Part 27

Under the Borgias, "treasons, assassinations, tortures, open debauchery, the practice of poisoning, the worst and most shameless outrages, are unblushingly and publicly tolerated in the open light of heaven. In 1490, the Pope's vicar having forbidden clerics and laics to keep concubines, the Pope revoked the decree, 'saying that that was not forbidden, because the life of priests and ecclesiastics was such that hardly one was to be found who did not keep a concubine, or at least who had not a courtesan.' Cæsar Borgia at the capture of Capua 'chose forty of the most beautiful women, whom he kept for himself; and a pretty large number of captives were sold at a low price at Rome.' Under Alexander VI., 'all ecclesiastics, from the greatest to the least, have concubines in the place of wives, and that publicly. If God hinder it not,' adds this historian, 'this corruption will pass to the monks and religious orders, although, to confess the truth, almost all the monasteries of the town have become bawd–houses, without anyone to speak against it.' With respect to Alexander VI., who loved his daughter Lucretia, the reader may find in Burchard the description of the marvellous orgies in which he joined with Lucretia and Cæsar, and the enumeration of the prizes which he distributed. {2442} Let the reader also read for himself the story of the bestiality of Pietro Luigi Farnese, the Pope's son, how the young and upright Bishop of Fano died from his outrage, and how the Pope, speaking of this crime as 'a youthful levity,' gave him in this secret bull 'the fullest absolution from all the pains which he might have incurred by human incontinence, in whatever shape or with whatever cause.' As to civil security, Bentivoglio caused all the Marescotti to be put to death; Hippolyto d' Este had his brother's eyes put out in his presence; Cæsar Borgia killed his brother; murder is consonant with their public manners, and excites no wonder. A fisherman was asked why he had not informed the governor of the town that he had seen a body thrown into the water; 'he replied that he had seen about a hundred bodies thrown into the water during his lifetime in the same place, and that no one had ever troubled about it.' 'In our town,' says an old historian, 'much murder and pillage was done by day and night, and hardly a day passed but some one was killed.' Cæsar Borgia one day killed Peroso, the Pope's favourite, between his arms and under his cloak, so that the blood spurted up to the Pope's face. He caused his sister's husband to be stabbed and then strangled in open day, on the steps of the palace; count, if you can, his assassinations. Certainly he and his father, by their character, morals, open and systematic wickedness, have presented to Europe the two most successful images of the devil. … Despotism, the Inquisition, the Cicisbei, dense ignorance, and open knavery, the shamelessness and the smartness of harlequins and rascals, misery and vermin,—such is the issue of the Italian Renaissance."

_H. A. Taine, History of English Literature, volume 1, pages 354-355._

"It is certain … that the profound horror with which the name of Alexander VI. strikes a modern ear, was not felt among the Italians at the time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with which he was afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the 16th century. This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the time of his death. In course of time, when the attention of the Northern nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend, which, like all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects. Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two conflicting world forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. … Alexander was a stronger and a firmer man than his immediate predecessors. 'He combined,' says Guicciardini, 'craft with singular sagacity, a sound judgment with extraordinary powers of persuasion; and to all the grave affairs of life he applied ability and pains beyond belief.' His first care was to reduce Rome to order. The old factions of Colonna and Orsini, which Sixtus had scotched, but which had raised their heads again during the dotage of Innocent, were destroyed in his pontificate. In this way, as Machiavelli observed, he laid the real basis for the temporal power of the Papacy. Alexander, indeed, as a sovereign, achieved for the Papal See what Louis XI. had done for the throne of France, and made Rome on its small scale follow the type of the large European monarchies. … Former Pontiffs had raised money by the sale of benefices and indulgences: this, of course, Alexander also practised—to such an extent, indeed, that an epigram gained currency; 'Alexander sells the keys, the altars, Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to sell them.' But he went further and took lessons from Tiberius. 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. … Former Popes had preached crusades against the Turk, languidly or energetically according as the coasts of Italy were threatened. Alexander frequently invited Bajazet to enter Europe and relieve him of the princes who opposed his intrigues in the favour of his children. The fraternal feeling which subsisted between the Pope and the Sultan was to some extent dependent on the fate of Prince Djem, a brother of Bajazet and son of the conqueror of Constantinople, who had fled for protection to the Christian powers, and whom the Pope kept prisoner, receiving 40,000 ducats yearly from the Porte for his jail fee. … Lucrezia, the only daughter of Alexander by Vannozza, took three husbands in succession, after having been formally betrothed to two Spanish nobles. … History has at last done justice to the memory of this woman, whose long yellow hair was so beautiful, and whose character was so colourless. The legend which made her a poison-brewing Mænad, has been proved a lie—but only at the expense of the whole society in which she lived. … It seems now clear enough that not hers, but her father's and her brother's, were the atrocities which made her married life in Rome a byeword. She sat and smiled through all the tempests which tossed her to and fro, until she found at last a fair port in the Duchy of Ferrara. … [On the 12th of August, 1503], the two Borgias invited the Cardinal Carneto to dine with them in the Belvedere of Pope Innocent. Thither by the hands of Alexander's butler they previously conveyed some poisoned wine. By mistake they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim. Alexander died, a black and swollen mass, hideous to contemplate, after a sharp struggle with the poison."

_J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Age of the Despots, chapter 6._

The long-accepted story of Pope Alexander's poisoning, as related above by Mr. Symonds, is now discredited. "The principal reason why this picturesque tale has of late been generally regarded as a fiction is the apparent impossibility of reconciling it with a fact in connexion with Pope Alexander's last illness which admits of no dispute, the date of its commencement. The historians who relate the poisoning unanimously assert that the effect was sudden and overpowering, that the pope was carried back to the Vatican in a dying state and expired shortly afterwards. The 18th of August has hitherto been accepted without dispute as the date of his death: it follows, therefore, that the fatal banquet must have been on the 17th at the earliest. {2443} But a cloud of witnesses, including the despatches of ambassadors resident at the papal court, prove that the pope's illness commenced on the 12th, and that by the 17th his condition was desperate. The Venetian ambassador and a Florentine letter-writer, moreover, the only two contemporary authorities who assign a date for the entertainment, state that it was given on the 5th or 6th, … which would make it a week before the pope was taken ill. … It admits … of absolute demonstration that the banquet could not have been given on the 12th or even on the 11th, and of proof hardly less cogent that the pope did actually die on the 18th. All the evidence that any entertainment was ever given, or that any poisoning was ever attempted, connects the name of Cardinal Corneto with the transaction. He and no other, according to all respectable authorities (the statement of late writers that ten cardinals were to have been poisoned at once may be dismissed without ceremony as too ridiculous for discussion), was the cardinal whom Alexander on this occasion designed to remove. Now, Cardinal Corneto was not in a condition to partake of any banquet either on 11 August or 12 August Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, who attributes the pope's illness to a fever contracted at supper at the cardinal's villa on 5 August, says, writing on the 13th, 'All have felt the effects, and first of all Cardinal Adrian [Corneto], who attended mass in the papal chapel on Friday [11 August], and after supper was attacked by a violent paroxysm of fever, which endured until the following morning; yesterday [the 12th] he had it again, and it has returned to-day.' Evidently, then, the cardinal could not give or even be present at an entertainment on the 12th, and nothing could have happened on that day to throw a doubt on the accuracy of Burcardus's statement that the pope was taken ill in the morning, which would put any banquet and any poisoning during the course of it out of the question. … There is, therefore, no reason for discrediting the evidence of the two witnesses, the only contemporary witnesses to date, who fix the supper to 5 August or 6 August at the latest. It is possible that poison may have been then administered which did not produce its effects until 12 August; but the picturesque statement of the suddenness of the pope's illness and the consternation thus occasioned are palpable fictions, which so gravely impair the credit of the historians relating them that the story of the poisoning cannot be accepted on their authority. … The story, then, that Alexander accidentally perished by poison which he had prepared for another—though not in itself impossible or even very improbable—must be dismissed as at present unsupported by direct proof or even incidental confirmation of any kind. It does not follow that he may not have been poisoned designedly."

_R. Garnett, The Alleged Poisoning of Alexander VI. (English Historical Review, April, 1894)._

"Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alexander, no account need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. Whatever opinion may be formed of him considered as the high-priest of the Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II. was one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance, and that his name, instead of that of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of St. Peter's, that materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal Rome, was his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice stain his pontificate. His one purpose was to secure and extend the temporal authority of the Popes; and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians, who threatened to enslave Romagna, by reducing Perugia and Bologna to the Papal sway, by annexing Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the heritage bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia. At his death he transmitted to his successors the largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. But restless, turbid, never happy unless fighting, Julius drowned the peninsula in blood. He has been called a patriot, because from time to time he raised the cry of driving the barbarians from Italy: it must, however, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal di San Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; it was he who stirred up the League of Cambray [see VENICE: A. D. 1508-1509] against Venice, and who invited the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy [see ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513]; in each case adding the weight of the Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his country. … Leo X. succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief of the Romans, wearied with the continual warfare of the old 'Pontefice terribile.'"

_J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Age of the Despots, chapter 6._

ALSO IN: _J. C. Robertson, History of the Christian Church, book 9, chapter 5 (volume 8)._

_M. Creighton, History of the Papacy, book 5, chapters 3-17._

_W. Gilbert, Lucrezia Borgia._

_P. Villari, Life and Times of Machiavelli, introduction, chapter 4 (volume 1); book 1, chapters 6-14 (volumes 2-3)._

PAPACY: A. D. 1493. The Pope's assumption of authority to give the New World to Spain.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1493.

PAPACY: A. D. 1496-1498. The condemnation of Savonarola.

See FLORENCE: A. D. 1490-1498.

PAPACY: A. D. 1503 (September). Election of Pius III.

PAPACY: A. D. 1503 (October). Election of Julius II.

PAPACY: A. D. 1508-1509. Pope Julius II. and the League of Cambrai against Venice.

See VENICE: A. D. 1508-1509.

PAPACY: A. D. 1510-1513. The Holy League against France. The pseudo-council at Pisa. Conquests of Julius II.

See ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513.

PAPACY: A. D. 1513. Election of Leo X.

PAPACY: A. D. 1515-1516. Treaty of Leo X. with Francis I. of France. Abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII. The Concordat of Bologna. Destruction of the liberties of the Gallican Church.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1515-1518.

{2444}

PAPACY: A. D. 1516-1517. Monetary demands of the court and family of Pope Leo X., and his financial expedients. The theory of Indulgences and their marketability.

"The position which the pope [Leo X.], now absolute lord of Florence and master of Siena, occupied, the powerful alliances he had contracted with the other powers of Europe, and the views which his family entertained on the rest of Italy, rendered it absolutely indispensable for him, spite of the prodigality of a government that knew no restraint, to be well supplied with money. He seized every occasion of extracting extraordinary revenues from the church. The Lateran council was induced, immediately before its dissolution (15th of March, 1517), to grant the pope a tenth of all church property throughout Christendom. Three different commissions for the sale of indulgences traversed Germany and the northern states at the same moment. These expedients were, it is true, resorted to under various pretexts. The tenths were, it was said, to be expended in a Turkish war, which was soon to be declared; the produce of indulgences was for the building of St. Peter's Church, where the bones of the martyrs lay exposed to the inclemency of the elements. But people had ceased to believe in these pretences. … For there was no doubt on the mind of any reasonable man, that all these demands were mere financial speculations. There is no positive proof that the assertion then so generally made —that the proceeds of the sale of indulgences in Germany was destined in part for the pope's sister Maddelena—was true. But the main fact is indisputable, that the ecclesiastical aids were applied to the uses of the pope's family."

_L. Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1)._

"Indulgences, in the earlier ages of the Church, had been a relaxation of penance, or of the discipline imposed by the Church on penitents who had been guilty of mortal sin. The doctrine of penance required that for such sin satisfaction should be superadded to contrition and confession. Then came the custom of commuting these appointed temporal penalties. When Christianity spread among the northern nations, the canonical penances were frequently found to be inapplicable to their condition. The practice of accepting offerings of money in the room of the ordinary forms of penance, harmonized with the penal codes in vogue among the barbarian peoples. At first the priest had only exercised the office of an intercessor. Gradually the simple function of declaring the divine forgiveness to the penitent transformed itself into that of a judge. By Aquinas, the priest is made the instrument of conveying the divine pardon, the vehicle through which the grace of God passes to the penitent. With the jubilees, or pilgrimages to Rome, ordained by the popes, came the plenary indulgences, or the complete remission of all temporal penalties—that is, the penalties still obligatory on the penitent—on the fulfillment of prescribed conditions. These penalties might extend into purgatory, but the indulgence obliterated them all. In the 13th century, Alexander of Hales and Thomas Aquinas set forth the theory of supererogatory merits, or the treasure of merit bestowed upon the Church through Christ and the saints, on which the rulers of the Church might draw for the benefit of the less worthy and more needy. This was something distinct from the power of the keys, the power to grant absolution, which inhered in the priesthood alone. The eternal punishment of mortal sin being remitted or commuted by the absolution of the priest, it was open to the Pope or his agents, by the grant of indulgences, to remit the temporal or terminable penalties that still rested on the head of the transgressor. Thus souls might be delivered forthwith from purgatorial fire. Pope Sixtus IV., in 1477, had officially declared that souls already in purgatory are emancipated 'per modum suffragii'; that is, the work done in behalf of them operates to effect their release in a way analogous to the efficacy of prayer. Nevertheless, the power that was claimed over the dead, was not practically diminished by this restriction. The business of selling indulgences had grown by the profitableness of it. 'Everywhere,' says Erasmus, 'the remission of purgatorial torment is sold; nor is it sold only, but forced upon those who refuse it.' As managed by Tetzel and the other emissaries sent out to collect money for the building of St. Peter's Church, the indulgence was a simple bargain, according to which, on the payment of a stipulated sum, the individual received a full discharge from the penalties of sin or procured the release of a soul from the flames of purgatory. The forgiveness of sins was offered in the market for money."

_G. P. Fisher, The Reformation, chapter 4._

The doctrine concerning indulgences which the Roman Catholic Church maintains at the present day is stated by one of its most eminent prelates as follows: "What then is an Indulgence? It is no more than a remission by the Church, in virtue of the keys, or the judicial authority committed to her, of a portion, or the entire, of the temporal punishment due to sin. The infinite merits of Christ form the fund whence this remission is derived: but besides, the Church holds that, by the communion of Saints, penitential works performed by the just, beyond what their own sins might exact, are available to other members of Christ's mystical body; that, for instance, the sufferings of the spotless Mother of God, afflictions such as probably no other human being ever felt in the soul, —the austerities and persecutions of the Baptist, the friend of the Bridegroom, who was sanctified in his mother's womb, and chosen to be an angel before the face of the Christ,—the tortures endured by numberless martyrs, whose lives had been pure from vice and sin,—the prolonged rigours of holy anchorites, who, flying from the temptations and dangers of the world, passed many years in penance and contemplation, all these made consecrated and valid through their union with the merits of Christ's passion,—were not thrown away, but formed a store of meritorious blessings, applicable to the satisfaction of other sinners. It is evident that, if the temporal punishment reserved to sin was anciently believed to be remitted through the penitential acts, which the sinner assumed, any other substitute for them, that the authority imposing or recommending them received as an equivalent, must have been considered by it truly of equal value, and as acceptable before God. And so it must be now. If the duty of exacting such satisfaction devolves upon the Church,—and it must be the same now as it formerly was,—she necessarily possesses at present the same power of substitution, with the same efficacy, and, consequently, with the same effects. And such a substitution is what constitutes all that Catholics understand by the name of an Indulgence. … Do I then mean to say, that during the middle ages, and later, no abuse took place in the practise of indulgences? Most certainly not. {2445} Flagrant and too frequent abuses, doubtless, occurred through the avarice, and rapacity, and impiety of men; especially when indulgence was granted to the contributors towards charitable or religious foundations, in the erection of which private motives too often mingle. But this I say, that the Church felt and ever tried to remedy the evil. … The Council of Trent, by an ample decree, completely reformed the abuses which had subsequently crept in, and had been unfortunately used as a ground for Luther's separation from the Church."

_N. Wiseman, Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church, lecture 12._

PAPACY: A. D. 1517. Tetzel and the hawking of Indulgences through Germany.