Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/91

Rh flew up to heaven as fast as the money chinked in the box. Whoso questioned the rightfulness of the system was delared a heretic.

By these measures in the spiritual order Alexander exercised vast influence over the future of the Catholic Church, whilst by his nepotism he caused the Papacy to become a political power in Italy. His nepotism is commonly explained by his desire to enrich his kindred. But there was more than this. There was the desire to put in the place of almost independent feudatories a prince who represented the person, and could be trusted to do the will, of the Pope, and to strengthen and sustain the Papacy by the introduction of an hereditary element. It is a wise saying of Guicciardini, that the Popes were badly served because their reigns were short, but that the Borgias proved what could be accomplished by a well-served Pope. It was a substitute for the security derived from dynastic interests and influence. There was a vulgar nepotism in the solicitude of Alexander to heap wealth and titles on his obscurer sons and kinsmen. But Cæsar's career of conquest, the great reproach of the Borgias, was not a mere pursuit of mean and sordid objects; it belonged to a system of policy founded on reason and design, and pregnant with consequences not yet extinct.

The secret of Cæsar's power over his father was not love but fear. Machiavelli saw that he really controlled the action of the pontiff, and advised the Florentines that they would obtain more by keeping an agent at Cesena than by their embassy at Rome; but he did not discover