Caesar Borgia: A Study of the Renaissance

by John Leslie Garner

From that time forth St. Peter’s successors were temporal sovereigns who happened to be Popes; the members of their families were everywhere treated as princes. Many of their putative nephews were in reality their own illegitimate sons. There was a saying current in Europe during the reign of Sixtus that there were as many popes in Rome as he had nephews. With every change in the Papacy a new swarm came into power, only to fall with their creator’s decease.

The Papacy having become a temporal power, the Pope’s kinsmen were his chief support; at the same time, the Sacred Office was the greatest political instrument an ambitious and powerful family could secure to aid its advancement.

The papal nephews terrorised the domain of the Church and endeavoured to obtain possession of rival states and cities. Nepotism became a system, and, as hereditary succession was denied the Pope, it furnished him the only means by which he could hope to perpetuate his power, but as we have seen the means were inadequate.

The Italians promptly discovered that the same hopes and fears, the same ambitions and passions prevailed in St. Peter’s Chair as ruled elsewhere, and also that the Pope was a very human sovereign and one who enjoyed the advantage of being unhampered by any feudal institutions.

The temporal supremacy of the Pope, however, could be exercised only in the territory about the city of Rome where there were still left a few powerful feudal families, together with a number of small republics whose destruction could be compassed only through the agency of the Pontiff’s favourites or kinsmen. In that way a monarchy might be established which in size and power would have equalled most of the Italian states of that age.

Sixtus created no less than thirty-five cardinals. The Pazzi conspiracy, the war against Ferrara, his treatment of the Colonna and the names of Pietro and Girolamo Riario show to what depths the Papacy had fallen in the closing years of the fifteenth century.

Between the nepotism of Sixtus IV. and that of Alexander VI. there was but little difference. If the nephews of Della Rovere had possessed the ability of the Borgia, or if political events had occurred to disturb the concord of the peninsula, Sixtus IV. would have secured the place in Italy and in the history of Rome which Alexander VI. holds. Sixtus was the first Pope-king, but he was far surpassed by Alexander VI.

Italy had fallen upon evil days; the peninsula was teeming with corruption; everywhere there was a mad scramble for office; every man’s hand was against his neighbour; the Popes engaged in all sorts of financial operations—the sale of offices, honours, indulgences, immunities; and, to make matters worse, foreign invasion threatened the country.

Sixtus died August 12, 1484, and when his opponents learned of his death they rushed forth and sacked the Riario palaces. The conclave for the election of his successor was held August 26th, and it was found that the cardinals were divided into two parties, one comprising Rodrigo Borgia, the Orsini, and the Aragonese faction; the other, Colonna, Cibo, Della Rovere, and the Venetians.

Rodrigo Borgia felt so certain of being elected that he had his palace fortified to preserve it from being sacked. Votes were openly traded for castles, benefices, and papal offices. Ascanio Sforza and the Aragonese, unable to force the election of the Borgia, sold their votes to Cardinal Giambatista Cibo, who was elected August 29, 1484. He assumed the name Innocent VIII. Giuliano della Rovere had managed his campaign most skilfully.