The Renaissance—The Papacy in the fifteenth century—The
Borgia.
Possessing a mild climate and a fertile soil, Italy
from the earliest times has attracted the invader,
the adventurer. Extending out into the Mediterranean,
she has been exposed to attacks on all
sides, and when the Roman Empire, disintegrated
by its own corruption and wickedness, had passed
away, no strong central power was left to repel the
marauders who swarmed into the peninsula from
all sides.
The rich plains of the north attracted the
Teutonic tribes who established the Lombard
Kingdom, and from the south came the Arabs,
bringing their arts and crafts to Sicily. To the
Orient the merchants of Venice went for their perfumes,
their spices, their gorgeous stuffs, their
stamped leathers, and with them they brought back
much of the civilisation of the Far East.
Owing to her geographical position, to conditions
resulting from her past history, and the prizes she
offered the bold and unscrupulous, Italy at an early
date became the battle-ground of Europe. Human
ambitions and energies now have the entire globe
for their field, but before America was discovered
little was known of either Africa or Asia, consequently
civilisation was almost entirely restricted
to Western Europe.
Italy was a seething cauldron of life and activity,
and there sprang into being a race of strong, many-sided
individuals. Like Spain, she became, in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a land of mighty
personalities, of men of varied gifts and vast
energy. While Spain gave the world Cortez,
Murillo, Velazquez, Calderon, Charles V., Loyola,
Alva, and Gonsalvo de Cordova, Italy produced
Columbus, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Ariosto,
Ludovico il Moro, St. Francis, Prospero Colonna,
and Julius II.
Students have ever been fascinated by those
periods in the world’s history which have been
characterised by unusual activity in the domains
of art, letters, science, and politics. The marvellous
flowering in architecture and sculpture in
the age of Pericles, in poetry and the drama in
the time of Elizabeth, and in all the arts during
the vaguely defined period of the Italian Renaissance
have never ceased to baffle the historian and
the psychologist.
Professor Gebhart, in a work of great erudition3
has endeavoured to account for the civilisation of
the Italian Renaissance by reference to “the
inherent characteristics of the Italian soul; to
certain great and persistent tendencies in her intellectual
life, and to certain facts in her political
career—causes which affect the entire life of the
people; some of which were remote in time, but
of lasting effect, while others were recent and
transitory.”
In all fields of worthy human endeavour men in
Italy had constantly before them the inspiration of
splendid achievement; but they were also confronted
by examples of evil, vast and successful,
reaping material rewards such as rarely fall to the
lot of virtue. Throughout Italy, in the age of the
Borgia, impudent but brave and crafty adventurers
were establishing princely houses, enjoying boundless
dominion and wealth—and could their example
have been lost on Alexander VI. and Caesar Borgia?
The Renaissance in Italy was much more than
a revival in literature and the graphic arts; it was
the supreme development of Italian civilisation as a
whole, the most perfect expression of the genius
and intellectual life of the peninsula.
The chief causes of the Italian Renaissance,
causes inherent in Italy herself, were, above all,
liberty of the individual mind and social freedom.
The persistence of Latin traditions, and the ever-present
memory of Greece were likewise potent
factors; while the language reached maturity at
exactly the right moment. The affluents that came
later to swell the movement and hasten the development
of the peninsula were the foreign civilisations,
Byzantine, Arabian, Norman, Provençal and
French.
The Italian spirit has always been essentially
practical; abstractions have never appealed to it
as anything more than mental gymnastics; for pure
metaphysics the Italians cared but little; the whole
tendency of their philosophy was utilitarian. In
Dante’s “Convito” the question of pure being, the
universals, matter and force are subordinate subjects;
the “Banquet” is chiefly concerned with
discussions of manners; the happiness and welfare
of humanity, the government of cities—it is the
work, not of a metaphysician, but of a publicist
and moralist—ethics is placed above metaphysics;
its philosophy is wholly practical.
The chosen study of the Italian universities was
jurisprudence. Law, the offspring of pure reason
and experience seeking to reconcile changeable
conditions with the immutable principles of
justice, assumed, owing to the importance of the
interests it endeavoured to harmonise—interests
upon which rest the government and peace of the
world—the first place in the universities of the
peninsula. Roman law was the favourite discipline
of mediaeval Italy.
The Papacy and the Empire; the relations and
the limits of the spiritual power with reference to
the temporal and feudal power; the universal
monarchy, and the freedom of the cities—such were
the weighty problems to which Italy devoted her
intellect. Jurisprudence controlled all her mental
activities just as absolutely as scholasticism did those
of France. The juristprudents Accorso and his
sons, Jacopo of Arena, Cino da Pistoja, Bartolo
and Baldo, were the men who lent lustre to the
Italian universities of the thirteenth century. Law
was the basis of a liberal education. Petrarch had
studied it. His contempt for the scholasticism of
“the disputatious city of Paris” is well known.
One of his favourite sayings was: “The object of
education is to teach men to think, and not merely
to teach them to argue.” Logic he regarded simply
as a useful tool.
The freedom the Italians displayed in their intellectual
life was manifest also in their religious
conscience—and this is one of the most striking
characteristics of their genius. During the Middle
Ages they resembled none of the other members of
the great family of Christian nations. Subtle metaphysics,
refined theology, strict regime, dogmatism,
elaborate ritual, restless casuistry, all were repellent
to the Italian genius. The Italian regarded the
Church of Italy as the Universal Church and as
largely his handiwork. In St. Peter’s chair, in the
Sacred College, in the great monastical institutions
he sees himself; he knows human passions prevail
there as well as elsewhere—consequently he does
not hesitate to enter the Church. This is why they
never found the national religion a too heavy
burden, why they seldom seceded and founded sects.
Italy never originated any great national heresy
or beheld any general religious uprisings like the
popular movements initiated by Peter Waldo,
Wyclif, Huss, and Luther, although later numerous
heresies from other parts of Europe entered the peninsula.
When other countries were burning witches
and heretics at the stake Italy put Dolcino di
Novara and Francesco da Pistoja to death for advocating
the abolition of private property. In 1327
the poet Cecco d’Ascoli was burned at the stake
for practising astrology and necromancy, but in
1452 the priest Niccolò da Verona, condemned in
Bologna for sorcery, was taken from the stake
by the populace and saved. Savonarola suffered
martyrdom, not for his religious theories, but for
his political dreams.4
The Italians never spared the Papacy. Dante
placed Pope Anastasius in the red-hot sepulchre of
the heresiarchs, and Boniface VIII. in the circle of
the simoniacs with Nicholas III., and to St. Peter
in Paradise he ascribes these ghibelline words:
“He who on earth now usurps my seat before the
Son of God, has made of my tomb a sink of blood
and filth.” And Petrarch describes the papal city
of Avignon as “a sewer in which is collected all
the filth of the universe.”
Without an appreciation of the Italian character
and a knowledge of conditions in the peninsula
before and during the Renaissance it is impossible
to understand how such men as Sixtus IV. and
Alexander VI. could have been chosen to fill the
chair of St. Peter.
* * * * *
By the end of the fifteenth century the Papacy
had almost entirely lost its sacred character and
had become a political prize for which all the
powerful families contended. It was an office to
which any cardinal, regardless of his fitness, might
aspire.
Like Naples, Florence, Milan, Perugia, and all
the other petty despotisms of the peninsula, it was
a secular principality with the sole difference that
its head had certain priestly functions to perform
and that he was an elected not an hereditary
sovereign. Owing to this latter fact it was the
most corrupt of all at this time, and its corruption
was all the more vile and hideous because of the
contrast between the theoretical sacredness and the
actual baseness of its head.
In the course of the centuries the Papacy had
evolved the astonishing and absurd fiction that the
occupant of St. Peter’s chair had the right to make
and unmake sovereigns at will; and princes and
potentates made a pretence of yielding to this
doctrine, knowing that the Church, being able to
control the thoughts, actions, and conscience of the
ignorant masses, by the terror it inspired, was the
strongest ally they could have to maintain them
in their usurped and illegitimate domination over
those whom they called their subjects and whose
subjection had always originated in acts of violence
on the part of their masters.
The Papacy was the greatest office in Christendom.
It enjoyed a vast income; the patronage,
the benefices at its disposal, were innumerable, and
during the period of the Renaissance they were
usually sold to the highest bidder. Owing to the
vast power of the Pope as the arbiter of the
destinies of mankind beyond the grave, as well
as in this world, his friendship and support were
sought by all the potentates of Europe. Being
human, it is quite natural that he was always ready
to profit by this circumstance. The humblest priest
might aspire to the great office, and if he was
sufficiently astute and corrupt might attain it.
During the fifteenth century in the election of the
supreme head of the Church votes were bought
and sold even more brazenly than they are to-day
on the occasion of the election of a United States
senator, and the rabble made bets on the result
just as they now do on the outcome of a political
contest. Giustinian records the odds that were
given on the election of Giuliano della Rovere
against his rivals.
Just as only a wealthy man, a member of a great
family, or a representative of a powerful interest
can now hope to attain a high political office, so
in those days none other could hope to reach the
Papacy, except when the rivalry among the leading
aspirants was so intense that some obscure
member of the Sacred College—a “dark horse”—was
selected as a compromise candidate; and it is
worthy of note that the one so selected was
generally in such poor health or so decrepit that
he could not hold the office long, and consequently
during the period between his election and his
death the rival candidates would have another
opportunity to develop their respective forces and
strengthen their tactics for a new election. It therefore
seems that the Divine influences which were
supposed to preside over the election of a Pope
were somewhat uncertain in their operation, or that
the influences of the Borgia, the Piccolomini, the
Della Rovere, the Cibo, and the Medici factions
outweighed the supernatural, and there is ample
evidence to show that this was precisely their view.
A story is told of a certain cardinal who, it was
noticed during the conclave, was bowed and bent
beneath the weight of years and infirmities; indeed,
he was scarcely able to hold up his head—his eyes
were ever on the ground. “Surely,” said his
colleagues, “he will soon go to his reward—we
will make him our Pope.” Immediately after his
election his eyes brightened, his voice grew strong,
he straightened up erect—and the Princes of the
Church marvelled greatly. “Whence this change?”
they asked; “to what miracle is it due? You
were bent—your eyes ever on the ground—but
now——!”
“Ah! my beloved children, I was only looking
for the keys of St. Peter—and I have found
them!”
Any strong candidate for the great honour and
the vast emoluments of the Holy Office could count
on the vigorous support of his own family and
in many cases on that also of various princes in
Italy and throughout Europe.
When Nicholas V. succumbed to the gout in
1455 the Sacred College was composed of twenty
cardinals, and in the conclave which followed
the three strongest candidates were Capranica,
Bessarion, and Alonzo Borgia. The contest had
reached the acute stage when Alain, Archbishop
of Avignon and Cardinal of Santa Prassede, sprang
to his feet and asked, “Shall we select for Pope,
for head of the Latin Church, a Greek, a mere
interloper? Bessarion still wears his beard—and
forsooth, he is to be our Lord!”
Then arose his Eminence the Cardinal-Bishop
of Nicæa, graceful as he was erudite, and, announcing
that it would be a mistake to elect him, cast his
vote for Alonzo de Borja, Cardinal of Santi
Quattro Coronati, deciding the election in
favour of the Spaniard, who assumed the name
Calixtus III. Thus it was that the Spanish house
of Borja entered into the history of Italy and of
the Papacy, April 8, 1455.
Alonzo Borja was born in Xativa, Spain, in
1378; he developed into a studious boy and
became a professor at Lerida; later he was made
a canon by the anti-Pope Benedict XIII. In
Alonzo’s youth a prophet, Vicenzo Ferrerio, had
announced that the studious boy would some day
wear the tiara, and shortly after his election Alonzo
secured the canonisation of the prophetic Vicenzo,
thus showing that he recognised merit.
Alonzo was regarded as the leading jurist of his
day and as one of the most astute men who ever
occupied the throne of St. Peter. He was the first
of the Borja to come to Italy, having accompanied
Alfonso of Aragon as secretary. By Martin V.
he was made Bishop of Valencia and created
cardinal by Eugene IV.
When Bessarion arose and cast his vote—with
great tact and perhaps equal political acumen—in
the aged cardinal’s favour, the Curia remembered
that Alonzo was seventy-seven years of age and
afflicted with the gout—and his election was
assured.
When Alonzo assumed the tiara he pledged
his word to the Sacred College that he would keep
himself free from all nepotism—thus showing that
this was a growing evil—a promise he promptly,
broke by bestowing the purple upon his nephew,
Juan Luis de Mila, whom he appointed papal representative
in Bologna, and upon Rodrigo Borgia,
whom he made legate to the Marches and Vice-Chancellor
of the Church. He likewise made Juan
Mila, Bishop of Zamora, a cardinal.
The new Pope’s nephews—his sister’s sons—were
bad men in a bad age, but, blinded by his affection
for them, he did not foresee to what his passion
would lead.
CALISTVS PAPA-III-HISPANVS
POPE CALIXTUS III.
From an engraving of 1580.
To face p. 32.
Rodrigo Borgia, when the cardinalate was
bestowed upon him by his uncle, September 26,
1456, was about twenty-five years of age, handsome
and profligate. Like the Claudian family
of Rome, the Borgia of Valencia possessed great
intellectual force and physical beauty.
Rodrigo’s brother, Pier Luigi, who was a year
younger than the cardinal, remained a layman, but
the highest temporal honours were bestowed upon
him; he was made Gonfalonier of the Church,
Prefect of the city, and finally Warder of the Castle
of St. Angelo—in spite of the protests of Capranica
and Scarampo, who consequently became the object
of the Holy Father’s undying hatred. Pier Luigi has
been described as a handsome and depraved ruffian.
Even as early as this—the first period of the
Borgia supremacy—Rome was teeming with
Spaniards; when Alonzo was made cardinal
numerous members of the related Borgia and Mila
families flocked thither—their number and aggressiveness
being attested by the general and intense
hatred that was felt for the Catalans. It was
through the Borgias and their followers that Spain
secured the strong grip upon the Papacy which
she held for a hundred years—although the way
had been prepared by the establishment of the
Spanish power in Naples and Sicily. To the
Eternal City they flocked, kinsmen and retainers,
fortune-hunters, and adventurers of every sort;
they secured all the important offices; they became
utterly lawless and, justice being perverted, they
robbed and murdered with impunity.
In July, 1458, Calixtus further advanced Pier
Luigi by bestowing upon him the vicariate of
Benevento and Terracina. He became the most
powerful man in Rome, and seemed destined for
a great future when his career was abruptly terminated.
The Orsini had risen to expel the Colonna
and the Catalans; and Pier Luigi, having sold the
Castle of St. Angelo to the cardinals, fled to
Civitavecchia, where, attacked by a fever, he died—August,
1458—leaving his vast property to his
brother Rodrigo, who, already wealthy, now became
one of the richest of the cardinals.
August 6, 1458, Calixtus passed away—to the
great relief of the Romans, who expressed their joy
at being delivered from the Spanish yoke by sacking
the Borgia palaces. Calixtus was bitterly criticised
for allowing his nephews to rule him and because
of the wretched condition of affairs in Rome during
his reign, when robbery, violence, and murder were
of daily occurrence.
Although Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia had found
it prudent to betake himself to Ostia on the death
of his uncle, his high position in the Church was
not shaken, and he was soon able to return to his
house in the Ponte Quarter.
Little is known of the private life of Rodrigo
when he was created cardinal, but there is extant
a beautiful letter of admonition written to him by
Pius II., the amiable Æneas Sylvius, from the
baths of Petriolo, June 11, 1460, when Rodrigo
was about twenty-nine years of age, which throws
a strong light on the personal conduct of the
Cardinal of San Niccolò in Carcere Tulliano.
“Dear Son,—We have learned that your
Worthiness, forgetful of the high office with which
you are invested, was present in the gardens of
Giovanni de Bichis four days ago, from the seventeenth
to the twenty-second hour,5 with several
women of Siena—women wholly given over to
worldliness and vanity. Your companion was one
of your colleagues who, owing to his years, if not
on account of his office, ought to have been mindful
of his duty. We have heard that wanton dances
were indulged in; that none of the allurements of
love were wanting; and that you conducted yourself
in a manner altogether worldly. Shame forbids
mention of all that took place, for not only the
acts themselves, but also their very names are
unworthy your rank. In order that your pleasures
might be free from all restraint the husbands,
fathers, brothers, and kinsmen of the women were
not asked to be present. You and a few servants
were the originators of this orgy. I am told that in
Siena nothing is now talked of but your vanity,
which is generally ridiculed. Here at the baths,
where there are a great many people—Churchmen
and laity—your name is on every one’s lips. Our
displeasure is beyond words, for your conduct has
brought the Holy State and Office into disgrace.
The people will say that they make us rich and
great, and that instead of living blameless lives,
we use what they give us to gratify our passions.
This is the reason the Princes and the Powers
despise us and the laity mock at us. This is why
our own mode of living is flung in our faces when
we reprove others. Contempt falls to the lot of
Christ’s Vicar because he appears to countenance
these doings. You, dear son, have charge of the
Bishopric of Valencia, the most important in Spain;
you are Chancellor of the Church, and what renders
your conduct all the more reprehensible is the fact
that you have a seat among the cardinals who are
the Pope’s advisers. We leave it to you to decide
whether it is becoming to your dignity to court
young women and to send those whom you love
presents of wine and fruits, and during the whole
day to give thought to nothing but sensual
pleasures. On account of your conduct people
blame us, and the memory of your blessed uncle
Calixtus also suffers—and many say he did wrong
in heaping honours upon you. If you seek to
excuse yourself on the ground of your youth, I say
to you that you are not so young as not to know
what duties your offices impose upon you. A
cardinal should be above reproach, and an example
of right living in the eyes of all men—and then we
should have just grounds for anger when temporal
princes revile us, when they dispute with us for
the possession of our property and force us to
submit to their wills.
“Of a truth we inflict these wounds upon ourselves
and of these troubles we ourselves are the
cause, since by our conduct we constantly diminish
the authority of the Church. Our punishment for
it in this world is dishonour, and in the world to
come it will be torment well deserved. May your
good sense place a restraint upon these frivolities,
and may you never again lose sight of your dignity;
then people will not regard you as a vain gallant
among men. If this occurs again we shall be
compelled to show that it was in violation of our
admonition, and that it caused us great pain; and
our censure will not pass over you without bringing
the blush of shame to your cheek. We have always
loved you and thought you worthy of our protection,
as a man of an earnest and modest
character.
“Therefore conduct yourself henceforth in such a
way that we may retain this our good opinion of you
and may find in you only the example of a well-ordered
life. Your years, which are not such as to
preclude improvement, permit us to admonish you
paternally.”
During the pontificate of Paul II. Gasparino of
Verona described Rodrigo Borgia as “handsome
and of a most glad countenance. He is gifted with
a honeyed eloquence. The beautiful women upon
whom he casts his eyes are lured to love him and
are moved in a mysterious manner—as iron is
attracted by the magnet.”
In 1476, the year of Caesar’s birth, the Cardinal
of Pavia wrote Rodrigo a letter in the Pope’s name,
urging him to change his manner of living, in which
he says: “What I write you will not be long,
but this letter is necessary between you and me.
Do not entrust this communication, which is inspired
by affection, to your secretaries, but keep
it with you so that you may read it over
occasionally and think of it at least once a
year.”
From this it is evident that Rodrigo had not
changed his habits. Love of pleasure characterised
him throughout his life. He had no less than
eight illegitimate children—five sons and three
daughters—all of whom were recognised in official
documents. At the time of his death, when he
was seventy-two years of age, he had a mistress,
the beautiful Giulia Farnese, by whom he had had
a son, who was then five years old, Don Giovanni,
Infans Romanus, Lord of Camerino, whom he first
declared to be the child of his son Caesar, but later
in a bull dated September 1, 1501, acknowledged
to be his own.
It has been said that as Alexander VI. was not
an ordinary man he should not be judged by the
moral standards of ordinary men. The theory that
the great are not subject to the laws which should
regulate the conduct of lesser persons is as absurd
as it is pernicious. It would be more just to say that
the Borgia should be judged, not by the criterions
of a later day, but by those of his own age.
There is evolution in morals; the standard of right
living is higher to-day than it was during the
Renaissance, and no man of the character of Alexander
VI., were such possible, could now be elected
to the Papacy. At that time many thrones were
occupied by men who, in this age, could not survive
a year. It is, however, exceedingly difficult to
judge men of a past age, because, the sphere of
morals being a wide one, there may be progress
in one field but not in others—in fact, there may
be retrogression in some. During the Renaissance
there were men who were bad, judged by the
criterions of their own day as well as by those of
the present, but their contemporaries, ignorant of
the laws governing human progress, which include
the laws of morality, did not perceive their true
status. Surrounded by men of like character, many
of the personalities of the Renaissance were blind
to their own depravity.
Nepotism was the root, if not of all, of most of
the evil in Rome, and it steadily increased from the
time of Calixtus III., who was succeeded by Enea
Silvio Piccolomini—Pius II.—who was no less
devoted to the interests of his family than his
predecessor had been to those of his kinsmen. Of
the four children of his sister Laudomia, he made
Antonio a duke, Andrea a castellan in Pescara,
and Giacomo a noble of Montemarciano. Niccolò
Forteguerra, a kinsman on his mother’s side, he
made cardinal; Alessandro Mirabelli Piccolomini,
who in partnership with Ambrogio Spannochi conducted
a bank in Rome, was made Master of the
Palace and Governor of Frascati. Jacopo Ammananti
of Siena was made cardinal and Bishop
of Pavia. Lolli, a cousin of the Pope, was given
an office, and so many natives of Siena were provided
with places at the pontifical court that it
was a saying that “all Siena had moved over to
Rome.” Even Saint Catherine owed her beatification
to Pius II., who died August 15, 1464.
The conclave for the election of his successor
was held August 27th. The Bishop of Torcello, a
famous Venetian scholar and humanist, addressed
the cardinals, deploring the loss of dignity of the
Sacred College and exhorting his colleagues to
select a man who would put a stop to the abuses
in the Church. At the first scrutiny it was found
that the Cardinal of San Marco was unanimously
elected. The new Pope, who was born in 1418,
was the son of Niccolò Barbo and Polisena
Condulmer, a sister of Eugene IV.
When a youth, as he was about to embark
on a ship for the Orient, he received news
of his uncle’s election to the Papacy; promptly
perceiving the opportunities for advancing his
fortunes offered him by this event, he changed
his plans, and assiduously devoted himself to the
study of theology, for which he had no aptitude,
and in 1440 he was made Cardinal of San Marco.
His Eminence was a stupid but handsome man,
tall of figure, majestic, and exceedingly vain of
his personal appearance in ecclesiastical pageants.
On his election he wanted to assume the name
Formoso, the Handsome, but was dissuaded by
the cardinals, who also prevented him from taking
the name San Marco, which was the battle-cry of
the Republic of Venice, consequently Piero Barbo
called himself Paul II. and was duly consecrated
September 16, 1464.
During the conclave he had sworn to prosecute
the war against the Turks; to reform the Curia; to
summon a council at the end of the year; to limit
the number of cardinals to twenty-four; and not to
appoint any one under thirty years of age, or any
one who was ignorant of law and theology, or any
of his nephews, to the cardinalate. These promises
were exacted by the members of the Sacred College
for the protection of their traditional privileges.
They also secured his permission to meet twice
a year to assure themselves that the agreement
was being observed.
Their efforts, however, to reduce the monarchical
Papacy to an oligarchy failed. The Pope promptly
found a way out of the difficulty by presenting the
cardinals for their signature a document which purported
to be a copy of the original agreement,
but which was in fact very different. Out of complaisance
some promptly signed it, Bessarion under
the Pope’s coercion, while Carvajal was the only
one who persisted in his refusal. Among the
cardinals created by Paul II. were his kinsmen
Marco Barbo, Giovanni Michiel and Battista
Zeno.
The Pope himself, according to Corio, was wholly
given over to sensual pleasures; he filled his palace
with concubines, says Attilius Alexius, and turned
night into day, so that it was exceedingly difficult
to obtain an audience with him. The licentiousness
of his court and the corruption of his clergy were
scandalous. He was noted for a vulgar love of
display and took a childish delight in showing
himself to the Romans on all public occasions.
He desired to be thought astute in all ways, but
was merely duplicit. He was wholly unable to retain
the friendship of other potentates. He, however,
did much to embellish the city, in spite of the fact
that he was exceedingly avaricious. He was fond
of the table, gluttonous, and a valiant drinker.
Although comparatively young, his life was terminated
by apoplexy, July 26, 1471, following a
supper consisting of two huge watermelons.
In the conclave which assembled August 6, 1471,
for the selection of his successor Cardinal Bessarion
just missed the throne, being defeated by Francesco
della Rovere, who owed his success to Borgia,
Orsini, and Gonzaga, and also to the zeal of his
attendant in the conclave, Fra Pietro Riario. In
return for his support Borgia received the commendam
of Subiaco; Gonzaga, the abbey of
S. Gregorio; and Orsini, famous and wealthy, was
appointed camerlengo.
Francesco della Rovere, born in Savona in 1414,
was the son of a poor fisherman and a Greek
woman, Lucchesina Mugnone. He was created
cardinal in 1467 and assumed the title of San Pietro
ad Vincula. He had been general of the Minorites
and was famous for his scholarship and his skill
in controversy. On his election he took the name
Sixtus IV., and he was crowned by Rodrigo Borgia
August 25, 1471.
With Sixtus the head of the Church rapidly lost
his priestly character and became a temporal
prince. Thenceforth St. Peter’s successors were
Italian sovereigns, and when they possessed the
sacred character it was wholly accidental. The
life they led compelled them to resort to mundane
expedients—the sale of offices and indulgences and
the promotion of the interests of their kinsmen.
Never before had such shameless nepotism been
displayed, and it now became the mainspring of
every act of the Pope.
Illegitimate sons of the Popes appeared with
every change in the Papacy; they conducted themselves
in the Vatican like princes; they terrorised
Rome and endeavoured by force to obtain possession
of the various Italian principalities. Generally
their careers came to an abrupt end with the death
of the Pope to whom they owed their advancement,
and to whom they were frequently valuable aids,
the Pontiff’s desire for temporal supremacy often
finding expression through them. The Popes, in
their struggle with the cardinals, frequently found
these satellites highly useful. Their power, however,
did not extend far beyond the boundaries of
the States of the Church as they were bitterly
opposed by the older dynasties.
Under Calixtus III. Rome had been a Spanish
state, in the reign of Pius II. a Sienese, and
during the papacy of Sixtus IV. it was a Ligurian
monarchy, and the domain of St. Peter had now
reached its greatest territorial expansion. Within
its boundaries, however, there still remained a
number of feudal families and republics to be
destroyed. These the papal favourites, anxious to
change the States of the Church into an hereditary
monarchy, were eager to crush.
December 15, 1471, Sixtus made Pietro Riario,
his putative nephew, but probably his son, Cardinal
of San Sisto, and Giuliano della Rovere, son of
his brother Raffaele, Cardinal of San Pietro ad
Vincola, thus breaking his oath. Both these young
men were of low origin and no education, and
the Sacred College little suspected that one of them,
Giuliano, was destined to become the famous
Julius II.
Giuliano della Rovere, who was Bishop of Carpentras,
was twenty-eight years old, a libertine and
man of the world. Pietro Riario was somewhat
younger and Sixtus made him Bishop of Treviso
and bestowed numerous other honours upon him.
Pietro soon entirely dominated the Pope and from
a poor friar became a man of vast wealth. He
entered upon an unchecked career of vice, and in
two years had squandered a fortune of two hundred
thousand gold florins and become a physical
wreck. He died in 1472, leaving vast debts
which were never paid. Other kinsmen of Sixtus
remained laymen but nevertheless were advanced
to positions of honour through the influence of
the Pope.
On the death of Pietro Riario, Sixtus transferred
his affections to his nephew Girolamo, probably
also the pontiff’s son, who was called to Rome
and given the title to Imola, which had been purchased
from Taddeo Manfredi. The government
of the States of the Church was entrusted to him,
and Galeazzo Sforza conferred upon him the hand
of his illegitimate daughter, Caterina, the heroic
virago who defended Forli against her husband’s
murderers and later against Caesar Borgia, and
whom her countrymen styled la prima donna
d’Italia. In return for the honour Sixtus made
Galeazzo’s son, Ascanio, a cardinal.
Soon after this the Pope succeeded in establishing
a matrimonial alliance between his family and
the princes of Urbino; for, in return for creating
Federico di Montefeltre Duke of Urbino, the
latter consented to the marriage of his daughter,
Giovanna, to Giovanni della Rovere, another
brother of Giuliano.
Sixtus also conferred the purple on Cristoforo
and Domenico della Rovere; upon his sister’s son,
Geronimo Basso, and also on Raffaele Riario, a
nephew of Pietro Riario.
It was stated that the Pope in his eagerness to
advance his innumerable kinsmen and connections
frequently bestowed an office on one, forgetting he
had already given it to another. It was even said
that Cardinal Pietro Riario entered into an agreement
with Galeazzo Maria Sforza, of Milan, by
which the duke was to furnish him with money and
troops to enable him to seize the papal throne,
which Sixtus appears to have been ready to yield
to him; the plan, however, which would have
resulted in the secularisation of the Papal States,
failed through the death of Pietro.
The secularisation of the Papacy, nevertheless,
was proceeding rapidly. The Curia was becoming
more and more addicted to the vices of the age.
German travellers who visited Rome in 1475, the
year of the Jubilee—Paul II. having reduced the
period intervening between jubilees to twenty-five
years for the sake of the money they yielded—relate
that they saw nothing but nepotism, simony,
extortion, and crime. On every hand was extravagance,
pomp, and vulgar love of display. The
populace, as in the days of the Roman Empire,
clamoured for spectacular exhibitions, and these
the Popes lavishly furnished.
The success of the political schemes of Sixtus
demanded the overthrow of the Medici, and he
consequently, at least, countenanced the Pazzi
conspiracy, which resulted in the murder of
Giuliano de’ Medici and the wounding of Lorenzo,
who only saved himself by flight. Three weeks
later the Pope, King Ferdinand of Naples, and the
city of Siena formed a league whose avowed purpose
was the expulsion of the Medici from Florence.
Sixtus was a consummate politician, and Infessura
speaks of the day on which he died as “that
most blessed day upon which God delivered
Christendom from the hands of a most impious
and iniquitous king.”6 He states that Sixtus had
no affection for his people; that he was avaricious,
vain, vicious; that he trafficked in offices and
benefices, made a plaything of justice, and that he
was cruel and vindictive.
According to history Sixtus was an evil ruler in
an evil age. All his acts were inspired by a love
of power or an exaggerated affection for his kinsmen.
He it was who first completely surrendered
the Papacy and Rome to his relatives. He used
all sorts of means to increase the Church revenues,
only to hand them over to his nephews to use in
extending the power of his family. He was, however,
not wholly devoid of virtue, for he possessed
great learning. Impatient of contradiction, he used
any means to overcome opposition, and he soon
showed that he was born to rule. Sixtus IV. had
none of the priestly characteristics which the
Supreme Pontiff is supposed to possess; in him the
priest was lost in the prince.
From that time forth St. Peter’s successors were
temporal sovereigns who happened to be Popes;
the members of their families were everywhere
treated as princes. Many of their putative nephews
were in reality their own illegitimate sons. There
was a saying current in Europe during the reign
of Sixtus that there were as many popes in Rome
as he had nephews. With every change in the
Papacy a new swarm came into power, only to fall
with their creator’s decease.
The Papacy having become a temporal power,
the Pope’s kinsmen were his chief support; at
the same time, the Sacred Office was the greatest
political instrument an ambitious and powerful
family could secure to aid its advancement.
The papal nephews terrorised the domain of the
Church and endeavoured to obtain possession of
rival states and cities. Nepotism became a system,
and, as hereditary succession was denied the Pope,
it furnished him the only means by which he could
hope to perpetuate his power, but as we have seen
the means were inadequate.
The Italians promptly discovered that the same
hopes and fears, the same ambitions and passions
prevailed in St. Peter’s Chair as ruled elsewhere,
and also that the Pope was a very human sovereign
and one who enjoyed the advantage of being unhampered
by any feudal institutions.
The temporal supremacy of the Pope, however,
could be exercised only in the territory about the
city of Rome where there were still left a few
powerful feudal families, together with a number
of small republics whose destruction could be compassed
only through the agency of the Pontiff’s
favourites or kinsmen. In that way a monarchy
might be established which in size and power would
have equalled most of the Italian states of that age.
Sixtus created no less than thirty-five cardinals.
The Pazzi conspiracy, the war against Ferrara, his
treatment of the Colonna and the names of Pietro
and Girolamo Riario show to what depths the
Papacy had fallen in the closing years of the
fifteenth century.
Between the nepotism of Sixtus IV. and that of
Alexander VI. there was but little difference. If
the nephews of Della Rovere had possessed the
ability of the Borgia, or if political events had
occurred to disturb the concord of the peninsula,
Sixtus IV. would have secured the place in Italy
and in the history of Rome which Alexander VI.
holds. Sixtus was the first Pope-king, but he was
far surpassed by Alexander VI.
Italy had fallen upon evil days; the peninsula
was teeming with corruption; everywhere there was
a mad scramble for office; every man’s hand was
against his neighbour; the Popes engaged in all
sorts of financial operations—the sale of offices,
honours, indulgences, immunities; and, to make
matters worse, foreign invasion threatened the
country.
Sixtus died August 12, 1484, and when his
opponents learned of his death they rushed forth
and sacked the Riario palaces. The conclave for
the election of his successor was held August 26th,
and it was found that the cardinals were divided
into two parties, one comprising Rodrigo Borgia,
the Orsini, and the Aragonese faction; the other,
Colonna, Cibo, Della Rovere, and the Venetians.
Rodrigo Borgia felt so certain of being elected
that he had his palace fortified to preserve it from
being sacked. Votes were openly traded for
castles, benefices, and papal offices. Ascanio
Sforza and the Aragonese, unable to force the
election of the Borgia, sold their votes to Cardinal
Giambatista Cibo, who was elected August 29,
1484. He assumed the name Innocent VIII.
Giuliano della Rovere had managed his campaign
most skilfully.
Cibo was a handsome and imposing man, but
he possessed neither wealth nor brains. He had
numerous progeny by a certain Neapolitan woman.
It was his son, Franceschetto Cibo—reputed to be
his nephew—who married Maddalena, daughter of
Lorenzo de’ Medici, January 20, 1488, in the
Vatican amid great pomp, and in return for this
honour, Giovanni de’ Medici, then thirteen years
of age—the future Leo X.—was created cardinal.
To the cardinals Innocent made all sorts of
promises which he never kept—promises made by
the man might be broken by the Pope. He was
the first of Christ’s Vicars publicly to acknowledge
his children, of whom he had seven. He was
a loathsome individual, avaricious, vicious, and
venal, and completely under the control of his
favourites. At Rome he established an office
for the sale of pardons whose revenues went to
himself and his son Franceschetto. During his
reign crime held high carnival throughout the
Campagna.
Innocent continued and extended the evil
practices of his predecessors. The traffic in offices
was conducted on a scale hitherto unknown, for
he constantly created new ones solely for the profit
to be derived from their sale. He sold the right
to collect the customs to certain individuals and
bankrupted the State. Rome was a sink of crime
and corruption, a market where all the world might
purchase indulgences.
Innocent’s nepotism was different from that of
some of the other Popes. With him it was based
on no political idea or purpose, but simply upon
avarice and vulgar greed. He founded no principalities
for his sons because he himself was entirely
devoid of force and political acumen, and they had
neither the ambition nor the ability to make themselves
powerful in the State. The county of
Cervetri and Anguillara had been given to
Franceschetto, but on the death of his father he
sold it to Virginio Orsini, and wisely, because he
could not have held it.
Infessura tells us that when the wretched
Innocent VIII. was on his death-bed his Jewish
leech sought to prolong his life with the blood of
three young boys who were purchased for a ducat
apiece, and who promptly died, whereupon the
physician fled and the Pope expired, July 25,
1492.
The conclave for the election of his successor
began in the Sistine chapel, August 6th. Twenty-five
cardinals were present. The Sacred College
was dominated by Ascanio Sforza, Lorenzo Cibo,
Raffaele Riario, Giuliano della Rovere, and Rodrigo
Borgia. It is said that the King of France contributed
200,000 ducats and Genoa 100,000 to
secure the election of Della Rovere, whose most
dangerous rival was Ascanio Sforza, for whom
Rodrigo Borgia cast his vote, knowing that he could
not be elected.
When Sforza saw that he himself could not win
the great prize, he set about securing—with the help
of Riario and Orsini—the election of the Borgia,
and at the proper moment cast his vote for him.
Although Ascanio Sforza was enormously wealthy
he had his price and he was bought. In Rome
it was said that before the conclave Rodrigo
Borgia had sent him four mules laden with silver,
and also that he had promised him, in the event
of his own election, his palace and its contents,
and also the great office of Vice-Chancellor of
the Church. Orsini was satisfied with Monticelli
and Soriano, while Colonna and his family were
pleased to accept Subiaco and its castles in perpetuity.
Cardinal Michiel was promised the
Bishopric of Porto; Sclafenati was presented with
Nepi, and Cardinal Savelli with Civita Castellana.
Others preferred cash. The Patriarch of Venice,
then ninety-five years of age, was given 50,000
ducats to provide for him until he should enter
into paradise. The few who could not be bought
were Piccolomini, Zeno, Della Rovere, and Caraffa.
When the Borgia found he was elected he was
overcome with joy and exclaimed: “Now I am
Pope, Pontiff, Christ’s Vicar!”—but the youthful
Cardinal de’ Medici leaned over and whispered in
Cibo’s ear: “Let us escape before the wolf gets
us into his maw!”
Borgia, fearing that by some mischance the office
might still slip through his fingers, hastily donned
the papal robes and directed the Master of Ceremonies
to distribute cards bearing the words,
“We have as Pope, Alexander VI.” Early the next
morning the window was thrown open, the cross
put forth, and in the silence of early dawn the name
of the new Pope was announced: Alexander VI.!
Alexander’s dissolute life was known of all men;
and when we remember that this was an age of
libertinism, when men expected no more of the
clergy than they did of the laity, the fact that the
Borgia’s conduct excited any comment shows to
what depths of immorality he had descended. He
was freely accused of the unmentionable vices
which Tacitus and Suetonius lay to the charge of
the earlier Roman emperors.
It cannot be denied, however, that Alexander VI.
also possessed great virtues. His contemporaries
describe him as energetic, cultivated, astute, and
prompt to act, and also as ready and vigorous of
speech.
Rodrigo Borgia had spent seven years at
Bologna studying canon law; and when his uncle,
Calixtus III., in 1456, made him Bishop of
Valencia, he also created him Cardinal-deacon of
San Niccolò in Carcere Tulliano, and shortly afterwards
made him Vice-Chancellor of the Church.
During the reign of Sixtus IV. he had been made
Bishop of Porto and sent as legate to Spain. While
returning to Italy he was shipwrecked and rescued
only with great difficulty. When he was cardinal
he occupied the Cesarini palace, but it is said that
he was miserly and that, in spite of his vast wealth,
he seldom entertained.
The Borgia made a majestic and imposing Pope;
he was crowned August 26, 1492, with the greatest
pomp and magnificence. Never before since the
days of the Empire had Rome beheld such
pageants. When the Pope, half dead with fatigue,
reached the Lateran he fainted; and again when he
took his seat on the throne, he swooned, his head
falling on Riario’s shoulder.
Guicciardini says Italy’s two greatest misfortunes
were Lorenzo de’ Medici’s death and Rodrigo
Borgia’s accession to the papacy.
* * * * *
The Borgias were vicious, shrewd, intellectual,
and perspicacious, and possessed of indomitable
will. They were endowed with the mental and
physical force which wins success and often hatred.
POPE ALEXANDER VI.
From a fresco by Pinturicchio.
To face p. 52.
Securing possession of the papal office at a time
when all men were greedy for power; building
up principalities and advancing the family interests
and at the same time enhancing the Spanish influence
in the Holy See and throughout Italy, their
enemies minimised their virtues and magnified their
vices. They were charged with all sorts of hideous
crimes, some of which they undoubtedly committed,
and some, of which they certainly were innocent.
Their hostile contemporaries spread reports of their
evil deeds throughout Christendom, and the charges
made against them in their lifetime have been
repeated by historians down to the present day.
Again, the Borgias have been judged, not in connection
with their age and their contemporaries,
but as isolated creatures, or by modern standards of
ethics. Caesar Borgia has been described as a
ravening wolf among a flock of sheep, whereas, as
Medin well says,7 he was merely a wolf battling
with other wolves, with this difference, that while
he possessed the same greediness, ferocity, and
ambition, he surpassed them all in the vastness of
his projects and in the unshakable determination
with which he carried them out.
To judge the Borgias by present standards is
manifestly unjust. The character of the Papacy has
changed; Alexander VI. was merely a temporal
prince with certain sacerdotal functions. He used
his great office for the advancement of himself, his
family, and his followers, as other Popes of his
epoch did, but more consistently, more skilfully.
Like other potentates of the day, he had his mistresses,
whom he did not hesitate to introduce into
the Vatican, and his numerous bastards, whom he
publicly acknowledged.
In this connection it might be well to remember
that the illegitimate in the fifteenth century were
not regarded with the contempt in which they are
supposed to be held at the present time; in fact,
they were openly recognised and treated exactly the
same as the legitimate children, and when for
political or other reasons it became necessary to
legitimatise them, nothing was easier, the Popes
often undertaking to remove the taint by special
bulls. Gregorovius calls this the golden age of
bastards and enumerates among the reigning
princes of Italy of illegitimate birth, Sforza of
Milan, Ferrante of Calabria, Sigismondo Malatesta
of the Marches, and Borso of Ferrara, who was one
of the eight natural sons of the House of Este who
rode forth to meet Pius II. when he was on his
way to the Congress of Mantua in 1459, and whom
he described as “eloquent, generous, and magnificent.”8
When the lawful children were minors or
lacking in force, bastards were often admitted to
the succession; the fitness of the individual, and
not the fact of pure or impure birth, was the test.
In more northern countries, Burgundy for example,
illegitimate children were provided for by a distinct
class of appanages, such as bishoprics. The
greatest of the sons of men did not express an
isolated opinion when he made Gloucester’s illegitimate
son, Edmund, exclaim:—
“Who in the lusty stealth of nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got ’tween asleep and awake.”
History, whose chief concern until recent years
has been the recording of the victories of fraud and
force and the perpetuation of the memory of the
morally deformed, from Caesar to Bonaparte, has
preserved for our edification the names of innumerable
bastards who dazzled their contemporaries, and
whom little boys and girls are taught to admire,
just as they are taught to admire those monsters
who, in the pursuit of their own aims and ambitions,
have destroyed the greatest number of
their fellows—wholesale murder being a glorious
achievement; thus we have Don John of Austria,
Vendôme, Dunois, Prince Eugene, the Constable of
Bourbon, and Maurice of Saxony. Not until the
sixteenth century did Italy feel any repugnance for
illegitimacy, and then it was due to the influence
of foreign ideas and the counter-revolution.9
In addition to illegitimacy of birth another form
of illegitimacy was common in the peninsula, the
illegitimate power of a reigning sovereign—that is,
the usurped dominion enjoyed by a political adventurer.
We need not pause to inquire whether he
usurped it from an earlier usurper, either a prince
or a faction, or to ask how usurped power can ever
become legitimate. This state of affairs gave birth
to innumerable crimes of violence, and the dagger
and the poisoned cup were the usual instruments of
personal political advancement.
The origin of some of these illegitimate powers
can be traced back to the middle of the eleventh
century, when the feudal lords found themselves
confronted by a new power in the cities in the form
of the corporation or guild of artisans who had
gradually become conscious of their strength and
importance, and had shown their masters that they
were to be counted with in the future.
The development of this new movement was
furthered by the Wars of Investiture, which, while
weakening the authority of the bishops, aroused
the minds of the citizens, caused them to take an
interest in public affairs, and gave them a desire
for freedom.
In almost every city there were then two bishops,
one representing the Empire, the other the Holy
See, and each sought to increase the number of
his followers for the purpose of overcoming and
expelling his rival; hence innumerable concessions,
privileges, and franchises were granted the citizens,
until finally, when the struggle was brought to a
close by the Concordat of Worms, in 1122, almost
all the sovereign rights—the regalia—had passed
into the hands of the people.
Not only were the bishops forced to yield but
the Emperor himself, the Countess Matilda, and
all the great lords were compelled to acquiesce
in the movement which even extended to cities
that were independent of any bishop.
Henceforth the cities governed themselves and
elected their own chiefs or consuls. They, however,
did not pretend to be wholly independent of
the Empire but readily acknowledged themselves
its feudatories. The movement spread throughout
Italy, and many of the cities became so powerful
that they compelled the feudal lords of the surrounding
country to apply for citizenship and to
agree to obey the communal statutes. These various
elements introduced into the city soon occasioned
discord and quarrels, in which bloodshed became
frequent; in addition to this intestine warfare, the
rivalry between the different communes resulted in
continual strife among them.
For a time they were left to prey on each
other; for, although they were feudatories of the
Empire, the Emperors were unable to devote any
attention to the affairs of Italy, Germany being torn
asunder by the Guelphs, adherents of the house
of Bavaria, and the Ghibellines, supporters of the
house of Franconia.
The communal regime was an advance over the
Feudal System, but it could not survive the internal
and external quarrels; it soon began to show signs
of weakness, and by the end of the century it
was apparent that it was doomed. The majority
of the people, interested in commerce and manufacturing,
grew tired of the strife and were ready
to welcome any strong power that would assume
the leadership and put an end to the internal dissension
and protect the city from attacks from
without. As the commune was broken up into
innumerable factions it was in a peculiarly suitable
condition to be seized by any strong and daring
adventurer who might aspire to the control, and
when this man happened to be the head of the
city government, the podestà or captain of the
people, it was an easy step to the tyranny. During
the later years of the communes the magistrates
were usually selected from among the feudal
families of the neighbourhood. They were accustomed
to command and were supplied with arms,
and in addition to their supporting faction in the
city they had, in many cases, a large following
of kinsmen and retainers on their neighbouring
estates. Consequently nothing was easier than for
them to seize the supreme power in the city, hold,
and transmit it to their descendants.
Among the first families to secure and preserve
this illegitimate power were the Della Scala, who
appropriated Verona; the Este, who imposed themselves
on Ferrara; the Medici, who secured the
powerful commune of Florence; and the Gonzaga,
who seized Mantua.
The vast multitude which came to Rome for the
jubilee of 1300 inspired Boniface VIII. with
dreams of empire, and a year later he published a
bull in which he affirmed the absolute power of the
Pope above all princes, kings, and emperors. This
view was contested by Philippe le Bel of France,
who was supported by the nobles, clergy, and
people. Boniface retired to his city of Anagni to
prepare a bull of excommunication, whereupon,
acting in accord with Sciarra Colonna and other
enemies of the Pope, Nogaret, Philippe’s minister,
took possession of the town of Anagni and seized
his Holiness, who was, however, liberated by the
people a few days later. The Holy Father returned
to Rome, where he died shortly afterwards (1303).
Two years later a Frenchman, Bertrand Got,
Archbishop of Bordeaux, was elected Pope. He,
however, did not go to Italy, but established the
Papal See at Avignon, and the Popes finally placed
themselves under the protection of the kings of
France and their political authority rapidly
declined.
During the succeeding two hundred years the
tyrannies established on the ruins of the communes
were growing stronger, and in many cities powerful
dynasties had established themselves, handing the
government down from father to son, or to the
member of the clan best fitted to conserve the
power, priority or legitimacy of birth having little
to do with the succession, the possession of virtu,
the characteristic most necessary for the preservation
of self and family, determining the descent.
Wherever the legitimate heir was found to be
inferior, mentally or physically, to one of the
bastards of the family, he was set aside for the
latter.
The companies of paid soldiers now began to
appear in Italy. These bands of mercenaries were
captained by the so-called condottieri, and when the
war for which they had been engaged was ended
they were discharged like other wage-workers.
Their leaders were bold and unscrupulous and had
no personal interest at stake. This system gave
rise to the gravest dangers to the peninsula; it
brought into Italy swarms of worthless adventurers,
who sold their services to any one able to pay for
them and often they turned against their employer.
They overran the country, robbing, murdering,
debauching.
The power of the Popes in Romagna, never very
strong, had grown weaker during their absence in
Avignon. Bologna had fallen into the grasp of
the Pepoli; the Polentani had secured Ravenna;
the Manfredi owned Faenza; the Ordelaffi enjoyed
Forli; the Malatesta held sway over Rimini; the
Varano disposed of the fortunes of Camerino; the
Montefeltre of Urbino and Civitavecchia. The
Campagna was harassed by bands of brigands led
by members of these families, and in Rome complete
anarchy obtained, the two great clans of
Orsini and Colonna constantly fighting to secure
the control.
The fifteenth century was filled with the contests
of the tyrannies among themselves; the weaker
were crushed by the stronger, who absorbed their
territories, and thus the great states were formed
and their heads became princes. Besides the
struggles with outside rivals these princely houses
were always at strife with other powerful families
within their own domain; conspiracies and intrigue
filled the day; the princes became more despotic;
rivals, pretenders, disobedient or lukewarm retainers
were systematically put to death; cruelty knew
no bounds.
The people were callous or indifferent to the
crimes of the lords because they were committed
chiefly against their own rivals—that is, persons
of their own rank. The populace had long since
lost all hope of ruling, and they were dazzled by
the splendour of the Court and the magnificence
of the monuments erected by the reigning prince.
The return of a modicum of the spoils, in the form
of a monument of some sort, a library, or a hospital,
to commemorate the name and fame of the brigand
has always been found to be the most efficacious
way to placate the despoiled rabble.
The Visconti of Milan was one of the greatest
of the princely houses of Italy, and it reached the
height of its power in the person of Gian Galeazo,
who added greatly to the family domains. With
the assistance of the Carrara of Padua he overthrew
the Scala of Verona and Vicenza, and then
proceeded to wrest Padua from his late allies, who,
however, soon recovered the city. He put down
the Gonzaga of Mantua, the Este of Ferrara, and
the Paleologi of Montferrat, and in 1395 he
induced the Emperor Winzel to confer the title of
Duke of Milan on him. Having defeated a coalition
formed against him, he seized Pisa, Siena,
Lucca, Perugia, Assisi, Spoleto, and Bologna,
and was preparing to appropriate Florence and
make himself King of Italy when he suddenly died
(1402). On his death his states rapidly fell away;
the Pope recovered Bologna, Perugia, and Assisi,
Florence took Pisa, while the Venetians grabbed
Verona and Vicenza. In some of the cities families
that had been despoiled by the Visconti returned
to power, and other places fell into the hands of
the condottieri, so that Gian Galeazzo’s sons found
their estates reduced to Milan and Pavia. No
better example could be found of the rise, growth,
and extinction of an illegitimate power—that is, a
power based on fraud, usurpation, and tyranny.
Filippo Maria, the last of the Visconti, died in
1447 and a republic was immediately proclaimed
in Milan. Francesco Sforza, not wishing to assert
such rights as he may have had to the succession
as the husband of a natural daughter of Filippo
Maria Visconti, placed his services at the command
of the republic in the war against Venice. He, however,
unexpectedly made peace with the enemy and
turned his forces against Milan, and, although there
was a party favourable to Sforza, the city made
a brave resistance. Finally an uprising occurred,
the republic was overthrown, and Francesco entered
the city and was proclaimed duke in 1450.
Milan in the second half of the fifteenth century
was one of the most powerful of the Italian states;
and when Francesco Sforza died in 1466 he was
succeeded by his son Galeazzo Maria, a dissolute
and cruel man, who was assassinated in a church
by three nobles in 1476. His son, Gian Galeazzo,
at this time was only eight years old, consequently
his mother, Bona of Savoy, assumed the regency.
The brothers of the deceased duke, however, conspired
against her, and finally Ludovico il Moro,
the most determined and deceitful of them, succeeded
in getting possession of the government,
whereupon he compelled her to leave the duchy.
* * * * *
Italy had awakened from the long slumber of
the Middle Ages, during which her intellect had
been paralysed by the superstitions and terrors inculcated
by an ignorant and mercenary priesthood.
She was emerging from the gloom into the new
life which manifested itself, not only in the revival
of learning and the prodigious blossoming of the
fine arts, but also in the expansion of the human
personality. Man had again discovered himself;
he had become conscious of his faculties; he had
found that he possessed a will that could carry him
on to greatness in many fields of human activity.
Hitherto superstitious, ignorant, and bigoted, he
had been taught that if he ventured to use the
intellect with which he had been endowed he would
be eternally damned. Life to him was merely a
painful pilgrimage between two eternities, through
one of which he would be doomed to hell fire if
in his mundane existence he dared to find any of
the joy of living.
Finally some perspicacious souls began to doubt,
and in the teachings of the newly discovered
heathen philosophy they found a theory of life
more humane, more natural, more charitable.
The arts had been entirely occupied with sacred
subjects because in the Middle Ages the Church
was their only patron. The gloom and superstition
of mediaeval Christianity oppressed men’s
souls, consequently the subjects selected were
hideous and lugubrious in the extreme—emaciated
saints, representations of the Last Judgment,
human beings writhing in the torment of eternal
wrath. The Almighty was not a god of
pity and love, but one of vengeance. The
teaching of the Nazarene was entirely distorted,
just as it was by the Presbyterian divines
in Scotland in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries when they proclaimed their mission to be
“to thunder out the Lord’s wrath and to curse,”
and endeavoured to frighten their hearers into
the paths of virtue with horrible tales of men
“scorched in hell-fire,” in “boiling oil, burning
brimstone, scalding lead,” sufficiently summarised
in one of Binning’s sermons: “You shall go out
of one hell into a worse; eternity is the measure
of its continuance, and the degrees of itself are
answerable to its duration.” Such, according to the
Scotch pastors, was the measure of God’s love.
Extremes, however, lead to revolution. A period
of great asceticism is always followed by an era
of licentiousness, and in Italy this era was synchronous
with the age of the Borgias.
It is no part of the present writer’s purpose to
palliate the crimes of the Borgia; recent attempts
which have been made to show that Alexander VI.
and his son Caesar were gentle and impeccable
beings, maligned and slandered, are inspired chiefly
by a love of paradox, or occasioned by a motive
not unlike that which actuates the great criminal
lawyer whose chief victories consist in securing,
not the acquittal of the innocent but of the guilty.
These efforts, therefore, should not be taken too
seriously.
Like other princes, the Borgias were human, and
the same passions that prevail among the laity also
rule among the priesthood. Theoretically the cardinals
were the Pope’s advisers, an ecclesiastical
senate, charged with the salvation of humanity,
but actually they were a body of powerful and
astute politicians, appointed by the Pope on his
own initiative or at the request of some reigning
sovereign or great family whose support his
Holiness was anxious to secure. The cardinalate
was bestowed in precisely the same way, and for
the same reasons, as a minister’s portfolio is at
the present time—that is, without any regard to
the fitness of the beneficiary, and as a reward for
services rendered or to come, and sometimes for
even baser reasons: Alexander VI. raised Farnese
to the purple in return for the complaisance of
his sister, the beautiful Giulia.
Youths were made cardinals at a tender age.
Giovanni de’ Medici, a precocious prelate of
eighteen years, on the conclusion of the conclave
that elected Alexander VI. was wise enough to
flee from Rome; and Caesar Borgia was seventeen
when his father discovered he had need of his
counsel in conducting the affairs of the Church.
The great houses vied with each other for the
honour, prestige, and power. It was no small
matter to sit in the ecclesiastical senate and have
a voice in directing the conscience of civilised
humanity, at a time when the masses did not dare
even to think; and to have a vote in the election of
the greatest potentate on earth, who could make
and unmake kings and emperors, and consign them
to eternal punishment at will. The vast emoluments
of the great office, the enormous revenues of the
various prebends and livings the cardinals enjoyed
need not be mentioned.
Their power and wealth knew no bounds. Surrounded
by their kinsmen and retainers, they maintained
princely courts. They rode about the city
in the garb of condottieri, encased in steel, with
swords clanking at their sides. In their palaces
they maintained hundreds of men, whose number
was increased, when occasion demanded, by the
addition of gangs of paid bullies and ruffians.
Every palace was a stronghold, and in addition
those of the cardinals possessed the right of sanctuary—a
right, it may be observed, which was not
generally respected unless it was backed by might,
as is shown by the frequent murders in churches
in Italy in the period of the Renaissance, one of
the most extraordinary of which was the stabbing
to death of Giuliano de’ Medici by Bernardo
Bandini and Francesco de’ Pazzi, assisted by a
priest, who “being accustomed to the place, was
less superstitious about its sanctity,” at the steps
of the altar in the duomo of Florence in 1478,
under the very eyes of Cardinal Raffaele Riario,
the raising of the Host being the signal for the
attack. The palaces were great stone fortresses
with towers and battlements; the portal was closed
with doors barred and studded with iron, capable of
resisting almost any force; within were vast courts
and living quarters for the swarms of retainers.
Many of these strongholds were even supplied with
artillery. A criminal often secured the protection
of some cardinal who, with the aid of his “family,”
his armed followers, would rescue and save him
from prison. On one occasion a number of playful
young Romans having assaulted some of Cardinal
Ascanio Sforza’s servants, the good prelate’s
“family,” armed to the teeth, sallied forth,
fell upon the jokers, and slashed and hacked
about twenty of them. At another time when a
certain Savelli, Captain of the Curia, was about
to proceed with an execution in the vicinity of
the palace of Cardinal Balue, that worthy ecclesiastic
called to him from a window and commanded
him to stop, as the place was in his own
jurisdiction. On the captain’s refusal to do as
he was commanded the cardinal ordered his
“family” to storm the prison, which they did,
liberating all the captives and destroying the
records. That night Cardinals Savelli and Colonna
dispatched their own forces against their colleague.
Subsequently all the belligerents were summoned
to appear before the Pope on the charge of contumacy,
but the only notice which Cardinal Balue
took of the order was to fill his lair with armed men.
In a world of rapid change human life, honour,
and the higher sentiments are held in slight esteem;
material success is the goal men strive to reach
and few question the means they employ. During
the late Renaissance the despot did not hesitate to
remove any obstacle in the way of his progress,
even when that obstacle was a near kinsman; and
the act was generally connived at by the other
members of the family, conscious that in those
unsettled days their own position and safety
depended upon the strength and astuteness of their
chief.
Italy was then divided into a hundred petty
dukedoms and principalities, each struggling to
preserve itself by annihilating its neighbour. Coalitions
were constantly formed for the destruction
of a state whose growing power threatened to
disturb the balance, and these compacts often were
broken as soon as made. Deception became a
fine art, and diplomacy and duplicity were synonymous.
It was this keen struggle for existence
which made the Italians the most perspicacious
politicians of the day.
Every ruler sought to attract to his court the
artist and the literary man, for he knew that the
prestige gained thereby was no slight adjunct to
his power, and this explains why many of the most
brutal and egotistical of the princes became famous
as patrons of the arts and sciences. This protection
was repaid with flattery, and to what depths
of sycophancy men will descend is attested by the
nauseous dedications of books of the day. In 1488,
when Caesar Borgia was fourteen years of age, and
by the grace of Innocent VIII. a prothonotary of
the Apostolic See, Paolo Pompilio dedicated his
“Syllabica,” a work on rhetoric, “to the ornament
and hope of the house of Borgia, the Illustrious
Caesar, whose love of letters foretells the greatness
that is to be his.”
