The great object of Alexander through his whole life was to gratify his inclination for pleasure, his ambition, and his love of ease. When at length he had attained to the supreme spiritual dignity, he seemed also to have reached the summit of happiness. Spite of his advanced years, the exultation he felt seemed daily to impart to him a new life. No painful thought was permitted to disturb his repose for a single night. His only care was to seize on all means that might aid him to increase his power, and advance the wealth and dignity of his sons; on no other subject did he ever seriously bestow a thought. This one consideration was at the base of all his political alliances, and of those relations by which the events of the world were at that time so powerfully influenced. How the pope would proceed, in regard to the marriages, endowments, and advance of his children, became a question affecting the politics of all Europe.
The son of Alexander, Cæsar Borgia, followed close on the footsteps of Riario. He began from the same point, and his first undertaking was to drive the widow of Riario from Imola and Forlì. He pressed forward to the completion of his designs with the most daring contempt of consequences; what Riario had only approached, or attempted, Cæsar Borgia carried forward to its utmost results. Let us take a rapid glance at the means by which his purposes were accomplished.
The ecclesiastical states had hitherto been divided by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the first represented in Rome by the family of Orsini, the second by the house of Colonna. The popes had usually taken part with one or the other of these factions. Sixtus IV had done so, and his example was followed by Alexander and his son, who at first attached themselves to the Guelf, or Orsini party. This alliance enabled them very soon to gain the mastery of all their enemies. They drove the house of Sforza from Pesaro, that of Malatesta from Rimini, and the family of Manfredi from Faenza. They seized on those powerful, well-fortified cities, and thus commenced the foundation of an extensive lordship. But no sooner had they attained this point, no sooner had they freed themselves from their enemies, than they turned every effort against their friends. And it was in this that the practice of the Borgias differed from that of their predecessors, who had ever remained firmly attached to the party they had chosen; Cæsar, on the contrary, attacked his own confederates, without hesitation or scruple. The duke of Urbino, from whom he had frequently received important aid, was involved, as in a network, by the machinations of Cæsar, and with difficulty saved his life, a persecuted fugitive in his own dominions. Vitelli, Baglioni, and other chiefs of the Orsini faction, resolved to show him that at least they were capable of resistance. But Cæsar Borgia, declaring that “it is permitted to betray those who are the masters of all treasons,” decoyed them into his snares with profoundly calculated cruelty, and mercilessly deprived them of life. Having thus destroyed both parties, he stepped into their place, gathered the inferior nobility, who had been their adherents, around him, and took them into his pay; the territories he had seized on were held in subjection by force of terror and cruelty.
The brightest hopes of Alexander were thus realised—the nobles of the land were annihilated, and his house about to found a great hereditary dominion in Italy. But he had already begun to acquire practical experience of the evil which passions, aroused and unbridled, are capable of producing. With no relative or favourite would Cæsar Borgia endure the participation of his power. His own brother stood in his way; Cæsar caused him to be murdered and thrown into the Tiber. His brother-in-law was assailed and stabbed, by his orders, on the steps of his palace. The wounded man was nursed by his wife and sister, the latter preparing his food with her own hands to secure him from poison; the pope set a guard upon the house to protect his son-in-law from his son. Cæsar laughed these precautions to scorn. “What cannot be done at noonday,” said he, “may be brought about in the evening.” When the prince was on the point of recovery, he burst into his chamber, drove out the wife and sister, called in the common executioner, and caused his unfortunate brother-in-law to be strangled. Towards his father, whose life and station he valued only as means to his own aggrandisement, he displayed not the slightest respect or feeling. He slew Peroto, Alexander’s favourite, while the unhappy man clung to his patron for protection, and was wrapped within the pontifical mantle. The blood of the favourite flowed over the face of the pope.
For a certain time the city of the apostles, and the whole state of the church, were in the hands of Cæsar Borgia. He is described as possessing great personal beauty, and was so strong that in a bull-fight he would strike off the head of the animal at a single blow; of liberal spirit, and not without certain features of greatness, but given up to his passions, and deeply stained with blood. How did Rome tremble at his name! Cæsar required gold, and possessed enemies; every night were the corpses of murdered men found in the streets, yet none dared move; for who but might fear that his own turn would be next? Those whom violence could not reach were taken off by poison. There was but one place on earth where such deeds were possible—that, namely, where unlimited temporal power was united to the highest spiritual authority, where the laws, civil and ecclesiastical, were held in one and the same hand. This place was occupied by Cæsar Borgia. Even depravity may have its perfection. The kindred of the popes have often distinguished themselves in the career of evil, but none attained to the eminence of Cæsar Borgia. He may be called a virtuoso in crime. Was it not in the first and most essential tendencies of Christianity to render such a power impossible? And yet, Christianity itself, and the very position of the supreme head of the church, were made subservient to its existence.
There needed, then, no advent of a Luther, to prove to the world that these things were in direct opposition to the spirit of Christianity. Even at that time men complained that the pope was preparing the way for antichrist, and labouring for the interest of Satan rather than the kingdom of God. We do not follow the history of Alexander in its minute details. He once purposed, as is but too well authenticated,[109] to destroy one of the richest cardinals by poison; but the latter contrived to win over the pope’s chief cook by means of promises, entreaties, and gifts. The confection, prepared for the cardinal, was set before the pontiff himself; and Alexander expired from the effects of that poison which he had destined for another.[f]
Estimates of Alexander VI
It is the pastime of historians to practise their technic impartially in besmirching the sanctified reputations of the saints of popular belief and in whitewashing the traditional villains. Alexander VI is too historic a monster to escape the efforts of some apologist, and in recent years Dr. Richard Garnett[g] and Frederick Baron Corvo[i] have come to his rescue. The former praises his great shrewdness, his learning and vigour, and finds him no worse than his times, which is at best damning with faint praise one who stood for St. Peter on earth. Dr. Garnett after his defence is however compelled to admit the following flaws in the pope’s character:[a]
“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. Lea[h] 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 Infessura[j] 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.”