FOUR great councils were held in the fifteenth century, all previous to
the year 1460. The council of Pisa in 1409: it is not reverenced as an
oecumenical one; it nevertheless, in deposing. Gregory XII. and Benedict
XIII. elected Alexander III. to their place. This act did not extinguish
the schism; on the contrary it occasioned at once three popes.
The council of Constance in 1414: this had greater authority; it caused
John Huss and Jerome of Prague to be burned; further, it declared the
superiority of general councils over the popes; a doctrine always
disapproved of at Rome, and to which Martin V: did not adhere, though
elected by this very council of Constance. But the church had no longer
more than two heads, Martin V. and the obstinate Benedict XIII. Gregory
XII. sent in his resignation; and John XXIII. the successor of Alexander
V. was thrown into prison, from whence he did not come out until he had
acknowledged Martin V. There is no vice, no crime, which contemporary
historians and the council of Constance do not reproach John XXIII. with
An act of accusation prepared against him, presented, they say, a
complete catalogue of every mortal crime²⁷⁷ They assert that he had
seduced three hundred nuns²⁷⁸ according to Theodoric de Nieve²⁷⁹ he
kept at Bologna two hundred mistresses. These exaggerations discover
calumny; and the friendship and hospitality with which the Florentines,
especially the Medicis, a family at this period distinguished, honoured
a pontiff so weakly established, would suffice to refute or weaken the
accusations with which, his enemies and his misfortunes have loaded his
memory. The weakness of his character stimulated the insults of his
rivals, and his disgraces those of the historian. Stripped of his states
by Ladislaus, king of Naples, betrayed by Frederick, duke of Austria,
hunted by the emperor Sigismund, John used too liberally the sole
resources which remained to him, simony and usury; he brought to
perfection, even after Boniface IX. the traffic in benefices²⁸⁰ and we
read²⁸¹ that a note for one thousand florins would be passed him where
he lent eight hundred for four months.
²⁷⁷ Theodor, de Niem. ap. Vonder Hart. vol. ii. p. 389.
²⁷⁸ L’Enfant’s Hist, of Coun. of Constance, 1. 2, p. 184.
²⁷⁹ Invect. in Joann. 1. 23. p. 6.
²⁸⁰ Fleury’s Eccles. Hist. 1. 103, n. 46.
²⁸¹ Theodor. Niem. Invect. p. 8.
The council of Basle in 1431: theologians declare it oecumenical to its
twenty-fifth session only; it held forty-five. This council also humbled
a good deal the papal authority; and its decrees on this head, as well
as those of Constance, served to prepare in France the celebrated
pragmatic sanction, to which we shall revert by and by. The fathers of
Basle deposed Eugene IV., the successor of Martin V., describing the
said Eugene as a disturber, a heretic, and a schismatic. Eugene
excommunicated this third council, and held a fourth at Florence in
1459. In it the reconciliation of the Greeks was treated of: John
Paleologus, emperor of the East, was at it, endeavouring to confirm by
this re-union the throne upon which he tottered; but the priests of
Constantinople persisted in the schism.
Louis III. of Anjou, had disputed the throne of Naples with Joan II.,
daughter of Charles Durazzo. Delivered from Louis by Alphonso V. king of
Arragon, Joan adopted the Arragonese monarch, and her liberator was to
become her heir. Subsequently some misunderstanding between Alphonso and
Joan determined her to revert to Louis of Anjou, and to revoke in his
favour the act of adoption obtained by Alphonso. Joan and Louis died:
and, two competitors present themselves to reign over Naples, Alphonso
and Reni, the brothers of Louis. Pope Eugene declares for Alphonso,
precisely because Reni, more acceptable to the Neapolitans, and to Italy
generally, would have been too formidable a neighbour for the Holy See.
This is the principal affair purely political in which the pontiff
concerned himself. He however obliged Uladislaus, king of Poland and
Hungary, to break a peace with the Turks, sworn to on the Evangelists
and on the Koran. A rupture fatal as it was perfidious, and which drew
after it, in 1444 near Varne, the defeat and death of Uladislaus.
Eugene retained to his death the title of pope, although the counsel of
Basle had conferred it on the duke of Savoy, Amadeus VIII. whose papal
name was Felix V. This duke afterwards abdicated the tiara, and the
church had at last but one head Nicholas V., the successor of Eugene;
Nicholas, a pacific prelate; the friend of literature, and founder of
the Vatican library, and one of the most generous protectors of the
learned Greeks, who took refuge in Italy after Mahomet II. had taken
Constantinople in 1446.
We have seen that during the first half of the fifteenth century, the
priesthood, divided, had no means of very seriously threatening great
empires. This opportunity ought to have been seized on for effecting
those reformations, provoked by the corruptions which the false
decretals had produced in the ecclesiastical discipline.
The ancient rules left to the clergy, to the people, and to the
sovereign, an active part in the election of bishops, and the new law
reserved to the pope the institution of the incumbents.
Excommunications, formerly rare and confined to matters altogether
spiritual, were multiplied after the tenth century against emperors and
kings, whose power they shook. The popes of the eight first centuries
never thought of enacting tributes from the newly elected bishops; now,
the pope demands first fruits of them. Before the decretals, the
ecclesiastics were in civil and criminal cases amenable to the secular
tribunals: after the decretals, the pope wished to become, in all sorts
of causes, the supreme judge of every member of the priesthood. In fine,
dispensations, pardons, reservations and reversions, and appeals to the
Holy See, were perpetual; the abuses, become excessive, wearied France
in an especial manner.
After having withdrawn, as we have said, from obedience to both the
candidates for the papacy, the Gallican church began to regulate itself
agreeable to the primitive laws, and received with transport the decrees
of the councils of Constance and Basle, which limited the power of the
pope and subjected it to that of the united church. The council of
Basle, when Eugene IV. had quitted it, sent its decrees to the king of
France, Charles VII. who communicated them to the great nobles of his
kingdom, secular as well as ecclesiastical, met together for this
purpose in the holy chapel of Bourges. The decrees of Basle and of
Constance, approved and modified by this assembly, formed the pragmatic
sanction, which was read and proclaimed as the king’s edict, in the
parliament of Paris, the 3d of July, 1439. It is determined by this
edict, that general councils ought to be held every ten years, that
their authority is superior to that of the pope, that the number of
cardinals should be reduced to twenty-four, that the presentation to
ecclesiastical benefices should be perfectly free, that the first fruits
should no longer be demanded, and that neither reservations or
reversions should be recognised.²⁸² All orders of the state received
this “pragmatic” with enthusiasm; and the whole course of history
attests how dear it was to the French.
²⁸² We must observe, said the president Henault, that in 1441 the king
issued a declaration respecting the pragmatic sanction, implying
that his design and that of the assembly at Bourges, was, that the
arrangement made between Eugene IV. and his ambassadors should
take effect from the day of the date of this pragmatic, without
any regard to the date of the Basle decree, issued before the date
of the pragmatic; and from this it is concluded, that the decrees
of general councils, as respects discipline, have no force in
France until after they have received authority from the edicts of
our kings.—Ab. Chron. of Hist, of France, ann. 1438.
In Italy the schism had gradually produced a revolution in their
political views. Under doubtful and rival demi-popes; under the feeble
influence of the emperors Robert, Sigismund, Robert II. Frederick III.
the Guelph and Ghibeline factions become almost extinct either from want
of heads or of standards, or lassitude consequent on four or five
centuries of madness and misfortune. The Visconti, become the chiefs of
the Ghibelines, sunk and disappointed, replaced by the Sforza, a family
just hatched and destined to combat for interests new as itself. The
Medicis, less recent, laboured to calm the commotions which agitated
Florence, and indulged the hope of seeing liberty, laws, and literature
flourish, in the loveliest country they could make their abode.—
Impelled also by the idea of their advances in the fine arts, other
cities of Italy aspired to free themselves altogether from the German
yoke, and to exercise an habitual influence over the people they had
outstripped in civilisation. This national pride it was which reconciled
them secretly to the papacy, disposed them to consider it as the centre
of Italian power, and to mourn over the ancient splendour of this once
dreaded focus. The middle of the fifteenth century, is the true era in
which was confirmed, and propagated in Italy, the doctrine elsewhere
denominated ultramontane, a doctrine which has since been but the mask
of the political interests of this nation, well or ill understood by
her. Since then, the Italians have generally abstained from seconding
the resistance that the English, the Germans, the French, have not
ceased to oppose to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, to his worldly
ambition, and abuse of his spiritual ministry. Already, in the councils
of Constance and Basle, the Italian prelates were in general remarked
for the lukewarmness of their zeal in the reformation of ecclesiastical
irregularities. Terrified no doubt, by the rash boldness of Wickliffe
and many other innovators, they did not perceive that propriety of
manners and wise laws would be the most certain security against
alterations in doctrine; or rather, the preservation of the faith was
not what they most sincerely desired to secure. Behold then, in what
disposition the successors of Nicholas V., found the clergy, the
learned, the rulers, and consequently the people of Italy; and such were
the points of support on which the pontifical levers went to work, in
order to put it under way once more.
Six popes, after Nicholas V, governed the church during the second half
of the fifteenth century: Calixtus III., from 1445 to 1458; Pius II. to
1464; Paul II. to 1471; Sixtus IV. to 1484; Innocent VIII. to 1492; and
Alexander IV. for the following years.
Calixtus III. who vainly preached a crusade against the Turks
established at Constantinople, shewed much more zeal still for the
particular interests of his family. This pope had three nephews: he
raised two of them to the cardinalat, which they disgraced by the open
irregularity of their conduct. He heaped secular dignities on the head
of the third: he made him duke of Spoleto, and general of the troops of
the Holy See; he was desirous of making king of Naples, and thus
terminate the rivalry existing between Ferdinand, the son of Alphonso,
John, the son of Rene, and other candidates, whose object this kingdom
was. Calixtus endeavoured to arm the Milanese against Ferdinand, and
forbad this prince on pain of excommunication from taking the title of
king: but Calixtus reigned only three years, and his ambitious
intentions had no durable consequence.
After him came Pius II., who before, under the name of Eneas Sylvius,
was an author sufficiently distinguished: he had also been secretary to
the council of Basle, and as such a zealous partisan of the supremacy of
councils; but finally, when pope, an ardent defender of the omnipotence
of the Holy See. He even formally retracted all that he had written at
the dictation of the council; and, by an express bull, Pius II. condemns
Eneas Sylvius.²⁸³ His bull ‘Execrabilis,’ anathematizes appeals to
general councils, to one of which France appealed on this very bull.
Charles VII. still reigned; he maintained the pragmatic sanction; and
observe in what terms the attorney general Douvet protests against this
bull:²⁸⁴
“Since our holy father the pope, to
“whom all power has been given for the building up
“of the church and not for its destruction, wishes to
“disturb and insult our lord the king, the ecclesi−
“astics of the kingdom, and even his secular sub
“jects, I, John Douvet, attorney general of his
“Majesty, do protest such judgments or censures to
“be null, according to the decrees of the sacred
“canons, which declare void, in many cases, this
“sort of decisions; submitting, nevertheless, all
“things to the judgment of a general council, to
“which our very Christian king purposes to have
“recourse, and to which I, in his name, appeal.”
²⁸³ "Never did individual,” says Mezerai, “labour more to reduce the
power of the popes within the limits of the canons than Eneas
Sylvius; and never did pope endeavour more to extend it beyond the
bounds of right and of reason, than the same man when he became
Pius II.”—Abr. Chron. vol. i. pt. 2, p. 436.
²⁸⁴ Proofs of the Liberty of the Gallican Church, vol. i. p. 2, pa.
40.
But Louis XI. succeeded Charles in 1461, and repealed the ‘pragmatic’
yielding to the solicitations of Pius, who wept for joy at it, ordained
public festivals, and caused the act of the assembly at Bourges to be
dragged through the puddle of Rome. Louis had affixed two stipulations
to his compliance; one, that the pope should favour John of Anjou and
proclaim him king of Naples; the other, that a legate, a Frenchman by
birth, should be appointed to invest the incumbents in France. Pius, who
had made both these promises, fulfilled neither; but he composed verses
in honour of the king, and sent him a sword, ornamented with diamonds,
to fight Mahomet II.—Louis highly irritated, directed the parliament
secretly to oppose the edict which rescinded the pragmatic. This
opposition it was not difficult to secure, it was sufficient not to
thwart it: the parliament embraced so rare an opportunity of testifying
their obedience, by refusing to obey. Louis XI. armed not against the
Turks; but while Pius II. thus stimulated the kings of Europe to combat
the new masters of Constantinople, let us see what the holy father
writes to Mahomet II. himself.²⁸⁵
“Do you
“wish to become the most powerful of mortals?
“What prevents your becoming so to−morrow? a
“mere trifle certainly, what may be found without
“the seeking, some drops of baptismal water.
“Prince, but a little water, and we will declare you
“emperor of the Greeks and of the East, of the
“West also, if need be. In former times, freed
“from Astolphus and Didier, by the good offices of
“Pepin and of Charlemagne, our predecessors
“Stephen, Adrian, and Leo, crowned their liber−
“ators. Do you act like Charlemagne and Pepin,
“and we shall do as Leo, Adrian and Stephen.”
²⁸⁵ Pii secundi pontificis maximi, ad illustrem Mahumetem Turcarum
imperatorem, epistola. Tarvisii, Garard de Flandria. 1475, in 4to.
We read in fol. 4 and 3: “Parva res omnium qui hodie Vaint,
maximum et potentissimum et cla-rissimum te reddere potest Quæris
quid sit? Non est inventa difficiles neque procul quærenda; ubique
gentium reperitur: id est, aquæ parexillium quo baptizeris. Id si
feceris, non erit in orbe princeps qui te gloriâ superet aut
tequare potentiâ valeat. Nos te Graecoram et Orientis imperatorem
appellabimus Et sicut nostri antecessories, Stephanas, Adrianas,
Leo, ad versas Haistulphum et Desi-deritun, gentes Longobardæ
reges, Pipinum et Karolum Magnum accersiverunt, et liberati de
manu tyrannicâ, imperium à Grœcis ad ipsos liberatores
transtulerunt, ita et nos in ecclesiæ necessitatibus patrocinio
tuo uteramur, et vicem redderemus beneficii accepti.”
These are plain terms, we see, and disguise nothing of the pontifical
policy.
To Pius II. succeeded Barbo, a Venetian, so handsome and so vain, that
he was templed to assume the name of Formosa:²⁸⁶ he contented himself
with that of Paul II. His efforts to league the Christian sovereigns
against the Turks, and to have the abrogation of the pragmatic
registered by the parliament of Paris, were equally unsuccessful; other
interests occupied the former, and the parliament of Paris was
obstinate. In vain Cardinal Balne obtained from Louis the deprivation of
the solicitor general John de Saint Romain: the university united with
the magistrates in an appeal to a future council. In the mean time
letters are discovered which prove to Louis that he is betrayed by
Balne. The cardinal is already cast into prison; but Paul pretends to be
the sole legitimate judge of a prince of the church, and Balne, after a
long detention in an iron cage, is finally liberated.
²⁸⁶ Art of verifying Dates, vol. i, p. 337.—‘ Formosus’ implies
‘handsome.’
Paul also vainly endeavoured to make himself master of Rimini: in vain
he armed the Venetians against Robert Malatesti who occupied this place:
Robert, aided by the Medicis, opposed a formidable army to the
Venetians, and which, under the command of the Duke d’Urbino, put that
of the pope to flight²⁸⁷ His holiness received such conditions as his
conquerors dictated; he loaded the Medicis with invectives, and no
longer made war but with men of letters;²⁸⁸ he condemned many of these
to horrible tortures to extort from them the avowal of heresies which
they never professed; and when their constancy in refusing to make false
confessions, when all the evidence, all the witnesses proclaimed their
innocence, the holy father declared they could not leave their dungeons
until they had completed in them an entire year, having at the time of
their arrest made a vow not to release them before the expiration of
this term.
²⁸⁷ Muratori’s Annals of Italy, vol., ix. p. 508.
²⁸⁸ Art of verifying Dates, vol. i. p. 327.
Platina, one of Paul’s victims, has compiled a history of the popes in
which, this pontiff is not spared: Platina is doubtlessly here a
suspicious testimony; but as the reverend Benedictine fathers
judiciously observe,:
“his relation is supported by the evidence of James
“Piccolomini, cardinal bishop of Pavia, a respect−
“able writer, who, both in his commentaries, in
“the letter he wrote to Paul himself a short time
“after his exaltation, and in that addressed to the
“cardinals who had elected him, draws a very un−
“favourable portrait of this pope.”
Two nephews, invested the one with the duchy of Sora, the other with the
county of Imola; an expedition fruitless against the Mahometans;
alternate alliances and enmities with the Venetians; disturbances
encouraged in Ferrara, Florence and Naples; arms, stratagems, and
anathemas, in turn assayed against the enemies of the Holy See: these
several details of the history of Sixtus IV. would possess greater
interest if the conspiracy of the Pazzi did not absorb all the attention
this pontificate can claim.
The Medici had offended Sixtus IV. by some shew of resistance to the
elevation of his nephews, and to the nomination of the archbishop of
Pisa, Salviati. Their power, so much the more imposing as it was then
connected with the most honourable renown, restrained and wearied the
pontiff, who aspired to become master of Florence and the North of
Italy. One of the first cares of Sixtus was, to deprive the family of
the Medicis of the situation of treasurer of the Holy See, in order to
give it to that of the Pazzi. Till this period, no jealousy was
manifested between these two illustrious houses, united on the contrary
by alliances and by mutual services. The Florentine authors exhaust in
vain their investigations to discover motives or pretexts for the enmity
of the Pazzi to the Medici. To represent the latter as tyrants, the
conspirators as liberators, is at once to oppose sound morality and
contemporary history. No, it is impossible to imagine any other causes
here than the instigations of the court of Rome, and the hope presented
to the Pazzi, of invading under the protection of the Holy See, the
government of Florence, if they were willing to become, not the rivals
of the Medicis, but their assassins. To the Pazzi were joined the Count
Riacio, nephew of the pope, the cardinal Riacio, nephew of the Count,
the archbishop of Pisa, a a brother of this prelate; one Bandini, known
by the excess of his debaucheries; Montesecco, one of Sixtus’s
‘condottieri,’ with other robbers and priests. It was arranged to
poignard Lorenzo and Giulio de Medici, on Sunday, the 26th of April, in
the church, in the middle of Mass, at the moment of the elevation of the
host. These circumstances, which added to the crime the character of
sacrilege, terrified the conscience of Montesecco,²⁸⁹ who had received,
as the best skilled of them all at assassination, the commission to
strike Lorenzo; two ecclesiastics took the office on them. But they
acquitted themselves with less skill than zeal; and Lorenzo, only
wounded, escaped from their hands, while Giulio expired under the blows
of Bandini and Francisco Pazzi.
²⁸⁹ He said, his courage would never support him in commiting such a
crime in a church, and adding to his treason
sacrilege.—Machiavellii’s History of Flortnce, 1. 8.
The death of Giulio was instantly revenged: the traitors were seized,
and exterminated by the populace. The archbishop of Pisa was seen when
hanged by the side of Francisco Pazzi, biting in his agony the carcase
of his companion. Montesecco revealed at the foot of the scaffold the
dark clues and sacred origin of the conspiracy. Bandini, after having
fled to Constantinople, was sent back by Mahomet 11. to Florence, where
he was executed: a sultan would not afford an asylum to an assassin that
a pope did not blush to arm; and while Lorenzo, scarcely recovered from
his wounds, endeavoured to repress the popular indignation, even while
he saves the Cardinal Riario, what does Sixtus do? As if his being an
accomplice was not sufficiently exposed by Montesecco, was not
abundantly demonstrated by the circumstances themselves, he proclaims it
himself by the excommunication of Lorenzo de Medicis and the
Florentines. He terms Lorenzo and the magistrates, children of
perdition, suckers of iniquity: he declares them and their successors
born or to be born, incapable of receiving or transmitting any property
by will or inheritance; he summons the Florentines to deliver Lorenzo up
to him; and, when he can no longer hope for so unprincipled a treason,
he raises troops against Florence; he arms some Neapolitans; at any
price he is desirous to consummate the crime, of which the Pazzi
succeeded in effecting but the half. In the mean time Italy, Germany,
and France, interested themselves for the Medicis; Louis XI. himself
declares that he will restore the ‘pragmatic,’ if the pope does not
revoke his anathemas: but the descent of the Turks at Otranto was
requisite, and that the fears and the forces of the courts of Naples and
of Rome should have to turn their attention to this point, before the
pontiff would pardon the victim who had escaped his thunders and his
poignards.²⁹⁰
²⁹⁰ Ang. Politian. De Hist, coryurat. Pactianæ comment.— Don Bossi,
chron. ann. 1478.—Machiav. Hist, of Flor. 1. 8.— Ammir. Hist.
Flor. vol. iii. p. 118, &c.—Valori, Vita Laurent. Med.—Fabr. Vit.
ejusdem.—Muratori’s Annals of Italy, years 1478, 1479, &c.
Sixtus, to associate the court of Naples in his vengeance, had abolished
a quit rent which it paid to the Court of Rome. Innocent VIII. designed
its re-establishment, as necessary to the undertakings he meditated
against the Mussulmans. Upon the refusal of king Ferdinand, the pope
encouraged the Neapolitan barons to revolt, partisans of the Duke of
Calabria, and little attached to the house of Arragon. He promised, and
sent them troops; he excommunicated the king, deposed him, and called
the king of France, Charles VIII. into Italy: but, indolent and
unskilful, Innocent merited no success; and the eight years of his
pontificate have left behind but trifling mementos.
Of Alexander VI. the private life is well known; the nature of our
subject will excuse us from pursuing the details which compose it, of,
robbery, perjury, revelings, sacrilege, obscenity, incest, poisoning,
and assassination. Our business is with his politics not his manners. He
persuaded Charles VIII. to pass into Italy, for the purpose of
conquering Naples; and, while Charles was preparing for it, Alexander
entered into negociations with every court, even that of the Sultan, to
raise up enemies to France. His writing to Bajazet II. that Charles
menaced Naples but in order to fall on the Ottoman empire; his
delivering Prince Zizim, the brother of Bajazet, to Charles, by order of
the Sultan, but delivering him up poisoned, and receiving from the
latter the price of his crime: such were, in his political career, the
feats of Alexander VI. Yet this did not prevent his holiness from
concluding a treaty of alliance with Charles, and almost immediately
after leaguing with the Venetians and the Emperor Maximilian against the
same Charles, whose greatest error was, opposing the designs of eighteen
cardinals who, already wearied with the excesses of Alexander, resolved
to depose him.
The pope had a daughter named Lucretia, and four sons, of whom one named
Geoffrey remains almost unknown; another obtained from the King of
Naples the title of Squillace; another became celebrated under the name
of Cesar Borgia; and the eldest was Duke of Gandia and Benevenlum. To
advance Cesar, who was only a cardinal, Charles VIII. was promised
support in a second expedition of the French into Italy: Charles died
before it could be undertaken, and Frederick, king of Naples, was then
resorted to. This prince was required to give his daughter in marriage
to Cesar, who should be created prince of Tarentum: Frederick having
rejected this proposal, it was necessary to recur a third time to the
French, then governed by Louis XII.
Cesar arrived in France: he took with him a bull which authorised Louis
to part with his first wife; and he instigated him to conquer Naples and
Milan: Naples, which from the time of Charles of Anjou, had not ceased
to belong to a French prince; Milan, where Louis was to recover the
rights he derived from Valentine Visconti, his grandmother: and, to
prevent his being over-ruled by wiser counsels, his minister, cardinal
Amboise, was seduced with the hope of being one day the successor of
Alexander VI. Behold here, how the best of kings, having become the ally
of the most perfidious of pontiffs, engages in a dangerous war, in which
the treacheries of Rome snatch from the French the fruits of their
victories. But the Cardinal Cesar becomes Duke of Valentinois; the
family of Borgia triumphs over its enemies, and enriches itself with
their spoils; in fine, Alexander VI. became the first potentate in
Europe, when a drug which he had prepared for others terminated, by a
happy mistake, his abominable pontificate.
This pope and his predecessors, since Calixtus, have been much
reproached with their nepotism, or zeal for the elevation of their
nephews, their children, and their relations. Certainly we do not mean
to justify this abuse of the apostolate, this triumph of the interests
of individuals over those of the religion of Jesus Christ; but, in order
to clear up as far we are able, by general observations, a history, the
details of which we could not embrace here, we may say that Nepotism was
a weakening, a degradation of the political ambition; that the papacy,
regarded as a means of enriching and aggrandizing families, became, by
these means alone, less formidable to sovereigns: and, that after the
extinction of the schism from 1450 to 1500, the civil authority had
suffered much more frequent attacks, if these domestic cares, these
family interests, had not so often diverted the popes from the vast
undertakings necessary to restore the importance of the Holy See.
Sedulous to humble kings, Innocent III. and Gregory VII. did not busy
themselves in elevating particular families: they sought to exercise
themselves, and transmit to their successors, a universal supremacy.
Many circumstances, which we have pointed out, would have favoured, at
the middle of the fifteenth century, the re-establishment of this
enormous power, if the popes had united the austere and disinterested
enthusiasm of Hildebrand, to the knowledge which must have been
possessed by the contemporaries of Politiano, and almost of Machiavel.
It was not that Pius II. wanted sense, nor Paul II. wickedness, nor
Sixtus IV. perfidy, nor Borgia any vice; but it is not sufficient to be
unprincipled, a pope must know also how to turn to account the errors of
others and his own crimes.