Two worthy and able Pontiffs followed Martin, and equally failed to bring about a reform. Eugenius IV., an austere, though harsh and autocratic, Venetian, found that his attempts to recover Papal territory and curb the Conciliar party would not permit him to reform the financial system. The reformers forced on him the Council of Basle in 1431, but its renewal of the Schism and creation of a last Anti-Pope, when he resisted its proposals, discredited the Conciliar movement. Reform must come from without: Popes and cardinals could not effect it, and in the prevailing creed there was no canonical basis for the action of a Council in defiance of them. Nicholas V., a quiet man of letters, crowned the financial and political work of his two predecessors with a great artistic restoration. He left politics to Æneas Sylvius and opened the gates of Rome to the fairer form of the Renaissance. Greek artists and scholars were now pouring into Italy—Constantinople fell to the Turks during this Pontificate (1453)—and fostering the growth of the Humanist movement. Rome began to assume its rich mantle of mediæval art, and the Papacy seemed to smile once more on a docile and prosperous Christendom.
But the restoration had been accomplished by an evasion of reform, and the new culture was sharpening the pens of critics. One of these inquisitive scholars, Lorenzo Valla, was actually declaring that the "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery. Many denounced, in fiery prose or with the cold cynicism of the epigram, the luxury and vice of the higher clergy. Heresy hardened in Bohemia, and, among the stricter ranks of the faithful, men like Nicholas of Cusa, John Capistrano, and Savonarola were raising ideals which, if they rebuked the laity, far more solemnly rebuked the clergy. And just at this critical period the Papacy entered upon a development which ended in the enthronement of Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X.; the Reformation inevitably followed.
At the death of Nicholas V., the Orsini and Colonna cardinals came to a deadlock in their struggle for the Papacy, and a neutral and innocuous alternative was sought in Alfonso Borgia (or, in Spanish style, Borja), a Spanish canonist of some scholarly distinction. Calixtus III., as he named himself, was a gouty valetudinarian who lay abed most of the day in pious conversation with friars. He very properly disdained the new art and culture, and saved the Papal funds to meet the advancing Turks. He had, however, one weakness, which was destined to prove very costly to the Papacy. There was a tradition of nepotism at Rome, and Calixtus had nephews. While he was Bishop of Valencia, his sister Isabella had come to him from Xativa, their native place, with her two sons, Pedro Luis and Rodrigo. When, in 1455, he became Pope, he sent Rodrigo to study at Bologna and enriched him with benefices. Pedro Luis was reserved for a lay career, and Juan Luis Mila, son of another sister, was sent with Rodrigo to Bologna.
At this time Rodrigo Borgia was in his twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year: an exceptionally handsome young Spaniard, with the most charming Spanish manners, and with rich sensuous lips and an eye for maidens which escaped his uncle's notice. He and his cousin were, within a year, made cardinals. In December (1456) he was appointed legate for the March of Ancona, and in the following May he was, in spite of the murmurs of the cardinals, promoted to the highest and most lucrative office at the Court, the Vice-Chancellorship. His elder brother became Duke of Spoleto, Gonfaloniere of the Papal army, and (in 1457) Prefect of Rome. Other needy Spaniards came over the sea in droves, and the disgusted Romans were soon ousted from the best positions. In 1458, however, Calixtus fell ill, and was reported to be dead; and the Romans chased the "Catalans" out of the city. Rodrigo at first retired with his more hated brother, but he courageously returned on August 6th, just in time to witness the actual death of his uncle.
Æneas Sylvius mounted the throne, under the name of Pius II., but the Humanists looked in vain for favour to that genial diplomatist, traveller, and littérateur. He had reached a gouty and repentant age, and his one pre-occupation was to stir a lethargic Christendom to a crusade against the Turks. Cardinal Rodrigo had been useful to him, reserving a vacant benefice for him now and again, so he kept his place and continued to win for himself wealthy bishoprics and abbeys. For a moment, in 1460, Rodrigo trembled. Pius had sent him to direct the building of a cathedral at Siena, and the Pope startled his Vice-Chancellor with a stern letter. Rodrigo and another cardinal, the Pope heard, had entertained a number of very frivolous young ladies for five hours in a private garden. They had excluded the parents of these girls, and there had been "dances of the most licentious character" and other things which "modesty forbids to recount." It was the talk of the town.[271] From the kind of dances and women which Alexander had in the Vatican long afterwards we can imagine the things which startled Siena. Rodrigo urged that there had been exaggeration, but the Pope, while admitting the possibility of this, again sternly bade him mind his behaviour.
The long discussion of the morals of Alexander VI. has, in fact, now ended in entire agreement that by the year 1460, at least, he was openly immoral. The Papal and other documents relating to his children—at least six in number—which have been found in the Vatican archives and in the private archives of the Duke of Ossuna show an extraordinary laxity at Rome. There is a Bull of Sixtus IV., dated November 5, 1481, legitimizing the birth of Pedro Luis Borgia, "son of a cardinal-deacon and an unmarried woman"; he is described as "a young man," and was probably born about 1460. There is the marriage contract of Girolama Borgia, dated 1482, which refers to the "paternal love" of the Vice-Chancellor; she must then have been at least thirteen years old. There is a document, dated October 1, 1480, dispensing from the bar of illegitimacy Cæsar Borgia, "son of a cardinal-bishop and a married woman"; and he is described as in his sixth year, or born about 1475. There is a deed of gift of Rodrigo to Juan Borgia, "his carnal son," whose birth must fall either in 1474 or 1476. There are documents referring to the celebrated Lucrezia, whose birth is generally put in 1478, and to Jofre Borgia, who was born about 1480; and there are documents from which we have—as we shall see later—the gravest reason to conclude that the Pope had a son in 1497 or 1498, when he approached his seventieth year. Except that a few hesitate, in face of the strongest evidence, to admit the last child, no serious historian of any school now questions these facts, and the evidence need not be examined in detail.[272]
At least four of these children were born of Vannozza (or Giovannozza) dei Catanei, a Roman lady who was the Cardinal's mistress from about 1460 to 1486. The story that she was an orphan entrusted to his care and seduced by him is not reliable. Nothing is confidently known about her early years, but her epitaph has been discovered, and it honours her, not only for her "signal probity and great piety," but because she was the mother of Cæsar, Juan, Jofre, and Lucrezia Borgia. Pedro Luis and Girolama may have been born of an earlier mistress, but it is not at all certain. Vannozza, who married three times, is constantly mentioned, by the ambassadors, as Borgia's mistress. She had a handsome mansion near the Cardinal's palace and the Vatican, and she entertained there and in her country house long after Borgia became Pope and replaced her by a younger mistress.
These monuments of parentage are almost the only evidences of the existence of Cardinal Borgia under Pius II. and Paul II. In 1471 a pious and learned Franciscan friar, Sixtus IV., assumed the tiara, and it is an indication of the strange temper of the times that under such a man the Papal Court became more corrupt than ever.[273] Sixtus vigorously restored the secular rule of the Papacy and encouraged the artistic and cultural development, but his nepotism was shameless and profoundly harmful. One of the nephews whom he drew from the obscurity of a Franciscan monastery and made a prince of the Church was Pietro Riario, who spent 260,000 ducats,[274] and within two years of his promotion wore out his life in the most flagrant dissipation. His immense palace, with its magnificent treasures, its five hundred servants in scarlet silk, and its prodigious banquets, was the home of every species of vice; and it is said that his chief mistress, Tiresia, flaunted eight hundred ducats' worth of pearls on her embroidered slippers. Another nephew was the sterner, though also immoral, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere—also brought from a monastery—whom we shall know as Julius II. Other cardinals promoted by the friar-Pope were equally notorious for their indulgence and for the unscrupulous quest of money to sustain it.
From the Bulls of Sixtus which I have quoted, it is clear that he was acquainted with the vices of Borgia, yet he sent him as legate to Spain, to excite interest in the crusade, in the spring of 1472. In spite of some compliments, it does not appear that Borgia did more than impress his countrymen with his display and gallantry, and he returned toward the close of 1473 and built one of the most stately palaces in the rich quarter which was now rising round the Vatican. When Sixtus died, in 1484, he made a resolute effort to get the tiara. The dispatches of the ambassadors who now represented the northern States at the Vatican afford us a valuable means of checking the chroniclers, and they put it beyond question that Borgia and Giuliano della Rovere entered upon a corrupt rivalry for the Papacy. Giuliano was now a tall, serious-looking man of forty: reserved in speech and brusque in manners, a good soldier and most ambitious courtier. Although he was known to have children, he kept a comparatively sober household and reserved his wealth for special occasions of display and for bribery. Borgia was his senior by thirteen years, but he had the buoyancy, gaiety, and sensuality of a young man. He, too, kept a moderate table and gambled little, but his amours were notorious and one could not please him better than by providing a ballet of handsome women. To these wealthy "up-starts" the haughty Orsini and Colonna were bitterly opposed, and the announcement of the death of Sixtus let loose a flood of passion. The splendid mansion of Count Riario, another nephew of the late Pope, was sacked, the Orsini entrenched themselves on Monte Giordano, and the other cardinals filled their halls with armed men.