother, the
Lord Cardinal Ippolito, who retired to Rome to nurse his discontent and
plan his next move against the Bastard Giulio. Madonna Angela, who was
no more to be blamed than any other girl whose charms have inflamed a
lusty pair of rivals to desperation, married the third, Don Alessandro
Pio Estense di Savoja, Count of Sassuolo. The bandit[87] Cardinal
Ippolito had not long to wait in exile. If he had been the Master of
Fate, he could not have devised a neater or completer vengeance than
that which came to him. It is one thing to attempt to blind a bastard
brother who is a royal prince. It is another thing to compass the death
of a brother who is a reigning sovereign. The robust young Cardinal was
equal to the first: but above the second.
Duke Alfonso’s brothers, Don Ferdinando d’Este and the Bastard Giulio,
engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate him. News of the plot reached
Cardinal Ippolito in Rome. He promptly warned Duke Alfonso of his
danger. Finding themselves discovered, the conspirators fled. Don
Ferdinando was caught: but the Bastard Giulio, good at escapes, took
refuge in sanctuary with his brother-in-law the Marquess of Mantua, who
replied to Duke Alfonso’s demand for extradition that, if evidence of
guilt were shewn, the criminal should be delivered up to justice.
Evidence was shewn, in the shape of the full confession of Don
Ferdinando; and the Bastard Giulio passed into his sovereign brother’s
hands. Brought to the common block in the square of Ferrara, the two
detected traitors were allowed to suffer all the pangs of the approach
of death: but, at the last moment, Duke Alfonso in his mercy granted a
reprieve, commuting their penance to life-imprisonment.
* * * * *
Early in 1507, died Duke Cesare de Valentinois (detto Borgia), by a mean
inglorious death for one who had been in life so mighty a man. While
commanding a small squadron on behalf of the King of Navarre, he was
killed in a petty skirmish by the castle of Viana. His corpse was
quietly interred in the cathedral of Pampeluna, which, by a curious
coincidence, had been the first piece of ecclesiastical preferment
conferred on him by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. So ended a phenomenal
personality in which superb and tawny beauty of physique, prodigious
force of character, fierce all-conquering energy, swift unerring
almost-feline agility of action, and transcendent splendour of
achievement, were blasted and nullified and marred, humanly speaking, by
one single delicacy of respectful conscientious self-sacrifice and
supreme confidence in clerical honour. His beautiful elegy by Ercole
Strozzi,
“Ille diu, qui dum caelestibus auris
Visitur, implet onus laudis, caelumque meretur”
is too well-known to be quoted at length. He left three children,
(α) Madame Eloise de Valentinois; who married, first, the Sieur Louis
de la Tremouille, second, the Sieur Philippe de Bourbon, Comte
de Busset, whose direct descendants flourish in France at the
present day:
(β) Don Girolamo de Valentinois; who, by marriage with Madonna
Isabella Carpi patrician of Ferrara, had issue Madonna Lucrezia
de Valentinois married, in 1562, to Don Bartolomeo Oroboni
patrician of Ferrara, who died in 1565.
(γ) a bastard Madonna Camilla Lucrezia; (evidently the offspring of an
intrigue carried on when Duke Cesare was in Ferrara in 1500–1
arranging the marriage of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia to the heir of
Duke Ercole d’Este;) born of Duke Cesare and a married woman in
Ferrara; according to the deed of legitimation,[88] dated 1509,
where Madonna Camilla Lucrezia is said to be “of the age of more
than seven years”: she became Abbess of San Bernardino in
Ferrara, in 1545; and died in 1573.
The Duchess Lucrezia Borgia d’Este was deeply grieved by the death of
Duke Cesare her half-brother. There is a very touching letter written by
her friend and sister-in-law, the Marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of
Mantua, to Duke Alfonso who at that time was in Rome. It is dated the
eighteenth of April 1507; and describes how that the Duchess of Ferrara,
on receiving the sad news, immediately went to the church of the
monastery of Corpus Domini and remained during two days and nights,
praying for the repose of the soul of Duke Cesare de Valentinois. A
simple act; and precisely what any good Christian woman would do in
similar circumstances.
* * * * *
A year later, on the fourth of April 1508, at the Castle of Ferrara to
the immense joy of all, _formosus puer est formoso natus Aprili_, says
Benedetto Lampridii in his Carmina Inedita, the Duchess Lucrezia bore to
Duke Alfonso a son and heir, who was baptized by the name Ercole.
During this year, a league of the Powers was formed under the
Elect-Emperor Maximilian directed against Venice; and Duke Alfonso,
whose dominions marched with those of that Republic, threw in his lot
with its foes. While he was engaging the Venetians on the Romagna
frontier, the Duchess Lucrezia ruled as Regent in Ferrara. She
administered government of the state with the same sweet womanly
thoroughness as she shewed in the administration of the government of
her domestic affairs. History is rich in records relating to this lovely
lady. She superintended the household matters of her palaces with a
minute attention to detail which, to the modern middle-classes, would
appear amazing in a Sovereign Duchess. To set a fashion of rare
liberal-mindedness she appointed the Jewess Mazzolino to the care of her
extensive wardrobe, and Messer Ludovico as her physician. Her régime was
of the simple patriarchal type of the old Duke Ercole, who, on the
occasion of an outbreak of plague in 1500, issued an Edict which said
that “Duke Ercole d’Este, for good reasons to him known, _and because it
always is well to be on good terms with God_,” ordained religious
processions every day throughout Ferrara. A second quaint Edict of the
same fatherly potentate, (which incidentally speaks for the meticulously
cleanly personal habits of the Borgian Era, so strenuously maintained on
a previous page of this book,) proclaims that “inasmuch as bakers are
known to knead their dough with feet that, frequently, are unclean, such
practices must not continue except on penalty of fine or imprisonment:
but the dough must be worked with clean hands _and nails_.”
Evildoers, all the same, had a shocking time. Maria Equicola gives exact
particulars of a certain Madonna Laura (name suppressed) who, being
caught in adultery, was immured alive; that is to say, she was publicly
confined in a cell a few feet square, with a little window, outside the
episcopal palace, near the entrance on the right of the high altar of
the cathedral of Ferrara. Perjurers went about after their conviction
with their tongues securely nailed to little logs of wood. The accounts
for the nails and logs exist. Duchess Lucrezia’s sumptuary laws were
unsuccessful. The sex of the legislator prevented her from manufacturing
laws to regulate fashion, which could be put into practical effect. That
was perfectly natural; nor does the failure in any way reflect upon the
excellence of the intentions of her ducal highness. She ordained that no
woman should wear a gown whose value was higher than the sum of fifteen
ducats (say £30), nor jewellery worth more than fifty ducats (say £100).
She furnished a specification of the gems which might be worn, and of
the fabrics of which gowns might be made. Also, she precisely specified
the quantity of material that might be used, and the cut and fashion
that was to be adopted. Further, in order to secure the observation of
these laws, she ordained a box, having a slit in its lid like a modern
letter-box, to be placed in the cathedral by the holy water-stoup; so
that fathers, husbands, or lovers, who found themselves outraged by the
length or the rotundity of the skirts, or the bulk of the sleeves, or
the violence of the style of their women-folk,—and the cost of the
same,—secretly might drop in denunciations while in the act of taking
holy water; the said denunciations afterwards to be attended-to in a
legal manner by the justiciary. Delightfully solemn and futile effort of
a charming woman. Well, it failed; not on account of the female peacocks
of Ferrara, but by reason of the very skewbald harlequins whose
propriety and purses it had aimed to benefit. How many denunciations
secretly were dropped into Duchess Lucrezia’s precious box, how many
scandalized fathers, husbands, and lovers, sneaked about their
daughters, wives, and lemans, is not known. Only one thing is
known,—there was not a justiciar in all the duchy of Ferrara, married or
unmarried, who dared even to allude to, much less to act upon, the said
denunciations, and enforce the law.
On the twenty-fifth of August 1509, the Duchess Lucrezia gave birth to a
second son, Don Ippolito d’Este, named after his uncle the heraklean
Cardinal; and who, in after years, became Archbishop and Cardinal of
Milan.
All through 1508 and 1509 the war went on. In December of the latter
year, a powerful Venetian fleet advanced to the mouth of the Po,
devastating the country on both banks, and invading the duchy of Ferrara
with frightful atrocities. Duke Alfonso, hurrying to meet the foe, won a
glorious victory at Policella: but the war dragged on till 1512, keeping
him in camp, away from his capital, which almost exclusively was
governed by the Duchess Lucrezia (she bore Don Alessandro d’Este in
1511), assisted by Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, now no longer a bandit, but
completely in the confidence and favour of his sovereign brother.
* * * * *
On the fifth of February 1510 died the noble and strenuous knight Don
Pietro Gregorio Borgia of the Junior Branch. He had been high in honour
with Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna since he saved him from
the clutches of the Christian King Charles VIII in 1495; and had served
him as mounted scale-armoured arbalister, lieutenant, and
standard-bearer. On the fall of the Duke, he returned to his allegiance
to the Regno now ruled by the Catholic King Don Hernando. He was Viceroy
of the province of the Abruzzi when he died, and was buried in the
Church of San Clemente at Velletri, his native city.[89] His fine
epitaph[90] runs:
“HIC REQUIESCIT NOB. ET STRENUUS EQUES DOM. PETRUS BORGIA,
CATAPHRACTOR. LOCUM-TENENS, AC SIGNIFER CESARIS BORGIAE ISPANI
VALENTINI DUCIS, QUI OBJIT AN. DNI. MDX. D. QV. MEN. FEB.”
* * * * *
The year 1511 is remarkable for a wildly frenetic insurrection on the
part of the gentle old Cardinal Francisco de Borja, which cost that Most
Worshipful Lord his rank and his life. There is a limit to human
endurance. In some men it is wide; in others narrow: but human nature
subjected to unnatural suppression and restraint, sooner or later
desperately will struggle to burst its bonds. This principle has never
been understood by the clergy. It is one of the disabilities under which
they labour in dealing with men. History teems with examples of amiable,
would-be obedient, and respectable characters, tried beyond their
strength by inconsiderate ignorant oppressive injustice on the part of
churchmen, and transformed into savagely bitter and appallingly
destructive suicides. There is no better example than Cardinal Francisco
de Borja.
He was of the age of seventy years. Though his illustrious House had
been predominant in Christendom during more than fifty of those years,
he had never sought to benefit by the fact that his father was the Lord
Calixtus P.P. III, nor to intrude himself among the mighty who were his
blood-relations. Not till he was on the verge of his sixtieth year did
he become a personage; and then his august cousin, the Lord Alexander
P.P. VI, in admiration of his enchanting disposition, dignified him with
the scarlet hat and the rank of Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa
Lucia _in Silice_, (_Atti Consistoriali_). Later, he proceeded to the
Title of Santa Cecilia, (_Ciacconi_ and _Moroni_); thence again to the
Title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo (_Atti Consistoriali_); and last to
the Title of San Clemente. He also was Treasurer of the Holy See, Bishop
of Teano, and Archbishop of Cosenza.
Seeing the exacerbating measures which the Terrible Pontiff, the Lord
Julius P.P. II was using against the House of Borgia, and especially the
spoliation of the two little boys Duke Roderico and Duke Giovanni, this
very sympathetic old cardinal had the indiscretion to put his frank
opinion of the Pope’s Holiness into certain letters which he wrote to
the Orator of Ferrara at the Court of Rome. This opinion could not fail
to be unfavourable and the reverse of complimentary. No doubt the Orator
was in direct communication with his sovereign, Duke Alfonso d’Este,
whom he would keep advised of the trend of sentiments and of events in
Rome. These letters came, by means which it would be improper to
describe, into the anointed hands of God’s Vicegerent. His Holiness read
them; and vehemently enraged himself against the Duke Alfonso d’Este of
Ferrara, and upon Cardinal Francisco de Borja, whom he incontinently
flung into prison with every species of indignity. The Sacred College,
tremorous for its own security if such treatment of a Purpled One should
pass without remonstrance, exerted its influence on the Holiness of the
Pope, and procured the ungracious liberation of Cardinal Francisco de
Borja.
But the ill was done. The milk of human kindness effectually had been
soured; the placid amiable old gentleman had been changed into a violent
malcontent breathing threatenings and slaughter, and whose fiery Spanish
blood at last was boiling over. Two other cardinals joined in his savage
revolt, the Lord Bernardino Lopez de Caravajal Cardinal-Bishop of
Sabina, and the Lord Guillaume de Briçonnet Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste
(Palestrina). These three decamped from Rome to Pisa, where, a fourth,
the Lord Réné de Prie Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina,
having joined them, they constituted themselves as a General Council;
and dared to cite the Lord Julius P.P. II to shew cause before them why
He should not be declared a Pseudopontiff, and deposed from Peter’s
Throne, by reason of the irregularity of His election due to Simony and
other crimes:—an excellent example of the sauce for the goose being
served to the gander.
Melpomene is own sister to Thalia; and never has a ghastlier tragedy
been more comically played. This self-styled Council of Pisa laboured
under the disadvantage of being radically schismatic. Only the Roman
Pontiff can summon, or confirm the decrees of, a General Council. The
acts of the Schismatic Council of Pisa, therefore, were hopelessly and
irretrievably invalid. The very impossibility of the whole affair is
proof conclusive that these four well-intentioned, well-living pathetic
old men had been tried beyond their strength, beyond all patience,
goaded by insult and by gross injustice into frenzy. Their conduct was
simply frenetic.
The Lord Julius P.P. II replied to Cardinal Francisco de Borja with
short incisive action. By His supreme authority He issued a Bull of
Deposition from the cardinalate; and denounced him to all Christendom as
an heresiarch and schismatic with whom none might have to do. A Bull
(Bulla Monitorii Apostolici) was issued on the twenty-eighth of July
1511 “_cõtra tres reverendissimos cardinales ... ut redeãt ad obediẽtâ
S.d.n. ne Schisma in eccl. in sancta dei oriẽt_.” This was followed by a
second “_Bulla intimatiõis Generalis Concilii apud Lateranum per S.d.n.
Juliũ Papâ II edita_,” directed, with the scrupulous politeness of a
cleric about to crush, against “_dilectũ filiũ nostrũ Franciscũ Tituli
Sancti Clementis p̃byterum Cardinalem_”; who “_in seipsis armis
assumptis et pro sacerdotalibus vestis Thorace[91] indutis et gladiis
armati Papā se cõtulerãt_.” Printed contemporary copies of these two
Bulls are in the British Museum; and, bound with them, but, strange to
say, uncatalogued (A.D. 1900)—(strange, because of the unique perfection
of everything at the British Museum)—is the momentous Brief announcing
the issue of the Bull of Deposition. Its title is “_Breve Julii Secũdi
Pont. Max. ad reges, duces, et principes christianos, etc._ “_Julius
Papa II_” addresses Himself to
“Our well-beloved son in Christ Maximilian, Elect-Emperor, Always
August;
„ „ „ Louis (XII), of the French, the Most
Christian King;
„ „ „ Hernando, of Aragon and the Two
Sicilies, the Catholic King;
„ „ „ Emanuele, of Portugal, the Illustrious
King;
„ „ „ Henry (VII), of England, the
Illustrious King;[92]
„ „ „ James (V), of the Scots, the
Illustrious King;
„ „ „ Wladislaf, of Hungary and Bohemia, the
Illustrious King;
„ „ „ Jean and Katharine, King and Queen of
Navarre;
„ „ „ Sigismund, King of Poland;
„ „ „ John, King of Denmark;
„ „ „ Carlo, Duke of Savoja;
„ „ „ Lionardo Lauredano, Doge of Venice;”
and proclaims that “this day, in Public Consistory, We have deprived” of
all things ecclesiastical, and of the cardinalitial hat, (_galero
cardinalatus_), Bernardino Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, Guillaume
Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste (Palestrina), Francisco Cardinal-Presbyter
of the title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo (a clerical error for his
Title, as given above in the Bull, was San Clemente), and Réné de Prie
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina, that they no longer may
be considered Cardinals, nor called Cardinals, by word or by writing.
The Brief is _Dated at Rome at St. Peters, and given Under the
Fisherman’s Ring, the twenty-fourth of October 1511 and the eighth year
of Our Pontificate_. This summary is appended here as an example of
form.
Death had hurled his dart before the Terrible Pontiff. Cardinal
Francisco de Borja died of an apoplexy at Pisa, before the sentence of
his disgrace and deposition reached him there.
The student of history, who seeks a field wherein few yet have walked,
will be well advised to investigate the life of this gentle and quiet
cardinal, who departed in the tragic blaze of madness and revolt.
* * * * *
In 1512 death relieved the Lord Julius P.P. II of two more of the Borgia
whom He loathed: for there died in his Neapolitan exile the Most
Worshipful Lord Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borja, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa
Maria _in Via Lata_, Arch-presbyter of the Liberian Basilica (Santa
Maria Maggiore), Abbot of San Simpliciano at Milan, and Archbishop of
Valencia in Spain. Having heard a rumour of the death of the Supreme
Pontiff, he was on the verge of returning to Rome for the Conclave; but
he was killed by falling from his mule at Naples, where he is buried in
the church of San Piercelestino without any memorial.
This year also died Don Roderico de Aragona e Borgia, at the age of
thirteen years, the son of Madonna Lucrezia by her first legitimate
marriage with Don Alonso de Aragona Prince of Bisceglia. He had been
despoiled of his duchy of Sermoneta in favour of Caïetani by the Lord
Julius P.P. II; and his existence as a step-son was embarrassing in
Ferrara, except to his mother, who most sincerely mourned him.
The Duchess Lucrezia was to suffer much this year. The Lord Julius P.P.
II put the ban of Greater Excommunication upon her beloved husband Duke
Alfonso. As the consort of a Borgia—a Borgia universally adored, a
sovereign Borgia, a Borgia of unblemished character,—the Duke of Ferrara
naturally was intensely antipathetic to the Holiness of the Pope. If
that were not enough, the facts remained that Duke Alfonso was the
friend of France, (as the Supreme Pontiff’s predecessor also had been);
and, he was cognizant of Cardinal Francisco’s disesteem for the Lord
Julius P.P. II. Naturally the Pope’s Holiness found the Duke’s
Excellency most annoying. The awful import of Excommunication barely can
be realized at the present time. People idly wonder why the
excommunicated take their case so seriously—why they do not turn to find
amusement, or satisfaction, in another channel,—why they persist in
lying prone in the mire where the fulmination struck them. And, indeed,
in modern times the formal sentence rarely is promulgated, and only
against personages of distinction, like the German Dr. Döllinger or the
Sabaudo King Vittoremanuele II di Savoja, whose very circumstances
provided them with the means to allay the temporal irritation of the
blow. There are excommunications “_gerendae_ sententiae” and “_latae_
sententiae.” In the former, excommunication is threatened for some act:
but the offender must have sentence passed upon him. In the latter, the
offender is excommunicate the moment he performs the act forbidden,
(“ipso facto”). This however operates only “in foro _interno_,” and in
the Eyes of God. To make it effectual “in foro _externo_” it is
necessary that the guilt be proved and be declared to be so by some
“competent judge.” Excommunication _latae sententiae_ appears not to
have been uncommon in the Victorian Era. A Leading Case occurred in
December 1882, when it was enforced against a Scots clergyman on the
strength of the following letter:—
“ROME, _6 December 1882_.
“MY DEAR LORD ARCHBISHOP (of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh),—I have just
received a message from the Cardinal-Prefect (of Propaganda, Cardãl
Simeoni,) to tell your Grace ‘che il noto sacerdote il quale voleva
citare i Vescovi incorrerebbe senza dubbio la censura al primo atto
efficace che ponesse, ossia all’ atto della citazione, come _cogens
Ecclesiasticum ad tribunal laicum_. Se fosse ancora in tempo sarebbe
bene che l’Arcivescovo ne avvertisse il Sacerdote per distoglierlo da
tale atto.’
“Yours very respectfully,
“F. A. CAMPBELL,
“(then Rector of the Scots College of Rome.)”
The censure was Excommunicatio latae sententiae speciali modo reservatae
Romano Pontifici. Bulla _Apostolicae Sedis. VII_.[93] Seldom does a case
of Excommunication terminate in a perridiculous collapse, as this one
did, when the Cardinal-Prefect denied having sent the quoted message.
Seldom, on the whole, is Excommunication _latae sententiae_ made
effectual by proof of guilt and declaration of proof of guilt by a
competent judge. The effect can be produced in another and far more
exitial way. Simple secret instructions, or even hints, can be given by
bishops to clergy, or adverse opinions can be expressed by one clerk to
another, suggesting that it would be well (that it would tend ad majorem
Dei gloriam, some say,) to obstruct the worldly welfare of such and such
an one, to refuse him his rites and sacraments, or at least to offer the
last upon such conditions as the “proper pride” in human nature will
disdain to accept. This mode is purely devilish. It is capable of abuse
by unworthy clerks for personal ends. It admits of no defence, of no
appeal, of no redress, by the very reason of its intangibility. It
constricts a man in phantom folds. It blanches him with venomous breath.
The world, ever ready to pity some obscene dog who manifests his pain,
here sees nothing save one bruised and broken; desperately digladiant,
struggling with some invisible (and therefore incredible) foe. The
civilized world goes in terror of the invisible; goes by “on the other
side.” Excommunication of any kind is a fearsome thing for him to whom
the Faith once delivered to the saints is the only prize worth having.
To the man who, in defect of spiritual advice, is convinced of his own
integrity, to whom the sacraments are as “odorifera panacea,”[94] to
whom the sacraments are the only means which keep him from Despair,
their deprivation, by the revenge of a personal enemy, of an offended
vanity abasing spiritual powers to satiate secular ambition, signifies
that, for the excommunicate, the light goes out of life, love is
eradicated from the heart, confidence in man is killed, hope is banished
from death. Sympathy he may have from aliens, if he can humiliate
himself to expose his grievous wounds: but he may have it only at a
price which in honour he cannot pay—the price of insincerity to his
convictions—the price of apostasy. The dire Ban of excommunication,
formal or informal, drives a man wild; turns his hand against every man,
and every man’s hand against him; he is savage; he is a Bandit, actually
and literally. Sometimes he becomes criminal. Ostracism practised is a
school for scoundrels. Far more merciful—divinely merciful, not
humanly—it would be to slay outright the body; than to doom a soul to
live a solivagous life of torture—the torture of Hopelessness. That is
why Excommunication is so horrible in this present age of works. That is
why it was so trenchant a weapon in the ages of faith. It was, and is,
perfectly impossible to be resisted by one who is, and was, sincerely
faithful. Often enough, an excommunicate sovereign would try resistance;
for sovereigns are stronger than ordinary plebeians in the matter of
resources. Then, when an interval for consideration had elapsed, the
second blow of the Flail would fall—Interdict: his demesne would be made
to suffer loss of the means of grace, the sacraments, which were denied
to him. His subjects generally rose, resentful and revolting. There was
no reason why they should be afflicted, when submission of their
sovereign to God’s Vicegerent would suffice for their enfranchisement.
But sometimes Interdict also failed. The third blow came. Subjects were
absolved from their oath of allegiance to the excommunicate; his throne
was declared vacant; kings and princes of Christendom were invited to
invade his realm, to take his crown and sceptre, to expel him a homeless
friendless connudate outcast in a world that shunned him like a
pestilence, like the horrid leprous scab of creeping things which his
blasted human body inevitably would become. Then, suppliant, submissive,
he crawled to his Canossa; as the late Duke of Lauenberg crawled to the
Lord Leo P.P. XIII the other day; as Caesar Fridericus Ahenobarbus
Semper Augustus abjectly crawled to, and waited at, the gates of the
huge Englishman, Nicholas Breakespeare, the Lord Hadrian P.P. IV, who
ruled the world eight hundred years ago, “Not for thee, but for Peter,”
that indignant Emperor muttered, perforce doing groom’s service for
Peter’s Successor, holding the stirrup of the pontifical palfrey. “For
Us, _and_ for Peter,” the superb English Pope retorted, as He bent
Caesar to His unconquerable will. Arrogant? Arrogant——of any miserable
mortal man who did not believe himself to be, who had not been
officially crowned and saluted, and to whom every emperor and king and
prince of Christendom, every Christian sovereign and subject of Europe,
had not sworn allegiance as, “Ruler of the World, Father of Princes and
of Kings, Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour.”
When the action of the human mind is inspired by the principle
endeavoured here to be set down, the inexpugnable face of
Excommunication, (magnified by the assent to its validity of the
excommunicated one,) perhaps, may be realized. Duke Alfonso d’Este could
not hope to stand where Caesar Semper Augustus fell. Naturally, he went
in desperate and horrid fear. He knew that he had not deserved to be
gibbeted as a Bandit before the world: but he knew also that, before the
Holiness of the Pope, he, a sovereign-regnant, was crushable as a worm.
He lost no time in omitting to seek release from the hideous ban.
Early in 1513, he chose the poet Messer Ludovico Ariosto, with his
beautiful Greek profile and noble intellect, secretary and laureate of
Cardinal Ippolito; and named him as his Orator to open negotiations with
the Pope.
The Lord Julius P.P. II was perfectly implacable. He had not pardoned
the indiscreet criticisms of Cardinal Francisco de Borja, who had passed
beyond His power. It was the complete ruin of Borgia that alone would
slake His passionate thirst for vengeance;—and a Borgia was Duchess of
Ferrara. He did not intend kindness to the consort of that Duchess: and
He resolved to begin, in a clerical manner, with intimidation.
Accordingly, He admitted Messer Ludovico Ariosto to an audience; and
immediately ordered him to quit the Vatican by the door before he should
be thrown from the window. After this reception of a proffered
olive-branch, the Pope’s Holiness coolly awaited Duke Alfonso’s next
move.
Don Fabrizio Colonna flourished in the favour of the Lord Julius P.P.
II; and he, also, was under many vital obligations to the Duke of
Ferrara. He, in his turn, tried the role of peacemaker between pontiff
and sovereign; and so far succeeded, that the Holy Father farcically
permitted the Duke to come to Rome, assured of a favourable reception,
to plead his cause and to arrange the terms of his submission.
He came. He saw the Ruler of the World. He was conquered. The Terrible
Pontiff named the sole conditions on which He would consent to remit the
ban of excommunication. Nothing could be more enormously radical and
sweeping. They were, abdication of his sovereignty over the city and
whole duchy of Ferrara, with absolute renunciation for himself and his
heirs for ever of all rights therein, in favour of the Holy See; also,
his retirement to voluntary life-long exile at the little city of Asti
in the province of Lombardy. Death and obliteration of the Borgia, not
by vulgar assassination but by constitutional withdrawal of the means to
live, was the aim of the Terrible Pontiff; wherefore He would strip
naked Duke Alfonso, as aforetime He had stripped naked Duke Cesare.
Duke Alfonso d’Este refused to purchase release from excommunication on
these disgraceful terms. The Lord Julius P.P. II let him have hints
which gave to understand that the said terms might be mitigated. By
various subterfuges he was detained in Rome.
The army of the Terrible Pontiff stealthily was advancing on Ferrara.
There was only a woman there.
Duke Alfonso chanced to hear of the pontifical stratagem. On the
instant, he made his plans for quitting Rome. But he found that he was
in a prison. The Terrible Pontiff held him; and would not let him go.
The Lord Alexander P.P. VI may not have been a Saint: but He never
dirtied His honour like this.
This treachery of the Holiness of the Pope disgusted the Ghibellinism of
Don Fabrizio Colonna. This was not what he had contemplated, when he
persuaded Duke Alfonso to adventure his right hand in the jaws of the
Wolf of Rome. Considering himself to be responsible, his own honour at
stake, he played a counter-stratagem upon the Lord Julius P.P. II. By
his aid, the Duke broke prison; and, under his protection, in his
fortress of Marino fifteen miles from Rome, a safe asylum was provided.
Duke Alfonso desired to hasten to defend his duchy now menaced by the
Pope: and all Colonna acclaimed his resolution. Don Prospero Colonna
undertook to bring him there where he would be. Travelling by night
through hostile territory, environed by ever-present dangers, at length,
disguised as Don Prospero’s cook, the royal and ducal Bandit reached
Ferrara.
In the city there was joy. In the duchy there was confidence restored.
In the heart of the Duchess Lucrezia there was gratitude for the safety
of her much-loved lord. Ferrara was fresh from four years successful
war: an excessively dangerous enemy to assault, now that her leader led
her. The pontifical army executed a second strategic movement at the
double—to the rear.
And, before the year 1513 was three months old, the Terrible Pontiff,
the Lord Julius P.P. II, (Who, according to Monsignor Paris de Grassis,
successor to Burchard as Papal Caerimonarius, suffered from the French
Disease,) died at Rome, raving in His last delirium “Frenchmen, begone
from Italy! Begone from Italy, Alfonso d’Este!”
Dreadful end of a furious revengeful disappointed plebeian who was Ruler
of the World! The monstrous Moses of Michelangelo, in San Pietro _ad
Vincula_, marks His ambitious unfinished tomb.
* * * * *
The Most Illustrious Lord Giovanni de’ Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa
Maria _in Domnica_, was the son of Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, born
the eleventh of December 1475. His mother was Madonna Clarice Orsini,
one of the sweetest and best of good mothers. Her husband said that his
own mother chose her for him,
“Tolsi donna ... ovvero mi fu data.
When Don Giovanni was of the age of seven years (the age of reason,
technically,) the Christian King named him Abbot of Fonte Dolce, on the
nineteenth of May 1483, in which preferment the Lord Sixtus P.P IV.
confirmed him twelve days later by Brief dated the thirty-first of May
1843. On the first of June he received the ecclesiastical tonsure, when
episcopal hands wielded scissors to cut the child-clerk’s hair in five
places—on the front, the back, the right, the left, and the crown, of
the head—while bishop and boy recited the psalm verse:
“The Lord is the portion— “_Dominus pars_—
“Of mine inheritance— “_Haereditatis meae_—
“And of my cup— “_Et calicis mei_—
“Thou art He Who shall restore— “_Tu es Qui restitues_—
“Mine inheritance to me— “_Haereditatem meam mihi_—
and finally the bishop endued him with the fair white linen surplice,
(super pellicem) the official vesture of his clerical estate. The
symbolism of this mystery seems to be that the clerk enlists himself in
the regular army of the Church Militant, sacrificing an actual piece of
his person as a pledge of his fidelity, and receiving as handsel, so to
speak, his uniform. From this date the child was called in his family
Messer Giovanni, (Mr. John). On the first of March 1484, he was named
Abbot of Passignano. He grew up a good and manly boy, fond of nice
things, grave, quietly merry, and a perfect gentleman. On the third of
March 1489, his father’s friend the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII created him
Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_; but, as he was only of the
age of thirteen years, the creation was reserved _in petto_, while he
continued his studies under Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano);
who, in 1492 wrote to the Pope about his pupil,
“This youth is so formed by nature and education that, being inferior
to none in genius, he yields not to his equals in industry, nor to his
teachers in learning, nor to old men in gravity of demeanour. He
naturally is honest and ingenuous, and he has been so strictly bred
that never from his mouth there comes a lewd, or even a light,
expression. Though he be so young, his judgement is so secure that
even the old respect him as a father. He sucked piety and religion
with his mother’s milk, preparing himself for his sacred office even
from his cradle. (Ep. v. Lib. VIII)”
In the Publick Consistory of the twenty-second of March 1492, he was
admitted to the Sacred College, receiving the scarlet hat and the
cardinalitial sapphire ring, (whose value was six hundred zecchini
d’oro—say, £1200); and he was of the age of sixteen years, three months,
eleven days.
During his cardinalate his most delightful trait was the loving kindness
which he shewed to his young cousin Giulio, (Botticelli’s most precious
model), the bastard of Don Giuliano de’ Medici, by Madonna Antonia
Gorini of Florence, and who ended his life as the Lord Clement P.P. VII.
Cardinal Giovanni got him ennobled as a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem
of Malta, and Prior of Capua; and gave him an honourable position in his
household as confidential counsellor: and, indeed, it was to Don Giulio,
attending him as esquire in the Conclave of March 1513, that Cardinal
Giovanni generously said, when the result of the squittino (scrutiny)
was made known, “Come Giulio, let us enjoy the Papacy, since God hath
given it to Us:” and he immediately raised His cousin to the purple,
giving him His Own vacated rank of Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in
Domnica_.[95]
Cardinal Giovanni, like all the Medici, was congenitally myopic. In all
presentments of him, there is the slight forward bend or set of the neck
which marks the short-sighted man. Messer Paolo Giovio says that he
surveyed the world through a concave crystal, and that this affected his
skill as a sportsman. Messer Rafaele Sanzio’s portrait of him and his
cousin shows him with this concave crystal spy-glass in his hand. No
doubt his physical incompleteness wonderfully aided in developing his
enchanting taste and temperament; for it is well-known that the best
artist is the man who does not see all.[96]
The crowd, waiting outside the Conclave of 1513 for the annunciation of
the new Pope, were confronted by a doorway builded of the fragments of
other buildings. Some of the stones bore portions of mutilated
inscriptions; and the crowd amused itself by piecing these together. But
there was one large stone above the lintel, whose inscription baffled
explanation. It bore the letters
M. C. C. C. C. X. L.
and presumably had come from some edifice dated 1440. Presently, the
door was flung open; and the scarlet Cardinal-Archdeacon proclaimed, “I
announce to you great joy. We have for a Pope the Lord Giovanni de’
Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_, who wills to be
called Leo the Tenth.” And in the doorway stood the white figure of the
new Successor of St. Peter, of the age of thirty eight years, His head
straining a little forward, peering through His half-closed bright eyes,
lifting His hand in Apostolic Benediction. Instantly a wag in the
kneeling crowd explained the cryptic inscription _Multi Caeci Cardinales
Creaverunt Caecum X (decimum) Leonem_; “Many short-sighted cardinals
created a short-sighted one Leo the Tenth.” That is a specimen of wit in
the year 1513, bright, quick, direct, pungent, and finished.
* * * * *
The election of the Lord Leo P.P. X was an immense relief to the Duke
and Duchess of Ferrara. It meant deliverance from unscrupulous
persecution for the Pope’s Holiness now was patrician, and at least a
gentleman, though no enemy to the House of Borgia. So Ferrara and Borgia
went in peace. The duchy had been at war for nearly six years, almost
without cessation; her resources were quite exhausted; her exchequer was
empty. So keen was the distress, that, in order not to add to his
people’s burden by pressing for his revenues, Duke Alfonso pawned his
plate, and Duchess Lucrezia her jewels which were of enormous value.
These were redeemed three years later: and it is to the inventory, made
when they were pawned, that modern knowledge of their extraordinary
rarity and worth is due.
* * * * *