Book II

, speaks for the fact that venom was feared, and therefore likely

to be used. Governments experimented with venoms: for what purpose, who can tell? M. Lamanshy published an interesting document dated 1432 which he found in the Venetian Secret Archives.[71] “Trial has been made, on three porcine animals, of certain venoms, found in the chancery, sent very long ago from Vicenza, which have been proved not to be good.”

Undoubtedly, there was the will. Undoubtedly, also, there was not the ability.

* * * * *

Strange and paradoxical though it may seem to be, alchymical knowledge, alchymical art, was in a lower condition during the years succeeding the Renascence of Learning, than it had been in the Middle Ages, the so-called Dark Ages, which had gone before. The Dark Ages were the ages of Simples. The Age of the Renascence was the age of Compounds. And, in those compounds, virtue was changed, or lost, by sublimation, by distillation, or annulled by heterogeneous admixture. The following will make this plain.

In the Dark Ages, medicaments were made from single herbs exhibited in the form of draughts, poultices, lotions, or unguents. The old herbaries of Dioskorides, or of Appulejus, were used as text-books; and a few extracts from these will be curious, perhaps valuable, certainly a help to understanding.

(α) The herb Betony or Bishopwort (_Betonica officinalis_) must be gathered in August without the help of iron, the mould shaken from the roots, and dried in the shade. When triturated, two drachms of it, mixed with hot beer or wine or honey, is an antidote to venom, a digestive, a cure for hydrophobia, constipation, toothache, and prevents monstrous nocturnal visitors, or frightful sights and dreams. A lotion, made from the herb seethed in fresh water till two-thirds are evaporated, cures broken-head, epistaxis, fatigue, and rupture; or the leaves may be used as a poultice. (As a matter of fact, Betony is intoxicating, emetic, and purgative.)

(β) The herb Vervain or Ashthroat (_Verbena officinalis_) must be pounded as a poultice for wounds and carbuncles. It is an antidote to all venoms, and dogs may not bark at him who bears it.

(γ) The herb Clovewort (_Ranunculus acris_), wreathed with red thread on the neck during the waning of the April or October moon, cures lunacy.

(δ) The herb Mugwort (_Artemisia dracunculus_), pounded to an unguent with well-boiled olive-oil, will make strained sinews supple. (This is excellent.)

(ε) The herb Ravensleek (_Orchis_, Σατύριον) will cure sore eyes when they are smeared with its juice.

(ζ) The herb Watercress (_Nasturtium officinale_) will with its juice stop hair from falling.

(η) The herb Madder (_Rubia tinctoria_) as a poultice cures sciatica.

(θ) The herb Clover (_Trifolium pratense_) prevents him who carries it from suffering sore jaws.

(ι) The herb Rosemary (_Rosmarinus officinalis_) is good for the teeth.

(κ) The herb Rue (_Ruta graveolens_), eaten green is an antifat; a twig stops nose-bleeding; macerated in vinegar and soused on the brow induces forgetfulness. Recommended for priests who wish to observe their vow of continence.

(λ) The herb Dwarfdwostle or Pennyroyal (_Mentha pulegium_), as unguent, cures sea-sickness; as a salve, or burned as incense, cures fever and bellyache.

(μ) The herb Sage (_Salvia_), as a lotion, cures itch.

(ν) The herb Marjoram (_Origanum vulgare_), steeped in vinegar, cures headache, or may be chewed for a cough.

(ξ) The herb Foxglove (_Digitalis purpurea_), as a poultice, cures sores and pimples, ἕρπης. (Its venomous principle appears to be unknown.)

(ο) The herb Wildthyme or Shepherdspurse (_Thymus campestris_) will remove all inward foulness by the drinking of its ooze.

(π) The herb Violet (_Viola odorata_), made into an unguent with lard or honey, cures wounds.

(ρ) The herb Wildgourd (_Cucumis colocynthus_, κολοκύνθος ἀγρía), its inward neshness pounded in lithe beer without the churnels, will stir the inward.

Those are Simples, _i.e._, medicaments derived from single herbs, easily come-by, within the reach of all; suited to a simple, but by no means silly, race of men content with simple things, gifted with faith and sense, and unconcerned to dive below the surface and explore, or experiment with, nature’s sacrosanct arcana.

* * * * *

The Renascence of Learning, when the works of ancient writers were rediscovered, devoured, put in practice, filled men’s minds with new ideas, and completely changed their point of view.

_The Most Salubrious Precepts of Medicine_ written by Quintus Serenus Sermonicus in the Third Century; the Thirty Seven Books of _Natural History_ by C. Plinius Secundus (Pliny Senior) which first saw light in A.D. 77; the eighty-three _Treatises_ of Claudius Galenus, (A.D. 130–200); the thirty-four chapters of the _Animal Medicaments_ which Sextus Placitus wrote in the Fourth Century after the Incarnation; the eight books of Alexandros of Tralles in Lydia, _On Medicine_, first given to the world in the Sixth Century;—these were the keys that opened the door of speculation to the alert and eager men of the Fifteenth Century, already intoxicated by the glorious Discovery of Man.

Weird and wonderful effects were produced by this flood of knowledge. Weird and wonderful were the new significances given to natural things, the combinations of natural objects projected, the doctrines evolved from observation of natural phenomena. The study of nature became a sacred thing, reserved for the reverent and wise. Its followers were called magi, or magicians; their pursuit was magic. The magical art was either white or black, for the good or ill of men. Great and holy personages practised white magic: the black was damned by the Church, and the bare suspicion of its practice sufficed to burn. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI distinguished Himself by His severity to the black magi. White magic included the art of healing; divination by cheiromancy, amniomancy, lithomancy, astrology, and also experimented to find out the hidden properties and virtues of all things strange, as well as common. It was a vast field for research; and the men who walked therein were just like boys, eager, sensible, ardent, inexperienced, ready to assume and take for granted.

A most eminent mage was Messer Eurico Cornelio Agrippa. During the pontificate of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI he wrote his learning in a book which he called _The Book of Occult Philosophy_. In the year 1510 he shewed his work to a friend, the celebrated Abbot Trithemius, who was charmed with it, added to it, and advised Messer Eurico to impart it to the elect alone. The advice apparently was taken; for the book was not published till 1531. The mage largely dealt with kabbalistic writing, giving various mysterious alphabets for use in magical recipes. He set forth the sigils planets and planet-signs of certain archangels, patrons of the days of the week, Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Raphael, Sachael, Anael, Cassiel, with their proper perfumes, red wheat, aloes, pepper, mastic, saffron, pepperwort, sulphur. He placed great importance on charms and periapts or amulets.

“St. Thomas Aquinas,” he wrote, “that holy Doctor, in his Book _De Fato_ saith that even Garments, Buildings, and other artificial Works whatsoever, do receive a certain Qualification from the Stars: and Magicians affirm that, not only by the Mixture and Application of natural Things, but also in Images, Seals, Rings, Glasses, and some other Instruments, being opportunely framed under a certain Constellation, some celestial illustration may be taken, and some wonderful thing may be received.”

This being his idea, it is not surprising to find him prescribing for the reduction of an intermittent fever, the following charm of Quintus Serenus Sermonicus to be written on parchment and worn round the neck:

a b r a c a d a b r a a b r a c a d a b r a b r a c a d a b a b r a c a d a a b r a c a d a b r a c a a b r a c a b r a a b r a b a

or, as a protection against evil spirits and dangers of journey, water, enemy, or arms, the beginning and end of the first five verses of Genesis:

‏בוווו‎––‏צמרכד‎‎

written on virgin parchment, or on most pure gold, back and front, with an ink made of the smoke, of incense, or of consecrated wax tapers, mixed with holy water. This charm also must be worn round the neck, and its efficacy is conditional upon the belief of the wearer in God the Creator of All.

Men of the Borgian Era knew that the tail of an ibex, dried with its flesh and skin and worn about the person, would ward off magic unless the wearer should consent thereto. This they learned from St. Hildegard’s treatise _De Animalibus_. They knew that the herb Heliotrope or Turnsole (_Heliotropion Europaeum_), placed under the pillow of a man who has been robbed, will bring him a vision of the thief and his spoil; and that, when it was set up in a church, unfaithful wives would be unable to go away until it was removed. Their faith in the virtue of gems was very precious; and chiefly derived from the physician Alexandros of Tralles. A cockatrice engraved on green jasper preserved from the Evil Eye. A metal cross tied on the left arm cured epilepsy. A live spider tied in a rag on the same arm cured ague. A metal ring, engraved with the sacred tau =Τ= (the “_Mark on the Forehead_”), also freed from epilepsy. A ring, set with ass-hoof, cured ἀδυναμία. A ring, carved with a council of ravens for Apollo, conferred conjugal joy and the gift of clear-seeing. A brownish-yellow jacinth gave sleep. An agate, carved with St. John the Divine, protected from venom. Oriental jasper or heliotrope (blood-stone), engraved with a youth wearing a necklace of herbs, when anointed with marigold juice, conferred invisibility. A copper ring, figured with a lion, a crescent, and a star, and worn on the fourth finger, cured calculus. Amethyst kept the wearer sober, and a papal bull ordained it for episcopal rings. Coral delivered from incubi and succubi. Herakles strangling the lion of Nemea, carved on a honey-coloured sard, cured colic. Carnelian carved with a Hermes Psuchopompos gave cheerfulness and courage. A man might live as long as he liked if he looked at a presentment of St. Christopher (the Christian Herakles) every day.[72] The toad-stone or bufonite (the fossil palatal tooth of the ray-fish _Pycnodus_) when set in a ring was a most potent periapt against black magic. In the University Galleries at Oxford, No. 691, there is a splendid specimen of a double-toad-stone ring; _i.e._, the stones are set outward on opposite sides of the ring so that the one always touches the closed hand, while the other is free to dismay a magical enemy.

Cheiromancy was expounded by Messer Andrea Corvo da Carpi, whose deeply religious little treatise adorned with diagrams was published at Venice in 1500.

But the chief of the men of science of the Borgian Era was Messer Giambattista della Porta of Naples. Born in 1445, dying in 1515, he was an exact contemporary of Borgia. What he did not know of natural science, no other man of his epoch knew. His house in Naples was a resort of literary and scientific men of every nation. He established public and private academies of science in all directions, the chief of which were Gli Ozioni of Naples and one called Il Secreti which met in his own house, and to which no mage was admitted unless he had made some new and notable discovery of natural phenomena. This was the academy whose name and air of mystery excited intense ecclesiastical suspicion at Rome, which by hinting at black magic procured the order to close the meetings of the mages.

Messer Giambattista della Porta was a copious writer. He gave to the world a treatise On Physiognomy, in which he judges men’s characters by comparing their faces to those of certain beasts; and a diffuse and learned work on cyphers, De Occultis Literium Notis. His great work, however, was The Book of Natural Magic. He says that he began it in 1460, when he barely was of the age of fifteen years;—these were the precocious times when Messer Giovanni de Medici was a Lord Cardinal at thirteen and Prince Gioffredo Borgia of Squillace a married man and captain of condottieri at fourteen;—and thirty-five years later in 1495, by the help of that lusty young Maecenas the Lord Cardinal Prince Ippolito d’Este, he published the matured work from which the following recipes are taken.

Very few English people realize the doctrine of Sympathy and Antipathy; or admit that Attraction and Repulsion are Primary Forces. “I do not love thee, Doctor Fell, the reason why I cannot tell,” says the Englishman, and worries to find that reason instead of recognising the Law. “She is simpatica and he is antipaticissimo,” says an Italian, stating and admitting a natural law. Messer Giambattista della Porta is very clear on the point of Antipathy, which he illustrates by saying that Vine and Colewort are natural enemies, because Colewort cures drunkenness; that Rue and Hemlock are natural enemies, because Hemlock heals blisters raised by Rue: as well as on the point of Sympathy which he illustrates by saying that a wild bull, tethered to a fig-tree, will become tame and gentle; and a dog, laid to a diseased part of a man’s body, will absorb the disease.

He says that beasts have knowledge all their own: that ravens use ivy, eagles use maidenhair, herons use carrots, on their nests as natural preservatives against enchantments: that cats eat grass, and pigeons pellitory, for their ailments: that lions with quartan agues eat apes, that dim-eyed hawks eat sow-thistle, that serpents rejuvenate on fennel, and that partridges eat leeks to clear their voices.

To prove that he has not gone about the world with eyes closed, he remarks that mice are generated of putrefaction, frogs of rotten dust and rain, red toads of dirt and καταμήνια, and serpents of the hair of horses’ manes or of a dead man’s back-marrow.

He advises the creation of new animals by crossbreeding; a hunting dog, of a mastiff and a lioness or tigress; a trick dog, of a bitch and an ape; and birds with delicious flesh for gourmets, of a cock and a peahen, or of a cock pheasant and a plain hen. His method of making a bird sociable and friendly is quaint and unique. He says that, before the creature has got its feathers, you must break off its lower beak even to the jaw. Then, having not the wherewithal to peck up food, it must come to its master to be fed.

He advocates the creation of new fruits which sound most daintily, by grafting a mulberry on a chestnut tree, a peach on a nut, a quince on a pear, a citron on an apple, and a cherry on a bay. He advises the making of bread with dates and walnuts; and of wine with quinces.

He will make precious stones—a jacinth by putting lead into an earthen pot, and setting it in a glass-maker’s furnace until the lead is vitrified: or an emerald by dissolving silver in aqua-fortis, casting in plates of copper to which the composition will adhere, drying the plates in the sun, setting them in an earthen pot for some days in a glass-maker’s furnace.

He says that green and merry dreams may be procured by eating balm, or bugloss, or bows of poplar; and black and melancholy dreams by eating beans, lentils, onions, garlic, leeks.

He will cure toothache with roots of pellitory or of herbane, bruised. For the care of the teeth he recommends a wash made of leaves of mastic, rosemary, sage, and bramble, macerated in Greek wine, (_i.e._, a strong rich wine grown in dry volcanic soil:) or a tooth-powder made of barley bread-crumbs browned with salt. But his recipe for white and pearly teeth is a master-piece.

“Take three handfuls each of flowers and leaves of sage, nettle, rosemary, mallow, olive, plantain, and rind of walnut roots; two handfuls each of rock-rose (κίστος), horehound, bramble-tops; a pound of flower and half a pound of seed of myrtle; two handfuls of rose buds; two drachms each of sandal-wood, coriander, and citron-pips; three drachms of cinnamon; ten drachms of cypress nuts; five green pine-cones; two drachms each of mastic and Armenian bole or clay. Reduce all these to powder. Infuse them in sharp black wine. Macerate them for three days. Slightly press out the wine. Put them in an alembic and distil them on a gentle fire. Boil the distillation till two ounces of alum is dissolved in it. Keep in a close-stopped vial: and, for use, fill the mouth with the lotion, and rub the teeth with a finger wrapped in fine linen.”

An excellent specimen this, of a Compound as distinguished from a Simple; of the sophistication, and of the meticulous personal cleanliness, of people of the Borgian Era.

To cure a man of Envy, says this mage, keep him in the fresh air, hang carbuncles and jacinths and sapphires on his neck, let him wear a ring made of ass-hoof and smell to hyssop and sweet lilies.

Messer Giambattista Porta’s ninth Book teaches how to make women beautiful. There was a fashion which continued the forehead to the middle of the skull; and a depilatory is recommended made of quicklime four ounces, and orpiment two ounces, boiled until a hen’s feather dipped into it is bared. This frightful compound must not long remain on the skin; and the burns should be dressed with the gum of aspen-bark (_Populus Tremula_) and oil of roses or of violets. Or, hair may be removed by fomentation with hot water, plucking out with nippers one by one, and anointing the holes with a saturated solution of saltpetre, or with oil of brimstone or vitriol, the process being repeated once a year. Where hair is only thin and downy, the roots of wild hyacinth rubbed on will keep it back.

To dye the hair yellow, (in imitation of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, whose beautiful yellow hair was much admired,) add enough honey to soften the lees of white wine and keep the hair wet with this all night. Then bruise roots of celandine and greater-clivers-madder, mix them with oil of cummin seed, box-shavings, and saffron; and keep this on the head for four and twenty hours, when it should be washed off with a lye of cabbage-stalks and ashes of rye-straw.

To make the hair grow it should be washed in the liquid that first distils from honey by the fire: or it should be anointed with an unguent made of marsh-mallow bruised in hog’s grease, boiled long in wine, added to bruised cummin seed, mastic, yolk of egg, boiled again, and strained through linen.

To make hair thick and curly, boil maidenhair with smallage seed in wine and oil; or roots of daffydillies, or dwarf-elder, boiled with wine and oil.

Water, in which the bulbous tops of lilies have been boiled, makes the skin fair: and corrosive sublimate and cerusa (white lead) makes the face white and shining.

For sunburn, white of egg and sugar-candy on the face at night, washed off in barley-water in the morning, is prescribed: and a clear skin is to be had by rubbing with the rind or bruised seeds of melons. It will be obvious that there were “plain” as well as “coloured” women in the Borgian Era; _i.e._, those who went about their duty (of cultivating their charms) in a wholesome way, and those who used violent and nasty methods.

Messer Giambattista della Porta appears to have used his science and magical art to invent “Some Sports against Women”; which will show what the Borgian Era regarded as permissible practical jokes. He says that, if you wish to discover paint on a face, you must chew saffron before breathing on her, and incontinently she yellows: or you may burn brimstone near her, which will blacken mercury sublimate and cerusa (white lead): or you may chew cummin or garlic and breathe on her, and her cerusa or quicksilver will decay. But if that you yearn to dye a woman green, you must decoct a chameleon in her bath.

His tenth book deals with interminable and elaborate processes of distillation and sublimation; proving that what was said on a previous page concerning Letters and Art, (viz., that the habit of the time was to think all of the workmanship, and nothing of the material used,) was perfectly true of Fifteenth Century pharmacy also. These mages sat and boiled their alembics and crucibles; and distilled, and distilled, and sublimed, and sublimed, till the nature of their stuff was lost, or utterly changed, instead of being refined and concentrated as they vainly hoped. They were just like boys, eager, sensible, ardent, inexperienced. They made the inevitable blunders of adventurers. They committed the extravagances of human nature in unwonted circumstances; and the wisdom of the Twentieth Century is the fruit of the fooling of the Fifteenth.

Messer Giambattista della Porta devotes his eleventh book to Perfumes; his twelfth to the making of Greek Fire (from camphor, pitch, spirits and brimstone) of gunpowder, and of rockets shells and mines; his thirteenth to the tempering of steel.

His fourteenth book contains monstrous and characteristic recipes connected with meats and drinks. If you want to make your guests drunken, mix with their wine the filth of a dog’s ear. If you prefer to make them mad-drunk, give them a camel’s froth in water. If you want to avoid being overcome of wine, eat leeks and saffron, wear garlands of roses, violets and ivy-berries, and carry an amethyst on your person. To keep your boy sober, before he has tasted wine give him the boiled eggs of an owl, to temper his natural heat. If you want delicately to drive unwelcome guests from your table, you may disgust them with the viands in five ways: first, a needle which has sewed dead men’s shrouds when stuck under the table will cause all to loathe to eat: secondly, meat secretly peppered with powdered root of wake-robin (_Arum maculatum_) will fetch the skin off their mouths: thirdly, food sprinkled before serving with powdered leaves of cuckoo-pine (—_gen. Arum_) will produce copious salivation: fourthly, knives and napkins rubbed with wildgourd juice (_Cucunis colocynthus_, κολοκύνθις ἀγρία) will give to all they touch a horrible smack : lastly, harp-strings, cut small and strewed on hot meat, will writhe like worms; and so you may rid your table of unwelcome guests.

If you would bone a pigeon, draw, and soak in vinegar for four and twenty hours; then pull out the bones, wash well, fill with herbs and spices and roast or boil it. To make tender a tough capon, boil it before roasting. But, if you desire to give your friends much joy, entertain them to a goose cooked alive. In the courtyard, pluck your goose except her head and neck, and cover her with lard and suet. Build a ring of faggots round her; not too narrow, lest she evade the roasting, nor too wide lest the smoke choke her, or the fire burn her. Inside the ring of faggots, on the ground occupied by your plucked and larded goose, place several pots of water mixed with salt and bearwort. Light the faggots slowly. When the goose begins to roast she will walk about; but she cannot escape; and you have her wings. When she grows weary and very hot, she quenches her thirst with the medicated water, and cools her heart and her inward parts. You continually must moisten her head and her heart with a sponge at the end of a cane. At last, you will see her run incontinently up and down; and presently stumble. Then she is empty, and there is no more moisture in her heart. Wherefore you may take her away, and set her on the table to your guests: she will cry when you pull off her pieces; and you almost may eat her before she has died.

The fifteenth and last book of Natural Magic treats of various modes of conducting secret correspondence by invisible inks, writing on eggs or naked backs of drugged couriers, counterfeit seals and writing, messages by pigeon or by arrows.

Those are the things of which a sober learned and most eminent physician of the Fifteenth Century seriously has written, and called Natural Magic. He shews the innocent ingenuous mind of a child rampant among new toys.

* * * * *

Having shewn something of this mage’s knowledge, it may be said, now, that, scattered about his Book of Natural Magic, carelessly and incidentally, there are allusions to certain venoms. He says:

I. that ἐζάμβλωσις may be procured by exhibiting the wine that Pliny calls Phthorium (Φθόριος) (Plin. 4, 16, 19, § 110), made from the grapes of a vine on which hellebore, wildgourd, and scamony have been grafted:

II. that Mandrakes (Μανδραγόρας), _Mandragora_ (_Atropa Officinalis_) growing by a vine, will make its grapes hypnotic:

III. that one drachm of belladonna (—_gen. Atropa_) or stramonium (thorn-apple, _Datura stramonium_) in water, (which they will infect without taste or smell,) “will make men mad without any hurt, so that it is a most pleasant spectacle to behold such mad whimsies and visions. It is very pleasant to behold. Pray make trial,” he lightly says. But he adds that one ounce of these drugs will make a man sleep four days.

IV. that one drachm of Nightshade rind (_Solanum nigrum_) in wine will give sleep; a little more, madness; a large dose, death:

V. that Hemlock (_Conium maculatum_) in wine will cause death:

VI. that the drachm dose of belladonna, bruised in wine, is good for driving away unwelcome guests.

It will be noticed that three of these six prescriptions contemplate death.

Messer Giambattista della Porta emphatically states that no single venom will kill all living creatures; “for what is venomous to one may serve for the preservation of another, which comes not by reason of the quality but of the distinct nature.” He gives a lengthy list of substances with the animals to which they are fatal, _e.g._, wolfebane kills wolves; henbane, hens; daffydillies, mice; black hellebore, oxen; white hellebore, pigeons; ivy, bats; comfrey, eagles; pondweed, urchins; mustard-seed, larks; vine-juice, cranes; willow, tom-tits; pomegranate-churnels, falcons, vultures, sea-gulls, blackbirds; and nux vomica, dogs. In regard to the last, it should be understood that the Fifteenth Century called foxglove (_Digitalis purpurea_) nux vomica ; and had not succeeded in extracting the vegetable alkaloid Strychnine, in its modern isolated form, from the Javanese Στρύχνος _nux vomica_, of which it is the active principle.

To complete the exposition of this typical Fifteenth Century man of science, his chief Antidote to Venom is appended here.

“Take three pounds of old oil and two handfuls of St. John’s Wort, (Balm of the Warrior’s Wound, _hypericum_.) Macerate for two months in the sun. Strain off the old flowers, and add two ounces of fresh. Boil in Balneo Mariae (a bain-marie) for six hours. Put in a close-stopped bottle and keep in the sun for fifteen days. During July, add three ounces of St. John’s Wort seed which gently has been stamped and steeped in two glasses of white wine for three days. Add also two drachms each of gentian, tormentil, dittany, zedoary, and carline, (all of which must have been gathered in August,) sandal-wood and long-aristolochie. Gently boil for six hours in Balneo Mariae. Strain in a press. Add to the expression one ounce each of saffron, myrrh, aloes, spikenard, and rhubarb, all bruised. Boil for a day in Balneo Mariae. Add two ounces each of treacle and mithridate. Boil for six hours in Balneo Mariae. And set it in the sun for forty days.

“In plague, or suspicion of venom, anoint the stomach, wrists, and heart; and drink three drops in wine. It will work wonders,” says Messer Giambattista della Porta.

* * * * *

The pharmacy of the Renascence, to quote the confession of the charlatan Cagliostro, consisted _in herbs and words_, “in verbis et in herbis.”

The practice of medicine during the Borgian Era appears to have been entirely empirical. Physicians experimented on the vile body of their patient, trusting to luck, or chance, or faith, to work a cure. In contracts it was expressly stated that physicians must have the reputation of being _fortunate_ (felix). Chirugeons were totally unaware of the circulation of the blood. So much stress here is laid upon the art and craft and mystery of medicine and its exponents, because from these, and from these alone, the knowledge and use of venoms could be obtained; and, if the blind can lead the blind without both falling into the same ditch, then there might be some foundation in fact for the legend of the Borgia Venom. But while physicians and chirugeons and apothecaries solemnly bought three little boys for a ducat each, drew off their blood and sublimed it into a potion to save the life of a senile pontiff; or did such monkey-tricks as Messer Juan de Vigo did to the Lord Julius P.P. II a few years later, all with quite convincing evidence of gravity and good faith, one must conclude that these mages acted according to the very best of their knowledge and belief; but that, in quantity as well as quality, their belief was vastly superior to their knowledge. Nardaeus says[73]

“The famous chirugeon Juan de Vigo, perceiving that an ulcer of the Lord Julius P.P. II became every day more stubborn, and that the Pope persisted in refusing all manner of remedies, hit upon a new method of cure: for he boiled together, in a brass kettle, for three hours, old rags cut in pieces, crumbs of fine bread, plantain, and a fomentation of arsenic sublimed in rosewater; after which, drying them, and applying them by way of powder to the wound (to which he had sworn that he would apply no more plaisters,) he cured the Pope in a very short time, to the admiration of all concerned.”

Infantile as was the condition of medical science in regard to life, it was not one jot more robust in its observations of death. The cases of the suspicious demises of two cardinals, not during the reign of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, but a few years later, will illustrate this.

In 1508, during the reign of the eternal enemy of Borgia the Lord Julius P.P. II, a nephew of His Holiness died, the Lord Galeotto Franciotto della Rovere, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Pietro _ad Vincula_. And, says Mgr. Paris de Grassis (Burchard’s inimical successor as Caerimonarius,[74] “I saw on his face and on his body such spots as seemed to be the effect of a dose of venom; and all the others formed the same opinion.”

After autopsy, the chirugeons found no venom, but “certain bloody spots: wherefore they judged him to have died of a superfluity of blood; and, if he had been phlebotomized, he would have had no harm.”

The second case is that of the Lord Christopher Bainbridge, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Prassede, and Orator of King Henry VII Tudor at the Court of the Lord Leo P.P. X. He died in Rome, in 1514; and, says Mgr. Paris de Grassis the Caerimonarius, “when his death was ascribed to venom” (—_this surely ought to prove that the suspicion was habitual, and no more appropriate to the Borgia than to any other family of this period_,—) “by command of the Pope he was eviscerated, and it was found that his heart was diseased on the right side.”

Now this Cardinal Bainbridge, whose death obviously was due to organic disease, has come down to posterity as a victim of venom; while Cardinal Dellarovere, whose _salma_ presented far more suspicious, in fact distinctly suspicious, symptoms, is reputed to have died a natural death!

Of all the wonderful and subtile recipes for venoms which are believed to have been possessed by European potentates about this time, only one now is accessible: but it is dated 1540, exactly thirty-seven years after the Lord Alexander P.P. VI died of his double-tertian fever. It is a Venetian recipe, and comes from the Secret Archives of the Council of Ten.[75] Arsenic, antimony, orpiment, and aconite, are to be subjected to a long long process of preparation, similar to those wondrous stews in which Messer Giambattista della Porta, in company with every other respectable mage, had his continual joy; and, when all is done, the ignorant inventor of this horrible venom says that he cannot guarantee its success. Why? The dose of any single one of those four venomous ingredients alone would have been fatal. Why should their combination bring uncertainty? For the simple reason that the boiling and the sun-baking, the sublimation and the distillation, which so prolongedly was practised, set up chemical change, reaction, decomposition, destroyed the virtue or the nature, and effectually altered or annulled the venomous properties originally possessed by the subject of so much empiricism. As simples, they certainly would have been veneficous. As compounds, they might have caused grave inconvenience. But, heterogeneously compounded with alien matter, boiled to disintegration for weeks and months together, their effect surely could not be predicted. They might have been dangerous; or they might not: there is no knowing.

* * * * *

There is no defined charge against the House of Borgia of having compassed their enemies’ deaths by means of venomous rings. The vulgar conception of a venomous ring is not unconnected with a needle-point, (or point,) projecting from the bezel, along which a minute drop of deadly venom can be made to flow; and which pierces the hand that grasps it, inducing syncope and death. Or, another kind conceals a small box in the bezel, containing a tiny capsule of glass wherein venom innocuously lurks, until the glass is broken on the lips.

At the Victoria and Albert Museum of South Kensington, and at the University Galleries of Oxford, there are very splendid collections of rings. Neither collection contains a ring having the legendary needle-point, (or point:) but each collection has a ring which may have been a proximate occasion of the vulgar belief.

Nº 916 at South Kensington is a massive ring of brass, 1⁷⁄₁₆ inches in diameter; and has an octagonal bezel externally armed with a quincunx of spikes. It belongs to the Eighteenth Century, and is of the kind worn by Bavarian peasant-lads on the right middle finger at the present day.

Nº 385 at Oxford is an Italian ring of the Fourteenth Century, of gold _niello_, very beautiful. The bezel projects, and ends in the revolving rowel of a Fiery spur.

Both of these rings are weapons, intended hideously to scratch and tear an adversary’s face. There is no hollow in them that might harbour venom; and they are in no sense venomous rings according to the popular specification: but they are rings,—means of violence of another species—; and, (men being what they are,) these rings may have formed the germ of the tradition.

However, at Oxford and South Kensington, there were rings labelled _Poison Rings_, at the close of the Nineteenth Century.

Nº 479 in the Fortnum Collection at Oxford, is an Italian ring of the Sixteenth Century, of gold, and having a tiny χερούβ carved in cameo projecting from the high gold bezel. This bezel is hollow, pierced by two pinholes. Its capacity is under an eighth of a cubic inch. The hollow bezel may have been used to contain perfume, introduced through the pinholes: but it is more reasonable to conjecture that the hollow is due to a desire to economise the precious metal.

Nº 533 in the same collection, is a German ring of the Seventeenth Century, of gold, and having a large rough pearl set _in_, not on, its bezel. Minute examination with microscope and probe proves that there is absolutely no room in this ring for any venom whatever; and that neither this, nor the foregoing, deserves the designation “_Poison Ring_,” which, however, discreetly is queried on the actual official labels. Apparently, the said labels purely are a concession to the unreasoning vulgar, who expect as a right to find at least a specimen of venomous rings in every respectable museum.

At South Kensington there is a massive ring of iron, plated and damascened with gold. It is Italian, of the Seventeenth Century, ¹¹⁄₁₂ of an inch in diameter. Its octagonal bezel is a tiny box having a hinged lid. This might have held a relic. There is no ground for supposing that it ever concealed venom.

Of these three so-called Poison Rings, the South Kensington specimen, and Nº 533 at Oxford, belong to a period at least a hundred years after the demise of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI and Duke Cesare (detto Borgia). Only Nº 479 in the Fortnum Collection, by any exercise of imagination, can be planted in the Borgian Era. It is labelled “_Sixteenth Century_”; and the Lord Alexander P.P. VI reigned in Rome, as God’s Vicegerent, during the first two years, seven months, seventeen days, of that century. There is no earthly cause to connect His Holiness with that ring: but, for the purpose of the argument, let it be granted that Nº 479 with its cameo χερούβ belonged to the Borgia Pontiff, that the hollow bezel was used as a receptacle for venom, and not for perfume. What then?

If the venom were a powder, the Pope’s Holiness would have to poke it in with a pin, and close the two tiny holes with wax. Then, when the time came for envenoming the usual cardinal, He assiduously would pick out the wax, and, by violent jerks and shaking, induce the venom to present itself for application. If the venom were a liquid, (M. Dumas’ bear-juice for example,) the same process of waxing up and pin-picking would be necessary.

But there was no venom known to the Borgia, or to any other man or woman of that era, which would kill, with as small a dose as would go in that ring. The venoms of the Fifteenth Century were administered (when they were administered) by the drachm, or by the ounce—not by the grain. The recipes have been displayed here. To harbour a fatal dose of the known venoms, such as Messer Giambattista della Porta describes, a monstrous and vast ring would be needed, more gigantic than those bronze-gilt _anuli_ used as credentials by the pontifical couriers of the Lord Pius P.P. II (1458–1464), N^{os} 665 and 666 in the South Kensington Collection, two and three-eighths, and two inches, respectively, in diameter. The processes of brewing and stewing, so dear to the mages, without any doubt were a direct disposition of Providence for the security of human life; for they effectually withdrew the sting from venomous substances, and made it perfectly impossible for would-be murderers (and they were more than many) to kill, except accidentally, or with enormous doses and the disadvantages coincident thereto.

No doubt the Twentieth Century still has a little to learn. No doubt that wisdom would wait upon research among the mountains of documents stored in the archives of the Italian patriciate and baronage, Colonna, (not Orsini, whose papers were destroyed by fire in 1702), Savelli, Poplicola di Santacroce, Sforza-Cesarini, Carafa, Caïetani, Piccolhuomini, Borgia of Milan and Velletri, etc. No doubt in the Vatican Secret Archives (the Lord Alexander P.P. VI left one hundred and thirteen volumes in large folio of His acts,) infinite fields of information are white for harvest. There is nothing to prevent the reaping, but the lack of reapers. No doors are shut. No secrets are reserved. “The Popes have need of nothing except the truth.”

Meanwhile, this only can be said.

The empirical methods of the Borgian Era preclude the possibility of anything approaching artistic venenation.

Not one of the definite accusations against the Borgia have been proved. On the contrary they are shewn to lack valid foundation.

There is no authentic evidence regarding the Venom that the Borgia are said to have employed.

In fact, there was no Venom of the Borgia.

Pontifex Maximus Alexander VI et Princeps

In reviewing the Pontificate of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI notice must be taken of the fashion which represents Him as having been in continual fear of deposition on account of the simony by which He is alleged to have bought the papal power. It already has been shewn that no law existed, which made simony an annulment of election to ecclesiastical benefices, until the reign of the Lord Julius P.P. II. It remains to be considered whether the distribution of offices, with which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI signalized his election, in any case would give colour to the charge of simony.

The Conclave for the election of a Pope begins with the Mass of the Holy Spirit chaunted in the Chapel of St. Gregory. Afterwards, the cardinals go in procession, singing _Veni Creator Spiritus_, to take possession of the cells which they will have to occupy. These cells are erected in a hall of the Vatican, communicating with the Xystine Chapel. They are mere frameworks of wood hung with fringed curtains of baize, green in the cases of cardinals who are creatures of previous pontiffs; violet in the cases of cardinals who are creatures of the pontiffs just deceased. On the front of each cell is a curtained doorway over which the armorials of the occupant are shewn, surmounted by a little swinging window. Each cardinal has a bed, a table, and a chair. His attendants support life in discomfort as best they may. Three hours after avemmaria, all doors and windows communicating with the outer world are walled up. Guards on the outside watch every avenue of access, under command of the Hereditary Marshal of the Church, now Prince Chigi, then Prince Savelli. To every cardinal are allowed two conclavists for his attendants, a chaplain and an esquire. A cardinal-prince, or one aged and infirm, may add a third. In addition to the cardinals and the conclavists, there are enclosed a sacristan with his subsacristans, a secretary with his undersecretaries, five masters of ceremonies, a confessor, two physicians, a chirugeon, two barbers, an apothecary, with their respective boys, a mason, a carpenter, and servants for menial work. Great care is taken that none of these lay-persons should be agents of the orators of the secular powers; and they are made to swear a stringent oath of secrecy. As a matter of fact, they are not allowed to know anything of the proceedings in the Xystine Chapel. Meals are served at stated hours, through a revolving cupboard (ruota) in the outer wall, supervised by cardinals-inspectors. Flagons are of bare glass, lumps of bread or meat are cut open, that no messages from the outer world may pass in by these means. Nor may any single thing pass out. Urgent private letters written in the Conclave are subject to cardinals-censors. Cardinals, who have need, may speak to visitors, but in presence of witnesses; and all communication must be open, and in a language that all can understand. These interviews take place at a window, the cardinal being on the inside, his visitor on the outside: but the conclavists and others are forbidden to approach the window on any pretext whatever.

In the Xystine Chapel, at the moment of the election, the cardinals alone are ocular and auricular witnesses of what takes place. Certainly all proceedings are recorded in the Acts of the Conclave. But the original acts of the Conclave that elected the Lord Alexander P.P. VI are not forthcoming: they very likely were lost in the Sack of Rome in 1527, when the Catholic Catalans and Lutheran Goths of the Elect-Emperor Don Carlos V gambled in the gutters for nuns and for the wives and daughters of Roman citizens. This then is the situation. All accounts of the Conclave of 1492, including the dispatches of Orators to their respective governments, are based on hearsay, or popular rumour. Historians have no other material; for there is none.

The cry of simony always is raised at every election of a Pope. It is only an exemplification of the law that Attraction and Repulsion are Primary Forces. That the Lord Alexander P.P. VI on His election did strip Himself of His new palace, and of His multitudinous benefices, cannot be denied. Why need it be denied? It always is done; for a cardinal who is elected Pope has no more need of these things: he leaves them with his scarlet and ermine cappamagna when He is endued with the plain white frock of Christ’s Vicar. The giving away of His cast-off goods and offices cannot be twisted into an act of simony, unless there is a distinct stipulation that they are given and taken as the price of a vote. And no such distinct stipulation is extant. It is difficult to see why cardinals should be considered likely to be guilty of such degeneration. As a class of men they stand high: they generally are possessed of illustrious birth; they generally are possessed of such enormous wealth as to place them beyond the range of pecuniary temptation; and invariably they are men of merit, the fine flower of their profession. As far as mundane honours go, they have tasted all the glory that the world can offer, except one glory. No layman may kneel on the same bench with a cardinal, unless he be a reigning sovereign. No layman may make a fourth in a carriage containing three cardinals, not even a reigning sovereign. Their rank places them far above peers or princes. They are not eligible for the Athenæum Club, but nothing that the world can offer will improve their position except the Papacy; yet they are suspected, as a class, of intrigues and cabals of the basest kind, mere financial operations; and rarely, very rarely, is there any ground for the suspicion, the prize for which they are said to struggle generally being beneath their notice, the petty advantage which they are thought to desire being unworthy even of their contempt; for cardinals are tired men, tired of splendour, tired of the earthly things; and they are not invariably vile.

When, therefore, the absurd people who wish to prove simoniacal the election of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, or the stupid craven Catholics who fatuously think to conciliate by joining rabidly in the hue and cry against a Pope, can show a definite declaration from one or more of the cardinals-assistant of the Conclave of 1492, couched in some such terms as these, “_I acknowledge and confess that, seduced by the dignities and the money that he offered me_, (or, _intimidated by the menaces of Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja_,) _I allowed myself to be corrupted; and, against my will and better knowledge, I sold my vote to this unworthy cardinal_: or, _I declare that I have resisted all his promises, threats, and flatteries, and firmly have refused to sell my vote to Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja_ : then, and only then, can this silly or malicious calumny be said to have any foundation in fact.[76]

One thing is perfectly certain. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Who really was the last man in the world _à S’ encanailler_, never behaved as though He had gained the Triregno by illegitimate means. Not when all Europe yelped around His footstool did He blench or quail or shew a sign of fear. The heathen raged; and the people imagined a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves; and the rulers took counsel together. The Monarchs of Naples nagged; the Catholic King and Queen denounced; the Christian Kings minced, grimaced, and gibbered; Caesar Semper Augustus protested; Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere raved and nursed sedition; the barons of Rome revolted; the dukes and tyrants and republics of Italy took up arms; the dominions of the Pope’s Holiness were invaded; the Eternal City suffered violence; the sacrosanctity of the pontifical person was in imminent danger: but the invincible Lord Alexander P.P. VI magnificently retired into the Mola of Hadrian, the only spot in all Christendom where His rule remained; and held His Own, inflexibly, implacably, with an enormous dignity impossible in one who was a mere usurper, a venal simoniac. So much is sure. The demeanour of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI in direst straits, was the demeanour of a man who had no doubt regarding his own integrity.

* * * * *

The so-called scandals of His private life are shewn to have been based upon the malice or the idle gossip of His enemies. He sat in “the fierce light that beats upon a throne.” He was the father of a family. He was not the first or the last Pope Who has been the father of a family. His immediate predecessor, the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII, admitted the paternity of seven children. A successor, the Lord Paul P.P. III, also used Himself in a similar manner: nor are these all. If this be vicious, it was only vicious in the Lord Alexander P.P. VI because He was the Lord Alexander P.P. VI; for in other men the same thing was, and is, tolerated, accepted, applauded. A patrician or a plebeian may steal a horse: but a Pope may not look over the wall. _Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hic diadema._[77] However, as a father, He exhibited an illustrious example of paternal virtue. He was kind, loving, affectionate to his children; solicitous and self sacrificing for their welfare and advancement. That He employed His spiritual power, to build up the temporalities of His family, was a temptation, to avoid which He would need to have been more than human. It was the custom of the time. It was an imperious necessity of the situation.

* * * * *

The murders and venenations of which He has been accused, in company with Duke Cesare, fail of proof; and indeed His guiltlessness as instigator, principal, or accomplice, appears in every case to be beyond question.

The murder of Don Juan Francisco de Lançol y Borja, Duke of Gandia, remains a mystery: but what evidence there is distinctly points to a vendetta of Orsini directed against the Pope through His Captain-General.

The murder of the Prince of Bisceglia is referable rather to a vendetta of Sanseverini and Caïetani, than to the Pope or Duke Cesare (detto Borgia).

The deaths of Don Astorgio and Don Gianevangelista Manfredi are susceptible of the Venetian Orator’s explanation, _puto mal san_; there positively is nothing to connect the Pope or the Duke with them.

The death of the Sultán Djim was due to natural causes, while he was in the hands of the Christian King; and the Pope’s Holiness was a pecuniary loser (to the extent of about £80,000 a year) by his death.

The death of Cardinal Orsini was due to natural causes, according to the sworn testimony of physicians provided by the House of Orsini.

Fra Girolamo Savonarola Ο.P. was executed on a capital charge by due process of law; and the Pope was an unwilling agent for the administration of that law.

(The crime of Fra Girolamo really was that of intriguing with a foreign power with which his country was at war. General Booth committing treachery with Mr. Kruger, or Mr. Ira D. Sankey with the Son of Heaven Kwang Su, would be Twentieth Century parallels of Savonarola and Charles VIII.)

Cardinal Giovanni Borgia (detto Giuniore) died a natural death.

Messer Ramiro d’ Orco, Don Vitellozzo Vitelli, and Don Oliverotto da Fermo had a legal trial by court-martial, and paid the legal penalty of crime.

Don Paolo and Duke Francesco Orsini of Gravina suffered merited death, due to the exigencies of civil war in which they and their House were the aggressors.

There remain two other violent deaths to be accounted for, which were not of sufficient importance to treat of in the history of this pontificate, the case of Calderon Perotto, and that of Messer Francesco Trocces.

It is said by Don Paolo Capello, the Orator of Venice, in his Diarium, (or rather in that edition of the said Diarium which was prepared forty years later by Don Marino Sanuto,) that Calderon Perotto was a Spanish lad of eighteen years, one of the Pontifical pages; and that he was stabbed by Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) at the Pope’s feet. The fact is related without comment or explanation. It would not be safe to attach much importance to the statement, because Don Paolo Capello’s original document is not forthcoming and Don Marino Sanuto’s version of what he wrote is the only version accessible. But the alleged murder of the page Perotto is not, like other calumnies, a posthumous invention; for it is mentioned in the atrocious _Letter to Silvio Savelli_ described on an earlier page. The Pope is not, and was not blamed. The murder, if it were a murder at all, is attributed to Duke Cesare (detto Borgia); and it was not an unusual thing for a lord to slay a servant in the Borgian Era. That was common enough; but to do it in the presence of the Holiness of the Pope certainly was sacrilege; and this last circumstance makes it probable that the whole story is a pure invention; for the guilt of sacrilege lightly was not incurred even by the most bloody and abandoned villains: and Duke Cesare was not of that species.

The other death, that of Messer Francesco Trocces is more probable, and mentioned in several dispatches of Orators. He was a papal chamberlain (confidential flunkey of the cloak and sword,—minor situation dear to _petits maîtres_ of the English and Keltic bourgeoisie now;) and was employed as governmental courier. The Republic of Venice was playing fast and loose with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, disliking to see Duke Cesare’s amazing success in the Romagna; and its Orator, Don Antonio Giustiniani carried on relations of a doubtful kind with Messer Francesco Trocces, in the usual manner of ambassadors who find that they can buy state-secrets from a “crapule.” Suddenly, Messer Francesco fled from Rome to Civita Vecchia. He had been complaining to the Venetians about Duke Cesare; and all his treachery had come to light. The Duke’s steel claws were far-reaching. The traitor was captured there and brought to Rome, strangled, and his body hanged on Tor Savelli as an example to others of his kind. Legally speaking he was executed for the crime of high treason; and the formal exposure of his corpse gives the lie to the idea of clandestine assassination. The practice of secret trials and summary executions is odious to the Twentieth Century: but, in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth, not only all civilized governments, but even barons who had power of life and death over their retainers, used these means as a matter of course; and that alone should be sufficient to exonerate the Borgia from blame.

It has been said of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI that He habitually envenomed his cardinals, that He might have their goods. The following story is given, not in this connection, by Mr. F. Marion Crawford, and is here inserted on account of its frequent significance. At the corner of the Via Lata in the Corso of Rome, is the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, a typical Roman palace of the Borgian Era, two-thirds the size of the Vatican Basilica, and able to accommodate a thousand inhabitants. It was built by Cardinal Santorio (?), who bought the site from the Chapter of Santa Maria _Maggiore_, and expended thousands of gold ducats in the erection of a House Beautiful. All through the reigns of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI and of the Lord Pius P.P. III, he remained in unmolested possession: but during the pontificate of the Lord Julius P.P. II (Giuliano della Rovere) the Pope’s Holiness said to him that his palace was “more suitable for a secular duke than for a prince of the Church”; and forced him to make Him a free gift of it for His Own nephew Don Francesco della Rovere, whom He had created Duke of Urbino. The unfortunate Cardinal Santorio died soon after of a broken heart. It was not Borgia who caused _his_ death, in order to have his palace: but Borgia’s eternal enemy.

* * * * *

As a secular sovereign, no contemporary of His even deserves to be named in comparison with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. His reign broke the back of the turbulent ambitious selfish baronage which had ravaged the papal states for centuries. He was an independent Pope; willing to enter into alliances, it is true, so long as they served His purpose: but just as willing to throw over His allies and stand alone upon occasion. If His interests leaned more in one direction than another, it may be taken that He was a Sforza + Cesarini Pope, rather than a creature of Colonna or Orsini as the custom was. His political policy entirely was directed to the substitution of peace and order with security of life and property, instead of the anarchy and desolation which He saw on His accession. He fully lived up to His official title of RULER OF THE WORLD; and the sovereigns of Europe at all times found Him sternly rigorously just, amenable neither to fear nor flattery. He was an admirable FATHER OF PRINCES AND OF KINGS. Notwithstanding all that weakly has been said to the contrary, the Holy Roman Church and Christendom owe a vast debt of gratitude to Him. He found feebleness and war and tumult at His coming: at His going He left behind Him differences removed, rebellions quelled, and a tradition of consolidated strength. He was the Fosterer of Justice and of Peace. He was a great and wise Princeps.

* * * * *

As Pontifex Maximus, EARTHLY VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST OUR SAVIOUR, He merits reverent admiration. His habits and tastes were of the simplest kind, in an age of singular luxury. He was temperate in His diet; and the Orators of the Powers commented with disgust upon the fact that He never had more than one dish upon His table. He slept but little. His amusements occupied a mere fraction of His time: but, during recreation, He unbent His awful dignity, and enjoyed Himself with the frank abandon of a school boy. He was a patron of painters: but men of letters incontinently drove their pens against Him; for the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was confronted by the problem of dealing with a new enemy to Christ’s flock and to civilization—He had to regulate the printing-press in the interest of morals; and, as a duty of His office, He ordained the censorship of printed books, He inaugurated the “Imprimatur,” He “muzzled the printer’s devil.”

Yet He was a gentle and kindly-affectioned Shepherd. In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain. He entertained them in security in Rome. In 1494, He was horrified by news of the diabolical atrocities of the Grand Inquisitor of Spain; and, though He Himself was a Spaniard, He appointed four assessors with equal power, to restrain the excesses of Torquemada. The Spanish Inquisition never had the countenance of Rome, but Her bitterest opposition. The wanton ingenious cruelty of that infamous Tribunal was due to the fiendish strain of African black blood which tinges and defiles the bluest blood of Spain; and was committed in explicit defiance of the commands of God’s Vicegerent. It is true that He gave America to Spain, and Africa to Portugal.[78] The Bulls of Donation shew that He considered it to be the Pope’s duty to teach the Gospel to all nations, and to compel the observance of natural laws. He believed that, before the heathen could hear the Gospel, or observe those laws, it was necessary to make them subjects of a Christian Power. He knew that conquest makes more converts in one day, than preaching in three hundred years. He took as abruptly practical and business-like a view of things as though He had been fortunate enough to have been born an Englishman. And He acted upon the extremely scriptural principle that civil rights and civil authorities lawfully cannot obstruct the propagation of the Faith. None knew better than He that the Treasure was in an earthen vessel[79]: but, as the chief bishop of the Church far above all principality and power and might and dominion,[80] He spoke, exhorted, and rebuked, with an authority. Let no man despise Him.[81] There was no other representative of Christianity; there was no other, in all the world, who even claimed to be the representative of Christianity, at that time. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, magnificent and invincible, was the only one. Let no man despise Him.

As Pastor, He was merciful; as Judge, severe and just. His laws against witchcraft and Black Magic were of the most stringent kind. He used the means which every other sovereign of Europe also used. “East of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases; Man being there handed over to the power of the Gods and Devils of Asia—” the most observant of modern English writers says. Men who have lived in the Far East, where Christian influence is very feeble, will recognize the singular correctness of Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s theory. Men, also, who at first hand have studied modern recrudescences of devil-worship, modern flirtations with kakodaimoniacal agencies, the Luciferianism of modern France, will not mutter with patronizing superiority of superstitions and old wives’ fables; but perfectly well will know that hideous abnormity with which the Pope’s Holiness had to deal. Only the wilfully ignorant deny the actuality of diabolic manifestations, called witchcraft and Black Magic in the vulgar tongue. The ostrich who buries her head in sand is like to these. By the side of high civilization there always runs the impulse to savagery, the weird and radical decadence which wanders on dark paths. Hellas and Rome pried into the mysteries of Isis; Christendom entertains Turlupins, Rosicrucians, Indian gumnosophists, and Mahatmas; the Borgian Era played with the Roaring Lion; the Victorian Era with Sathanas and his sorrows. “Perhaps”, “after all”, “audi alteram partem”,—hesitation, compromise, want of defined principle, lack of courageous singleness of mind,—amounting to Emasculation—is the mental note of the Twentieth Century. The Fifteenth had not a tithe of the knowledge now possessed: but it was awfully convinced, strong, and decisive, within its limitations. Then, there was no place for the palterer—except against the wall.

Other malefactors felt the flail which, like Osiris, He wielded equally with the crook. Notaries of the Pontifical Briefs debauched by the undisciplined rule of previous Popes, had become corrupt. In the absence of restraint they habitually forged briefs nominating to benefices, not only in Italy, but in all Christian countries. The ambition of German clergy created the demand. The flagitious notaries managed the supply. They sold their forged briefs privately to whoso would pay the price, and they pocketed the proceeds of this nefarious traffic. In 1497, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI found them out. Some promptly were broiled on Campo di Fiori, the nineteenth of October; one, the Lord Archbishop of Cosenza, and three secretaries, deprived of their benefices and degraded from their clerical estate, solemnly were immured alive in the Mola of Hadrian. These miserable criminals lived some years in their solitary cells, as the custom was, literally feeding on the bread of tears and the water of affliction until they died. (_Burchard_, _Diarium_.) One has heard fables of nuns immured. Here is a fairly genuine case of an immured archbishop. Immuration is the same punishment which the Twentieth Century metes out in countries where capital punishment has been abolished:—solitary confinement;—nothing more. The archbishopric of Cosenza was conferred on Cardinal Francisco de Borja, bastard of the Lord Calixtus P. P. III.

The assiduous attention to the duties of His office which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI exhibited is perfectly astounding; and pregnant with indubitable signification.

He reformed the monasteries of Austria, and the secular clergy of Portugal. He confirmed the Rule of the Religion of Friars Minim, founded by San Francesco da Paola. He approved the Rule of the Third Order of Friars Minor, founded by San Francesco d’Assisi. He permitted Madame Jean de Valois to found her Religion. In 1499, He confirmed the Rule of the Jesnats of San Girolamo, a congregation of laymen leading a religious communal life under the Rule of St. Aurelius Augustine, nursing the sick, and distilling aquavitæ, (as Carthusians distil Chartreuse, yellow and green, now.) He founded and confirmed in Rome the Order of Military Knights of St. George, for the defence of Christendom against the Muslim Infidel. He granted privileges to the College at Windsor: (Chapter of St. George, or King Henry VI Plantagenet’s Foundation at Eton?) He approved the Order of Praying Knights of St. Michael in France. He reformed the Order of Military Knights of Christ in Portugal. He canonized no saints. His personal piety was simple, diligent, and real. He greatly revered the Deipara, the Blessed Virgin Mary. In her honour, He ordained the bell which rings at sunset, sunrise, and noon, for the _Angelus Domini_ in memory of The Incarnation. On His death-bed, He said, “We always have had, and have, a singular affection for the Most Holy Virgin.”

In the Secret Archives of the Vatican, (merely a technical term, for they are open to all the world,) His original acts are preserved; the veritable Briefs and Bulls which He laboured to utter during His reign. They are bound in one hundred and thirteen large-folio volumes, each tome containing about ten thousand separate documents.[82] To understand what kind of thing is a Papal Bull or Brief, the Epistles of St. Peter, which are easily accessible, may be mentioned as the best examples extant;—earnest disquisitions, simple or scholarly, dealing authoritatively with subjects the most vital. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI is responsible for more than a million of these; and He only reigned eleven years.

The days and nights appreciably were not longer then than now. WHERE, THEN, DID THE LORD ALEXANDER P.P. VI FIND THE TIME TO ACCOMPLISH THE MULTIFARIOUS TURPITUDES WITH WHICH HE HAS BEEN CHARGED?

He was the father of bastards. He was not the first or last,—plebeian, patrician, potentate, or pontiff.

He was inflexible to foes. Was ever peace assured except by a stern martinet?

The Lord Alexander P.P. VI was a very great Prince, a very faithful Pastor, a very human Man.

By members of that Church, at least, which He so ably ruled, He should be regarded as above and beyond criticism (so-called), amenable to no judge, ecclesiastical, or secular.[83] For the rest—the dwellers in glass houses....

* * * * *

Sparks that Die

“_A fire, that is kindled, begins with smoke and hissing, while it lays hold on the faggots; bursts into a roaring blaze, with raging tongues of flame, devouring all in reach, spangled with sparks that die._”

On the death of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna was the most potent personage in Italy. Several of his veteran legions under Don Michelotto held the Eternal City. Usually, during the Novendiati after a Pope’s demise, armed bands of Colonna and Orsini pervaded the streets, to intimidate the Conclave with their war-cries _Column—Column—_, _Bear—Bear—_. In August and September 1503, the baronial partizans were dumb; and all Rome shouted _Duca—Duca—Duca—_for Duke Cesare. He might have done anything that he pleased.

Now, if Duke Cesare were the ambitious ruthless impious despot and villain which a fashion has painted him, he must also have been a fool; in that he did not force the Sacred College to raise another Borgia to Peter’s Throne. There were three Borgia cardinals ready to his hand, all quiet and malleable and inoffensive, and two of them aged men; viz.,

(α) the Lord Luis Juan de Mila y Borja, Cardinal-Prior-Presbyter of the Title of Santi Quattro Coronati and Bishop of Lerida; first cousin and contemporary of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI:

(β) the Lord Francisco de Borja, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo, Archbishop of Cosenza; bastard of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III:

(γ) the Lord Pedro Luis de Borja y Lançol, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Via Lata; son of the late Pope’s sister Doña Juana de Borja by her marriage with her cousin Don Guillelmo de Lançol.

The last was a young man, a contemporary of Duke Cesare himself, and appears to have been of a modest and retiring disposition. Whether his youth would have taken fire at being crowned with the Triregno, is an open question. He was not elected, and is numbered with the sparks that die. The Cardinal de Mila had resided nearly half a century at his bishopric in Spain; and was completely out of touch with his Italian relatives, as well as with the Sacred College.

But Cardinal Francisco de Borja seems to have been an ideal nominee for the purpose of Duke Cesare. He owed his rank to the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. He was of the age of sixty-two years, a gentle old gentleman of placid nature, of sweet and lovable habits, easily plastic. If he had been elected Pope by the influence of Duke Cesare, the consolidation of the Borgia Dynasty would have been an accomplished fact. Theoretically, it matters not a jot who may be the Pope, Caius or Balbus, Peter or Paul. If there be any basis for the claims of the Holy Roman Church, Her mission goes on till the world’s end, as well and as inevitably when Borgia, as when Pecci, reigns; as well and as inevitably under Boys of the age of twelve and eighteen years, like the Lord Benedict P.P. IX and the Lord John P.P. XII, as under Saints, like the Lord St. Sylvester P.P. and the Lord St. Fabian P.P. ; as well and as inevitably under a Jew, like the Lord St. Peter P.P. as under an Englishman like the Lord Hadrian P.P. IV. The personality of God’s Vicegerent is of no consequence whatever to the purity of the Faith, or to the triumph of the Holy Roman Church. These things being so, it is hard to understand why Duke Cesare did not menace with his unconquerable army the Sacred College, or assassinate samples of the cardinals who should decline to vote at his direction; until, by ultimate intimidation, he should have secured the election of his candidate. If he had been the godless wretch that his enemies designated, he would have achieved some such _colpo-di-stato_ as this.

But, in the _rôle_ of an unconscionable villain, Duke Cesare was a failure—an accented failure. Contrariwise, he comported himself as exemplarily as any good and pious Catholic. Most likely his fever, or the murderous remedies of his physicians, was responsible for this. There is no doubt but that the scheme for a Borgia Dynasty had been adumbrated; and that this was the psychological moment for giving it concrete expression: but the death of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, and Duke Cesare’s own illness came with sobering effect to him; and his course of action may be translated thus—that he resolved not to usurp the prerogative of the Supreme Disposer of events. For a villain, the resolve was weak: but it was what was to be expected of a splendid man of sense.

Duke Cesare knew that he held his riches, his supremacy, his titles of Duke of Romagna, Gonfalonier of the Holy Roman Church, and Castellan of Santangelo, solely at the pleasure of the Pope; yet he made no effort to secure the election of a Pope who would confirm his possession of them. There is still in existence a ring of his, (they call it a “Poison Ring”—but of that much has been said—) which bears the splendid motto

FAYS CEQUE DOYS AVIEN QUE POURRA _Do thy duty, come what may._

That principle informed his action now. Duke Cesare did his duty.

He renewed his feudal oath of allegiance in the presence of the Sacred College. He formally recognized the supremacy, during the interregnum, of the Cardinal-Dean and the Cardinal-Chamberlain. He divested himself of the semblance and reality of power, by relinquishing the Mola of Hadrian (which impregnable fortress he held as Castellan of Santangelo, and whence he could have overawed both the Vatican and Rome). Further, finding that the mere presence of his army in the City was considered disrespectful to the Conclave, he retired it to his province of the Romagna; and he himself withdrew to France to his duchy of Valentinois.

So, the Conclave of 1503 met in absolute freedom; and elected, as Successor of St. Peter, Ruler of the World, Father of Princes and of Kings, and Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour, the Lord Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini, Cardinal-Archdeacon of Sant’ Eustachio, Archbishop of Siena, who deigned to be called the Lord Pius P. P. III, in memory of His august uncle, the Lord Pius P. P. II[84] Who had reigned from 1458 to 1464.

Then momentous events came thick and fast. The new Pope, on His coronation in St. Peter’s, graciously permitted Duke Cesare to return to Rome. Such a mighty and splendid vassal as he was naturally inspired fear and distrust among the clergy. Such a trenchant weapon as he possessed in his unconquerable veteran army was described as a danger to the papacy. It is always very hard to make the clergy understand that a laic can be as sentimental and conscientious and self sacrificing as a clerk. The word was put about that, seeing the Romagna to have been reduced to order, the necessity for Duke Cesare’s army had ceased to be. Naturally, the clergy could not be expected to understand the necessity for an “army of occupation.” The first rumour speedily grew into the statement that Duke Cesare’s army was to be disbanded.

Colonna and Orsini heard, in their ugly exile, in their battered fortresses. Like the chained wolves on the Capitol who know when rust makes thin their fetters, they lifted up their horrid heads and waited till the ultimate link should part. If Duke Cesare’s army were disbanded, thousands of condottieri would be at large, brigands ready to take service under a new chief, under any banner. Why not under the banners of the Column and the Bear? Colonna and Orsini in alliance, reinforced by those same unconquerable mercenaries might recover their old position, and once more become the strong right and left hands of a feeble Pope of their own; and then the days of the hated Borgia would be numbered. Colonna and Orsini, like their antipodes righteousness and peace, forgot their ancient feud and each kissed other. Duke Cesare indeed was in evil case.

And then, suddenly, after a pontificate of six and twenty days, the Lord Pius P.P. III died.

This moment was the opportunity of the psychic epileptic, the Lord Cardinal-Bishop Giuliano della Rovere, eternal enemy of the House of Borgia. He had emerged from the exile, which his innumerable treasons and malfeasances had merited, in time for the election of the Lord Pius P.P. III during Whose short reign he had employed himself to his own advantage. He had no friends. He gained the loathing of all with whom he had to do. The Sacred College to a man was inimical to him. He was not wealthy. He was thoroughly plebeian, he had no learning, no diplomatic skill, no charm. And there, on the other hand, was the splendid Duke Cesare, feared; yes: but admired also; and his unconquerable army was within call. A second time the election appeared likely to depend on him.

Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was a desperate man. The only advantage that he possessed was, that at this time when all the other cardinals were in a state of nervous perturbation at the unusual occurrence of the deaths of two Popes in three months, he alone preserved his equanimity. He alone knew what he wanted. His colleagues in the Conclave were mentally collapsed: they shewed signs of a liability to come under the influence of, to take advice, to take even direction from any one who would tell them what they wanted; and chiefly from him who was the one strong man of Italy, the man with the veteran army, Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna (detto Borgia). The strongest laic is no match for an unscrupulous clerk when it comes to wits. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere saw that he could gain the Sacred College, by gaining Duke Cesare. He concentrated all his crude rough desperate will on the one point.

* * * * *

The historian Varillas, who writes as a violent upholder of the Papacy, relates an extraordinary story; which, if true, is a veritable solution of mysteries; which, in short, is so strange, that it very likely is not fiction, historical or otherwise, but the blind and naked Truth emerging from her well unabashed, luciferous, and, naturally, unwelcome.

He says that Duke Cesare proposed to the Second Conclave of 1503 to elect a cardinal whom he should name: that Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, becoming aware of this, endeavoured to attract Duke Cesare’s influence to himself: that to this end the said Cardinal privately announced to the said Duke that he was his father after the manner of men, further alleging this to have been the cause of his (the said cardinal’s) enmity against the Lord Alexander P.P. VI deceased: that the said Cardinal asked the said Duke to assist him, his father, to gain the papal throne, promising, in return for such assistance, after his coronation with the Triregno, publicly to acknowledge the said Duke as his son, to confirm him in possession of his duchies and his conquests, and to retain him in all the offices which he then held: that the said Duke believed the said Cardinal, and by withdrawing from opposition, and by exerting full influence in a filial manner, he had compassed the election of the said Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere: that after his election the said Cardinal had belied all his promises, deprived the said Duke, of Umbria, and the Romagna, and all the fiefs which he had won, and of all the situations which he enjoyed, and finally had harassed, despoiled, and exiguously persecuted, all who bore the name of, or were connected with, The Borgia.

This is an extremely probable tale. Certainly a part of it is true, and perhaps the whole.

The identity of the father of Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) is involved in mystery.

The Brief of the Lord Xystus P.P. IV[85] dated the first of October 1480, which dispenses Messer Cesare from the necessity of proving his legitimacy, calls him “son of a cardinal bishop and a married woman,” _de episcopo cardinali genitus et coniugata_.

The Brief of the Same, dated the sixteenth of August 1482, which makes Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja administrator of Messer Cesare’s estate, calls the boy “son of a cardinal bishop and a married woman,” _de episcopo cardinali genitus et coniugata_.

The name of this “cardinal bishop” is not given in either Brief.

Most of the scribblers, diarists, chroniclers, orators, speak of Don Cesare, Cardinal Cesare, and Duke Cesare, as the son of Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja (the Lord Alexander P.P. VI). Some, like Peter Martyr and Fioramondo Brugnolo call him “nephew of a brother of our Lord the Pope.” In his autograph letter to the Pope, dated the sixteenth of January 1500, he himself speaks of Cardinal Giovanni Borgia (detto Giuniore), (who was the son of Don Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borja, own brother of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI) as “my brother.”

In no official document is he named as the son of Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja (the Lord Alexander P.P. VI): but the Venetian Senate, in conferring on him the patriciate of that Republic in 1500, styled him “nephew of Pope Alexander.”

The Lord Alexander P.P. VI never called him “son”: but, in an autograph Brief of recommendation addressed to the Christian King Louis XII, He introduced Duke Cesare as His “heart.”

Duke Cesare’s subscription of a letter, which he wrote to the Pope on the twenty-eighth of January 1503, at the time of the Orsini revolt, is very curious. He signed himself “The most humble servant and most faithful handiwork of Your Holiness.” _Vestrae Sanctitatis humillimus servus et devotissima factura._ As cardinal he might, and did, call himself the Pope’s “creature,” _creatura_: that is the form. A son, however, is not “handiwork” in any sense of the word: but a duke, who is made by his sovereign’s signature of his patent, precisely is.

The authorities, who call Duke Cesare “nephew,” may be dismissed. Popes, like other human beings, generally have nephews _stricte dicte vel late_.

His own appellation of Cardinal Giovanni Giuniore is susceptible of the meaning “comrade.”

And “factura” will bear reference to his duchy, gonfalonierate, castellanship, etc.

Who then was the father of Duke Cesare?

Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei (wife of Don Giorgio della Croce, and, after his death, of Don Carlo Canale,) was certainly his mother. Two official inscriptions bear witness to this. The first, which was published by Signor Gnoli in the _Nuova Antologia_ of the first of February 1881, refers to a house on Campo di Fiori which she left as an endowment for anniversary masses for the repose of the souls of herself and her two husbands named. The deed is the work of Messer Andrea Caroso, Notary Public, and is dated the fifteenth of January 1517. In it she is called “Vanoza Catanea _madre del Duca Borge_.” The second is her epitaph on her tomb in Santa Maria del Popolo (Forcella. Iscrizioni delle chiese di Roma I. 335) shewing her natural pride at finding herself the mother of two dukes, a prince duke, and a sovereign duchess.

“Faustiae Cathanae, _Caesare Valentiae_, Joannae Candiae, Jufredo Scylatii, et Lucretia Ferrariae ducib. filiis nobili Probitate insigni religioni eximia pari et aetate et Prudentiae optime de xenodochio Lateranen. Meritae Hieronimus Picus fidei commis. procur. ex test(amento) pos(uit). Vix(it) ann. LXXVI m. IV d. XIII. Objit anno M.D.XVIII. XXVI Nov.”

In the absence of anything more authoritative than the foregoing, the story of Varillas remains the most probable solution of the mystery. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI never named, never treated, Duke Cesare as His son; never shewed for him the paternal love and affection which He shewed for his bastards, Don Pedro Luis, Madonna Girolama, Duke Juan Francisco, Duchess Lucrezia, Prince Gioffredo, Madonna Laura, Duke Giovanni. Yet Duke Cesare was splendid and superb; his abilities were immense, and pre-eminently useful to the Pope. And the Pope used him on all occasions as His most serviceable subject, rewarding him with lavish generosity for the service which he rendered. Between the Duke and his Sovereign Patron, there was a certain privileged and familiar confidence: but never intimate relationship, or filial or paternal love.

The status of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere; his furious, blind, instinctive, and eternal hatred of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI and of every one connected with Him, is susceptible of an extremely human explanation. It bears the strongest possible resemblance to that very singular and very distinguishable passion of revengeful jealous rage which consumes the vulgar man in regard to a superior (in rank, breeding, or physique,) who shall have supplanted him in the favours of a lady.

Cardinal Rodrigo and Cardinal Giuliano both were cardinals and bishops at the time of the birth of Duke Cesare. Cardinal Rodrigo had wealth, illustrious ancestry, incomparable charm of manner, a sumptuous aspect. He was magnificent and invincible. Cardinal Giuliano as a boy had peddled onions in a boat between Arbisola and Genoa, he had no money except the revenues of a few benefices, he was of a saturnine habit of mind, repulsive to his fellow creatures. His portraits, as cardinal on his medal by Sperandio, as Pope by Il Caradosso (Ambrogio Foppa), shew him as a hatefully ugly man with satyr-brows, sunken and bleared eyes, fierce but haggard mien, and the animal appetites hugely predominant in the lips, the back of the head, and the curious little muscles which obliquely tend downward right and left in the region of the root of the nose. In the age of the Discovery of Man, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere’s physique did not qualify him to gain, or retain, the fidelity of any woman whom, inevitably, he would hunger to possess.

Nothing is known against the character of Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei except that she was the mistress, first of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, second of Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja. A woman who indulges in systematic adultery _and sacrilege_ is liable to be as false to her lovers, as she is to her husband and her God, at least until she has repented of her crimes and sins, giving proof of her repentance by surceasing from those same to lead a godly righteous and sober life, as Madonna Giovanna did during the whole reign of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, and especially in, and after, 1508, when she was converted, together with Madonna Fiametta, a leman of Duke Cesare’s, by hearing Frat’ Egidio da Viterbo preach the Lent in Rome. But history and rumour agree in this, that with the exception of these two separate intrigues lasting from 1473 to 1481 Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei was “alioquin proba mulier” as even the rascally Paulo Giovio says, (Vita Gonsalvi 212)—otherwise, an honest woman.

It is humanly probable that Duke Cesare was the son of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere by Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei. He was born in 1474, “son of a cardinal bishop and a married woman.” The following year, 1475, the lady bore to Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, Don Juan Francisco; in 1478, Madonna Lucrezia; in 1481, Don Gioffredo. It is as humanly natural that, after the birth of Duke Cesare, Cardinal Rodrigo should win the mother from Cardinal Giuliano; as that in 1492 he should win the Triregno from him in full conclave. The two prelates were antipathetic from heel to crown. There was bound to be rivalry between them. The loss of the papal throne in 1492 would have embittered Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere: but, by itself, hardly could have imparted that virulent vicious smack to his revenge that made him agonize, during twenty years, to dispossess and grind to powder the House of Borgia. The introduction of the feminine element provides a key to the enigma of that pettiness.

The narration of Varillas, therefore, deserves consideration as a contribution to the solving of the mysteries of the unquenchable hatred of Dellarovere for Borgia, and of Duke Cesare’s relations with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI.

Whatever the truth may be, it is circumstantially evident that to Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna, his advocacy or neutrality, his influence exercised or his abstention from opposition, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere owed his election in the Conclave of November 1503. He chose to be called the Lord Julius P.P. II.; and He instantly set about the ruin of the House of Borgia.

* * * * *

The three Borgia cardinals naturally did not vote for Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. Cardinal Luis Juan de Mila y Borja did not deign to attend the Conclave: but remained at his bishopric of Lerida in Spain. Cardinal Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borja, immediately after the election, passed into voluntary exile in the Regno without speaking to the Pope. Cardinal Francisco de Borja followed the custom of his House in regard to the voting: but he remained in Rome; and no doubt hoped with his charming innocent good nature that the Lord Julius P.P. would be satisfied, would be appeased, now that the world had nothing more to give Him. The Cardinal was bitterly disappointed.

From Madonna Lucrezia’s little boy, Duke Roderico, His Holiness seized the duchy of Sermoneta; and restored it to the Caïetani from whom it originally had been taken, and who hold it still, A.D. 1901. (The present Duke of Sermoneta also has the superb sword of state which Maestro Ercole, the master-sword-smith of his age, had made to carry before Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) when he officiated as Cardinal Ablegate at the coronation of King Don Federigo of Naples in 1497. It is a miracle of damascening and design, a lesson to Twentieth Century makers of decorative swords who heap glories on hilt and scabbard, and leave the blade to be hidden. Of this sword of Duke Cesare’s the blade is the soul. The sheath of plain embossed leather is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.)

Then, the Lord Julius P.P. II demanded of Duke Cesare the renunciation of his duchy of the Romagna. That province was a fief of the Holy See; and it was competent for the Holiness of the Pope to deal with it at His pleasure: but, seeing that to Duke Cesare’s splendid services, the Papacy practically owed the peace, the possession, the heftiness of the Romagna, heretofore a hell of turbulent bandits, brigands and assassins who defied their Over-lord to collect His revenues,—the demand of the Lord Julius P.P. II at least was discouraging.

Duke Cesare, while willing to take the oath of allegiance of a feudal vassal to the Prince, refused to relinquish the fortresses of the Romagna which by conquest he had won, and garrisoned with his veteran army, now disbanded by the Judas wiles of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and re-enlisted under alien banners.

[Illustration: _Julius P.P. II._]

Whether the Lord Julius P.P. II had made, or had not made, promises before His election, He was now _de iure_ and _de facto_ Ruler of the World, and absolutely despotic. He arrested Duke Cesare in Rome; and imprisoned him as a rebel in the Borgia Tower. The utter and vacuous helplessness of the Duke is in striking contrast to the masterful energy of all his previous life. Some enormous mental shock might produce such degeneration; the hideous treachery of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere as related by Varillas, for example. Duke Cesare behaved, in his misfortune, like a son staggered, struck breathless and speechless by a revelation of a father’s iniquity. A Bull of Deprivation despoiled him of all fiefs and dignities held from the Holy See, and confiscated all his personal property. He literally was stripped naked. In 1504, he escaped from Rome to Ostia in disguise, and thence to Naples. Here he might have found a pied à terre; and, with the splendour of his past achievements, have won an opportunity of recovering his lost estates by war: but the Lord Julius P.P. II, conscious of the danger to His peace that such an aggrieved and notable personality would be, had intrigued with the Catholic King; and, on Duke Cesare’s arrival in the Regno, he was re-arrested, and shipped to a new prison in the castle of Medina del Campo in Spain.

* * * * *

The marriage of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia with Don Alfonso d’Este was a most happy one. The sweet young bride had made herself beloved by all Ferrara, from her husband’s father Duke Ercole to the meanest of his subjects, by her beauty, her goodness, and her wonderfully able versatility, three indispensable qualities in the wife of the heir to the throne. Attired in “a mulberry satin gown embroidered with gold fish-bones each two fingers broad,” with the lace-flounce worth thirty thousand ducats (say £60,000) which, according to Giovanni Lucido, was in her wedding-chest, she would amuse herself in the ducal palace by witnessing performances of the _Casina_ or the _Miles Gloriosus_, comedies of Plautus. Sometimes, (as Sanuto, the Venetian Orator at Ferrara, informed his government,) she would remain all day in her apartments, writing letters, and having her head washed: or she would sit for hours and listen to the violin-music of her adept young husband. On the Maundy Thursday of the first year of her marriage, she publicly washed the feet of one hundred and sixty poor men. Her observance of religious duties was as notable as the spirit of genuine piety which pervades her many letters still extant.

On hearing of Duke Cesare’s _disgrazia_, Madonna Lucrezia earnestly wrote to the Marquess of Mantua, and to her friend, sister-in-law, and confidante, the Marchioness Isabella, begging them to use the influence of their House of Gonzaga with the Lord Julius P.P. II to procure his freedom. The times were out of joint for Este personally to interfere; for Madonna Lucrezia was stricken down with the effects of an ἄμβλωσις, and the old Duke Ercole was breathing his last sigh.

On the nineteenth of January 1505, the Lord Julius P.P. II issued His notorious Bull against Simony; striking a new blow at the House of Borgia, by the aspersion cast upon the memory of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI.

Duke Alfonso d’Este and his Duchess Lucrezia ascended the throne of their duchy in due course; and negotiations with the Holiness of the Pope, for the enfranchisement of Duke Cesare, might have been, and would have been instituted: but, early in the spring of the year Ferrara was threatened by famine, and the hands of the young sovereigns were entirely occupied. Had Duke Cesare been own brother to the Duchess Lucrezia, perhaps more urgent steps would have been taken: but she never seems to have regarded him otherwise than as a half-brother, who was her Father’s most useful servant, and her mother’s shame. Duke Alfonso proceeded to Venice to buy food stuffs in view of the famine, for the patriarchal rule obtained in Ferrara; and left the Duchess Lucrezia as Regent of his state. Her lovely womanly character may be seen in an edict which she issued for the protection of Jews, who were attacked and pillaged by Christians rioting for food; and in the sweet indignant letter, abounding in mis-spelt words (as do all good and distinguished women’s letters,) and enjoining the Podesta (mayor) to be energetic about securing to the Jews protection of their lives and property equally with the Christians.

When Duke Alfonso returned, after some months’ absence during which the Duchess sent him periodical and frequent accounts of her regency, addressed “To the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Lord, My Most Honourable Lord and Consort, These, with speed—speed—speed—” the summer brought plague on the heels of famine. The visitation was most severe. The unselfish exertions of the Duke and Duchess were noble and untiring. The health of the Duchess Lucrezia suffered; and before the year was over she gave birth to a dead child.

In 1506, Duke Cesare de Valentinois escaped from his Spanish prison, and made his way into the neighbouring realm of Navarre, where the King Jean d’Albret was brother to his wife Madame Charlotte d’Albret, Duchess of Valentinois. The events of the last three years had not broken his splendid spirit. All his triumphs, all the results of his strenuous energy and talent had been nullified for him. At the age of thirty-three years he was despoiled of his life’s work, and was a ruined man. The Romagna for ever was gone from him. His French duchy seems to have been of small account. Still, he was not crushed, he had the courage to begin again to carve out a career in a new country; and to this end he took service in the army of his brother-in law King Jean of Navarre.

* * * * *

The Lord Julius P.P. II having decreed Himself and His Successors to be the heir-at-law, next-of-kin, residuary and sole legatee, of all cardinals, and of all clergy who die within the walls of Rome, an era of sumptuous premortal cenotaphs and sepulchres set in among the Illustrissimi Colendissimi ed Osservantissimi Porporati, as well as among the lesser ecclesiastical dignitaries; to the end that as little as possible of their riches, after their demise, should go to the pontifical exchequer.

There is a codicil to the will of the Genoese mariner, Messer Cristoforo Colombi of this date, the fourth of May 1506, by which the Inventor of America bequeathed to his native Republic of Genoa “the prayer-book which Pope Alexander gave him; and which, in prison, in conflict, and in every kind of adversity, had been to him the greatest of comforts.” How simply bright a light does this incident throw upon the relations of a great and good man with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI!

The Lord Julius P.P. II was capable of doing without Duke Cesare in the Romagna. The Pope’s Holiness Himself was a man of war, Who found it consistent to wear cuirass and casque on battlefields equally with pluviale and triregno in the Vatican Basilica. Men called Him _Il Pontifice Terribile_. “Give Us in Our hands no stupid book, but a bare blade,” He impatiently roared to the painter of His portrait, now in the National Gallery. But Messer Rafaele Sanzio, despite all his conventional macaronics, was for once in his life artist enough to omit both book and blade, and to concentrate on the painting of the character of those fierce vulgar insatiable empty hands gripping the arms of the chair. And the Romagna found the whips of Duke Cesare to be preferred before the scorpions of the Lord Julius P.P. II. Perugia was the seat of the Baglioni. Twenty years before, in 1487, there had been an outbreak of the feud of Baglioni and Oddi, months of continual rioting, the gutters running blood, the city like a slaughterhouse; until Oddi was driven away, and Baglioni turned the place into a fortress and the churches into barracks. In 1491, in another outbreak, Baglioni hanged a hundred and thirty conspirators from the windows of the Palazzo Communale in a single day; and, (with the quick reversion from carnage to piety which is a characteristic of the age,) incontinently erected five and thirty altars in the public square, and caused continuous masses to be said and processions to be performed, to purify the city and to procure repose for the souls of the slain. Duke Cesare made a marked impression on these brigands, who learned to give him little trouble: but, when he was dispossessed and his long sword sealed in its scabbard, Baglioni took the bit between their teeth and reared, refused tribute to their sovereign Over-lord, and broke out in rebellion in the customary manner. The Lord Julius P.P. II promptly raised an army which He led in person; and reduced Perugia. Without precautions for His safety, trusting to the moral effect of His presence for the inviolability of His sacrosanct person, He adventured Himself in the heart of the rebel city, and beat Don Giampaolo Baglioni to his knees. In a man of sensibility this hardihood would indicate a very dare-devil: in the case of the Supreme Pontiff a distinction must be made between courage and mere plebeian callousness. Messer Niccolo Machiavelli sneered at this miserable Don Giampaolo Baglioni, because he lacked the boldness to strangle his unwelcome visitor, the Lord Julius P.P. II, and so crown his life of crime with a signal act of “Magnanimità”! Certainly a man would need some boldness to strangle the Pope, the Ruler of the World, the Father of Princes and of Kings, the Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour! Certainly, a man who would strangle in cold blood the Sovereign Pontiff coming to him as his guest, unarmed, under a flag of truce, would win fame, or infamy, for endless ages. But that such a deed should deserve the epithet “magnanimous,” should be considered to be indicative of greatness of soul, is a matter of opinion. Evidently the Twentieth Century considerably has curtailed and straitened the signification and the application which the word Magnanimity bore in the Fifteenth. Now, we call a man magnanimous who, at huge self-sacrifice, does noble deeds. Then, Messer Niccolo Machiavelli thought that startling actions, good, or bad, proclaimed the greatness of their agent’s soul!

The Lord Julius P.P. II was not without His flatterers. No man is, if he can pay. Literary petits maîtres like Messer Baltassare Castiglioni found it profitable to address the Terrible Pontiff in terms like these:

“O Pater, O Pastor populorum, O “O Father, O Shepherd of the Maxime mundi people, O Supreme Arbiter, humanum qui genus omne Master of the world, Who rulest all regis; the human race; Iustitiae pacisque Dator Giver of Justice, Peace, and placidaeque quietis, tranquil Ease, Credita Cui soli est vita salusque Thou to Whom alone is committed the hominum; life and salvation of men; Quem Deus Ipse Erebi fecit caelique Whom God Himself has made Lord of potentem, heaven and hell, Ut nutu pateant utraque regno Tuo;— That either realm might open at Thy nod—

“When the spiritual authority of the Popes came thus to be expressed in Latin verse, it was impossible not to treat them as deities. The temptation to apply to them the language of Roman religion was too great; the double opportunity of flattering their vanity as pontiffs, and their ears as scholars, was too attractive to be missed.”[86]

The Terrible Pontiff, however, was no scholar, but an unadulterated plebeian. It is true that He, as Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, bought that vastly over-rated piece known as the Apollo of the Belvedere, when first it was discovered at Porto d’Anzio (Antium). It is true that He bought, in 1506, for six hundred gold crowns (?) the Laocoon, (which Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti saw unearthed in the Baths of Titus,) to the supreme disgust of his “art-adviser” who declared that the two sons of the Thymbraian priest were not boys, but little men. It is true that He bought the Ariadne (which He called Cleopatra), the Torso of Herakles, and the Commodus, unearthed on Campo di Fiori, and now in the Vatican. He did these things because they were modish things to do in 1506. One gained more κῦδος in the pose of a Sixteenth Century Maecenas, than as Successor of the Galilean Fisherman. The plebeian pontiff of the Sixteenth Century was ashamed of His plebeian predecessor of the First. The times were changed, he argued, as the faithful vainly argue to excuse prelatical vagaries now. He preferred competition with “men of the world” to the cure of souls. He was quite unable to appreciate intellect. He was congenitally incapable of appreciating the delicacy, or the validity, of Letters. The plebeian chiefly is touched by way of the sense of sight; and the Lord Julius P.P. II understood naked statues, things which He could see: wherefore He bought Apollo and Laocoon and the rest. There is not the slightest credit due to Him for discrimination in His purchases, or for a deliberate choice of what was beautiful. Men happened to dig up those marbles in Roman territory just then. Any one could see them to be beyond the ordinary. Any one could see them to be antiques. It was the fashion to buy antiques; and the Terrible Pontiff bought—bought as retired grocers buy, who buy their libraries by the cwt. Also, He had Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti at His ankle, with whose advice it would have been difficult for a sardonic goat to commit an artistic blunder. They were a pair, those two, the artist and the pontiff, _uomini terribili_, terrible men, both. Messer Michelangelo had been educated at the expense of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Palazzo Medici of Florence and the Villa Medici of Fiesole. There, at the suggestion of Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano), he had sculptured his Battle of Herakles with the Centaurs, while listening to Fra Girolamo Savonarola and Messer Giovanni Pico della Mirandola surnamed the Phoenix of Genius (_Fenice degli iugegni_.) Could any man but Poliziano have suggested a more admirable subject for Michelangelo than this of weird muscular gigantic energy? In 1500, in the reign of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, he had carved his lily-pure Pietà of the Vatican Basilica, the most divinely pure presentment of God’s Maiden Mother, of the Μητροπάρθενος, save those of Alessandro Filipepi (detto Botticelli) since Byzantine art had faded. Now, he was in Rome, “art-adviser” to the Terrible Pontiff, eating his own heart in inactivity, burning and yearning to work with his own hands, with all the passionate excruciating torture suffered by every artist who may not put his talent “out to the exchangers.” It was the lust of creation in Michelangelo that made him terrible to his fellow men. His incivilities to his colleagues are proverbial. “Goffo nell’ arte” he flung with contemptuous scorn to Messer Pietro di Cristoforo Vanucci of città della Pieve (detto Perugino) who had a picture-shop at Florence, and bought estates with the proceeds of his smooth and stony saints and seraphs, stencilled by his pupils on the canvases, and touched by himself in his workshop or picture-factory at Perugia, at the very time when Oddi and Baglioni each were tearing the other’s throats to tatters outside his door. Then in 1508 the Lord Julius P.P. II ordered Messer Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Xystine Chapel. The gods on high Olympos never allow a man to do the thing that he wants to do: they are jealous lest a man should create a god. Messer Michelangelo wanted to practise sculpture; wherefore he was told to paint a ceiling. “I’m not a painter!” (Nè io pittore!) he roared to the Terrible Pontiff, who fulminated and thundered in reply. They both were terrible men; and they unrestrainedly spoke with perfect frankness as between man and man, using no set form whatever.

The Terrible Pontiff, like all clerical patrons, was an infernal nuisance to the Terrible Painter, who well-nigh killed himself by years of ceaseless toil, lying on his back upon a scaffold in the filthy air that hangs about a ceiling. He would have no assistant save a boy or two. He lived, and ate, and slept on the scene of his labour. Many times the Terrible Pontiff came to see what was being done; and every time the Terrible Painter instructed Him in the art and mystery of anathema, and drove Him away. At last the Lord Julius P.P. II threatened to have Messer Michelangelo flung down, and the scaffold pulled about his ears: but this was when the work was done. The Terrible Painter had the scaffold removed, and invited his patron to view the sumptuous ceiling. The Terrible Pontiff came; and saw; and suggested that the scaffold should be reerected so that the work might be touched up with—ultramarine and gold-leaf!

* * * * *

In Ferrara, the year 1506 was marked by one of those tragical expositions of naked human passion which afflict humanity in every age. Madonna Angela de Borja y Lançol, a cousin of the Duchess Lucrezia—being the daughter of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI’s sister, Doña Juana, by her marriage with Don Guillelmo de Lançol, and sister to Cardinal Juan de Borja y Lançol (detto Giovanni Seniore), Archbishop of Monreale, and Cardinal Pedro Luis de Borja y Lançol,—was a maid-of-honour attached to the suite of the Duchess of Ferrara. She was very beautiful, and is called in the chronicle “a most elegant damsel”—_damigella elegantissima_. Two younger brothers of Duke Alfonso, the athletic Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, and Don Giulio d’Este (bastard of the old Duke Ercole) fell in love with her. Madonna Angela favoured the Bastard Giulio whose lovely eyes she unreservedly admired—consequently, as the manner was, his rival the Cardinal hired four professionals to put out those eyes. Naif unpaltering straightforwardness of the Sixteenth Century! The operation failed of execution, for the Bastard Giulio, being forewarned, escaped with his eyes unharmed. But such conduct does not make for the peace of a state, brawling royalties affording disedification to the mob. The laws of Ferrara, paternal in character, ordained a scale of penances graduated to the rank of culprits: for example, a working man, who obscenely swore, would pay a fine; a swearing burgess paid a double fine and a swearing noble was mulcted of a triple fine. Therefore Duke Alfonso put the ban on his brother, the Lord Cardinal Ippolito, who retired to Rome to nurse his discontent and plan his next move against the Bastard Giulio. Madonna Angela, who was no more to be blamed than any other girl whose charms have inflamed a lusty pair of rivals to desperation, married the third, Don Alessandro Pio Estense di Savoja, Count of Sassuolo. The bandit[87] Cardinal Ippolito had not long to wait in exile. If he had been the Master of Fate, he could not have devised a neater or completer vengeance than that which came to him. It is one thing to attempt to blind a bastard brother who is a royal prince. It is another thing to compass the death of a brother who is a reigning sovereign. The robust young Cardinal was equal to the first: but above the second.

Duke Alfonso’s brothers, Don Ferdinando d’Este and the Bastard Giulio, engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate him. News of the plot reached Cardinal Ippolito in Rome. He promptly warned Duke Alfonso of his danger. Finding themselves discovered, the conspirators fled. Don Ferdinando was caught: but the Bastard Giulio, good at escapes, took refuge in sanctuary with his brother-in-law the Marquess of Mantua, who replied to Duke Alfonso’s demand for extradition that, if evidence of guilt were shewn, the criminal should be delivered up to justice. Evidence was shewn, in the shape of the full confession of Don Ferdinando; and the Bastard Giulio passed into his sovereign brother’s hands. Brought to the common block in the square of Ferrara, the two detected traitors were allowed to suffer all the pangs of the approach of death: but, at the last moment, Duke Alfonso in his mercy granted a reprieve, commuting their penance to life-imprisonment.

* * * * *

Early in 1507, died Duke Cesare de Valentinois (detto Borgia), by a mean inglorious death for one who had been in life so mighty a man. While commanding a small squadron on behalf of the King of Navarre, he was killed in a petty skirmish by the castle of Viana. His corpse was quietly interred in the cathedral of Pampeluna, which, by a curious coincidence, had been the first piece of ecclesiastical preferment conferred on him by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. So ended a phenomenal personality in which superb and tawny beauty of physique, prodigious force of character, fierce all-conquering energy, swift unerring almost-feline agility of action, and transcendent splendour of achievement, were blasted and nullified and marred, humanly speaking, by one single delicacy of respectful conscientious self-sacrifice and supreme confidence in clerical honour. His beautiful elegy by Ercole Strozzi,

“Ille diu, qui dum caelestibus auris Visitur, implet onus laudis, caelumque meretur”

is too well-known to be quoted at length. He left three children,

(α) Madame Eloise de Valentinois; who married, first, the Sieur Louis de la Tremouille, second, the Sieur Philippe de Bourbon, Comte de Busset, whose direct descendants flourish in France at the present day:

(β) Don Girolamo de Valentinois; who, by marriage with Madonna Isabella Carpi patrician of Ferrara, had issue Madonna Lucrezia de Valentinois married, in 1562, to Don Bartolomeo Oroboni patrician of Ferrara, who died in 1565.

(γ) a bastard Madonna Camilla Lucrezia; (evidently the offspring of an intrigue carried on when Duke Cesare was in Ferrara in 1500–1 arranging the marriage of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia to the heir of Duke Ercole d’Este;) born of Duke Cesare and a married woman in Ferrara; according to the deed of legitimation,[88] dated 1509, where Madonna Camilla Lucrezia is said to be “of the age of more than seven years”: she became Abbess of San Bernardino in Ferrara, in 1545; and died in 1573.

The Duchess Lucrezia Borgia d’Este was deeply grieved by the death of Duke Cesare her half-brother. There is a very touching letter written by her friend and sister-in-law, the Marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua, to Duke Alfonso who at that time was in Rome. It is dated the eighteenth of April 1507; and describes how that the Duchess of Ferrara, on receiving the sad news, immediately went to the church of the monastery of Corpus Domini and remained during two days and nights, praying for the repose of the soul of Duke Cesare de Valentinois. A simple act; and precisely what any good Christian woman would do in similar circumstances.

* * * * *

A year later, on the fourth of April 1508, at the Castle of Ferrara to the immense joy of all, _formosus puer est formoso natus Aprili_, says Benedetto Lampridii in his Carmina Inedita, the Duchess Lucrezia bore to Duke Alfonso a son and heir, who was baptized by the name Ercole.

During this year, a league of the Powers was formed under the Elect-Emperor Maximilian directed against Venice; and Duke Alfonso, whose dominions marched with those of that Republic, threw in his lot with its foes. While he was engaging the Venetians on the Romagna frontier, the Duchess Lucrezia ruled as Regent in Ferrara. She administered government of the state with the same sweet womanly thoroughness as she shewed in the administration of the government of her domestic affairs. History is rich in records relating to this lovely lady. She superintended the household matters of her palaces with a minute attention to detail which, to the modern middle-classes, would appear amazing in a Sovereign Duchess. To set a fashion of rare liberal-mindedness she appointed the Jewess Mazzolino to the care of her extensive wardrobe, and Messer Ludovico as her physician. Her régime was of the simple patriarchal type of the old Duke Ercole, who, on the occasion of an outbreak of plague in 1500, issued an Edict which said that “Duke Ercole d’Este, for good reasons to him known, _and because it always is well to be on good terms with God_,” ordained religious processions every day throughout Ferrara. A second quaint Edict of the same fatherly potentate, (which incidentally speaks for the meticulously cleanly personal habits of the Borgian Era, so strenuously maintained on a previous page of this book,) proclaims that “inasmuch as bakers are known to knead their dough with feet that, frequently, are unclean, such practices must not continue except on penalty of fine or imprisonment: but the dough must be worked with clean hands _and nails_.”

Evildoers, all the same, had a shocking time. Maria Equicola gives exact

## particulars of a certain Madonna Laura (name suppressed) who, being

caught in adultery, was immured alive; that is to say, she was publicly confined in a cell a few feet square, with a little window, outside the episcopal palace, near the entrance on the right of the high altar of the cathedral of Ferrara. Perjurers went about after their conviction with their tongues securely nailed to little logs of wood. The accounts for the nails and logs exist. Duchess Lucrezia’s sumptuary laws were unsuccessful. The sex of the legislator prevented her from manufacturing laws to regulate fashion, which could be put into practical effect. That was perfectly natural; nor does the failure in any way reflect upon the excellence of the intentions of her ducal highness. She ordained that no woman should wear a gown whose value was higher than the sum of fifteen ducats (say £30), nor jewellery worth more than fifty ducats (say £100). She furnished a specification of the gems which might be worn, and of the fabrics of which gowns might be made. Also, she precisely specified the quantity of material that might be used, and the cut and fashion that was to be adopted. Further, in order to secure the observation of these laws, she ordained a box, having a slit in its lid like a modern letter-box, to be placed in the cathedral by the holy water-stoup; so that fathers, husbands, or lovers, who found themselves outraged by the length or the rotundity of the skirts, or the bulk of the sleeves, or the violence of the style of their women-folk,—and the cost of the same,—secretly might drop in denunciations while in the act of taking holy water; the said denunciations afterwards to be attended-to in a legal manner by the justiciary. Delightfully solemn and futile effort of a charming woman. Well, it failed; not on account of the female peacocks of Ferrara, but by reason of the very skewbald harlequins whose propriety and purses it had aimed to benefit. How many denunciations secretly were dropped into Duchess Lucrezia’s precious box, how many scandalized fathers, husbands, and lovers, sneaked about their daughters, wives, and lemans, is not known. Only one thing is known,—there was not a justiciar in all the duchy of Ferrara, married or unmarried, who dared even to allude to, much less to act upon, the said denunciations, and enforce the law.

On the twenty-fifth of August 1509, the Duchess Lucrezia gave birth to a second son, Don Ippolito d’Este, named after his uncle the heraklean Cardinal; and who, in after years, became Archbishop and Cardinal of Milan.

All through 1508 and 1509 the war went on. In December of the latter year, a powerful Venetian fleet advanced to the mouth of the Po, devastating the country on both banks, and invading the duchy of Ferrara with frightful atrocities. Duke Alfonso, hurrying to meet the foe, won a glorious victory at Policella: but the war dragged on till 1512, keeping him in camp, away from his capital, which almost exclusively was governed by the Duchess Lucrezia (she bore Don Alessandro d’Este in 1511), assisted by Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, now no longer a bandit, but completely in the confidence and favour of his sovereign brother.

* * * * *

On the fifth of February 1510 died the noble and strenuous knight Don Pietro Gregorio Borgia of the Junior Branch. He had been high in honour with Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna since he saved him from the clutches of the Christian King Charles VIII in 1495; and had served him as mounted scale-armoured arbalister, lieutenant, and standard-bearer. On the fall of the Duke, he returned to his allegiance to the Regno now ruled by the Catholic King Don Hernando. He was Viceroy of the province of the Abruzzi when he died, and was buried in the Church of San Clemente at Velletri, his native city.[89] His fine epitaph[90] runs:

“HIC REQUIESCIT NOB. ET STRENUUS EQUES DOM. PETRUS BORGIA, CATAPHRACTOR. LOCUM-TENENS, AC SIGNIFER CESARIS BORGIAE ISPANI VALENTINI DUCIS, QUI OBJIT AN. DNI. MDX. D. QV. MEN. FEB.”

* * * * *

The year 1511 is remarkable for a wildly frenetic insurrection on the part of the gentle old Cardinal Francisco de Borja, which cost that Most Worshipful Lord his rank and his life. There is a limit to human endurance. In some men it is wide; in others narrow: but human nature subjected to unnatural suppression and restraint, sooner or later desperately will struggle to burst its bonds. This principle has never been understood by the clergy. It is one of the disabilities under which they labour in dealing with men. History teems with examples of amiable, would-be obedient, and respectable characters, tried beyond their strength by inconsiderate ignorant oppressive injustice on the part of churchmen, and transformed into savagely bitter and appallingly destructive suicides. There is no better example than Cardinal Francisco de Borja.

He was of the age of seventy years. Though his illustrious House had been predominant in Christendom during more than fifty of those years, he had never sought to benefit by the fact that his father was the Lord Calixtus P.P. III, nor to intrude himself among the mighty who were his blood-relations. Not till he was on the verge of his sixtieth year did he become a personage; and then his august cousin, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, in admiration of his enchanting disposition, dignified him with the scarlet hat and the rank of Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Lucia _in Silice_, (_Atti Consistoriali_). Later, he proceeded to the Title of Santa Cecilia, (_Ciacconi_ and _Moroni_); thence again to the Title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo (_Atti Consistoriali_); and last to the Title of San Clemente. He also was Treasurer of the Holy See, Bishop of Teano, and Archbishop of Cosenza.

Seeing the exacerbating measures which the Terrible Pontiff, the Lord Julius P.P. II was using against the House of Borgia, and especially the spoliation of the two little boys Duke Roderico and Duke Giovanni, this very sympathetic old cardinal had the indiscretion to put his frank opinion of the Pope’s Holiness into certain letters which he wrote to the Orator of Ferrara at the Court of Rome. This opinion could not fail to be unfavourable and the reverse of complimentary. No doubt the Orator was in direct communication with his sovereign, Duke Alfonso d’Este, whom he would keep advised of the trend of sentiments and of events in Rome. These letters came, by means which it would be improper to describe, into the anointed hands of God’s Vicegerent. His Holiness read them; and vehemently enraged himself against the Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara, and upon Cardinal Francisco de Borja, whom he incontinently flung into prison with every species of indignity. The Sacred College, tremorous for its own security if such treatment of a Purpled One should pass without remonstrance, exerted its influence on the Holiness of the Pope, and procured the ungracious liberation of Cardinal Francisco de Borja.

But the ill was done. The milk of human kindness effectually had been soured; the placid amiable old gentleman had been changed into a violent malcontent breathing threatenings and slaughter, and whose fiery Spanish blood at last was boiling over. Two other cardinals joined in his savage revolt, the Lord Bernardino Lopez de Caravajal Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, and the Lord Guillaume de Briçonnet Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste (Palestrina). These three decamped from Rome to Pisa, where, a fourth, the Lord Réné de Prie Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina, having joined them, they constituted themselves as a General Council; and dared to cite the Lord Julius P.P. II to shew cause before them why He should not be declared a Pseudopontiff, and deposed from Peter’s Throne, by reason of the irregularity of His election due to Simony and other crimes:—an excellent example of the sauce for the goose being served to the gander.

Melpomene is own sister to Thalia; and never has a ghastlier tragedy been more comically played. This self-styled Council of Pisa laboured under the disadvantage of being radically schismatic. Only the Roman Pontiff can summon, or confirm the decrees of, a General Council. The acts of the Schismatic Council of Pisa, therefore, were hopelessly and irretrievably invalid. The very impossibility of the whole affair is proof conclusive that these four well-intentioned, well-living pathetic old men had been tried beyond their strength, beyond all patience, goaded by insult and by gross injustice into frenzy. Their conduct was simply frenetic.

The Lord Julius P.P. II replied to Cardinal Francisco de Borja with short incisive action. By His supreme authority He issued a Bull of Deposition from the cardinalate; and denounced him to all Christendom as an heresiarch and schismatic with whom none might have to do. A Bull (Bulla Monitorii Apostolici) was issued on the twenty-eighth of July 1511 “_cõtra tres reverendissimos cardinales ... ut redeãt ad obediẽtâ S.d.n. ne Schisma in eccl. in sancta dei oriẽt_.” This was followed by a second “_Bulla intimatiõis Generalis Concilii apud Lateranum per S.d.n. Juliũ Papâ II edita_,” directed, with the scrupulous politeness of a cleric about to crush, against “_dilectũ filiũ nostrũ Franciscũ Tituli Sancti Clementis p̃byterum Cardinalem_”; who “_in seipsis armis assumptis et pro sacerdotalibus vestis Thorace[91] indutis et gladiis armati Papā se cõtulerãt_.” Printed contemporary copies of these two Bulls are in the British Museum; and, bound with them, but, strange to say, uncatalogued (A.D. 1900)—(strange, because of the unique perfection of everything at the British Museum)—is the momentous Brief announcing the issue of the Bull of Deposition. Its title is “_Breve Julii Secũdi Pont. Max. ad reges, duces, et principes christianos, etc._ “_Julius Papa II_” addresses Himself to

“Our well-beloved son in Christ Maximilian, Elect-Emperor, Always August; „ „ „ Louis (XII), of the French, the Most Christian King; „ „ „ Hernando, of Aragon and the Two Sicilies, the Catholic King; „ „ „ Emanuele, of Portugal, the Illustrious King; „ „ „ Henry (VII), of England, the Illustrious King;[92] „ „ „ James (V), of the Scots, the Illustrious King; „ „ „ Wladislaf, of Hungary and Bohemia, the Illustrious King; „ „ „ Jean and Katharine, King and Queen of Navarre; „ „ „ Sigismund, King of Poland; „ „ „ John, King of Denmark; „ „ „ Carlo, Duke of Savoja; „ „ „ Lionardo Lauredano, Doge of Venice;”

and proclaims that “this day, in Public Consistory, We have deprived” of all things ecclesiastical, and of the cardinalitial hat, (_galero cardinalatus_), Bernardino Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, Guillaume Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste (Palestrina), Francisco Cardinal-Presbyter of the title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo (a clerical error for his Title, as given above in the Bull, was San Clemente), and Réné de Prie Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina, that they no longer may be considered Cardinals, nor called Cardinals, by word or by writing. The Brief is _Dated at Rome at St. Peters, and given Under the Fisherman’s Ring, the twenty-fourth of October 1511 and the eighth year of Our Pontificate_. This summary is appended here as an example of form.

Death had hurled his dart before the Terrible Pontiff. Cardinal Francisco de Borja died of an apoplexy at Pisa, before the sentence of his disgrace and deposition reached him there.

The student of history, who seeks a field wherein few yet have walked, will be well advised to investigate the life of this gentle and quiet cardinal, who departed in the tragic blaze of madness and revolt.

* * * * *

In 1512 death relieved the Lord Julius P.P. II of two more of the Borgia whom He loathed: for there died in his Neapolitan exile the Most Worshipful Lord Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borja, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Via Lata_, Arch-presbyter of the Liberian Basilica (Santa Maria Maggiore), Abbot of San Simpliciano at Milan, and Archbishop of Valencia in Spain. Having heard a rumour of the death of the Supreme Pontiff, he was on the verge of returning to Rome for the Conclave; but he was killed by falling from his mule at Naples, where he is buried in the church of San Piercelestino without any memorial.

This year also died Don Roderico de Aragona e Borgia, at the age of thirteen years, the son of Madonna Lucrezia by her first legitimate marriage with Don Alonso de Aragona Prince of Bisceglia. He had been despoiled of his duchy of Sermoneta in favour of Caïetani by the Lord Julius P.P. II; and his existence as a step-son was embarrassing in Ferrara, except to his mother, who most sincerely mourned him.

The Duchess Lucrezia was to suffer much this year. The Lord Julius P.P. II put the ban of Greater Excommunication upon her beloved husband Duke Alfonso. As the consort of a Borgia—a Borgia universally adored, a sovereign Borgia, a Borgia of unblemished character,—the Duke of Ferrara naturally was intensely antipathetic to the Holiness of the Pope. If that were not enough, the facts remained that Duke Alfonso was the friend of France, (as the Supreme Pontiff’s predecessor also had been); and, he was cognizant of Cardinal Francisco’s disesteem for the Lord Julius P.P. II. Naturally the Pope’s Holiness found the Duke’s Excellency most annoying. The awful import of Excommunication barely can be realized at the present time. People idly wonder why the excommunicated take their case so seriously—why they do not turn to find amusement, or satisfaction, in another channel,—why they persist in lying prone in the mire where the fulmination struck them. And, indeed, in modern times the formal sentence rarely is promulgated, and only against personages of distinction, like the German Dr. Döllinger or the Sabaudo King Vittoremanuele II di Savoja, whose very circumstances provided them with the means to allay the temporal irritation of the blow. There are excommunications “_gerendae_ sententiae” and “_latae_ sententiae.” In the former, excommunication is threatened for some act: but the offender must have sentence passed upon him. In the latter, the offender is excommunicate the moment he performs the act forbidden, (“ipso facto”). This however operates only “in foro _interno_,” and in the Eyes of God. To make it effectual “in foro _externo_” it is necessary that the guilt be proved and be declared to be so by some “competent judge.” Excommunication _latae sententiae_ appears not to have been uncommon in the Victorian Era. A Leading Case occurred in December 1882, when it was enforced against a Scots clergyman on the strength of the following letter:—

“ROME, _6 December 1882_.

“MY DEAR LORD ARCHBISHOP (of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh),—I have just received a message from the Cardinal-Prefect (of Propaganda, Cardãl Simeoni,) to tell your Grace ‘che il noto sacerdote il quale voleva citare i Vescovi incorrerebbe senza dubbio la censura al primo atto efficace che ponesse, ossia all’ atto della citazione, come _cogens Ecclesiasticum ad tribunal laicum_. Se fosse ancora in tempo sarebbe bene che l’Arcivescovo ne avvertisse il Sacerdote per distoglierlo da tale atto.’

“Yours very respectfully, “F. A. CAMPBELL, “(then Rector of the Scots College of Rome.)”

The censure was Excommunicatio latae sententiae speciali modo reservatae Romano Pontifici. Bulla _Apostolicae Sedis. VII_.[93] Seldom does a case of Excommunication terminate in a perridiculous collapse, as this one did, when the Cardinal-Prefect denied having sent the quoted message. Seldom, on the whole, is Excommunication _latae sententiae_ made effectual by proof of guilt and declaration of proof of guilt by a competent judge. The effect can be produced in another and far more exitial way. Simple secret instructions, or even hints, can be given by bishops to clergy, or adverse opinions can be expressed by one clerk to another, suggesting that it would be well (that it would tend ad majorem Dei gloriam, some say,) to obstruct the worldly welfare of such and such an one, to refuse him his rites and sacraments, or at least to offer the last upon such conditions as the “proper pride” in human nature will disdain to accept. This mode is purely devilish. It is capable of abuse by unworthy clerks for personal ends. It admits of no defence, of no appeal, of no redress, by the very reason of its intangibility. It constricts a man in phantom folds. It blanches him with venomous breath. The world, ever ready to pity some obscene dog who manifests his pain, here sees nothing save one bruised and broken; desperately digladiant, struggling with some invisible (and therefore incredible) foe. The civilized world goes in terror of the invisible; goes by “on the other side.” Excommunication of any kind is a fearsome thing for him to whom the Faith once delivered to the saints is the only prize worth having. To the man who, in defect of spiritual advice, is convinced of his own integrity, to whom the sacraments are as “odorifera panacea,”[94] to whom the sacraments are the only means which keep him from Despair, their deprivation, by the revenge of a personal enemy, of an offended vanity abasing spiritual powers to satiate secular ambition, signifies that, for the excommunicate, the light goes out of life, love is eradicated from the heart, confidence in man is killed, hope is banished from death. Sympathy he may have from aliens, if he can humiliate himself to expose his grievous wounds: but he may have it only at a price which in honour he cannot pay—the price of insincerity to his convictions—the price of apostasy. The dire Ban of excommunication, formal or informal, drives a man wild; turns his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him; he is savage; he is a Bandit, actually and literally. Sometimes he becomes criminal. Ostracism practised is a school for scoundrels. Far more merciful—divinely merciful, not humanly—it would be to slay outright the body; than to doom a soul to live a solivagous life of torture—the torture of Hopelessness. That is why Excommunication is so horrible in this present age of works. That is why it was so trenchant a weapon in the ages of faith. It was, and is, perfectly impossible to be resisted by one who is, and was, sincerely faithful. Often enough, an excommunicate sovereign would try resistance; for sovereigns are stronger than ordinary plebeians in the matter of resources. Then, when an interval for consideration had elapsed, the second blow of the Flail would fall—Interdict: his demesne would be made to suffer loss of the means of grace, the sacraments, which were denied to him. His subjects generally rose, resentful and revolting. There was no reason why they should be afflicted, when submission of their sovereign to God’s Vicegerent would suffice for their enfranchisement. But sometimes Interdict also failed. The third blow came. Subjects were absolved from their oath of allegiance to the excommunicate; his throne was declared vacant; kings and princes of Christendom were invited to invade his realm, to take his crown and sceptre, to expel him a homeless friendless connudate outcast in a world that shunned him like a pestilence, like the horrid leprous scab of creeping things which his blasted human body inevitably would become. Then, suppliant, submissive, he crawled to his Canossa; as the late Duke of Lauenberg crawled to the Lord Leo P.P. XIII the other day; as Caesar Fridericus Ahenobarbus Semper Augustus abjectly crawled to, and waited at, the gates of the huge Englishman, Nicholas Breakespeare, the Lord Hadrian P.P. IV, who ruled the world eight hundred years ago, “Not for thee, but for Peter,” that indignant Emperor muttered, perforce doing groom’s service for Peter’s Successor, holding the stirrup of the pontifical palfrey. “For Us, _and_ for Peter,” the superb English Pope retorted, as He bent Caesar to His unconquerable will. Arrogant? Arrogant——of any miserable mortal man who did not believe himself to be, who had not been officially crowned and saluted, and to whom every emperor and king and prince of Christendom, every Christian sovereign and subject of Europe, had not sworn allegiance as, “Ruler of the World, Father of Princes and of Kings, Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour.”

When the action of the human mind is inspired by the principle endeavoured here to be set down, the inexpugnable face of Excommunication, (magnified by the assent to its validity of the excommunicated one,) perhaps, may be realized. Duke Alfonso d’Este could not hope to stand where Caesar Semper Augustus fell. Naturally, he went in desperate and horrid fear. He knew that he had not deserved to be gibbeted as a Bandit before the world: but he knew also that, before the Holiness of the Pope, he, a sovereign-regnant, was crushable as a worm. He lost no time in omitting to seek release from the hideous ban.

Early in 1513, he chose the poet Messer Ludovico Ariosto, with his beautiful Greek profile and noble intellect, secretary and laureate of Cardinal Ippolito; and named him as his Orator to open negotiations with the Pope.

The Lord Julius P.P. II was perfectly implacable. He had not pardoned the indiscreet criticisms of Cardinal Francisco de Borja, who had passed beyond His power. It was the complete ruin of Borgia that alone would slake His passionate thirst for vengeance;—and a Borgia was Duchess of Ferrara. He did not intend kindness to the consort of that Duchess: and He resolved to begin, in a clerical manner, with intimidation. Accordingly, He admitted Messer Ludovico Ariosto to an audience; and immediately ordered him to quit the Vatican by the door before he should be thrown from the window. After this reception of a proffered olive-branch, the Pope’s Holiness coolly awaited Duke Alfonso’s next move.

Don Fabrizio Colonna flourished in the favour of the Lord Julius P.P. II; and he, also, was under many vital obligations to the Duke of Ferrara. He, in his turn, tried the role of peacemaker between pontiff and sovereign; and so far succeeded, that the Holy Father farcically permitted the Duke to come to Rome, assured of a favourable reception, to plead his cause and to arrange the terms of his submission.

He came. He saw the Ruler of the World. He was conquered. The Terrible Pontiff named the sole conditions on which He would consent to remit the ban of excommunication. Nothing could be more enormously radical and sweeping. They were, abdication of his sovereignty over the city and whole duchy of Ferrara, with absolute renunciation for himself and his heirs for ever of all rights therein, in favour of the Holy See; also, his retirement to voluntary life-long exile at the little city of Asti in the province of Lombardy. Death and obliteration of the Borgia, not by vulgar assassination but by constitutional withdrawal of the means to live, was the aim of the Terrible Pontiff; wherefore He would strip naked Duke Alfonso, as aforetime He had stripped naked Duke Cesare.

Duke Alfonso d’Este refused to purchase release from excommunication on these disgraceful terms. The Lord Julius P.P. II let him have hints which gave to understand that the said terms might be mitigated. By various subterfuges he was detained in Rome.

The army of the Terrible Pontiff stealthily was advancing on Ferrara.

There was only a woman there.

Duke Alfonso chanced to hear of the pontifical stratagem. On the instant, he made his plans for quitting Rome. But he found that he was in a prison. The Terrible Pontiff held him; and would not let him go. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI may not have been a Saint: but He never dirtied His honour like this.

This treachery of the Holiness of the Pope disgusted the Ghibellinism of Don Fabrizio Colonna. This was not what he had contemplated, when he persuaded Duke Alfonso to adventure his right hand in the jaws of the Wolf of Rome. Considering himself to be responsible, his own honour at stake, he played a counter-stratagem upon the Lord Julius P.P. II. By his aid, the Duke broke prison; and, under his protection, in his fortress of Marino fifteen miles from Rome, a safe asylum was provided. Duke Alfonso desired to hasten to defend his duchy now menaced by the Pope: and all Colonna acclaimed his resolution. Don Prospero Colonna undertook to bring him there where he would be. Travelling by night through hostile territory, environed by ever-present dangers, at length, disguised as Don Prospero’s cook, the royal and ducal Bandit reached Ferrara.

In the city there was joy. In the duchy there was confidence restored. In the heart of the Duchess Lucrezia there was gratitude for the safety of her much-loved lord. Ferrara was fresh from four years successful war: an excessively dangerous enemy to assault, now that her leader led her. The pontifical army executed a second strategic movement at the double—to the rear.

And, before the year 1513 was three months old, the Terrible Pontiff, the Lord Julius P.P. II, (Who, according to Monsignor Paris de Grassis, successor to Burchard as Papal Caerimonarius, suffered from the French Disease,) died at Rome, raving in His last delirium “Frenchmen, begone from Italy! Begone from Italy, Alfonso d’Este!”

Dreadful end of a furious revengeful disappointed plebeian who was Ruler of the World! The monstrous Moses of Michelangelo, in San Pietro _ad Vincula_, marks His ambitious unfinished tomb.

* * * * *

The Most Illustrious Lord Giovanni de’ Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_, was the son of Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, born the eleventh of December 1475. His mother was Madonna Clarice Orsini, one of the sweetest and best of good mothers. Her husband said that his own mother chose her for him,

“Tolsi donna ... ovvero mi fu data.

When Don Giovanni was of the age of seven years (the age of reason, technically,) the Christian King named him Abbot of Fonte Dolce, on the nineteenth of May 1483, in which preferment the Lord Sixtus P.P IV. confirmed him twelve days later by Brief dated the thirty-first of May 1843. On the first of June he received the ecclesiastical tonsure, when episcopal hands wielded scissors to cut the child-clerk’s hair in five places—on the front, the back, the right, the left, and the crown, of the head—while bishop and boy recited the psalm verse:

“The Lord is the portion— “_Dominus pars_— “Of mine inheritance— “_Haereditatis meae_— “And of my cup— “_Et calicis mei_— “Thou art He Who shall restore— “_Tu es Qui restitues_— “Mine inheritance to me— “_Haereditatem meam mihi_—

and finally the bishop endued him with the fair white linen surplice, (super pellicem) the official vesture of his clerical estate. The symbolism of this mystery seems to be that the clerk enlists himself in the regular army of the Church Militant, sacrificing an actual piece of his person as a pledge of his fidelity, and receiving as handsel, so to speak, his uniform. From this date the child was called in his family Messer Giovanni, (Mr. John). On the first of March 1484, he was named Abbot of Passignano. He grew up a good and manly boy, fond of nice things, grave, quietly merry, and a perfect gentleman. On the third of March 1489, his father’s friend the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII created him Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_; but, as he was only of the age of thirteen years, the creation was reserved _in petto_, while he continued his studies under Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano); who, in 1492 wrote to the Pope about his pupil,

“This youth is so formed by nature and education that, being inferior to none in genius, he yields not to his equals in industry, nor to his teachers in learning, nor to old men in gravity of demeanour. He naturally is honest and ingenuous, and he has been so strictly bred that never from his mouth there comes a lewd, or even a light, expression. Though he be so young, his judgement is so secure that even the old respect him as a father. He sucked piety and religion with his mother’s milk, preparing himself for his sacred office even from his cradle. (Ep. v. Lib. VIII)”

In the Publick Consistory of the twenty-second of March 1492, he was admitted to the Sacred College, receiving the scarlet hat and the cardinalitial sapphire ring, (whose value was six hundred zecchini d’oro—say, £1200); and he was of the age of sixteen years, three months, eleven days.

During his cardinalate his most delightful trait was the loving kindness which he shewed to his young cousin Giulio, (Botticelli’s most precious model), the bastard of Don Giuliano de’ Medici, by Madonna Antonia Gorini of Florence, and who ended his life as the Lord Clement P.P. VII. Cardinal Giovanni got him ennobled as a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta, and Prior of Capua; and gave him an honourable position in his household as confidential counsellor: and, indeed, it was to Don Giulio, attending him as esquire in the Conclave of March 1513, that Cardinal Giovanni generously said, when the result of the squittino (scrutiny) was made known, “Come Giulio, let us enjoy the Papacy, since God hath given it to Us:” and he immediately raised His cousin to the purple, giving him His Own vacated rank of Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_.[95]

Cardinal Giovanni, like all the Medici, was congenitally myopic. In all presentments of him, there is the slight forward bend or set of the neck which marks the short-sighted man. Messer Paolo Giovio says that he surveyed the world through a concave crystal, and that this affected his skill as a sportsman. Messer Rafaele Sanzio’s portrait of him and his cousin shows him with this concave crystal spy-glass in his hand. No doubt his physical incompleteness wonderfully aided in developing his enchanting taste and temperament; for it is well-known that the best artist is the man who does not see all.[96]

The crowd, waiting outside the Conclave of 1513 for the annunciation of the new Pope, were confronted by a doorway builded of the fragments of other buildings. Some of the stones bore portions of mutilated inscriptions; and the crowd amused itself by piecing these together. But there was one large stone above the lintel, whose inscription baffled explanation. It bore the letters

M. C. C. C. C. X. L.

and presumably had come from some edifice dated 1440. Presently, the door was flung open; and the scarlet Cardinal-Archdeacon proclaimed, “I announce to you great joy. We have for a Pope the Lord Giovanni de’ Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_, who wills to be called Leo the Tenth.” And in the doorway stood the white figure of the new Successor of St. Peter, of the age of thirty eight years, His head straining a little forward, peering through His half-closed bright eyes, lifting His hand in Apostolic Benediction. Instantly a wag in the kneeling crowd explained the cryptic inscription _Multi Caeci Cardinales Creaverunt Caecum X (decimum) Leonem_; “Many short-sighted cardinals created a short-sighted one Leo the Tenth.” That is a specimen of wit in the year 1513, bright, quick, direct, pungent, and finished.

* * * * *

The election of the Lord Leo P.P. X was an immense relief to the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara. It meant deliverance from unscrupulous persecution for the Pope’s Holiness now was patrician, and at least a gentleman, though no enemy to the House of Borgia. So Ferrara and Borgia went in peace. The duchy had been at war for nearly six years, almost without cessation; her resources were quite exhausted; her exchequer was empty. So keen was the distress, that, in order not to add to his people’s burden by pressing for his revenues, Duke Alfonso pawned his plate, and Duchess Lucrezia her jewels which were of enormous value. These were redeemed three years later: and it is to the inventory, made when they were pawned, that modern knowledge of their extraordinary rarity and worth is due.

* * * * *

On the thirteenth of September 1513 was born in Rome, of Don Tarquinio Poplicola di Santacroce and Madonna Ersilia his wife, the Noble Don Prospero Poplicola di Santacroce, afterwards Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Girolamo _degli Schiavoni_ and Nuncio, who introduced Tobacco into Italy and gave it the name _Erba Santacroce_, Holycross Herb.

* * * * *

The life of the Duchess Lucrezia, during the next few years, was a life of calm after storm, _post tot naufragias tuta_. She won fresh fame by her goodness to young girls, whom she provided with dowries, to tempt them to keep continency by marrying well. Delightfully practical age, which went directly to the point attempting no maudlin half-measures, “so sweetly mawkish and so smoothly dull”! The ideal of the professional philanthropist, then, was to make virtue easy, and vice difficult. The ideal of the professional philanthropist, now, is to make virtue horribly vulgar and vice an imperious necessity. The Duchess Lucrezia had observed that the lack of money is the root of all evil; and, at that root she struck.

Charming descriptions are extant of the evenings which this egregious lady spent in conversation with poets and scholars, listening to music, and working on the lovely embroidery for which she was so celebrated. On the third of July 1515, she presented her lord with a daughter. The same year she was grieved by the death of her friend, the great printer, Messer Aldo Manuzio. That cool-headed, shrewd, and very learned Venetian, the hereditary enemy of Ferrara, has left laudations of the Duchess Lucrezia which are sincere and unsurpassable. It is not singular that the great and good among her intimate contemporaries should be those who praise her; and that her defamers should be professional squibbers, notoriously base and venal. The following year, the eleventh of July, 1516, she suffered the loss of her little son who was of the age of five years. Is the touching letter, by which she conveyed the news to her confidante and sister-in-law, the Marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua, the letter of a wicked woman or of a good? She says,

“——the Most Illustrious Don Alessandro, my youngest son, after a long and painful illness, in which remedies were of no avail, was seized by a cruel dysentery. Yesterday, at the fourth hour of the night, (say, midnight,) the poor little man (_poverino_) yielded his blessed soul into the hands of our Lord God, leaving me much afflicted and full of sorrow; as Your Excellency, being a woman and a tender mother yourself, may easily believe.[97]”

On the Festival of All Saints, she bore another son to Duke Alfonso, who was baptized by the name Francesco.

* * * * *

On the twenty-sixth of November 1517, there died in Rome Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei, the mother of the Duchess Lucrezia; and was buried in Santa Maria _del Popolo_ by the Flaminian Gate. Nine of her letters to her daughter, and rather crabbed letters too, are preserved in the Archives of Modena. They are subscribed, “_La felice ed infelice madre_;” which seems precisely to describe her condition. She was a happy mother; happy in the gorgeous loveliness of her children, happy in their good fortune, happy in being the mother of two dukes, a prince duke, and a sovereign duchess: but unhappy, in that human law made their father not her husband. Another letter of hers, dated from Rome the fifteenth of December 1515, and signed “Perpetua Oratrice Vanozza,” has been the means of causing some uncertainty as to her real name. The following is suggested as an explanation.

“Vanozza”, of course, is a familiar abbreviation of “Giovanozza”, which is equivalent to “Big Jenny”. Italians are deliciously disrespectfully inoffensive in their use of universal and personal nicknames; which are taken conferred without the least aggrievance. “Perpetua Oratrice[98]” is not a name at all: but a quasi-official style.

In England at the present day, one frequently is startled by the receipt of a letter, from some fervent member of that devout female sex (for which Holy Church, knowing needs, diurnally prays), bearing as signature the names of the writer, with the addition “E de M”. If one has not yet seen the lions, (as the Fifteenth Century said of a novice,) one looks for the university degree, knightly order, municipal or parochial rank, of which those letters are the sign. But, when one knows them to stand for “Enfant de Marie,” one remembers that a pious sodality, of French origin and called “The Children of Mary,” is an excessively and universally fashionable one among females; and doubts are at an end.

It is probable that there was some such pious association for females of the Borgian Era. Madonna Giovanna always was a respectable well-living character: but we know that she found salvation, was converted, became _dévote_, in 1508, when she sat under Frat’ Egidio da Viterbo preaching a course of Lent sermons in Rome.

It is suggested, then, that at once she began “to make her soul,” to prepare to meet her God, for she was well on in years; and that she became a member of some Confraternity of Perpetual Prayer, resembling those of the present day whose members divide among themselves the duty of praying the clock round, so that an unending stream of supplication shall flow toward the Throne of Grace. It is suggested, that, being a human woman, cherishing no objection to a little perfectly legitimate advertisement of virtue (like the ladies of the “E de M” description), Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei formed the habit of signing her private letters “The Perpetual Suppliant, Big Jenny.”

Her epitaph has been given on p. 261.

* * * * *

There are two documents of this year 1517, which go to prove that, at this time, there existed no idea of concealing the parentage of Don Giovanni Borgia the sometime Duke of Nepi and Camerino. The boy appears to have made his home with his sister, the Duchess Lucrezia; for both documents are issued under her protection and authority. She was nineteen years older than her brother, who now was of the age of twenty-one years; and her notable good nature, as well as her royal estate, make it natural enough that she should be more mother than sister to her august Father’s youngest son.

The first brief (they both are quoted in Cittadella,) is dated “sub die Iº Nov. 1517”; and names the Bishop of Adria as Don Giovanni’s agent in some pecuniary transaction, he being less than twenty-five, and more than eighteen, years old. It begins, “Ferrariae in palatio habitationis Ill^{mi} ... Ill^{mus} Dominus Joannes Borgia, _frater_ Ill^{mae} Dominae Lucretiae Borgiae Ducissae Ferrariae, minor annis vigintiquinque, maior tamen decem octo,——.”

The second brief is addressed to Messer Filippo Strozzi; and claims, from the consuls of Pesaro, the baggage which the young noble had lost after his shipwreck in sight of that city! It is dated the second of December 1517; and begins, “Mandatum Ill^{mae} Dominae Ducissae Ferrariae in palatio Ducali ... Ill^{ma} Domina Lucretia Borgia Estensis ... suo nomine, et nomine ac Tanquam coniuncta persona Ill^{mi} Domini Joannis Borgiae _eius frater_——.”

Little or nothing further has been discovered regarding the life of this youth. His history, with that of his brother Prince Gioffredo Borgia of Squillace, waits to reward research in the archives of Naples, Nepi, Camerino and Ferrara. Reluctantly, they must be left here among the _Sparks That Die_.

* * * * *

The following announcement closes the second epoch of the House of Borgia. It is dated the twenty-first day of June 1519; and was sent by flying posts to his nephew, the Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua: “It hath pleased the Lord God to take unto Himself the soul of the Illustrious Duchess, my much-beloved Consort. (Signed) Alfonsus Dux Feraria.”

The “Illustrious Duchess” Lucrezia Borgia was buried in her favourite church at the monastery of Corpus Domini, by side of her husband’s mother the Duchess Leonor de Aragona, deeply and sincerely mourned by her children, and her husband Duke Alfonso d’Este, and, indeed, by all Ferrara duchy crowding round her bier. She was only in the forty-second year of her age.

May she rest in the fragrant peace of her good deeds.

=Book the Third=

The Brilliant Light[99]

“_A fire that is kindled, begins with smoke and hissing, while it lays hold on the faggots; bursts into a roaring blaze, with raging tongues of flame, devouring all in reach, spangled with sparks that die; settles into the steady genial glare, the brilliant light, that men call fire_;”

The Borgia, who have gone before, present no difficulty to the Twentieth Century. When once their formula has been learned, they are found to be men of like passions with ourselves. They were born—they struggled through life with an amazing amount of dignity and success—they died. For a reason which has yet to be explained, the human race has made them serve for hell-myths, for prodigies of turpitude, for symbols wherewith to express ultimate and abysmal crime.

“The slave of his own appetites, in bondage to conventional laws, his spirit emasculated by the indulgences, or corroded by the cares of life, hardly daring to act, to think, or to speak, for himself; man,—gregarious man,—worships the world in which he lives, adopts its maxims, and treads its beaten paths. To rouse him from his lethargy, and to give a new current to his thoughts, heroes appear from time to time on the verge of his horizon; and hero-worship, Pagan or Christian, withdraws him for a while from still baser idolatry. To contemplate the motives and the career of such men may teach much that well deserves the knowing: but nothing more clearly than this—that no one can have shrines erected to his memory in the hearts of men of different generations, unless his own heart was an altar, on which the daily sacrifices, of fervent devotion and magnanimous self denial, were offered to the only true Object of human worship.”[100]

The wheel of time makes one unerring revolution; and lo, a saint,—a Borgia Saint.

To write of Saint Francisco de Borja, so that he may be known of men, is more than difficult. Each man knows another, not by his strength but by his weaknesses, not as surpassing but as lacking such and such of the Ideal; for weakness makes men kin. And Saint Francisco de Borja gave no sign of human weakness, little or no sign of human nature, after he had reached his manhood. He has been called “a magnified non-natural man”; and that is the only point of view from which he can be observed. He lived entirely on the supernatural plane: the world, to him, was nothing but an enemy with whom he would have neither art nor part: he was in it, but not of it: his ways were not men’s ways, nor his thoughts men’s thoughts: he rightly cannot be liked, or disliked, hated, or loved, admired, or even judged. He must be taken as he was, comparable to none, the exact antipodes of his strenuous august invincible magnificent ancestors for there are “diversities of gifts,” in opposition to all human ideals, a “magnified non-natural man.” His note is brilliantly personal. He was utterly and absolutely selfishly solicitous about his own salvation. He made that the unique object of his life; and, to that end, he deliberately chose renunciation, hardship, ignominy, utter and extreme. His singular devotion, to the task of living according to his light, is a phenomenon of an intensity beyond the natural, environing him with an aura as of one aloof, as of one alien among men, and, therefore, altogether antipathetic to men.

He was the great-grandson of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Whose bastard Don Juan Francisco de Borja, Duke of Gandia in Spain, Prince of Teano and Tricarico, Count of Chiaramonte, Lauria, and Cerignola, Constable of Naples, and General of the Pontifical Army, had married Doña Maria de Aragona, a princess of the royal House of Aragon. After the mysterious murder of her husband at Rome in 1497, the Duchess Doña Maria married Don Enriquez de Luna, uncle and Master of the Household to the Viceroy Don Hernando of Castile, and Grand Commander of Leon, who soon left her widowed the second time. She lived at Baeza in Granada, and devoted herself to her two children, Doña Isabella, and Don Juan II de Borja, who succeeded his murdered father as Duke of Gandia and the rest. When her son married, she retired to the monastery of Poor Clares (the Second Order of the Religion of San Francesco d’Assisi) at Gandia, where she took the vows of a nun, and became Suor Maria Gabriella till her death in 1537. Her daughter, Doña Isabella, who was betrothed to the Duke of Segorbe, obtained the necessary dispensations, broke before marriage from her affianced husband; and followed the Duchess of Gandia her beloved mother to the Poor Clares, where she also took the vows as Suor Francisca de Jesus.

Don Juan II married, first, Dona Francisca de Castro y Pinos; secondly, Doña Juana de Aragona, bastard of Archbishop Don Alonso de Aragona of Saragossa nephew of the Catholic King Don Hernando of Spain.[101] Fourteen children were the offspring of these marriages;

DON FRANCISCO, THE SAINT:

Don Alonso, Abbot of Valdigna:

Don Enrico, Cardinal-Deacon of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo:

Doña Luisa, married Don Martino de Aragona y Gurrea, Duke of Villahermosa:

Don Rodrigo, Cardinal-Deacon of San Niccolo _in Carcere Tulliano_: “while still a youth” (Ciacconi)

Don Pedro Luis, Viceroy of Cataluna:

Don Tommaso, Archbishop of Saragossa, (in succession to Archbishop Don Juan de Aragona bastard of Archbishop Don Alonso,) and Viceroy of Aragon:

Don Felipe, Knight of Montesa and Governor of Oran:

Don Diego, died young:

_Doña Juana, First Abbess of the Royal Monastery of Discalced Carmelites at Madrid. She died in the Odour of Sanctity_:

Doña Leonor, married Don Juan de Gurrea:

Doña Magdalena, married Don Hernando de Proxita, Count of Almenara:

Doña Margarita, married Don Fadrique de Portugal y Cordo:

* * * * *

Doña Isabella, followed her grandmother Doña Maria (Suor Maria Gabriella), and her aunt Doña Isabella (Suor Francisca de Jesus) to the Poor Clares of Gandia, of which monastery she became Abbess.

That is a very characteristic family of a Grandee and Hijo de algo (son of something) of Spain. Leaving the heir out of the question, the eight sons divide between them two cardinalates, an archbishopric, an abbacy, two viceroyalties, and a governorship: while, of the six daughters, two enter religion and become abbesses, and four marry grandees and semi-royalty of Spain. It is worth noting too, that shame on account of their origin, or their ancestors’ supposed misbehaviour, has not yet made its appearance. Alonso was the name of many royal bastards of the House of Aragon, as well as of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III. Rodrigo was the name of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, who also began his public career in the Cardinal-Diaconate of San Niccolo _in Carcere Tulliano_, and Whose eldest bastard (ob. 1481) was called Pedro Luis. All these names were repeated here in the third and fourth generation; and the eldest son of Don Juan II, bore the second name of his murdered grandfather, Francisco.

The Terrible Pontiff, the Lord Julius P.P. II was reigning in Rome, when Don Francisco de Borja was born in 1510 at the ducal palace of Gandia in Spain.

The Terrible Pontiff was only a terrible memory ten years later, and the Lord Leo P.P. X. was trying hard to “enjoy the Papacy,” in Rome when riots arose in Gandia, the ducal palace was sacked, and Don Juan II, with his family, was forced to flee for life. Don Francisco, then a gracious boy of ten, was sent to his uncle Archbishop Don Juan de Aragona at Saragossa,[102] who supplied him with a house and retinue suited to his condition, and masters who taught him music, fencing, and Latin grammar; for he was to be bred as became the heir to the duchy of Gandia, and the future head of the Spanish Branch of the House of Borja.

In January 1522 died the Lord Leo P.P. X; and the Lord Hadrian P.P. VI, a ship-carpenter’s son out of Utrecht in Flanders, was elected Pope, called the Laocoon a pagan idol, walled-up the Belvedere statue-gallery of the Vatican; and died. To Him, in 1523, succeeded Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, cousin and life-friend of the Lord Leo P.P. X, who ascended Peter’s Throne under the title of the Lord Clement P.P. VII. Great changes were taking place in Europe. By marriage, conquest, inheritance, or lapse, the Holy Roman Empire had passed into the hands of Spain. The Elect-Emperor Carlos V, though he ceremonially had not been crowned with the Iron Crown or the Double Golden Diadem, ruled in Spain, Naples and Southern Italy, Germany, Austria, and part of France. King Henry VIII Tudor, the Defender of the Faith, was becoming a power in England. The Christian King of France was his rival: but the Continent of Europe mainly was the Elect-Emperor’s, and wholly, perhaps, the Roman Pontiffs.

At the age of fourteen years, Don Francisco de Borja went to Tor de Sillas as page of honour to the Infanta Doña Catalina, the Elect-Emperor’s sister, who was about to be married to King Don Juan III of Portugal.

When the marriage took place in 1525, Don Francisco did not accompany his royal mistress to her new kingdom; because his father, who had for him a higher ambition, had commanded his return to Saragossa to study rhetoric and philosophy under his uncle, the Archbishop Don Juan. Here he remained until he passed his seventeenth year; and in 1528 he entered the Court of the Elect-Emperor Carlos V, where his robust physical beauty, his courteous manner, and his brilliant ability, gained for him a notable reception.

Humanly speaking, this acceptance of service under such a potentate is most astonishing in a youth of the gracious piety of Don Francisco. The Elect-Emperor was hot and reeking from the commission of what must have seemed to be a perfectly appalling crime—the ghastly Sack of Rome of 1527, the fierce beleaguerment of God’s Vicegerent the Lord Clement P.P. VII in the Mola of Hadrian, carnage, pillage, rape, rapine, sacred monastic enclosures violated, virginity deflowered, nuns and the wives and daughters of Roman citizens gambled for and ravished in the public streets by the Elect-Emperor’s unpaid army of drunken Lutheran Goths and Catholic Catalans. It was to the Court of this monarch that Don Francisco de Borja brought the Gracious flower of his maiden manlihood.

Amid voluptuous surroundings, he found that it was better to marry than to burn; and, in 1529, being then of the age of nineteen years, he led in marriage the Noble Doña Leonor of Portugal. The Elect-Emperor, to mark imperial approval, perhaps, also, from the generous benevolence of a man who himself is about to receive—(he had come to terms with the Lord Clement P.P. VII, and was hoping for the Dual Coronation,)—created Don Francisco Marquess of Lombay.

The relations between Pope and Elect-Emperor were after this fashion. Both were exhausted: both were desirous of peace. Peace, then, was signed, and a perpetual alliance, on the twentieth of June 1527. The Elect-Emperor had gained territory from Venice, and detached Genoa from France; the Pope’s Holiness had promised to invest him with crown of Naples, (which his predecessor the Catholic King Don Hernando of Spain had stolen from the bastard Aragon dynasty in 1501); and formally to crown him as Holy Roman Emperor. The Lord Clement P.P. VII had gained a strong ally, who guaranteed to subdue rebellious Florence for the pontifical nephew Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, to consolidate the alliance by marrying the Bastard Doña Margarita of Austria to the said pontifical nephew; and to procure the restoration of pontifical authority in Emilia, Ravenna, and Cervia. They had been hideous enemies, these two; and the Elect-Emperor had behaved abominably. Even now, he refused to go to Monza or to Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan for the Iron Crown, or to the Lateran Basilica of Rome for the Golden Imperial Diadem, as by precedent he would have been compelled to do, had he belonged to the House of Swabia. But he was a Spaniard, arrogant, cruel, unscrupulous, and infamously powerful; and he insolently told the Pope’s Holiness that he had not the habit of running after crowns, for, instead, they came to him.

If the coronation of the Successor of St. Peter be a remarkable function, the coronation according to the Roman Rite of the Successor of Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus is but one degree less sumptuous. It would be worth the while of any man of the Twentieth Century to exchange lives with William of Hohenzollern, for the sake of the opening which lies before him. In the case of Carlos V, all ceremonies duly were observed. The Lord Clement P.P. VII came to Bologna, a neutral city, for the coronation, and the Elect-Emperor met Him there. On the twenty-second of February 1530, in the Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, the Iron Crown[103] was set upon the imperial head. Two days later, in the Cathedral of San Petronio, curtains were drawn around the imperial canopy forming a pavilion wherein the Elect-Emperor stripped naked for the anointing with holy oil and chrism. He was ordained deacon, vested in the sacred imperial dalmatica, endued with orb and sword and sceptre offered by reigning sovereigns, God’s Vicegerent crowned him with the high closed Double Crown of Empire and heralds proclaimed him

CAESAR

ROMANORUM IMPERATOR SEMPER AUGUSTUS MUNDI TOTIUS DOMINUS UNIVERSIS DOMINIS UNIVERSIS PRINCIPIBUS ET POPULIS SEMPER VENERANDUS.

These things having been done, Pope and Emperor appeared in the cathedral porch. There, Caesar Carlos V vested in full imperial insignia, held the Pontiffs stirrup as He mounted, and led His palfrey several paces, as a public act of homage and allegiance to Him By Whose Sanction Kings Do Reign. Then, he mounted his own charger, and rode by the Lord Clement P.P. VII’s side through the city of Bologna making knights, as the way is, when the Pontiff left him.

It is probable enough that the Marquess Don Francisco de Borja witnessed, and assisted at, this superb ceremony. He was attached to the personal suite of Caesar Carlos V: but there is another circumstance that implies that, in some way or another, most presumably in the flesh, he was brought into contact with the Pope’s Holiness about this time. It is that a little later, the Supreme Pontiff conferred an extraordinary favour on his illustrious House, consisting of Five Privileges granted to Duke Juan II of Gandia, his heirs and descendants of both sexes, and whomsoever they might marry, IN CONSIDERATION OF THE SIGNAL SERVICES RENDERED TO THE HOLY SEE BY THE HOUSE OF BORGIA. This unmistakeably distinct statement shews that calumnies and lampoons of Messer Francesco Guicciardini had made no ill impression on the Lord Clement P.P. VII, who actually had met that writer when he was the guest of the _bas bleu_ Madonna Veronica Gambara during the coronation festivities at Bologna. The fable of Borgia iniquity is a plant of later growth. In 1531 the House was considered to have rendered signal services, deserving recognition, _for a perpetual memorial_. Hence the granting of the Five Privileges which follow here.

I

“To any confessor whom they may select,[104] powers to absolve them from the gravest ecclesiastical censures and penalties: to commute the obligation of fasting to almsgiving: once a year to absolve them in cases usually reserved to the Holy See; or from any oath or vow but those generally excepted.

II

“Special indulgences for the hour of Death, and for visits to a church, or an altar: also, for every mass offered _by_ a scion of the House (he being in priest’s orders), or _for_ any scion of the House, indulgences equal to those which might be gained at the altars of San Sebastiano, San Lorenzo, Santa Pudentiana, and Santa Maria _de Panis_ in Rome.

III

“Permission to use _Lacticinia_ (all food made of milk and eggs) and meat,[105] on fast days throughout the year: this permission to extend to guests and servants of the family. Permission to take luncheon at mid-day, and dinner at night. Permission to receive the sacraments within prohibited times.[106] Permission to be buried on any day in the year, Easter alone excepted.

IV

“Priests who are scions of the House of Borgia may anticipate or postpone their recitation of the Breviary Offices without observing the fixed hours, reciting the whole office at once, or dividing it at their pleasure.

V

“To female scions of the House of Borgia, or connections by marriage, liberty once a month to enter the enclosure of nuns,[107] taking with them four others to converse with the nuns, and to eat with them, provided only that they do not remain for the night.” (_La heroica vida, etc., del grande San Francisco de Borja, by Cardinal Alvaro Cienfuegos. Madrid, 1717._ I. iii. 3, 4.)

The marriage of the Marquess Don Francisco, and the Marchioness Doña Leonor, of Lombay, resulted in the birth of eight children, who were,

Don Carlos, the heir:

Don Juan, Count of Ficalho; Viceroy of Portugal; Ambassador of King Don Felipe III.; Author of _Empresas Morales_ (1581); Married to Doña Lorenza Oñaz de Loyola, heiress of Don Beltrano, Señor de Loyola:

Don Alvaro, Marquess of Alcaguizes; Ambassador of King Don Felipe III to the Holy See:

Don Hernando, Knight of the Order of Calatrava:

Don Alonso, Chamberlain to the Empress Maria:

Doña Isabella, married Don Francisco de Sandoval y Rojas, Marquess of Denia, Count of Lerina: (from this marriage descends the ducal house of Lerina:)

Doña Juana, married Don Juan Enriquez de Almanas, Marquess of Alcanices:

Doña Dorotea, nun at the monastery of Poor Clares in Gandia.

Six years the Marquess Don Francisco spent in the duties of a husband, father, and courtier. In 1536, he accompanied Caesar Carlos V on a futile vainglorious expedition into Provence. Harassed by the French commander Montmorency, his vast preparations all nullified, his troops wasted by disease and discredited by disaster, half his army _hors de combat_ by reason of famine and plague, two months of inglorious campaigning sufficed for Caesar Carlos V. The French raised the peasantry against him; his retreat became a rout; and only a shattered fragment of his once-magnificent army reached the gates of Milan. Burning to retrieve his shame in the eyes of Europe, he launched a second vast expedition against Algiers; only to encounter a second ignominious disaster. Such were the Marquess Don Francisco de Borja’s experiences of war.

In 1537, died in the monastery of Poor Clares at Gandia, the Suor Maria Gabriella (Doña Maria de Aragona y Luna) widow of the murdered Duke of Gandia (bastard of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI), and grandmother of the Marquess Don Francisco. The same year, also, death claimed his brother Don Rodrigo, who had enjoyed the Cardinal-Diaconate of San Niccolo _in Carcere Tulliano_ only one year.

In 1539, an event occurred which fundamentally affected the Marquess Don Francisco. He and his wife the Marchioness Doña Leonor, were lord- and lady-in-waiting to Caesar’s wife, the Empress Doña Isabella. While Caesar was at Toledo trying to wring a grant of money from the Cortes of Castile, a sudden illness took the Empress, and she died. The Marquess and Marchioness of Lombay were entrusted with the duty of bringing the imperial corpse for burial to Elvira. There, was performed the ceremony of verification. Before the opened coffin, the Marquess Don Francisco was required to swear before the magistracy, that its contents were the mortal relics of the Empress Isabella. Corruption had set in, completely ravaging the dead: the face was like no human face and totally unrecognizable. The Marquess Don Francisco swore, not from recognition, but from knowledge that the coffin had never left his care. But a permanent impression scathed and branded him. He saw Death the Inevitable, the Horrible. Life at its highest and best, such as he himself enjoyed, offered no equivalent to, no consolation for, the end which none escape. He resolved to qualify for life eternal.

Perhaps the most prominent note in the Spanish character is singlemindedness. It can pursue a single aim with a concentration of energy, with a fulness and pertinacity of unwavering will which is simply astounding. Is it kind and noble: the kind nobility of Don Quixote de la Mancha exemplifies Spanish ideal. Is it cruel: the ruthless remorseless impersonal cruelty of Torquemada makes worlds to wince. Is it pious: it achieves complete disagreeable detachment of soul from every earthly sentiment, possession, hope, desire. Is it impious: a Spaniard will ravish an abbess of eighty, the corpse of a virginal novice, the statue of Truth. Is it gay: no lark in the sun on the morning of Easter is gayer. Is it gloomy: black moonless night, unstarred, brooding on pools obscure, shadowed by funeral pines, is not more fathomless than the deep depth of gloom veiling sad Spanish eyes. The sight of the dead Empress Isabella drew that veil across the joy of living, for the Marquess Don Francisco. He resolved to abjure the world: he prayed that God would shew the way, and break the bonds that bound him there. He was of the age of nine and twenty years.

When he returned to Toledo, Caesar named him Viceroy of Cataluna and Knight of the Order of Sant’ Jago. Entering with zeal on his new duties, he swept away the brigands who made travelling dangerous and obstructed commerce in his province. He found justice hard to come by; and the judges corrupt and venal. He reformed them all. Hospitals for sick and needy, schools and colleges for the education of the young, sprang up under his viceregal rule. A Sixteenth Century Viceroy was responsible, not to press or parliament or self-styled philanthropists; but to one earthly power alone—the Caesar. So long as his province regularly paid its tribute, and gave no trouble to the imperial exchequer, the Viceroy had absolute freedom. He was a despot in all but name. On this account, a Viceroy who laboured for his people’s welfare was something of a novelty. The piety of the Marquess Don Francisco grew intenser; he changed his habit; going to Holy Communion once a week instead of once a month. He was trying to detach himself from the world—that despotic Viceroy.

Presently, there came a new kind of religious man, neither monk, nor friar, nor secular priest (to speak strictly), but a priest, one Padre Aretino Aroaz, “of the company of Jesus,” he said; and he preached before the Viceroy at Barcelona. From him, the Marquess Don Francisco heard the marvellous history of the marvellous man, the Señor Don Iñigo Lopez de Recalde, of the House of Loyola; who, born in 1491, the year before the Borgia Lord Alexander P.P. VI began to rule Christendom from Rome, had followed a career of arms; taken a serious incapacitating wound in 1521; become converted; gone on a pilgrimage to Nuestra Señora, the Μητροπάρθενος, of Montserrat, in 1522; lived ten months in an hermitage at Manresa; studied theology in that same city of Barcelona; testified everywhere to his faith in Christ; been imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition for heresy—six weeks at Alcala, three weeks at Salamanca; studied theology again in Paris from 1528 to 1532; received Holy Order as a priest; founded a Religion of military priest-knights of Christ; gained the sanction and benison of Christ’s Vicar, the Lord Paul P.P. III, for his “Company of Jesus”;[108] and given to the world a book of Spiritual Exercises for the training of the soul in counsels of perfection. All this was of extreme interest and significance to the Marquess Don Francisco. To know more, he entertained a correspondence with this Padre Iñigo de Loyola in Rome.

This same year 1539, the Viceroy’s brother Don Enrico had news that the Lord Paul P.P. III deigned to raise him to the Sacred College, as Cardinal-Deacon of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo, the Title of which previously had been held by Cardinal Francisco de Borja, bastard of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III who died excommunicate in 1511. Setting out for Rome to receive the cardinalitial insignia, Don Enrico reached Viterbo, where he suddenly died in September 1540. His epitaph in the Vatican Basilica shews that no shame was known at this date on account of descent from the invincible Lord Alexander P.P. VI.

“HENRICUS . GENTE . BORGIA . NATIONE . HISPANUS . PATRIA . VALENTINUS . ALEXANDER . VI. . PRONEPOS . DUCIS . GANDIAE . F . DUM . IN . MAXIMA . SPE . ASSURGERET . IMMATURA . MORTE . HEU . NIMIUM . RAPTUS . EST . SPIRITUS . IN . CAELO . CORPUS . HIC . QUIESCIT.”

There were now no cardinals of the House of Borgia.

In 1543, died the Duke Don Juan II. de Borja, father of the Viceroy Marquess of Lombay, who now succeeded to the Duchy of Gandia, the principalities of Teano and Tricarico, the counties of Chiaramonte, Lauria, and Cerignola. Having obtained Caesar’s leave to resign the Viceroyalty of Cataluna, Duke Don Francisco de Borja returned to court, where he was appointed Master of the Household of the Infanta Doña Maria de Portugal. This princess was betrothed to the Infante Don Felipe, son of Caesar Carlos V; and it appeared that worldly ties were not to be untied, but tightened for the Duke of Gandia. But the Portuguese Infanta died before marriage, her household was dispersed; and Duke Don Francisco retired to his duchy, where he began to make plans for a new college for the Company of Jesus (which perfectly had charmed him), and for a new monastery of Dominican nuns in whom his Duchess Doña Leonor was interested.

* * * * *

The year 1546, in a most signal manner marked the Duke of Gandia’s progress along the road of detachment from the world.

The Duchess was sick. The Duke was praying for her recovery. The FIGURE on the Crucifix spoke to him.

What follows here rests on sworn testimony at the subsequent process of canonization, later to be described; a formal legal process that, from its scope and stringency, demands as much consideration as the Report of a Royal Commission, or, better still, a Decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in modern England.

The FIGURE on the Crucifix spoke: “—oyo una voz sensible, carinosa e distinta, que Christo articulaba desde aquella estatua muerta.”[109]

IT said: “Si tu quieres que te dexe à la Duquesa mas tempo in esta vida, yo lo dexo en tu mano; pero te aviso que à ti no te conviene esto.” _If thou askest Me to leave the Duchess longer in this life, I will do so; but I warn thee that this will not be profitable to thee._[110]

The Duke of Gandia repeated this to his confessor. He also told him his reply, which was as follows:

“What is this, O my God? Dost Thou indeed commit to a weak and trembling hand like mine, a Power which belongs to Thy Divine Omnipotence? What art Thou, O my Only Good? And what am I, that Thou should’st desire to do my will; when I was sent into the world for the purpose of doing Thine Alone, and of obeying, not only Every Command, but Every Inspiration of my Rightful Master? What Immeasurable Goodness is This, that, in order to shew favour to a creature, Thou should’st be willing to abrogate Thy Supreme Prerogative as his Creator! Since it is my wish to belong, not to myself, but altogether to Thee, I desire that, not my will, but Thine, should be done. Leave nothing O Lord to the decision of Francisco de Borja. Remember how often his feelings have blinded him and led him astray. Surely I cannot do less in return for Thine Infinite Condescension and Gracious Generosity, than to offer to Thee the lives of my wife and children as well as mine own, and everything, in fact, that I possess in the world. From Thine Hand I have received all: to Thee do I return all: earnestly entreating Thee to dispose of all according to Thy Good Pleasure.”

The Duchess died.

It is unnecessary to engage in a disquisition anent the Speaking Crucifix. It is conceivable that He, Who made the ass of Balaam speak, could also make a statue speak. It already has been said that this history deals with matters which, as far as little human knowledge goes—and that is not far—, are out of the course of nature. The affair most rigorously has been investigated, and admitted, by a competent tribunal, whose verdict must be taken as going as near the path of truth as it is possible for a human tribunal to go. Therefore, the item of the Speaking Crucifix, with other items of supernatural manifestation, will be related as they occur, without attempts to explain them away, or to fit them with an adequate apology. If it be granted that they be possible, they at once become extremely probable. The length and elaboration of the Duke of Gandia’s reply are considered, by some, as proving it to have been composed after the event, and with due consideration. This conclusion is quite worthy of notice, because it is open to serious and practical objection. The few men, and the many women, who habitually pray to God and to His saints, who are in direct frank frequent and habitual communication with the other world, will be perfectly well aware of the spontaneous ease with which ideas automatically sort themselves, the formal phrases of the special language automatically flow, from the lips of those whose life is one continual prayer. To these the Duke of Gandia’s utterance presents no difficulty: they recognize a foreign tongue with which they chance to be acquainted. Also, it is quite permissible to understand those words as not having been uttered actually, but as clothing the sentiments of the mind of the Duke of Gandia.

Viewing the affair from a human stand-point, ordinary men will regard Duke Don Francisco’s conduct as abhorrent, as heartless, as utterly brutal. It was. Granting the circumstances, he deliberately sacrificed the life of his wife. But his conduct was purely superhuman, purely supernatural. He was one of the many Roman Catholics of the Sixteenth Century—the Twentieth is less prolific—who really and truly believed _In The Life Of The World To Come_. His actions prove it. He knew that every man inevitably must submit to the hideous ordeal of surrendering to God’s enemy, Death, as the price of entrance to eternity. He judged that, the sooner this ordeal was over, the better it would be. Therefore, confident in the merits of his Saviour and his wife’s, the chance of translation being offered, he incontinently accepted on her behalf. It was the act of a truly Christian, of a cruelly unworldly man. “He wished to be rid of his wife!”

He did wish. Is it wrong to accept the joy of heaven for one loved, suffering here on earth? “But his wish was selfish!”

His wish was selfish. The Duke of Gandia gained by the death of his wife. He gained liberty to tear the flesh of his gracious body with thongs and scourges. He gained liberty to abdicate his duchy, his marquessate, his two principalities, his three counties; to strip himself of every farthing of his enormous wealth; to forsake his home, his children, his palaces, and his power; to starve on foul bread and fouler water; to wear odiously ugly clothes; to do menial service for his natural inferiors; to wheel manure in barrows; worst of all, to herd with vulgar men; to make himself disliked and scorned and hated, literally——: if it be selfish to desire these things, then the Duke of Gandia was a selfish man. “It is impossible to admire him!”

People who say these silly things make the mistake, commit the injustice, are guilty of the absurd inconsistency, of judging the Duke of Gandia by comparing him to their own ideal. He must be regarded as he was; not as he might have been if he had imitated the ideal of some Twentieth Century plumber, haberdasher, or journalist. It is not necessary to admire him. He never courted admiration; nor imitation either. What he did was personal between himself and his God. He acted up to his lights. He obeyed the voice of his conscience. He took for his ideal, that of San Francesco d’Assisi,

NUDUS NUDUM CHRISTUM SEQUENS,

He had the right. The affair was his. And his deeds can be related only: for, to use them to teach a lesson or to point a moral would be like a vain beating of the air. Lessons in this department of knowledge are given by no human instructor; and they are given solely to the hearts of willing learners.

The first hindrance was removed.

A few days after the death of the Duchess, Père Pierre Lefevre of the Company of Jesus arrived at Gandia, by previous arrangement, to lay the foundation stone of the college which the Duke was building for the Jesuits. He brought with him the Book of Spiritual Exercises written by the General Padre Iñigo de Loyola. The Duke of Gandia took advantage of his presence to perform these Spiritual Exercises, consisting of prayers, pious meditations, and rigorous and systematic searchings of the heart. Feeling profited by this experience, he wrote to the Lord Paul P.P. III, begging Him to pronounce Apostolic Approval of the book. In course of post, (which the Sixteenth Century carried on by means of private couriers,) that is to say in the course of a few months, he received from the Holiness of the Pope a Brief of Recommendation. The Bull of Approval was issued on the thirty-first of July 1548.

This Brief caused him to resolve to join the Company of Jesus; and he wrote his resolution to the General without delay. When the death of his Duchess made him free to renounce the world, he seriously had thought of becoming a Friar Minor. His name Francisco gave him San Francisco d’Assisi, the founder of the Religion of Friars Minor, as his patron-saint: the abject poverty, the singular contempt of the world, the awful austerities of the Franciscans admirably agreed with his habit of mind. He consulted his resident chaplain who himself was a Friar Minor. To this friar, there came a vision of Madonna Mary saying, “Tell the Duke to enter the Company of my Son.” To Duke Don Francisco, also, a statue of Madonna Mary spoke the same words. Hence his final resolution.

Padre Ribadaneira of the Company of Jesus, who, afterwards was his confessor, and who wrote the life of the Duke of Gandia and swore before five tribunals of the truth of every word that he had written, says (xv. 238) that, for the next seven days, Duke Don Francisco was afflicted with an apparition of a sumptuous mitre always floating above his head. He had much fear. He knew that, when a person of his quality relinquished a brilliant secular career, an equally brilliant ecclesiastical one lay open to him. This was the very last thing that he desired. He swore to God that, unless the apparition left him, and he should be allowed to practise poverty during his whole life yet to come, he would refuse to don the clerical habit: for he felt the prospect of dignity to be a danger. Then the apparition left him: How exceedingly natural is this example of unconscious cerebration. It would have been strange indeed if the Duke’s crushed and bruised humanity had not asserted itself in phantasmal apparitions.

The singular reply of the General of the Company of Jesus shall be given in full. Its curious worldly care for the worldly welfare of worldly people, its wonderful depth of spirituality for him who is spiritually minded, its complete grip of the subject, its polite piety, its discreet judgment, its personal humility, its impersonal dignity, its authoritative decision, its quaint gravity of form, stamp it as the work of a great and powerful mind. Padre Iñigo de Loyola wrote as follows:

“MOST NOBLE LORD:—

“It gave me great delight to hear of the resolution with which God in His Infinite Goodness has inspired you. Since we, who are on earth, are unable to render Him sufficient thanks for the favour which He has been pleased to show to our humble Company, in calling you to join it, I humbly beseech the angels and the saints who are now enjoying His Presence in heaven to supply our deficiency in this respect. I trust that Divine Providence will cause this decision of yours to be the means of effecting much good, not only in regard to your own soul, but to the souls of many others who may be led to follow your example. As for us who are already members of the Company, we shall strive to serve with increased devotion the Gracious Father, who has given us so skilled a labourer to aid in the work of cultivating the tender vine, which He has been pleased to entrust to my care, although I am in every respect unworthy of the office. In the name of the Lord, I therefore receive you at once as our brother, and shall henceforth regard you as such. Most truly can I promise to feel for you, now, and always, an affection proportioned to the large-hearted generosity with which you desire to enter the House of God, there to serve Him more perfectly.

“With reference to your enquiries as to the time and manner of your entrance into the Company, I have laid the matter before God in prayer. It is my opinion that this change must be made with much caution and deliberation, in order that you may not leave any of your immediate duties unfulfilled; otherwise it may not prove to be A.M.D.G. (Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam—_To The Greater Glory Of God_; the motto of the Company of Jhesus.) You had better keep the affair a secret at present; at least as far as it is possible to do, striving meanwhile so to arrange things as to be free as soon as you can, and at liberty to carry out the plan you so ardently desire to execute for the love of our Lord.

“In order to make myself more plainly understood, I may as well say that, as your daughters are of a marriageable age, I think you ought to endeavour to see them suitably settled. It would be well if you were also to choose a suitable wife for your eldest son, the Marquess of Lombay. In regard to your other sons, it would be better not to leave them dependent upon their elder brother: but to assign to each a suitable and sufficient income of his own; allowing them meanwhile to pursue their university career. It is reasonably to be hoped that, if they fulfil, as I trust and believe they will, the promise of their youth, the Emperor will extend to them the favour he has always shown to you; and will bestow upon them, when the right time comes, appointments in keeping with their rank. You must also try and push on the various buildings you have begun; for I think it desirable that they should all be completed, before the great change you are contemplating is generally made known.

“Meanwhile, you cannot do better, since you are already a proficient in most branches of human learning, than apply yourself to the study of Theology. It is my wish that you should do this with much care and pains; for I should like you to take a doctor’s degree in the University of Gandia.

“I cannot conclude without inculcating upon you to take every possible precaution in order to prevent this astonishing piece of news from being prematurely divulged. I feel that I need add no more on this head.

“I shall hope to hear frequently from you; and I will try to give you all the advice and assistance you may need. In the meantime, I shall beseech our Lord to grant you all graces and blessings, in ever-increasing abundance.”

That truly is an extraordinary letter. The two men had never met. Only a few letters at long intervals had passed between them; yet there is not the slightest doubt or misunderstanding. The humble priest, readily but not avidly, calmly but not arrogantly accepts the role of mentor to the brilliant duke. He is very glad to get a duke—who will have done with dukedom: but he will allow no looking back when once the hand is put to the plough. The severance must be absolute and irrevocable; and, to this end, Padre Iñigo de Loyola gives an exhibition of plain and practical common sense expressed in terms of courteous and definite command, _It is my wish_—_I think you ought_——.

So during the next four years the Duke of Gandia laboured to carry out the orders of his ecclesiastical superior, removing the only hindrances that bound him to the world. His late wife’s sister Doña Juana de Meneses acted as mother to his children. In 1548, he married his heir the Marquess Don Carlos of Lombay, at the age of eighteen years, to Doña Magdalene de Centellas y Cardona, Countess of Oliva. In 1549, he married his daughter Doña Isabella to Don Francisco de Sandoval y Rojas, Marquess of Denia and Count of Lerina. He finished the buildings of the Dominican monastery at Gandia, and of the Jesuit College which is richly endowed with houses for poor scholars, and for children of the Maranas or Jews on condition of baptism. He also obtained charters from the Lord Paul P.P. III and from Caesar Carlos V. raising this college to the rank of an university.

At last, in 1550, he left his duchy of Gandia and journeyed toward Rome, escorted by a retinue of thirty servants, and his second son Don Juan de Borgia of the age of seventeen years. He had to pay the penalty of his extraordinary notoriety. On his passage through Ferrara, the reigning Duke (who himself came of Borgia stock) met him with fêtes and processions. At Florence, Duke Cosmo de’ Medici accorded a state-reception. He was going to renounce the world; and the world made a triumphal progress of his going. His desire to slink into the lowest place won him attention verging on adoration. His chagrin was undisguised. He envoyed an avant-courier to ask his superior’s leave to enter Rome by night avoiding publicity. Padre Iñigo de Loyola peremptorily refused: for the Duke of Gandia was too good an object-lesson to be thrown away. His entrance into the Eternal City, whose citizens even in 1550 revered the memory of Borgia, was like that of a king who comes into his kingdom. The Lord Paul P.P. III sent ambassadors to welcome him, and to offer lodging in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican: but the Duke of Gandia hurried to the Jesuit College; doing obeisance at the feet of the General and Founder of the Company of Jesus. So these two unique personalities first met, whom now men call Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Francis of Borgia.

Padre Iñigo de Loyola immensely admired the Duke of Gandia. This last, whose gracious and brilliant figure caused him to be compared to Apollo and gained for him the nickname The Modern Narcissus, already was known to fame as a ruler and orator born. He was the master of enormous wealth and influence; and his only ambition in life was to strip himself of these and abnegate his will at the command of another. During his sojourn in Rome, he lavished his revenues on the foundation of the Roman College. The honourable title of Founder was offered to him by his own General: but he begged to be excused; and the title afterwards was accepted by the Lord Gregory P.P. XIII, Who named the college The Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome. Meanwhile, he sent a courier to Augsburg, where Caesar Carlos V was, with a letter in which he asked his sovereign’s leave to resign all his titles and estates. While he was waiting for the reply, his General obliged him to fulfil all the duties of his ducal rank; whereby he was brought into intimate relations with the Holiness of the Pope and the Curial Cardinals. Even in this august assemblage he won regard. The Pope and the cardinals became so fond of him, that they disliked the notion of allowing so brilliant a man to bury himself in the severe Religion of Padre Iñigo de Loyola. It was a waste of talent, they said; and the Supreme Pontiff proposed instantly to name him cardinal, like his dead brothers Don Rodrigo and Don Enrico.

It did appear to be a waste of talent. But that was a personal account which the Duke of Gandia would have to settle with his Judge. In these specimens of abnormal humanity, interference invariably is fatal, owing to natural forces. It always is the safest and wisest plan, not to hinder, but to help a sane well-meaning man, who is aware of his responsibilities, to do the thing which he wants to do. For human nature is capable of amazing outbreak, violence, and divarication, where it is not free.

After four months in Rome, suddenly, and with no leave-taking, the Duke of Gandia fled to Spain. The prospect of a scarlet hat had become too real, too terrifying. Of course there is not the slightest danger that a man may be made cardinal against his expressed desire. The cardinalate is not an infectious disease like the plague, or scarlet fever; nor is it a sacrament, like baptism, which leaves an ineradicable mark upon the soul. It conceivably is possible that only brutal rudeness and incivility will suffice for its avoidance:—but they will suffice. And it can always be renounced, rare though renunciations be. The Duke of Gandia was a very gracious lord, in full possession of all his faculties, utterly uninfluenced; and, no doubt, he wished to avoid an occasion when his conscience would direct him to be ungracious or uncivil to the benevolence of the Holiness of the Pope. In his flight, he first went to the castle of Loyola, where his General had been born, to thank Heaven for the nativity of that marvellous man: then, onward again, a few miles to the little town of Oñata in Guipuscoa, where there was a house of the Company of Jesus. The Lord Paul P.P. III died in Rome this year 1550: and was succeeded by the Lord Julius P.P. III.

The Duke of Gandia received a Brief from Caesar Carlos V, dated the twelfth of February 1551, giving permission, to divest himself of rank and to renounce the world, with very much regret at losing the allegiance of his most brilliant subject, and solely because Caesar felt that to refuse would be opposition to the Divine Will. He made the formal act of renunciation before a notary at Oñate; bestowing his duchy, his principalities, and his counties on his heir, the Marquess Don Carlos of Lombay; distributing his estates and wealth among his children. He laid aside his sword, which, according to the fashion of the courtiers of Caesar Carlos V, he rode cock-horse, (so to speak,) as it hung between his legs. He had his hair cut short, and the tonsure shaved on his head. He changed his ducal robes for the shabby ill-fitting black habit of a Jesuit. On Whit Saturday he was ordained priest; and the Duke of Gandia disappeared in Padre Francisco de Borja. In his after life, he never would allow of any allusion to his former style, except when he chanced to hear of the refusal by the Company of Jesus to admit a would-be but unsuitable novice, when he would say, “Now I thank God from the bottom of my heart for having made me a duke; for assuredly there was nothing else about me which could have induced the superiors to accept me”: an opinion which shews that Padre Francisco’s extremely poor opinion of himself betrayed him into exaggeration—a little human touch which brings him nearer to human understanding.

He said his first mass privately in the chapel of the castle of Loyola, on the first of August 1551, the Festival of St. Peter’s Chains; and gave Holy Communion to his second son, Don Juan de Borja, who, having found it hard to leave his father, was losing his young heart to Doña Lorenza Oñaz de Loyola, heiress of the Señor Don Beltrano de Loyola.

Padre Francisco’s second mass was a public function. All the people round about persisted in nicknaming him “Lo Santo Duque,” _The Holy Duke_. The Lord Julius P.P. III granted a plenary indulgence to all who should assist at this mass, on the usual conditions of confession and communion. To satisfy the multitude the mass was to be said in the city of Vergara: but no church would hold the crowd, and the altar was erected in a field by the hermitage of Santa Ana. It began at nine o’clock in the morning of the fifteenth of November 1551, and continued till three in the afternoon, so overwhelming was the number of communicants. (The ordinary mass lasts half an hour.) The sermon was preached by Padre Francisco in the courtly Castilian dialect: but it is recorded that people of all provinces understood him, even those whose native tongue was Basque. A certain Don Juan de Moschera publicly cursed him; to whom Padre Francisco instantly went, begging pardon for being worth a cursing.

He set up as a hermit in a wooden cell near the Jesuit House at Oñate; and gained fame as a preacher, especially (strange to say) among the learned clergy. Men who take pleasure in approving of others, newcomers, of the same trade, are very rare: but for the clergy to approve of a preacher is rarer. He wrote a manual of Advice to Preachers, which had an unusual vogue. He was very fond of the breviary hymn _Vexilla Regis prodeunt_, (The Royal Banners forward go;) and repeated with delight of soul the stanza,

“_Arbor decora et fulgida, Ornata regis purpura: Electo digno stipite, Tam Sancta Membra tangere._

“O Tree of glory, Tree most fair, ordained those Holy Limbs to bear; How bright in purple robe It stood, the purple of a Saviour’s Blood.” (“Hymns Ancient and Modern.”)

He worked miracles. A lady had two splinters of wood; the one was unnotable, the other was a Relique of the True Cross: but which was the Relique was not known. Padre Francisco, to decide, broke them both; from one, Blood dropped upon a piece of paper. An Infanta of Spain put him to a similar test: but in this case the relique was said to be a piece of the skin of St. Bartholomew Apostle (he was flayed alive), with another. Padre Francisco tore both skins; and again blood dropped from one on linen. The blood-stained paper and the blood-stained linen, with both reliques, are in the monastery of Poor Clares at Madrid. Multitudes came to see the quondam duke as hermit; they said that they saw a radiant nimbus lighting the pallor of his brow; and to prevent Padre Francisco from becoming puffed up, (an excessively unnecessary precaution, one would think,) his superior at Oñate, Padre Ochiva, set him to hard menial labour, to dig, saw, carry stones, chop wood, light fires, help in the kitchen, and wheel barrows of manure. The General, to whom every detail was reported, sent Padre Francisco to preach in Portugal, where the Company of Jesus was little known; and his mission met with great results. With himself he was most severe. All physical beauty was gone from his once gracious body, macerated in ceaseless austerities. He took the habit of signing his letters _Francisco Pecador_, “Francis the Sinner”: but his sapient General promptly stopped that practice, saying that Singularity was not the seed of Sanctity. All letters which came to him addressed to The Duke of Gandia, he returned, inscribed _Not for me_, _Francisco S.J._

The Lord Julius P.P. III issued a Brief, offering him a scarlet hat. He sent a firm refusal in reply. It has been said that he feared to accept the cardinalate, lest he should be elected Pope at the next Conclave. The statement is absurd; because

(α) in theory, the election of the Successor of St. Peter is the work of the Holy Spirit; and _ubi Spiritus ibi libertas_, where the Spirit is there is liberty: not cardinals alone, but humble priests as well, or newly tonsured clerks, or any Christian male, is eligible:—there is no such absurd thing as a restriction on the Right of the Divinity to choose his Vicar; and Padre Francisco, therefore, was as liable in black, as he would have been in scarlet:

(β) if he had been elected Pope, it was open to him to refuse or to accept the Call.

Some Roman Catholics hold that he _could_ not have refused. But Popes can abdicate, and have abdicated! But _would_ he have refused? Would he have been allowed by the General of the Company of Jesus to refuse? There is no knowing. Such a case has never occurred.

There never has been a Jesuit Pope. It would have been an unique, an unheard of situation,—the Company of Jesus in full power, armed with plenary authority, absolute in all the world, practising unscrupulous, uncompromising Christianity. The conditions of the Millennium would stand in a fair way of being fulfilled—to speak by the Book.—But Padre Francisco de Borja refused the scarlet hat; for he wished for himself complete detachment from the world, and nothing more, here.

Returning from his mission in Portugal to Spain, he evangelized the provinces of Castile and Andalusia. At Alicaza, he healed a cripple girl. At Valladolid, he raised the dead to life. Two teeth being knocked out of the head of a great preacher, his companion, they were replanted by Padre Francisco: and never old age nor decay affected them. The General named him Provincial for Spain and the Indies; and Father and Founder of the Company of Jesus in Spain and Portugal. His preaching converted the rich and worldly Bishop of Plasencia who returned to his religious duties. Padre Francisco introduced the Company of Jesus at Valladolid, Medina, San Lucar, Burgos, Granada, Plasencia, Murcia, Sevilla, Valencia. Did he, in passing through Valencia, find any of the old stock of Don Juan Domingo de Borja who, exactly a century earlier, had given the Lord Calixtus P.P. III to Rome and Christendom?

He was the first to establish the Jesuit Noviciates; and the Noviciate at Simancas was his favourite. Here are his methods of dealing with novices. A certain novice of noble birth and breeding, but pious all the same, found it intolerable that he should have to wait upon himself with no menial to truss his points, or brush his clothes, or sweep his floor to serve him. Padre Francisco heard his complaint; and, having there another novice, who in the world had been a valet, he ordered him on his obedience to serve his noble brother. The thing was done; and in a little while, the noble novice sensibly took shame at his own singularity, as might have been expected; and dispensed with further service. Another noble novice found his narrow cell and his hebdomadal shirt altogether insupportable. Padre Francisco promptly furnished him with a large room, and a clean shirt every day; and, presently, he grew to hate his privileges, renounced them, and assimilated himself with the rest. Padre Francisco at least believed what already has been said here, viz., that the wise man does not hinder, but helps the sane well-meaning man who is aware of his responsibilities, to do the thing that he desires to do: for, if that thing be undesirable, the doer quickly will find it out, and so convince himself; while the thing undone, the wish unsatisfied, causes the unconvinced to hanker after, to struggle for, and to revolt. Once when Padre Francisco was visiting the College of Sant’ Andrea of Valladolid, the resources were at an end; and there was neither food nor money in the house. Natheless, he ordered the bell to be rung as usual for supper though the board was bare; and, in the nick of time, there came to the outer door an old grey-headed man with a huge lovely boy, strangers in the city, who brought baskets of meat and bread and fish and eggs and wine, and a purse of money: whom the pious have called St. Andrew and an Angel.

The year 1555 saw three Popes; the Lord Julius P.P. III, Who died and was succeeded by the Lord Marcellus P.P. II, Who died and was succeeded by the Lord Paul P.P. IV.

In 1556, Padre Iñigo de Loyola died; and Padre Francisco instantly began to invoke his departed chief,—_Holy Ignatius of Loyola, pray to the Lord our God for me_;—while Padre Jago Laynez was elected General of the Company of Jesus.

In 1558, also died the Holy Roman Emperor Carlos V, who long had given himself to religion. On his death-bed, Imperial Caesar cried for “santo Padre Francisco de Borja” to assist him in his agony. But the Jesuit was unable to arrive except in time to preach the funeral oration. Caesar had shown to the priest the unparalleled respect and honour of naming him executor of his will; an office which the unworldliness of Padre Francisco impelled him to decline. The royal and imperial family, conscious of the κύδος which they would gain by his acceptance, appealed against his decision. The Princess-Regent also invoked the General, who issued a command upon obedience; which Padre Francisco perforce obeyed, carried out the provisions of the will of Caesar Carlos V, taking as little as possible of his own share, to avoid offence. Of course, all he had would go to the funds of his order, his vow of poverty debarring him from personal possessions.

In 1559, he was in Portugal once more, sick of an intermittent fever at Evora. The people of this country, natural enemies of Spain and Spaniards, so loved Padre Francisco that they said he must be a Portuguese. During his sickness, he wiled the weary waiting and cheered his soul by setting music to the anthem _Regina caeli laetare_ (“Rejoice, O Queen of Heaven”), and the hundred and seventy-six verses of Psalm cxviii, Vulgate Version, _Beati Immaculati_, (Psalm cxix, Authorized Version, “Blessed are the undefiled in the way.”) This year, his sister Dona Juana de Borja y Aragona (Suor Juana de la Cruz,) died In The Odour of Sanctity. She was the first Abbess of the Royal Monastery of Sandalled (Discalced) Carmelites in Madrid. This year 1559, died the Lord Paul P.P. IV and the Lord Pius P.P. IV succeeded Him. In 1560, Padre Francisco calmed the terrified population of Oporto during a total eclipse of the sun, spontaneously preaching an impassioned sermon on the eclipse, of mortal sin, which veils man’s soul from the Sun of Righteousness. Then, again, sickness laid him low; neuralgia, paralysis, ulcers. The vile body was resisting the strain which he made it bear.

Restored to health in 1561, he was summoned to Rome and named Vicar-General of the Company of Jesus. Let it never be forgotten that, while the Borgia Pontiffs paved the way for, Padre Francisco de Borja governed the Jesuits throughout the world while the General Padre Jago de Laynez was present at, the Œcumenical of Trent. The connection between the House of Borgia and the Tridentine Decrees is of enormous significance. Here, at last, was the General Council for the Reformation of the Holy Roman Church, summoned and legally constituted by lawful authority. For years, self-seeking malcontents, ecclesiastical and royal, had howled for it. Now, it was come: but the German schism was an accomplished fact. The cry had gone through Christendom that Rome was effete, corrupt, on the verge of decay and dissolution. And lo, She arose in Her strength, and cut away the parasitic ulcers that long had blurred with open wounds Her contours; refurbished spiritual arms long rusted; set Her house in order; and was ready again, like a giant refreshed, for Her interminable affray. The Barque of Peter went into dock. The Garden of Souls was weeded. The Council of Trent reformed the Holy Roman Church: and a Borgia, as General’s deputy, was ruling the Company of Jesus in all the world.

During four years, Padre Francisco was Vicar-General in Rome. He preached often in the Spanish church of San Giuseppe on Via del Monserrato. The Religion of Padre Iñigo de Loyola endured one of its numerous phases of attack. In this world, things being as they are, to such an institution a liability to disesteem is inevitable. Persecutors and calumniators arose; and Padre Francisco showed a talent for successful defence. Having completely crushed himself, he could bring to his cause an amount of irresistible force of which the ordinary man, distracted by the whimsy interests of this and that, is altogether unaware.

[Illustration: _Saint Francis Borgia._]

His behaviour, in one of those cases with which the Holy Roman Church occasionally shocks the world, is quite remarkable. His son Don Alvaro de Borja, who was about the age of twenty-seven years, and Ambassador of Spain in Rome, desired to marry Doña Laniparte de Almansa y Borja, daughter of his own sister Doña Juana, and of the age of about fourteen years. Padre Francisco refused to countenance a marriage between his grand-daughter and his son, between uncle and niece: refused to ask the Pope’s Holiness for the necessary dispensation. Whereupon, Don Alvaro approached the Lord Pius P.P. IV directly, in his capacity of ambassador, and obtained the dispensation; while the Pope scolded Padre Francisco for his conduct in the matter.

In 1565 Padre Jago Laynez died. Deliberately shutting their ears to his appeals, the Jesuits elected Padre Francisco de Borja Prepositor-General of the Company of Jesus on the second of July. With the single exception of the Roman Pontiff, he now was the most powerful ruler in Christendom, general of an army unrivalled in discipline, utterly reliable, because voluntarily enlisted and morally ruled. Yet he gave no sign of pride or pleasure. He was a perfect Jesuit, humanely sensitive, completely self-distrustful. He said “It is evident that our Lord has condescended to assume the government of this Company since He sees fit to use so deplorably unworthy an instrument.” What words could express more sincerely abject and unworldly humility than those?

_Aut pati aut mori_ was his motto. As General, he relaxed not one of the stern rigorous austerities with which he kept under his body and brought it into subjection. Every passion and appetite of his human nature he deliberately killed. He slept little. He ate little. He had freed himself from every earthly love.

What he might have been!

What he was!

A brilliant and gracious duke, master of territories and boundless wealth, father of a noble family allied with the bluest blood of Spain, honoured by his sovereign, reverenced by his equals, loved by his kin, adored by his dependants.

A sinister shadow of a man, wracked with continual pain, deliberately apart from all his kind, feared, disliked, distrusted, alone, suffering,—alone.

Every day he systematically meditated during five hours on superhuman things. Every morning and every night, he subjected his conscience to rigorous examination, and confessed even every impulse to evil thought. He prayed without ceasing. Once, when travelling in Spain with Padre Bustamente, the two slept side by side on the bare floor of a loft, because there was no room for them in the inn. Padre Bustamente, being asthmatic, spat all night long, unknowingly on the face of his companion, who never moved. In the morning light, he was horrified to see what he had done: but Padre Francisco consoled him, saying that in all the world no more suitable place could have been found. He had been very urgent with his sister Doña Juana, Abbess of the Poor Clares at Gandia, that she should persevere in penance and mortification till her life’s end. Has there ever been a case of a consistent Roman Catholic who has committed suicide from religious melancholomania? Rarely; if ever: for the Church, wisely recognising that peculiar temperament, has provided a system where voluntary mortification has its places, its rules, and may be practised by whoever will.

Padre Francisco had the gifts of intuition and of clear-seeing, which generally are found developed respectively in women and brute beasts. He knew when a house was about to fall some time before it fell. He knew, on seeing a courier from his eldest son, that an heir was born to the Duke Don Carlos of Gandia. The courier did not relish this intuition, thinking that he deserved reward for his good news: of which disgust, also, Padre Francisco was aware; and gave reward. _The greater the detachment from the world, over worldly things the greater power is gained._ People who saw Padre Francisco during his generalship, saw rays of mysterious light playing round his head. The phenomenon of the electric aura now is well-known; and the camera will show it on occasion. Often, in his trances of prayer, he was seen floating above the ground.

In 1566 the Lord Pius P.P. IV died; and, succeeding Him, the Lord Pius P.P. V. stopped his coronation procession at the Jesuit House in Rome, that He might pay His respects to the holy General. In 1569 Padre Francisco again was stricken with fever. Recovering, he made a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Nazareth, which angels carried over the sea from Palestine and set down at Loreto by Ancona. In 1571 the Pope’s Holiness sent an embassage to France and Spain and Portugal, to rouse the sovereigns of Christendom against the Muslim Infidel. The ambassadors were the Papal Nephew, the Lord Michele Bonello, son of Madonna Gardina the Pope’s sister, born at Boschi near Alessandria, who at his august Uncle’s first creation in 1566 had been named Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Maria _sopra Minerva_ with the cognomen Alessandrino; and Padre Francisco de Borgia, Prepositor-General of the Company of Jesus. The two left Rome in 1571. In Barcelona, they settled a long-standing dispute between the government and the cathedral chapter; for Padre Francisco was ever a peacemaker. In the province of Cataluna, which was not unmindful of him who had been its viceroy, the ambassadors were received with the highest honour.

The record of this journey, through the scenes of his youthful glory, is one of the most pathetic things in human history. This sinister emaciated phantom shabbily robed in thread-bare black, whose thin lips bit perpetual pain; this great and narrow spirit with eyes tardy and grave, furtively, drowsily, reluctantly, regarding earthly things, having seen the heavenly; this mendicant, whose companion was a prince of the church sumptuous in ermine and vermilion,—he was no stranger in Cataluna, where aforetime as marquess, duke, and imperial viceroy he had exercised despotic and sovereign rule. Now he thought no place low enough, foul enough, for his deserts. He was in, but not of, the world.

At Valencia, his children and his grandchildren knelt to kiss his way-worn feet. They prayed him to visit his duchy of Gandia. He refused. He was no longer of the world.

He preached for the last time in the cathedral of Valencia—Valencia the shrine of the House of Borja. Here, a century and a half earlier, Canon Alonso de Borja had been raised to the bishopric. The Bishop of Valencia became cardinal. The Cardinal of Valencia became the strenuous Lord Calixtus P.P. III. From Xativa by Valencia sprang Don Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, Bishop of Valencia, Cardinal of Valencia, the magnificent invincible Lord Alexander P.P. VI. The splendid Don Cesare (detto Borgia) also was Bishop of Valencia and Cardinal, before he renounced the purple for the French duchy of Valentinois. Three huge personalities had borne the name that now was represented by this obscure wan figure whose voice, whose magic pleading fading voice, thrilled in the aisles of Valencia’s fane. Here, in Valencia, the fire was kindled; hence, from Valencia, blazed the all-devouring flame; here, in Valencia, the cresset glowed with steady brilliant light, so shining before men that they might see good works, and glorify the Father which is in heaven. Padre Francisco de Borja preached for the last time in the cathedral of Valencia.

In France, the ambassadors met with no success. That miserable country was in the throes of the Huguenot Rebellion; and the Queen Dowager, Madame Caterina de’ Medici, ruled the maniac King. After travelling through France in the winter, gaining converts and confirming the churches, but failing in the object of their journey, the ambassadors reached Turin; and became guests of the Duke of Savoy. Padre Francisco, utterly worn out with exertion and anxiety, his vital forces being on the verge of exhaustion, fell ill on the second of February, Candlemas Day 1572. The exigencies of courtly etiquette bored him to distraction; and he hurried on. Low Sunday found him in Ferrara. Here, having concluded his ambassadorial duties, the last remains of his strength departed. His nephew, the Duke of Ferrara, gave him a royal escort, and a royal litter, as he was too weak to ride, and sent him onward to Rome. During this last journey, it was noticed that, though he lay still, more like a corpse than a man, his characteristic gesture of command remained with him to the very end.

He attained the Flaminian Gate of Rome on the twenty-eighth of September. All the Company of Jesus were there to receive their dying General. He was carried to the Jesuit House, and the last Sacraments of Unction and Viaticum fortified his soul.

On the Festival of St. Michael Archangel, he lay a-dying. The next day, his speech departed. His last words, the last words of the sometime gracious and brilliant duke, the last words of the Jesuit General, were the words of a simple little Christian child, “I long for Jesus!”

He had done with the Latin of the Church. He had gone back to his mother-tongue, “A Jesus quiero.”

On the first of October 1572, he died of a decline, being of the age of two and sixty years.

* * * * *

Instantly, the pious opinion was entertained that Padre Francisco de Borja had died In The Odour of Sanctity.

It was found impossible to undress the corpse. Among others, his brother Don Tommaso de Borja, the Viceroy of Aragon, made an attempt to perform the last duties, but all without success. This same Don Tommaso, who afterwards became Archbishop of Saragossa, wrote a detailed history of this phenomenon which he calls miraculous. Various explanations are given of the sudden and complete _rigor mortis_, which, however, are mystical, not practical ones. It is said that modesty prevented the disrobing, or that it was intended to hide the scars of long-practised austerities, or that the greatest reverence was due to the body which had been the temple of the Holy Spirit.

His family, and all who in his life had known him, looked upon Padre Francisco de Borja as a saint: as such, they privately venerated his fragrant memory, and invoked the aid of his intercession. No public honours were accorded, for his right to these had not yet been made clear: but it was alleged that these private invocations produced marvellous results. Two shall be named. The physicians attending the Duchess of Uzeda in child-bed found themselves unable to effect delivery owing to congenital malformation. After the invocation of the dead Jesuit, instant safe and painless delivery took place with perfect health to mother and child. Queen Doña Margarita, wife of King Don Felipe III of Spain, endured puerperal fever. The invocation of Padre Francisco brought a cure. Then, and with these credentials, the Company of Jesus formally petitioned the Papal Nuncio in Spain, Monsignor Decio Carafa afterwards Cardinal, to order an enquiry into the virtues and miracles of the Servant of God, their departed General. Five tribunals were found at Valencia, Madrid, Barcelona, Saragossa, and Recanati; multitudes of witnesses were examined and cross-examined. Padre Ribadaneira, confessor of the deceased, confirmed on oath his book on the life of Padre Francisco de Borja. From this book, many of the foregoing facts are taken. In 1615, after thirty-seven years’ labour, the proceedings of the five tribunals in writing were sent to Rome, where Spain’s ambassador presented them to the Lord Paul P.P. V with recommending letters from King Don Felipe III, the Grandees and Hidalgos of Spain, archbishops and bishops, cathedral chapters, municipalities, and universities.

The Supreme Pontiff was pleased to refer the matter to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, the Roman tribunal competent to deal with such a case. Before this court, all evidence was verified; and a decree was issued attesting the orthodoxy of the teaching of the Venerable Servant of God, his sanctity of life, and the authenticity of the alleged miracles, satisfactorily to have been proved; and granted permission to proceed to Beatification. The Lord Paul P.P. V confirmed this decree; and named three Apostolic Commissioners to carry on the cause in Spain. The proceedings of a Royal Commission are so well understood, that it merely is necessary to say that the business of an Apostolic Commission is to search for information, to hear and weigh evidence, and to compile a report on a given subject.

Meanwhile, the claims of Spain to possess the remains of her renowned son were recognized; and on the twenty-third of February 1617, the body of the Venerable Francisco de Borja, (except an arm retained at the Gesù in Rome,) was translated to the chapel of the Jesuit House in Madrid.

In 1623, the eight years labours of the Apostolic Commission were concluded; and brought to the usual scrutiny in Rome. Later, the verdict was given to the effect that the sanctity and miracles of the Venerable Francisco de Borja fully had been established; and that, therefore, he was worthy of Beatification: which decision duly was confirmed by the Lord Gregory P.P. XV.

Thirty-one years later, on the thirty-first of August 1654, a decree in accord with this decision was issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and ratified by the Lord Urban P.P. VIII[111], Who, on the twenty-fourth of November, published the Bull of Beatification with the Office and Mass in honour of the Blessed Francisco de Borja for the Universal Church.

Another seventeen years of public prayers and legal action passed; and on the eleventh of April 1671, the Lord Clement P.P. XI solemnly canonized Saint Francisco de Borja, adding to the Roman Martyrology, which is the official roll of sanctitude, the three lines, in which the Holy Roman Catholic Church delivers Her authoritative judgment, and of which the following is a literal translation: “_Sixth day of the Ides of October. This day, at Rome, is kept the festival of Saint Francisco of Borja, Repositor-General of the Company of Jesus, memorable, having abdicated secular things and refused dignities of the Church, by asperity of life, by the gift of prayer._

In 1680, the reliques of the saint were translated to the gorgeous church in Madrid which the Duke of Lerma built A.M.D.G. To the Greater Glory of God, and of his ancestor St. Francisco de Borja. So, a century after his death, a Borgia was numbered with the Saints.

Rational human judgment may be glad to stand aside before the sober judgment of the Church, so far removed from bias, from ecstatic extravagance, so calmly judicially personal. She has divined all, and is reticent. She has settled his key, She has struck his note, and is sufficient. She has shewn him in an _Ideal Content_. He “left all”; and for that She honours him: and She has Scriptural Warrant.

“An accomplished courtier, a clever diplomatist, a brilliant and gracious viceroy, a perfect religious.

“A masterful imperious character—in breaking his own will he broke himself.

“A magnified non-natural man.

“Saint Francisco de Borja—Memorable—By asperity of life—By the gift of prayer.

“Memorable.

Ashes

“_A fire, that is kindled, begins with smoke and hissing, while it lays hold on the faggots; bursts into a roaring blaze, with raging tongues of flame, devouring all in reach, spangled with sparks that die; settles into the steady genial glare, the brilliant light, that men call fire: burns away to slowly-expiring ashes_;—

From the birthday to the Life eternal of St. Francisco de Borja, the Spanish Branch of the House in his direct descendants increased and multiplied; intermarried with the grandest names in Spain; and decreased in importance, until its extinction in the penultimate decade of the last century. Four only, of these, need be mentioned here.

Don Gaspard de Borja was a great-grandson of the Saint, and son of Duke Don Francisco de Gandia by his wife Doña Juana de Velasco Tovar. He studied at the Complutensian University, becoming a Laureate in Theology and Dean of the University. He was the first Grandee of Spain to occupy the Chair of Professor and Public Lecturer. At the instance of the Catholic King, he obtained a Canonry at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Toledo; and here he began to nourish the enormous ambition of becoming the third Pope of the House of Borgia.[112]

On the seventeenth of August 1611, he was named Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Croce _in Gerusalemme_, being then a youth; “invenis,” says Ciacconi; twenty-two years of age, says the exact and uniquely well-informed Moroni. On the fifteenth of May 1630, he was raised to the Cardinal-Bishopric of Albano, and named Archbishop of Seville. In Rome, he was on the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and ambassador of the Catholic King to the Holy See. In the Kingdom of Naples, he was Viceroy. He bought, (Mr. Henry Harland wittily says that one may buy such things,) the additional title of “Father of the Poor,” by distributing annually in charity ten thousand crowns; and he exchanged his archbishopric of Seville for that of Toledo. In 1641, he held a diocesan synod over which his Vicar-General presided as his proxy, and governed his archdiocese, while he was cultivating his ambition in Rome. He was an unwilling assistant at the two Conclaves, which elected the Lord Gregory P.P. XV and the Lord Urban P.P. VIII. And in November 1645, while England was in the throes of the Great Rebellion, he died at Madrid, after fifty-six years of life, and thirty-four of cardinalate, a disappointed man, and was buried in the metropolitan cathedral of Toledo.

* * * * *

Don Francisco de Borja, great-great-grandson of the Saint, son of Duke Don Carlos de Gandia by his wife Doña Maria Ponce de Leon, was born on the twenty-seventh of March 1659. He was a man of singular and extraordinary piety and learning, Archdeacon of Calatrava and Canon of Toledo. By his proved fidelity he gained the favour of the Catholic King Don Carlos II, who made him Councillor of Aragon. From Rome, he received the bishopric of Calagurita; and (on the fourteenth of November 1699, according to Moroni, or on the twenty-first of June 1700, according to Guarnacci,) the scarlet hat of the cardinalate and the archbishopric of Burgos. He died on the fourth of April 1702, undistinguishable from other ecclesiastics of his rank.

* * * * *

Don Carlos de Borja was brother to the foregoing. Born at Gandia his family’s fief on the thirtieth of April 1653 (Moroni), or 1663 (Guarnacci,) he studied theology at the college of Sant’ Ildefonso, and succeeded his brother as Archdeacon of Calatrava and Canon of Toledo. On the death of Archbishop Don Pedro de Portocarrero, the Lord Clement P.P. XI named him Archbishop of Tyre and Trebizond _in partibus infidelium_; a see held at the present moment by an Englishman who is the ornament of the “Black” drawing-rooms of Rome. From Tyre and Trebizond, Archbishop Don Carlos de Borja rose to the Patriarchate of the Indies, continuing to reside in Spain where he shewed piety and zeal as chaplain and almoner to the Catholic King Don Felipe V. On the thirtieth of September 1720, he was raised to the Sacred College; and in his capacity of cardinal, hurried to Rome for the Conclave of 1721. There, he found already elected and crowned, the Lord Innocent P.P. XIII, who named him Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Pudenziana, and placed him on the Sacred Congregations of The Index of Prohibited Books, of Indulgences, of Signaturae Gratiae. He died at the Royal Villa of Sant’ Ildefonso near Madrid on the eighth of August 1733, and honourably was buried there. He has left nothing of his personality, save a physically effete but beautiful gentle generous shadowy visage, in his portrait painted by Procaccini, and engraved by Rossi in Guarnacci II. 357–8.

* * * * *

So the Senior Branch, in the line of the direct descendants of the murdered Duke of Gandia, bastard of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, withered in sumptuous obscurity; heaping up secular titles and estates by marriage, heaping up ecclesiastical dignity and preferment by the enchantment of the Borja name added to personal merit, until its final extinction only eighteen years ago. The names and titles of the last of the Spanish Borja, here recorded, will shew what that House had accumulated in a bare four hundred years—three principalities, seven duchies, ten marquessates, sixteen counties, and one viscounty, besides knightly orders and decorations.

His name was

Don Mariano Tellez-Giron y Beaufort Spontin Pimentel de Quiñones Fernandes de Velasco y Herrera Diego Lopez de Zuñiga Perez de Guzman Sotomayor Mendoza Maza Ladrón de Lizana Carroz y Arborea Borja y Centelles Ponce de Leon Benavides Enriquez Toledo Salm-Salm Hurtado de Mendoza y Orozco Silva Gomez de Sandoval y Rojas Pimentel y Osorio Luna Guzman Mendoza Aragon de la Cerda Enriquez Haro y Guzman.

His titles were

Prince of Squillace[113], Eboli, Melito;

Duke of Osuna, Infantado, Benevente, Plasencia, Béjar, Gandia, Arcos de la Frontera, Medina de Rioseco y Lerma;

Marquess of Tavara, Santillana, Algecilla, Argüesco, Gibraleon, Zahara, Lombay, Peñafiel, Almenara y Cea;

Count of Benevente, Plasencia, Béjar, Gandia, Arcos de la Frontera, Medina de Rioseco y Lerma, Real de Manzanares, La Oliva, Belaleazar, Ureña, Casares, Melgar, Baiten, Mayorga y Fontenar;

Viscount of La Puebla de Alcocer.

He was Ten Times Grandee of Spain of the First Class, Knight of the Orders of Calatrava, of St. John of Jerusalem, of the Golden Fleece, Knight Grand Cross and Collar of the Orders of Carlos V, of St. Hermenegild, of St. Alexandra Newski, of the Christ of Portugal, of the Crown of Bavaria, of the Legion of Honour, etc., etc., etc.,

He died without issue on the second of June 1882.[114]

=Book the Fourth=

A Flicker from the Embers

_A fire, that is kindled, begins with smoke and hissing, while it lays hold on the faggots; bursts into a roaring blaze, with raging tongues of flame, devouring all in reach, spangled with sparks that die; settles into the steady genial glare, the brilliant light, that men call fire: burns away to slowly-expiring ashes; save where smouldering embers flicker, and nurse the glow_,—

While St. Francisco de Borja was his contemporary in the Spanish Branch, Don Pietro Borgia, (the great-grandson of that Don Pietrogorio Borgia who was the Trusty familiar of Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna and Viceroy of the Abruzzi,) was living in Velletri on the frontier of the Regno, the little Volscian city where his family had been settled since Don Niccolo Borgia was its Regent in 1417. He married Madonna Filomena—_gentildonna molto pia_, is the sweet breath of her, which Archbishop Bonaventura Theuli has preserved for us,[115]—and had three children:

(α) The youngest son, Don Polidoro Borgia, died in his youth, the year before St Francisco de Borgia died General of Jesuits in Rome. His epitaph, in the porch of Santa Maria del Trivito at Velletri, is as follows

D . O . M . POLIDORO BOR- -GIAE INVENI VIR- -TUTIBUS ET MORIB. ORNAT-

ISS. FILUMENA MATER HECTOR I.V.D. ET HORAT- IUS BORGIA FR. B.P . VIX . A . XXII OB . A . M.D . LXXJ DIE XII OCTOB.[116]

(β) The second son, Don Orazio Borgia, became commander of a squadron of Pontifical Cavalry; and fell gloriously fighting in the Crusade of Hungary 1597.[117]

(γ) The eldest son, Don Ettore di Pietro Borgia, married Madonna Porzia Landi, who bore him two sons:—The younger, Don Alessandro Borgia became Dean of the cathedral chapter of his native city. The elder, Don Camillo Borgia, became Governor of Velletri, married the Noble Madonna Constantia Gallinella, and died in 1645. His epitaph,[118] in the chapel of the Visitation of the Παρθενομητηρ (the patron-saint of the Veliternian Borgia) in the cathedral of San Clemente at Velletri, is as follows

D. T. V. CAMILLO BORGIAE NOBILI VELITERNO HECTORIS I.C. ET D. PORTIAE LANDAE FILIO NON MINUS CELEBRI AVORUM TOGA ET ARMIS INSIGNIUM CLARITUDINE ILLUSTRI IN PATRIAE REGIMINE CONSULI JUDICI ET RECTORI VIGILANTISSIMO VITAE CANDORE MORUM SUAVITATE UBIQ. CLARO OMNIBUS CHARO ANNO AET. SUAE LV ET MEN. IV EXTINCTO DIE XXVI. SEPT. A PARTU VIRGINIS M. DC. XLV ALEXANDER I.V.D. ET HUIUS CATHED. CANONICORUM DECANUS FRATER

HECTOR I.V.D. EX NOBILI CONSTANTIA GALLINELLA FILIUS EXTREMUM AMORIS MONUMENTUM MŒSTISS . POSUERE[119]

Don Camillo Borgia left three sons,

(α) The youngest, Don Giampaolo Borgia, was a canon of Velletri:

(β) The second, Don Ettore Borgia, was a celebrated Jurisprudent, who held governorships of pontifical cities, and was auditor-general and familiar of Prince Savelli, the Hereditary Marshal of the Holy Roman Church:

(γ) The eldest, the Noble Don Clemente Erminio Borgia, Roman Patrician, and Governor of Velletri, who married Madonna Cecilia Carboni, by whom he had seven children at the least.

Five of these children of Don Clemente Erminio Borgia have been traced.

They were

(α) Madonna Angela Caterina Borgia, who became a nun in a convent of Santa Lucia _in Silice_ at Rome, and who died In The Odour Of Sanctity:

(β) Don Fabrizio Borgia, born 1689, studied ten years with his uncle Canon Giampaolo Borgia, became Bishop of Ferentino in 1729, and died in 1754:

(γ) Don Cesare Borgia, was a Knight-Commander of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta in 1703:[120]

(δ) Don Alessandro Borgia, born 1682, studied with his brother Don Fabrizio under their uncle Canon Giampaolo; won the laurel wreath of the Archgymnasium of Sapienza at Rome; in 1706, was attached to the Secret Nunciature of Monsignor Bussi at Cologne;[121] in 1716, became Bishop of Nocera, and in 1723, Prince-Archbishop of Fermo. [In _Museum Mazzuchelliana_ (Tom. II. Tab. CXCIV, p. 382–3) there is an engraving of a medal of this prince-archbishop, which was struck to commemorate the consecration by him of his nephew, (the son of one of his sisters whose name remains to be discovered,) Don Pierpaolo Leonardi, as Prince-Bishop of Ascoli. The obverse of the medal shews three bishops sitting and one kneeling, with the legend A. BORGIA ARCHIEP. ET PRINCEPS FERMANUS P. PAULUM LEONARDUM EP. ET PRIN. ASCULAN. INUNGIT. The reverse shews the θεοτόκος in Assumption blessing two churches, with the legend UTRIUSQUE ECCLESIAE PATRONA FIRMI ET ASCULI A.D. M.D.CCLV.] Prince-Archbishop Alessandro Borgia died in 1764.

(ε) the heir Don Stefano Camillo Borgia, of the Supreme Magistracy, who married Madonna Maddalena Gagliardi, and had issue,

(α) Cavaliere Giampaolo Borgia, general in the Pontifical Army;

(β) The Noble Don Stefano Borgia, in whom the embers of the House of Borgia flickered a hundred years ago.

* * * * *

Don Stefano Borgia was born at Velletri on the third of December 1731. His early education was conducted in that little Volscian city where his House had been established certainly since 1417, and probably since the Document of Donation of the Lord Lucius P.P. III, 1181–1185. (_Ricchi._) Later, he went to his uncle the Prince-Archbishop Alessandro Borgia of Fermo, with whom he lived, and under whom he studied, till the latter’s death in 1756. The nature of this education can be judged from Don Stefano’s after-life in which he cut so noble a figure as ecclesiastic, diplomatist, ruler, scholar, archæologist, man of letters, and Christian gentleman.

At the age of nineteen years, he had written a learned little treatise on the monument of the Lord John P.P. XVI; and a Short History of the ancient city of Tadino in Umbria, with an exact account of the latest researches among its ruins, two octavo volumes published in Rome 1750–1: so that when he arrived in the Eternal City after his uncle’s death, he found himself appreciated not only for his illustrious name, but also for the crescent ability of which he had given evidence. Three years later, in 1759, he was named Governor of the city and duchy of Benevento, the pontifical fief formerly occupied by another Borgia, the murdered Duke of Gandia. Here he wrote his Historical Memorials of the Pontifical City of Benevento from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century, in three quarto volumes published in Rome 1763–9. In 1764 he was secretary to the Sacred Congregation On Indulgences. In 1765, at the age of thirty-four years, his hands were anointed and he received the order of priesthood. In 1770 he was named Secretary _a secretis_ to the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, (v. title-page of his _De Cruce_.)

His career was now well-begun; and he had time to pursue his favourite occupations of letters and archæology. Writing under his initials S. B., he published in 1773 his discovery of a Venetian Kalendar of the Eleventh Century from a vellum MS., and a Koptic and Latin Fragment of the Acts of St. Koluthus. In 1774, he published an edition of the Lord Pius P.P. II’s (Enea Silvio) work, _Against the Turks_. In 1775 the Signor Abbate Stefano Borgia addressed to the Etruscan Academies of Cortona and Florence, a duodecimo Philological Dissertation on an antique gem-intaglio, “la pregiabile vetusta agata—la bella e rara gemma—Gemma Borgiana—”; which the celebrated and learned antiquary Martinello, in a letter to Padre Ignazio della Croce a sandalled Augustinian, calls _most scholarly and precious_. In 1776 he produced a work in quarto on the Shrine of St. Peter in the Vatican Basilica. In 1779, he published a folio on the curious Cross of the Vatican which is venerated on Good Friday, with the Syriac Rite of Salutation of the Cross, all most learnedly set forth and illustrated with notes and commentaries.

He did not forget his House, or his native city of Velletri: for he established there the Borgia Museum of Antiquities, which chiefly was famous for the Mexican Codex of his presentation, lately found worthy to be produced in facsimile in Rome with a splendour and importance unapproachable by English publishers.

In 1780, he brought out his quarto on the Ancient Cross of Velletri, “a cross-full of reliques conserved in the cathedral with much decency.” (_Theuli II._ 158.) It is a curious and luscious work, which relates the history of the Cross, a fine gold piece encrusted with large single pearls (unionibus) and other gems, from the middle of the Thirteenth Century, when it was given to the Veliternian Cathedral of St. Clement by the Lord Alexander P.P. IV, who, before His election was known as the Lord Rainaldo de’ Conti di Segni,[122] Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and Velletri.[123] The year 1788, saw the issue of a new quarto from his gifted pen, being a Short History of the Temporal Dominion of the Apostolic See in the Two Sicilies; which went into a second edition the following year.

But at this point, the year of the French Revolution, the fortunes of the Abbate Stefano Borgia took a signal turn opening limitless possibilities. The Lord Pius P.P. VI named him Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Clemente, in the Consistory of the thirtieth of March 1789; and promoted him from the secretariate of Propaganda to the Prefectures of the Sacred Congregation of Index and of the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome.

The cardinalitial scarlet is the proper setting for this noble personage. The Most Eminent Lord Stefano Cardinal Borgia becomes at once a type of the huge and sumptuous princes of the church, to whom letters and the fine arts lend their glamour. “Quest’ Amplissimo Porporato,” as his friend and biographer the sandalled Carmelite Fra Pietro Paolino da San Bartolomeo calls him, had the two marks whereby the perfect gentleman and scholar universally may be known. He had a pretty taste for letters, a habit of acquiring rare books and manuscripts; and was himself a writer of extreme distinction. He had also a passion for collecting beautiful and singular things, especially engraved gems. The magic of carven precious stones enchanted him, as camei and intaglii ever have enchanted men of delicate and powerful mental mould. The times in which he lived were not convenient for the cultivation of these exquisite tastes: but it is in no case desirable that they should be cultivated. They lead nowhere, neither to heaven, nor to hell. Essentially they have no relation to the work of life, or death; and it is not well that they should usurp attention—for there are greater things. But the possession of these tastes is an imperative necessity to him who would do those greater things; for they bring, as nought else brings, the habit of discrimination, of selection, of appreciation; they refine and temper and grace the steel with which the greater deeds of life, and death, are done: and, so, their only end is served; while he who has them in the nature of him, not laboriously acquired but congenitally possessed, is the better man, the more capable man, the more enduring, skilful, potent, and triumphant man, and, correlatively, the happier man. Cardinal Stefano Borgia, then, having this gentle generous love for books and precious stones, most naturally became one of the most distinguished ecclesiastics of his age.

In 1791, he published as a supplement to his Short History, a learned quarto in Defence of the Temporal Dominion of the Apostolic See in the Two Sicilies. To this, he added, in 1793, a treatise on two Koptic saints, Koluthus and Panesnice, whose original Acts were in his possession. But it chiefly was as cardinal of the Curia, as Protector of Religious, as Ruler and Governour, as Proprefect of Propaganda (to which he was appointed in 1798,) that he manifested his ability and sterling worth. When the armies of Revolutionary France invaded Italy, engaging in those extravagant monstrosities of turpitude which habitually disgrace the French toward the close of every century, His Eminence allowed nothing of war or tumult to disturb the serene and strenuous performance of his multifarious offices. In those horrid times, when another or lesser man would have been paralysed, he retired with superb dignity from Rome to Padua, whence he continued to administer and govern not his own estates only, but all the foreign dioceses and missions throughout the world which were subject to Propaganda. And it was here in Padua that he quietly found time to do a beautiful and noble deed, by which alone, had he done nothing else, he would have prepared for himself a more illustrious name.

At this time, the College of Cardinals contained a certain August Personage, an Englishman of paramount importance.

When, in the Revolution of 1688, King James II Stewart had been driven from his kingdom of England by the Prince of Orange, His Majesty took refuge in France. His son Prince James, vulgarly called the Old Pretender, unsuccessfully warred for his rights in 1715; and, on the death of his father, assumed in exile his birthright with the style, James III D.G. of Great Britain France and Ireland King F.D. King James III had two sons,—observe the admirable insouciant carriage of head on their medals as boys. The elder, Prince Charles Edward, as Prince of Wales, vulgarly called the Young Pretender, advanced his father’s claim to the crown of England by force of arms in 1745. The result was the Massacre of Culloden Moor. The younger, Prince Henry Benedict, the Duke of York, was a priest. Hunted from France by Hanoverian diplomacy, King James III found refuge in Rome, where, at length, he died; the Prince of Wales succeeding him as King Charles III. Prince Henry Benedict meanwhile rose in ecclesiastical rank through the Cardinal-Bishopric of Ostia and Velletri (Cardinal Borgia’s city), to the Cardinal-Bishopric of Tusculum and the Vicechancellorship of the Holy Roman Church. His medal, by Filippo Cropanesi, dated 1766, shows his royal Stewart profile, still with the admirable high carriage of head, and the legend

HENRICUS M.D. EP. TUSC. CARD. DUX. EBOR S.R.E.V. CANC.

In 1788, his brother, King Charles III, died at Rome; and was buried with his father in the crypt of the Vatican Basilica. As he left no legitimate heirs, his rights in the Majesty of England devolved upon Cardinal Henry Benedict Stewart, who was known as His Royal Highness the Cardinal-Duke of York. This Personage combined with transcendent beauty and truly royal demeanour, rare and solid virtue and the extreme of good sense. Nothing could have been more perfectly kingly than his easy and ready realization of his situation. He was aware, as well of his hereditary rights, as of the fact that his subjects, having settled down under an usurping dynasty, had disowned and would disown his claims on their allegiance. He had seen war in his path. He had no insatiable craving for a crown. He arrived at a decision absolutely luminously wise. That the rights of his dynasty should suffer no diminution, by renunciation on his part, he made a technical assertion of his sovereignty, proclaiming his accession in such a way that the usurpation of his throne by the Elector of Hanover, (vulgarly called George III) should be undisturbed, _except by England’s Will_. He caused a medal to be struck, bearing on the obverse His Majesty’s effigy in a cardinal’s habit with zucchetto and the pectoral-cross of his episcopate,—the kingly head is drooping now—; with the legend

HENRY THE NINTH, OF GREAT BRITAIN FRANCE AND IRELAND KING, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, CARDINAL-BISHOP OF TUSCULUM.

The reverse shows a design of Faith, at whose feet are the cardinalitial hat and kingly crown, and who turns from the Lion to the Cross; with the legend

NOT BY THE DESIRES OF MEN BUT BY THE WILL OF GOD.

At the same time was struck a touch-piece, for distribution among the few loyal English who had not bowed the knee to Hanoverian Baal, and for curing those afflicted with struma or _kings evil_; an occult power which died with this last Stewart. The obverse bears a design of a frigate with the legend

HENRY THE NINTH, OF GREAT BRITAIN FRANCE AND IRELAND, KING BY THE GRACE OF GOD, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, CARDINAL-BISHOP OF TUSCULUM.

The reverse shows St. Michael Archangel overcoming the Dragon, with the legend

TO GOD ALONE BE GLORY.

And that was all,—an enduring record, carven in perennial bronze, that the King’s Majesty had come to the inheritance of his ancestors. He believed in his Divine Right, the right implied in his existence, his existence by the Sanction of Him by Whom kings do reign; and he simply affirmed his Right, waiting for his people to recognize him as their lawful sovereign, to do their part as he had done his. Could anything be more superbly, more contemptuously kingly than this distinction of the parts of sovereign and subject? Cardinal King Henry IX was happy in his lot, for he had a goodly heritage,—in the Holy Roman Church. Had His Majesty desired, the Supreme Pontiff could have released him from his ecclesiastical estate and obligations by a stroke of the pontifical pen, to enable him to prosecute his indubitable right. But he did not so desire. He had chosen the better part—peace—and the happiness of the subjects who were his, but who never would own him as their liege lord and sovereign. No more splendid and disinterested example of self-sacrifice exists in human history than the spectacle of this King of England who scorned to seek to compel unwilling homage. It was indeed the act of a king.

After the technical assumption of sovereignty, His Majesty made no further claim.[124] He did not hesitate to use his regal style on monuments which he erected in his Sub-Urban Diocese, or in similar places: but he was content to be called the Cardinal-Duke of York, as before, though all the world knew him as he really was, and invariably accorded the respect due to him as a prince of the church. There was, however, one notorious exception. The chivalrous nation of France, which formerly had revenged itself on the Lord Alexander P.P. VI by attacking Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei and Madonna Giulia Orsini nata Farnese, was just as ready now to strike at the old and helpless; and it is to the shameful atrocities of France that England owes the noble action of a Borgia in regard to the last of the Royal House of Stewart.

It has been said that Cardinal Stefano Borgia was at Padua in the autumn of 1799 while the regicidal armies of the French Consulate were earning infamy by ravaging the pontifical states. From Padua His Eminence indited a private letter, dated the fourteenth of September 1799, addressed to an English baronet, one Sir John Coxe Hippisley, at Grosvenor Street, London, which will tell a tale. The Cardinal wrote as follows, in beautiful Italian with the incorrect spelling of a gentleman born:

“The friendship with which you honoured me in Rome encourages me to lay before you a case worthy of your most mature reflection: which is, that, among the other cardinals who have taken refuge in Padua, here is also the Cardinal-Duke; and it is greatly afflicting to me to see so great a Personage, the last descendant of his Royal House, reduced to such distressed circumstances, having been barbarously stripped by the French of all his property” (_dai Francesi barbaramente spogliato di tutto_;) “and, if they deprived him not of life also, it was through the mercy of the Almighty, Who protected him in his flight both by sea and land, the miseries of which, nevertheless, greatly injured his health, at the advanced age of seventy-five; and produced a very grievous sore in one of his legs.

“Those who are well-informed of this most worthy Cardinal’s affairs, have assured me that, since his flight, having left behind him his rich and magnificent valuables, which were all sacked and plundered both at Rome and Frascati, he has been supported by the silver plate which he had taken with him, and of which he began to dispose at Messina; and, I understand, that in order to supply his wants during a few months in Venice, he has sold all that remained.

“Of the jewels[125] that he possessed, very few remain, as the most valuable had been sacrificed in the well-known contributions (_forced levies_ would be a juster word than the gentle Cardinal’s meek _contributions_) “to the French our destructive plunderers; and, with respect to his income, having suffered the loss of forty-eight thousand Roman crowns annually by the French Revolution, the remainder was lost also by the fall of Rome; namely, the yearly sum of ten thousand crowns assigned to him by the Apostolic Chamber, and also his

## particular funds in the Roman Bank.

“The only income which he has left is that of his benefices in Spain,[126] which amount to fourteen thousand crowns: but this, as it is only payable in paper at present, is greatly reduced by the disadvantage of exchange; and even that has remained unpaid for more than a year, owing, perhaps, to the interrupted communication with that kingdom.

“But here it is necessary that I should add that the Cardinal is heavily burdened with the annual sum of four thousand crowns for the dowry of the Countess of Albany his sister-in-law; three thousand crowns for the mother[127] of his deceased niece; and fifteen hundred for divers annuities of his father and brother: nor has he credit to supply the means of acquitting these obligations.

“This picture, nevertheless, which I present to your friendship, may well excite the compassion of every one who will reflect upon the high birth, the elevated dignity, and the advanced age of the Personage whose situation I now sketch in the plain language of truth, without resorting to the aid of eloquence. I will only entreat you to communicate it to those distinguished persons who have influence with your government; persuaded as I am that English Magnanimity[128] (_la Magnanimitá Inglese_) will not suffer an Illustrious Personage of the same nation to perish in misery.

“But here I pause, not wishing to offend your national delicacy, which delights to act from its own generous disposition, rather than from the impulse and urgency of others.[129]

“We have here (Padua) not only the Cardinal-Duke, but other cardinals, namely, the two Doria, Caprara, and Livizzani; and perhaps very soon they will all be here, as it is probable that the Conclave will be held in this place; for it has pleased God to deliver from all His labours the so eminently unfortunate Lord Pius P.P. VI, Who cherished for you the most tender affection, and Who was pleased when He was in the Carthusian convent (_Certosa_) at Florence to invest me with the charge of the Proprefecture of the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith.

“My paper fails me, but I shall never fail of being

“Your true friend and servitor (_servitore_) “STEFANO, CARDINAL BORGIA.”

That letter was written in September 1799. It is not clear by what route Cardinal Borgia’s courier carried it to England, nor how long was occupied by the journey. It manifestly is probable that the frightful disorders in France closed the short road through that country; and the short road in time of peace was not traversed in less than three weeks. An English lady[130] who married Don Lorenzo Sforza-Cesarini Duca di Segni, etc., (they were the grand-parents of the present Duke Lorenzo,) made the journey with post-horses in the autumn of 1837; and described it in detail to the present writer a few years ago, incidentally mentioning that, between London and Rome, it was necessary to pass in and out of the Pontifical States no less than five times, with the usual custom-house inconveniences. What then would the journey have been in 1799, when France, internally distracted, was inimical to all and sundry, especially to England and England’s friends! Further the journey from Vienna to Venice occupied a fortnight, as may be seen from the dates of succeeding letters on a later page. These considerations are necessary to explain the fact that three months elapsed before Cardinal Borgia was able to acknowledge Sir John Coxe Hippisley’s reply; for, during those three months, the journey—the long journey—had to be made twice over by the courier, going and returning; which would leave little time for action between.

It is curious to think that these events occurred only a hundred years ago; and that this intimate view of the private and secret history of the last royal Stewart, and the last illustrious Borgia, should have been suffered to remain obscure. Had there been any disgraceful element in the transaction, concealment could be understood: but contrariwise, the very greatest credit is reflected upon all concerned, on Borgia, on Stewart, on Englishmen, and—to give the devil his due—on the Elector of Hanover, vulgarly called George III. The indiscretions, the human weaknesses of the earlier Borgia are the things by which they are remembered:

“The evil, that men do, lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Here, then, is a good deed of a Borgia, which incontinently shall be translated from its inadequate sepulchre, ostended for the veneration of the faithful, and enshrined anew more worthily. Upon receiving Cardinal Borgia’s enchanting letter, Sir John Coxe Hippisley sent to his Eminence a draft for £500, begging him to offer this to the August Personage, “for the exigencies of the moment”; and promising to air the matter in a proper quarter.

The meticulous precautions which invariably are taken to secure the freedom of the Conclave for the election of a Pope, already have been described here. On the death of the Lord Pius P.P. VI alluded to in Cardinal Borgia’s letter, when Rome was in the hands of the French and all Italy distracted by foreign occupation, the Sacred College made its way by slow degrees and amid infinite peril to Venice, where it assembled in the convent on the Island of San Giorgio, and enclosed itself in Conclave with all formality. This means, among other things, that no cardinals were allowed to receive or to send out letters, unless these were subjected to a rigorous examination by the Cardinal-Censors; the object of which is to prevent the voting from being influenced by secular and external Powers or considerations.

On the fourth of January 1800, the said Cardinal-Censors on the Island of San Giorgio permitted the egress of a letter from Cardinal Borgia to Sir John Coxe Hippisley, acknowledging the receipt of the £500, speaking of the gratitude and satisfaction of the August Personage at knowing what was being done on his behalf. “I find myself shut up here in Conclave for the election of a new pontiff, (says Cardinal Borgia,) with thirty-four cardinals, who, when they heard of the English generosity to their Illustrious Colleague,”[131]—and he describes the many kindly complimentary and genuinely admiring sentiments which these Italian Cardinals, in common with Italians of all epochs and of all ranks, (excepting cardinals of the Nineteenth Century)[132] always felt and feel for England and the English. The letter is subscribed in the politely respectful third person,

“Suo servitore cordialissinio ed Amico “S. CARD. BORGIA.”

On the twenty-sixth of February 1800 a second letter was allowed to pass out of the Conclave from Cardinal Borgia to Sir John; a short note, in fact, which said that an English gentleman[133] had just been permitted to enter the Conclave, being the bearer of “a very polite letter from Lord Minto” to the August Personage. This “very polite letter” is given in its original form, as well for its own sake, as for an example of the French of English diplomacy a hundred years ago. It is addressed to the Cardinal-Duke of York.

“DE VIENNA, _9 Feb. 1800_.

“MONSEIGNEUR,

J’ai reçu les Ordres de Sa Majesté le Roi de la Grande Bretagne de faire remettre à Votre Eminence la somme de deux mille livres Sterling, et d’assurer V.E. qu’en acceptant cette marque de l’interêt et de l’estime de S.M. elle lui fera un sensible plaisir. Il “m’est en même terns ordonné de faire part à V.E. des intentions de SM. de lui transmettre une pareille somme de £2000 Sterling au mois de Juillet si les circonstances demeuraient telles que V.E. continuât à la desirer.

“J’ai donc l’honneure de la prevenir que la somme de £2000 Stg. est déposée à la maison de Messieurs Coutts et Cie., Banquiers à Londres à la disposition de Votre Eminence. En executant les Ordres du Roi mon Maitre, V.E. me rendra la justice de croire que je suis infiniment sensible à l’honneur d’être l’organe des sentiments nobles et touchants, qui ont dicté a S.M. la démarche dont elle a daigné me charger, et qui lui ont été inspirés d’un coté par ses propres vertus, et de l’autre tant par les qualités éminentes de la Personne Auguste, qui en est l’object, que par son désir de reparer partout où il est possible, les desastres dans lesquels de fleau Universel de nos jours a paru vouloir entrainer par préférence tout ce qui est le plus digne de Vénération et de Respect.

“Je prie V.E. d’agreer les assurances de mes hommages respectueux et de la Vénération profonde avec laquelle

“J’ai l’honneur d’être “De Votre Eminence “Le très humble et très obeissant Serviteur “MINTO

“_Env. Ex. et Min. Plen. de S.M.B. “à la Cour de Vienne._”

Stripped of polite verbiage this letter conveyed to Cardinal King Henry IX the offer of an annuity of £4000 for so long as he might please to need it. It is ungracious to say with some Scots that, after all, the Elector of Hanover only offered to the Majesty of England a calf of his own cow. The situation was fraught with difficulty. The essentials and the accidentals of his birth combined to make Cardinal Henry Benedict Stewart the only rightful King of England. He could not help that; any more than any man can help being the son of his father and mother, born in lawful wedlock; and King-ship, being of Divine origin, can only be conferred or transferred or confirmed by the Divinity acting through His Earthly Vicegerent, the Roman Pontiff. With these principles to guide him, and the circumstances being as they were, Cardinal Henry grandly decided to be king only in name. His mere existence, however, made the tenure of the occupant of the English Throne to some extent uncertain: for an alien dynasty can never feel entirely comfortable while any of the dispossessed remain. The old order had changed, and had given place to new: but the New could not know that the Old would accept—would condescend to accept—help in its private necessity. It was a most delicate position. On the other hand, it was out of the question that the King’s Majesty should make known to Englishmen his desperate plight, for Cardinal Henry was every inch a King. But the good heart and clever pen of Cardinal Stefano Borgia solved that difficulty, by invoking on grounds of private friendship the intervention of Sir John Coxe Hippisley.

The method of relief, when relief was seen to be required, was a task for the wits of diplomacy. When the English choose to change their sovereign dynasties, they at least should secure their nation against the disgrace of seeing, perishing in indigence, one who truly could say _My grandfather formerly wore the Crown, touched for the king’s evil on the steps of St. Winifred’s Well, and reigned as King in England_. The spectacle of the blind beggar of Constantinople, crying “Date obolum Belisario” is shameful enough for one continent, and can be spared the disgrace of repetition. A pension on the Civil List would have met the needs of the case: but it would have had many disadvantages. It would necessitate publicity; it would have been most disagreeable to the gentle pride of the August Personage whose life and character commanded nothing but respect.

At the present day, one is accustomed to hear members of a certain class of Scot, desirous of shining at least in a reflected light, boasting that their forbears were “out in the ’15” or “out in the ’45.” One does not so often hear an Englishman congratulating himself on his descent from heroes who endured confiscation, attainder, in the self-same cause—but in 1688. The English resist aggression at the outset; they are used to, are glad to, make sacrifices for, not bargains of, their sovereigns; and, needing no reflected light, they are not good boasters. There is no doubt that a great deal of Scots flesh was given in 1715 and in 1745 for the House of Stewart. There is no doubt that some Scots gold was offered on the same account. But one has not heard that the loyal Scots—loyal, as they say, to the Stewarts,—ever attempted to minister to the necessities of their liege Lord, the Cardinal King Henry the Ninth. Ethics, derived from Master John Knox, whose iconoclastic ardour stopped at the “saxpence” and made it the idolatrous object of supreme worship of dulia and hyperdulia and latria, no doubt mitigated the sentiment of loyalty in regard to a king who happened to be a prelatical papist. A national fund, a fund raised by the adherents of the Stewarts, to provide a yearly income for their exiled sovereign, would have been graceful and acceptable. It is the duty of a people to maintain its monarch; and it is not beneath the dignity of monarchy to accept such maintenance offered in loyalty. Peter’s Pence is nothing but a fund of yearly offerings instituted by King Ælfred the Great of England for the maintenance of the Sovereign Pontiff. In the case of Cardinal King Henry the Ninth, however, no such guaranteed annuity was forthcoming from the nation of which no inconsiderable part admitted his right to rule. Loyalty to the Stewarts—practical living loyalty—was confined to individuals, few in number; and it became necessary to seek another method of solving the difficulty.

Private munificence, towards the King _de jure_, on the part of—let it be said, for Cardinal Henry himself said it, and none had more right to decide than he—on the part of the King _de facto_, King George the Third, the official representative of the English nation, was the only possible method, which was likely to be agreeable or acceptable. Therefore, an annuity of £4000 was offered, not from the Civil List, not from the Nation, but from the Privy Purse, from King George to Cardinal Henry—from one English Gentleman to another. The delicate tact and straightforwardness with which the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty at the Court of Vienna made the offer; the complimentary terms of his letter to the “August Personage;” his guarded denunciation of the French robbers of the Cardinal as “the Universal Plague of our time which seems to design the destruction of all that is most worthy of Veneration and Respect;” his proffered homage;—all these qualities egregiously deserved Cardinal Stefano Borgia’s epithet “very polite,” and made the proposal one which honourably and gratefully could be accepted. At least the Cardinal-Duke of York was pleased to think so, as the two letters following here will shew. It may be observed that they are written in incoherent and peculiar English. Let it be remembered that they were written by a very old gentleman, under circumstance of extreme agitation; in a language of appalling difficulty which, though his native tongue, was altogether strange to him; for he had not lived in England, and, in his life-long exile, he used nothing but Latin with his clergy or Italian with his friends.

He wrote from the Conclave on the Island of San Giorgio on the twenty-sixth of February 1800; and the letters are sealed with the Royal Arms of England and France surmounted with the Cardinalitial Hat instead of the Crown.

(I. To Lord Minto.)

“With the arrival of Mr. Oakley who has been this morning with Me, I have received by his discourse, and much more by your letters, so many Tokens of your regard, singular consideration, and attention for My Person, that oblige Me to abandon all sort of ceremony, and to begin abruptly to assure you My dear lord, that your letters have been most acceptable to Me in all shapes and regards. I did not in the least doubt of the noble way of thinking of your generous and beneficent Sovereign; but I did not expect to see in writing so many and so obliging expressions that well calculated by the Persons who receive them and understand their force, impressed in their minds a lively sense of tenderness and gratitude which, I own to you, obliges me more than the generosity spontaneously imparted.

“I am in reality at a loss to express in writing all the sentiments of My Heart, and for that reason leave it entirely to the interest you take in all that regards My Person to make known in an energetical and convenient manner all I fain would say to express My thankfulness which may easily be by you comprehended after having perused the contents of this letter.

“I am much obliged to you to have indicated to Me the way I may write unto Coutts the Court Banker, and shall follow your friendly insinuations. In the meantime I am very desirous that you should be convinced of My sentiments of sincere esteem and friendship with which My dear lord with all My heart I embrace you.

“HENRY CARDINAL.”

(II. To Sir John Coxe Hippisley.)

“Your letters fully convince me of the cordial interest you take in all that regards My Person, and am happy to acknowledge that principally I owe to your friendly efforts, and to them of your friends, the succour generously granted to relieve the extreme necessities into which I have been driven by the present dismal circumstances. I cannot sufficiently express how sensible I am to your good heart: and write these few lines in the first place to contest to you these My most sincere and grateful sentiments and then to inform you by means of Mr. Oakley an English Gent^n arrived here last week, I have received a letter from Lord Minto from Vienna, advising Me that he had orders from his Court to remit to Me the sum of £2000 Sterling, and that in the month of July I may again draw, if I desire it, for another equal sum. The letter is written in so extremely obliging and genteel a manner, and with expressions of singular regard and consideration for Me, that, I assure you, excited in Me most

## particular and lively sentiments, not only of satisfaction for the

delicacy with which the affair has been managed, but also of gratitude for the generosity with which has been provided for my necessity.

I have answered Lord Minto’s letter, and gave it saturday last to Mr. Oakley who was to send it by that evening’s post” (the ambassadorial courier) “to Vienna, and have written in a manner that I hope will be to his lordship’s satisfaction. I own to you that the succour granted to Me could not be more timely, for, without it, it would have been impossible for Me to subsist on account of the absolutely irreparable loss of all My income, the very funds being also destroyed; so that I would otherwise have been reduced during the short remainder of My life to languish in misery and indigence. I would not loose a moment’s time to apprize you of all this, and am very certain that your experimented good heart will find proper means to make known in an energical and proper manner, these sentiments of My grateful acknowledgment.

“Your best of friends, “HENRY CARDINAL.”

Of the remaining history of H.R.H. The Cardinal-Duke of York it is not necessary to speak here. He died in 1807, and was honourably buried in the Vatican Basilica with his father and his brother, in a tomb which bears their names and styles, James III, Charles III, Henry IX, last of the Royal House of Stewart, three kings “who paid three crowns for a mass,” who sacrificed the crowns of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, rather than their religious convictions. May they rest in peace.[134]

* * * * *

The action of Cardinal Stefano Borgia which just has been described, was not the only evidence of nobility of soul that he exhibited during the long Conclave of 1799–1800. He did, or rather he did not do, another deed; the neglect of which suffices to win him high renown.

It already has been manifested here, that the tide of human ambition runs at its highest in the Conclave for the election of a Pope. At different periods of history, the papacy has been regarded as an appanage of the empire, or of the great Italian baronies, Crescenzi, Colonna, Orsini, Savelli, Medici. The House of Borgia, not without reason of a kind, desired to rank with these; and cardinals of that House complacently expected election. There already had been two Borgia Popes, the strenuous Lord Calixtus P.P. III. and the invincible Lord Alexander P.P. VI. The great-grandson of St. Francisco de Borja, Cardinal Don Gaspero, publicly hoped to be the third, and was disappointed. Now, in the last year of the Eighteenth Century, was enclosed in another Conclave another Borgia Cardinal, the noble Cardinal Stefano, and it confidently was expected that he would emerge therefrom not Stefano, but Peter, crowned with the Triregno, the pontifical diadem made of feathers of white peacocks encircled with three crowns of gold.

Humanly speaking his chance of election was not chance but certainty. He was admitted on all hands to be _facile Princeps_ of the Sacred College. His learning, his dominant power, his simple piety, his universally sympathetic personality, assured him of an unanimous majority, had he chosen to enter the ranks of the cardinals-competitors, that is to say, of the cardinals who were eligible and also willing.

When a man is aware of his own ability to do certain legitimate and beneficent deeds, the world is wont to call him fool as well as knave when he neglects to seek the situation, the opportunity, for exercising his peculiar talent. In this matter, the world is not ill-advised. Then, if an ecclesiastic is convinced that, in a certain position of authority, he can do God-service, why should he be deterred from seeking that position by craven terror of the inevitable scowls, rhodomontades, and lampoons of envious incompetent venal mediocrity? The Lord Pius P.P. II was not afraid. He knew His own powers. He was convinced of the purity of His intentions; and, as Cardinal Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de’ Piccolhuomini, he met the schemes of Cardinal Guillaume d’Estoutville in the Conclave of 1458 with counter-schemes, and accomplished His Own elevation to the pontifical throne. There is another and more intimate example, nearer home, and no later than the last century: the example of a provost of a metropolitan cathedral chapter, who knew his power, who knew the lawfully designated successor of the archbishop to be unfitted for the responsibilities of office, who kept an agent at the Vatican to urge his candidature when the see was vacant, until the Lord Pius P.P. IX, declaring it to be _un colpo-di-stato di Domeniddio_, transformed the convert-provost into Westminster’s Archbishop. It cannot be alleged that Cardinal Henry Edward Manning became inglorious by giving practical evidence of his contempt for the ridiculous and wicked doctrine which is preached by vicious degenerates, that _the Almighty intends much of His Good Work to be wasted_. It cannot be alleged that Cardinal Manning was actuated by personal arrogance, or by desire for personal aggrandisement. His whole life of saint-like self-sacrifice, of intensest humility, of ascetic mortification, of ceaseless toil for the spiritual and temporal welfare of all men without distinction of creed, has proved the contrary. By the same token, on this score, there would have been no stain on the noble character of Cardinal Stefano Borgia had he desired to exert himself to compass his own election to the Throne of Peter.

But he did not so desire. Indeed, he shewed himself unwilling to be elected; and the Sacred College made choice of the next Most Eminent Lord, the Benedictine Cardinal Gregorio Luigi Barnabo Chiaramonte, whose accession was proclaimed under the name of the Lord Pius P.P. VII. So Christendom still lacks the third Borgia Pontiff,—a lack unlikely soon to be made good; seeing that, since Cardinal Stefano, no Borgia wears the scarlet hat; yet by no means irremediable, seeing that the House of Borgia is living, and not dead.

Little remains to be written of the last pre-eminent Borgia. On the death of Cardinal Gerdil, Cardinal Stefano was promoted from the Proprefecture to the Prefecture of Propaganda Fide.

In 1804, while attending the debile Lord Pius P.P. VII to Paris, (whither His Holiness had been summoned for the coronation as emperor of the Corsican upstart Consul Napoleon Buonaparte,) Cardinal Stefano Borgia died, at the age of seventy-three years, on the Festival of St. Clement the twenty-third of November, at Lyons, and was buried there in the cathedral. It is worth noting that he had been baptized in the cathedral of St. Clement at Velletri in December 1731; that he derived his cardinalitial Title from the church of St. Clement in Rome; and that on the Festival of St. Clement 1804, he died. His friend, Fra Pietro Paolino da San Bartolomeo, a sandalled Carmelite, wrote his biography. The celebrated Cancellieri composed his elegy, which has been republished by Bodoni. The Borgia Museum of Antiquities which he established in Velletri, and whose elaborate catalogue is the work of his uncle Don Filippaurelio Visconti, in chief part is in the Royal Museum of Naples; the College of Propaganda has the lesser part, and also his splendid library.

* * * * *

The House of Borgia continues to flourish in the descendants of Cardinal Stefano’s brother, the CAVALIERE GIAMPAOLO BORGIA OF VELLETRI, a general in the pontifical army; who married the representative of two of the most important houses of the Romagna, often mentioned in these pages as having been subdued by the splendid Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) di Valentinois della Romagna, in the campaigns of 1499 and 1501–2,—the Countess Alcmena[135] Baglioni-Malatesta of Perugia. Eighteen children were the issue of this marriage. The names of five have been recovered at the date of writing, viz., the eldest, Cavaliere Camillo; Don Clemente; Don Alessandro; Don Cesare; and the youngest Don Francesco.

(α) THE CAVALIERE CAMILLO BORGIA, born 1777, was Adjutant-General and Field-Marshal under King Joachim Murat of Naples; Aulic-Counsellor and Chargé d’affaires of the King of Denmark in Rome; Knight of the Legion of Honour,[136] and of the Order of the Two Sicilies.[137] Distinguished in arms by his military talent, he was not less renowned in the kingdom of Letters. After his retirement from the army, he travelled much in Northern Africa to study Latin antiquities. At least one of his works has achieved fame—the _Planisfero Borgiano_. He married Mdlle. Adelaide Quaison, (who died in 1865); and he died in 1817, leaving issue

DON ETTORE BORGIA, born at Velletri in 1802, a Roman Patrician, Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta, Knight-Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great,[138] Gonfalonier of Velletri, National Representative of Velletri in the Roman Parliament of 1848, and Provisional Governour of Velletri in 1871. He departed this life, in 1892, at Melazzo in Sicily, being of the age of ninety years; and his death without issue extinguished the Veliternian Branch of the House of Borgia.

(β) DON CLEMENTE BORGIA OF ROME, who married Donna Luisa Calderoni, and died in 1852, leaving issue,

(α) Don Adriano, who died unmarried:

(β) Don Tito, who died unmarried:

(γ) Don Costantino, a prelate, (author of _De Cathedra Romana Sancti Petri Principus Apostolorum Oratio_, etc. a quarto published at Rome in 1845;) died unmarried in 1878:

(δ) DON AUGUSTO, a prelate, born 1820. His death, on the second of September 1900, without issue, extinguished the Roman Branch of the House of Borgia.

(γ) DON ALESSANDRO BORGIA, born 1788, Balì of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta, died 1872.

(δ) DON CESARE BORGIA, was a Knight-Commander of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta; and followed the profession of a man of letters in Ferrara, (the city of which his kinswoman, Madonna Lucrezia, formerly had been the sovereign duchess,) until his death in 1861.

_(Here should be inserted the names of thirteen children of the Cavaliere Giampaolo Borgia and his wife the Countess Alcmena Baglioni-Malatesta of Perugia, which, at present are not accessible. The eighteenth and youngest son of the said Cavaliere Giampaolo was,)_

(ε) THE NOBLE FRANCESCO BORGIA, born 1794; Knight of Honour and Devotion, and Hereditary Commandant of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta; Knight of the Order of the Lily of France[139]; Knight of the Order of the two Sicilies; Patrician of Rome: who married the Noble Luigia Ferrari di Cremona, Dowager-Countess Cassera (died 1855); and established the House of Borgia in Milan on his marriage with a Milanese lady in 1822. He died in 1861 leaving issue,

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

(β) THE NOBLE CESARE BORGIA, (_the present Head of the Illustrious House of Borgia_); Knight of Honour and Devotion and Hereditary Commandant of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta; Patrician of Rome, (which patriciate gives its holder the right to the title of Count;) born at Milan on the twenty-seventh of January 1830; married in 1856 Donna Clementina Tarantola (who died in 1884) and has issue,

(α) DON FRANCESCO BORGIA, born in 1863; married in 1885 the Marchioness Eugenia Litta-Modignani di Menzago e Vinago, Patrician of Milan; and has issue,

(α) DON CESARE BORGIA, born 1886:

(β) DON ALESSANDRO BORGIA, born 1898:

AD MULTOS ANNOS

* * * * *

“A FIRE, THAT IS KINDLED, BEGINS WITH SMOKE AND HISSING, WHILE IT LAYS HOLD ON THE FAGGOTS; BURSTS INTO A ROARING BLAZE, WITH RAGING TONGUES OF FLAME, DEVOURING ALL IN REACH, SPANGLED WITH SPARKS THAT DIE; SETTLES INTO THE STEADY GENIAL GLARE, THE BRILLIANT LIGHT, THAT MEN CALL FIRE; BURNS AWAY TO SLOWLY-EXPIRING ASHES; SAVE WHERE SMOULDERING EMBERS FLICKER, AND NURSE THE GLOW, UNTIL PROPITIOUS BREEZES BLOW IT INTO LIFE AGAIN.”

APPENDICES

Appendix I ABOUT WOMEN

Very little can be said of the women of the Borgian Era; for the simple reason that they as yet had not renounced and abjured the observation of the maxim of Euripides

“_Women should stay at home and talk._”

For women, then, to cultivate an intellect was rare. The sacred offices of mother and wife, of comforter and helper, chiefly occupied them. Yet no stupid restrictions were invented to harass and embitter the exceptions to this rule, the freaks, the Sports of Nature, (in modern medical phraseology;) and thus the splenetic self-assertive abnormalities of the twentieth century were avoided. Women, who so willed, were absolutely free; they were admitted to the same intellectual training as men in the universities and colleges[140]; professorial chairs rewarded talent male or female; and a learned lady was called Virago, in no sarcastic vein but in flattering admiration, the word being used in its scriptural sense. (_Vulgate_, Gen. ii. 23.)

Of these the most famous were Madonna Vittoria Colonna and Madonna Veronica Gambara. The first was the daughter of Don Fabrizio Colonna, Grand Constable of Naples, (who already has been mentioned as helping the Duchess Lucrezia Borgia’s consort to evade the snare of the Lord Julius P.P. II,) by his wife Madonna Agnesina di Montefeltro, daughter of Duke Federigo of Urbino. She was born in 1490; and married at nineteen in 1509 to Don Ferrando Francisco d’Avalos, who died in 1525. She consecrated the remaining twenty-two years of her life to her husband’s memory and to the duties of religion, residing, for the sake of her reputation, as a parlour-boarder in religious houses at Orvieto, Viterbo, Ischia, and Rome, where she kept a literary salon. Many celebrated men were her frequent visitors, among whom may be mentioned Cardinals Reginald Pole and Giacopo Sadoleto; the poets Marcantonio Flaminio and Pietro Carnesecchi; and Fra Bernardino Ochino the second general of the new religion called _Cappuccini_, who, after apostatizing to write his Twenty-one Dialogues advocating Polygamy as authorized by the example of the Patriarchs, was in turn expelled by the heresiarchs of Geneva. But by far the greatest of Madonna Vittoria Colonna’s admirers was the sculptor-painter-poet Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti, who respectfully inscribed to her many beautiful sonnets—sonnets which he hewed out of language, as also he hewed statues out of marble, and with the same aloof and rugged majesty. The following is given as a specimen, not only of the style of Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti, but also for the profession of faith contained in the latter half of the sestett—a human document which lends marvellous light to the more secret soul of this true artist and gigantic misanthrope.

“Per ritornar là donde venne fora “As one who will reseek her home of light, “L’immortal forma al tuo carcer “Thy form immortal to this terreno prison-house “Venne com’angel di pietà si pieno “Descended, like an angel piteous, “Che sana ogn’intelleto, e’l mondo “To heal all hearts and make the onora. whole world bright. “Questo sol m’arde, e questo “’Tis this that thralls my soul in m’innamora; love’s delight, “Non pur di fora il tuo volto “Not thy clear face of beauty sereno: glorious; “Ch’amor non già di cosa che vien “For he who harbours virtue still meno will choose “Tien ferma speme, in cu’ virtù “To love what neither years nor dimora. death can blight. “Ne altro avvien di cose altere e “So fares it ever with things high nuove and rare “In cui si preme la natura; e’l “Wrought in the sweat of nature; cielo heaven above “E ch’a lor parto largo “Showers on their birth the s’apparecchia. blessings of her prime: “Ne Dio, suo grazia, mi se mostra “Nor hath God deigned to shew altrove, Himself elsewhere “Piu che’n alcun leggiadro e mortal “More clearly than inhuman forms velo; sublime, “E quel sol amo, perche’n quel si “Which, since they image Him, alone specchia. I love.” MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI. TRANSLATION BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

Madonna Vittoria Colonna herself was a poet, but her literary history is not included in the Borgian Era. It may be mentioned that her descendant and namesake the beautiful Princess Vittoria Colonna married into the patrician House of Sforza-Cesarina, so prominent in these pages, and is the mother of the present Duke Lorenzo.

Madonna Veronica Gambara, the friend and fellow-virago of Madonna Vittoria Colonna was the daughter of Count Gianfrancesco Gambara, and Madonna Alda Pia da Carpi. She was born in 1485, and educated by Messer Pietro Bembo (afterwards Cardinal); married in 1509 to Don Guilberto di Cor Reggio; and widowed nine years later. At her Palazzo Marsili at Bologna, on the occasion of the coronation of Caesar Carlos V in 1530, she received in princely state the scholars of the day, “Bembo, Molza, the witty Francesco Berni, the learned Vida, the stately Trissio, the noble-hearted Marcantonio Flaminio, Paolo Giovio and Francesco Guicciardini.” She lived till 1550, a good mother to her two sons, Ippolito and Girolamo, noble, learned, virtuous, and a poet and woman-of-letters of much distinction.

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

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

“Vidi ego, ingint Andreas Victorellus, excriptum diploma fide publica firmatum, datum Romae sub annulo Piscatoris anno 1501 die xvii Aprilis in quo haec verba: _Te in cardinalem approbamus, quod tamen sub silentio tenebis, donec tempus idoneum aderit_.”

Appendix III PAPAL TRIBUTE

The following tribute was used to be paid yearly on the Vigil of St. Peter, xxviii June, in accordance with the rule of the Lord Boniface P.P. IX.

By the city of Forrara Two thousand scudi and a chalice „ „ „ „ Benevento „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ island „ Sardinia „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ city „ Terracina A white horse „ „ „ „ Gallese A stag „ „ „ „ Porto A brace of pheasants „ „ „ „ Monte Caprello A dog and a sparrow-hawk „ „ „ „ Sant’Ippolito A brace of partridges „ „ College of Apostolick Scribes A pyx and one hundred scudi „ „ „ „ „ Notaries A silver chalice „ „ Kingdom of Naples The “Chinea.” This was a valuable white horse or mule, richly caparisoned, carrying seven thousand ducati d’oro in a splendid coffer. The Prince Colonna, as Grand Constable of Naples, was the official in charge of the “Chinea.”

Monks and friars belonging to Abbeys which were Papal Peculiars, (—the Abbey of Westminster was a Papal, for five hundred years before it was a Royal, Peculiar,—) instead of paying tribute, pronounced the Holy Name of JESUS, when their names were called at this ceremonial.

Appendix IV SCHOLARSHIP IN THE BORGIAN ERA

One of the most amusing poses of the Borgian Era was the affectation of classical antiquity. This pose was engendered of the revival of learning upon human vanity. Scholars were the favourites of princes and of kings; and they modelled their mental deportment on that plane. The man who called himself Pomponius Laetus (for they Latinized or Hellenized even their names,) was a νόθος of the baronial House of Sanseverini, who revivified certain pagan cults and, with Cardinal Platino and others, solemnly and habitually practised them in secret Catacombs. Really, he was a learned man who owed his learning to his own wits and exertions, and not to the help or influence of his own kin; who, while he was a poor unknown pupil of Messer Lorenzo Valla, refused to acknowledge him. But, when at last he had won fame and was sought by the best society, the Sanseverini, being anxious to have at least the credit of an intellect, made him an overture of friendship, and offered to take him to their arms. His rejoinder is worth preservation as a specimen as well of the effect of megalomania, as of the successful imitation of a classic style. With delicious arrogance he wrote,

“_Pomponius Laetus cognatis et propinquis suis salutem. “Quod petitis fieri non potest.” Valete._

Writers of the Borgian Era curiously translated contemporary terms and titles into their classic phraseological equivalent. The Pope was _Pontifex Maximus_, and _Princeps_. The Emperor was _Caesar Augustus_, and sometimes _Princeps_. The Cardinals were _Senators_ or _Augurs_, elders in charge of the lightning (“aliquis senior qui publica fulgura condit.”) Nuns were _Vestal Virgins_. Excommunication was _Dirae_. Carnival was the _Lupercalia_. The Padre Eterno became, by the pen of Bishop Vida of Alba in Piedmont, _Superum Pater Nimbipotens_ and _Regnator Olympi_. The Santissimo Salvatore was known as Ἥρως; and the Santo Spirito as Ζέφυρος. Madonna was Ἥρα, Ἀφροδίτη, and Ἀθήνη παρθένος upon occasion. The saints were gods, δῖος ἢ δῖα, divus vel diva; St. Christopher was _Herakles_; St. Sebastian, or St. Michael Archangel, was Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων; St. Gabriel Archangel was _Hermes_; St. Raphael Archangel was _Asklepios_; St. George, St. Maurice, St. Theodore, were _Perseus_ or _Theseus_ according to the taste of the writer. This pose was affected in England as well as in Italy, as may be seen in the following verse from William Caxton’s _Boke of Curtesye_, A.D. 1477.

“Loke also/ upon Dan John Lydgate “My maister whylome/ monke at berye “Worthy to be renomede/ as poete laureate “I praye to gode in bliss his soul be mercy “Syngynge _Rex Splendens_ that heuenly kyrye “Among the Muses Nine celestyalle “Before the hyest Iubyter of alle.”

The scholarship of the Renascence of learning, however, was not all empty foolishness, not all the merest pose. The extravagances of the Yellow School of the day were inevitable; and, though their unreality soon palls and cloys, they afford ephemeral amusement. But the new learning did much to improve taste; and, in the hand of men of goodwill, was of vast benefit to the purity of letters. The following verses are quoted as additional examples of the style of noted scholars of the Borgian Era.

ANGELI POLITIANI, MONODIA IN LAURENTIUM MEDICEM.

(Intonata per Arrighum Isae.)

Quis dabit capiti meo aquam? Quis oculis meis fontem lacrymarum dabit? Ut nocte fleam; ut luce fleam, sie turtur viduus solet, sie cygnus moriens solet, sie luscinia, conqueri. Neu miser, miser, O dolor, dolor.

Laurus impetu fulminis, illa, illa, iacet subito, laurus omnium celebris musarum choris, nympharum choris, sub cuius patula coma, et Phœbi lyra blandius, et vox dulcius insonat. Nunc muta omnia, nunc surda omnia.

Quis dabit capiti meo aquam? Quis oculis meis fontem lacrymarum dabit? ut nocte fleam, ut luce fleam; sie turtur viduus solet sie cygnus moriens solet, sie luscinia, conqueri. Neu miser, miser, O dolor, dolor.

ANDREAE NANGERII (NAVAGERO) HYMNUS IN GABRIELEM ARCHANGELUM.

Iam caeli reserat fores aurato e thalamo exiens Mater Memnonis, et diem laeto provocat ore. Nos te maxime Maximi minister, canimus, Patris: quo nullus, qui hominum genus tam praesens iuvet, usquam est. Tu nostras celer ad preces, aures protinus an Deum has defers: nec tenues sinis evanescere in auras.

Tu dum fers nova nuncia virgini Ætherio Patri dilectae, quibus indicas Magni vota Tonantis; nobis fers nova nuncia: queis a faucibus impii erepti hostis, in aurea caeli templi vocamur. Adsis, o bone: et in dies semper nos propius iuva nec patrocinio tuo unquam mitte tueri.

ANGELI POLITIANI, HYMNUS IN DIVAM VIRGINEM.

O Virgo prudentissima, quam caelo missus Gabriel, supremus Regis nuntius, plenam testatur gratia. Cuius devota humilitas gemmis ornata fulgidis fidentis conscientiae Amore Deum rapuit. Te sponsam Factor omnium, te matrem Dei Filius, te vocat habitaculum Suum Beatus Spiritus. Per te de tetro carcere antiqui patres exeunt: per te nobis astriferæ panduntur aulae limina. Tu stellis comam cingeris, tu lunam premis pedibus, te sole amictam candido chori stupent angelici. Tu Stella Maris diceris, quae nobis inter scopulos inter obscuros turbines portum salutis indicas. Audi Virgo Puerpara, et Sola Mater Integra, audi precantes, quaesumus, tuos Maria servulos. Repelle mentis tenebras, disrumpe cordis glaciem, nos sub tuum praesidium confugientes protege. Da nobis in proposito sancto perseverantiam, ne noster adversarius in te sperantes superet: Sed et cunctis fidelibus, qui tuum templum visitant, benigna Mater dexteram da caelestis auxilii. Amen.

Appendix V BORGIA DOCUMENTS

_The British Museum possesses the following Original Letters by_

ALESSANDRO BORGIA, _Bishop of Nocera, Prince-Archbishop of Fermo_ viiii Nov. 1717–25 „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ Apr. 1727

NICCOLO BORGIA, _Bishop of Cava_, xiii Jan. 1752 „ „ „ „ „ xviii Jul. „

DON GASPARO DE BORJA Y VELASCO, _Cardinal-Archbishop of Seville and Toledo_ „ „ „ „ „ Letter to the Duke of Ossuna 1620 „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ „ concerning his embassy in Rome „ „ „ „ „ xx Dec. 1625

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

DON CARLOS DE BORJA, _Cardinal-Patriarch of the Indies_. xi Oct. 1711 to viiii Sept. 1724

STEFANO BORGIA, _Cardinal of San Clemente_ ii June 1801 „ „ „ xvii Jan. 1802 „ „ „ to L. Melini, Rome, xviii Aug. 1770 „ „ „ „ A. da Morona, Padua, xviiii June 1798 „ „ „ „ G. Andrei, Padua, i Sept. 1798

CESARE, DETTO BORGIA. _1. As Cardinal._

To the Catholick King and Queen Don Hernando and Dona Isabella of Spain, on sending a friar with a present, dated 1497, signed C CAR^{AL} DE VALENCIA.

Very rare.

_2. As Duke._

Holograph to Ricardo Cervini, from Cartoceto, dated i Feb. 1500. Eight lines of beautiful precise arrogant and masterly writing, signed CESAR BORGIA DE FRANCIA DUX VALENTIN, with seal.

_The Bodleian Library at Oxford has_

Indulgences conceeded to the college at Windsor (the chapter of St. George?) by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. Ashmolean MSS. Gasparo de Borgia, Cardãl, Protestatio in consistorio 1632 nomine Regis Hisp.

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

Appendix VI THE BORGIA AS MEN OF LETTERS

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

Bonedicti xiii Romani Pontificis ... vita commentario excerpta etc. Romae. 1741. 4º

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

Indulto sopra il Precetto di astenersi dalle opere servili in alcune Feste. 1752. 4º

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

Stampatoria Vescovale. Nocera. 1723. 4º

(he also wrote a life of St. Gerald in 1698. _Stefano Borgia in De Cruce Veliterna. 222._)

Antonio Borgia. Editor of

Poesie de’ Sig. Alunni e convitori del ... Vescovile Seminario ... di Frascati, dedicate all’Altezza Reale ... del Cardinale Duca d’York, etc.

Romae. 1772. 4º

Alexander Borgia. Teacher of Languages

Case of the Free Italian Church. 1877

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

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

Bartolomeo Borgia.

La sua vita. Milano. 1888. 8º

(He was a shoemaker of Fara Novarese, born 1818, died 1887; was converted to protestantism, and became connected with il Rev. MacDougall and il Dottore Stewart as Colportore della Societa Biblica Scozzese; made himself an evangelical nuisance, collided with the Established Church of the country, wherefore he and his family suffered persecution at the hands of ignorant papists. The

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

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

Constantinus Borgia. Son of Don Clemente Borgia, and grandson of Cavaliere Giampaolo Borgia of Velletri: prelate in Rome: died 1878.

De Cathedra Romana Sancti Petri Principis Apostolorum Oratio, etc.

Romae. 1845. 4º

Damiano Borgia.

Free Christian Church in Italy. Rome. 1880

History of the Gospel in Fara Novarese; an episode of reform in the nineteenth century. Florence. 1879.

Social Ruin, causes and remedies. 1894.

Fabrizio Borgia. Canon of Velletri. Bishop of Ferentino _inter Hernicos_, and brother of the Prince-Archbishop Alessandro Borgia of Fermo.

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

Gasparo de Borja, Cardinal.

Ossuniano coniuratio quâ D. P. Gyron Ossunae Dux regnum Neapolitanum ... sibi desponderat, etc.: una cum relatione stratagematis quo Illustriss. Card̃lis Borgia ... in eam Provinciam sibi aditum ... fecerit. 1623. 4º

Girolamo Borgia, detto Seniore. Jurisconsult, Bishop of Massa Labrese, 1544 (Massa Sorrentana?)

Incendium ad Avernum Lacum horribile pridie Kal. Octobr. MDXXXVIII nocte intempestata exortum. Neapoli. 1538.

Epithalamion. 1606. 12º

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

Giuseppe di Lorenzo Borgia.

In morte del Cav. G. di Lorenzo Borgia ... avenuta il dì XXX Novembre MDCCCLXXXII. (Parole, etc.)

Noto. 1882. 8º

Niccolo Borgia.

Il concetto della civiltà greca e sua funzione nella storia. Dissertatione su tema obbligato, etc. Napoli. 1881. 8º

Paulus Borgia.

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

Rosario Borgia.

Poesie in idioma Calabrese. Napoli. 1839. 8º

These innocent little verses valuably preserve the dialect of what was once a Greek colony. The author was a priest of the Oratory of San Filippo Neri; and wrote sonnets

For a seminarist-friend,

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

On the Triumph of Christ,

On San Fortunato Martire,

On San Filippo Neri,

On the occasion of the death of his father, Don Francescantonio Borgia, Patrician of Mileto (a city of the commune of Mileto in Calabria, containing 3000 inhabitants,) etc., etc., etc.

Stefano Borgia, Cardinal.

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

Salvatoris Bononiae, a S.B. nunc primum in lucem editum. (Anecdota Literaria etc. II.) 1773. 8º

Fragmentum Copticum ex Actis S. Coluthi ... quod nunc primum in lucem profert S.B. (Anec. Lit. IIII.) 1773. 8º

De miraculis Sancti Coluthi et reliquis actorum Sancti Panesnice martyrum ... Praeit dissertatio S. Card. B. de cultu S. Coluthi. 1793. 4º

Pii II oratio de bello Tureis inferendo, eruta ... et illustrata a S.B. 1774. 8º

Breve istoria del dominio temporale della Sede Apostolica nelle duc Sicilie. S.B. 1788–9. 4º

Difesa del dominio temporale della Sede Apostolica nelle due Sicilie. 1791. 4º

Breve istoria dell’antica città di Tadino nell’Umbria ed esatta relazione della ultime ricerche fatte sulle sue ruine. Romae 1751. 8º

De Cruce Vaticana en dono Justini Augusti in Parasceve maioris hebdomadae publicae venerationi exhiberi solita commentarius; cui accedit ritus salutationis Crucis in Ecclesia Autiochena Syrorum servatus nunc primum Syriaee et Latine editus adnotation ibusque inlustratus auctore S.B. Romae. 1779 fol.

De cruce Veliterna commentarius. Romae. 1780. 4º

Dissertatione filologica sopra un antica gemma intagliata (Caloghiera A. Nuova raccolta d’Opuscoli III.) 1775. 12º

Marmorea monumenta Beatissimo.... Pio VI. Pont. Opt. Mar ... a Veliternis ... in palatio senatorio dedicata S. Borgia ... typis evulgari curavit. Velletri. 1775. 4º

Memorie Istoriche della Pontificia Città di Benevento dal secolo VIII al secolo XVIII, etc. Tom. I. II. III. Roma. 1763–9. 4º

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

Vaticana Confessio Beati Petri Principis Apostolorum, chronologicis tam veterum quam recentiorum scriptorum testimoniis inlustrata. Romae. 1776. 4º

“IMPROBE FACIT QUI “IN ALIQUO LIBRO “INGENIOSUS EST.” MARTIAE.

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. London & Edinburgh

-----

Footnote 1:

The epithet _Most Eminent_ (Eminentissimo) was granted to cardinals by the Lord Urban P.P. VIII, 1630. Prior to that, they were styled _Most Illustrious_ (Illustrissimo); or, in the case of the Cardinal-Dean and Cardinal-Nephews, _Most Honourable_ and _Most Worshipful_ (Osservantissimo, Colendissimo).

Footnote 2:

They claim descent from the Gens Julia. Their armorials show the Bear (Orsini) chained to the Column (Colonna) with the Imperial Eagle displayed in chief.

Footnote 3:

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

Footnote 4:

_Pater Patrum_; the official style of the Roman Pontiff.

Footnote 5:

The process of canonisation of King Ælfred, though initiated by a Majesty of England (himself a saint _by acclamation_), has not yet been completed by the Court of Rome after four hundred and fifty years.

Footnote 6:

Religion—a gathering together for a pious purpose. It was the fifteenth century equivalent for Order or Society.

Footnote 7:

The Lord Clement P.P. VII (Giulio de Medici), 1523–34, appears on Cellini’s lovely medals in a full beard. Probably, in His case, there was no choice; for, during the Sack of Rome in 1527 by the Lutheran Goths and Catholic Catalans of the Elect-Emperor, Carlos V., His Holiness was holding the Mola of Hadrian, or Castle of Santangelo, and enduring the hard privations of a siege. Afterwards He did not shave; and full beards became the fashion for the clergy. Later, the Lord Alexander P.P. VII (Flavio Chigi), made the Vandyke beard and upturned mustachio the clerical mode; and, later still, the whole face was shaved according to the present rule. But, at the time when the Cardinal of Avignon reflected upon the Cardinal of Trebizond’s beard, there appears to have been a distinct prejudice in favour of a shaven, indeed of a shorn, pope. This may be seen in the medals of popes and cardinals of the fifteenth century (when cleanliness was a mark of gentility), where the large tonsure and shaven faces are very noticeable.

Footnote 8:

In the Acta Consistorialia of the Vatican Secret Archives, this Pope is called Calixtus the Fourth, evidently by the stupidity of some Apostolic Scribe, who happened to know that one John, Abbot of Struma, called himself Calixtus III. (having got himself schismatically and uncanonically elected in the reign of the Lord Alexander P.P. III); and who had not the sense to know that the Holy Roman Church has the habit of ignoring pseudopontiffs and other pretenders.

Footnote 9:

Villanueva (I. 18,181) quotes two Bulls of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III, giving relics to the church at Xativa. On p. 51, Villanueva alludes to him as “_Don Alonso de Borja, natural de la Torre de Canals, bautizado en la Iglesia Collegial de Xativa, hoy S. Felipe, electo en 20 de Agosto de 1429 por el Legado de Martin V. Conservo el gobierno de esta Iglesia hasta el año en que murió, sienda yu Papa Calixto III. En 1457 concedió á esta Iglesia un jubileo en el dia de la Asuncion de nuestra Señora, imponiendo para la fabrica la contribucion de diez sueldos._”

Footnote 10:

The pontifical diadem, consisting of a conical cap woven of the plumage of white peacocks and encircled by three crowns of gold. It is sometimes called the Tiara, and must be distinguished from the Mitre.

Footnote 11:

The _fiorino d’oro_, _ducato d’oro_, and _scudo d’oro_ were coins worth about half a guinea, which, in the fifteenth century, had a purchasing value of £2 to £2 10_s._

Footnote 12:

The first printing-press in Italy did not arrive till October 1465 at Subjaco in the Sabine Hills.

Footnote 13:

The first Pontiff of this name, fifth in succession from the Lord St. Peter P.P., is named in the Canon of the Mass as XYSTUS [Ξυστός, _cf._ Xanthus (Ξάνθος)]. The same form XYSTUS occurs in the Kalendarium, and, in fact, in all officially issued liturgies; and is adopted also in the authorised English version of the Liturgy. The word SIXTUS does not appear to be a Latin word at all, and is not in Andrew’s Latin-English Lexicon. It most likely is a debased corruption from XYSTUS, when Latin liquefied into the Italian SISTO.

Footnote 14:

The business of these Orators (ambassadors) was conducted more by means of florid eloquence than by the writing of despatches; though, of course, the last was not neglected.

Footnote 15:

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

Footnote 16:

_Huszar_, derived by a roundabout route from Italian _cossaro_, corsair, freelance (v. Murray).

Footnote 17:

Pragmatic Sanction, term of Byzantine origin, was applied to Imperial Edicts (Τὸ Πραγματικόν) containing decrees issued as Fundamental Laws. The Decrees of the Council of Basilea were embodied in a Pragmatic Sanction by the Diet of Mainz, 1434; but at the Council of Vienna 1448 most of the advantages which it intended to secure for the Church in Germany were abandoned.

Footnote 18:

Sikelian—Greek—Latin.

Footnote 19:

Note his epitaph in the Church of Santa Maria _sopra_ Minerva, recorded by Ciacconi.

“Cardineo Divus Honore Decoravit Calixtus.”

Obviously the fifteenth century used “Divus” as Tacitus also used it of Julius and Augustus; and as the twentieth century would say “the late ——.”

Footnote 20:

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

Footnote 21:

The saving virtue of a drink of human blood was no new idea. Compare Tertullian Apol. IX. “_Item illi qui munere in arena noxiorum iugulatorum sanguinem recentem (de iugulo decurrentem exceptum) avida siti comitiali morbo medentes hauserunt, ubi sunt?_”

Footnote 22:

Only one piece of antique silver, a salt-cellar, was possessed by the House of Sforza in the latter years of the last century. All the rest was not recovered from that Don Marino Torlonia, who usurped the Sforza-Cesarini titles and estates from 1832 to 1836, when he was deprived of them by the Ruota, the Supreme Tribunal of the Holy See, in favour of Don Lorenzo Sforza-Cesarini, grandfather of the present duke. The line of the great Francesco Sforza-Visconti, Duke of Milan, to which Cardinal Ascanio Maria belonged, is now extinct. The present House of Sforza-Cesarini descends from Don Bosio Sforza, Count of Santafiora, 1441–1476, brother of the great Francesco, and second son of Don Giovanni Muzio Attendolo, detto Sforza.

Footnote 23:

This paragraph rests entirely upon the gossip and conjectures of Manfredi, Orator of Ferrara at Florence; Stefano Infessura (Ed. Tommasini); Hans Burchard (Ed Thuasne); Bernardino Corio (Storia di Milano).

Footnote 24:

For an English parallel of riotous superlatives, compare the inscription on a picture of Elizabeth in the Hall of the Post-Reformation Jesus College, Oxford.

“Diva Elizabetha Virgo Invictissima Semper Augusta Plus Quam Caesarea Angliæ Franciae et Hiberniae Potentissima Imperatrix Fidei Christianae Fortissima Propugnatrix Literarum Omnium Scientissima Fautrix Immenso Oceani Felicissima Triumphatrix Collegii Jesu Oxon Fundatrix.”

Footnote 25:

Sdegnati di questa collazione contro del Papa, il Re tenne il dì medesimo gran consiglio, dove furono proposte e trattate piu cose contro del Papa in riformatione della chiesa. (Dispatch of 31 Aug. 1493, Canestrini, Négociations avec la Toscane. I. 249.)

Footnote 26:

There is a tale about this personage, that, having allowed himself to be frightened by one of the calumnies of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, to the effect that the Pope expected to be paid for the red hat (in addition to the six hundred ducats which every cardinal offers in return for the cardinalitial sapphire ring), he became so nervous on Ash Wednesday, when it was his office to scatter ashes on the head of the Sovereign Pontiff, as to substitute for the formula of administration, “Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris,” the words “Memento, homo, quia Papa es, et ego pecunias non habeo.”

Footnote 27:

Infessura, in Eccard II. 2015. Alberi, Rel. Ven. Sen. III. 314. Rivista Cristiana II. 261. Ugolini, Storia ... d’Urbino II. Doc. 13. Ciacconi, Vitae Pontificum, sub anno. Gregorovius, Geschichts der Stadt VII. 340. Matarazzo, Cron. di Perugia in Archivio Storico xvi. See I. pt. ij. 3.

Footnote 28:

“Aiunt etiam multo vulgo inter illos iactari, regem Roman venturum et statum Romanae Ecclesiae reformaturum. (Letter from Cardinal of Siena to Pope, from Lucca, IIII. Nos. 1494.)

Footnote 29:

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

Footnote 30:

A most important inference may be drawn from this, as to the paternity of Cardinal Cesare.

Footnote 31:

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

Footnote 32:

“E molto necessaria la provisione de le genti d’ arme contro questi demonii che non fugono per acqua santa.” xvi. ful. 1497.

Footnote 33:

“Commensano nel primo modo offenderse et non dare loco ad mei commandamenti.” xxvii. ful. 1497.

Footnote 34:

“La S^a V^a po ben comprendere che tucto lo remedio di questi male in la venuta de la gente d’arme, le quali tardando piu forniscere el paese de Todi da desolare, essendo da la partita miu la cita totalmente derelicta et lassata vacua.” xxx. ful. 1497.

Footnote 35:

“Procedono le cose qui con tanta obedientia et quieta che meglio non si potriano desiderare.” xxx. ful. 1497.

Footnote 36:

“Du becharini homicidi ho facti piglia, et son stati senza tumulto et piacer del populo menati in presione—cosa da bon tempo in qua insolita in questa cita, et questi matina ne è stato appichiato uno.” 11 Aug. 1497.

Footnote 37:

This was quite a common torture. Every patrician had the right to inflict it on his plebeians; and every inventory of palaces begins with “Ropes for the Cord.” In many palaces and castles, iron rings through which the Cord was passed remain to be seen. The witness had his hands tied, hanging loosely behind him. One end of the long Cord was attached to his wrists; the other end was flung over a beam or through a ring and held by the official torturer. Then the witness delicately was drawn up as high as possible. He hung there by his wrists which were strained backward and upward, with his shoulders generally dislocated. Then, with a frightful jerk he was dropped to within a braccia (2 feet 7 inches) of the floor, completing the dislocation with a shock. At this moment, the Question was put; his answer distinguished from his shrieks, and written down. Any stubbornness, or insolence, or reticence, was met by attaching weights to his feet, and subjecting him to fresh elevations and fresh drops, till his arms were torn from the sockets and his sinews strained to the uttermost. Or, as a variant, he was left to hang until his questioner had obtained the information required. Evidence of commoners, without the Question, appears to have been considered by the Fifteenth Century as valueless as evidence unsupported by oath or affidavit and untested by cross-examination at the present day. The nearest modern equivalent to the Torture of the Cord would be the smelling of a greasy testament _plus_ the stratagems of a cross-examining counsel. It was merely a legal form.

Footnote 38:

“Una de las mas principales causas que dava, para que el Cardenal de Valencia dexasse el capelo era, porque siendo a quel Cardenal, mientras en la Iglesia estuviesse, era bastante para impedir que no se hiziesse in reformacion.”—Zurita, 126.

Footnote 39:

But She won a signal and decisive victory there, with the aid of Our Lady of Victory (Νιχή, Poliziano would have said), in 1572.

Footnote 40:

“Mores esse profligatos pietatis studium restinctum, flagitiorum licentiam solutam, sanctissimas pretio indignissimis addici—remque esse in extremum poene discrimen adductam.”—(Osorius De rebus gestis Emanuelis, Op. I. 595.)

Footnote 41:

“Italia tutta aviebbe dimostrato lui non esser vero pontifice.”—(Marino Sanuto in De Leva, 61.) “Que eran notorias las formas que se tuvieron en se eleccion, y quan graves cosas se intentaron, y quan escandalosas.”—Zurita, 159.)

Footnote 42:

Indulgentia = Indulgence, gentleness, complaisance, tenderness, fondness, a remission of punishment or taxation.—(Andrews, Latin-English Lexicon, 1853, p. 789.)

Footnote 43:

De Maricourt.

Footnote 44:

“Il Papa ama ed a gran paura del figliuolo duca.”—Alberi, Relationi III. iii. 10.

Footnote 45:

This title is hopelessly irregular. The _Princeps_ of the Holy Roman Empire only becomes _Caesar Romanorum Imperator Semper Augustus mundi totius Dominus universis dominis universis principibus et populis Semper Venerandus_ by the herald’s proclamation after he has been stripped, anointed, clothed in the consecrated dalmatica, ordained deacon, and crowned with the Iron Crown of Monza and the Gold Diadem of the Empire by the hands of the Supreme Pontiff Himself. The title at present is dormant. If the sovereign is of the Swabian House, precedent demands that he must go to Monza or to Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan for the Iron Crown, and to San Giovanni Laterano at Rome for the Gold Diadem. But Imperial coronations, (the sovereign not being of the Swabian House,) at the Pope’s pleasure have taken place elsewhere. Caesar Friedrich IV was the last Emperor crowned in Rome. Caesar Francis II was the last to wear the imperial crown. He resigned it in 1806, having taken the title of Emperor of Austria in 1804. Before coronation by the Pope the title of “The Elect-Emperor” is used; and that is all which Maximilian can claim.

Footnote 46:

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

Footnote 47:

Gregorovius F., _Lucrezia Borgia_.

Footnote 48:

The present writer once witnessed the reception, in all amity, by the present Sforza, of the present Pasolini dell’ Onda, who came peaceably to gain information for his book in praise of Madonna Caterina Sforza-Riario. A singular example of the old order changed and giving place to new.

Footnote 49:

“Per dar ad intender a tutti che ’l Signor over Signori hanno appiacer del tradimento, ma non del traditore.” Priuli. xxvi. July 1502.

Footnote 50:

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

Footnote 51:

“Aveva il duca gittate assai buoni fondamenti alla potenza sua, avendo tutta la Romagna con il ducato d’ Urbino, e guadagnatosi tutti quei populi, per avere incomminciato a gustare il ben essere loro.” (Machiavelli. Il Principe. Op. i. 35.)

Footnote 52:

“Se ne ha contentare costui, e non il Papa, e per questo le cose che si concludessino del Papa possono bene essere ritrattate da costui, ma quelle che si concludessino da costui non saranno gia ritrattate dal Papa.” (Dispatch from Cesena xiv. Dec. 1502.)

Footnote 53:

Arcuballistarius = cross-bow-man.

Footnote 54:

Arcuballista = cross-bow.

Footnote 55:

“Alcuni lo volevano far Re d’ Italia, e coronarlo, altri lo volevano fa Imperatore, perche ’l prosperava talmente, che non era alcuno li bastasse l’animo d’impedirlo in cosa alcuna.” (xi Jan. 1503.)

Footnote 56:

“Se nella morte di Alessandro fusse stato sano, ogni cosa gli era facile.” (Machiavelli, Principe, Op. I. 39.)

Footnote 57:

Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khaiyam, xvi.

Footnote 58:

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

Footnote 59:

A comical side-light on this naïve age is given in the Annales Bononiensis, (Muratori xxiii. 890) on the occasion of an outbreak of plague. Penitence, fasting, and flagellation were resorted to. Butchers closed their shops for eight days. And, that sorrow for sin was not confined to respectable people may be gathered from the fact that “meretrices ad concubita nullum admittebant. Ex eis quàdam quae cupiditate lucri adolescentem admiserat, depreheusâ, aliae meretrices ita illius nates nudas corrigiis percusserunt ut sanguinem emitteres.”

Footnote 60:

Here is a specimen of Mgr. Burchard’s or his copyist’s gross inaccuracy. He officially was responsible for the conduct of this function. He intimately should have known, and directed, every movement and every gesture of every assistant. And he names, among the cardinals-assistant, the Lord Giovanni Borgia (detto Seniore) Archbishop of Monreale, Cardinal-Presbyter of Santa Susanna, _who had been dead just eighteen days_.

Footnote 61:

_i.e._ in the usual manner, with all the ceremonies required for the obsequies of the pontifical cadaver: not surreptitiously or with maimed rites as some have said.

Footnote 62:

A dead Pope lies in state in the Chapel of the Trinity in St. Peter’s, surrounded by unbleached wax tapers, and with the feet protruded through the screen for the osculations of the faithful.

Footnote 63:

Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de’ Piccolhuomini, 1458–1464.

Footnote 64:

Qy. A concoction of cantharides? Or was it merely a name, like κανθαρίτης οὶνός? (Plin. 14. 7. 9.)

Footnote 65:

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

Footnote 66:

Ducato d’oro = half a guinea with four times its purchasing power. A million of gold ducats would equal £2,000,000 sterling.

Footnote 67:

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

Footnote 68:

The Venerable Servant of God, King Ælfred the Great of England, has not yet been styled “The Blessed.” Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII Tudor, only was admitted to the rank of “The Blessed” in 1886, by the Lord Leo P.P. XIII. He now publicly may be invoked by name, and his portraits decorated by a halo.

Footnote 69:

The Clerk of the Hanaper is the domestic in charge of the great gallon goblet called the hanaper.

Footnote 70:

“Mercurii xx Nov. fuit data sententia in Rota, contra Sebastianum Pinzonum, scriptorum apostolicum, absentem ob contumaciam, privationis omnium beneficiorum et officiorum” (_interesting to notice that, in the reign of the Lord Julius P.P. II, the eternal enemy of Borgia, a convict on the capital charge was merely ruined, and not sentenced to death_;) “pro quod eo dominum cardinalem Mutinensem patronum suum veneno interemisset, qui eum de stercore eximerat.”

Footnote 71:

“Fuit facta proba, in tribus animalibus porcinis, de aliquibus venenis, repertis in cancelleria, missis perantea a Vincencia, qua reperta sunt non esse bona.” (Secrets de l’État de Venise, Petersburg, 1884, p. 6.)

Footnote 72:

“_Christophori sancti faciem quicunque tuetur Illa nempe die mala morte non morietur._”

Footnote 73:

in Pentade Quaest. latrophilologicarum, p. 122. Ed. Geneva 1647, quoting Juan de Vigo, Lib. II, Chirug. Tract. II, 5.

Footnote 74:

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

Footnote 75:

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

Footnote 76:

Cf. Maricourt.

Footnote 77:

Decii Junii Juvenalis, Satura xiii.

Footnote 78:

Have these Bulls been rescinded? If not, it is possible that they form the ground of the dull and bitter and radical animosity of Spain and Portugal to Anglo-Saxondom of the present day. In the light of these Bulls, England and America are usurpers and excommunicate!

Footnote 79:

Ep. II to Cor. ii. 7.

Footnote 80:

Ep. to Eph. i. 21.

Footnote 81:

Ep. to St. Titus ii. 15.

Footnote 82:

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

Footnote 83:

When it becomes a question of blaming a priest or a Pope, the principle of proportion demands that the lesser should bear. Two modern Roman Catholics have presumed with “unctuous rectitude” to scold the Holiness of the Pope as follows:

“From a Catholic point of view, it is impossible to blame Alexander too severely.”—(History of the Popes. Pastor + Antrobus. VI. 139.)

This inhuman pronouncement is saved by the “a.” Comment is needless: but there is another “Catholic point of view.”

Footnote 84:

Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de’ Piccolhuomini.

Footnote 85:

Secret Archives of the duchies of Ossuna and Infantado.

Footnote 86:

Symonds, J. A. Renascence, II. 493–5.

Footnote 87:

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

Footnote 88:

Observe the chivalrous gentleness of the Borgian Era in regard to women, compared with the bald mercilessness of modern parochial and civil Registers. In these deeds of legitimation, the woman is never named, and not always the man. The weaker party is never punished by eternal gibbeting, by eternal record of her shame by name. She is always permitted to hide under the veil of _coniugata_, or _soluta_, “a married woman” or “a spinster.” Still, the Twentieth Century is humane to the wolf’s brother and the hyæna’s cousin; and nourishes a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: and perhaps that balances the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ humanity and chivalry to sex.

Footnote 89:

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

Footnote 90:

Vit. Synop. Stef. Borgiae S.R.E. Card. Ampliss. (Peter Paul of St. Bartholomew, discalced Carmelite. Rome, 1805, I. 2.)

Footnote 91:

It appears to be a little inconsistent of a Pope, Who wished Messer Rafaele Sanzio to paint Him with a Sword and not a book in His hand, to object to a Cardinal in a Breast-plate: _for the sword is the weapon of offence; but the Breast-plate, of defence merely_. But many terms in this Bull are simply “corroborative detail calculated to lend an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative”—simply words, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Footnote 92:

The Twentieth Century may be shocked to notice that, in the Sixteenth, England ranked as the fifth Power in Europe, _after Portugal_.

Footnote 93:

See _Menghini_. (_C. Canon_) Opinion ... upon the Question whether ... John Carmont D.D. incurred the Major Excommunication, etc. _J. Anderson and Son. Courier and Herald Offices, Dumfries. 1886_: and leading article in _Scotsman_, May 11th, 1886.

Footnote 94:

(Verg. Aen. XII. 419.)

Footnote 95:

These two charming personages used a most beautiful handwriting, neat, clear, well-mannered, decisive; as may be seen in the private Brief of the Lord Leo P.P. X, _placet et ita motu proprio mandamus_; and in the letter of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, dated April 1516; which are preserved in the British Museum 23.721.

Footnote 96:

Whistler counts his myopia as his chief talent.

Footnote 97:

Belriguardo. xi Jul. 1516.

Footnote 98:

Oratrice (oratrix) is a rare word = but perfectly classical; and its use shews that the Renascence of Learning had done something to improve ecclesiastical Latin, and, by consequence, Italian also.

Footnote 99:

Authorities for this sketch of Saint Francisco de Borja, General of Jesuits, and sometime Duke of Gandia, etc.

1. Ribadaneira. Life.

2. Cardinal Alvaro Cienfuegos. La heroica vida, etc. del grande San Francisco de Borja. Madrid 1717.

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

4. Sir James Stephen. Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.

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

The last was prepared under the auspices of the late Fr. John Morris, S.J.; and is useful in giving the modern English Jesuit point of view.

Footnote 100:

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

Footnote 101:

A second bastard of Archbishop Don Alonso de Aragona, also called Doña Juana, married Don Felipe of Austria, and became the mother of the Emperor Carlos.

Footnote 102:

Anciently Salduba, colonized by Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus B.C. 27, who called it Caesaraugasta; afterwards corrupted into Saragossa.

Footnote 103:

A plain gold band, studded with uncut gems, round whose inner rim runs one of the Nails that nailed our Divine Redeemer to the Cross of Calvary hammered into a flat band to press the brows of him who wears the Iron Crown. It may be seen enshrined in the Treasury of the Cathedral at Monza.

Footnote 104:

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

Footnote 105:

Milk and meat were forbidden during Lent, and on every Saturday throughout the year.

Footnote 106:

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

Footnote 107:

To enable the Borgia ladies sometimes to see their relations in the Monastery of Poor Clares, whose Rule is one of the strictest.

Footnote 108:

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

Footnote 109:

_La heroica vida, etc., del grande San Francisco de Borja, by Cardinal Alvaro Cienfuegos._ Madrid, 1717, III. i. 115.

Footnote 110:

_La heroica vida, etc., del grande San Francisco de Borja, by Cardinal Alvaro Cienfuegos._ Madrid, 1717, III. i. 115.

Footnote 111:

This Pontiff once was asked to give an opinion as to who had been the greatest Popes. He answered, St. Peter, St. Sylvester, Alexander VI and Ourself.

Footnote 112:

“Card Zappata ajebat frustra Card. Gasparem Borgia mores componere et a natura recedere, ut Pontificatum assequatur. Quandoquidem a multis annis Spiritus Sanctus non spiret in Hispania, Cubebat nihilominus fidem adhibere inani, et fatuae predictioni bovem tertio murgiturum. Quod assentatores interpretabantur ut post Calixtum III et Alexandrum VI, ipse tertius Pontifex renuntiantur, et famiglia Borgia, bovem in scuto ferens.” (_Arnidenio, in Vite m. s.s. de’ Cardinali_)

Footnote 113:

It would be very interesting to know how and when this title passed from the line of Prince Gioffredo Borgia into the line of his elder brother Don Juan Francisco de Borja the murdered Duke of Gandia; for Prince Gioffredo, married at fourteen, certainly originated a notable branch of Borgia, which, in the Seventeenth Century intermarried with the Orsini Duke of Gravina. It is most unusual for a title _to turn back_, as it were, and vest itself in another branch. And what has become of the principalities of Teano and Tricarico, and the counties of Chiaramonte, Lauria, and Cerignola which were held by the murdered Duke of Gandia, his son Don Juan II, and the son of the last St. Francisco de Borja?

Footnote 114:

All from _El Blason de España_, by Don Augusto de Burgos, III. i. 85–95.

Footnote 115:

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

Footnote 116:

Theuli, III. 335.

Footnote 117:

Ricchi, 251.

Footnote 118:

Theuli, III. 312–3.

Footnote 119:

While it indubitably is Christian, this epitaph shews that the modern sophistication, which has destroyed belief in the world to come, already had made its appearance in Italy. Death here is no longer regarded with the calm dignity perceivable in earlier epitaphs, (that of his lineal ancestor Don Pietrogorio Borgia, for example, on p. 434), but as a Horror and an End.

Footnote 120:

The Order of Malta, or of St. John of Jerusalem, was founded by Don Gerardo di Martiquez di Provenza, warden of the Hospital of St. John Baptist for Pilgrims, in 1098. The Hospitallers were dedicated to the service of the poor; and wore a black habit, with an eight-pointed Maltese Cross, in white, on the breast. They took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. The Regular Foundation was delayed till 1104 when Baldwin I was king in Jerusalem. The Rule was that of St. Aurelius Augustine; and the Order was finally confirmed by the Bull of the Lord Paschal P.P. II in 1113. Its Constitution admitted of Knights of Honour and Brothers of Devotion; the former swore to defend the Faith against all enemies, the latter to minister to pilgrims and afflicted. There were two badges, a cross of six points in gold enamelled white, and a crowned cross of eight points of the same, worn on a black riband. The Order had a Priory in London before the Reformation—St. John of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell—whose original gate and crypt may yet be seen. The present soi-disant Order which occupies this Priory has yet to shew authority for its existence.

Footnote 121:

P. E. Cav. Visconti in Tipaldo.

Footnote 122:

The Sforza-Cesarini, who in the Fifteenth Century intermarried with the Borgia, enjoy the Duchy of Segni at the present day.

Footnote 123:

Coronelli, Bibl. Univ. II. 870.

Footnote 124:

By his last will and testament, Cardinal King Henry IX bequeathed his rights in the English Crown to the descendants of Anna Maria d’Orleans, (daughter of Henrietta Stewart, and niece of King Charles I,) who married Duke Vittoramadeo of Savoja; from whom descends—not the Bavarian Princess of the Order of the White Rose, but—King Vittoremanuele III of Italy.

Footnote 125:

A ring belonging to Cardinal King Henry IX, containing miniatures of his father and mother, King James III and Queen Clementina, has found its way into the Fortnum Collection at the Oxford University Galleries.

Footnote 126:

“Benefices in Spain,” the possession of which is alleged as a crime in the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, appear to be common enough.

Footnote 127:

Miss Clementina Walkinshaw, Countess Alberstorf, the mistress of King Charles III.

Footnote 128:

The word _magnanimitá_ had undergone a change of meaning since the Sixteenth Century, when Messor Niccolo Machiavelli sneered that the Baglioni of Perugia shewed no _magnanimitá_, because they did not garrote the Lord Julius P.P. II, their guest.

Footnote 129:

Could any hint be more obscurely obvious, more insinuatory of compliment? Cardinal Borgia’s little trick of leaving the initiative(!) to John Bull is a master-stroke of Latin diplomacy, whose strength is, now, and ever, in the pulling of wires.

Footnote 130:

From the ANNUAL REGISTER, 1837, p. 147. “_xvii Sept. 1837. At the private chapel of the rt. rev. the bishop Griffiths, (Vicar-Apostolic of the London District) Caroline Shirley, only daughter of Robert Sewallis Shirley, Viscount Tamworth, to Don Lorenzo Sforza, Duca Sforza, only son of the late Don Francisco Sforza, Duca Sforza, of Rome_.”

(There is a slight inaccuracy in this notice. Duke Lorenzo should be described as _only surviving son_ of Don Francisco, not as _only son_; for Don Francisco’s elder son, Don Salvatore, died xix May 1832; and Don Francisco’s daughter Donna Anna, wife to Don Marino Torlonia, egregiously failed, before the Tribunal of the Ruota, to dispossess her younger brother the aforesaid Don Lorenzo, the legitimate son, born on the night between xvii and xviii of March 1807, to the aforesaid Don Francisco Sforza-Cesarini, by his wife the Duchess Geltruda de’ Conti. This hideous law-suit was the excitement of all Rome at the time.)

Footnote 131:

“Io qui mi trovo racchiuso in conclave per l’elezione del nuovo pontifice con trenta quatro Cardli, i quali avendo saputa la generositá Inglese verso dell’ Illustro loro Collega.”

Footnote 132:

It is too early yet to speak about the twentieth.

Footnote 133:

It was Mr. Oakley, heir of Sir Charles Oakley Bart., who was entrusted with this confidential and very delicate mission.

Footnote 134:

It should be said that loyalty to the Stewarts, as it has been here entreated of, implies no shadow of disloyalty to the present Royal House of England. The law of Prescriptive Right by itself would be sufficient to require the most dutiful allegiance on the part of all the subjects of Her Most Sacred Majesty the late Queen-Empress. But it may be said further, that, as far as Roman Catholics are concerned, the most ingeniously scrupulous conscience can have no possible doubt about its obligation, since the Lord Leo P.P. XIII accorded that formal Recognition of the late Queen’s Majesty as Queen, by the presence of an Apostolic Ablegate at the Jubilee of 1887. In the course of this book the immense importance which sovereigns of the Borgian Era attached to this Recognition has been shewn. They were ready to fight for it, knowing that without it they could not hope to stand. In the present instance it was not even asked for; and its spontaneous granting by the Roman Pontiff should emphasize the fact that, what formerly might have been a matter for discussion, is now an imperative religious duty, namely, undeviating loyalty to the Royal and Imperial Dynasty of Queen Victoria.

Footnote 135:

Ἀλκμήνη. It is curious to note the survival of Greek names in the ancient families of Etruria.

Footnote 136:

The Legion of Honour is a French Order founded during the Consulate of Napoleon Buonaparte, 20 Fiorile, An. x: ratified by the Christian King Louis XVIII on VI July, 1814. It is governed by a Grand Master who is the Emperor, King, or President of France according to the fashion. It contains five classes. The Knights and Officers wear silver crosses. The Commanders, Grand Officers and Grand Crosses wear the decoration in gold. The motto is HONNEUR ET PATRIE. (_Tettoni e Saladini. Teatro Araldico._)

Footnote 137:

The Order of the Two Sicilies were founded by Joseph Buonaparte, XXIV Feb. 1808, to recompense loyalty, courage, and long service. (_Tettoni e Saladini. Teatro Araldico._)

Footnote 138:

The Order of St. Gregory the Great was founded by the Lord Gregory P.P. XVI for Merit, Civil and Military, 1 Sept. 1831. There are four classes, viz. First, and Second Grand Cross, Commanders, and Knights. The obverse of the octagonal silver medal bears an eight-pointed cross in red enamel, with a shield in pretence shewing an effigy of the Lord St. Gregory P.P. I the Great (the Pope who sent St. Augustine to convert the English, A.D. 596.) The reverse bears the legend, PRO DEO ET PRINCIPE GREGORIUS XVI. P.M. ANNO I. (_Tettoni e Saladini. Teatro Araldico._)

Footnote 139:

On the second of April 1814, M. le Comte d’Artois permitted the National Guard of Paris to wear a silver Fleurdelys suspended from a white watered riband, in recognition of service. On the twenty-sixth of April, a Star was substituted for the Fleurdelys, and a blue border added to the white riband. The Decoration was called the Order of the Lily of France, and all _decorés_ made to swear an oath of fidelity to God, and of obedience to the King, (_Tettoni e Saladini. Teatro Araldico._)

Footnote 140:

Burckhardt, _Cultur de Renaissance_, see 5 ed. 2, p. 312. Gregorovius, _Lucrezia Borgia_, II 4. Janitschek, _Gesellschaft der Renaissance_, III.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

111 Pontificum, sub anno. Pontificum, sub anno. Gregorovius, Geschichts de Stadt Gregorovius, Geschichts der VII. 340. Matarazzo Stadt VII. 340. Matarazzo

193 following is suggested at an following is suggested as an explanation explanation

226 ‏בוווד‎––‏צמובה‎‎‎ ‏בוווו‎––‏צמרכד‎‎

● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● Enclosed blackletter font in =equals=. ● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like 1^{st}).