ALEXANDER VI., THE BORGIA-POPE
Three grave issues had been laid before the Council of Constance: the
repression of heresy, the ending of the Schism, and the reform of
the Church "in head and members." In the third year of their labours
the prelates and doctors put an end to the Schism and elected Martin
V.; and the new Pope soon put an end to the Council before it could
reform the Church. Martin was a Colonna of high ideals and considerable
ability; but he was not well disposed to this democratic method of
reform by Council, nor was he strong enough to sacrifice Papal revenue
by suppressing the worst disorder, the Papal fiscal system. He returned
to Rome, and the task of restoring the city and the Papal estates
demanded such resources that he dare not abandon the corrupt practices
of the Curia.
Two worthy and able Pontiffs followed Martin, and equally failed
to bring about a reform. Eugenius IV., an austere, though harsh
and autocratic, Venetian, found that his attempts to recover Papal
territory and curb the Conciliar party would not permit him to reform
the financial system. The reformers forced on him the Council of
Basle in 1431, but its renewal of the Schism and creation of a last
Anti-Pope, when he resisted its proposals, discredited the Conciliar
movement. Reform must come from without: Popes and cardinals could
not effect it, and in the prevailing creed there was no canonical
basis for the action of a Council in defiance of them. Nicholas V.,
a quiet man of letters, crowned the financial and political work
of his two predecessors with a great artistic restoration. He left
politics to Æneas Sylvius and opened the gates of Rome to the fairer
form of the Renaissance. Greek artists and scholars were now pouring
into Italy--Constantinople fell to the Turks during this Pontificate
(1453)--and fostering the growth of the Humanist movement. Rome began
to assume its rich mantle of mediæval art, and the Papacy seemed to
smile once more on a docile and prosperous Christendom.
But the restoration had been accomplished by an evasion of reform,
and the new culture was sharpening the pens of critics. One of these
inquisitive scholars, Lorenzo Valla, was actually declaring that the
"Donation of Constantine" was a forgery. Many denounced, in fiery prose
or with the cold cynicism of the epigram, the luxury and vice of the
higher clergy. Heresy hardened in Bohemia, and, among the stricter
ranks of the faithful, men like Nicholas of Cusa, John Capistrano, and
Savonarola were raising ideals which, if they rebuked the laity, far
more solemnly rebuked the clergy. And just at this critical period
the Papacy entered upon a development which ended in the enthronement
of Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X.; the Reformation inevitably
followed.
At the death of Nicholas V., the Orsini and Colonna cardinals came to a
deadlock in their struggle for the Papacy, and a neutral and innocuous
alternative was sought in Alfonso Borgia (or, in Spanish style, Borja),
a Spanish canonist of some scholarly distinction. Calixtus III., as he
named himself, was a gouty valetudinarian who lay abed most of the day
in pious conversation with friars. He very properly disdained the new
art and culture, and saved the Papal funds to meet the advancing Turks.
He had, however, one weakness, which was destined to prove very costly
to the Papacy. There was a tradition of nepotism at Rome, and Calixtus
had nephews. While he was Bishop of Valencia, his sister Isabella
had come to him from Xativa, their native place, with her two sons,
Pedro Luis and Rodrigo. When, in 1455, he became Pope, he sent Rodrigo
to study at Bologna and enriched him with benefices. Pedro Luis was
reserved for a lay career, and Juan Luis Mila, son of another sister,
was sent with Rodrigo to Bologna.
At this time Rodrigo Borgia was in his twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth
year: an exceptionally handsome young Spaniard, with the most charming
Spanish manners, and with rich sensuous lips and an eye for maidens
which escaped his uncle's notice. He and his cousin were, within a
year, made cardinals. In December (1456) he was appointed legate for
the March of Ancona, and in the following May he was, in spite of the
murmurs of the cardinals, promoted to the highest and most lucrative
office at the Court, the Vice-Chancellorship. His elder brother became
Duke of Spoleto, Gonfaloniere of the Papal army, and (in 1457) Prefect
of Rome. Other needy Spaniards came over the sea in droves, and the
disgusted Romans were soon ousted from the best positions. In 1458,
however, Calixtus fell ill, and was reported to be dead; and the Romans
chased the "Catalans" out of the city. Rodrigo at first retired with
his more hated brother, but he courageously returned on August 6th,
just in time to witness the actual death of his uncle.
Æneas Sylvius mounted the throne, under the name of Pius II., but
the Humanists looked in vain for favour to that genial diplomatist,
traveller, and _littérateur_. He had reached a gouty and repentant
age, and his one pre-occupation was to stir a lethargic Christendom
to a crusade against the Turks. Cardinal Rodrigo had been useful to
him, reserving a vacant benefice for him now and again, so he kept
his place and continued to win for himself wealthy bishoprics and
abbeys. For a moment, in 1460, Rodrigo trembled. Pius had sent him to
direct the building of a cathedral at Siena, and the Pope startled his
Vice-Chancellor with a stern letter. Rodrigo and another cardinal, the
Pope heard, had entertained a number of very frivolous young ladies for
five hours in a private garden. They had excluded the parents of these
girls, and there had been "dances of the most licentious character" and
other things which "modesty forbids to recount." It was the talk of the
town.[271] From the kind of dances and women which Alexander had in
the Vatican long afterwards we can imagine the things which startled
Siena. Rodrigo urged that there had been exaggeration, but the Pope,
while admitting the possibility of this, again sternly bade him mind
his behaviour.
The long discussion of the morals of Alexander VI. has, in fact,
now ended in entire agreement that by the year 1460, at least, he
was openly immoral. The Papal and other documents relating to his
children--at least six in number--which have been found in the Vatican
archives and in the private archives of the Duke of Ossuna show an
extraordinary laxity at Rome. There is a Bull of Sixtus IV., dated
November 5, 1481, legitimizing the birth of Pedro Luis Borgia, "son
of a cardinal-deacon and an unmarried woman"; he is described as "a
young man," and was probably born about 1460. There is the marriage
contract of Girolama Borgia, dated 1482, which refers to the "paternal
love" of the Vice-Chancellor; she must then have been at least thirteen
years old. There is a document, dated October 1, 1480, dispensing from
the bar of illegitimacy Cæsar Borgia, "son of a cardinal-bishop and a
married woman"; and he is described as in his sixth year, or born about
1475. There is a deed of gift of Rodrigo to Juan Borgia, "his carnal
son," whose birth must fall either in 1474 or 1476. There are documents
referring to the celebrated Lucrezia, whose birth is generally put
in 1478, and to Jofre Borgia, who was born about 1480; and there are
documents from which we have--as we shall see later--the gravest
reason to conclude that the Pope had a son in 1497 or 1498, when he
approached his seventieth year. Except that a few hesitate, in face of
the strongest evidence, to admit the last child, no serious historian
of any school now questions these facts, and the evidence need not be
examined in detail.[272]
At least four of these children were born of Vannozza (or Giovannozza)
dei Catanei, a Roman lady who was the Cardinal's mistress from about
1460 to 1486. The story that she was an orphan entrusted to his care
and seduced by him is not reliable. Nothing is confidently known about
her early years, but her epitaph has been discovered, and it honours
her, not only for her "signal probity and great piety," but because
she was the mother of Cæsar, Juan, Jofre, and Lucrezia Borgia. Pedro
Luis and Girolama may have been born of an earlier mistress, but it is
not at all certain. Vannozza, who married three times, is constantly
mentioned, by the ambassadors, as Borgia's mistress. She had a handsome
mansion near the Cardinal's palace and the Vatican, and she entertained
there and in her country house long after Borgia became Pope and
replaced her by a younger mistress.
These monuments of parentage are almost the only evidences of the
existence of Cardinal Borgia under Pius II. and Paul II. In 1471 a
pious and learned Franciscan friar, Sixtus IV., assumed the tiara,
and it is an indication of the strange temper of the times that under
such a man the Papal Court became more corrupt than ever.[273] Sixtus
vigorously restored the secular rule of the Papacy and encouraged the
artistic and cultural development, but his nepotism was shameless
and profoundly harmful. One of the nephews whom he drew from the
obscurity of a Franciscan monastery and made a prince of the Church
was Pietro Riario, who spent 260,000 ducats,[274] and within two years
of his promotion wore out his life in the most flagrant dissipation.
His immense palace, with its magnificent treasures, its five hundred
servants in scarlet silk, and its prodigious banquets, was the home of
every species of vice; and it is said that his chief mistress, Tiresia,
flaunted eight hundred ducats' worth of pearls on her embroidered
slippers. Another nephew was the sterner, though also immoral, Cardinal
Giuliano della Rovere--also brought from a monastery--whom we shall
know as Julius II. Other cardinals promoted by the friar-Pope were
equally notorious for their indulgence and for the unscrupulous quest
of money to sustain it.
From the Bulls of Sixtus which I have quoted, it is clear that he was
acquainted with the vices of Borgia, yet he sent him as legate to
Spain, to excite interest in the crusade, in the spring of 1472. In
spite of some compliments, it does not appear that Borgia did more than
impress his countrymen with his display and gallantry, and he returned
toward the close of 1473 and built one of the most stately palaces
in the rich quarter which was now rising round the Vatican. When
Sixtus died, in 1484, he made a resolute effort to get the tiara. The
dispatches of the ambassadors who now represented the northern States
at the Vatican afford us a valuable means of checking the chroniclers,
and they put it beyond question that Borgia and Giuliano della Rovere
entered upon a corrupt rivalry for the Papacy. Giuliano was now a
tall, serious-looking man of forty: reserved in speech and brusque in
manners, a good soldier and most ambitious courtier. Although he was
known to have children, he kept a comparatively sober household and
reserved his wealth for special occasions of display and for bribery.
Borgia was his senior by thirteen years, but he had the buoyancy,
gaiety, and sensuality of a young man. He, too, kept a moderate table
and gambled little, but his amours were notorious and one could not
please him better than by providing a ballet of handsome women. To
these wealthy "up-starts" the haughty Orsini and Colonna were bitterly
opposed, and the announcement of the death of Sixtus let loose a flood
of passion. The splendid mansion of Count Riario, another nephew of
the late Pope, was sacked, the Orsini entrenched themselves on Monte
Giordano, and the other cardinals filled their halls with armed men.
In the Conclave it was soon apparent that neither Rodrigo nor Giuliano
could command the necessary two thirds of the votes, and they agreed to
adopt Cardinal Cibò, a Genoese noble who had outburned the passions of
youth before he entered the service of the Church. During the night of
August 28-29, when the supporters of Cardinal Barbo (who seemed to be
sure of election) had confidently retired to their cells, Rodrigo and
Giuliano, by intrigue and bribery, secured a majority for Cibò.[275] He
became Innocent VIII. the next morning, and during the eight years of
his amiable and futile Pontificate the College of Cardinals steadily
sank. Innocent's natural son was drawn from his decent obscurity and
made one of the richest and fastest nobles of Rome; and women were
hardly safe even in their own homes when Franceschetto Cibò roamed the
streets at night, with his cut-throats, in one of his wine-flushed
moods. He took so ardently to the new cardinalitial pastime of gambling
that in one night he lost 100,000 ducats to Cardinal Riario. Cardinal
la Balue left at his death a fortune of 100,000 ducats. Cardinal
Ascanio Sforza, brother of the ruler of Milan, was the leading
sportsman of Roman society. Cardinal Lorenzo Cibò owed his red hat
to the fortunate circumstance that he was an illegitimate son of the
Pope's brother. Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who was one day to be
Leo X., had received the tonsure in his eighth year and the title
of cardinal in his fourteenth. Cardinals Savelli, Sclafenati, and
Sanseverino were members of the fast and luxurious group. Each cardinal
maintained a large palace, with hundreds of gay-liveried servants and
ready swordsmen, and the wealthier seem to have studied with care the
pages in which Macrobius describes the exquisite or colossal banquets
of the older pagans. Each--apart from the minority of grave and
virtuous cardinals--had his faction in the city, and, as carnival
time approached, they were engrossed for weeks in the preparation of
the superb cars and brilliant troops of horse by which each sought to
prove his superior fitness for the chair of Gregory I. and Gregory VII.
Innocent VIII. smiled; and the thunders gathered beyond the Alps.
The state of Rome was in accord with the state of the Sacred College.
We may hesitate to believe Infessura when he tells us that, if
criminals were by some chance arrested, they bought their liberty at
the Vatican; but we have in Burchard's Diary a sombre, incidental
indication of the condition of Rome. There is in modern literature some
tendency to look with indulgent eye on the coloured gaiety of late
mediæval Rome, but--to say nothing of the ideals which the cardinals
professed--the insecurity of life and property and the widespread
brutality show that this license was far removed from genuine Humanism.
Some years later, when Rodrigo's son Juan was murdered, a boatman
said, when they asked why he had not reported seeing a body cast into
the river, that it was not customary to have any inquiry made into a
nightly occurrence of that kind. Rodrigo Borgia, the Vice-Chancellor,
paid no heed to this condition of the city. He added year by year to
the long list of his bishoprics and emoluments, and prepared to renew
the struggle for the tiara. He lost, or discarded, Vannozza when she
married her third husband in 1486 and entered upon a more sordid and
equally notorious _liaison_. His cousin, Adriana Orsini, had charge
of a young orphan, Giulia Farnese, a very beautiful, golden-haired
girl. She married Adriana's son, Orso Orsini, in 1489--her fifteenth
year--and at the same time became the Cardinal's mistress. Adriana
was rewarded with a considerable influence and the charge of the young
Lucrezia Borgia.[276]
The death of Innocent on July 25, 1492, led to fierce intrigue and
passionate encounters. There were more than two hundred murders in Rome
during the fourteen days before the Conclave, for which twenty-two
cardinals were, on August 6th, immured in the Sistine Chapel. Giuliano
della Rovere had spoiled his prospect by too patent a use of his
influence on Innocent VIII., and Borgia set himself to win the next
most important rival, Ascanio Sforza. Historians sometimes smile at
the statement of Infessura, that four mule-loads of silver passed from
Borgia's palace to that of Sforza, but it is not improbable. For some
centuries there had been a custom (abolished a few years later by Leo
X.) of sacking the palace of the cardinal who was elected Pope, and it
was not unusual to take precautions. Borgia may have sent the silver on
this pretext, as Infessura suggests, and he would hardly expect it to
be returned. It is, in fact, now certain that Sforza was bribed with
gifts far more valuable than Borgia's table silver; Borgia offered,
and afterwards gave him, his splendid palace, the Vice-Chancellorship,
the bishopric of Erlan (worth 10,000 ducats a year), and other
appointments. The sober Cardinal Colonna accepted the abbey of Subiaco
(or 2000 ducats a year). Eleven cardinals seem to have sold their
votes, and Borgia already had three supporters and his own vote. He
secured his majority and hastily retired behind the altar, where Papal
vestments of three sizes were laid out, and the genial Romans presently
roared their greetings to Alexander VI.[277]
Rome and Italy then sustained their parts in the comedy. Alexander,
although now sixty years old, was a vigorous and capable man, and some
advantage would be expected from his Pontificate. But one's sense of
humour is excited when one reads in Burchard's Diary, or in the letter
(reproduced by Thuasne) written by the General of the Camaldolite
monks, the description of the rejoicings at Rome. After the coronation
at St. Peter's on August 27th, Alexander received, on the steps of the
great church, the greetings of the orators who represented the northern
cities. One wonders what was the countenance of the massed prelates
and nobles when the Genoese orator read: "Thou art so adorned with the
glory of virtue, the merit of discipline, the holiness of thy life ...
that we must hesitate to say whether it is more proper to offer thee to
the Pontificate or to offer that most sacred and glorious dignity to
thee." And, as Alexander passed in stately procession to the Lateran,
he read on the triumphal arches which adorned the route, such maxims
as "Chastity and Charity," and "Great was Rome under Cæsar, now is she
most great. Alexander the Sixth reigns: Cæsar was a man, this is a God."
I make no apology for inserting these apparently trivial details in so
condensed a narrative. They, most of all, illumine the next momentous
phase of the history of the Papacy. In that year, 1492, a little
German boy, named Martin Luther, sat at his books in the remote town
of Mansfeld.
Infessura records that Alexander opened his Pontificate with large
promises and small instalments of reform. He was going to improve the
condition of Rome and the Church, to pacify Italy, and to check the
Turks; he would remove his children from Rome and reduce the number of
sinecures at the Curia. He did, in fact, make a drastic beginning of
the administration of justice, and even appointed certain hours during
which he would himself hear grievances. Possibly he had a sincere mood
of reform; though we are not disposed to be charitable when we recall
the appalling levity with which, a few years later, after the murder of
his son, he returned to vicious ways. Whatever his initial mood was, he
soon entered upon courses which made his Pontificate one of the most
degraded in the annals of the Papacy. Modern research has discredited
some of the most romantic crimes attributed to him, but it leaves on
his memory an indictment which no eager search for good qualities can
materially lessen.
He sustained the scandal of his personal conduct until the end of
his life, and I will dismiss it briefly. During the first four
years of his Pontificate, the youthful Giulia Orsini was his chief
_favorita_--others are occasionally mentioned with that title by the
ambassadors--and she was known to the wits of Rome as "the Spouse
of Christ." She and Adriana Orsini and Girolama (the Pope's elder
daughter) are described as "the heart and eyes of Alexander," and
suitors had to seek their favour. When Giulia's brother Alexander
received the red hat (Sept. 20, 1493), Rome gave the future Pope--who
was by no means without personal merit--the name of "The Petticoat
Cardinal." When her daughter Laura was born in 1497, the Pope was
generally believed to be the father; though that remains a mere rumour.
Pucci, in one of his dispatches, gives us a quaint picture. Giulia
lived in Lucrezia's palace, apart from her husband, and, when the
ambassador called one day in 1493, she dressed her long golden hair in
his presence, and insisted that he must see the baby; and he remarks
that the baby was "so very like the Pope that one can readily believe
he was the father." Giulia was an almost indispensable figure for some
years at the domestic (and even greater than domestic) festivities in
the Vatican, laughing with the cardinals at the prurient comedies and
still more prurient dances which enlivened the sacred palace.[278]
The last child attributed to him, though not accepted by all the
authorities, seems to have been born in 1496 (his sixty-sixth year).
There is a document dated September 1, 1501, legitimizing a certain
Juan Borgia, but there are two versions of this document.[279] The
first version describes him as the child of Cæsar Borgia: the second
says that he was born "not of the said Duke, but of us [Alexander] and
the said married woman." Creighton made the singular suggestion that
possibly Alexander was giving prestige to an illegitimate offspring
of his son, but it is now agreed that the second version is the more
authentic; it was to be kept in reserve for some grave dispute of his
rights. The distinguished Venetian Senator Sanuto tells us[280] that,
according to letters received from the Venetian ambassador at Rome
and from private persons, the Pope had, about this time, a child by a
married Roman lady, with the connivance of her father, and that the
angry husband slew his father-in-law and stuck his head on a pole,
with the inscription: "Head of my father-in-law, who prostituted his
daughter to the Pope." These concurrent testimonies are grave. Most
historians now rightly reject the charge that Alexander was intimate
with his daughter Lucrezia, since it rests only on bitterly hostile
Neapolitan gossip; but we cannot so easily set aside the persistent
statements of the ambassadors that a new _favorita_ appears at the
Vatican from time to time. These were sometimes ladies of Lucrezia's
suite.
Lucrezia, a merry, childish-looking, golden-haired girl, with her
father's high spirits and constant smile, is not likely to have
remained virtuous in such surroundings, but there is no serious
evidence of incest. Before her father's election she was betrothed
to a Spanish youth of moderate family, but her father cancelled the
espousals and married her, at the Vatican, in 1493, to Giovanni Sforza.
She was then, it is calculated, fifteen years old. Twelve cardinals
and a hundred and fifty of the great ladies of Rome attended the
wedding; and some of the prettier ladies remained to sup with the Pope
and cardinals, and applaud the loose comedies he provided. Giulia and
Lucrezia were present. When the Pope's policy estranged him from Milan,
he forced Lucrezia's husband to swear that the marriage had not been
consummated, and dissolved it. It seems probable that Giovanni, in
revenge, then put into circulation the suggestion of incest. Lucrezia
married Alfonso of Naples, who was murdered by her brother in 1500.
She then married the son of the Duke of Ferrara: and there is perhaps
no more terrible indictment of the Papal Court under Alexander than
the fact that, when his daughter was removed from it to Ferrara,
she earned, and kept until her death, a just repute for virtue and
benevolence.
These marriages introduce us to Alexander's political activity, on
which some recent historians have passed a somewhat lenient judgment.
Apart, however, from the treachery and brutality with which his aims
were often enforced, we shall find that at his death he left the
Papacy almost landless and impoverished, and we must conclude that his
chief objects were his personal security and the aggrandizement of his
children.
At the time of Alexander's accession, the duchy of Milan was improperly
held by Lodovico Sforza, brother of the Cardinal Ascanio, who sought
to convert his temporary regency into a permanent sovereignty. In
this ambition he had the support of France, while Ferrante of Naples
endeavoured to enforce the claim of the rightful Duke, Giovanni
Galeazzo. Alexander's indebtedness to Ascanio bound him at once to
the Sforzas, and the imprudence of Ferrante in helping his commander,
Virginio Orsini, to purchase from the nephew of the late Pope certain
towns which Alexander regarded as Papal fiefs, gave him an occasion
for animosity. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was implicated in this
sale, and when the Pope angrily rebuked him, he fled to Ostia and
fortified that commanding town. Alarmed at this cohesion of his enemies
and the support of their designs by Florence, Alexander entered into
a counter-league with Milan, Venice, Siena, Ferrara, and Mantua, and
married his daughter to Giovanni Sforza. Ferrante, however, appealed
to Spain, submitting (with the support of Cardinal della Rovere) that
the corrupt election and profligate life of Alexander demanded the
attention of a General Council, and the Pope sought a compromise. The
matter of the towns in Romagna was adjusted, Alexander's son Jofre was
betrothed to an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso of Calabria, and his
younger son, Juan, Duke of Gandia, was wedded to a Spanish princess.
Cæsar was destined for the Church and was made a cardinal on September
20, 1493. As Alexander had sworn before his election not to create
new cardinals, and now calmly absolved himself from his promise and
promoted several, the hostile cardinals again angrily deserted him.
Ferrante died on January 27, 1494, and the Pope had to confront a
delicate problem. France, instigated by Milan, pressed a claim to
the kingdom of Naples, and Alfonso II. demanded the investiture in
succession to Ferrante. Charles of France refused to be consoled with
the Golden Rose which Alexander sent him in refusing to recognize his
claim to Naples, and he threatened a General Council or a separation
of the French Church. When Alexander proceeded to take Ostia by force,
driving Cardinal Giuliano to France, and sent Cæsar to crown Alfonso
at Naples, the French monarch announced that he would lead his army
into Italy in order to recover Naples, to reform the Church, and to
conquer the Turks. The latter purpose furnished the Pope with a pretext
for a disgraceful move. Djem, the brother of the Sultan Bajazet, had
been enjoying the dissipations of Rome since 1489, and Bajazet paid
the Papacy 40,000 ducats a year to keep his younger brother in this
gilded captivity. Since Alexander's accession, Bajazet had refused
to pay the fee, and the Pope now wrote to the Sultan to say that the
King of France was coming to seize Djem and make him the pretext for
a war on the Turks; Bajazet must at once send 40,000 ducats to enable
him to resist the French. The Sultan sent the money, but his and the
Pope's envoy were captured by Cardinal della Rovere's brother, and were
relieved of the money and the Sultan's letter. When this letter was
published, Christendom learned with horror that the Sultan had offered
its Pope 300,000 ducats if he would have Djem assassinated.[281]
Of the war which followed little need be said. As the victorious French
advanced, Alexander tremblingly vacillated. At one moment he imprisoned
the pro-French cardinals, and then released them; and at another moment
he packed his treasures for flight, and then decided to meet the French
King. Alfonso bewailed that the Pope's arm was too weak or too cowardly
to launch an anathema against the invader. In the end the Pope met and
disarmed Charles. To the intense disgust of Giuliano della Rovere,
who had come with the King in expectation of the tiara, he persuaded
Charles that an Italian, even in the chair of Peter, could hardly
be expected to lead a saintly life; and to the equal indignation of
Alfonso he, while refusing to recognize Charles's claim to the throne
of Naples, abandoned the Neapolitan alliance and gave his son Cæsar as
a hostage of his good behaviour. With similar treachery to the Sultan
he abandoned Djem to Charles, yet stipulated that the yearly 40,000
ducats should still go to the Papal treasury.[282]
Charles took Naples, and soon learned that the versatile Pope had,
behind his back, entered into a league against him with Maximilian of
Germany, Ferdinand of Spain, Venice, and Lodovico Sforza. Alexander
prudently quitted Rome when the French King returned, and flung after
him a feeble threat of anathema, as he was cutting his way through the
allies. But by the aggrandizement of his family he made an evil use
of the peace which followed. Cæsar was made legate for Naples and his
nephew Juan legate for Perugia; and to his favourite son Juan, Duke of
Gandia, he assigned the important Papal fief of the duchy of Benevento,
to be held by him and his heirs for ever. Even loyal cardinals grumbled
at the scandal, while the outspoken and more distant critics spread in
every country the story of his private life. Alexander, delivered from
the menace both of France and Naples, cast aside all restraint. But his
gaiety was soon darkened by a grave tragedy, and it is, perhaps, the
most precise and most damning characterization of the man to record
that even this appalling catastrophe, occurring near the close of his
seventh decade of life, did not disturb for more than a few months the
licentious course of his conduct.
On June 14, 1497, Vannozza gave a banquet to her sons and a few
friends in the suburbs. Cæsar and Juan returned to the city together,
and were joined by a masked man who had for some weeks been seen in
communication with the young Duke. Juan left his brother with a light
hint that he had an assignation, and the same night he was murdered and
his body thrown into the Tiber. We are as far as contemporaries were
from identifying the murderer. That it was Cæsar Borgia few serious
historians now believe. That suggestion did not arise until nine
months after the murder, and the motives alleged are not convincing.
It is more plausibly claimed that the Sforzas and the Orsini adopted
this means of striking at the heart of the Pontiff, but it is equally
possible that Juan incurred the penalty of some dangerous seduction.
I am concerned only with Alexander. Appalled by this sudden clouding
of his prosperity, the Pope summoned his cardinals and announced with
tears that he would remove his children from Rome and abandon his
corrupt ways. Six cardinals were at once appointed to draw up a scheme
of Church-reform, and the draft of a Bull, which is still to be seen
in the Vatican archives, shows with what devotion Cardinals Costa and
Caraffa and their colleagues applied themselves to the long-desired
task. But before the end of the year Alexander had returned to his
vices and abandoned the idea of reform. He informed the cardinals
that he wished to release Cæsar from membership of their College, in
order that he might be free to contract an exalted marriage and pursue
his ambition; and it was then (December, 1497) that he brought about
the shameless divorce of Lucrezia from Giovanni Sforza. The Vatican
chambers resumed their nightly gaiety.
The Orsini and the Colonna now buried their ancient and deadly feud and
united with Naples, and the demand for a General Council was ominously
echoed in Germany and Spain. Alexander sought at first a counterpoise
in Naples, and wished to marry Cæsar and Lucrezia into the family of
Alfonso. After some hesitation, and with marked reluctance, Alfonso
II. gave his natural son Alfonso to Lucrezia, but he refused, in
spite of the political advantage, to degrade his daughter Carlotta
by a marriage with Cæsar. It is not immaterial to observe that Cæsar
had, like four other cardinals of the Church, contracted the "French
disease" which was then so fiercely punishing the vice of Italy. It
happened that at that time Louis XII. sought a divorce, and, at first
in the hope of bringing pressure on Naples, Cæsar, after resigning the
cardinalate on August 17th, was sent to gratify and impress the French
Court. Even Giuliano della Rovere, who lived quietly at Avignon, was
induced to enter the intrigue. Carlotta and her father still disdained
the connexion, but Louis offered Cæsar his young and beautiful niece,
Charlotte d'Albret, and the counties of Valentinois and Diois. They
were married on May 22d (1499), and the Papal policy entered upon a new
phase.
The Papacy and Venice, preferring their selfish interests to the
welfare of Italy, allied themselves with France, and for the hundredth
time an invading army descended upon the plains of Lombardy. Spain and
Portugal were now angrily threatening to have the Pope--who, with equal
warmth, accused Isabella herself of unchastity--tried by a General
Council for his scandalous actions, and he and Cæsar formed the design
of establishing, with the aid of the French, a strong principality
for Cæsar in central Italy. The Neapolitan alliance was discarded,
and Bulls were issued to the effect that the Lords of Rimini, Pesaro,
Imola, Faenza, Forli, Urbino, and Camerino had failed to discharge
their feudal duties to the Papacy and had forfeited their fiefs. The
victorious progress of Cæsar in these territories was checked for a
time by a revolt at Milan, but that city was retaken by the French in
1500. The successful Jubilee of 1500, which at one time drew 100,000
pilgrims to Rome, filled the coffers and helped to exalt the spirit
of the Pope. His character, indeed, seemed to become more buoyant and
defiant as his age advanced. During that year he had a narrow escape
from death, owing to the fall of the roof of the Sala de' Pape, and
Lucrezia's husband was cut to pieces in his chamber by the soldiers,
and at the command, of Cæsar. These events hardly dimmed the joy of
the Pope. Cæsar received the Golden Rose and was made Gonfaloniere
of the Church; and he was permitted to appropriate a large share of
the Jubilee funds and to exact large sums from the cardinals whom
the Pope promoted in 1500. Meantime, the ambassadors relate, Giulia
Orsini retained her influence over the seventy-year old Pope, and other
_favorite_ made a transient appearance at the Vatican.
The next two years were employed in the establishment of Cæsar's power
in Romagna and the reduction of the Pope's personal enemies. Louis of
France and Ferdinand of Spain drew up their famous, or infamous, scheme
for the partition of Naples, and Alexander conveniently discovered
for them, and proclaimed in a Bull, that Federigo of Naples had, by
an alliance with the Turks, become a traitor to Christendom. The
fall of Naples involved the ruin of the Colonna, and they and the
Savelli were condemned to lose their estates for rebellion against
the Holy See. From part of these estates the Pope formed the duchy of
Sermoneta for Lucrezia's two-year-old son, Rodrigo, and the duchy of
Nepi was bestowed on his own infant son Juan. Alexander next turned
his attention to Ferrara, and, when Venice and Florence forbade him
to attack it, he arranged a marriage of the widowed Lucrezia with
the Duke's son Alfonso: overcoming the abhorrence of the proud Este
family by the influence of Louis XII. and by a grant to the Duke of all
Church-dues in Ferrara for three years. From Ferrara, when it fell to
his sister, Cæsar would have a comparatively easy march on Bologna, if
not Florence.
So the year 1501 ended in such rejoicings as the fortune of the Borgia
family inspired. At the date October 11, 1501, Burchard dispassionately
notes in his diary that the Pope was unable to attend to his spiritual
duties, but was not prevented from enjoying, in the Vatican, a
"chestnut dance" and other performances of fifty nude courtesans whom
Cæsar introduced.[283] Lucrezia, whose purity some recent writers
are eager to vindicate, was present with her father and brother. On
December 30th she was married. Alexander gave her the finest set of
pearls in Europe and 100,000 ducats; and for a week Rome enjoyed such
spectacles and bull-fights as had not been seen for years. Within the
Vatican such comedies as the _Menæchmi_ of Plautus were enacted before
the Pope and his family and cardinals. Even tolerant Italy now broke
into caustic criticisms, and Cæsar replied vigorously by the daggers of
his followers. The Pope genially urged him to let men talk.
The last phase is, in its way, not less repulsive. By heartless
treachery and brilliant fighting Cæsar spread his sway over central
Italy and Alexander watched and spurred his progress. The Pope's
attendants had to endure unaccustomed fits of anger and abuse when his
son did not advance rapidly enough. He treacherously arrested Cardinal
Orsini; and the Cardinal's aged mother, who was ejected from her
palace, had to send to the Pope (by Orsini's mistress) a magnificent
pearl which Alexander coveted before she was allowed to provide her
son with decent food. Cardinal Orsini died, and his property was
confiscated. Cardinal Michiel died, and his fortune of 150,000 ducats
was appropriated. The College of Cardinals trembled and the famous
legend of the Borgia poison spread over Italy.[284] Nine new cardinals,
mostly of unworthy character, were created and are said to have paid
130,000 ducats for the dignity, and 64,000 ducats were raised by
inventing new offices in the Curia. Alexander, although seventy-two
years old, was in robust health, and looked forward to years of
pleasure under the protection of his victorious son. And one night in
the unhealthy heat of August (the 5th or 6th) he and Cæsar sat late
at supper with Cardinal Adriano da Corneto. Romance has it that the
poisoned wine they intended for their host was served to them: modern
history is content with the known malaria of an autumn night.[285] On
August 18th Alexander died, and both Cæsar and Cardinal Adriano were
seriously ill.
Of other actions of Alexander his connexion with Savonarola alone
demands some consideration, and it must be treated briefly. On July
25, 1495, Alexander, in friendly terms, summoned Savonarola to Rome
to give an account of the prophetic gifts he claimed. Alexander was
very tolerant of criticisms of his vices, except where they might
provoke kings to summon a council, and it is probable that he wished
to silence the politician rather than the preacher; Savonarola
vigorously supported the idea of an alliance of Florence with France,
which the Pope opposed. Savonarola evaded the summons to Rome, and
the Pope suspended him from preaching and endeavoured to destroy his
authority by joining the San Marco convent to the Lombard Congregation.
Savonarola defeated the Pope on the latter point, and on February 11,
1496, he returned to his pulpit, in defiance of the Pope's order and
at the command of the Signoria of Florence. In explanation of his act
he urged that Alexander's Brief was based on false information and
invalid, and he denounced Roman corruption more freely than ever.
Alexander, in November, directed that a new congregation should be
formed out of the Roman and Tuscan convents,[286] and when Savonarola
and his monks again defeated the project, the Pope had recourse to
secular measures.
A mind like that of the exalted and feverish preacher was not likely
to escape error and exaggeration in such circumstances, and his
opponents in Florence made progress. Alexander now offered the coveted
possession of Pisa to the Signoria if they would desert Savonarola
and the idea of a French alliance. The monk was forbidden by the
authorities to preach, and his defiance of the Signoria as well as the
Papacy led to disorders of which the Pope took advantage to publish a
sentence of excommunication (June 18, 1497). Alexander had meantime
again listened to entreaties of delay and inquiry, but when he heard
that the monk defied his anathema he said that the sentence must take
its course. Up to this point the Pope had, in view of the very strong
support which Savonarola had at Florence, proceeded with moderation,
though we may resent the insincerity of his attack; it was not the
prophecies, but the policy and the puritanism, of Savonarola which
interested him. He complained bitterly to the Florentine ambassadors of
Savonarola's attacks on himself and the cardinals, and was, as always,
alarmed by the monk's demand of a General Council. However, the monk,
not realizing the progress made by his enemies, struck a louder note
of defiance, and on the plea of the public disorders to which he gave
rise, he was arrested and put on trial. Alexander willingly granted
the authorities a tithe on the ecclesiastical property at Florence
when they announced the arrest. The sensitive monk was, by torture,
driven into some vague disavowal of his supernatural pretensions, and
he and two other friars were, on May 23, 1498, hanged by the Florentine
authorities as "heretics, schismatics, and contemners of the Holy
See." The sentence, however corruptly obtained, was technically just,
since in the legislation of the time contumacious defiance of the
Papacy implied heresy; but the respective positions of Savonarola and
Alexander VI. in the history of religious progress are a sufficient
monument to the bravery and inflexibility of the great Florentine
puritan.
There are few good deeds to be put in the scale against the crimes and
vices of Alexander VI. He made a considerable, though futile, effort
to rouse Christendom against the advancing Turks. He fortified Sant'
Angelo, and engaged Pinturicchio to decorate the Vatican apartments.
He pressed the propagation of the faith in the New World, ordered the
examination and authorization of printed books, endeavoured to check
heresy in Bohemia, and vigorously defended the rights of the Church
in the Netherlands. These things cannot alter our estimate of his
character. He was a selfish voluptuary of--in view of his position--the
most ignoble type; he countenanced and employed fraud, treachery, and
crime; and the condition in which we shall soon find the Papacy will
show that his policy had not the redeeming merit of effecting the
security of the institution over which he ignominiously presided.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 271: The letter is given in Raynaldus, _Annales
Ecclesiastici_, year 1460, n. 31, and is translated in Bishop Mathew's
_Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia_ (1912), p. 35. It is misrepresented
in Baron Corvo's _Chronicles of the House of Borgia_ (1901, p. 64).
The chief apologist for Alexander, A. Leonetti (_Papa Alessandro VI._,
1880), made the easy suggestion that the letter was a forgery, but
Cardinal Hergenroether found the original in the Vatican archives.
See the able essay by Comte H. de L'Épinois (another Catholic writer)
in the _Revue des Questions Historiques_ (April 1, 1881), p. 367. He
shows, by the use of original documents, that the apologetic efforts
of Ollivier, Leonetti, and a few others, are futile. Of these efforts
the leading Catholic historian of the Papacy, Dr. L. Pastor, observes:
"In the face of such a perversion of the truth, it is the duty of the
historian to show that the evidence against Rodrigo is so strong as to
render it impossible to restore his reputation" (_The History of the
Popes_, ii., 542).]
[Footnote 272: The decisive documents, from the archives of the Duke of
Ossuna, are published by Thuasne in his edition of Burchard's _Diarium_
(Appendix to vol. iii.). Dr. Pastor (ii., 453) has a good summary
of them, and there is other evidence in the _Lucrezia Borgia_ of
Gregorovius. See also the essay of Comte H. de L'Épinois, quoted above,
and "Don Rodrigo de Borja und seine Söhne," by C.R. von Höfler, in the
_Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften_, Bd. 73.
The chief original authorities are J. Burchard (_Diarium_, edited by
Thuasne, 3 vols., 1884) and S. Infessura (_Diario_, in Muratori, iii.),
and the despatches of the Italian ambassadors at Rome. Burchard and
Infessura are gossipy and hostile, and must be controlled. Recent works
on the Borgias are too apt to reproduce lightly the romantic statements
of later Italian historians or contemporary Neapolitan enemies. The
work of Bishop Mathew, to which I have referred, is less judicious than
his volume on Hildebrand. Bishop Creighton's _History of the Papacy_
is rather too indulgent to Alexander and needs supplementing by the
documents in Pastor and Thuasne.]
[Footnote 273: M. Brosch, the scholarly author of a study of Julius
II. (_Papst Julius II._, 1878), observes that research in the Rovere
archives has discovered no trace of the Paolo Riario who is assigned
as the father of Sixtus's nephews, and concludes that they were his
natural sons. But Paolo Riario is expressly mentioned in the funeral
oration on Cardinal Pietro Riario, and is more fully described in Leone
Cobelli's _Cronache Forlivesi_. There is no sound reason to impeach the
chastity of this Pope, as even Creighton does.]
[Footnote 274: The gold ducat is estimated at about ten shillings of
English money, but probably this does not express its full purchasing
power.]
[Footnote 275: See the dispatches quoted in Thuasne's Burchard, vol.
ii.]
[Footnote 276: I may repeat that I am not reproducing disputed
statements, or relying on uncertain chronicles, in these chapters. The
evidence may be examined in Thuasne, Pastor, L'Épinois, Creighton,
Gregorovius, and von Reumont (_Geschichte der Stadt Rom_, 3 vols.,
1867-8).]
[Footnote 277: See the evidence in Thuasne (ii., 610), L'Épinois (pp.
389-91), and Pastor (v., 382). A writer in the _American Catholic
Quarterly Review_ (1900, p. 262) observes: "That Borgia secured his
election through the rankest simony is a fact too well authenticated to
admit a doubt."]
[Footnote 278: Again I may refer to the convenient summaries of the
evidence in Pastor (v., 417), L'Épinois (398), Gregorovius (Appendix,
no. 11, etc.), and Creighton (iv., 203).]
[Footnote 279: There are copies, reproduced by Gregorovius, in the
archives at the Vatican, at Modena, and at Ossuna.]
[Footnote 280: _Diarii_ (ed. F. Stefani), i., 369.]
[Footnote 281: Alexander said that the letter published was a forgery,
and some historians have sought to prove this by internal evidence. It
is the general feeling of recent authorities that the letter is, at
least in substance, genuine. See Creighton (iv., Appendix 9) and Pastor
(v., 429).]
[Footnote 282: Djem died shortly afterwards, and it was rumoured that
Alexander had earned the 300,000 ducats by administering a slow poison
before he left Rome. But the better authorities tell us that the
weakened and dissolute youth contracted a chill and died of bronchitis.]
[Footnote 283: _Diarium_, iii., 167. The details of this dance,
which Burchard describes, and of the orgy which followed, may not
be translated. It is absurd to question Burchard's evidence on this
matter; he was then Master of Ceremonies at the Papal Court and
describes every move of the Pope. The Papal servants took part in the
performance, and he could easily learn the details. The Florentine and
other ambassadors speak of Cæsar repeatedly introducing these women
into the Vatican at night.]
[Footnote 284: There is, as Pastor and Creighton admit, grave reason to
think that Orsini and Michiel were poisoned, but charges of this kind
are difficult to check, and certainly there is a good deal of romance
in the Borgia legend. The death-rate of cardinals under Alexander was
not more than normal. See Baron Corvo's _Chronicles of the House of
Borgia_ (1901), and R. Sabatini's _Life of Cesare Borgia_ (1911).]
[Footnote 285: The poison theory is not mentioned by Burchard or the
chief ambassadors, and is positively advanced only by Neapolitan or
later writers. No historian seems now to entertain it. Alexander's
illness, which lasted thirteen days, followed a course more consistent
with malaria, and the very rapid decomposition of his body, which seems
to have impressed Lord Acton, is not inexplicable at that season.]
[Footnote 286: Savonarola was head of the Tuscan Congregation of the
Dominican Order, and these proposals--which were inspired by jealous
colleagues at Rome--aimed at putting him under a new and hostile
jurisdiction.]