RODERIGO LENZUOLO was born at Valencia, in Spain, in 1430 or 1431, and
on his mother’s side was descended, as some writers declare, of a family
of royal blood, which had cast its eyes on the tiara only after
cherishing hopes of the crowns of Aragon and Valencia. Roderigo from his
infancy had shown signs of a marvellous quickness of mind, and as he
grew older he exhibited an intelligence extremely apt for the study of
sciences, especially law and jurisprudence: the result was that his
first distinctions were gained in the law, a profession wherein he soon
made a great reputation by his ability in the discussion of the most
thorny cases. All the same, he was not slow to leave this career, and
abandoned it quite suddenly for the military profession, which his
father had followed; but after various actions which served to display
his presence of mind and courage, he was as much disgusted with this
profession as with the other; and since it happened that at the very
time he began to feel this disgust his father died, leaving a
considerable fortune, he resolved to do no more work, but to live
according to his own fancies and caprices. About this time he became the
lover of a widow who had two daughters. The widow dying, Roderigo took
the girls under his protection, put one into a convent, and as the other
was one of the loveliest women imaginable, made her his mistress. This
was the notorious Rosa Vanozza, by whom he had five children—Francesco,
Caesar, Lucrezia, and Goffredo; the name of the fifth is unknown.
Roderigo, retired from public affairs, was given up entirely to the
affections of a lover and a father, when he heard that his uncle, who
loved him like a son, had been elected pope under the name of Calixtus
III. But the young man was at this time so much a lover that love
imposed silence on ambition; and indeed he was almost terrified at the
exaltation of his uncle, which was no doubt destined to force him once
more into public life. Consequently, instead of hurrying to Rome, as
anyone else in his place would have done, he was content to indite to
His Holiness a letter in which he begged for the continuation of his
favours, and wished him a long and happy reign.
This reserve on the part of one of his relatives, contrasted with the
ambitious schemes which beset the new pope at every step, struck
Calixtus III in a singular way: he knew the stuff that was in young
Roderigo, and at a time when he was besieged on all sides by
mediocrities, this powerful nature holding modestly aside gained new
grandeur in his eyes so he replied instantly to Roderigo that on the
receipt of his letter he must quit Spain for Italy, Valencia for Rome.
This letter uprooted Roderigo from the centre of happiness he had
created for himself, and where he might perhaps have slumbered on like
an ordinary man, if fortune had not thus interposed to drag him forcibly
away. Roderigo was happy, Roderigo was rich; the evil passions which
were natural to him had been, if not extinguished,—at least lulled; he
was frightened himself at the idea of changing the quiet life he was
leading for the ambitious, agitated career that was promised him; and
instead of obeying his uncle, he delayed the preparations for departure,
hoping that Calixtus would forget him. It was not so: two months after
he received the letter from the pope, there arrived at Valencia a
prelate from Rome, the bearer of Roderigo’s nomination to a benefice
worth 20,000 ducats a year, and also a positive order to the holder of
the post to come and take possession of his charge as soon as possible.
Holding back was no longer feasible: so Roderigo obeyed; but as he did
not wish to be separated from the source whence had sprung eight years
of happiness, Rosa Vanozza also left Spain, and while he was going to
Rome, she betook herself to Venice, accompanied by two confidential
servants, and under the protection of a Spanish gentleman named Manuel
Melchior.
Fortune kept the promises she had made to Roderigo: the pope received
him as a son, and made him successively Archbishop of Valencia,
Cardinal-Deacon, and Vice-Chancellor. To all these favours Calixtus
added a revenue of 20,000 ducats, so that at the age of scarcely
thirty-five Roderigo found himself the equal of a prince in riches and
power.
Roderigo had had some reluctance about accepting the cardinalship, which
kept him fast at Rome, and would have preferred to be General of the
Church, a position which would have allowed him more liberty for seeing
his mistress and his family; but his uncle Calixtus made him reckon with
the possibility of being his successor some day, and from that moment
the idea of being the supreme head of kings and nations took such hold
of Roderigo, that he no longer had any end in view but that which his
uncle had made him entertain.
From that day forward, there began to grow up in the young cardinal that
talent for hypocrisy which made of him the most perfect incarnation of
the devil that has perhaps ever existed; and Roderigo was no longer the
same man: with words of repentance and humility on his lips, his head
bowed as though he were bearing the weight of his past sins, disparaging
the riches which he had acquired and which, according to him, were the
wealth of the poor and ought to return to the poor, he passed his life
in churches, monasteries, and hospitals, acquiring, his historian tells
us, even in the eyes of his enemies, the reputation of a Solomon for
wisdom, of a Job for patience, and of a very Moses for his promulgation
of the word of God: Rosa Vanozza was the only person in the world who
could appreciate the value of this pious cardinal’s conversion.
It proved a lucky thing for Roderiga that he had assumed this pious
attitude, for his protector died after a reign of three years three
months and nineteen days, and he was now sustained by his own merit
alone against the numerous enemies he had made by his rapid rise to
fortune: so during the whole of the reign of Pius II he lived always
apart from public affairs, and only reappeared in the days of Sixtus IV,
who made him the gift of the abbacy of Subiaco, and sent him in the
capacity of ambassador to the kings of Aragon and Portugal. On his
return, which took place during the pontificate of Innocent VIII, he
decided to fetch his family at last to Rome: thither they came, escorted
by Don Manuel Melchior, who from that moment passed as the husband of
Rosa Vanozza, and took the name of Count Ferdinand of Castile. The
Cardinal Roderigo received the noble Spaniard as a countryman and a
friend; and he, who expected to lead a most retired life, engaged a
house in the street of the Lungara, near the church of Regina Coeli, on
the banks of the Tiber. There it was that, after passing the day in
prayers and pious works, Cardinal Roderigo used to repair each evening
and lay aside his mask. And it was said, though nobody could prove it,
that in this house infamous scenes passed: Report said the dissipations
were of so dissolute a character that their equals had never been seen
in Rome. With a view to checking the rumours that began to spread
abroad, Roderigo sent Caesar to study at Pisa, and married Lucrezia to a
young gentleman of Aragon; thus there only remained at home Rosa Vanozza
and her two sons: such was the state of things when Innocent VIII died
and Roderigo Borgia was proclaimed pope.
We have seen by what means the nomination was effected; and so the five
cardinals who had taken no part in this simony—namely, the Cardinals of
Naples, Sierra, Portugal, Santa Maria-in-Porticu, and St.
Peter-in-Vinculis—protested loudly against this election, which they
treated as a piece of jobbery; but Roderigo had none the less, however
it was done, secured his majority; Roderigo was none the less the two
hundred and sixtieth successor of St. Peter.
Alexander VI, however, though he had arrived at his object, did not dare
throw off at first the mask which the Cardinal Borgia had worn so long,
although when he was apprised of his election he could not dissimulate
his joy; indeed, on hearing the favourable result of the scrutiny, he
lifted his hands to heaven and cried, in the accents of satisfied
ambition, "Am I then pope? Am I then Christ’s vicar? Am I then the
keystone of the Christian world?"
"Yes, holy father," replied Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the same who had
sold to Roderigo the nine votes that were at his disposal at the
Conclave for four mules laden with silver; "and we hope by your election
to give glory to God, repose to the Church, and joy to Christendom,
seeing that you have been chosen by the Almighty Himself as the most
worthy among all your brethren."
But in the short interval occupied by this reply, the new pope had
already assumed the papal authority, and in a humble voice and with
hands crossed upon his breast, he spoke:
"We hope that God will grant us His powerful aid, in spite of our
weakness, and that He will do for us that which He did for the apostle
when aforetime He put into his hands the keys of heaven and entrusted to
him the government of the Church, a government which without the aid of
God would prove too heavy a burden for mortal man; but God promised that
His Spirit should direct him; God will do the same, I trust, for us; and
for your part we fear not lest any of you fail in that holy obedience
which is due unto the head of the Church, even as the flock of Christ
was bidden to follow the prince of the apostles."
Having spoken these words, Alexander donned the pontifical robes, and
through the windows of the Vatican had strips of paper thrown out on
which his name was written in Latin. These, blown by the wind, seemed to
convey to the whole world the news of the great event which was about to
change the face of Italy. The same day couriers started for all the
courts of Europe.
Caesar Borgia learned the news of his father’s election at the
University of Pisa, where he was a student. His ambition had sometimes
dreamed of such good fortune, yet his joy was little short of madness.
He was then a young man, about twenty-two or twenty-four years of age,
skilful in all bodily exercises, and especially in fencing; he could
ride barebacked the most fiery steeds, could cut off the head of a bull
at a single sword-stroke; moreover, he was arrogant, jealous, and
insincere. According to Tammasi, he was great among the godless, as his
brother Francesco was good among the great. As to his face, even
contemporary authors have left utterly different descriptions; for some
have painted him as a monster of ugliness, while others, on the
contrary, extol his beauty. This contradiction is due to the fact that
at certain times of the year, and especially in the spring, his face was
covered with an eruption which, so long as it lasted, made him an object
of horror and disgust, while all the rest of the year he was the sombre,
black-haired cavalier with pale skin and tawny beard whom Raphael shows
us in the fine portrait he made of him. And historians, both chroniclers
and painters, agree as to his fixed and powerful gaze, behind which
burned a ceaseless flame, giving to his face something infernal and
superhuman. Such was the man whose fortune was to fulfil all his
desires. He had taken for his motto, ’Aut Caesar, aut nihil’: Caesar or
nothing.
Caesar posted to Rome with certain of his friends, and scarcely was he
recognised at the gates of the city when the deference shown to him gave
instant proof of the change in his fortunes: at the Vatican the respect
was twice as great; mighty men bowed down before him as before one
mightier than themselves. And so, in his impatience, he stayed not to
visit his mother or any other member of his family, but went straight to
the pope to kiss his feet; and as the pope had been forewarned of his
coming, he awaited him in the midst of a brilliant and numerous
assemblage of cardinals, with the three other brothers standing behind
him. His Holiness received Caesar with a gracious countenance; still, he
did not allow himself any demonstration of his paternal love, but,
bending towards him, kissed him on the forehead, and inquired how he was
and how he had fared on his journey. Caesar replied that he was
wonderfully well, and altogether at the service of His Holiness: that,
as to the journey, the trifling inconveniences and short fatigue had
been compensated, and far more than compensated, by the joy which he
felt in being able to adore upon the papal throne a pope who was so
worthy. At these words, leaving Caesar still on his knees, and reseating
himself—for he had risen from his seat to embrace him—the pope assumed a
grave and composed expression of face, and spoke as follows, loud enough
to be heard by all, and slowly enough for everyone present to be able to
ponder and retain in his memory even the least of his words:
"We are convinced, Caesar, that you are peculiarly rejoiced in beholding
us on this sublime height, so far above our deserts, whereto it has
pleased the Divine goodness to exalt us. This joy of yours is first of
all our due because of the love we have always borne you and which we
bear you still, and in the second place is prompted by your own personal
interest, since henceforth you may feel sure of receiving from our
pontifical hand those benefits which your own good works shall deserve.
But if your joy—and this we say to you as we have even now said to your
brothers—if your joy is founded on ought else than this, you are very
greatly mistaken, Caesar, and you will find yourself sadly deceived.
Perhaps we have been ambitious—we confess this humbly before the face of
all men—passionately and immoderately ambitious to attain to the dignity
of sovereign pontiff, and to reach this end we have followed every path
that is open to human industry; but we have acted thus, vowing an inward
vow that when once we had reached our goal, we would follow no other
path but that which conduces best to the service of God and to the
advancement of the Holy See, so that the glorious memory of the deeds
that we shall do may efface the shameful recollection of the deeds we
have already done. Thus shall we, let us hope, leave to those who follow
us a track where upon if they find not the footsteps of a saint, they
may at least tread in the path of a true pontiff. God, who has furthered
the means, claims at our hands the fruits, and we desire to discharge to
the full this mighty debt that we have incurred to Him; and accordingly
we refuse to arouse by any deceit the stern rigour of His judgments. One
sole hindrance could have power to shake our good intentions, and that
might happen should we feel too keen an interest in your fortunes.
Therefore are we armed beforehand against our love, and therefore have
we prayed to God beforehand that we stumble not because of you; for in
the path of favouritism a pope cannot slip without a fall, and cannot
fall without injury and dishonour to the Holy See. Even to the end of
our life we shall deplore the faults which have brought this experience
home to us; and may it please God that our uncle Calixtus of blessed
memory bear not this day in purgatory the burden of our sins, more
heavy, alas, than his own! Ah, he was rich in every virtue, he was full
of good intentions; but he loved too much his own people, and among them
he loved me chief. And so he suffered this love to lead him blindly
astray, all this love that he bore to his kindred, who to him were too
truly flesh of his flesh, so that he heaped upon the heads of a few
persons only, and those perhaps the least worthy, benefits which would
more fittingly have rewarded the deserts of many. In truth, he bestowed
upon our house treasures that should never have been amassed at the
expense of the poor, or else should have been turned to a better
purpose. He severed from the ecclesiastical State, already weak and
poor, the duchy of Spoleto and other wealthy properties, that he might
make them fiefs to us; he confided to our weak hands the
vice-chancellorship, the vice-prefecture of Rome, the generalship of the
Church, and all the other most important offices, which, instead of
being monopolised by us, should have been conferred on those who were
most meritorious. Moreover, there were persons who were raised on our
recommendation to posts of great dignity, although they had no claims
but such as our undue partiality accorded them; others were left out
with no reason for their failure except the jealousy excited in us by
their virtues. To rob Ferdinand of Aragon of the kingdom of Naples,
Calixtus kindled a terrible war, which by a happy issue only served to
increase our fortune, and by an unfortunate issue must have brought
shame and disaster upon the Holy See. Lastly, by allowing himself to be
governed by men who sacrificed public good to their private interests,
he inflicted an injury, not only upon the pontifical throne and his own
reputation, but what is far worse, far more deadly, upon his own
conscience. And yet, O wise judgments of God! hard and incessantly
though he toiled to establish our fortunes, scarcely had he left empty
that supreme seat which we occupy to-day, when we were cast down from
the pinnacle whereon we had climbed, abandoned to the fury of the rabble
and the vindictive hatred of the Roman barons, who chose to feel
offended by our goodness to their enemies. Thus, not only, we tell you,
Caesar, not only did we plunge headlong from the summit of our grandeur,
losing the worldly goods and dignities which our uncle had heaped at our
feet, but for very peril of our life we were condemned to a voluntary
exile, we and our friends, and in this way only did we contrive to
escape the storm which our too good fortune had stirred up against us.
Now this is a plain proof that God mocks at men’s designs when they are
bad ones. How great an error is it for any pope to devote more care to
the welfare of a house, which cannot last more than a few years, than to
the glory of the Church, which will last for ever! What utter folly for
any public man whose position is not inherited and cannot be bequeathed
to his posterity, to support the edifice of his grandeur on any other
basis than the noblest virtue practised for the general good, and to
suppose that he can ensure the continuance of his own fortune otherwise
than by taking all precautions against sudden whirlwinds which are want
to arise in the midst of a calm, and to blow up the storm-clouds I mean
the host of enemies. Now any one of these enemies who does his worst can
cause injuries far more powerful than any help that is at all likely to
come from a hundred friends and their lying promises. If you and your
brothers walk in the path of virtue which we shall now open for you,
every wish of your heart shall be instantly accomplished; but if you
take the other path, if you have ever hoped that our affection will wink
at disorderly life, then you will very soon find out that we are truly
pope, Father of the Church, not father of the family; that, vicar of
Christ as we are, we shall act as we deem best for Christendom, and not
as you deem best for your own private good. And now that we have come to
a thorough understanding, Caesar, receive our pontifical blessing." And
with these words, Alexander VI rose up, laid his hands upon his son’s
head, for Caesar was still kneeling, and then retired into his
apartments, without inviting him to follow.
The young man remained awhile stupefied at this discourse, so utterly
unexpected, so utterly destructive at one fell blow to his most
cherished hopes. He rose giddy and staggering like a drunken man, and at
once leaving the Vatican, hurried to his mother, whom he had forgotten
before, but sought now in his despair. Rosa Vanozza possessed all the
vices and all the virtues of a Spanish courtesan; her devotion to the
Virgin amounted to superstition, her fondness for her children to
weakness, and her love for Roderigo to sensuality. In the depth of her
heart she relied on the influence she had been able to exercise over him
for nearly thirty years; and like a snake, she knew how to envelop him
in her coils when the fascination of her glance had lost its power. Rosa
knew of old the profound hypocrisy of her lover, and thus she was in no
difficulty about reassuring Caesar.
Lucrezia was with her mother when Caesar arrived; the two young people
exchanged a lover-like kiss beneath her very eyes: and before he left
Caesar had made an appointment for the same evening with Lucrezia, who
was now living apart from her husband, to whom Roderigo paid a pension
in her palace of the Via del Pelegrino, opposite the Campo dei Fiori,
and there enjoying perfect liberty.
In the evening, at the hour fixed, Caesar appeared at Lucrezia’s; but he
found there his brother Francesco. The two young men had never been
friends. Still, as their tastes were very different, hatred with
Francesco was only the fear of the deer for the hunter; but with Caesar
it was the desire for vengeance and that lust for blood which lurks
perpetually in the heart of a tiger. The two brothers none the less
embraced, one from general kindly feeling, the other from hypocrisy; but
at first sight of one another the sentiment of a double rivalry, first
in their father’s and then in their sister’s good graces, had sent the
blood mantling to the cheek of Francesco, and called a deadly pallor
into Caesar’s. So the two young men sat on, each resolved not to be the
first to leave, when all at once there was a knock at the door, and a
rival was announced before whom both of them were bound to give way: it
was their father.
Rosa Vanozza was quite right in comforting Caesar. Indeed, although
Alexander VI had repudiated the abuses of nepotism, he understood very
well the part that was to be played for his benefit by his sons and his
daughter; for he knew he could always count on Lucrezia and Caesar, if
not on Francesco and Goffredo. In these matters the sister was quite
worthy of her brother. Lucrezia was wanton in imagination, godless by
nature, ambitious and designing: she had a craving for pleasure,
admiration, honours, money, jewels, gorgeous stuffs, and magnificent
mansions. A true Spaniard beneath her golden tresses, a courtesan
beneath her frank looks, she carried the head of a Raphael Madonna, and
concealed the heart of a Messalina. She was dear to Roderigo both as
daughter and as mistress, and he saw himself reflected in her as in a
magic mirror, every passion and every vice. Lucrezia and Caesar were
accordingly the best beloved of his heart, and the three composed that
diabolical trio which for eleven years occupied the pontifical throne,
like a mocking parody of the heavenly Trinity.
Nothing occurred at first to give the lie to Alexander’s professions of
principle in the discourse he addressed to Caesar, and the first year of
his pontificate exceeded all the hopes of Rome at the time of his
election. He arranged for the provision of stores in the public
granaries with such liberality, that within the memory of man there had
never been such astonishing abundance; and with a view to extending the
general prosperity to the lowest class, he organised numerous doles to
be paid out of his private fortune, which made it possible for the very
poor to participate in the general banquet from which they had been
excluded for long enough. The safety of the city was secured, from the
very first days of his accession, by the establishment of a strong and
vigilant police force, and a tribunal consisting of four magistrates of
irreproachable character, empowered to prosecute all nocturnal crimes,
which during the last pontificate had been so common that their very
numbers made impunity certain: these judges from the first showed a
severity which neither the rank nor the purse of the culprit could
modify. This presented such a great contrast to the corruption of the
last reign,—in the course of which the vice-chamberlain one day remarked
in public, when certain people were complaining of the venality of
justice, "God wills not that a sinner die, but that he live and
pay,"—that the capital of the Christian world felt for one brief moment
restored to the happy days of the papacy. So, at the end of a year,
Alexander VI had reconquered that spiritual credit, so to speak, which
his predecessors lost. His political credit was still to be established,
if he was to carry out the first part of his gigantic scheme. To arrive
at this, he must employ two agencies—alliances and conquests. His plan
was to begin with alliances. The gentleman of Aragon who had married
Lucrezia when she was only the daughter of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia was
not a man powerful enough, either by birth and fortune or by intellect,
to enter with any sort of effect into the plots and plans of Alexander
VI; the separation was therefore changed into a divorce, and Lucrezia
Borgia was now free to remarry. Alexander opened up two negotiations at
the same time: he needed an ally to keep a watch on the policy of the
neighbouring States. John Sforza, grandson of Alexander Sforza, brother
of the great Francis I, Duke of Milan, was lord of Pesaro; the
geographical situation of this place, on the coast, on the way between
Florence and Venice, was wonderfully convenient for his purpose; so
Alexander first cast an eye upon him, and as the interest of both
parties was evidently the same, it came about that John Sforza was very
soon Lucrezia’s second husband.
At the same time overtures had been made to Alfonso of Aragon, heir
presumptive to the crown of Naples, to arrange a marriage between Dana
Sancia, his illegitimate daughter, and Goffreda, the pope’s third son;
but as the old Ferdinand wanted to make the best bargain he could out of
it; he dragged on the negotiations as long as possible, urging that the
two children were not of marriageable age, and so, highly honoured as he
felt in such a prospective alliance, there was no hurry about the
engagement. Matters stopped at this point, to the great annoyance of
Alexander VI, who saw through this excuse, and understood that the
postponement was nothing more or less than a refusal. Accordingly
Alexander and Ferdinand remained in statu quo, equals in the political
game, both on the watch till events should declare for one or other. The
turn of fortune was for Alexander.
Italy, though tranquil, was instinctively conscious that her calm was
nothing but the lull which goes before a storm. She was too rich and too
happy to escape the envy of other nations. As yet the plains of Pisa had
not been reduced to marsh-lands by the combined negligence and jealousy
of the Florentine Republic, neither had the rich country that lay around
Rome been converted into a barren desert by the wars of the Colonna and
Orsini families; not yet had the Marquis of Marignan razed to the ground
a hundred and twenty villages in the republic of Siena alone; and though
the Maremma was unhealthy, it was not yet a poisonous marsh: it is a
fact that Flavio Blando, writing in 1450, describes Ostia as being
merely less flourishing than in the days of the Romans, when she had
numbered 50,000 inhabitants, whereas now in our own day there are barely
30 in all.
The Italian peasants were perhaps the most blest on the face of the
earth: instead of living scattered about the country in solitary
fashion, they lived in villages that were enclosed by walls as a
protection for their harvests, animals, and farm implements; their
houses—at any rate those that yet stand—prove that they lived in much
more comfortable and beautiful surroundings than the ordinary townsman
of our day. Further, there was a community of interests, and many people
collected together in the fortified villages, with the result that
little by little they attained to an importance never acquired by the
boorish French peasants or the German serfs; they bore arms, they had a
common treasury, they elected their own magistrates, and whenever they
went out to fight, it was to save their common country.
Also commerce was no less flourishing than agriculture; Italy at this
period was rich in industries—silk, wool, hemp, fur, alum, sulphur,
bitumen; those products which the Italian soil could not bring forth
were imported, from the Black Sea, from Egypt, from Spain, from France,
and often returned whence they came, their worth doubled by labour and
fine workmanship. The rich man brought his merchandise, the poor his
industry: the one was sure of finding workmen, the other was sure of
finding work.
Art also was by no means behindhand: Dante, Giotto, Brunelleschi, and
Donatello were dead, but Ariosto, Raphael, Bramante, and Michael Angelo
were now living. Rome, Florence, and Naples had inherited the
masterpieces of antiquity; and the manuscripts of AEschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides had come (thanks to the conquest of Mahomet II) to rejoin
the statue of Xanthippus and the works of Phidias and Praxiteles. The
principal sovereigns of Italy had come to understand, when they let
their eyes dwell upon the fat harvests, the wealthy villages, the
flourishing manufactories, and the marvellous churches, and then
compared with them the poor and rude nations of fighting men who
surrounded them on all sides, that some day or other they were destined
to become for other countries what America was for Spain, a vast
gold-mine for them to work. In consequence of this, a league offensive
and defensive had been signed, about 1480, by Naples, Milan, Florence,
and Ferrara, prepared to take a stand against enemies within or without,
in Italy or outside. Ludovico Sforza, who was more than anyone else
interested in maintaining this league, because he was nearest to France,
whence the storm seemed to threaten, saw in the new pope’s election
means not only of strengthening the league, but of making its power and
unity conspicuous in the sight of Europe.