Chapter VI: Book IV (4)

The Lord Innocent P.P. VIII made no impression on His age; as a despot, He was an accented failure. “The Patrimony of St. Peter would be the most delightful country in the world if it were not for Colonna and Orsini,” said the Sieur Philippe de Comines, Orator of the Christian King Louis XI of France. The States of the Church became a seething cauldron of lawlessness and licence. Rome herself, “where everything that is shameful or horrible collects and is practised” (_Tacitus_), swarmed with assassins, professional and amateur. Every man who valued his personal safety put on a mail-shirt when he left his naked bed, and set no foot in the streets till he had buckled a sword, or at least a dagger, by his side. The very perfection of these fifteenth century mail-shirts, which could be hidden in two hands, and yet were proof against a thrust or cut at closest quarters, tells its own tale. The trade of an armourer became an honourable art and mystery, when men staked their lives at every turn, as men callously stake money now on their convictions or opinions. A whole embassage from Maximilian, King of the Romans, as the heir of Caesar Friedrich IV was styled, was assailed by brigands and stripped to the shirts in sight of Rome.

In July 1492 the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII showed signs of decay, the feebleness of age increased, and He was only kept alive by women’s milk. Modern chroniclers of His last hours have fallen into serious error, in relating that the operation for transfusion of blood was performed by a Hebrew chirurgeon upon the Holiness of the Pope without accomplishing its end. The error arises from forgetfulness of the facts: (α) that the idea of the operation for transfusion could not occur to any one to whom the circulation of the blood was unknown; (β) that the phenomenon of the circulation of the blood was not discovered by Harvey until the seventeenth century. Before the circulation of the blood was known, the visible veins were taken for sinews. Verrochio thought them to be sinews when he carved them on the lean young arms of his alert David. The blood was conceived of as stagnant in the flesh; the heartbeats as a pulsing of the bowels. If the idea of transferring blood from a healthy to a feeble body had occurred to any one of them, the ordinary fifteenth century chirurgeons would not have been contented with a single incision, but would have filled up the weak body through numerous apertures, to be closed with the red hot cautery as usual; and the patient most certainly would have died under the operation, of syncope, caused, not by loss, but by acquisition of blood. Modern historians have misunderstood the words with which Infessura and Raynaldus describe the death of this Pope: and their misunderstanding further is caused by a casual and superficial knowledge of the pharmacy of the fifteenth century. Infessura and Raynaldus say that a certain Jewish physician promised to the Pope’s Holiness the restoration of His health; that he took three boys of the age of ten years, giving to them a ducat a-piece, saying that he wished to restore the Pope’s health, and that he required for that purpose a certain quantity of human blood, which must be young; that he drew all the blood out of those three boys; that the said boys incontinently died; that, when the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII knew, He execrated the crime of the Jew and gave order for his arrest; that the Jew had taken himself by flight out of the reach of the torturers; and that the Pope received no cure. This, Dr. Mandell Creighton and Mr. John Addington Symonds call transfusion of blood. They appear to be unaware of the fifteenth century passion for sublimation and distillation: and they appear to have missed this sentence of Raynaldus, _ut ex eo_ (the young blood) _pharmacum stillicidium chimica arte paratum propinandum Pontifici conficeret_; which plainly shows that it was a draught, a drink,[21] the quintessence of the boys’ blood, prepared by his alchymical art, with which the Hebrew physician was going to fail to save the life of the Pope.

* * * * *

These were the times, and the men, which the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja had to deal.

* * * * *

=Book the Second=

The Roaring Blaze

“_A fire that is kindled begins with smoke and hissing, while it lays hold upon the faggots; bursts into a roaring blaze with raging tongues of flame, devouring all in reach_;

The subject of this book has furnished occasion for liars of all ages—reckless liars, venal liars, raving liars, careless liars, clever liars, and futile liars, to perform their functions.

The Lord Innocent P.P. VIII died on the twenty-fifth of July 1492. The Lord Rafaele Galeotti Sansoni-Riarjo, Cardinal-Deacon of San Giorgio _in Velum Aureum_, Cardinal-Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church, sent guards to seize and hold the gates of Rome. _Caporioni_, priors of the fourteen Regions, patrolled the city to deal with seditions and disorders. Patarina, the great bell on Capitol, that only tolls when the Pope is dead, knelled unceasingly.

At this time the Sacred College consisted of seven and twenty cardinals. Four of these were absent in distant sees, and were unable to reach the Eternal City in the nine days at their disposal. They were:—

(α) The Lord Luis Juan de Mila y Borja, Cardinal-Prior-Presbyter of
the Title of Santi Quattro Coronati;

(β) The Lord Pedro Gonsalvo de Mendoza, Cardinal-Presbyter of the
Title of Santa Croce _in Gerusalemme_;

(γ) The Lord André Spinay, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San
Martino _in Monte t.t. Equitii_;

(δ) Frère Pierre d’Aubusson, Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes,
Cardinal-Deacon of Sant’ Adriano.

Twenty-one cardinals entered the Conclave. They were:—

(α) The Lord Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, Cardinal-Bishop of Porto and
Santa Rufina, Dean of the Sacred College, Vicechancellor of the
Holy Roman Church, etc.;

(β) The Lord Giovanni Michele, Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste, Bishop of
Verona;

(γ) The Lord Oliviero Carafa, Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, Archbishop of
Naples;

(δ) The Lord Giorgio Costa, Cardinal-Bishop of Albano.

(ε) The Lord Antoniotto Pallavicini, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title
of Sant’ Anastasia;

(ζ) The Lord Girolamo Basso della Rovere, Cardinal-Presbyter of the
Title of San Crisogono, Bishop of Recanata;

(η) The Lord Domenico della Rovere, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of
San Clemente, Archbishop of Taranto;

(θ) The Lord Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of
San Pietro _ad Vincula_;

(ι) The Lord Paolo Fregosio, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San
Sisto, Archbishop of Genoa;

(κ) The Lord Giovanni de’ Conti, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of
San Vitale, Archbishop of Consano;

(λ) The Lord Giangiacomo Sclafenati, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title
of San Stefano _in Monte Celio_, Bishop of Parma;

(μ) The Lord Ardicino della Porta, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of
San Giovanni e San Paolo, Bishop of Alba;

(ν) The Lord Lorenzo Cibo, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa
Cecilia, Archbishop of Benevento;

(ξ) The Lord Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini, Cardinal-Archdeacon of Sant’
Eustachio, Archbishop of Siena;

(ο) The Lord Rafaele Galeotti Sansoni-Riarjo, Cardinal-Deacon of San
Giorgio _in Velum Aureum_, Cardinal-Chamberlain of the Holy
Roman Church;

(π) The Lord Giovanni Colonna, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in
Aquiro_;

(ρ) The Lord Giambattista Orsini, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria
_Nuova_;

(σ) The Lord Giovanni de’ Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in
Domnica_;

(τ) The Lord Giovanni Savelli, Cardinal-Deacon of San Niccolo _in
Carcere Tulliano_;

(υ) The Lord Giambattista Zeno, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in
Portico_;

(φ) The Lord Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti, Cardinal-Deacon of San
Vito e San Modesto _in Macello_, Martiri.

At the last moment, before the Conclave finally was immured, there came:—

(χ) Fra Mafeo Gheraldo, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Nereo e
Sant’ Achilleo, Patriarch of Venice;

(ψ) The Lord Friderico Sanseverini, Cardinal-Deacon of San Teodoro.

On the sixth of August 1492, this Conclave of twenty-three cardinals listened to the preliminary exhortations of Fra Bernardino Lopez de Caravajal, and the business of election was begun.

* * * * *

Man mercifully has been left unable to foresee the effect which his actions will have upon the future. Many of these cardinals had assisted before at the election of a Pope; it was a routine with which they were acquainted. But by no means could they know what a mark upon the world’s history they would make with this election. Subsequent events, however, have shewn that the seed of tremendous issues here was sown, issues as great as the consolidation of a European kingdom under a sovereign dynasty that endured until 1870. As such, the Conclave of 1492 must be regarded as one of the most pregnant that ever have occurred; and its details, as worthy of intent consideration.

There was a faction and a shadow of a faction among the cardinals. The candidate of the first was the Dean and Vicechancellor-Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, nephew of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III. He actively was supported by the very influential cardinals Sforza-Visconti, Colonna, and Riarjo, whose friendship he is said to have cultivated during the reign of the late Pope, by promises of preferment and by gifts. He also is said to have won the alliance of fourteen other cardinals by similar inducements, and so to have placed himself at the head of a faction of eighteen. His supporters were led to believe that his Spanish nationality would make him neutral to the political parties of Italy; and much stress was laid upon the fact that Spain was now the rising power in Europe, with whom the Church would do well to be allied. The standard of morality of the day prevented objections to the character of Cardinal Rodrigo; and it was made clear to all that he was by far the richest cardinal, holding all the most lucrative appointments, which last would have to be vacated, and would be his to give away, in the event of his election.

The candidate of the second faction was Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, a nephew of the Lord Xystus P.P. IV. He was the life-long disappointed rival, in more senses than one, of Cardinal Rodrigo. His candidature was an attempt on the part of the Christian King Charles VIII of France to set up a Pontiff devoted to French, and not to Spanish, interests; to which end the King’s Majesty deposited two hundred thousand ducats with a Roman bank for the purchase of cardinalitial votes.

There was an independent candidate, Cardinal Lorenzo Cibo, a nephew of the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII, to whom Cardinal Pallavicini was bound by ties of gratitude: but he had no other supporter, and became submerged in the majority.

Of the two contestants, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had the poorer chance. His own cousins, Cardinals Girolamo and Domenico della Rovere, would not support him. His personality was universally antipathetic; his opponent’s was universally sympathetic. The French money which he had taken, was but as a drop in the ocean compared with the enormous wealth and desperate determination of the Spaniard. Also, there were no votes for sale. Four cardinals—the Lords Oliviero Carafa, Giorgio Costa, Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini, and Giambattista Zeno—announced that they would vote independently and under no influence; while the remnant of the Sacred College, consisting of seventeen cardinals, having been fiercely canvassed by Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti, representative of the reigning House of Milan and hereditary foe of France, were already in the pocket of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Dean.

The third night of the Conclave concluded the preliminary discussions; and at dawn, on the eleventh of August 1492, Cardinal Rodrigo was elected Pope, by the large majority of twenty-two out of twenty-three, consisting of his own vote with those of the Cardinal-Bishops Giovanni Michele, Oliviero Carafa, Giorgio Costa, the Cardinal-Presbyters Antoniotto Pallavicini, Lorenzo Cibo, Mafeo Gheraldo, Girolamo Basso della Rovere, Domenico della Rovere, Paolo Fregosio, Giovanni de’ Conti, Giangiacomo Sclafenati, Ardicino della Porta, the Cardinal-Archdeacon Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini, the Cardinal-Deacons Rafaele Galeotti Sansoni-Riarjo, Giovanni Colonna, Giambattista Orsini, Giovanni de’ Medici, Giovanni Savelli, Friderico Sanseverini, Giambattista Zeno, and Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti.

Rome was exciting herself about this election. Four mule loads of silver had been taken from the palace of Cardinal Rodrigo to the house of Cardinal Sforza-Visconti before the immuring of the Conclave, most conceivably to be guarded there more safely. Rome guessed that the Spaniard was so certain of his own election as to be preparing for the pleasant custom, which the citizens used, of pillaging the palace of the cardinal who was elected Pope. Some of the silver perhaps may have passed into Sforza’s possession; but there is no direct evidence to prove the absurd statement of Monsignor Burchard that it was the price of his vote. In the first instance, the security of the silver, was most probably the motive for its transference. After the election the Pope would naturally wish to reward his most useful supporter; and no doubt left the silver[22] with Cardinal Sforza-Visconti while bestowing on him other and more proportionate acknowledgments.

In the Conclave, if one can believe reports, there was no less excitement. All the sombre dignity of Spain left Cardinal Rodrigo at the supreme moment of his life. He showed himself as just a human man, successful in the most daring, most immense, of all ambitions, when his quondam colleagues lowered their green or purple canopies to his, as he joyfully cried: “We are Pope and Vicar of Christ!”

The cardinals knelt at His feet, and Cardinal Sforza-Visconti said that undoubtedly the election was the work of God. Then the new Pope recovered at least decorum of speech, replying that He was conscious of His Own weakness, and relied entirely upon Divine Guidance; but His order to Monsignor Burchard, the Caerimonarius, to write His name on little slips of paper, and fling them from a window for the satisfaction of the citizens who swarmed impatiently outside the Vatican; and His haste to retire behind the altar for the purpose of changing His cardinalitial scarlet for the papal habit of white taffetas with cincture, rochet of fair linen, embroidered crimson stola, house-cap, almuce, and shoes of ermine and crimson velvet (of which vestments three sizes are prepared, to suit the stature of any Pope); this order and this haste shew that the Pope’s Holiness was most deeply moved, as any human being well might be.

Outside, Rome rejoiced. Inside, the cardinals asked what name the Pope would choose, suggesting Calixtus as a compliment to His dead Uncle and Creator, Who had brought Him first to Rome. But, now, the Pontiff had regained His magnificent composure, and He answered mightily: “We desire the name of the Invincible Alexander.” Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, a clever, serious boy of the age of seventeen years, whispered to Cardinal Cibo: “Now we are in the jaws of a ravening wolf, and if we do not flee he will devour us.” But the gigantic Cardinal Sanseverini lifted the Lord Alexander P.P. VI in his strong arms and throned Him on the altar; and the Sacred College paid Him the first adoration, kissing the cross embroidered on His shoe and on the ends of the stola at His knee, and the Ring of the Fisherman on His right forefinger, while Cardinal-Archdeacon Franceso de’ Piccolhuomini and the second Cardinal-Deacon made proclamation to the crowd at the re-opened door of the Conclave:

“I announce to you great joy. We have for a Pope the Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Dean Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, Who wills to be called Alexander the Sixth.”

[23]And, incontinent, says Monsignor Hans Burchard the vulgar tittle-tattling Caerimonarius, (wilfully misquoting the Vulgate Psalm cxi. 9,) having assumed the papal power, _dispersit et dedit pauperibus bona sua_, He hath dispersed, He hath given to the poor, his goods. (_Authorised Version_, _Psalm_ cxii. 9.) To Cardinal Orsini He gave the Vicechancellor’s palace of San Lorenzo _in Damaso_, the fortalices of Soria and Monticelli, the revenues of the cathedral of Cartagena in Spain, worth five thousand ducats (which He had been administering for Don Cesare (detto Borgia) in accordance with the Breves of the Lords Xystus P.P. IV and Innocent P.P. VIII), and the legation of the Mark of Ancona. To Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti He gave His new palace on Banchi Vecchi (_v._ p. 67), the town of Nepi, the revenues of the cathedral of Agria in Hungary, worth ten thousand ducats, and named him, at the age of thirty-seven years, Vicechancellor of the Holy Roman Church. To Cardinal Colonna He gave the Abbacy of Subjaco with all its fortresses and rights of patronage, confirming the same to his house for ever. To Cardinal Riarjo He gave the huge palace in Trastevere (now Corsini) vacated by Cardinal Sforza-Visconti, benefices in Spain producing four thousand ducats yearly revenue, and confirmed him in his office of Cardinal-Chamberlain. To Cardinal Savelli He gave the legations of Perugia and Civita Castellana, including twenty towns and a revenue of three thousand ducats; and to other cardinals the remainder of the preferments which He now vacated.

If these gifts were given and taken as the price of votes, then an enormous act of Simony technically was committed, the buying and selling of ecclesiastical power. Afterwards, His enemies continually were charging Him with Simony; but, at the time, no serious accusation was made. Even the four cardinals, who had announced that they did not intend to be bribed, voted for the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. And here it may be noticed, that though Simony, by the Bull of the Lord Julius P.P. II _De Simoniaca Electione_, is held to invalidate an ecclesiastical election; yet the said Bull was not issued until after the death of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, and was not retrospective in effect, although the vehement personal hatred of Julius for Alexander, hatred worthy rather of Carthaginian Hannibal than of the Vicar of the Prince of Peace, leaves no doubt whatever of the intention to defile the memory of the preceding Pontiff with an insinuation which never has been made valid. Under these circumstances, it perhaps may be permitted to those irrational persons who habitually usurp the functions of the Eternal Judge, and who already have condemned the Borgia Pontiff, to remember that, if this election was invalidated and annulled by Simony, He never was a Pope at all, and therefore cannot be blamed, attacked, condemned, in a papal capacity. Much satisfaction of a kind may be derived from that reflection. At the same time, though the theory might be allowed for private consumption, as a “pious opinion” distinguished from a “dogma,” it would be highly injudicious to court collision with another Bull—the Bull _Execrabilis_ of the Lord Pius P.P. II—which provides all proclaimed aspersions of the Popes with pains and penalties. But when all has been considered, no evidence is forthcoming to prove that a single cardinal sold—_sold_—his vote to Cardinal Rodrigo buying. None but a purchased or unpurchased cardinal can testify that he sold, or did not sell; and none of these have testified. That the new Pope gave great gifts is not denied. Popes always do. They cannot help Themselves. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI vacated so much preferment, that He had much to give. To give that preferment was one of the duties of His office; and, naturally, He gave it to His friends, and not to His single enemy and envious rival, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who, in revenge, alleged Simony.

* * * * *

The Lord Innocent P.P. VIII died on the twenty-fifth of July 1492. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI began to reign on the eleventh of August. During the seventeen days that intervened, while the city was under the rigid rule of the white-faced Cardinal-Chamberlain Riarjo, a matter of some two hundred and twenty assassinations took place: in such order had the deceased Pope left His capital that more than nine murders were committed every day among a population of a mere five and eighty thousand. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI acted with decision to end this abominable state of lawlessness. An assassin was caught redhanded—there was no difficulty about that—he and his brother were forced to look on while their house was rased to the ground (the worst disgrace possible to a Roman); and then they were ceremoniously hanged among the ruins. A commission was established to decide all quarrels, which, formerly, had been settled by cold steel. Official inspectors of prisons were appointed; arrears of official salaries paid up to date; and a bench of four judges established for dealing with capital crimes. So the first act of this pontificate was the restoration, at least provisionally, of public order. The admiring Romans said that this vigorous administration of justice was due to the direct disposing of the Almighty.

The coronation, on the steps before the Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican, of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI by the Cardinal-Archdeacon on the twenty-sixth of August was a scene of unlimited magnificence, attended by the Orators of the Powers who hailed the Pope with the most laudatory congratulations. Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano), who spoke for Siena, said :—

“Præstans animi magnitudo quae mortales crederes omnes
antecellere—Magna quaedam de te, rara, ardua, singularia,
incredibilia, inaudita, pollicentur.[24]

The Orator of Lucca said:—

“Quid iste tuus divinus, et maiestate plenus, aspectus?

The Orator of Genoa said:—

“Adeo virtutum gloria et disciplinarum laude, et vitae sanctimonia
decoraris, et adeo singularum ac omnium rerum ornamento dotaris, quae
talem summam ac venerandam dignitatem praebeant ut valde ab omnibus
ambigendum sit, tu ne magis pontificatui, an illa tibi sacratissima et
gloriosissima Papatus dignitas offerenda fuerit.

The Venetian Senate rejoiced:—

“propter divinas virtutes ac dotes quibus Ipsum insignitum et ornatum
conspiciebamus, videbatur a Divina Providentia talem Pastorem gregi,
dominio et sacrosancto Romanae Ecclesiae Vicarium Suum fuisse delectum
et praeordinatum.

Manfredi, the Ferrarese Orator at Florence, wrote to his Duchess:—

“Dicesi che sara glorioso pontifice!

Those words were re-echoed from Milan, from Naples, even from far Germany, “They say that this will be a glorious Pontiff!” All who were permitted to approach Him were enchanted by His magnificent presence and His honeyed tongue; every one praised His talents, His notable mastery of affairs, His active benevolence and beneficence. He was admired because His habits were of the simplest kind, and His magnificence free from prodigal ostentation: though it must be added that the Ferrarese Orator said that people disliked dining with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI because His meals consisted of a single dish. But Rome and Italy generally were very proud of Him, because, at sixty-one years of age, He combined the vigour of manhood’s prime with the wisdom of experience of life. If peace could be maintained, while a strong hand guided politics, the auspices were all propitious.

On the thirty-first of August, at the First Consistory, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI named his nephew, Don Juan de Borja y Lançol (Giovanni Borgia, detto Seniore) Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Susanna. This Most Worshipful Purpled One was the son of the Pope’s sister, Doña Juana. He had been Apostolic Prothonotary, Corrector of Pontifical Breves, and Archbishop of Monreale, under the Lord Xystus P.P. IV; and powerless Governor of Rome under the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII. He was a great man of business, dexterous and capable with plenary powers, and competent to deal with grave matters. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, like His August Uncle, lost no time in securing the services of blood relation near to His Own person.

The chorus of flattery was not altogether free from discords. The sinister Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, every day becoming more and more aggrieved by the success of his abhorred rival, called for a General Council (according to the ridiculous custom of his age) to adjudge the Lord Alexander P.P. VI guilty of Simony. In Florence the eccentric Fra Girolamo Savonarola, a friar of the Religion of St. Dominic, was prophesying evil days. Lorenzo de’ Medici, “that monster of genius,” was dead; and he, literally, had been the Keeper of the Peace. His sons, Don Piero and Don Lorenzo Secondo, brothers to Cardinal Giovanni, were no fit successors to their renowned father. Fra Girolamo really ruled in Florence; and his rule was baneful, because he let his personality over-ride his principles. Starting, a few years before, to convert the sinners of Florence, he had preached naked Christianity. When he had smitten many souls to penitence, his converts (in the manner of converts) leaned upon him. He allowed himself to become a director. From director it naturally was but a step to dictator: and there is the human error of Fra Girolamo Savonarola. That is the point from which he went astray. As dictator, he brought not peace but a sword—privilege of not a human man. He ordained what the world calls eccentricities; he became impatient of opinion, of resistance, of control; his penitents were the Salvation Army of the fifteenth century, making singular exhibitions of frenetic benevolence. He had made himself, by perfectly legal means, independent of his local Dominican superiors; the Archbishop of the province had no jurisdiction over him; he was subject only to the General of Dominicans and to the Pope in Rome. He was absolutely sincere; he was a fervent Catholic; of his bonafides there can be no doubt whatever. He had no attraction of manner; his personal aspect was vulgar, terrible, appalling. Yet there must have been some charm in his teaching, for great and holy men left all to follow him; Messer Alessandro Filipepi (detto Botticelli) joined him. And now he claimed to be the prophet of the Most High, prophesying of evils at the door.

* * * * *

Milan menaced the peace of Italy. By the assassination of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza-Visconti in 1476, the duchy passed to his infant son Duke Giangaleazzo; whose widowed mother, the Duchess Bona of Savoja, ruled as Regent. Four brothers of her dead husband conspired against her; and in 1479, the eldest, Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti (detto Il Moro), took possession of her child and deprived her of the regency. Cardinal Ascanio Maria, brother of Il Moro, exerted himself in Rome to obtain confirmation of this heartless deed. Duchess Bona, distracted when she found her young son torn from her arms, knowing his infant life to be the only bar between his uncle Don Ludovico Maria and the throne of Milan, made frantic appeals for the intervention of France. But the Christian King Louis XI died before he could reply to that poor mother: and Don Ludovico Maria, as Regent, thrived, keeping the boy-duke at Pavia in a palace that was, in fact, a prison, in conditions not cruel nor fatal but assuredly not ducal, nor suited to the enjoyment and maintenance of life. In 1489 Duke Giangaleazzo reached the age of twenty years; and then it was remembered that his mother; the Duchess Bona, had affianced him in his infancy to Madonna Isabella, daughter of the heir of Naples, Duke Don Alonso de Aragona of Calabria. There appeared to be no reason why Don Ludovico Maria should exacerbate the royal House of Naples by interference with the keeping of this contract; the boy was eager, the girl was marriageable; and the wedding was celebrated with appropriate pomp. The usurping Regent insisted, however, that, as the young Duke was a minor, he should still remain in the condition of a ward; and the newly-wedded children retired to try conjugal life at Pavia. A year later, 1492, a son was born; and then Duke Giangaleazzo, by paternity emboldened into manlihood, became restive against his uncle’s yoke, protesting that he no longer would submit to the treatment of a boy. But Don Ludovico was well aware that long confinement shortens life; and he had kept his nephew a prisoner for ten years. He was not precisely of the stuff of which murderers are made; or a knife-blade delicately pushed between the youngster’s neck and spine long ago would have made the sceptre of Milan his. As Regent he had absolute power; and he was well content to wait. So he took no notice of Duke Giangaleazzo’s remonstrances; and, to pass the time, he practised marriage in his proper person, wedding the lovely Madonna Beatrice d’Este of Ferrara in 1491. (Don Francesco Sforza, son of Don Bosio Sforza and Madonna Cecilia Aldobrandeschi, heiress of Santafiora, the kinsman of Don Ludovico Maria, who arranged this marriage, was the Orator of Milan at the coronation of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI in 1492.) After the nuptials of the usurping Regent, the young Duke Giangaleazzo resigned himself to bear his lot. But his wife was furious, and thought of the interests of her baby son. “In real truth,” cried Madonna Isabella to her feeble spouse, “thou art Duke of Milan, and I thy Duchess. But thou art content to abide in Pavia while that Black, Don Ludovico, ruleth in thy duchy, and seateth Madonna Beatrice near him in my place on thy throne. I will have that girl to know that she is no duchess, and that I, I Isabella, am Duchess of Milan.” And the lady wrote to her father, Don Alonso de Aragona Duke of Calabria, who was heir to the crown of the Regno, inciting him to resent the insult put upon her, his daughter, to end the usurpation of Don Ludovico Maria, and to restore Duke Giangaleazzo to his duchy.

Duke Don Alonso was not unwilling. War was imminent between Naples and Milan. Then the Pope died; the Lord Alexander P.P. VI succeeded Him; and, it being an age when the Pope frankly was admitted to be Ruler of the World, Father of princes and of kings, etc., all Italy and Christendom waited to know the new Pope’s pleasure.

This was the first of a series of extremely delicate positions in which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI found Himself involved. On the one hand, the Papacy was at peace with Naples. On the other, the Pope’s Holiness found His brilliant young Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti to be exceedingly valuable; and he was own brother to that Don Ludovico Maria (detto Il Moro) against whom Naples was invoked. Momentous consequences waited on His action.

* * * * *

On the eleventh of December 1492, there arrived in Rome Don Federigo de Aragona, Prince of Altamura, second son of King Don Ferrando I, ostensibly to offer to the Pope’s Holiness the obedience of Naples, with congratulations on His coronation. The royal envoy sumptuously was entertained by Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, whose chief occupations at this period appear to have been the feeling of the pulses of the Powers, and the search for a potentate willing to be used against the Borgia.

Manifestations of goodwill between Papacy and Regno pleased the Romans. The frontier of Naples was but a day’s ride from Rome; and the Romans liked to feel that beyond that frontier flourished a friend, not lurked a foe. In private audience, however, Don Federigo said that the assistance of the Pope’s Holiness was required in a family affair; and he made it clear that the attitude of Regno to Papacy would be determined by the extent to which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI would go on behalf of Naples.

This was the case in question. King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary had married Madonna Beatrice, a bastard of King Don Ferrando I. On the death of King Matthias Corvinus, his childless widow Queen Beatrice had intrigued to get the Hungarian crown settled upon King Wladislaw of Bohemia, who, in return for her Majesty’s services, had promised to marry her. Such a promise of marriage was equivalent to a betrothal, and a betrothal was only less binding than an actual marriage in that it was capable of being dissolved; whereas a marriage was, and is, indissoluble. King Wladislaw of Bohemia had been crowned King of Hungary through the exertions of Queen Beatrice. She, preferring the situation of Queen Regnant to that of Queen Dowager, had performed her part of the contract; and now King Wladislaw had changed his mind, and was about to ask the Pope for a dispensation from the obligation of fulfilling his promise of marriage. This was a grievous insult to the bastard of the King of Naples, whose counterpetition to the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was that no such dispensation should be granted to King Wladislaw, and that he should be compelled to perform his part of the bargain. Nothing was said at this time regarding the affair of the Duchess Isabella of Milan, in which the Regno also was interested. The cases of queens take precedence of those of duchesses.

The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, with the experience of seven and thirty years of curial diplomacy behind Him, required time in which to reflect upon His answer; and would enter into no immediate engagement with the Neapolitan prince. Don Federigo, who imagined that the Regno had but to ask and have, was much aggrieved; and his host, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, inflamed him with sardonic sympathy, and eyed the Regno, for a purpose, from that day forward. An uncouth pugnacious schemer was this Most Illustrious Lord Cardinal. As a captain of condottieri he might have captured a kingdom: but as an ecclesiastic he was at all times utterly disedifying. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI seems to have treated him with admirable forbearance, with contemptuous indifference, than which no attitude is more calculated to sting and irritate an angry mediocrity. He had been allowed to proceed in his turn to the cardinal-bishopric of Ostia without let or hindrance: he had rank, riches, and power. But he was discontented, jealous, filled with envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.

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It is imperatively important to be able to distinguish between the Office and the Man; and to avoid the excessively vulgar error of confounding the general with the particular. The pontifical acts of Rodrigo, Who is called Alexander P.P. VI, will compare favourably with those of any Supreme Pontiff, from Simon, Who is called Peter P.P., to Gioacchino Vincenzo Rafaele Luigi, Who is called Leo P.P. XIII. His comportment as man, and Italian despot, is another matter. The just necessity of the distinction insistently is laid upon the student of His history.

Man does not yearn to please a person who is playing ugly tricks upon him. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI particularly did not yearn to please the King of Naples. While the envoy of the Regno was displaying his royal father’s petition at the feet of the Father of princes and of kings, the Pope’s Holiness was digesting news of a trick which had been played upon Him by the intrigues of King Don Ferrando I.

Don Franciotto Cibo, bastard of the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII, had been enriched by his Father with the lordships of Cervetri and Anguillara. These were pontifical fiefs, held by feudal tenure from the Pope. Being a silly avaricious weakling, rather frightened of the responsibility of baronage, Don Franciotto Cibo sold the said lordships to Don Virginio Orsini for forty thousand ducats; and went to live at Florence under the protection of his brother-in-law Don Piero de’ Medici. Now Don Virginio Orsini had borrowed those forty thousand ducats from the King of Naples, who was his firm friend, and perfectly qualified to understand the loan to be a super-excellent investment. The lordships of Cervetri and Anguillara lay between the Regno and the territories of the Republic of Florence; and their transference into the hands of Orsini, Naples’ friend, signified the opening of a road from Naples into Tuscany, along which a Neapolitan army easily might travel, should King Don Ferrando be pleased to campaign in a northerly direction.

It was Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti (detto Il Moro), the usurping Regent of Milan, who first saw the serious portent of this move: but, though he communicated his discovery to the Holiness of the Pope, he laboured under a slight misapprehension; for usurpers are the most touchy of mankind, and see an enemy in everything which they do not understand. The northern frontier of Tuscany impinged upon the southern frontier of Milan. Now that the southern frontier of Tuscany was connected, by Cervetri and Anguillara, with the Regno, Don Ludovico Maria suspected an alliance between Don Piero de’ Medici and King Don Ferrando I, between Tuscany and Naples, an alliance which most possibly implied designs detrimental to the duchy of Milan—after all the real Duchess Isabella was Naples’ bastard, thought Don Ludovico Maria, the usurper—; and he envoyed swift couriers to his brother the Vicechancellor-Cardinal in Rome, with instructions to advise the Pope’s Holiness of the imbroglio.

That was the news of which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI chewed the cud at the time when He gave audience to the Prince of Altamura. With His magnificent talent for resolving diplomatic problems into their elements, from which He could discard those that He deemed useless while reserving those possessing salient features, the Pope’s Holiness concluded that the politics of Milan, of Tuscany, of the Regno, and the affairs of their respective rulers, were of secondary importance and altogether negligeable; but that the secret unauthorised transfer of papal fiefs into the hands of dangerous malcontents of the very powerful House of Orsini, required prompt decisive assertion of the rights of the Pontifical Suzerain.

At the beginning of 1493, Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti was found to be urging the Supreme Pontiff to act against the illegal transfer of Cervetri and Anguillara. Loyalty to his brother, the usurping Regent of Milan, and his duty as Vicechancellor bound to maintain the paramountcy of the Holy Roman Church—these make clear his point of view.

A clashing of interests between Papacy and Regno was an opportunity which Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere greatly relished. He did not hesitate to take the part of Naples. If he had one enemy whom he hated as perfervidly as he hated the Pope, that enemy was Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti whose exertions on behalf of his rival had deprived him of the tiara or triregno; and, having sworn that either he or Sforza-Visconti should quit the Sacred College, he avidly seized the present chance of belabouring the cardinal as well as the Pope. He had the support of Orsini, naturally. Colonna, always more Ghibelline than Guelf, was not unwilling to espouse the cause of a man who went about saying that the Pope’s Holiness was plotting to ruin his reputation—his reputation!—and to deprive him of his dignities: and hence arose a very singular and unusual combination.

The Papacy generally has been allied with Colonna or with Orsini. Such was the importance of these houses, that during many hundred years all European treaties and concordats contained their names on one side or the other. But here, for once in their mysterious and interminable feud, these mighty barons of Rome, with all their collateral branches and their myriads of armed retainers, were found united in a common cause. The phenomenon may be explained by the rise of other baronial houses, who were becoming quite as numerous and quite as potent as Colonna or Orsini; and who were equally desirable as allies. The most prominent of these, in 1493, were the Sforza and the Cesarini. The Sforza descended from Don Giovanni Muzio Attendolo (detto Sforza); and included the Sovereign-Duchy of Milan, by the marriage of the great Francesco with the heiress of Duke Giangaleazzo Visconti; the Sovereign-County of Santafiora, by the marriage of Francesco’s brother Bosio with the heiress of Aldobrandeschi; and the Tyrannies of Pesaro, Chotignuola, Imola and Forli. The Sforza blazon the lion rampant with the holy flower of the quince for Santafiora, and the salvage boy couped at the thighs issuant from a serpent statant for Milan. The Cesarini were a Roman house of enormous wealth and distinction, claiming a Cesarian origin. It was already allied with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI by the marriage in 1482 of His bastard Madonna Girolama Borgia with Don Giovandrea Cesarini. Its representative, Don Gabriele Cesarini, was the Gonfaloniere of Rome, who fought the Prior of the Caporioni for precedence at the coronation of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Who, in person, accorded the first place to Cesarini. Don Giangiorgio Cesarini, the heir, was allied with Sforza by marriage with Madonna Maria Sforza di Guido di Santafiora; and Don Giuliano Cesarini held office in the Apostolic Chamber. It was a house which, during centuries, had been content with secondary rank, while accumulating immense reserves of power, now to be brought into action. These were the two patrician Houses which the Pope’s Holiness found ready to His hand when Colonna leagued with Orsini against His peace. In fact, Sforza and Cesarini were the right and left hands of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, as Colonna or Orsini were of His predecessors and successors.

Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, after relieving himself of some treasonable speeches, considered Rome to be unsafe; and fled down Tiber to his bishopric of Ostia, where he fortified himself and advertised for mercenaries.

The word war, to the bloody men of valour of the end of the fifteenth century, signified a game like that of chess. The sole object of war was profit. It was undertaken simply to deprive an enemy of his goods. Prisoners were captured, and held to ransom. Cities and fortresses were reduced by starvation, or by a display of overwhelming force. But bloodshed—and this is noteworthy—was avoided as far as possible; and the game chiefly was played by strategic marches, counter-marches, and manœuvres. It was a business, a profession, “not more hazardous than that of a professional football-player.” The superfluous men of Europe, and the temperamental fighters, served as hired mercenaries under the captains and the princes who could pay their price and afford them a roystering life. Patriotism, the honour of the fatherland, were unknown. Except in the case of England, there was no national army. When a position had been won, a city captured, the conquerors satisfied themselves with the ransoms and the richest spoils. If the citizens wished to avoid the inconvenience of a sack, they collected a sum sufficient to pay off the rank and file. Otherwise the mercenaries took the women, and had licence to recoup themselves by pillage. Resistance meant torture and death: but bloodshed was an accident, not an essential of war.

The action of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was an invitation to the Lord Alexander P.P. VI to engage in war. He had thrown down the gauntlet. He had made the first move in the game; and his gambit was a very fine one, for the fortress of Ostia dominated Tiber mouth, and enabled him to paralyse Rome by stopping sea-borne supplies.

Like all important characters, the Pope’s Holiness was neurotic; not by any means a coward, but quick to scent danger, susceptible of momentary fright. Early in the spring of 1493 He was going to a picnic, at the villa which the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII had built for pontifical refreshment at La Magliana, outside the walls; and when a cannon saluted His approach He was stricken with a sudden panic, and galloped back to the Vatican amid the frank execrations of His escort disappointed of their dinner.

Here was the situation. The Pope was comfortably embroiled with Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere and his allies of Naples, of Colonna, of Orsini. To some extent His interests tied Him to Sforza and Milan. Tuscany was undecided between the Pope and Naples. The other Powers looked on.

While Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti was suggesting an alliance between the Pope, the duchy of Milan, and the Republic of Venice, to overawe the Neapolitan Bond, King Don Ferrando was intriguing with a view to discover whether he could make a better bargain with the Sovereign Pontiff than with Colonna + Orsini + della Rovere. This was not treachery. It was merely the Neapolitan method, of which all Italy was fully cognizant. The King’s Majesty sent envoys to Rome, to Milan, and to Tuscany, to try to settle the Cervetri-Anguillara affair by pacific means.

The Lord Alexander P.P. VI was well aware that no confidence could be placed in King Don Ferrando I: but by way of giving him a chance He proposed a marriage between His bastard, Don Gioffredo Borgia, now of the age of twelve years, and Madonna Lucrezia, a grand-daughter of the Majesty of Naples. At the same time He gathered troops and fortified the Vatican and the Mola of Hadrian, with the gallery-passage, called Lo Andare, which connects them, enabling Pope and cardinals to run, in time of danger, from the Apostolic Palace to the impregnable fortress tomb by Tiber.

The Republic of Venice flung itself into the arms of Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti; for the Doge and Senate were dreadfully afraid lest the impassioned appeals of the Duchess Isabella on behalf of her husband, the pathetic Duke Giangaleazzo, should receive the attention of Naples. If the said Duke Giangaleazzo should come to owe his throne to King Don Ferrando I, then Milan would be, to all intents and purposes, a fief of the Regno; and to have Naples lording it in Northern Italy would by no means satisfy Venice, which, on this account, preferred alliance with the usurping Regent, even at the cost of winking at his usurpation of the Regency of Milan. Now Milan and Venice in alliance were a menace to their own neighbours; and, acting on the principle that made those two Powers one, the duchies of Mantua and Ferrara, and the Republic of Siena, hastened to fall into line with them. This concatenation, being superior to anything that Naples could exhibit, also caused the Lord Alexander P.P. VI to arrive at a decision: and, on the twenty-fifth of April 1493, accompanied by an armed cavalcade of Sforza and Cesarini for the ocular instruction of Colonna and Orsini, the Holiness of the Pope proceeded through Rome to the Venetian church of San Marco, on Piazza Venezia, where He ceremonially published the Bull of League between the Papacy, the duchies of Milan, Mantua, and Ferrara, and the Republics of Venice and Siena; after which, the river-port of Rome at Ostia being in His enemies’ hands, He began to fortify the land-port of Rome at Civita Vecchia, by way of giving effect to His warlike proclamation.

At this call of check, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere howled aloud for a General Council to depose the Lord Alexander P.P. VI; and Don Alonso de Aragona, Duke of Calabria, wanted immediately to unite with Don Piero de’ Medici and the Signoria of Florence, and, aided by the Colonna of Paliano and Marino and the Orsini of Gravina and Bracciano, to assault Rome from the outer side, while Colonna + Orsini, who were in the city, engaged in similar diversions. But King Don Ferrando was too sly. He had yet another piece to play. He knew, and none knew better, that the territories of the Holy See during a long course of centuries had been distributed among pontifical relatives and favourites; that, at present, the States of the Church were smaller than an ordinary duchy; and he had heard of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI as a singularly affectionate father, devoted to His children’s interests. Wherefore the Majesty of Naples conceived, and with absolute correctness, that the Pope’s Holiness intended, by hook or by crook, by diplomacy, by marriages, or by war, to recover the possessions of the Papacy, and to use them to promote the fortunes of His family. Secondly, King Don Ferrando I knew France to be Milan’s northern neighbour; and he saw the exceeding possibility of an alliance between the usurping Regent, Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti, and the Christian King Charles VIII of France; a combination which, with the Papacy, the duchies, and republics, already joined in league, would be absolutely and permanently overwhelming and disintegrating to the very Regno itself. To turn the flank, as it were, to give France occupation in another direction, he resolved on courting an alliance with Spain.

To this end he indited an invective against the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, adopting all the gratuitous insults and lying babble foamed out by the malignant Cardinal-Bishop Giuliano della Rovere. “He leads a life that is abhorred by all, without respect to the seat He holds.” [Compare the speeches of the Orators and contemporary dispatches.] “He cares for nothing save to aggrandise His children by fair means or by foul.” [So far He had done nothing at all, by foul means or by fair, for His children; except to deprive His reputed bastard Don Cesare (detto Borgia) of the revenues of the cathedral of Cartagena, in favour of that very Cardinal Giambattista Orsini who now deserted Him.] “From the beginning of His pontificate He has done nothing but disturb the peace.” [This is partly true. The Pope’s Holiness wonderfully had done more than any preceding Pontiff to restore good government and order and security to Rome. But He had behaved, in a certain instance, in a way that was extremely offensive to the Spanish ideal of peace. According to the notions of King Don Ferrando I de Aragona, himself a Spaniard—according to Spanish notions, and the Majesty of Naples was a Spaniard writing to Spaniards—the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was indeed a disturber of the peace. But the facts are these. In 1492, the horrible Spanish Inquisition—that frightful and diabolical atrocity constantly condemned by Rome—under the guidance of the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, had procured the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The Spaniards have much of the Moor, a touch of the oriental, the element of the human devil, in their blood. Throughout Christendom the Jews were looked upon with horror, by no means undeserved. Many long years before, England had cast them out; and now they were forced from Spain. The sufferings, with which the fiendish Spaniard visited them, were so fearful as to excite pity even in Papal Italy, whose loathing of Jews was a habit of mind, an article of faith, not an inhuman vice. Messer Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (detto Fenice degli Ingegni) said:—

“The sufferings of the Jews, in which the glory of Divine Justice
delights, were so extreme as to fill us Christians with commiseration.

Senarega said:—

“The matter (_i.e._, the expulsion of the Jews) at first sight seemed
praiseworthy as regarding the honour done to our religion; yet it
involved some amount of cruelty, if we look upon them (the Jews) not
as beasts but as men, the handiwork of God.

Many of this miserable race came to Rome, where, under the expressed order of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, they were protected, and allowed to share in that security of life and limb which He, at the beginning of His pontificate, had ordained. The Romans did not like these Marañas, as the Moorish Jews were called, any more than they liked, or like, Catalans, or Franks, or Goths, or any other foreigners save the English-speaking race; and, following hereditary instinct, there were occasional attempts at persecution, the rigorous stamping out of which, by the justice of the Pope, caused intermittent rioting and disaffection of the citizens who only could look upon the Jews as fair game. That was the only disturbance of the peace with which King Don Ferrando could charge the Holy Father; and it was an act of justice and humanity. But the fifteenth century, in common with the nineteenth (the twentieth is too young yet to be judged), was very wont to give a bad name to the dog that it had failed to hang.]

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Any success that might have attended the rabid calumnies of the Majesty of Naples was prevented by an occurrence of the most startling species.

A mariner of Genoa, called Messer Cristoforo Colombi, announced to the Spanish Court, in March 1493, the astounding news of his discovery of a continent. An explorer’s ardour, combined with religious zeal, had made him seek to extend the boundaries of Christendom. He had set out in the hope of finding a few islands. He returned to Europe solemnly asserting that he had found a world. Universal curiosity was awakened, and a fresh expedition planned, with which the intrepid mariner set forth on a second voyage to prove, and to secure, his prize. Meanwhile, Don Hernando and Doña Isabella, the Catholic King and Queen of Spain, thought it would be prudent to bind this new world to their domain by a bond that easily could not be broken. The Pope, as Ruler of the World and Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ, was held to have authority over all heathen lands, and to His Holiness an envoy went from Spain commissioned to announce the discovery, and to pray Him graciously to confirm it to the Catholic King and Queen.