Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/526

Rh 488 ALEXANDER VI. taste for female society while discharging a legation at Siena procured him one of the severest reprimands ever addressed to a cardinal by a pope. Pius s reproof is pre served in Raynaldus (Append, ad ami. 1460, num. 31), and alone refutes the fiction of Borgia s religious hypocrisy. Cardinal Barbo, however, who succeeded as Paul II., was the same spirited patrician who had befriended the Borgias in their hour of need, and his ostentatious pontificate ushered in the era of Rodrigo s unbroken prosperity. &quot; He is,&quot; writes at this time Gaspar Veronensis (Muratori, torn. iii. pt. 2, p. 1037), &quot;a comely man of cheerful countenance and honeyed discourse, who gains the affec tions of all the women he admires, and attracts them as the loadstone does iron ; it is indeed supposed that he proceeds no further.&quot; A supposition rather pious than probable. On the death of the jovial Paul (1471), Borgia is men tioned, along with Cardinals Orsino and Gonzaga, as one of the three who chiefly contributed to place the tiara on the brows of the then famous preacher and exemplary ascetic Sixtus IV., who immediately (per fuggire I ingrati- tudine) bestowed on him the opulent abbey of Subiaco, and raised him to the dignity of cardinal-bishop. About the same time must have commenced his intimacy with Vanozza. In 1473 he undertook a legation to Spain, avowedly with the purpose of visiting his diocese and of composing differences between the kings of Castile and Portugal, but in reality to display his magnificence to his countrymen. His demeanour on this occasion is repre sented in the most unfavourable light by the cardinal of Pavia, who had previously composed for him that elegant oration to his Valencian flock which the Abb6 Ollivier has the simplicity to attribute to Borgia himself. The cardinal, however, is too much of a time-server and a rhetorician for his account to be altogether trustworthy. More certain is the occurrence of a tremendous tempest on Borgia s return, in which part of his retinue perished, while ho himself narrowly escaped. Innocent VIII., the successor of Sixtus, owed his election to Borgia s coalition with the late pope s nephew, and the fortunes of the former remained unimpaired throughout his tranquil ponti ficate. The long malady which terminated it afforded scope for the intrigues of aspirants to the succession ; and when the cardinals entered into conclave (August 1492), already the rumour ran that a Spaniard would be pope. The simoniacal character of the election is indisputable. We need not believe that the opulent and high-spirited Cardinal Ascanio Sforza was tempted with four mule-loads of silver, but his instant elevation to the vice-chancellorship speaks for itself. Cardinal Orsino was bought with Borgia s palace in Borne; Cardinal Colonna with the abbey of Subiaco ; money gained the minor members of the Sacred College ; five cardinals alone are recorded as incorruptible. Borgia s uneasiness was betrayed by his hasty assumption of the pontifical vestments, and premature announcement of the election to the expectant crowd. He assumed the name of Alexander VI. His allocution to the cardinals breathed spirit and dignity : an admonitory discourse to his son Caesar, which may be read in Gordon, is an inven tion of the anonymous romancer. The pomp of his coro nation far surpassed preceding examples, and the compli ments of foreign ambassadors on the majesty of his mien and the maturity of his wisdom were echoed by a public accustomed to simony, relieved at their deliverance from a period of anarchy, and sensible of their need of a firmer hand. This hope Alexander justified and surpassed. Ere long he had divided Rome into judicial districts, placed a magistrate at the head of each, and himself established a weekly audience, at which, by the admission of the mal content Infessura, &quot; he administered justice after a marvel lous sort.&quot; Alexander s pontificate might have been less eventful but for a circumstance beyond his control. The political system of Italy was on the eve of dissolution. Ludovico the Moor, anxious to confirm himself in his ill-gotten duchy of Milan, was already tempting the French monarch across the Alps by the bait of the kingdom of Naples. As of old in Greece, so now dissensions and political cor ruption were about to cast down the civilisation of Italy at the feet of the stranger. The passion for family aggrandisement on this occasion impelled Alexander to a patriotic course. His third son Giofr6 had espoused the illegitimate daughter of the king of Naples, and received as dower the principality of Squillace. When, therefore, the French envoys demanded the investiture of Naples, they met with a flat refusal. This encouraged Alexander s enemies. Cardinal della Rovere (Julius II.) withdrew from the papal court, seized upon Ostia, and from thence addressed urgent appeals to the French king to march upon Rome, convene a council, and purge Christendom of the simoniacal pope. On this side Alexander felt himself indeed vulnerable. Casting about for alliances, he de spatched an envoy to the Sultan; the ambassador was arrested as he returned with a favourable reply ; and the publication of his instructions created a fresh scandal. Others still, had Roman manners been less lax, might have arisen from the marriage of the pope s acknowledged daughter Lucretia to the Lord of Pesaro, under the auspices of the whole Sacred College, and from the elevation of his second son Caesar to the cardinalate at the age of eighteen, unblushing perjury being employed to conceal his illegitimate birth. Yet, at the same period, the suc cessor of Peter appeared for the last time in history as the undisputed bestower of kingdoms and the ultimate tribunal of appeal for Christian nations. Spain and Portugal resorted to him for the adjustment of their claims to the New World ; and by tracing a line upon a map he dis posed of three-fourths of the human race. Never, accord ing to mediaeval ideas, had a pope exerted his prerogative with equal grandeur ; but the medieval conception of the papacy was passing away, and no one s faith in it was feebler than the pope s. Charles VIII. passed the Alps in the autumn of 1494; city after city fell before him, and by the end of the year Rome was added to the number. Alexander had retired into the castle of St Angelo. His deposition was uni versally expected, most of all by himself. But Charles s minister, Briconnet, had been gained. by the promise of a cardinal s hat. On IGth January the reconciliation of king and pontiff was officially celebrated : they rode together through the city; but distrust still prevailed between them. With really surprising firmness Alexander continued to refuse the investiture of Naples, with which Charles may have thought himself able to dispense. Nothing, indeed, could have been more rapid than his conquest, except his loss of that kingdom. By March the triumph of the French seemed complete : on 6th July their retreating army cut its way through the Italian hosts at Taro in Upper Italy ; on 7th July the King of Naples re-entered his capital. Nothing remained of the French incursion except a fatal contagion, and the more fatal revelation of the weakness of Italy. The retreat of the French left Alexander at liberty to pursue what must have been the main object of any pope of intelligence and spirit in his place the extirpation of the petty feudal vassals of the church, and the establish ment of the temporal independence of the papacy. This was in truth but a phase of the great struggle of the crown and the people against the aristocracy, universally a characteristic of that age; but the pope s principal motive was unquestionably the insatiable appetite of family