Renaissance in Italy Volume I Part 15

[6] See Corio, p. 420. Corio hints that the Venetians poisoned the Cardinal for fear of this convention being carried out.

[7] _1st. Fior_, lib. i. vol. i. p. 38.

Sixtus, however, while thus providing for his family, could not enjoy life without some youthful protege about his person. Accordingly in 1463 he made his valet, a lad of no education and of base birth, Cardinal and Bishop of Parma at the age of twenty. His merit was the beauty of a young Olympian. With this divine gift he luckily combined a harmless though stupid character.

With all these favorites to plant out in life, the Pope was naturally short of money. He relied on two princ.i.p.al methods for replenis.h.i.+ng his coffers. One was the public sale of places about the Court at Rome, each of which had its well-known price.[1] Benefices were disposed of with rather more reserve and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be considered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held no privilege within his pontifical control on which he was not willing to raise money: 'Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, our heaven, our very G.o.d, are purchasable!' exclaims a scholar of the time; while the Holy Father himself was wont to say, 'A pope needs only pen and ink to get what sum he wants.'[2] The second great financial expedient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal States.

Fict.i.tious dearths were created; the value of wheat was raised to famine prices; good grain was sold out of the kingdom, and bad imported in exchange; while Sixtus forced his subjects to purchase from his stores, and made a profit by the hunger and disease of his emaciated provinces.

Ferdinand, the King of Naples, practiced the same system in the south.

It is worth while to hear what this bread was like from one of the men condemned to eat it: 'The bread made from the corn of which I have spoken was black, stinking, and abominable; one was obliged to consume it, and from this cause sickness frequently took hold upon the State.'[3]

[1] The greatest ingenuity was displayed in promoting this market. Infessura writes: 'Multa et inexcogitata in Curia Romana officia adinvenit et vendidit,' p. 1183.

[2] Baptista Mantua.n.u.s, _de Calamitatibus Temporum_, lib. iii.

Venalia n.o.bis Templa, sacerdotes, altaria, sacra, coronae, Ignes, thura, preces, coelum est venale, Deusque.

Soriano, the Venetian amba.s.sador, ap. Alberi ii. 3, p. 330, writes: 'Conviene ricordarsi quello che soleva dire Sisto IV., che al papa bastava solo la mano con la penna e l'inchiostro, per avere quella somma che vuole.' Cp. Aen. Sylv. Picc. _Ep_.

i. 66: 'Nihil est quod absque argento Romana Curia dedat; nam et ipsae ma.n.u.s impositiones et Spiritus Sancti dona venduntur, nec peccatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur.'

[3] Infessura, _Eccardus_, vol. ii. p. 1941: 'Panis vero qui ex dicto frumento fiebat, erat ater, foetidus, et abominabilis; e ex necessitate comedebatur, ex quo saepenumero in civitate morbus viguit.'

But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not merely the spectacle of a Pope who trafficked in the bodies of his subjects and the holy things of G.o.d, to squander basely gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The peace of Italy was destroyed by desolating wars in the advancement of the same worthless favorites, Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions of Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but the House of Este, firmly planted for centuries, and connected by marriage or alliance with all the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose l.u.s.t for blood and broils was only equaled by his avarice and his libertinism,[1] rushed with wild delight into a project which involved the discord of the whole Peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all the pa.s.sions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when finally, tired of fighting for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he died of rage in 1484. The Pope did actually die of disappointed fury because peace had been restored to the country he had mangled for the sake of a favorite nephew.

[1] This phrase requires support. Infessura (loc. cit. p. 1941) relates the savage pleasure with which Sixtus watched a combat 'a steccato chiuso.' Hearing that a duel to the death was to be fought by two bands of his body-guard, he told them to choose the Piazza of S. Peter for their rendezvous. Then he appeared at a window, blessed the combatants, and crossed himself as a signal for the battle to begin. We who think the ring, the c.o.c.kpit, and the bullfight barbarous, should study Pollajuolo's engraving in order to imagine the horrors of a duel 'a steccato chiuso.' Of the inclination of Sixtus to sensuality, Infessura writes: 'Hic, ut fertur vulgo, et experientia demonstravit, puerorum amator et sodomita fuit.' After mentioning the Riarii and a barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo nunc alia, quae circa hoc possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo.' It was not, perhaps, a wholly Protestant calumny which accused Sixtus of granting private indulgences for the commission of abominable crimes in certain seasons of the year.

The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the corruption of the Papacy in his age remains still to be told. This was the sanction of the Pazzi Conjuration against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. In the year 1477 the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes of the Pazzi family from the magistracy at Florence and otherwise annoying them, had driven Francesco de' Pazzi in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his banker in the place of the Medicean Company. He became intimate with Girolamo Riario, and was well received at the Papal Court. Political reasons at this moment made the Pope and his nephew anxious to destroy the Medici, who opposed Girolamo's schemes of aggrandizement in Lombardy. Private rancor induced Francesco de' Pazzi to second their views and to stimulate their pa.s.sion. The three between them hatched a plot which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, another private foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista Montesecco, a captain well affected to the Count Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators was to lure the brothers Medici to Rome, and to kill them there. But the young men were too prudent to leave Florence. Pazzi and Salviati then proceeded to Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church to succeed in murdering their two enemies together. Bernardo Bandini, a man of blood by trade, and Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to a.s.sa.s.sinate Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dispose of Lorenzo.[1]

The 26th of April 1478 was finally fixed for the deed. The place selected was the Duomo.[2] The elevation of the Host at Ma.s.s-time was to be the signal. Both the Medici arrived. The murderers embraced Giuliano and discovered that this timid youth had left his secret coat of mail at home. But a difficulty, which ought to have been foreseen, arose. Monteseoco, cut-throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo before the high altar: at the last moment some sense of the _religio loci_ dashed his courage. Two priests were then discovered who had no such silly scruples. In the words of an old chronicle, 'Another man was found, who, _being a priest_, was more accustomed to the place and therefore less superst.i.tious about its sanct.i.ty.' This, however, spoiled all. The priests, though more sacrilegious than the bravos, were less used to the trade of a.s.sa.s.sination. They failed to strike home.

Giuliano, it is true, was stabbed to death by Bernardo Bandini and Francesco de' Pazzi at the very moment of the elevation of Christ's body. But Lorenzo escaped with a slight flesh-wound. The whole conspiracy collapsed. In the retaliation which the infuriated people of Florence took upon the murderers, the Archbishop Salviati, together with Jacopo and Francesco de' Pazzi and some others among the princ.i.p.al conspirators, were hung from the windows of the Palazzo Pubblico. For this act of violence to the sacred person of a traitorous priest, Sixtus, who had upon his own conscience the crime of mingled treason, sacrilege, and murder, ex-communicated Florence, and carried on for years a savage war with the Republic. It was not until 1481, when the descent of the Turks upon Otranto made him tremble for his own safety, that he chose to make peace with these enemies whom he had himself provoked and plotted against.

[1] His 'Confession,' printed by Fabroni, _Lorenzi Medicis Vita_, vol. ii. p. 168, gives an interesting account of the hatching of the plot. It is fair to Sixtus to say that Montesecco exculpates him of the design to murder the Medici.

He only wanted to ruin them.

[2] It is curious to note how many of the numerous Italian tyrannicides took place in church. The Chiavelli of Fabriano were murdered during a solemn service in 1435; the sentence of the creed 'Et incarnatus est' was chosen for the signal. Gian Maria Visconti was killed in San Gottardo (1412), Galeazzo Maria Sforza in San Stefano (1484). Lodovico Moro only just escaped a.s.sa.s.sination in Sant' Ambrogio (1484). Machiavelli says that Lorenzo de' Medici's life was attempted by Batista Frescobaldi in the Carmine (see _1st. Fior._ book viii. near the end). The Bagliani of Perugia were to have been ma.s.sacred during the marriage festival of Astorre with Lavinia Colonna(1500). Stefano Porcari intended to capture Nicholas V.

at the great gate of S. Peter's (1453). The only chance of catching cautious princes off their guard was when they were engaged in high solemnities. See above, p. 168.

Another peculiarity in the Pontificate of Sixtus deserves special mention. It was under his auspices in the year 1478 that the Inquisition was founded in Spain for the extermination of Jews, Moors, and Christians with a taint of heresy. During the next four years 2,000 victims were burned in the province of Castile. In Seville, a plot of ground, called the Quemadero, or place of burning--a new Aceldama--was set apart for executions; and here in one year 280 heretics were committed to the flames, while 79 were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and 17,000 to lighter punishments of various kinds. In Andalusia alone 5,000 houses were at once abandoned by their inhabitants. Then followed in 1492 the celebrated edict against the Jews. Before four months had expired the whole Jewish population were bidden to leave Spain, carrying with them nothing in the shape of gold or silver. To convert their property into bills of exchange and movables was their only resource. The market speedily was glutted: a house was given for an a.s.s, a vineyard for a suit of clothes. Vainly did the persecuted race endeavor to purchase a remission of the sentence by the payment of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdinand and his consort, raising the crucifix, and crying: 'Judas sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver; sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for the same to G.o.d!' The exodus began. Eight hundred thousand Jews left Spain[1]--some for the coast of Africa, where the Arabs ripped their bodies up in search for gems or gold they might have swallowed, and deflowered their women--some for Portugal, where they bought the right to exist for a large head-tax, and where they saw their sons and daughters dragged away to baptism before their eyes. Others were sold as slaves, or had to satisfy the rapacity of their persecutors with the bodies of their children. Many flung themselves into the wells, and sought to bury despair in suicide. The Mediterranean was covered with famine-stricken and plague-breeding fleets of exiles. Putting into the Port of Genoa, they were refused leave to reside in the city, and died by hundreds in the harbor.[2] Their festering bodies, bred a pestilence along the whole Italian sea-board, of which at Naples alone 20,000 persons died. Flitting from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, these forlorn specters, the victims of bigotry and avarice, everywhere pillaged and everywhere rejected, dwindled away and disappeared. Meanwhile the orthodox rejoiced. Pico della Mirandola, who spent his life in reconciling Plato with the Cabala, finds nothing more to say than this: 'The sufferings of the Jews, in which the glory of the Divine justice delighted, were so extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration.' With these words we may compare the following pa.s.sage from Senarega: 'The matter at first sight seemed praiseworthy, as regarding the honor done to our religion; yet it involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them, not as beasts, but as men, the handiwork of G.o.d.' A critic of this century can only exclaim with stupefaction: _Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!_ Thus Spain began to devour and depopulate herself. The curse which fell upon the Jew and Moor descended next upon philosopher and patriot. The very life of the nation, in its commerce, its industry, its free thought, its energy of character, was deliberately and steadily throttled. And at no long interval of time the blight of Spain was destined to descend on Italy, paralyzing the fair movements of her manifold existence to a rigid uniformity, shrouding the light and color of her art and letters in the blackness of inquisitorial gloom.

[1] This number is perhaps exaggerated. Limborch in his _History of the Inquisition_ (p. 83) gives both 800,000 and 400,000; he also speaks of 170,000 _families_ as one calculation.

[2] Senarega's account of the entry of the Jews into Genoa is truly awful. He was an eye-witness of what he relates. The pa.s.sage may be read in Prescott's _Ferdinand and Isabella_, chapter 17.

Most singular is the att.i.tude of a Sixtus--indulging his l.u.s.t and pride in the Vatican, adorning the chapel called after his name with masterpieces,[1] rending Italy with broils for the aggrandizement of favorites, haggling over the prices to be paid for bishoprics, extorting money from starved provinces, plotting murder against his enemies, hounding the semi-barbarous Swiss mountaineers on Milan by indulgences, refusing aid to Venice in her champions.h.i.+p of Christendom against the Turk--yet meanwhile thinking to please G.o.d by holocausts of Moors, by myriads of famished Jews, conferring on a faithless and avaricious Ferdinand the t.i.tle of Catholic, endeavoring to wipe out his sins by the blood of others, to burn his own vices in the _autos da fe_ of Seville, and by the foundation of that diabolical engine the Inquisition to secure the fabric his own infamy was undermining.[2] This is not the language of a Protestant denouncing the Pope. With all respect for the Roman Church, that Alma Mater of the Middle Ages, that august and venerable monument of immemorial antiquity, we cannot close our eyes to the contradictions between practice and pretension upon which the History of the Italian Renaissance throws a light so lurid.

[1] Musing beneath the Sibyls and before the Judgment of Michael Angelo, it is difficult not to picture to the fancy the arraignment of the Popes who built and beautified that chapel, when the Christ, whose blood they sold, should appear with His menacing right arm uplifted, and the prophets should thunder their denunciations: 'Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye princ.i.p.al of the flock, for the days of your slaughter and your dispersions are accomplished.'

[2] The same incongruity appears also in Innocent VIII., whose bull against witchcraft (1484) systematized the persecution directed against unfortunate old women and idiots. Sprenger, in the _Malleus Maleficarum_, mentions that in the first year after its publication forty-one witches were burned in the district of Como, while crowds of suspected women took refuge in the province of the Archduke Sigismond. Cantu's _Storia della Diocesi di Como_ (Le Monnier, 2 vols.) may be consulted for the persecution of witches in Valtellina and Val Camonica.

Cp. Folengo's _Maccaronea_ for the prevalence of witchcraft in those districts.

After Sixtus IV. came Innocent VIII. His secular name was Giambattista Cibo. The sacred College, terrified by the experience of Sixtus into thinking that another Pope, so reckless in his creation of scandalous Cardinals, might ruin Christendom, laid the most solemn obligations on the Pope elect. Cibo took oaths on every relic, by every saint, to every member of the conclave, that he would maintain a certain order of appointment and a purity of election in the Church. No Cardinal under the age of thirty, not more than one of the Pope's own blood, none without the rank of Doctor of Theology or Law, were to be elected, and so forth. But as soon as the tiara was on his head, he renounced them all as inconsistent with the rights and liberties of S. Peter's Chair.

Engagements made by the man might always be broken by the Pope. Of Innocent's Pontificate little need be said. He was the first Pope publicly to acknowledge his seven children, and to call them sons and daughters.[1] Avarice, venality, sloth, and the ascendency of base favorites made his reign loathsome without the blaze and splendor of the scandals of his fiery predecessor. In corruption he advanced a step even beyond Sixtus, by establis.h.i.+ng a Bank at Rome for the sale of pardons.[2] Each sin had its price, which might be paid at the convenience of the criminal: 150 ducats of the tax were poured into the Papal coffers; the surplus fell to Franceschetto, the Pope's son. This insignificant princeling, for whom the county of Anguillara was purchased, showed no ability or ambition for aught but getting and spending money. He was small of stature and tame-spirited: yet the destinies of an important house of Europe depended on him; for his father married him to Maddalena, the daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici, in 1487. This led to Giovanni de' Medici receiving a Cardinal's hat at the age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest in Rome was founded; in the course of a few years the Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and by their ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains of Florence fast.[3] The traffic which Innocent and Franceschetto carried on in theft and murder filled the Campagna with brigands and a.s.sa.s.sins.[4]

Travelers and pilgrims and amba.s.sadors were stripped and murdered on their way to Rome; and in the city itself more than two hundred people were publicly a.s.sa.s.sinated with impunity during the last months of the Pope's life. He was gradually dozing off into his last long sleep, and Franceschetto was planning how to carry off his ducats. While the Holy Father still hovered between life and death, a Jewish doctor proposed to reinvigorate him by the transfusion of young blood into his torpid veins. Three boys throbbing with the elixir of early youth were sacrificed in vain. Each boy, says Infessura, received one ducat. He adds, not without grim humor: 'Et paulo post mortui sunt; Judaeus quidem aufugit, et Papa non sanatus est.' The epitaph of this poor old Pope reads like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism: 'Ego autem in Innocentia mea ingressus sum.'

[1] 'Primus pontific.u.m filios filiasque palam ostentavit, primus eorum apertas fecit nuptias, primus domesticos hymenaeos celebravit.' Egidius of Viterbo, quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom_, vol. vii. p. 274, note.

[2] Infessura says he heard the Vice-chancellor, when asked why criminals were allowed to pay instead of being punished, answer: 'G.o.d wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should pay and live.' Dominico di Viterbo, Apostolic Scribe, forged bulls by which the Pope granted indulgences for the commission of the worst scandals. His father tried to buy him off for 5,000 ducats. Innocent replied that, as his honor was concerned, he must have 6,000. The poor father could not sc.r.a.pe so much money together; so the bargain fell through, and Dominico was executed. A Roman who had killed two of his own daughters bought his pardon for 800 ducats.

[3] Guicciardini, i. 1., points out that Lorenzo, having the Pope for his ally, was able to create that balance of power in Italy which it was his chief political merit to have maintained until his death.

[4] It is only by reading the pages of Infessura's Diary (Eccardus vol. ii. pp. 2003-2005) that any notion of the mixed debauchery and violence of Rome at this time can be formed.

Meanwhile the Cardinals had not been idle. The tedious leisure of Innocent's long lethargy was employed by them in active simony. Simony, it may be said in pa.s.sing, gave the great Italian families a direct interest in the election of the richest and most paying candidate. It served the turn of a man like Ascanio Sforza to fatten the golden goose that laid such eggs, before he killed it--in other words, to take the bribes of Innocent and Alexander, while deferring for a future time his own election. All the Cardinals, with the exception of Roderigo Borgia,[1] were the creatures of Sixtus or of Innocent. Having bought their hats with gold, they were now disposed to sell their votes to the highest bidder. The Borgia was the richest, strongest, wisest, and most worldly of them all. He ascertained exactly what the price of each suffrage would be, and laid his plans accordingly. The Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, brother of the Duke of Milan, would accept the lucrative post of Vice-Chancellor. The Cardinal Orsini would be satisfied with the Borgia Palaces at Rome and the Castles of Monticello and Saviano. The Cardinal Colonna had a mind for the Abbey of Subbiaco with its fortresses. The Cardinal of S. Angelo preferred the comfortable Bishopric of Porto with its palace stocked with choice wines. The Cardinal of Parma would take Nepi. The Cardinal of Genoa was bribable with the Church of S. Maria in Via Lata. Less influential members of the Conclave sold themselves for gold; to meet their demands the Borgia sent Ascanio Sforza four mules laden with coin in open day, requesting him to distribute it in proper portions to the voters. The fiery Giuliano della Rovere remained implacable and obdurate. In the Borgia his vehement temperament perceived a fit antagonist. The armor which he donned in their first encounters he never doffed, but waged fierce war with the whole brood of Borgias at Ostia, at the French Court, in Romagna, wherever and whenever he found opportunity.[2] He and five other Cardinals--among them his cousin Raphael Riario--refused to sell their votes. But Roderigo Borgia, having corrupted the rest of the college, a.s.sumed the mantle of S. Peter in 1492, with the ever-memorable t.i.tle of Alexander VI.

[1] Roderigo was the son of Isabella Borgia, niece of Pope Calixtus III., by her marriage with Joffre Lenzuoli. He took the name of Borgia, when he came to Rome to be made Cardinal, and to share in his uncle's greatness.

[2] The marriage of his nephew Nicolo della Rovere to Laura, the daughter of Alexander VI. by Giulia Bella, in 1505, long after the Borgia family had lost its hold on Italy, is a curious and unexplained incident.

Rome rejoiced. The Holy City attired herself in festival array, exhibiting on every flag and balcony the Bull of the house of Borgia, and crying like the Egyptians when they found Apis:--

Vive diu Bos! Vive diu Bos! Borgia vive!

Vivit Alexander: Roma beata manet.

In truth there was nothing to convince the Romans of the coming woe, or to raise suspicion that a Pope had been elected who would deserve the execration of succeeding centuries. In Roderigo Borgia the people only saw, as yet, a man accomplished at all points, of handsome person, royal carriage, majestic presence, affable address. He was a brilliant orator, a pa.s.sionate lover, a demiG.o.d of court pageantry and ecclesiastic parade--qualities which, though they do not suit our notions of a churchman, imposed upon the taste of the Renaissance. As he rode in triumph toward the Lateran, voices were loud in his praise. 'He sits upon a snow-white horse,' writes one of the humanists of the century,[1]

'with serene forehead, with commanding dignity. As he distributes his blessing to the crowd, all eyes are fixed upon him, and all hearts rejoice. How admirable is the mild composure of his mien! how n.o.ble his countenance! his glance how free! His stature and carriage, his beauty and the full health of his body, how they enhance the reverence which he inspires!' Another panegyrist[2] describes his 'broad forehead, kingly brow, free countenance full of majesty,' adding that 'the heroic beauty of his whole body' was given him by nature in order that he might 'adorn the seat of the Apostles with his divine form in the place of G.o.d.' How little in the early days of his Pontificate the Borgia resembled that Alexander with whom the legend of his subsequent life has familiarized our fancy, may be gathered from the following account:[3] 'He is handsome, of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with honeyed and choice eloquence; the beautiful women on whom his eyes are cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more powerfully than the magnet influences iron.' These, we must remember, are the testimonies of men of letters, imbued with the Pagan sentiments of the fifteenth century, and rejoicing in the advent of a Pope who would, they hoped, make Rome the capital of luxury and license.

Therefore they require to be received with caution. Yet there is no reason to suppose that the majority of the Italians regarded the elevation of the Borgia with peculiar horror. As a Cardinal he had given proof of his ability, but shown no signs of force or cruelty or fraud.

Nor were his morals worse than those of his colleagues. If he was the father of several children, so was Giuliano della Rovere, and so had been Pope Innocent before him. This mattered but little in an age when the Primate of Christendom had come to be regarded as a secular potentate, less fortunate than other princes inasmuch as his rule was not hereditary, but more fortunate in so far as he could wield the thunders and dispense the privileges of the Church. A few men of discernment knew what had been done, and shuddered. 'The king of Naples,' says Guicciardini, 'though he dissembled his grief, told the queen, his wife, with tears--tears which he was wont to check even at the death of his own sons--that a Pope had been made who would prove most pestilent to the whole Christian commonwealth.' The young Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, again, showed his discernment of the situation by whispering in the Conclave to his kinsman Cibo: 'We are in the wolf's jaws; he will gulp us down, unless we make our flight good.' Besides, there was in Italy a widely spread repugnance to the Spanish intruders--Marrani, or renegade Moors, as they were properly called--who crowded the Vatican and threatened to possess the land of their adoption like conquerors. 'Ten Papacies would not suffice to satiate the greed of all this kindred,' wrote Giannandrea Boccaccio to the Duke of Ferrara in 1492: and events proved that these apprehensions were justified; for during the Pontificate of Alexander eighteen Spanish Cardinals were created, five of whom belonged to the house of the Borgias.

[1] See Michael Fernus, quoted by Greg. _Lucrezia Borgia_, p.

45.

[2] Jason Mainus, quoted by Greg, _Stadt Rom._ p. 314, note.

[3] Gasp. Ver., quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom._ p. 208, note.

It is certain, however, that the profound horror with which the name of Alexander VI. strikes a modern ear was not felt among the Italians at the time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with which he was afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life, which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the sixteenth century.

This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the date of his death. In course of time, when the attention of the Northern nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend which, like all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects.

Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. The Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual insolence in their autocracy. What they desired of strange and sweet and terrible in the forbidden fruits of l.u.s.t, they had enjoyed. The Popes of the Middle Ages--Hildebrand and Boniface--had displayed the extreme of spiritual insolence in their theocracy. What they desired of tyrannous and forceful in the exercise of an usurped despotism over souls, they had enjoyed. The Borgia combined both impulses toward the illimitable.

To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as unrestrained as Nero's, were relieved against the background of flame and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is justifiable. His spiritual tyranny, that arrogated Jus, by right of which he claimed the hemisphere revealed by Christopher Columbus, and imposed upon the press of Europe the censure of the Church of Rome, was rendered ten times monstrous by the glare reflected on it from the unquenched furnace of a G.o.dless life. The universal conscience of Christianity is revolted by those unnamable delights, orgies of blood and festivals of l.u.s.t, which were enjoyed in the plenitude of his green and vigorous old age by this versatile diplomatist and subtle priest, who controlled the councils of kings, and who chanted the sacramental service for a listening world on Easter Day in Rome. Rome has never been small or weak or mediocre. And now in the Pontificate of Alexander 'that memorable scene' presented to the nations of the modern world a pageant of Antichrist and Antiphysis--the negation of the Gospel and of nature; a glaring spectacle of discord between humanity as it aspires to be at its best, and humanity as it is at its worst; a tragi-comedy composed by some infernal Aristophanes, in which the servant of servants, the anointed of the Lord, the lieutenant upon earth of Christ, played the chief part. It may be objected that this is the language not of history but of the legend. I reply that there are occasions when the legend has caught the spirit of the truth.

Alexander was a stronger and a firmer man than his immediate predecessors. 'He combined,' says Guicciardini, 'craft with singular sagacity, a sound judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; and to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability and pains beyond belief.'[1] His first care was to reduce Rome to order. The old factions of Colonna and Orsini, which Sixtus had scotched, but which had raised their heads again during the dotage of Innocent, were destroyed in his Pontificate. In this way, as Machiavelli observed,[2] he laid the real basis for the temporal power of the Papacy. Alexander, indeed, as a sovereign, achieved for the Papal See what Louis XI. had done for the throne of France, and made Rome on its small scale follow the type of the large European monarchies. The faithlessness and perjuries of the Pope, 'who never did aught else but deceive, nor ever thought of anything but this, and always found occasion for his frauds,'[3] when combined with his logical intellect and persuasive eloquence, made him a redoubtable antagonist. All considerations of religion and morality were subordinated by him with strict impartiality to policy: and his policy he restrained to two objects--the advancement of his family, and the consolidation of the temporal power. These were narrow aims for the ambition of a potentate who with one stroke of his pen pretended to confer the new-found world on Spain. Yet they taxed his whole strength, and drove him to the perpetration of enormous crimes.

[1] It is but fair to Guicciardini to complete his sentence in a note: 'These good qualities were far surpa.s.sed by his vices; private habits of the utmost obscenity, no shame nor sense of truth, no fidelity to his engagements, no religious sentiment; insatiable avarice, unbridled ambition, cruelty beyond the cruelty of barbarous races, burning desire to elevate his sons by any means: of these there were many, and among them--in order that he might not lack vicious instruments for effecting his vicious schemes--one not less detestable in any way than his father.' _St. d'It._ vol. i. p. 9. I shall translate and put into the appendix Guicciardini's character of Alexander from the _Storia di Firenze_.

[2] In the sentences which close the 11th chapter of the _Prince_.

[3] Mach. _Prince_, ch. xvii. In the Satires of Ariosto (Satire i. 208-27) there is a brilliant and singularly outspoken pa.s.sage on the nepotism of the Popes and its ruinous results for Italy.

Former Pontiffs had raised money by the sale of benefices and indulgences: this, of course, Alexander also practiced--to such an extent, indeed, that an epigram gained currency: 'Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to sell them.' But he went further and took lessons from Tiberius. Having sold the scarlet to the highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with rich benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he poisoned him, laid hands upon his h.o.a.rds, and recommenced the game. Paolo Capello, the Venetian Amba.s.sador, wrote in the year 1500: 'Every night they find in Rome four or five murdered men, Bishops and Prelates and so forth.'