The Historians' History of the World 08

“Cardinal Borgia had simply bought up the Sacred College. Although Alexander’s election was without question the most notorious of any for the unscrupulous employment of illegitimate influences, it is difficult to affirm that it was in principle more simoniacal than most of those which had lately preceded it or were soon to follow. Men said that Alexander had bribed the French ministers; probably he had. He had been tortuous, perfidious, temporising under stress of circumstances. Unrestrained by moral scruples, or by any spiritual conception of religion, he was betrayed into gross sensuality of one kind, though in other respects he was temperate and abstemious. In the more respectable guise of family affection it led him to outrage every principle of justice. The general tendency of investigation, which utterly shattering all idle attempts to represent him as the model pope, has been to relieve him of the most odious imputations against his character. There remains the charge of secret poisoning from motives of cupidity, which indeed appear established, or nearly so, only in a single instance, but this may imply others.”

In the same work Henry C. Leah is more severe. “It is no wonder that Rome had become a centre of corruption whence infection was radiated throughout Christendom. In the middle of the fourteenth century Petrarch exhausts his rhetoric in describing the abominations of the papal city of Avignon, where everything was vile; and the return of the curia to Rome transferred to that city the supremacy in wickedness. In 1499 the Venetian ambassador describes it as the sewer of the world, and Machiavelli asserts that through its example all devotion and all religion had perished in Italy. In 1490 it numbered 6000 public women—an enormous proportion for a population not exceeding 100,000. The story is well known, how Cardinal Borgia, who, as vice-chancellor, openly sold pardons for crime, when reproved for this, replied, that God desires not the death of sinners but that they should pay and live. If the diary of Infessuraj is suspect on account of his partisanship, that of Burchard is unimpeachable, and his placid recital of the events passing under his eyes presents to us a society too depraved to take shame at its own wickedness. The public marriage, he says, of the daughters of Innocent VIII and Alexander VI set the fashion for the clergy to have children, and they diligently followed it; for all, from the highest to the lowest, kept concubines, while the monasteries were brothels.”

And John Addington Symonds has been quite as emphatic:

“To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as unrestrained as Nero’s, were relieved against the background of flames and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is justifiable. An epigram gained currency: ‘Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to sell them.’ 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 hoards, and recommenced the game. His traffic in church dignities was carried on upon a grand scale, twelve cardinals’ hats, for example, were put to auction in a single day. This was when he wished to pack the conclave with votes in favour of the cession of Romagna to Cesare Borgia. Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this pope throughout his life. His relations to Vanozza Catanei and to Giulia Farnese were open and acknowledged. These two sultanas ruled him during the greater portion of his career, conniving meanwhile at the harem, which, after true oriental fashion, he maintained in the Vatican.”l

JULIUS II

[1503-1513 A.D.]

A pope followed who made it his object to assume a position in direct contrast with that of the Borgias; but who pursued the same end, though he took different, and from that very circumstance successful, means for his purpose. Julius II (1503-1513 A.D.) enjoyed the incalculable advantage of finding opportunity for promoting the interests of his family by peaceable means; he obtained for his kindred the inheritance of Urbino. This done, he could devote himself, undisturbed by the importunities of his kindred, to the gratification of that innate love for war and conquest which was indeed the ruling passion of his life. To this he was invited by the circumstances of the times, and the consciousness of his eminent position; but his efforts were all for the church—for the benefit of the papal see. Other popes had laboured to procure principalities for their sons or their nephews; it was the ambition of Julius to extend the dominions of the church. He must, therefore, be regarded as the founder of the papal states.

A Friar of the Sixteenth Century