That letter was written in September 1799. It is not clear by what route

Cardinal Borgia’s courier carried it to England, nor how long was

occupied by the journey. It manifestly is probable that the frightful

disorders in France closed the short road through that country; and the

short road in time of peace was not traversed in less than three weeks.

An English lady[130] who married Don Lorenzo Sforza-Cesarini Duca di

Segni, etc., (they were the grand-parents of the present Duke Lorenzo,)

made the journey with post-horses in the autumn of 1837; and described

it in detail to the present writer a few years ago, incidentally

mentioning that, between London and Rome, it was necessary to pass in

and out of the Pontifical States no less than five times, with the usual

custom-house inconveniences. What then would the journey have been in

1799, when France, internally distracted, was inimical to all and

sundry, especially to England and England’s friends! Further the journey

from Vienna to Venice occupied a fortnight, as may be seen from the

dates of succeeding letters on a later page. These considerations are

necessary to explain the fact that three months elapsed before Cardinal

Borgia was able to acknowledge Sir John Coxe Hippisley’s reply; for,

during those three months, the journey—the long journey—had to be made

twice over by the courier, going and returning; which would leave little

time for action between.

It is curious to think that these events occurred only a hundred years

ago; and that this intimate view of the private and secret history of

the last royal Stewart, and the last illustrious Borgia, should have

been suffered to remain obscure. Had there been any disgraceful element

in the transaction, concealment could be understood: but contrariwise,

the very greatest credit is reflected upon all concerned, on Borgia, on

Stewart, on Englishmen, and—to give the devil his due—on the Elector of

Hanover, vulgarly called George III. The indiscretions, the human

weaknesses of the earlier Borgia are the things by which they are

remembered:

“The evil, that men do, lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Here, then, is a good deed of a Borgia, which incontinently shall be

translated from its inadequate sepulchre, ostended for the veneration of

the faithful, and enshrined anew more worthily. Upon receiving Cardinal

Borgia’s enchanting letter, Sir John Coxe Hippisley sent to his Eminence

a draft for £500, begging him to offer this to the August Personage,

“for the exigencies of the moment”; and promising to air the matter in a

proper quarter.

The meticulous precautions which invariably are taken to secure the

freedom of the Conclave for the election of a Pope, already have been

described here. On the death of the Lord Pius P.P. VI alluded to in

Cardinal Borgia’s letter, when Rome was in the hands of the French and

all Italy distracted by foreign occupation, the Sacred College made its

way by slow degrees and amid infinite peril to Venice, where it

assembled in the convent on the Island of San Giorgio, and enclosed

itself in Conclave with all formality. This means, among other things,

that no cardinals were allowed to receive or to send out letters, unless

these were subjected to a rigorous examination by the Cardinal-Censors;

the object of which is to prevent the voting from being influenced by

secular and external Powers or considerations.

On the fourth of January 1800, the said Cardinal-Censors on the Island

of San Giorgio permitted the egress of a letter from Cardinal Borgia to

Sir John Coxe Hippisley, acknowledging the receipt of the £500, speaking

of the gratitude and satisfaction of the August Personage at knowing

what was being done on his behalf. “I find myself shut up here in

Conclave for the election of a new pontiff, (says Cardinal Borgia,) with

thirty-four cardinals, who, when they heard of the English generosity to

their Illustrious Colleague,”[131]—and he describes the many kindly

complimentary and genuinely admiring sentiments which these Italian

Cardinals, in common with Italians of all epochs and of all ranks,

(excepting cardinals of the Nineteenth Century)[132] always felt and

feel for England and the English. The letter is subscribed in the

politely respectful third person,

“Suo servitore cordialissinio ed Amico

“S. CARD. BORGIA.”

On the twenty-sixth of February 1800 a second letter was allowed to pass

out of the Conclave from Cardinal Borgia to Sir John; a short note, in

fact, which said that an English gentleman[133] had just been permitted

to enter the Conclave, being the bearer of “a very polite letter from

Lord Minto” to the August Personage. This “very polite letter” is given

in its original form, as well for its own sake, as for an example of the

French of English diplomacy a hundred years ago. It is addressed to the

Cardinal-Duke of York.

“DE VIENNA, _9 Feb. 1800_.

“MONSEIGNEUR,

J’ai reçu les Ordres de Sa Majesté le Roi de la Grande Bretagne de

faire remettre à Votre Eminence la somme de deux mille livres

Sterling, et d’assurer V.E. qu’en acceptant cette marque de l’interêt

et de l’estime de S.M. elle lui fera un sensible plaisir. Il “m’est en

même terns ordonné de faire part à V.E. des intentions de SM. de lui

transmettre une pareille somme de £2000 Sterling au mois de Juillet si

les circonstances demeuraient telles que V.E. continuât à la desirer.

“J’ai donc l’honneure de la prevenir que la somme de £2000 Stg. est

déposée à la maison de Messieurs Coutts et Cie., Banquiers à Londres à

la disposition de Votre Eminence. En executant les Ordres du Roi mon

Maitre, V.E. me rendra la justice de croire que je suis infiniment

sensible à l’honneur d’être l’organe des sentiments nobles et

touchants, qui ont dicté a S.M. la démarche dont elle a daigné me

charger, et qui lui ont été inspirés d’un coté par ses propres vertus,

et de l’autre tant par les qualités éminentes de la Personne Auguste,

qui en est l’object, que par son désir de reparer partout où il est

possible, les desastres dans lesquels de fleau Universel de nos jours

a paru vouloir entrainer par préférence tout ce qui est le plus digne

de Vénération et de Respect.

“Je prie V.E. d’agreer les assurances de mes hommages respectueux et

de la Vénération profonde avec laquelle

“J’ai l’honneur d’être

“De Votre Eminence

“Le très humble et très obeissant Serviteur

“MINTO

“_Env. Ex. et Min. Plen. de S.M.B.

“à la Cour de Vienne._”

Stripped of polite verbiage this letter conveyed to Cardinal King Henry

IX the offer of an annuity of £4000 for so long as he might please to

need it. It is ungracious to say with some Scots that, after all, the

Elector of Hanover only offered to the Majesty of England a calf of his

own cow. The situation was fraught with difficulty. The essentials and

the accidentals of his birth combined to make Cardinal Henry Benedict

Stewart the only rightful King of England. He could not help that; any

more than any man can help being the son of his father and mother, born

in lawful wedlock; and King-ship, being of Divine origin, can only be

conferred or transferred or confirmed by the Divinity acting through His

Earthly Vicegerent, the Roman Pontiff. With these principles to guide

him, and the circumstances being as they were, Cardinal Henry grandly

decided to be king only in name. His mere existence, however, made the

tenure of the occupant of the English Throne to some extent uncertain:

for an alien dynasty can never feel entirely comfortable while any of

the dispossessed remain. The old order had changed, and had given place

to new: but the New could not know that the Old would accept—would

condescend to accept—help in its private necessity. It was a most

delicate position. On the other hand, it was out of the question that

the King’s Majesty should make known to Englishmen his desperate plight,

for Cardinal Henry was every inch a King. But the good heart and clever

pen of Cardinal Stefano Borgia solved that difficulty, by invoking on

grounds of private friendship the intervention of Sir John Coxe

Hippisley.

The method of relief, when relief was seen to be required, was a task

for the wits of diplomacy. When the English choose to change their

sovereign dynasties, they at least should secure their nation against

the disgrace of seeing, perishing in indigence, one who truly could say

_My grandfather formerly wore the Crown, touched for the king’s evil on

the steps of St. Winifred’s Well, and reigned as King in England_. The

spectacle of the blind beggar of Constantinople, crying “Date obolum

Belisario” is shameful enough for one continent, and can be spared the

disgrace of repetition. A pension on the Civil List would have met the

needs of the case: but it would have had many disadvantages. It would

necessitate publicity; it would have been most disagreeable to the

gentle pride of the August Personage whose life and character commanded

nothing but respect.

At the present day, one is accustomed to hear members of a certain class

of Scot, desirous of shining at least in a reflected light, boasting

that their forbears were “out in the ’15” or “out in the ’45.” One does

not so often hear an Englishman congratulating himself on his descent

from heroes who endured confiscation, attainder, in the self-same

cause—but in 1688. The English resist aggression at the outset; they are

used to, are glad to, make sacrifices for, not bargains of, their

sovereigns; and, needing no reflected light, they are not good boasters.

There is no doubt that a great deal of Scots flesh was given in 1715 and

in 1745 for the House of Stewart. There is no doubt that some Scots gold

was offered on the same account. But one has not heard that the loyal

Scots—loyal, as they say, to the Stewarts,—ever attempted to minister to

the necessities of their liege Lord, the Cardinal King Henry the Ninth.

Ethics, derived from Master John Knox, whose iconoclastic ardour stopped

at the “saxpence” and made it the idolatrous object of supreme worship

of dulia and hyperdulia and latria, no doubt mitigated the sentiment of

loyalty in regard to a king who happened to be a prelatical papist. A

national fund, a fund raised by the adherents of the Stewarts, to

provide a yearly income for their exiled sovereign, would have been

graceful and acceptable. It is the duty of a people to maintain its

monarch; and it is not beneath the dignity of monarchy to accept such

maintenance offered in loyalty. Peter’s Pence is nothing but a fund of

yearly offerings instituted by King Ælfred the Great of England for the

maintenance of the Sovereign Pontiff. In the case of Cardinal King Henry

the Ninth, however, no such guaranteed annuity was forthcoming from the

nation of which no inconsiderable part admitted his right to rule.

Loyalty to the Stewarts—practical living loyalty—was confined to

individuals, few in number; and it became necessary to seek another

method of solving the difficulty.

Private munificence, towards the King _de jure_, on the part of—let it

be said, for Cardinal Henry himself said it, and none had more right to

decide than he—on the part of the King _de facto_, King George the

Third, the official representative of the English nation, was the only

possible method, which was likely to be agreeable or acceptable.

Therefore, an annuity of £4000 was offered, not from the Civil List, not

from the Nation, but from the Privy Purse, from King George to Cardinal

Henry—from one English Gentleman to another. The delicate tact and

straightforwardness with which the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister

Plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty at the Court of Vienna made the

offer; the complimentary terms of his letter to the “August Personage;”

his guarded denunciation of the French robbers of the Cardinal as “the

Universal Plague of our time which seems to design the destruction of

all that is most worthy of Veneration and Respect;” his proffered

homage;—all these qualities egregiously deserved Cardinal Stefano

Borgia’s epithet “very polite,” and made the proposal one which

honourably and gratefully could be accepted. At least the Cardinal-Duke

of York was pleased to think so, as the two letters following here will

shew. It may be observed that they are written in incoherent and

peculiar English. Let it be remembered that they were written by a very

old gentleman, under circumstance of extreme agitation; in a language of

appalling difficulty which, though his native tongue, was altogether

strange to him; for he had not lived in England, and, in his life-long

exile, he used nothing but Latin with his clergy or Italian with his

friends.

He wrote from the Conclave on the Island of San Giorgio on the

twenty-sixth of February 1800; and the letters are sealed with the Royal

Arms of England and France surmounted with the Cardinalitial Hat instead

of the Crown.

(I. To Lord Minto.)

“With the arrival of Mr. Oakley who has been this morning with Me, I

have received by his discourse, and much more by your letters, so many

Tokens of your regard, singular consideration, and attention for My

Person, that oblige Me to abandon all sort of ceremony, and to begin

abruptly to assure you My dear lord, that your letters have been most

acceptable to Me in all shapes and regards. I did not in the least

doubt of the noble way of thinking of your generous and beneficent

Sovereign; but I did not expect to see in writing so many and so

obliging expressions that well calculated by the Persons who receive

them and understand their force, impressed in their minds a lively

sense of tenderness and gratitude which, I own to you, obliges me more

than the generosity spontaneously imparted.

“I am in reality at a loss to express in writing all the sentiments of

My Heart, and for that reason leave it entirely to the interest you

take in all that regards My Person to make known in an energetical and

convenient manner all I fain would say to express My thankfulness

which may easily be by you comprehended after having perused the

contents of this letter.

“I am much obliged to you to have indicated to Me the way I may write

unto Coutts the Court Banker, and shall follow your friendly

insinuations. In the meantime I am very desirous that you should be

convinced of My sentiments of sincere esteem and friendship with which

My dear lord with all My heart I embrace you.

“HENRY CARDINAL.”

(II. To Sir John Coxe Hippisley.)

“Your letters fully convince me of the cordial interest you take in

all that regards My Person, and am happy to acknowledge that

principally I owe to your friendly efforts, and to them of your

friends, the succour generously granted to relieve the extreme

necessities into which I have been driven by the present dismal

circumstances. I cannot sufficiently express how sensible I am to your

good heart: and write these few lines in the first place to contest to

you these My most sincere and grateful sentiments and then to inform

you by means of Mr. Oakley an English Gent^n arrived here last week, I

have received a letter from Lord Minto from Vienna, advising Me that

he had orders from his Court to remit to Me the sum of £2000 Sterling,

and that in the month of July I may again draw, if I desire it, for

another equal sum. The letter is written in so extremely obliging and

genteel a manner, and with expressions of singular regard and

consideration for Me, that, I assure you, excited in Me most

particular and lively sentiments, not only of satisfaction for the

delicacy with which the affair has been managed, but also of gratitude

for the generosity with which has been provided for my necessity.

I have answered Lord Minto’s letter, and gave it saturday last to Mr.

Oakley who was to send it by that evening’s post” (the ambassadorial

courier) “to Vienna, and have written in a manner that I hope will be

to his lordship’s satisfaction. I own to you that the succour granted

to Me could not be more timely, for, without it, it would have been

impossible for Me to subsist on account of the absolutely irreparable

loss of all My income, the very funds being also destroyed; so that I

would otherwise have been reduced during the short remainder of My

life to languish in misery and indigence. I would not loose a moment’s

time to apprize you of all this, and am very certain that your

experimented good heart will find proper means to make known in an

energical and proper manner, these sentiments of My grateful

acknowledgment.

“Your best of friends,

“HENRY CARDINAL.”

Of the remaining history of H.R.H. The Cardinal-Duke of York it is not

necessary to speak here. He died in 1807, and was honourably buried in

the Vatican Basilica with his father and his brother, in a tomb which

bears their names and styles, James III, Charles III, Henry IX, last of

the Royal House of Stewart, three kings “who paid three crowns for a

mass,” who sacrificed the crowns of Great Britain, France, and Ireland,

rather than their religious convictions. May they rest in peace.[134]

* * * * *

The action of Cardinal Stefano Borgia which just has been described, was

not the only evidence of nobility of soul that he exhibited during the

long Conclave of 1799–1800. He did, or rather he did not do, another

deed; the neglect of which suffices to win him high renown.

It already has been manifested here, that the tide of human ambition

runs at its highest in the Conclave for the election of a Pope. At

different periods of history, the papacy has been regarded as an

appanage of the empire, or of the great Italian baronies, Crescenzi,

Colonna, Orsini, Savelli, Medici. The House of Borgia, not without

reason of a kind, desired to rank with these; and cardinals of that

House complacently expected election. There already had been two Borgia

Popes, the strenuous Lord Calixtus P.P. III. and the invincible Lord

Alexander P.P. VI. The great-grandson of St. Francisco de Borja,

Cardinal Don Gaspero, publicly hoped to be the third, and was

disappointed. Now, in the last year of the Eighteenth Century, was

enclosed in another Conclave another Borgia Cardinal, the noble Cardinal

Stefano, and it confidently was expected that he would emerge therefrom

not Stefano, but Peter, crowned with the Triregno, the pontifical diadem

made of feathers of white peacocks encircled with three crowns of gold.

Humanly speaking his chance of election was not chance but certainty. He

was admitted on all hands to be _facile Princeps_ of the Sacred College.

His learning, his dominant power, his simple piety, his universally

sympathetic personality, assured him of an unanimous majority, had he

chosen to enter the ranks of the cardinals-competitors, that is to say,

of the cardinals who were eligible and also willing.

When a man is aware of his own ability to do certain legitimate and

beneficent deeds, the world is wont to call him fool as well as knave

when he neglects to seek the situation, the opportunity, for exercising

his peculiar talent. In this matter, the world is not ill-advised. Then,

if an ecclesiastic is convinced that, in a certain position of

authority, he can do God-service, why should he be deterred from seeking

that position by craven terror of the inevitable scowls, rhodomontades,

and lampoons of envious incompetent venal mediocrity? The Lord Pius P.P.

II was not afraid. He knew His own powers. He was convinced of the

purity of His intentions; and, as Cardinal Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de’

Piccolhuomini, he met the schemes of Cardinal Guillaume d’Estoutville in

the Conclave of 1458 with counter-schemes, and accomplished His Own

elevation to the pontifical throne. There is another and more intimate

example, nearer home, and no later than the last century: the example of

a provost of a metropolitan cathedral chapter, who knew his power, who

knew the lawfully designated successor of the archbishop to be unfitted

for the responsibilities of office, who kept an agent at the Vatican to

urge his candidature when the see was vacant, until the Lord Pius P.P.

IX, declaring it to be _un colpo-di-stato di Domeniddio_, transformed

the convert-provost into Westminster’s Archbishop. It cannot be alleged

that Cardinal Henry Edward Manning became inglorious by giving practical

evidence of his contempt for the ridiculous and wicked doctrine which is

preached by vicious degenerates, that _the Almighty intends much of His

Good Work to be wasted_. It cannot be alleged that Cardinal Manning was

actuated by personal arrogance, or by desire for personal

aggrandisement. His whole life of saint-like self-sacrifice, of

intensest humility, of ascetic mortification, of ceaseless toil for the

spiritual and temporal welfare of all men without distinction of creed,

has proved the contrary. By the same token, on this score, there would

have been no stain on the noble character of Cardinal Stefano Borgia had

he desired to exert himself to compass his own election to the Throne of

Peter.

But he did not so desire. Indeed, he shewed himself unwilling to be

elected; and the Sacred College made choice of the next Most Eminent

Lord, the Benedictine Cardinal Gregorio Luigi Barnabo Chiaramonte, whose

accession was proclaimed under the name of the Lord Pius P.P. VII. So

Christendom still lacks the third Borgia Pontiff,—a lack unlikely soon

to be made good; seeing that, since Cardinal Stefano, no Borgia wears

the scarlet hat; yet by no means irremediable, seeing that the House of

Borgia is living, and not dead.

Little remains to be written of the last pre-eminent Borgia. On the

death of Cardinal Gerdil, Cardinal Stefano was promoted from the

Proprefecture to the Prefecture of Propaganda Fide.

In 1804, while attending the debile Lord Pius P.P. VII to Paris,

(whither His Holiness had been summoned for the coronation as emperor of

the Corsican upstart Consul Napoleon Buonaparte,) Cardinal Stefano

Borgia died, at the age of seventy-three years, on the Festival of St.

Clement the twenty-third of November, at Lyons, and was buried there in

the cathedral. It is worth noting that he had been baptized in the

cathedral of St. Clement at Velletri in December 1731; that he derived

his cardinalitial Title from the church of St. Clement in Rome; and that

on the Festival of St. Clement 1804, he died. His friend, Fra Pietro

Paolino da San Bartolomeo, a sandalled Carmelite, wrote his biography.

The celebrated Cancellieri composed his elegy, which has been

republished by Bodoni. The Borgia Museum of Antiquities which he

established in Velletri, and whose elaborate catalogue is the work of

his uncle Don Filippaurelio Visconti, in chief part is in the Royal

Museum of Naples; the College of Propaganda has the lesser part, and

also his splendid library.

* * * * *

The House of Borgia continues to flourish in the descendants of Cardinal

Stefano’s brother, the CAVALIERE GIAMPAOLO BORGIA OF VELLETRI, a general

in the pontifical army; who married the representative of two of the

most important houses of the Romagna, often mentioned in these pages as

having been subdued by the splendid Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) di

Valentinois della Romagna, in the campaigns of 1499 and 1501–2,—the

Countess Alcmena[135] Baglioni-Malatesta of Perugia. Eighteen children

were the issue of this marriage. The names of five have been recovered

at the date of writing, viz., the eldest, Cavaliere Camillo; Don

Clemente; Don Alessandro; Don Cesare; and the youngest Don Francesco.

(α) THE CAVALIERE CAMILLO BORGIA, born 1777, was Adjutant-General

and Field-Marshal under King Joachim Murat of Naples;

Aulic-Counsellor and Chargé d’affaires of the King of Denmark

in Rome; Knight of the Legion of Honour,[136] and of the Order

of the Two Sicilies.[137] Distinguished in arms by his

military talent, he was not less renowned in the kingdom of

Letters. After his retirement from the army, he travelled much

in Northern Africa to study Latin antiquities. At least one of

his works has achieved fame—the _Planisfero Borgiano_. He

married Mdlle. Adelaide Quaison, (who died in 1865); and he

died in 1817, leaving issue

DON ETTORE BORGIA, born at Velletri in 1802, a Roman Patrician,

Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Order of St. John of

Jerusalem of Malta, Knight-Commander of the Order of St.

Gregory the Great,[138] Gonfalonier of Velletri, National

Representative of Velletri in the Roman Parliament of 1848,

and Provisional Governour of Velletri in 1871. He departed

this life, in 1892, at Melazzo in Sicily, being of the age of

ninety years; and his death without issue extinguished the

Veliternian Branch of the House of Borgia.

(β) DON CLEMENTE BORGIA OF ROME, who married Donna Luisa Calderoni,

and died in 1852, leaving issue,

(α) Don Adriano, who died unmarried:

(β) Don Tito, who died unmarried:

(γ) Don Costantino, a prelate, (author of _De Cathedra Romana Sancti

Petri Principus Apostolorum Oratio_, etc. a quarto published at

Rome in 1845;) died unmarried in 1878:

(δ) DON AUGUSTO, a prelate, born 1820. His death, on the second of

September 1900, without issue, extinguished the Roman Branch of

the House of Borgia.

(γ) DON ALESSANDRO BORGIA, born 1788, Balì of the Order of St. John of

Jerusalem of Malta, died 1872.

(δ) DON CESARE BORGIA, was a Knight-Commander of the Order of St. John

of Jerusalem of Malta; and followed the profession of a man of

letters in Ferrara, (the city of which his kinswoman, Madonna

Lucrezia, formerly had been the sovereign duchess,) until his

death in 1861.

_(Here should be inserted the names of thirteen children of the

Cavaliere Giampaolo Borgia and his wife the Countess Alcmena

Baglioni-Malatesta of Perugia, which, at present are not accessible. The

eighteenth and youngest son of the said Cavaliere Giampaolo was,)_

(ε) THE NOBLE FRANCESCO BORGIA, born 1794; Knight of Honour and

Devotion, and Hereditary Commandant of the Order of St. John of

Jerusalem of Malta; Knight of the Order of the Lily of

France[139]; Knight of the Order of the two Sicilies; Patrician

of Rome: who married the Noble Luigia Ferrari di Cremona,

Dowager-Countess Cassera (died 1855); and established the House

of Borgia in Milan on his marriage with a Milanese lady in 1822.

He died in 1861 leaving issue,

(α) THE NOBLE ALCMENA, married to the Marquess Paolo Litta-Modignani

of Milan:

(β) THE NOBLE CESARE BORGIA, (_the present Head of the Illustrious

House of Borgia_); Knight of Honour and Devotion and Hereditary

Commandant of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta;

Patrician of Rome, (which patriciate gives its holder the right

to the title of Count;) born at Milan on the twenty-seventh of

January 1830; married in 1856 Donna Clementina Tarantola (who

died in 1884) and has issue,

(α) DON FRANCESCO BORGIA, born in 1863; married in 1885 the

Marchioness Eugenia Litta-Modignani di Menzago e Vinago,

Patrician of Milan; and has issue,

(α) DON CESARE BORGIA, born 1886:

(β) DON ALESSANDRO BORGIA, born 1898:

AD MULTOS ANNOS

* * * * *

“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;

SETTLES INTO THE STEADY GENIAL GLARE, THE BRILLIANT LIGHT, THAT MEN

CALL FIRE; BURNS AWAY TO SLOWLY-EXPIRING ASHES; SAVE WHERE SMOULDERING

EMBERS FLICKER, AND NURSE THE GLOW, UNTIL PROPITIOUS BREEZES BLOW IT

INTO LIFE AGAIN.”

APPENDICES

Appendix I

ABOUT WOMEN

Very little can be said of the women of the Borgian Era; for the simple

reason that they as yet had not renounced and abjured the observation of

the maxim of Euripides

“_Women should stay at home and talk._”

For women, then, to cultivate an intellect was rare. The sacred offices

of mother and wife, of comforter and helper, chiefly occupied them. Yet

no stupid restrictions were invented to harass and embitter the

exceptions to this rule, the freaks, the Sports of Nature, (in modern

medical phraseology;) and thus the splenetic self-assertive

abnormalities of the twentieth century were avoided. Women, who so

willed, were absolutely free; they were admitted to the same

intellectual training as men in the universities and colleges[140];

professorial chairs rewarded talent male or female; and a learned lady

was called Virago, in no sarcastic vein but in flattering admiration,

the word being used in its scriptural sense. (_Vulgate_, Gen. ii. 23.)

Of these the most famous were Madonna Vittoria Colonna and Madonna

Veronica Gambara. The first was the daughter of Don Fabrizio Colonna,

Grand Constable of Naples, (who already has been mentioned as helping

the Duchess Lucrezia Borgia’s consort to evade the snare of the Lord

Julius P.P. II,) by his wife Madonna Agnesina di Montefeltro, daughter

of Duke Federigo of Urbino. She was born in 1490; and married at

nineteen in 1509 to Don Ferrando Francisco d’Avalos, who died in 1525.

She consecrated the remaining twenty-two years of her life to her

husband’s memory and to the duties of religion, residing, for the sake

of her reputation, as a parlour-boarder in religious houses at Orvieto,

Viterbo, Ischia, and Rome, where she kept a literary salon. Many

celebrated men were her frequent visitors, among whom may be mentioned

Cardinals Reginald Pole and Giacopo Sadoleto; the poets Marcantonio

Flaminio and Pietro Carnesecchi; and Fra Bernardino Ochino the second

general of the new religion called _Cappuccini_, who, after apostatizing

to write his Twenty-one Dialogues advocating Polygamy as authorized by

the example of the Patriarchs, was in turn expelled by the heresiarchs

of Geneva. But by far the greatest of Madonna Vittoria Colonna’s

admirers was the sculptor-painter-poet Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti,

who respectfully inscribed to her many beautiful sonnets—sonnets which

he hewed out of language, as also he hewed statues out of marble, and

with the same aloof and rugged majesty. The following is given as a

specimen, not only of the style of Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti, but

also for the profession of faith contained in the latter half of the

sestett—a human document which lends marvellous light to the more secret

soul of this true artist and gigantic misanthrope.

“Per ritornar là donde venne fora “As one who will reseek her home of

light,

“L’immortal forma al tuo carcer “Thy form immortal to this

terreno prison-house

“Venne com’angel di pietà si pieno “Descended, like an angel piteous,

“Che sana ogn’intelleto, e’l mondo “To heal all hearts and make the

onora. whole world bright.

“Questo sol m’arde, e questo “’Tis this that thralls my soul in

m’innamora; love’s delight,

“Non pur di fora il tuo volto “Not thy clear face of beauty

sereno: glorious;

“Ch’amor non già di cosa che vien “For he who harbours virtue still

meno will choose

“Tien ferma speme, in cu’ virtù “To love what neither years nor

dimora. death can blight.

“Ne altro avvien di cose altere e “So fares it ever with things high

nuove and rare

“In cui si preme la natura; e’l “Wrought in the sweat of nature;

cielo heaven above

“E ch’a lor parto largo “Showers on their birth the

s’apparecchia. blessings of her prime:

“Ne Dio, suo grazia, mi se mostra “Nor hath God deigned to shew

altrove, Himself elsewhere

“Piu che’n alcun leggiadro e mortal “More clearly than inhuman forms

velo; sublime,

“E quel sol amo, perche’n quel si “Which, since they image Him, alone

specchia. I love.”

MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI. TRANSLATION BY JOHN ADDINGTON

SYMONDS.

Madonna Vittoria Colonna herself was a poet, but her literary history is

not included in the Borgian Era. It may be mentioned that her descendant

and namesake the beautiful Princess Vittoria Colonna married into the

patrician House of Sforza-Cesarina, so prominent in these pages, and is

the mother of the present Duke Lorenzo.

Madonna Veronica Gambara, the friend and fellow-virago of Madonna

Vittoria Colonna was the daughter of Count Gianfrancesco Gambara, and

Madonna Alda Pia da Carpi. She was born in 1485, and educated by Messer

Pietro Bembo (afterwards Cardinal); married in 1509 to Don Guilberto di

Cor Reggio; and widowed nine years later. At her Palazzo Marsili at

Bologna, on the occasion of the coronation of Caesar Carlos V in 1530,

she received in princely state the scholars of the day, “Bembo, Molza,

the witty Francesco Berni, the learned Vida, the stately Trissio, the

noble-hearted Marcantonio Flaminio, Paolo Giovio and Francesco

Guicciardini.” She lived till 1550, a good mother to her two sons,

Ippolito and Girolamo, noble, learned, virtuous, and a poet and

woman-of-letters of much distinction.

Appendix II

CREATURE UNPROCLAIMED, OF THE LORD ALEXANDER P.P. VI

Query? Whether the Lord Pietro Ciero can be considered a cardinal of His

creation?

“Vidi ego, ingint Andreas Victorellus, excriptum diploma fide publica

firmatum, datum Romae sub annulo Piscatoris anno 1501 die xvii Aprilis

in quo haec verba: _Te in cardinalem approbamus, quod tamen sub

silentio tenebis, donec tempus idoneum aderit_.”

Appendix III

PAPAL TRIBUTE

The following tribute was used to be paid yearly on the Vigil of St.

Peter, xxviii June, in accordance with the rule of the Lord Boniface

P.P. IX.

By the city of Forrara Two thousand scudi and a chalice

„ „ „ „ Benevento „ „ „ „ „ „

„ „ island „ Sardinia „ „ „ „ „ „

„ „ city „ Terracina A white horse

„ „ „ „ Gallese A stag

„ „ „ „ Porto A brace of pheasants

„ „ „ „ Monte Caprello A dog and a sparrow-hawk

„ „ „ „ Sant’Ippolito A brace of partridges

„ „ College of Apostolick Scribes A pyx and one hundred scudi

„ „ „ „ „ Notaries A silver chalice

„ „ Kingdom of Naples The “Chinea.” This was a valuable

white horse or mule, richly

caparisoned, carrying seven

thousand ducati d’oro in a

splendid coffer. The Prince

Colonna, as Grand Constable of

Naples, was the official in

charge of the “Chinea.”

Monks and friars belonging to Abbeys which were Papal Peculiars, (—the

Abbey of Westminster was a Papal, for five hundred years before it was a

Royal, Peculiar,—) instead of paying tribute, pronounced the Holy Name

of JESUS, when their names were called at this ceremonial.

Appendix IV

SCHOLARSHIP IN THE BORGIAN ERA

One of the most amusing poses of the Borgian Era was the affectation of

classical antiquity. This pose was engendered of the revival of learning

upon human vanity. Scholars were the favourites of princes and of kings;

and they modelled their mental deportment on that plane. The man who

called himself Pomponius Laetus (for they Latinized or Hellenized even

their names,) was a νόθος of the baronial House of Sanseverini, who

revivified certain pagan cults and, with Cardinal Platino and others,

solemnly and habitually practised them in secret Catacombs. Really, he

was a learned man who owed his learning to his own wits and exertions,

and not to the help or influence of his own kin; who, while he was a

poor unknown pupil of Messer Lorenzo Valla, refused to acknowledge him.

But, when at last he had won fame and was sought by the best society,

the Sanseverini, being anxious to have at least the credit of an

intellect, made him an overture of friendship, and offered to take him

to their arms. His rejoinder is worth preservation as a specimen as well

of the effect of megalomania, as of the successful imitation of a

classic style. With delicious arrogance he wrote,

“_Pomponius Laetus cognatis et propinquis suis salutem.

“Quod petitis fieri non potest.” Valete._

Writers of the Borgian Era curiously translated contemporary terms and

titles into their classic phraseological equivalent. The Pope was

_Pontifex Maximus_, and _Princeps_. The Emperor was _Caesar Augustus_,

and sometimes _Princeps_. The Cardinals were _Senators_ or _Augurs_,

elders in charge of the lightning (“aliquis senior qui publica fulgura

condit.”) Nuns were _Vestal Virgins_. Excommunication was _Dirae_.

Carnival was the _Lupercalia_. The Padre Eterno became, by the pen of

Bishop Vida of Alba in Piedmont, _Superum Pater Nimbipotens_ and

_Regnator Olympi_. The Santissimo Salvatore was known as Ἥρως; and the

Santo Spirito as Ζέφυρος. Madonna was Ἥρα, Ἀφροδίτη, and Ἀθήνη παρθένος

upon occasion. The saints were gods, δῖος ἢ δῖα, divus vel diva; St.

Christopher was _Herakles_; St. Sebastian, or St. Michael Archangel, was

Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων; St. Gabriel Archangel was _Hermes_; St. Raphael

Archangel was _Asklepios_; St. George, St. Maurice, St. Theodore, were

_Perseus_ or _Theseus_ according to the taste of the writer. This pose

was affected in England as well as in Italy, as may be seen in the

following verse from William Caxton’s _Boke of Curtesye_, A.D. 1477.

“Loke also/ upon Dan John Lydgate

“My maister whylome/ monke at berye

“Worthy to be renomede/ as poete laureate

“I praye to gode in bliss his soul be mercy

“Syngynge _Rex Splendens_ that heuenly kyrye

“Among the Muses Nine celestyalle

“Before the hyest Iubyter of alle.”

The scholarship of the Renascence of learning, however, was not all

empty foolishness, not all the merest pose. The extravagances of the

Yellow School of the day were inevitable; and, though their unreality

soon palls and cloys, they afford ephemeral amusement. But the new

learning did much to improve taste; and, in the hand of men of goodwill,

was of vast benefit to the purity of letters. The following verses are

quoted as additional examples of the style of noted scholars of the

Borgian Era.

ANGELI POLITIANI, MONODIA IN LAURENTIUM MEDICEM.

(Intonata per Arrighum Isae.)

Quis dabit capiti meo

aquam? Quis oculis meis

fontem lacrymarum dabit?

Ut nocte fleam;

ut luce fleam,

sie turtur viduus solet,

sie cygnus moriens solet,

sie luscinia, conqueri.

Neu miser, miser,

O dolor, dolor.

Laurus impetu fulminis,

illa, illa, iacet subito,

laurus omnium celebris

musarum choris,

nympharum choris,

sub cuius patula coma,

et Phœbi lyra blandius,

et vox dulcius insonat.

Nunc muta omnia,

nunc surda omnia.

Quis dabit capiti meo

aquam? Quis oculis meis

fontem lacrymarum dabit?

ut nocte fleam,

ut luce fleam;

sie turtur viduus solet

sie cygnus moriens solet,

sie luscinia, conqueri.

Neu miser, miser,

O dolor, dolor.

ANDREAE NANGERII (NAVAGERO) HYMNUS IN GABRIELEM ARCHANGELUM.

Iam caeli reserat fores

aurato e thalamo exiens

Mater Memnonis, et diem

laeto provocat ore.

Nos te maxime Maximi

minister, canimus, Patris:

quo nullus, qui hominum genus

tam praesens iuvet, usquam est.

Tu nostras celer ad preces,

aures protinus an Deum has

defers: nec tenues sinis

evanescere in auras.

Tu dum fers nova nuncia

virgini Ætherio Patri

dilectae, quibus indicas

Magni vota Tonantis;

nobis fers nova nuncia:

queis a faucibus impii

erepti hostis, in aurea

caeli templi vocamur.

Adsis, o bone: et in dies

semper nos propius iuva

nec patrocinio tuo

unquam mitte tueri.

ANGELI POLITIANI, HYMNUS IN DIVAM VIRGINEM.

O Virgo prudentissima,

quam caelo missus Gabriel,

supremus Regis nuntius,

plenam testatur gratia.

Cuius devota humilitas

gemmis ornata fulgidis

fidentis conscientiae

Amore Deum rapuit.

Te sponsam Factor omnium,

te matrem Dei Filius,

te vocat habitaculum

Suum Beatus Spiritus.

Per te de tetro carcere

antiqui patres exeunt:

per te nobis astriferæ

panduntur aulae limina.

Tu stellis comam cingeris,

tu lunam premis pedibus,

te sole amictam candido

chori stupent angelici.

Tu Stella Maris diceris,

quae nobis inter scopulos

inter obscuros turbines

portum salutis indicas.

Audi Virgo Puerpara,

et Sola Mater Integra,

audi precantes, quaesumus,

tuos Maria servulos.

Repelle mentis tenebras,

disrumpe cordis glaciem,

nos sub tuum praesidium

confugientes protege.

Da nobis in proposito

sancto perseverantiam,

ne noster adversarius

in te sperantes superet:

Sed et cunctis fidelibus,

qui tuum templum visitant,

benigna Mater dexteram

da caelestis auxilii. Amen.

Appendix V

BORGIA DOCUMENTS

_The British Museum possesses the following Original Letters by_

ALESSANDRO BORGIA, _Bishop of Nocera, Prince-Archbishop of Fermo_

viiii Nov. 1717–25

„ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ Apr. 1727

NICCOLO BORGIA, _Bishop of Cava_, xiii Jan. 1752

„ „ „ „ „ xviii Jul. „

DON GASPARO DE BORJA Y VELASCO, _Cardinal-Archbishop of Seville and

Toledo_

„ „ „ „ „ Letter to the Duke of Ossuna 1620

„ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „

concerning his embassy in Rome „

„ „ „ „ xx Dec. 1625

DON JUAN DE BORJA, _Conde de Ficalho_, n.d. Portug. Signed.

DON CARLOS DE BORJA, _Cardinal-Patriarch of the Indies_. xi Oct. 1711

to viiii

Sept.

1724

STEFANO BORGIA, _Cardinal of San Clemente_ ii June 1801

„ „ „ xvii Jan. 1802

„ „ „ to L. Melini, Rome, xviii Aug. 1770

„ „ „ „ A. da Morona, Padua, xviiii June 1798

„ „ „ „ G. Andrei, Padua, i Sept. 1798

CESARE, DETTO BORGIA. _1. As Cardinal._

To the Catholick King and Queen Don Hernando and Dona Isabella of

Spain, on sending a friar with a present, dated 1497, signed C

CAR^{AL} DE VALENCIA.

Very rare.

_2. As Duke._

Holograph to Ricardo Cervini, from Cartoceto, dated i Feb. 1500. Eight

lines of beautiful precise arrogant and masterly writing, signed CESAR

BORGIA DE FRANCIA DUX VALENTIN, with seal.

_The Bodleian Library at Oxford has_

Indulgences conceeded to the college at Windsor (the chapter of St.

George?) by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. Ashmolean MSS. Gasparo de

Borgia, Cardãl, Protestatio in consistorio 1632 nomine Regis Hisp.

Stefano Borgia, Cardãl. Four Latin Letters to C. G. Woide, 1783–7.

Appendix VI

THE BORGIA AS MEN OF LETTERS

ALESSANDRO BORGIA. Bishop of Nocera. Prince-Archbishop of Fermo.

Bonedicti xiii Romani Pontificis ... vita commentario

excerpta etc. Romae. 1741. 4º

Della Cristiana educazione de’ figliuoli. Omelie. Fermo. 1760. 8º

Indulto sopra il Precetto di astenersi dalle opere servili in

alcune Feste. 1752. 4º

Istoria della chiesa e città di Velletri descritta in quattro libri.

Stampatoria Vescovale. Nocera. 1723. 4º

(he also wrote a life of St. Gerald in 1698. _Stefano Borgia in De Cruce

Veliterna. 222._)

Antonio Borgia. Editor of

Poesie de’ Sig. Alunni e convitori del ... Vescovile Seminario ... di

Frascati, dedicate all’Altezza Reale ... del Cardinale Duca d’York,

etc.

Romae. 1772. 4º

Alexander Borgia. Teacher of Languages

Case of the Free Italian Church. 1877

Napoleon III. Italy on the eve of Freedom. 1860.

Novena of Meditations on Abuses of the Church of Rome. 1854.

Bartolomeo Borgia.

La sua vita. Milano. 1888. 8º

(He was a shoemaker of Fara Novarese, born 1818, died 1887; was

converted to protestantism, and became connected with il Rev.

MacDougall and il Dottore Stewart as Colportore della Societa

Biblica Scozzese; made himself an evangelical nuisance, collided

with the Established Church of the country, wherefore he and his

family suffered persecution at the hands of ignorant papists. The

book is illustrated by an awful photograph of this Borgia with a

bible and a billycock-hat, preaching over a satchel, on a painted

background.)

Constantinus Borgia. Son of Don Clemente Borgia, and grandson of

Cavaliere Giampaolo Borgia of Velletri: prelate in Rome: died 1878.

De Cathedra Romana Sancti Petri Principis Apostolorum Oratio, etc.

Romae. 1845. 4º

Damiano Borgia.

Free Christian Church in Italy. Rome. 1880

History of the Gospel in Fara Novarese; an episode of reform

in the nineteenth century. Florence. 1879.

Social Ruin, causes and remedies. 1894.

Fabrizio Borgia. Canon of Velletri. Bishop of Ferentino _inter

Hernicos_, and brother of the Prince-Archbishop Alessandro Borgia

of Fermo.

An Account of the Translation of St. Gerald. 1714.

Gasparo de Borja, Cardinal.

Ossuniano coniuratio quâ D. P. Gyron Ossunae Dux regnum

Neapolitanum ... sibi desponderat, etc.: una cum relatione

stratagematis quo Illustriss. Card̃lis Borgia ... in eam

Provinciam sibi aditum ... fecerit. 1623. 4º

Girolamo Borgia, detto Seniore. Jurisconsult, Bishop of Massa Labrese,

1544 (Massa Sorrentana?)

Incendium ad Avernum Lacum horribile pridie Kal. Octobr.

MDXXXVIII nocte intempestata exortum. Neapoli. 1538.

Epithalamion. 1606. 12º

Juris Civilis, lib. XX. Bulifon. Naples. 1689 (1678?) fol.

Giuseppe di Lorenzo Borgia.

In morte del Cav. G. di Lorenzo Borgia ... avenuta il dì XXX Novembre

MDCCCLXXXII. (Parole, etc.)

Noto. 1882. 8º

Niccolo Borgia.

Il concetto della civiltà greca e sua funzione nella storia.

Dissertatione su tema obbligato, etc. Napoli. 1881. 8º

Paulus Borgia.

De Rabie Canina dissertatio inauguralis, etc. Patavii. 1830. 8º

Rosario Borgia.

Poesie in idioma Calabrese. Napoli. 1839. 8º

These innocent little verses valuably preserve the dialect of what was

once a Greek colony. The author was a priest of the Oratory of San

Filippo Neri; and wrote sonnets

For a seminarist-friend,

To the same on becoming prefect of the seminary-kitchen,

On the Triumph of Christ,

On San Fortunato Martire,

On San Filippo Neri,

On the occasion of the death of his father, Don Francescantonio

Borgia, Patrician of Mileto (a city of the commune of Mileto in

Calabria, containing 3000 inhabitants,) etc., etc., etc.

Stefano Borgia, Cardinal.

Kalendarium Venetum saec. xj. ex Cod. Membranaceo Bibliotheca S.

Salvatoris Bononiae, a S.B. nunc primum in lucem editum. (Anecdota

Literaria etc. II.) 1773. 8º

Fragmentum Copticum ex Actis S. Coluthi ... quod nunc primum in

lucem profert S.B. (Anec. Lit. IIII.) 1773. 8º

De miraculis Sancti Coluthi et reliquis actorum Sancti Panesnice

martyrum ... Praeit dissertatio S. Card. B. de cultu S. Coluthi.

1793. 4º

Pii II oratio de bello Tureis inferendo, eruta ... et illustrata a

S.B. 1774. 8º

Breve istoria del dominio temporale della Sede Apostolica nelle duc

Sicilie. S.B. 1788–9. 4º

Difesa del dominio temporale della Sede Apostolica nelle due

Sicilie. 1791. 4º

Breve istoria dell’antica città di Tadino nell’Umbria ed esatta

relazione della ultime ricerche fatte sulle sue ruine. Romae

1751. 8º

De Cruce Vaticana en dono Justini Augusti in Parasceve maioris

hebdomadae publicae venerationi exhiberi solita commentarius;

cui accedit ritus salutationis Crucis in Ecclesia Autiochena

Syrorum servatus nunc primum Syriaee et Latine editus adnotation

ibusque inlustratus auctore S.B. Romae. 1779 fol.

De cruce Veliterna commentarius. Romae. 1780. 4º

Dissertatione filologica sopra un antica gemma intagliata

(Caloghiera A. Nuova raccolta d’Opuscoli III.) 1775. 12º

Marmorea monumenta Beatissimo.... Pio VI. Pont. Opt. Mar ... a

Veliternis ... in palatio senatorio dedicata S. Borgia ... typis

evulgari curavit. Velletri. 1775. 4º

Memorie Istoriche della Pontificia Città di Benevento dal secolo

VIII al secolo XVIII, etc. Tom. I. II. III. Roma. 1763–9. 4º

Monumento di Giovanni XVI. illustrato per S.B. Roma. 1750. 8º

Vaticana Confessio Beati Petri Principis Apostolorum, chronologicis

tam veterum quam recentiorum scriptorum testimoniis inlustrata.

Romae. 1776. 4º

“IMPROBE FACIT QUI

“IN ALIQUO LIBRO

“INGENIOSUS EST.”

MARTIAE.

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

London & Edinburgh

-----

Footnote 1:

The epithet _Most Eminent_ (Eminentissimo) was granted to cardinals by

the Lord Urban P.P. VIII, 1630. Prior to that, they were styled _Most

Illustrious_ (Illustrissimo); or, in the case of the Cardinal-Dean and

Cardinal-Nephews, _Most Honourable_ and _Most Worshipful_

(Osservantissimo, Colendissimo).

Footnote 2:

They claim descent from the Gens Julia. Their armorials show the Bear

(Orsini) chained to the Column (Colonna) with the Imperial Eagle

displayed in chief.

Footnote 3:

The kingdoms of Aragon, Naples, the two Sicilies, and Jerusalem.

Footnote 4:

_Pater Patrum_; the official style of the Roman Pontiff.

Footnote 5:

The process of canonisation of King Ælfred, though initiated by a

Majesty of England (himself a saint _by acclamation_), has not yet

been completed by the Court of Rome after four hundred and fifty

years.

Footnote 6:

Religion—a gathering together for a pious purpose. It was the

fifteenth century equivalent for Order or Society.

Footnote 7:

The Lord Clement P.P. VII (Giulio de Medici), 1523–34, appears on

Cellini’s lovely medals in a full beard. Probably, in His case, there

was no choice; for, during the Sack of Rome in 1527 by the Lutheran

Goths and Catholic Catalans of the Elect-Emperor, Carlos V., His

Holiness was holding the Mola of Hadrian, or Castle of Santangelo, and

enduring the hard privations of a siege. Afterwards He did not shave;

and full beards became the fashion for the clergy. Later, the Lord

Alexander P.P. VII (Flavio Chigi), made the Vandyke beard and upturned

mustachio the clerical mode; and, later still, the whole face was

shaved according to the present rule. But, at the time when the

Cardinal of Avignon reflected upon the Cardinal of Trebizond’s beard,

there appears to have been a distinct prejudice in favour of a shaven,

indeed of a shorn, pope. This may be seen in the medals of popes and

cardinals of the fifteenth century (when cleanliness was a mark of

gentility), where the large tonsure and shaven faces are very

noticeable.

Footnote 8:

In the Acta Consistorialia of the Vatican Secret Archives, this Pope

is called Calixtus the Fourth, evidently by the stupidity of some

Apostolic Scribe, who happened to know that one John, Abbot of Struma,

called himself Calixtus III. (having got himself schismatically and

uncanonically elected in the reign of the Lord Alexander P.P. III);

and who had not the sense to know that the Holy Roman Church has the

habit of ignoring pseudopontiffs and other pretenders.

Footnote 9:

Villanueva (I. 18,181) quotes two Bulls of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III,

giving relics to the church at Xativa. On p. 51, Villanueva alludes to

him as “_Don Alonso de Borja, natural de la Torre de Canals, bautizado

en la Iglesia Collegial de Xativa, hoy S. Felipe, electo en 20 de

Agosto de 1429 por el Legado de Martin V. Conservo el gobierno de esta

Iglesia hasta el año en que murió, sienda yu Papa Calixto III. En 1457

concedió á esta Iglesia un jubileo en el dia de la Asuncion de nuestra

Señora, imponiendo para la fabrica la contribucion de diez sueldos._”

Footnote 10:

The pontifical diadem, consisting of a conical cap woven of the

plumage of white peacocks and encircled by three crowns of gold. It is

sometimes called the Tiara, and must be distinguished from the Mitre.

Footnote 11:

The _fiorino d’oro_, _ducato d’oro_, and _scudo d’oro_ were coins

worth about half a guinea, which, in the fifteenth century, had a

purchasing value of £2 to £2 10_s._

Footnote 12:

The first printing-press in Italy did not arrive till October 1465 at

Subjaco in the Sabine Hills.

Footnote 13:

The first Pontiff of this name, fifth in succession from the Lord St.

Peter P.P., is named in the Canon of the Mass as XYSTUS [Ξυστός, _cf._

Xanthus (Ξάνθος)]. The same form XYSTUS occurs in the Kalendarium,

and, in fact, in all officially issued liturgies; and is adopted also

in the authorised English version of the Liturgy. The word SIXTUS does

not appear to be a Latin word at all, and is not in Andrew’s

Latin-English Lexicon. It most likely is a debased corruption from

XYSTUS, when Latin liquefied into the Italian SISTO.

Footnote 14:

The business of these Orators (ambassadors) was conducted more by

means of florid eloquence than by the writing of despatches; though,

of course, the last was not neglected.

Footnote 15:

“... horribilesque ultimosque Britannos.” C. Valerius Catullus XI.

Footnote 16:

_Huszar_, derived by a roundabout route from Italian _cossaro_,

corsair, freelance (v. Murray).

Footnote 17:

Pragmatic Sanction, term of Byzantine origin, was applied to Imperial

Edicts (Τὸ Πραγματικόν) containing decrees issued as Fundamental Laws.

The Decrees of the Council of Basilea were embodied in a Pragmatic

Sanction by the Diet of Mainz, 1434; but at the Council of Vienna 1448

most of the advantages which it intended to secure for the Church in

Germany were abandoned.

Footnote 18:

Sikelian—Greek—Latin.

Footnote 19:

Note his epitaph in the Church of Santa Maria _sopra_ Minerva,

recorded by Ciacconi.

“Cardineo Divus Honore Decoravit Calixtus.”

Obviously the fifteenth century used “Divus” as Tacitus also used it

of Julius and Augustus; and as the twentieth century would say “the

late ——.”

Footnote 20:

The Lord Pius P.P. II (Enea Silvio).

Footnote 21:

The saving virtue of a drink of human blood was no new idea. Compare

Tertullian Apol. IX. “_Item illi qui munere in arena noxiorum

iugulatorum sanguinem recentem (de iugulo decurrentem exceptum) avida

siti comitiali morbo medentes hauserunt, ubi sunt?_”

Footnote 22:

Only one piece of antique silver, a salt-cellar, was possessed by the

House of Sforza in the latter years of the last century. All the rest

was not recovered from that Don Marino Torlonia, who usurped the

Sforza-Cesarini titles and estates from 1832 to 1836, when he was

deprived of them by the Ruota, the Supreme Tribunal of the Holy See,

in favour of Don Lorenzo Sforza-Cesarini, grandfather of the present

duke. The line of the great Francesco Sforza-Visconti, Duke of Milan,

to which Cardinal Ascanio Maria belonged, is now extinct. The present

House of Sforza-Cesarini descends from Don Bosio Sforza, Count of

Santafiora, 1441–1476, brother of the great Francesco, and second son

of Don Giovanni Muzio Attendolo, detto Sforza.

Footnote 23:

This paragraph rests entirely upon the gossip and conjectures of

Manfredi, Orator of Ferrara at Florence; Stefano Infessura (Ed.

Tommasini); Hans Burchard (Ed Thuasne); Bernardino Corio (Storia di

Milano).

Footnote 24:

For an English parallel of riotous superlatives, compare the

inscription on a picture of Elizabeth in the Hall of the

Post-Reformation Jesus College, Oxford.

“Diva Elizabetha Virgo Invictissima Semper Augusta Plus Quam Caesarea

Angliæ Franciae et Hiberniae Potentissima Imperatrix Fidei Christianae

Fortissima Propugnatrix Literarum Omnium Scientissima Fautrix Immenso

Oceani Felicissima Triumphatrix Collegii Jesu Oxon Fundatrix.”

Footnote 25:

Sdegnati di questa collazione contro del Papa, il Re tenne il dì

medesimo gran consiglio, dove furono proposte e trattate piu cose

contro del Papa in riformatione della chiesa. (Dispatch of 31 Aug.

1493, Canestrini, Négociations avec la Toscane. I. 249.)

Footnote 26:

There is a tale about this personage, that, having allowed himself to

be frightened by one of the calumnies of Cardinal Giuliano della

Rovere, to the effect that the Pope expected to be paid for the red

hat (in addition to the six hundred ducats which every cardinal offers

in return for the cardinalitial sapphire ring), he became so nervous

on Ash Wednesday, when it was his office to scatter ashes on the head

of the Sovereign Pontiff, as to substitute for the formula of

administration, “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem

reverteris,” the words “Memento, homo, quia Papa es, et ego pecunias

non habeo.”

Footnote 27:

Infessura, in Eccard II. 2015. Alberi, Rel. Ven. Sen. III. 314.

Rivista Cristiana II. 261. Ugolini, Storia ... d’Urbino II. Doc. 13.

Ciacconi, Vitae Pontificum, sub anno. Gregorovius, Geschichts der

Stadt VII. 340. Matarazzo, Cron. di Perugia in Archivio Storico xvi.

See I. pt. ij. 3.

Footnote 28:

“Aiunt etiam multo vulgo inter illos iactari, regem Roman venturum et

statum Romanae Ecclesiae reformaturum. (Letter from Cardinal of Siena

to Pope, from Lucca, IIII. Nos. 1494.)

Footnote 29:

Allusion to the five red balls and the lilied bezant in the Medici

armorials.

Footnote 30:

A most important inference may be drawn from this, as to the paternity

of Cardinal Cesare.

Footnote 31:

The Roman phrase “to go to Santo Spirito” means “to go mad.”

Footnote 32:

“E molto necessaria la provisione de le genti d’ arme contro questi

demonii che non fugono per acqua santa.” xvi. ful. 1497.

Footnote 33:

“Commensano nel primo modo offenderse et non dare loco ad mei

commandamenti.” xxvii. ful. 1497.

Footnote 34:

“La S^a V^a po ben comprendere che tucto lo remedio di questi male in

la venuta de la gente d’arme, le quali tardando piu forniscere el

paese de Todi da desolare, essendo da la partita miu la cita

totalmente derelicta et lassata vacua.” xxx. ful. 1497.

Footnote 35:

“Procedono le cose qui con tanta obedientia et quieta che meglio non

si potriano desiderare.” xxx. ful. 1497.

Footnote 36:

“Du becharini homicidi ho facti piglia, et son stati senza tumulto et

piacer del populo menati in presione—cosa da bon tempo in qua insolita

in questa cita, et questi matina ne è stato appichiato uno.” 11 Aug.

1497.

Footnote 37:

This was quite a common torture. Every patrician had the right to

inflict it on his plebeians; and every inventory of palaces begins

with “Ropes for the Cord.” In many palaces and castles, iron rings

through which the Cord was passed remain to be seen. The witness had

his hands tied, hanging loosely behind him. One end of the long Cord

was attached to his wrists; the other end was flung over a beam or

through a ring and held by the official torturer. Then the witness

delicately was drawn up as high as possible. He hung there by his

wrists which were strained backward and upward, with his shoulders

generally dislocated. Then, with a frightful jerk he was dropped to

within a braccia (2 feet 7 inches) of the floor, completing the

dislocation with a shock. At this moment, the Question was put; his

answer distinguished from his shrieks, and written down. Any

stubbornness, or insolence, or reticence, was met by attaching weights

to his feet, and subjecting him to fresh elevations and fresh drops,

till his arms were torn from the sockets and his sinews strained to

the uttermost. Or, as a variant, he was left to hang until his

questioner had obtained the information required. Evidence of

commoners, without the Question, appears to have been considered by

the Fifteenth Century as valueless as evidence unsupported by oath or

affidavit and untested by cross-examination at the present day. The

nearest modern equivalent to the Torture of the Cord would be the

smelling of a greasy testament _plus_ the stratagems of a

cross-examining counsel. It was merely a legal form.

Footnote 38:

“Una de las mas principales causas que dava, para que el Cardenal de

Valencia dexasse el capelo era, porque siendo a quel Cardenal,

mientras en la Iglesia estuviesse, era bastante para impedir que no se

hiziesse in reformacion.”—Zurita, 126.

Footnote 39:

But She won a signal and decisive victory there, with the aid of Our

Lady of Victory (Νιχή, Poliziano would have said), in 1572.

Footnote 40:

“Mores esse profligatos pietatis studium restinctum, flagitiorum

licentiam solutam, sanctissimas pretio indignissimis addici—remque

esse in extremum poene discrimen adductam.”—(Osorius De rebus gestis

Emanuelis, Op. I. 595.)

Footnote 41:

“Italia tutta aviebbe dimostrato lui non esser vero

pontifice.”—(Marino Sanuto in De Leva, 61.) “Que eran notorias las

formas que se tuvieron en se eleccion, y quan graves cosas se

intentaron, y quan escandalosas.”—Zurita, 159.)

Footnote 42:

Indulgentia = Indulgence, gentleness, complaisance, tenderness,

fondness, a remission of punishment or taxation.—(Andrews,

Latin-English Lexicon, 1853, p. 789.)

Footnote 43:

De Maricourt.

Footnote 44:

“Il Papa ama ed a gran paura del figliuolo duca.”—Alberi, Relationi

III. iii. 10.

Footnote 45:

This title is hopelessly irregular. The _Princeps_ of the Holy Roman

Empire only becomes _Caesar Romanorum Imperator Semper Augustus mundi

totius Dominus universis dominis universis principibus et populis

Semper Venerandus_ by the herald’s proclamation after he has been

stripped, anointed, clothed in the consecrated dalmatica, ordained

deacon, and crowned with the Iron Crown of Monza and the Gold Diadem

of the Empire by the hands of the Supreme Pontiff Himself. The title

at present is dormant. If the sovereign is of the Swabian House,

precedent demands that he must go to Monza or to Sant’ Ambrogio at

Milan for the Iron Crown, and to San Giovanni Laterano at Rome for the

Gold Diadem. But Imperial coronations, (the sovereign not being of the

Swabian House,) at the Pope’s pleasure have taken place elsewhere.

Caesar Friedrich IV was the last Emperor crowned in Rome. Caesar

Francis II was the last to wear the imperial crown. He resigned it in

1806, having taken the title of Emperor of Austria in 1804. Before

coronation by the Pope the title of “The Elect-Emperor” is used; and

that is all which Maximilian can claim.

Footnote 46:

“Non de prefato duca sed de Nobis et dicta muliere soluta.”

Footnote 47:

Gregorovius F., _Lucrezia Borgia_.

Footnote 48:

The present writer once witnessed the reception, in all amity, by the

present Sforza, of the present Pasolini dell’ Onda, who came peaceably

to gain information for his book in praise of Madonna Caterina

Sforza-Riario. A singular example of the old order changed and giving

place to new.

Footnote 49:

“Per dar ad intender a tutti che ’l Signor over Signori hanno appiacer

del tradimento, ma non del traditore.” Priuli. xxvi. July 1502.

Footnote 50:

Costabili to Duke of Ferrara. Rome, xi. Aug. 1502.

Footnote 51:

“Aveva il duca gittate assai buoni fondamenti alla potenza sua, avendo

tutta la Romagna con il ducato d’ Urbino, e guadagnatosi tutti quei

populi, per avere incomminciato a gustare il ben essere loro.”

(Machiavelli. Il Principe. Op. i. 35.)

Footnote 52:

“Se ne ha contentare costui, e non il Papa, e per questo le cose che

si concludessino del Papa possono bene essere ritrattate da costui, ma

quelle che si concludessino da costui non saranno gia ritrattate dal

Papa.” (Dispatch from Cesena xiv. Dec. 1502.)

Footnote 53:

Arcuballistarius = cross-bow-man.

Footnote 54:

Arcuballista = cross-bow.

Footnote 55:

“Alcuni lo volevano far Re d’ Italia, e coronarlo, altri lo volevano

fa Imperatore, perche ’l prosperava talmente, che non era alcuno li

bastasse l’animo d’impedirlo in cosa alcuna.” (xi Jan. 1503.)

Footnote 56:

“Se nella morte di Alessandro fusse stato sano, ogni cosa gli era

facile.” (Machiavelli, Principe, Op. I. 39.)

Footnote 57:

Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khaiyam, xvi.

Footnote 58:

Pastor, L. _History of the Popes_, edited by Fr. Frederick Antrobus of

the Oratory.

Footnote 59:

A comical side-light on this naïve age is given in the Annales

Bononiensis, (Muratori xxiii. 890) on the occasion of an outbreak of

plague. Penitence, fasting, and flagellation were resorted to.

Butchers closed their shops for eight days. And, that sorrow for sin

was not confined to respectable people may be gathered from the fact

that “meretrices ad concubita nullum admittebant. Ex eis quàdam quae

cupiditate lucri adolescentem admiserat, depreheusâ, aliae meretrices

ita illius nates nudas corrigiis percusserunt ut sanguinem emitteres.”

Footnote 60:

Here is a specimen of Mgr. Burchard’s or his copyist’s gross

inaccuracy. He officially was responsible for the conduct of this

function. He intimately should have known, and directed, every

movement and every gesture of every assistant. And he names, among the

cardinals-assistant, the Lord Giovanni Borgia (detto Seniore)

Archbishop of Monreale, Cardinal-Presbyter of Santa Susanna, _who had

been dead just eighteen days_.

Footnote 61:

_i.e._ in the usual manner, with all the ceremonies required for the

obsequies of the pontifical cadaver: not surreptitiously or with

maimed rites as some have said.

Footnote 62:

A dead Pope lies in state in the Chapel of the Trinity in St. Peter’s,

surrounded by unbleached wax tapers, and with the feet protruded

through the screen for the osculations of the faithful.

Footnote 63:

Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de’ Piccolhuomini, 1458–1464.

Footnote 64:

Qy. A concoction of cantharides? Or was it merely a name, like

κανθαρίτης οὶνός? (Plin. 14. 7. 9.)

Footnote 65:

M. de Voltaire speaks of Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) as “the son.”

Footnote 66:

Ducato d’oro = half a guinea with four times its purchasing power. A

million of gold ducats would equal £2,000,000 sterling.

Footnote 67:

M. de Voltaire speaks of Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) as the Pope’s son;

and of the Pope as Duke Cesare’s Father.

Footnote 68:

The Venerable Servant of God, King Ælfred the Great of England, has

not yet been styled “The Blessed.” Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of

England under Henry VIII Tudor, only was admitted to the rank of “The

Blessed” in 1886, by the Lord Leo P.P. XIII. He now publicly may be

invoked by name, and his portraits decorated by a halo.

Footnote 69:

The Clerk of the Hanaper is the domestic in charge of the great gallon

goblet called the hanaper.

Footnote 70:

“Mercurii xx Nov. fuit data sententia in Rota, contra Sebastianum

Pinzonum, scriptorum apostolicum, absentem ob contumaciam, privationis

omnium beneficiorum et officiorum” (_interesting to notice that, in

the reign of the Lord Julius P.P. II, the eternal enemy of Borgia, a

convict on the capital charge was merely ruined, and not sentenced to

death_;) “pro quod eo dominum cardinalem Mutinensem patronum suum

veneno interemisset, qui eum de stercore eximerat.”

Footnote 71:

“Fuit facta proba, in tribus animalibus porcinis, de aliquibus

venenis, repertis in cancelleria, missis perantea a Vincencia, qua

reperta sunt non esse bona.” (Secrets de l’État de Venise, Petersburg,

1884, p. 6.)

Footnote 72:

“_Christophori sancti faciem quicunque tuetur

Illa nempe die mala morte non morietur._”

Footnote 73:

in Pentade Quaest. latrophilologicarum, p. 122. Ed. Geneva 1647,

quoting Juan de Vigo, Lib. II, Chirug. Tract. II, 5.

Footnote 74:

Mgr. Paris de Grassis _On Mgr. Hans Burchard_ is fine indeed!

Footnote 75:

Lamansky. Secrets de l’Etat de Venise. Petersburg. 1884.

Footnote 76:

Cf. Maricourt.

Footnote 77:

Decii Junii Juvenalis, Satura xiii.

Footnote 78:

Have these Bulls been rescinded? If not, it is possible that they form

the ground of the dull and bitter and radical animosity of Spain and

Portugal to Anglo-Saxondom of the present day. In the light of these

Bulls, England and America are usurpers and excommunicate!

Footnote 79:

Ep. II to Cor. ii. 7.

Footnote 80:

Ep. to Eph. i. 21.

Footnote 81:

Ep. to St. Titus ii. 15.

Footnote 82:

Réné, Comte de Maricourt, who quotes M. L’Abbé Morel in _L’Univers_.

Footnote 83:

When it becomes a question of blaming a priest or a Pope, the

principle of proportion demands that the lesser should bear. Two

modern Roman Catholics have presumed with “unctuous rectitude” to

scold the Holiness of the Pope as follows:

“From a Catholic point of view, it is impossible to blame Alexander

too severely.”—(History of the Popes. Pastor + Antrobus. VI. 139.)

This inhuman pronouncement is saved by the “a.” Comment is needless:

but there is another “Catholic point of view.”

Footnote 84:

Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de’ Piccolhuomini.

Footnote 85:

Secret Archives of the duchies of Ossuna and Infantado.

Footnote 86:

Symonds, J. A. Renascence, II. 493–5.

Footnote 87:

One _bandito_, under sentence, or ban, of exile.

Footnote 88:

Observe the chivalrous gentleness of the Borgian Era in regard to

women, compared with the bald mercilessness of modern parochial and

civil Registers. In these deeds of legitimation, the woman is never

named, and not always the man. The weaker party is never punished by

eternal gibbeting, by eternal record of her shame by name. She is

always permitted to hide under the veil of _coniugata_, or _soluta_,

“a married woman” or “a spinster.” Still, the Twentieth Century is

humane to the wolf’s brother and the hyæna’s cousin; and nourishes a

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: and perhaps that

balances the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ humanity and chivalry

to sex.

Footnote 89:

Theuli. Bonaventura Abp. Teatro Istorico di Velletri, II. 5.

Footnote 90:

Vit. Synop. Stef. Borgiae S.R.E. Card. Ampliss. (Peter Paul of St.

Bartholomew, discalced Carmelite. Rome, 1805, I. 2.)

Footnote 91:

It appears to be a little inconsistent of a Pope, Who wished Messer

Rafaele Sanzio to paint Him with a Sword and not a book in His hand,

to object to a Cardinal in a Breast-plate: _for the sword is the

weapon of offence; but the Breast-plate, of defence merely_. But many

terms in this Bull are simply “corroborative detail calculated to lend

an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing

narrative”—simply words, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Footnote 92:

The Twentieth Century may be shocked to notice that, in the Sixteenth,

England ranked as the fifth Power in Europe, _after Portugal_.

Footnote 93:

See _Menghini_. (_C. Canon_) Opinion ... upon the Question whether ...

John Carmont D.D. incurred the Major Excommunication, etc. _J.

Anderson and Son. Courier and Herald Offices, Dumfries. 1886_: and

leading article in _Scotsman_, May 11th, 1886.

Footnote 94:

(Verg. Aen. XII. 419.)

Footnote 95:

These two charming personages used a most beautiful handwriting, neat,

clear, well-mannered, decisive; as may be seen in the private Brief of

the Lord Leo P.P. X, _placet et ita motu proprio mandamus_; and in the

letter of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, dated April 1516; which are

preserved in the British Museum 23.721.

Footnote 96:

Whistler counts his myopia as his chief talent.

Footnote 97:

Belriguardo. xi Jul. 1516.

Footnote 98:

Oratrice (oratrix) is a rare word = but perfectly classical; and its

use shews that the Renascence of Learning had done something to

improve ecclesiastical Latin, and, by consequence, Italian also.

Footnote 99:

Authorities for this sketch of Saint Francisco de Borja, General of

Jesuits, and sometime Duke of Gandia, etc.

1. Ribadaneira. Life.

2. Cardinal Alvaro Cienfuegos. La heroica vida, etc. del grande San

Francisco de Borja. Madrid 1717.

3. Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu. Madrid 1894–5.

4. Sir James Stephen. Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.

5. A. M. Clarke. St. Francis Borgia. Lond. 1872 etc.

The last was prepared under the auspices of the late Fr. John Morris,

S.J.; and is useful in giving the modern English Jesuit point of view.

Footnote 100:

Sir James Stephen. Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, i. 29.

Footnote 101:

A second bastard of Archbishop Don Alonso de Aragona, also called Doña

Juana, married Don Felipe of Austria, and became the mother of the

Emperor Carlos.

Footnote 102:

Anciently Salduba, colonized by Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus

Augustus B.C. 27, who called it Caesaraugasta; afterwards corrupted

into Saragossa.

Footnote 103:

A plain gold band, studded with uncut gems, round whose inner rim runs

one of the Nails that nailed our Divine Redeemer to the Cross of

Calvary hammered into a flat band to press the brows of him who wears

the Iron Crown. It may be seen enshrined in the Treasury of the

Cathedral at Monza.

Footnote 104:

In Catholic countries one is bound to use the clergy of one’s own

parish.

Footnote 105:

Milk and meat were forbidden during Lent, and on every Saturday

throughout the year.

Footnote 106:

_e.g._, one might marry in Lent or Advent.

Footnote 107:

To enable the Borgia ladies sometimes to see their relations in the

Monastery of Poor Clares, whose Rule is one of the strictest.

Footnote 108:

The Bull _Regimini_ was not finally sealed till xxvii Sept. 1540.

Footnote 109:

_La heroica vida, etc., del grande San Francisco de Borja, by Cardinal

Alvaro Cienfuegos._ Madrid, 1717, III. i. 115.

Footnote 110:

_La heroica vida, etc., del grande San Francisco de Borja, by Cardinal

Alvaro Cienfuegos._ Madrid, 1717, III. i. 115.

Footnote 111:

This Pontiff once was asked to give an opinion as to who had been the

greatest Popes. He answered, St. Peter, St. Sylvester, Alexander VI

and Ourself.

Footnote 112:

“Card Zappata ajebat frustra Card. Gasparem Borgia mores componere et

a natura recedere, ut Pontificatum assequatur. Quandoquidem a multis

annis Spiritus Sanctus non spiret in Hispania, Cubebat nihilominus

fidem adhibere inani, et fatuae predictioni bovem tertio murgiturum.

Quod assentatores interpretabantur ut post Calixtum III et Alexandrum

VI, ipse tertius Pontifex renuntiantur, et famiglia Borgia, bovem in

scuto ferens.” (_Arnidenio, in Vite m. s.s. de’ Cardinali_)

Footnote 113:

It would be very interesting to know how and when this title passed

from the line of Prince Gioffredo Borgia into the line of his elder

brother Don Juan Francisco de Borja the murdered Duke of Gandia; for

Prince Gioffredo, married at fourteen, certainly originated a notable

branch of Borgia, which, in the Seventeenth Century intermarried with

the Orsini Duke of Gravina. It is most unusual for a title _to turn

back_, as it were, and vest itself in another branch. And what has

become of the principalities of Teano and Tricarico, and the counties

of Chiaramonte, Lauria, and Cerignola which were held by the murdered

Duke of Gandia, his son Don Juan II, and the son of the last St.

Francisco de Borja?

Footnote 114:

All from _El Blason de España_, by Don Augusto de Burgos, III. i.

85–95.

Footnote 115:

Theuli. _Teatro Istorico di Velletri._ Velletri, 1644. III. 304.

Footnote 116:

Theuli, III. 335.

Footnote 117:

Ricchi, 251.

Footnote 118:

Theuli, III. 312–3.

Footnote 119:

While it indubitably is Christian, this epitaph shews that the modern

sophistication, which has destroyed belief in the world to come,

already had made its appearance in Italy. Death here is no longer

regarded with the calm dignity perceivable in earlier epitaphs, (that

of his lineal ancestor Don Pietrogorio Borgia, for example, on p.

434), but as a Horror and an End.

Footnote 120:

The Order of Malta, or of St. John of Jerusalem, was founded by Don

Gerardo di Martiquez di Provenza, warden of the Hospital of St. John

Baptist for Pilgrims, in 1098. The Hospitallers were dedicated to the

service of the poor; and wore a black habit, with an eight-pointed

Maltese Cross, in white, on the breast. They took vows of poverty,

chastity and obedience. The Regular Foundation was delayed till 1104

when Baldwin I was king in Jerusalem. The Rule was that of St.

Aurelius Augustine; and the Order was finally confirmed by the Bull of

the Lord Paschal P.P. II in 1113. Its Constitution admitted of Knights

of Honour and Brothers of Devotion; the former swore to defend the

Faith against all enemies, the latter to minister to pilgrims and

afflicted. There were two badges, a cross of six points in gold

enamelled white, and a crowned cross of eight points of the same, worn

on a black riband. The Order had a Priory in London before the

Reformation—St. John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell—whose original gate

and crypt may yet be seen. The present soi-disant Order which occupies

this Priory has yet to shew authority for its existence.

Footnote 121:

P. E. Cav. Visconti in Tipaldo.

Footnote 122:

The Sforza-Cesarini, who in the Fifteenth Century intermarried with

the Borgia, enjoy the Duchy of Segni at the present day.

Footnote 123:

Coronelli, Bibl. Univ. II. 870.

Footnote 124:

By his last will and testament, Cardinal King Henry IX bequeathed his

rights in the English Crown to the descendants of Anna Maria

d’Orleans, (daughter of Henrietta Stewart, and niece of King Charles

I,) who married Duke Vittoramadeo of Savoja; from whom descends—not

the Bavarian Princess of the Order of the White Rose, but—King

Vittoremanuele III of Italy.

Footnote 125:

A ring belonging to Cardinal King Henry IX, containing miniatures of

his father and mother, King James III and Queen Clementina, has found

its way into the Fortnum Collection at the Oxford University

Galleries.

Footnote 126:

“Benefices in Spain,” the possession of which is alleged as a crime in

the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, appear to be common enough.

Footnote 127:

Miss Clementina Walkinshaw, Countess Alberstorf, the mistress of King

Charles III.

Footnote 128:

The word _magnanimitá_ had undergone a change of meaning since the

Sixteenth Century, when Messor Niccolo Machiavelli sneered that the

Baglioni of Perugia shewed no _magnanimitá_, because they did not

garrote the Lord Julius P.P. II, their guest.

Footnote 129:

Could any hint be more obscurely obvious, more insinuatory of

compliment? Cardinal Borgia’s little trick of leaving the

initiative(!) to John Bull is a master-stroke of Latin diplomacy,

whose strength is, now, and ever, in the pulling of wires.

Footnote 130:

From the ANNUAL REGISTER, 1837, p. 147. “_xvii Sept. 1837. At the

private chapel of the rt. rev. the bishop Griffiths, (Vicar-Apostolic

of the London District) Caroline Shirley, only daughter of Robert

Sewallis Shirley, Viscount Tamworth, to Don Lorenzo Sforza, Duca

Sforza, only son of the late Don Francisco Sforza, Duca Sforza, of

Rome_.”

(There is a slight inaccuracy in this notice. Duke Lorenzo should be

described as _only surviving son_ of Don Francisco, not as _only son_;

for Don Francisco’s elder son, Don Salvatore, died xix May 1832; and

Don Francisco’s daughter Donna Anna, wife to Don Marino Torlonia,

egregiously failed, before the Tribunal of the Ruota, to dispossess

her younger brother the aforesaid Don Lorenzo, the legitimate son,

born on the night between xvii and xviii of March 1807, to the

aforesaid Don Francisco Sforza-Cesarini, by his wife the Duchess

Geltruda de’ Conti. This hideous law-suit was the excitement of all

Rome at the time.)

Footnote 131:

“Io qui mi trovo racchiuso in conclave per l’elezione del nuovo

pontifice con trenta quatro Cardli, i quali avendo saputa la

generositá Inglese verso dell’ Illustro loro Collega.”

Footnote 132:

It is too early yet to speak about the twentieth.

Footnote 133:

It was Mr. Oakley, heir of Sir Charles Oakley Bart., who was entrusted

with this confidential and very delicate mission.

Footnote 134:

It should be said that loyalty to the Stewarts, as it has been here

entreated of, implies no shadow of disloyalty to the present Royal

House of England. The law of Prescriptive Right by itself would be

sufficient to require the most dutiful allegiance on the part of all

the subjects of Her Most Sacred Majesty the late Queen-Empress. But it

may be said further, that, as far as Roman Catholics are concerned,

the most ingeniously scrupulous conscience can have no possible doubt

about its obligation, since the Lord Leo P.P. XIII accorded that

formal Recognition of the late Queen’s Majesty as Queen, by the

presence of an Apostolic Ablegate at the Jubilee of 1887. In the

course of this book the immense importance which sovereigns of the

Borgian Era attached to this Recognition has been shewn. They were

ready to fight for it, knowing that without it they could not hope to

stand. In the present instance it was not even asked for; and its

spontaneous granting by the Roman Pontiff should emphasize the fact

that, what formerly might have been a matter for discussion, is now an

imperative religious duty, namely, undeviating loyalty to the Royal

and Imperial Dynasty of Queen Victoria.

Footnote 135:

Ἀλκμήνη. It is curious to note the survival of Greek names in the

ancient families of Etruria.

Footnote 136:

The Legion of Honour is a French Order founded during the Consulate of

Napoleon Buonaparte, 20 Fiorile, An. x: ratified by the Christian King

Louis XVIII on VI July, 1814. It is governed by a Grand Master who is

the Emperor, King, or President of France according to the fashion. It

contains five classes. The Knights and Officers wear silver crosses.

The Commanders, Grand Officers and Grand Crosses wear the decoration

in gold. The motto is HONNEUR ET PATRIE. (_Tettoni e Saladini. Teatro

Araldico._)

Footnote 137:

The Order of the Two Sicilies were founded by Joseph Buonaparte, XXIV

Feb. 1808, to recompense loyalty, courage, and long service. (_Tettoni

e Saladini. Teatro Araldico._)

Footnote 138:

The Order of St. Gregory the Great was founded by the Lord Gregory

P.P. XVI for Merit, Civil and Military, 1 Sept. 1831. There are four

classes, viz. First, and Second Grand Cross, Commanders, and Knights.

The obverse of the octagonal silver medal bears an eight-pointed cross

in red enamel, with a shield in pretence shewing an effigy of the Lord

St. Gregory P.P. I the Great (the Pope who sent St. Augustine to

convert the English, A.D. 596.) The reverse bears the legend, PRO DEO

ET PRINCIPE GREGORIUS XVI. P.M. ANNO I. (_Tettoni e Saladini. Teatro

Araldico._)

Footnote 139:

On the second of April 1814, M. le Comte d’Artois permitted the

National Guard of Paris to wear a silver Fleurdelys suspended from a

white watered riband, in recognition of service. On the twenty-sixth

of April, a Star was substituted for the Fleurdelys, and a blue border

added to the white riband. The Decoration was called the Order of the

Lily of France, and all _decorés_ made to swear an oath of fidelity to

God, and of obedience to the King, (_Tettoni e Saladini. Teatro

Araldico._)

Footnote 140:

Burckhardt, _Cultur de Renaissance_, see 5 ed. 2, p. 312. Gregorovius,

_Lucrezia Borgia_, II 4. Janitschek, _Gesellschaft der Renaissance_,

III.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

111 Pontificum, sub anno. Pontificum, sub anno.

Gregorovius, Geschichts de Stadt Gregorovius, Geschichts der

VII. 340. Matarazzo Stadt VII. 340. Matarazzo

193 following is suggested at an following is suggested as an

explanation explanation

226 ‏בוווד‎––‏צמובה‎‎‎ ‏בוווו‎––‏צמרכד‎‎

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last

chapter.

● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=.

● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to

individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like

1^{st}).