CHAPTER XII

ALEXANDER VI., THE BORGIA-POPE

Three grave issues had been laid before the Council of Constance: the repression of heresy, the ending of the Schism, and the reform of the Church "in head and members." In the third year of their labours the prelates and doctors put an end to the Schism and elected Martin V.; and the new Pope soon put an end to the Council before it could reform the Church. Martin was a Colonna of high ideals and considerable ability; but he was not well disposed to this democratic method of reform by Council, nor was he strong enough to sacrifice Papal revenue by suppressing the worst disorder, the Papal fiscal system. He returned to Rome, and the task of restoring the city and the Papal estates demanded such resources that he dare not abandon the corrupt practices of the Curia.

Two worthy and able Pontiffs followed Martin, and equally failed to bring about a reform. Eugenius IV., an austere, though harsh and autocratic, Venetian, found that his attempts to recover Papal territory and curb the Conciliar party would not permit him to reform the financial system. The reformers forced on him the Council of Basle in 1431, but its renewal of the Schism and creation of a last Anti-Pope, when he resisted its proposals, discredited the Conciliar movement. Reform must come from without: Popes and cardinals could not effect it, and in the prevailing creed there was no canonical basis for the action of a Council in defiance of them. Nicholas V., a quiet man of letters, crowned the financial and political work of his two predecessors with a great artistic restoration. He left politics to Æneas Sylvius and opened the gates of Rome to the fairer form of the Renaissance. Greek artists and scholars were now pouring into Italy--Constantinople fell to the Turks during this Pontificate (1453)--and fostering the growth of the Humanist movement. Rome began to assume its rich mantle of mediæval art, and the Papacy seemed to smile once more on a docile and prosperous Christendom.

But the restoration had been accomplished by an evasion of reform, and the new culture was sharpening the pens of critics. One of these inquisitive scholars, Lorenzo Valla, was actually declaring that the "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery. Many denounced, in fiery prose or with the cold cynicism of the epigram, the luxury and vice of the higher clergy. Heresy hardened in Bohemia, and, among the stricter ranks of the faithful, men like Nicholas of Cusa, John Capistrano, and Savonarola were raising ideals which, if they rebuked the laity, far more solemnly rebuked the clergy. And just at this critical period the Papacy entered upon a development which ended in the enthronement of Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X.; the Reformation inevitably followed.

At the death of Nicholas V., the Orsini and Colonna cardinals came to a deadlock in their struggle for the Papacy, and a neutral and innocuous alternative was sought in Alfonso Borgia (or, in Spanish style, Borja), a Spanish canonist of some scholarly distinction. Calixtus III., as he named himself, was a gouty valetudinarian who lay abed most of the day in pious conversation with friars. He very properly disdained the new art and culture, and saved the Papal funds to meet the advancing Turks. He had, however, one weakness, which was destined to prove very costly to the Papacy. There was a tradition of nepotism at Rome, and Calixtus had nephews. While he was Bishop of Valencia, his sister Isabella had come to him from Xativa, their native place, with her two sons, Pedro Luis and Rodrigo. When, in 1455, he became Pope, he sent Rodrigo to study at Bologna and enriched him with benefices. Pedro Luis was reserved for a lay career, and Juan Luis Mila, son of another sister, was sent with Rodrigo to Bologna.

At this time Rodrigo Borgia was in his twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year: an exceptionally handsome young Spaniard, with the most charming Spanish manners, and with rich sensuous lips and an eye for maidens which escaped his uncle's notice. He and his cousin were, within a year, made cardinals. In December (1456) he was appointed legate for the March of Ancona, and in the following May he was, in spite of the murmurs of the cardinals, promoted to the highest and most lucrative office at the Court, the Vice-Chancellorship. His elder brother became Duke of Spoleto, Gonfaloniere of the Papal army, and (in 1457) Prefect of Rome. Other needy Spaniards came over the sea in droves, and the disgusted Romans were soon ousted from the best positions. In 1458, however, Calixtus fell ill, and was reported to be dead; and the Romans chased the "Catalans" out of the city. Rodrigo at first retired with his more hated brother, but he courageously returned on August 6th, just in time to witness the actual death of his uncle.

Æneas Sylvius mounted the throne, under the name of Pius II., but the Humanists looked in vain for favour to that genial diplomatist, traveller, and _littérateur_. He had reached a gouty and repentant age, and his one pre-occupation was to stir a lethargic Christendom to a crusade against the Turks. Cardinal Rodrigo had been useful to him, reserving a vacant benefice for him now and again, so he kept his place and continued to win for himself wealthy bishoprics and abbeys. For a moment, in 1460, Rodrigo trembled. Pius had sent him to direct the building of a cathedral at Siena, and the Pope startled his Vice-Chancellor with a stern letter. Rodrigo and another cardinal, the Pope heard, had entertained a number of very frivolous young ladies for five hours in a private garden. They had excluded the parents of these girls, and there had been "dances of the most licentious character" and other things which "modesty forbids to recount." It was the talk of the town.[271] From the kind of dances and women which Alexander had in the Vatican long afterwards we can imagine the things which startled Siena. Rodrigo urged that there had been exaggeration, but the Pope, while admitting the possibility of this, again sternly bade him mind his behaviour.

The long discussion of the morals of Alexander VI. has, in fact, now ended in entire agreement that by the year 1460, at least, he was openly immoral. The Papal and other documents relating to his children--at least six in number--which have been found in the Vatican archives and in the private archives of the Duke of Ossuna show an extraordinary laxity at Rome. There is a Bull of Sixtus IV., dated November 5, 1481, legitimizing the birth of Pedro Luis Borgia, "son of a cardinal-deacon and an unmarried woman"; he is described as "a young man," and was probably born about 1460. There is the marriage contract of Girolama Borgia, dated 1482, which refers to the "paternal love" of the Vice-Chancellor; she must then have been at least thirteen years old. There is a document, dated October 1, 1480, dispensing from the bar of illegitimacy Cæsar Borgia, "son of a cardinal-bishop and a married woman"; and he is described as in his sixth year, or born about 1475. There is a deed of gift of Rodrigo to Juan Borgia, "his carnal son," whose birth must fall either in 1474 or 1476. There are documents referring to the celebrated Lucrezia, whose birth is generally put in 1478, and to Jofre Borgia, who was born about 1480; and there are documents from which we have--as we shall see later--the gravest reason to conclude that the Pope had a son in 1497 or 1498, when he approached his seventieth year. Except that a few hesitate, in face of the strongest evidence, to admit the last child, no serious historian of any school now questions these facts, and the evidence need not be examined in detail.[272]

At least four of these children were born of Vannozza (or Giovannozza) dei Catanei, a Roman lady who was the Cardinal's mistress from about 1460 to 1486. The story that she was an orphan entrusted to his care and seduced by him is not reliable. Nothing is confidently known about her early years, but her epitaph has been discovered, and it honours her, not only for her "signal probity and great piety," but because she was the mother of Cæsar, Juan, Jofre, and Lucrezia Borgia. Pedro Luis and Girolama may have been born of an earlier mistress, but it is not at all certain. Vannozza, who married three times, is constantly mentioned, by the ambassadors, as Borgia's mistress. She had a handsome mansion near the Cardinal's palace and the Vatican, and she entertained there and in her country house long after Borgia became Pope and replaced her by a younger mistress.

These monuments of parentage are almost the only evidences of the existence of Cardinal Borgia under Pius II. and Paul II. In 1471 a pious and learned Franciscan friar, Sixtus IV., assumed the tiara, and it is an indication of the strange temper of the times that under such a man the Papal Court became more corrupt than ever.[273] Sixtus vigorously restored the secular rule of the Papacy and encouraged the artistic and cultural development, but his nepotism was shameless and profoundly harmful. One of the nephews whom he drew from the obscurity of a Franciscan monastery and made a prince of the Church was Pietro Riario, who spent 260,000 ducats,[274] and within two years of his promotion wore out his life in the most flagrant dissipation. His immense palace, with its magnificent treasures, its five hundred servants in scarlet silk, and its prodigious banquets, was the home of every species of vice; and it is said that his chief mistress, Tiresia, flaunted eight hundred ducats' worth of pearls on her embroidered slippers. Another nephew was the sterner, though also immoral, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere--also brought from a monastery--whom we shall know as Julius II. Other cardinals promoted by the friar-Pope were equally notorious for their indulgence and for the unscrupulous quest of money to sustain it.

From the Bulls of Sixtus which I have quoted, it is clear that he was acquainted with the vices of Borgia, yet he sent him as legate to Spain, to excite interest in the crusade, in the spring of 1472. In spite of some compliments, it does not appear that Borgia did more than impress his countrymen with his display and gallantry, and he returned toward the close of 1473 and built one of the most stately palaces in the rich quarter which was now rising round the Vatican. When Sixtus died, in 1484, he made a resolute effort to get the tiara. The dispatches of the ambassadors who now represented the northern States at the Vatican afford us a valuable means of checking the chroniclers, and they put it beyond question that Borgia and Giuliano della Rovere entered upon a corrupt rivalry for the Papacy. Giuliano was now a tall, serious-looking man of forty: reserved in speech and brusque in manners, a good soldier and most ambitious courtier. Although he was known to have children, he kept a comparatively sober household and reserved his wealth for special occasions of display and for bribery. Borgia was his senior by thirteen years, but he had the buoyancy, gaiety, and sensuality of a young man. He, too, kept a moderate table and gambled little, but his amours were notorious and one could not please him better than by providing a ballet of handsome women. To these wealthy "up-starts" the haughty Orsini and Colonna were bitterly opposed, and the announcement of the death of Sixtus let loose a flood of passion. The splendid mansion of Count Riario, another nephew of the late Pope, was sacked, the Orsini entrenched themselves on Monte Giordano, and the other cardinals filled their halls with armed men.

In the Conclave it was soon apparent that neither Rodrigo nor Giuliano could command the necessary two thirds of the votes, and they agreed to adopt Cardinal Cibò, a Genoese noble who had outburned the passions of youth before he entered the service of the Church. During the night of August 28-29, when the supporters of Cardinal Barbo (who seemed to be sure of election) had confidently retired to their cells, Rodrigo and Giuliano, by intrigue and bribery, secured a majority for Cibò.[275] He became Innocent VIII. the next morning, and during the eight years of his amiable and futile Pontificate the College of Cardinals steadily sank. Innocent's natural son was drawn from his decent obscurity and made one of the richest and fastest nobles of Rome; and women were hardly safe even in their own homes when Franceschetto Cibò roamed the streets at night, with his cut-throats, in one of his wine-flushed moods. He took so ardently to the new cardinalitial pastime of gambling that in one night he lost 100,000 ducats to Cardinal Riario. Cardinal la Balue left at his death a fortune of 100,000 ducats. Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, brother of the ruler of Milan, was the leading sportsman of Roman society. Cardinal Lorenzo Cibò owed his red hat to the fortunate circumstance that he was an illegitimate son of the Pope's brother. Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who was one day to be Leo X., had received the tonsure in his eighth year and the title of cardinal in his fourteenth. Cardinals Savelli, Sclafenati, and Sanseverino were members of the fast and luxurious group. Each cardinal maintained a large palace, with hundreds of gay-liveried servants and ready swordsmen, and the wealthier seem to have studied with care the pages in which Macrobius describes the exquisite or colossal banquets of the older pagans. Each--apart from the minority of grave and virtuous cardinals--had his faction in the city, and, as carnival time approached, they were engrossed for weeks in the preparation of the superb cars and brilliant troops of horse by which each sought to prove his superior fitness for the chair of Gregory I. and Gregory VII. Innocent VIII. smiled; and the thunders gathered beyond the Alps.

The state of Rome was in accord with the state of the Sacred College. We may hesitate to believe Infessura when he tells us that, if criminals were by some chance arrested, they bought their liberty at the Vatican; but we have in Burchard's Diary a sombre, incidental indication of the condition of Rome. There is in modern literature some tendency to look with indulgent eye on the coloured gaiety of late mediæval Rome, but--to say nothing of the ideals which the cardinals professed--the insecurity of life and property and the widespread brutality show that this license was far removed from genuine Humanism. Some years later, when Rodrigo's son Juan was murdered, a boatman said, when they asked why he had not reported seeing a body cast into the river, that it was not customary to have any inquiry made into a nightly occurrence of that kind. Rodrigo Borgia, the Vice-Chancellor, paid no heed to this condition of the city. He added year by year to the long list of his bishoprics and emoluments, and prepared to renew the struggle for the tiara. He lost, or discarded, Vannozza when she married her third husband in 1486 and entered upon a more sordid and equally notorious _liaison_. His cousin, Adriana Orsini, had charge of a young orphan, Giulia Farnese, a very beautiful, golden-haired girl. She married Adriana's son, Orso Orsini, in 1489--her fifteenth year--and at the same time became the Cardinal's mistress. Adriana was rewarded with a considerable influence and the charge of the young Lucrezia Borgia.[276]

The death of Innocent on July 25, 1492, led to fierce intrigue and passionate encounters. There were more than two hundred murders in Rome during the fourteen days before the Conclave, for which twenty-two cardinals were, on August 6th, immured in the Sistine Chapel. Giuliano della Rovere had spoiled his prospect by too patent a use of his influence on Innocent VIII., and Borgia set himself to win the next most important rival, Ascanio Sforza. Historians sometimes smile at the statement of Infessura, that four mule-loads of silver passed from Borgia's palace to that of Sforza, but it is not improbable. For some centuries there had been a custom (abolished a few years later by Leo X.) of sacking the palace of the cardinal who was elected Pope, and it was not unusual to take precautions. Borgia may have sent the silver on this pretext, as Infessura suggests, and he would hardly expect it to be returned. It is, in fact, now certain that Sforza was bribed with gifts far more valuable than Borgia's table silver; Borgia offered, and afterwards gave him, his splendid palace, the Vice-Chancellorship, the bishopric of Erlan (worth 10,000 ducats a year), and other appointments. The sober Cardinal Colonna accepted the abbey of Subiaco (or 2000 ducats a year). Eleven cardinals seem to have sold their votes, and Borgia already had three supporters and his own vote. He secured his majority and hastily retired behind the altar, where Papal vestments of three sizes were laid out, and the genial Romans presently roared their greetings to Alexander VI.[277]

Rome and Italy then sustained their parts in the comedy. Alexander, although now sixty years old, was a vigorous and capable man, and some advantage would be expected from his Pontificate. But one's sense of humour is excited when one reads in Burchard's Diary, or in the letter (reproduced by Thuasne) written by the General of the Camaldolite monks, the description of the rejoicings at Rome. After the coronation at St. Peter's on August 27th, Alexander received, on the steps of the great church, the greetings of the orators who represented the northern cities. One wonders what was the countenance of the massed prelates and nobles when the Genoese orator read: "Thou art so adorned with the glory of virtue, the merit of discipline, the holiness of thy life ... that we must hesitate to say whether it is more proper to offer thee to the Pontificate or to offer that most sacred and glorious dignity to thee." And, as Alexander passed in stately procession to the Lateran, he read on the triumphal arches which adorned the route, such maxims as "Chastity and Charity," and "Great was Rome under Cæsar, now is she most great. Alexander the Sixth reigns: Cæsar was a man, this is a God."

I make no apology for inserting these apparently trivial details in so condensed a narrative. They, most of all, illumine the next momentous phase of the history of the Papacy. In that year, 1492, a little German boy, named Martin Luther, sat at his books in the remote town of Mansfeld.

Infessura records that Alexander opened his Pontificate with large promises and small instalments of reform. He was going to improve the condition of Rome and the Church, to pacify Italy, and to check the Turks; he would remove his children from Rome and reduce the number of sinecures at the Curia. He did, in fact, make a drastic beginning of the administration of justice, and even appointed certain hours during which he would himself hear grievances. Possibly he had a sincere mood of reform; though we are not disposed to be charitable when we recall the appalling levity with which, a few years later, after the murder of his son, he returned to vicious ways. Whatever his initial mood was, he soon entered upon courses which made his Pontificate one of the most degraded in the annals of the Papacy. Modern research has discredited some of the most romantic crimes attributed to him, but it leaves on his memory an indictment which no eager search for good qualities can materially lessen.

He sustained the scandal of his personal conduct until the end of his life, and I will dismiss it briefly. During the first four years of his Pontificate, the youthful Giulia Orsini was his chief _favorita_--others are occasionally mentioned with that title by the ambassadors--and she was known to the wits of Rome as "the Spouse of Christ." She and Adriana Orsini and Girolama (the Pope's elder daughter) are described as "the heart and eyes of Alexander," and suitors had to seek their favour. When Giulia's brother Alexander received the red hat (Sept. 20, 1493), Rome gave the future Pope--who was by no means without personal merit--the name of "The Petticoat Cardinal." When her daughter Laura was born in 1497, the Pope was generally believed to be the father; though that remains a mere rumour. Pucci, in one of his dispatches, gives us a quaint picture. Giulia lived in Lucrezia's palace, apart from her husband, and, when the ambassador called one day in 1493, she dressed her long golden hair in his presence, and insisted that he must see the baby; and he remarks that the baby was "so very like the Pope that one can readily believe he was the father." Giulia was an almost indispensable figure for some years at the domestic (and even greater than domestic) festivities in the Vatican, laughing with the cardinals at the prurient comedies and still more prurient dances which enlivened the sacred palace.[278]

The last child attributed to him, though not accepted by all the authorities, seems to have been born in 1496 (his sixty-sixth year). There is a document dated September 1, 1501, legitimizing a certain Juan Borgia, but there are two versions of this document.[279] The first version describes him as the child of Cæsar Borgia: the second says that he was born "not of the said Duke, but of us [Alexander] and the said married woman." Creighton made the singular suggestion that possibly Alexander was giving prestige to an illegitimate offspring of his son, but it is now agreed that the second version is the more authentic; it was to be kept in reserve for some grave dispute of his rights. The distinguished Venetian Senator Sanuto tells us[280] that, according to letters received from the Venetian ambassador at Rome and from private persons, the Pope had, about this time, a child by a married Roman lady, with the connivance of her father, and that the angry husband slew his father-in-law and stuck his head on a pole, with the inscription: "Head of my father-in-law, who prostituted his daughter to the Pope." These concurrent testimonies are grave. Most historians now rightly reject the charge that Alexander was intimate with his daughter Lucrezia, since it rests only on bitterly hostile Neapolitan gossip; but we cannot so easily set aside the persistent statements of the ambassadors that a new _favorita_ appears at the Vatican from time to time. These were sometimes ladies of Lucrezia's suite.

Lucrezia, a merry, childish-looking, golden-haired girl, with her father's high spirits and constant smile, is not likely to have remained virtuous in such surroundings, but there is no serious evidence of incest. Before her father's election she was betrothed to a Spanish youth of moderate family, but her father cancelled the espousals and married her, at the Vatican, in 1493, to Giovanni Sforza. She was then, it is calculated, fifteen years old. Twelve cardinals and a hundred and fifty of the great ladies of Rome attended the wedding; and some of the prettier ladies remained to sup with the Pope and cardinals, and applaud the loose comedies he provided. Giulia and Lucrezia were present. When the Pope's policy estranged him from Milan, he forced Lucrezia's husband to swear that the marriage had not been consummated, and dissolved it. It seems probable that Giovanni, in revenge, then put into circulation the suggestion of incest. Lucrezia married Alfonso of Naples, who was murdered by her brother in 1500. She then married the son of the Duke of Ferrara: and there is perhaps no more terrible indictment of the Papal Court under Alexander than the fact that, when his daughter was removed from it to Ferrara, she earned, and kept until her death, a just repute for virtue and benevolence.

These marriages introduce us to Alexander's political activity, on which some recent historians have passed a somewhat lenient judgment. Apart, however, from the treachery and brutality with which his aims were often enforced, we shall find that at his death he left the Papacy almost landless and impoverished, and we must conclude that his chief objects were his personal security and the aggrandizement of his children.

At the time of Alexander's accession, the duchy of Milan was improperly held by Lodovico Sforza, brother of the Cardinal Ascanio, who sought to convert his temporary regency into a permanent sovereignty. In this ambition he had the support of France, while Ferrante of Naples endeavoured to enforce the claim of the rightful Duke, Giovanni Galeazzo. Alexander's indebtedness to Ascanio bound him at once to the Sforzas, and the imprudence of Ferrante in helping his commander, Virginio Orsini, to purchase from the nephew of the late Pope certain towns which Alexander regarded as Papal fiefs, gave him an occasion for animosity. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was implicated in this sale, and when the Pope angrily rebuked him, he fled to Ostia and fortified that commanding town. Alarmed at this cohesion of his enemies and the support of their designs by Florence, Alexander entered into a counter-league with Milan, Venice, Siena, Ferrara, and Mantua, and married his daughter to Giovanni Sforza. Ferrante, however, appealed to Spain, submitting (with the support of Cardinal della Rovere) that the corrupt election and profligate life of Alexander demanded the attention of a General Council, and the Pope sought a compromise. The matter of the towns in Romagna was adjusted, Alexander's son Jofre was betrothed to an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso of Calabria, and his younger son, Juan, Duke of Gandia, was wedded to a Spanish princess. Cæsar was destined for the Church and was made a cardinal on September 20, 1493. As Alexander had sworn before his election not to create new cardinals, and now calmly absolved himself from his promise and promoted several, the hostile cardinals again angrily deserted him.

Ferrante died on January 27, 1494, and the Pope had to confront a delicate problem. France, instigated by Milan, pressed a claim to the kingdom of Naples, and Alfonso II. demanded the investiture in succession to Ferrante. Charles of France refused to be consoled with the Golden Rose which Alexander sent him in refusing to recognize his claim to Naples, and he threatened a General Council or a separation of the French Church. When Alexander proceeded to take Ostia by force, driving Cardinal Giuliano to France, and sent Cæsar to crown Alfonso at Naples, the French monarch announced that he would lead his army into Italy in order to recover Naples, to reform the Church, and to conquer the Turks. The latter purpose furnished the Pope with a pretext for a disgraceful move. Djem, the brother of the Sultan Bajazet, had been enjoying the dissipations of Rome since 1489, and Bajazet paid the Papacy 40,000 ducats a year to keep his younger brother in this gilded captivity. Since Alexander's accession, Bajazet had refused to pay the fee, and the Pope now wrote to the Sultan to say that the King of France was coming to seize Djem and make him the pretext for a war on the Turks; Bajazet must at once send 40,000 ducats to enable him to resist the French. The Sultan sent the money, but his and the Pope's envoy were captured by Cardinal della Rovere's brother, and were relieved of the money and the Sultan's letter. When this letter was published, Christendom learned with horror that the Sultan had offered its Pope 300,000 ducats if he would have Djem assassinated.[281]

Of the war which followed little need be said. As the victorious French advanced, Alexander tremblingly vacillated. At one moment he imprisoned the pro-French cardinals, and then released them; and at another moment he packed his treasures for flight, and then decided to meet the French King. Alfonso bewailed that the Pope's arm was too weak or too cowardly to launch an anathema against the invader. In the end the Pope met and disarmed Charles. To the intense disgust of Giuliano della Rovere, who had come with the King in expectation of the tiara, he persuaded Charles that an Italian, even in the chair of Peter, could hardly be expected to lead a saintly life; and to the equal indignation of Alfonso he, while refusing to recognize Charles's claim to the throne of Naples, abandoned the Neapolitan alliance and gave his son Cæsar as a hostage of his good behaviour. With similar treachery to the Sultan he abandoned Djem to Charles, yet stipulated that the yearly 40,000 ducats should still go to the Papal treasury.[282]

Charles took Naples, and soon learned that the versatile Pope had, behind his back, entered into a league against him with Maximilian of Germany, Ferdinand of Spain, Venice, and Lodovico Sforza. Alexander prudently quitted Rome when the French King returned, and flung after him a feeble threat of anathema, as he was cutting his way through the allies. But by the aggrandizement of his family he made an evil use of the peace which followed. Cæsar was made legate for Naples and his nephew Juan legate for Perugia; and to his favourite son Juan, Duke of Gandia, he assigned the important Papal fief of the duchy of Benevento, to be held by him and his heirs for ever. Even loyal cardinals grumbled at the scandal, while the outspoken and more distant critics spread in every country the story of his private life. Alexander, delivered from the menace both of France and Naples, cast aside all restraint. But his gaiety was soon darkened by a grave tragedy, and it is, perhaps, the most precise and most damning characterization of the man to record that even this appalling catastrophe, occurring near the close of his seventh decade of life, did not disturb for more than a few months the licentious course of his conduct.

On June 14, 1497, Vannozza gave a banquet to her sons and a few friends in the suburbs. Cæsar and Juan returned to the city together, and were joined by a masked man who had for some weeks been seen in communication with the young Duke. Juan left his brother with a light hint that he had an assignation, and the same night he was murdered and his body thrown into the Tiber. We are as far as contemporaries were from identifying the murderer. That it was Cæsar Borgia few serious historians now believe. That suggestion did not arise until nine months after the murder, and the motives alleged are not convincing. It is more plausibly claimed that the Sforzas and the Orsini adopted this means of striking at the heart of the Pontiff, but it is equally possible that Juan incurred the penalty of some dangerous seduction. I am concerned only with Alexander. Appalled by this sudden clouding of his prosperity, the Pope summoned his cardinals and announced with tears that he would remove his children from Rome and abandon his corrupt ways. Six cardinals were at once appointed to draw up a scheme of Church-reform, and the draft of a Bull, which is still to be seen in the Vatican archives, shows with what devotion Cardinals Costa and Caraffa and their colleagues applied themselves to the long-desired task. But before the end of the year Alexander had returned to his vices and abandoned the idea of reform. He informed the cardinals that he wished to release Cæsar from membership of their College, in order that he might be free to contract an exalted marriage and pursue his ambition; and it was then (December, 1497) that he brought about the shameless divorce of Lucrezia from Giovanni Sforza. The Vatican chambers resumed their nightly gaiety.

The Orsini and the Colonna now buried their ancient and deadly feud and united with Naples, and the demand for a General Council was ominously echoed in Germany and Spain. Alexander sought at first a counterpoise in Naples, and wished to marry Cæsar and Lucrezia into the family of Alfonso. After some hesitation, and with marked reluctance, Alfonso II. gave his natural son Alfonso to Lucrezia, but he refused, in spite of the political advantage, to degrade his daughter Carlotta by a marriage with Cæsar. It is not immaterial to observe that Cæsar had, like four other cardinals of the Church, contracted the "French disease" which was then so fiercely punishing the vice of Italy. It happened that at that time Louis XII. sought a divorce, and, at first in the hope of bringing pressure on Naples, Cæsar, after resigning the cardinalate on August 17th, was sent to gratify and impress the French Court. Even Giuliano della Rovere, who lived quietly at Avignon, was induced to enter the intrigue. Carlotta and her father still disdained the connexion, but Louis offered Cæsar his young and beautiful niece, Charlotte d'Albret, and the counties of Valentinois and Diois. They were married on May 22d (1499), and the Papal policy entered upon a new phase.

The Papacy and Venice, preferring their selfish interests to the welfare of Italy, allied themselves with France, and for the hundredth time an invading army descended upon the plains of Lombardy. Spain and Portugal were now angrily threatening to have the Pope--who, with equal warmth, accused Isabella herself of unchastity--tried by a General Council for his scandalous actions, and he and Cæsar formed the design of establishing, with the aid of the French, a strong principality for Cæsar in central Italy. The Neapolitan alliance was discarded, and Bulls were issued to the effect that the Lords of Rimini, Pesaro, Imola, Faenza, Forli, Urbino, and Camerino had failed to discharge their feudal duties to the Papacy and had forfeited their fiefs. The victorious progress of Cæsar in these territories was checked for a time by a revolt at Milan, but that city was retaken by the French in 1500. The successful Jubilee of 1500, which at one time drew 100,000 pilgrims to Rome, filled the coffers and helped to exalt the spirit of the Pope. His character, indeed, seemed to become more buoyant and defiant as his age advanced. During that year he had a narrow escape from death, owing to the fall of the roof of the Sala de' Pape, and Lucrezia's husband was cut to pieces in his chamber by the soldiers, and at the command, of Cæsar. These events hardly dimmed the joy of the Pope. Cæsar received the Golden Rose and was made Gonfaloniere of the Church; and he was permitted to appropriate a large share of the Jubilee funds and to exact large sums from the cardinals whom the Pope promoted in 1500. Meantime, the ambassadors relate, Giulia Orsini retained her influence over the seventy-year old Pope, and other _favorite_ made a transient appearance at the Vatican.

The next two years were employed in the establishment of Cæsar's power in Romagna and the reduction of the Pope's personal enemies. Louis of France and Ferdinand of Spain drew up their famous, or infamous, scheme for the partition of Naples, and Alexander conveniently discovered for them, and proclaimed in a Bull, that Federigo of Naples had, by an alliance with the Turks, become a traitor to Christendom. The fall of Naples involved the ruin of the Colonna, and they and the Savelli were condemned to lose their estates for rebellion against the Holy See. From part of these estates the Pope formed the duchy of Sermoneta for Lucrezia's two-year-old son, Rodrigo, and the duchy of Nepi was bestowed on his own infant son Juan. Alexander next turned his attention to Ferrara, and, when Venice and Florence forbade him to attack it, he arranged a marriage of the widowed Lucrezia with the Duke's son Alfonso: overcoming the abhorrence of the proud Este family by the influence of Louis XII. and by a grant to the Duke of all Church-dues in Ferrara for three years. From Ferrara, when it fell to his sister, Cæsar would have a comparatively easy march on Bologna, if not Florence.

So the year 1501 ended in such rejoicings as the fortune of the Borgia family inspired. At the date October 11, 1501, Burchard dispassionately notes in his diary that the Pope was unable to attend to his spiritual duties, but was not prevented from enjoying, in the Vatican, a "chestnut dance" and other performances of fifty nude courtesans whom Cæsar introduced.[283] Lucrezia, whose purity some recent writers are eager to vindicate, was present with her father and brother. On December 30th she was married. Alexander gave her the finest set of pearls in Europe and 100,000 ducats; and for a week Rome enjoyed such spectacles and bull-fights as had not been seen for years. Within the Vatican such comedies as the _Menæchmi_ of Plautus were enacted before the Pope and his family and cardinals. Even tolerant Italy now broke into caustic criticisms, and Cæsar replied vigorously by the daggers of his followers. The Pope genially urged him to let men talk.

The last phase is, in its way, not less repulsive. By heartless treachery and brilliant fighting Cæsar spread his sway over central Italy and Alexander watched and spurred his progress. The Pope's attendants had to endure unaccustomed fits of anger and abuse when his son did not advance rapidly enough. He treacherously arrested Cardinal Orsini; and the Cardinal's aged mother, who was ejected from her palace, had to send to the Pope (by Orsini's mistress) a magnificent pearl which Alexander coveted before she was allowed to provide her son with decent food. Cardinal Orsini died, and his property was confiscated. Cardinal Michiel died, and his fortune of 150,000 ducats was appropriated. The College of Cardinals trembled and the famous legend of the Borgia poison spread over Italy.[284] Nine new cardinals, mostly of unworthy character, were created and are said to have paid 130,000 ducats for the dignity, and 64,000 ducats were raised by inventing new offices in the Curia. Alexander, although seventy-two years old, was in robust health, and looked forward to years of pleasure under the protection of his victorious son. And one night in the unhealthy heat of August (the 5th or 6th) he and Cæsar sat late at supper with Cardinal Adriano da Corneto. Romance has it that the poisoned wine they intended for their host was served to them: modern history is content with the known malaria of an autumn night.[285] On August 18th Alexander died, and both Cæsar and Cardinal Adriano were seriously ill.

Of other actions of Alexander his connexion with Savonarola alone demands some consideration, and it must be treated briefly. On July 25, 1495, Alexander, in friendly terms, summoned Savonarola to Rome to give an account of the prophetic gifts he claimed. Alexander was very tolerant of criticisms of his vices, except where they might provoke kings to summon a council, and it is probable that he wished to silence the politician rather than the preacher; Savonarola vigorously supported the idea of an alliance of Florence with France, which the Pope opposed. Savonarola evaded the summons to Rome, and the Pope suspended him from preaching and endeavoured to destroy his authority by joining the San Marco convent to the Lombard Congregation. Savonarola defeated the Pope on the latter point, and on February 11, 1496, he returned to his pulpit, in defiance of the Pope's order and at the command of the Signoria of Florence. In explanation of his act he urged that Alexander's Brief was based on false information and invalid, and he denounced Roman corruption more freely than ever. Alexander, in November, directed that a new congregation should be formed out of the Roman and Tuscan convents,[286] and when Savonarola and his monks again defeated the project, the Pope had recourse to secular measures.

A mind like that of the exalted and feverish preacher was not likely to escape error and exaggeration in such circumstances, and his opponents in Florence made progress. Alexander now offered the coveted possession of Pisa to the Signoria if they would desert Savonarola and the idea of a French alliance. The monk was forbidden by the authorities to preach, and his defiance of the Signoria as well as the Papacy led to disorders of which the Pope took advantage to publish a sentence of excommunication (June 18, 1497). Alexander had meantime again listened to entreaties of delay and inquiry, but when he heard that the monk defied his anathema he said that the sentence must take its course. Up to this point the Pope had, in view of the very strong support which Savonarola had at Florence, proceeded with moderation, though we may resent the insincerity of his attack; it was not the prophecies, but the policy and the puritanism, of Savonarola which interested him. He complained bitterly to the Florentine ambassadors of Savonarola's attacks on himself and the cardinals, and was, as always, alarmed by the monk's demand of a General Council. However, the monk, not realizing the progress made by his enemies, struck a louder note of defiance, and on the plea of the public disorders to which he gave rise, he was arrested and put on trial. Alexander willingly granted the authorities a tithe on the ecclesiastical property at Florence when they announced the arrest. The sensitive monk was, by torture, driven into some vague disavowal of his supernatural pretensions, and he and two other friars were, on May 23, 1498, hanged by the Florentine authorities as "heretics, schismatics, and contemners of the Holy See." The sentence, however corruptly obtained, was technically just, since in the legislation of the time contumacious defiance of the Papacy implied heresy; but the respective positions of Savonarola and Alexander VI. in the history of religious progress are a sufficient monument to the bravery and inflexibility of the great Florentine puritan.

There are few good deeds to be put in the scale against the crimes and vices of Alexander VI. He made a considerable, though futile, effort to rouse Christendom against the advancing Turks. He fortified Sant' Angelo, and engaged Pinturicchio to decorate the Vatican apartments. He pressed the propagation of the faith in the New World, ordered the examination and authorization of printed books, endeavoured to check heresy in Bohemia, and vigorously defended the rights of the Church in the Netherlands. These things cannot alter our estimate of his character. He was a selfish voluptuary of--in view of his position--the most ignoble type; he countenanced and employed fraud, treachery, and crime; and the condition in which we shall soon find the Papacy will show that his policy had not the redeeming merit of effecting the security of the institution over which he ignominiously presided.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 271: The letter is given in Raynaldus, _Annales Ecclesiastici_, year 1460, n. 31, and is translated in Bishop Mathew's _Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia_ (1912), p. 35. It is misrepresented in Baron Corvo's _Chronicles of the House of Borgia_ (1901, p. 64). The chief apologist for Alexander, A. Leonetti (_Papa Alessandro VI._, 1880), made the easy suggestion that the letter was a forgery, but Cardinal Hergenroether found the original in the Vatican archives. See the able essay by Comte H. de L'Épinois (another Catholic writer) in the _Revue des Questions Historiques_ (April 1, 1881), p. 367. He shows, by the use of original documents, that the apologetic efforts of Ollivier, Leonetti, and a few others, are futile. Of these efforts the leading Catholic historian of the Papacy, Dr. L. Pastor, observes: "In the face of such a perversion of the truth, it is the duty of the historian to show that the evidence against Rodrigo is so strong as to render it impossible to restore his reputation" (_The History of the Popes_, ii., 542).]

[Footnote 272: The decisive documents, from the archives of the Duke of Ossuna, are published by Thuasne in his edition of Burchard's _Diarium_ (Appendix to vol. iii.). Dr. Pastor (ii., 453) has a good summary of them, and there is other evidence in the _Lucrezia Borgia_ of Gregorovius. See also the essay of Comte H. de L'Épinois, quoted above, and "Don Rodrigo de Borja und seine Söhne," by C.R. von Höfler, in the _Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften_, Bd. 73. The chief original authorities are J. Burchard (_Diarium_, edited by Thuasne, 3 vols., 1884) and S. Infessura (_Diario_, in Muratori, iii.), and the despatches of the Italian ambassadors at Rome. Burchard and Infessura are gossipy and hostile, and must be controlled. Recent works on the Borgias are too apt to reproduce lightly the romantic statements of later Italian historians or contemporary Neapolitan enemies. The work of Bishop Mathew, to which I have referred, is less judicious than his volume on Hildebrand. Bishop Creighton's _History of the Papacy_ is rather too indulgent to Alexander and needs supplementing by the documents in Pastor and Thuasne.]

[Footnote 273: M. Brosch, the scholarly author of a study of Julius II. (_Papst Julius II._, 1878), observes that research in the Rovere archives has discovered no trace of the Paolo Riario who is assigned as the father of Sixtus's nephews, and concludes that they were his natural sons. But Paolo Riario is expressly mentioned in the funeral oration on Cardinal Pietro Riario, and is more fully described in Leone Cobelli's _Cronache Forlivesi_. There is no sound reason to impeach the chastity of this Pope, as even Creighton does.]

[Footnote 274: The gold ducat is estimated at about ten shillings of English money, but probably this does not express its full purchasing power.]

[Footnote 275: See the dispatches quoted in Thuasne's Burchard, vol. ii.]

[Footnote 276: I may repeat that I am not reproducing disputed statements, or relying on uncertain chronicles, in these chapters. The evidence may be examined in Thuasne, Pastor, L'Épinois, Creighton, Gregorovius, and von Reumont (_Geschichte der Stadt Rom_, 3 vols., 1867-8).]

[Footnote 277: See the evidence in Thuasne (ii., 610), L'Épinois (pp. 389-91), and Pastor (v., 382). A writer in the _American Catholic Quarterly Review_ (1900, p. 262) observes: "That Borgia secured his election through the rankest simony is a fact too well authenticated to admit a doubt."]

[Footnote 278: Again I may refer to the convenient summaries of the evidence in Pastor (v., 417), L'Épinois (398), Gregorovius (Appendix, no. 11, etc.), and Creighton (iv., 203).]

[Footnote 279: There are copies, reproduced by Gregorovius, in the archives at the Vatican, at Modena, and at Ossuna.]

[Footnote 280: _Diarii_ (ed. F. Stefani), i., 369.]

[Footnote 281: Alexander said that the letter published was a forgery, and some historians have sought to prove this by internal evidence. It is the general feeling of recent authorities that the letter is, at least in substance, genuine. See Creighton (iv., Appendix 9) and Pastor (v., 429).]

[Footnote 282: Djem died shortly afterwards, and it was rumoured that Alexander had earned the 300,000 ducats by administering a slow poison before he left Rome. But the better authorities tell us that the weakened and dissolute youth contracted a chill and died of bronchitis.]

[Footnote 283: _Diarium_, iii., 167. The details of this dance, which Burchard describes, and of the orgy which followed, may not be translated. It is absurd to question Burchard's evidence on this matter; he was then Master of Ceremonies at the Papal Court and describes every move of the Pope. The Papal servants took part in the performance, and he could easily learn the details. The Florentine and other ambassadors speak of Cæsar repeatedly introducing these women into the Vatican at night.]

[Footnote 284: There is, as Pastor and Creighton admit, grave reason to think that Orsini and Michiel were poisoned, but charges of this kind are difficult to check, and certainly there is a good deal of romance in the Borgia legend. The death-rate of cardinals under Alexander was not more than normal. See Baron Corvo's _Chronicles of the House of Borgia_ (1901), and R. Sabatini's _Life of Cesare Borgia_ (1911).]

[Footnote 285: The poison theory is not mentioned by Burchard or the chief ambassadors, and is positively advanced only by Neapolitan or later writers. No historian seems now to entertain it. Alexander's illness, which lasted thirteen days, followed a course more consistent with malaria, and the very rapid decomposition of his body, which seems to have impressed Lord Acton, is not inexplicable at that season.]

[Footnote 286: Savonarola was head of the Tuscan Congregation of the Dominican Order, and these proposals--which were inspired by jealous colleagues at Rome--aimed at putting him under a new and hostile jurisdiction.]

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