Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/82

Rh a small quantity of gold-filings in the Castle of S. Angelo, for which act he received plenary Papal absolution. It seems therefore certain that Cellini cleared himself before the judges of this charge of peculation; and nothing more was subsequently said about it.

Yet there remains some difficulty in understanding why he was kept so long in prison after the voracious Pier Luigi found that no articles of value could be extracted from him. Are we to believe that Paul III. remained obdurate in his resentment merely because some courtiers told him that Cellini had been laughing at the Pope behind his back? That is by no means either impossible or improbable, knowing as we do what acts of tyranny a Pope was capable of perpetrating. Varchi, for example, writing his History of Florence under Medicean influence for a Medicean Grand Duke, relates how the last great Medicean Pope, Clement VII., caused a political antagonist, Fra Foiano, to be starved in the Castle of S. Angelo by daily reducing his rations till the wretch expired of vermin and famine. Now Alessandro Farnese, Pope Paul III., was in some ways worse and more dangerous than any of those previous Pontiffs. He owed his first advancement to his sister's shame; for Giulia la Beila had been the mistress of Pope Alexander VI. During his early manhood he underwent imprisonment in the Castle of S. Angelo for forgery while holding public offices of trust. He was, in fact, a survivor from the most worldly and most lawless days of the Roman Church.