Chapter V: Book IV (3)

One of the claims of the church is that of a Divine Promise of Her Maintenance until the end of the world. It is interesting to the student of history to notice that, from time to time, Her responsible authorities comport themselves as though they had no faith in the validity of that prediction. They seem to think that its fulfilment solely depends upon their own exertions. The strange conviction of the necessity of his present existence, which is innate in the ordinary man, is perhaps the explanation of the extraordinary expenditure of energy to avert death, to invalidate the most fervent and frequent professions of belief in The Life Of The World To Come, to consolidate human institutions and human plans, which obtains on such occasions as the close of a prelacy or the end of a pontificate. If it be true that actions speak louder than words, then the confusion attendant on a Pope’s death must tell a sorry tale.

On the sixth of August 1458 the Lord Calixtus P.P. III lay dying in the Vatican. Rome was in a turmoil. Colonna and Orsini were sharpening their swords. The banished cardinals were hurrying back for the ensuing Conclave. The four loyal cardinals were fortified in their palaces. Only the Cardinal-Nephews attended at the Pope’s bedside.

The curious privilege which was accorded to these last, at this period, could not be exercised in the present case. By the very conditions of their juniority in the Sacred College, added to the powerful influence which they were supposed to hold over the reigning Pontiff, the Cardinal-Nephews were the objects of intense dislike (to put it mildly) on the part of their colleagues. Their elevation was an offence; their enrichment, a matter for envy; their indifference to opinion, a matter for positive hatred. The only consolation to the other cardinals, creatures of previous Pontiffs, which their situation held, was that it must end with the demise of their creator. When their Pontifical Uncle ceased to live in this world, the Cardinal-Nephews sank at once to their proper place in the Sacred College. Under these circumstances, the said Cardinal-Nephews were used to make their hay while yet the sun was shining, to avail themselves of their opportunities for securing a satisfactory future, as junior cardinals, by the acquisition of property, real estate, benefices, jewels, or money, at the pleasure of the Pope. And when their time was drawing near its close, when their August Uncle was entering His last agony, it was the custom for the Cardinal-Nephews to plunder the apostolic palace of any valuables which already had not passed into their hands. This privilege was their last chance; for, at the instant of the Pontiff’s death, the Cardinal-Chamberlain assumes possession as representative of the curia; and, in an age when self aggrandisement was not less a ruling passion than at the present hour, the practice was at least connived at, on the principle that every dog should be allowed to have its day.

But, on the present occasion, there was no plundering by the Cardinal-Nephews. The fury of the Romans against all Spaniards made it expedient for them to avoid the risk of a journey across the City, to their palaces, encumbered by the mules which bore their spoils. This would seem to be the human explanation of their presence in the Vatican, while the Orsini faction made havoc of the Catalans, and despoiled all who bore arms in the Borgo or pontifical Region of Rome.

* * * * *

The learned Dr. Creighton has well said that men of decided opinions and eminent ability who come to their power late in life, spend the accumulated passion of a lifetime in the accomplishment of long cherished desires. The Lord Calixtus P.P. III would come into that category.

Though He was unenthusiastic regarding the Renascence of Letters and the Arts, and checked the tremendous schemes of His predecessor, yet He was by no means inattentive to the duties involved by His position. He restored the palace and church of Santi Quattro Coronati, because He had occupied them during His cardinalate. He improved the church of San Sebastiano _extra muros_ above the Catacomb of San Calixto, in honour of the saint from whom He took His papal name. He repaired the church of Santa Prisca, and began the new roof of the Liberian Basilica on the Esquiline. He employed the painters, who did not leave Rome on His election, in painting banners for the Crusade. The Vatican school of arras-weavers, founded by the Lord Nicholas P.P. V, was continued, and flourished exceedingly under His benevolence. He created nine cardinals in the course of His short pontificate. The Porporati of the Consistory of the twentieth of February 1456 were named on p. 36. At the Consistory at Christmas the same year, He elevated to the purple:—

(α) The Lord Rainaldo Pisciscello, the virtuous and learned Archbishop
of Naples, as Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Cecilia:

(β) Don Juan de Mella, brother of the celebrated Franciscan Frat’
Alonso de Mella, and a noble of Spain, Auditor of the Ruota to
the Lord Martin P.P. III, as Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of
Sant’ Aquila e Santa Prisca:

(γ) The Lord Giovanni Castelleone, patrician of Milan, Legate to
Caesar Friedrich IV, and Bishop of Pavia, as Cardinal-Presbyter
of the Title of San Clemente:

(δ) The Lord Giacomo di Collescipoli Teobaldi, a Roman citizen, as
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Anastasia:[19]

(ε) The Lord Richart de Longueil Olivier, Bishop of Constance,
Archpriest of the Vatican Basilica, one of the judges at the
Rehabilitation of Madame Jehanne de Lis, the Maid of Orleans, as
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Sant’ Eusebio:

(ζ) The Lord Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de’ Piccolhuomini, as
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina.

The Lord Calixtus P.P. III has no share in the evil reputation which has been cast upon His House. The worst that has been said of Him is, that He was obstinate, irritable, and inspired no affection. They were disappointed suitors who so spoke. The Pope’s Holiness used Himself ever gently to the poor and needy, who found in Him a good samaritan. His benefactions to the hospital of Santo Spirito have been recorded. In His will He left five thousand ducats to found a hospital in His cardinalitial palace of Santo Quattro Coronati. His private life was one of rigid piety, simplest habits, apostolic fervour. He left one hundred and fifty thousand ducats in the Pontifical Treasury, which He had collected for the Holy War.

But the whole force of His resourceful and masterful character was concentrated upon the Crusade, and the settlement in life of His beloved nephews. On those two points He would brook no opposition. With the violent impetuosity of age, of Spanish blood, He was inflexible, overbearing, inconsiderate, on all matters connected with these projects. All the ardour, and all the zeal, which He devoted to the delivery of Christendom from the Muslim Infidel, was doomed to fail. The Muslim Infidel defiles Constantinople now. But His dealings with His nephews produced more permanent results.

Yet “it must always be an honour to the Papacy that, in a great crisis of European affairs, it asserted the importance of a policy which was for the interest of Europe as a whole. Calixtus and his successor[20] deserve, as statesmen, credit which can be given to no other politicians of the time. The Papacy, by summoning Christendom to defend the limits of Christian civilisation against the assaults of heathenism, was worthily discharging the chief secular duty of the office.” (Creighton.)

The Lord Calixtus P.P. III died on the sixth of August 1458, in the fourth year of His reign; and was buried by four priests in the crypt of the old Basilica of St. Peter-by-the-Vatican.

* * * * *

Kindling

It has been said that the junior branch of the House of Borja (which originated in Don Ricardo de Borja, second son of Don Pedro, Count of Aybar, Lord of Borja, who died in 1152), emigrated to the kingdom of Naples, where it became naturalised, and softened its name into the Italian Borgia. From Don Fortunio, the son of the aforesaid Don Ricardo, descends Don Rodrigo who had two sons:—

(α) Don Romano Borgia, Monk of Vall’ Ombrosa and Bishop of Venafri,
A.D. 1300. (_Ricchi_.)

(β) Don Ximenes Borgia, Captain in the Army of Naples, whose son, Don
Antonio Borgia, married Madonna Girolama Ruffola of Naples, and
had issue:—

(α) Don Niccolo Borgia, familiar of King Don Alonso I, The
Magnanimous, Regent of Velletri 1417, married the Noble Madonna
Giovanna Lamberti of Naples, and had issue....

(β) Don Girolamo Borgia, (detto Seniore)....

Reverting to the Senior Branch:—

The career of Don Francisco de Borja, bastard of Bishop Alonso de Borja of Valencia (afterwards the Lord Calixtus P.P. III), is an unsolved mystery from his birth in 1441 until 1497....

Of the five children of Doña Juana de Borja by her husband Don Jofre de Lançol:—

(α) Doña Francisca married Don Ximenez Perez de Arenas;

(β) Doña Tecla married Don Vitale de Villanueva;

(γ) Doña Juana married her cousin Don Guillelmo de Lançol, and had
issue:—

Girolama,
Angela,
Pedro Luis (Pierludovico)....
Juan (Giovanni seniore)....

(δ) Don Rodrigo, Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Deacon of San Niccolo _in
Carcere Tulliano_....

(ε) Don Pedro Luis, Duke of Spoleto, Castellan of Santangelo, Prefect
of Rome, died on the twenty-sixth of September 1458, leaving two
bastards:—

Juan (Giovanni giuniore)....
Silvia, married Don Alonso Gomiel.

Of the two children of Doña Caterina de Borja by her husband Don Juan de Mila, Baron of Mazalanes:—

(α) Don Luis Juan, Cardinal-Presbyter of Santi Quattro Coronati,
Bishop of Lerida, retired to his diocese on the death of his
August Uncle and Creator, and lived there secluded till his
death in 1507. (The career and character of this prince of the
church, cardinal at twenty, bishop at twenty-three, and during
those three years living in the very arcana of the pontifical
court; who then thought fit to bury himself in a remote
university city during half a century, while his nearest kin
were ruling Europe and Christendom, awaits, and should repay,
investigation.)

(β) Doña Adriana came to Italy, married Don Luigi Orsini, and had
issue Don Orso Orsini....

* * * * *

The chief personage of the House of Borja, on the death of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III, was Cardinal Rodrigo, of the age of twenty-seven years.

His position was a precarious one; and it is perfectly amazing that he was not forced to follow his cousin, the Cardinal de Mila, into permanent retirement. That he was able, not only to remain in Rome but to carve out for himself a unique career there, undoubtedly is due to those superb talents and alert vigour of character which have made him such a prominent figure in history.

He had only two friends in Rome, the Cardinal Enea Silvio of Siena and the Cardinal-Archdeacon Prospero Colonna. Quite unmoved by the hatred of the other Purpled Ones, he entered the Conclave of 1458 for the election of the new Pope, with no such stupid thing as a plan of action; but with a determination to comport himself so, according as opportunities arose, as to improve his position and his prospects. It was impossible to know beforehand what steps he would have to take: he could be guided only by circumstances. To a young man of such temper the gods send opportunities. There arrived a deadlock in the Conclave; and of that deadlock Cardinal Rodrigo seized the key.

* * * * *

There are five ways by which a Pope may be elected:—

(α) By Compromise—_i.e._, when the cardinals appoint a committee of
themselves with power to name the Pope:

(β) By Inspiration—_i.e._, when a number of cardinals put themselves
to shout the name of some cardinal, as “The
Cardinal-Prior-Presbyter is Pope,” or “The Cardinal-Archdeacon
is Pope;” by which method of shouting other voices are
attracted, and the minimum majority (of two-thirds plus one)
attained:

(γ) By Adoration—_i.e._, when the minimum majority (of two-thirds plus
one) of the cardinals go and adore a certain cardinal:

(δ) By Scrutiny—_i.e._, when each cardinal secretly records a vote:

(ε) By Accession—_i.e._, when, the scrutiny having failed to give the
minimum majority (of two-thirds plus one) to any cardinal, the
opponents of that cardinal, whose tally is the highest, shall
accede to him.

In the Conclave of 1458 the method of Compromise was not used, and no cardinals were moved to proceed by Inspiration or to Adoration. Votes were taken by the Scrutiny, which revealed an extraordinary state of things. The French Cardinal d’Estouteville had a certain number of votes; the Cardinal Enea Silvio of Siena had a higher number; but neither had the minimum majority. The cardinals sat upon their green or purple thrones, beneath their green or purple canopies, watching and waiting for a sign.

Then the young Cardinal-Vicechancellor Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja rose up and proclaimed: “I accede to the Lord Cardinal of Siena.” His friend and ally, the Cardinal-Archdeacon Prospero Colonna, followed him: “I accede to the Lord Cardinal of Siena.” Cardinal Teobaldi, who, as a Roman citizen, followed Colonna, said also: “I accede to the Lord Cardinal of Siena.” The three lowered their green and purple canopies. They were in the presence of the Pope, in Whom all authority resides, before Whom none may remain covered. The minimum majority had been attained. The Lord Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de’ Piccolhuomini, sometime Caesar’s ambassador in “the horrible and ultimate Britains” (Scotland), sometime poet-laureate, novelist, historian, bishop, and cardinal, had become the Lord Pius P.P. II.

By this act, which practically gave the proud triregno to his friend, the Cardinal-Vicechancellor put himself into high favour with the new Pontiff, Whose enchanting temperament delighted in the brilliance and aptitude of the Borgia, and made his future the object of especial interest.

* * * * *

Materials for the history of Cardinal Rodrigo during this reign are but scanty, in the absence of opportunities for original research. In 1459, he went a-holiday-making with the Lord Pius P.P. II, on a triumphal progress through Florence; where the Holy Father chatted with a lovely boy of seven years, called Lionardo da Vinci, bastard of a Florentine notary and a contadina. They visited Siena; and Corsignano, where the Pope’s Holiness was born, which He was pleased to rename Pienza, in honour of His papal name, and to build there a cathedral, an episcopal palace, and the Piccolhuomini palace for His Own family on the three sides of the public square. By way of showing His confidence in the Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Archdeacon (Archdeacon _vice_ Cardinal Prospero Colonna), perhaps, also, to curb, with useful employment, the exuberance of manlihood which had been giving evidence of revolt against the convenances, the Lord Pius P.P. II left the superintendence of these buildings in the hands of Cardinal Rodrigo, who has not scrupled to adorn their façades with the armorials of the House of Borgia, _Or, a bull passant gules on a field flory vert, within a bordure gules semée of flammels, or_.

Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Archdeacon Rodrigo had lived the life of a gallant handsome prince and man of the world of the fifteenth century, in no wise differing from his antitype of the twentieth. The Renascence had brought about an age when sensuousness degenerating into sensualism was found in prominent places. It is difficult to see what else was to be expected. “Ye can not serve God and Mammon.” Learning and art essentially, radically, and necessarily are antagonistic to Christianity, hard though that saying may be found. Towards them the Church’s policy always has been a policy of compromise. “You may learn the wisdom of the world, but you may not learn all,” She says; trying to serve God, paltering the while with Mammon. “Nudus, Nudum Christum sequens” went Beato Fra Francesco when he renounced the world; and the Church compromises with St. Sebastian for Phoibos Apollon. Therefore, as long as Grace and Nature are served up on the same dish, it is stupidly unreasonable to hold up holy hands in horror when high ecclesiastical dignitaries happen to comport themselves like human beings.

The twentieth century is no whit more chaste than the fifteenth, and can ill afford to cast a stone. Nor was the fifteenth century the stew of universal depravity which some would have us believe it to have been. It was unmoral as the twentieth is immoral. But there were pure and maid-white souls then, as there are now; and the difference between the fifteenth century and the twentieth is a mere difference of fashion. Now, we pretend to be immaculate; then, they bragged of being vile. Much of the literature of the fifteenth century is most suitably presented in the original. Poets and historians, especially historians, allowed little scope for exercise of the imagination. The convention of concealment, of suggestion, had not been invented. Messeri Stefano Infessura and Benedetto Varchi rank among the most eminent chroniclers of their day; certainly the Latin of the one, and the Tuscan of the other, would serve for models: but a complete unbowdlerised translation of the former’s Journal of Roman Affairs (_Diarium Rerum Romanum_), or of the latter’s Florentine History (_Storia Fiorentina_), incontinently would be suppressed by the police. Yet it would be absurd to conclude that these writers, or others of their kidney, have given a just account of the morals of their age. “The divorce court and the police news do not reflect the state of morality in England. No more do Juvenal’s Satires give us a complete or impartial picture of Roman society. We must read side by side with them the contemporary letters of Pliny, which give a very different picture, and also weigh the evidence offered by inscriptions.” (E. G. Hardy. Satires of Juvenal, p. xliv.) That is the spirit in which the student of the fifteenth century should approach his task. He will read all, and hear all sides, and form his own conclusion, which, at best, must be a faulty one, until the secrets of all hearts are known.

The Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Archdeacon was a human being. If he were, as Gaspar Veronensis describes him at a later date, “a comely man, of cheerful countenance and honeyed discourse, who gains the affections of all the women he admires, and attracts them as the loadstone attracts iron,” what must he have been in the glow of his superb youth? This is not by any means a suitable reputation for a churchman; and only its non-singularity prevents it from being a disgraceful one. Viewed from a theological stand-point, Cardinal Rodrigo’s carnal lusts are, of course, wholly indefensible: but this work is an attempt at the study of certain human beings prominent in history; and not a theological treatise nor an act of the _advocatus diaboli_. The Lord Pius P.P. II has said, “If there are good reasons for enjoining celibacy of the clergy, there are better and stronger auguments for insisting on their marriage”; and that Supreme Pontiff was far and away the wisest and most observing man of His Own (or perhaps of any) time.

Therefore, it is suggested that, knowing of the proclivities of Cardinal Rodrigo, being in truth his firm friend, desirous that he should live up to the obligations of his rank, and, above all, actuated by a sense of duty as Christ’s Vicar, the Pope’s Holiness set him to supervise the buildings at Pienza—to keep him out of mischief.

In 1460 was born Don Pedro Luis de Borja, bastard of the said Cardinal-Archdeacon and a spinster (soluta). The child was openly acknowledged and honourably reared.

About this time the Lord Pius P.P. II wrote a letter, to remonstrate with Cardinal Rodrigo and with the Lord Giacopo Ammanati, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Crisogono, concerning their divergences from ecclesiastical discipline. It is a genial and paternal letter, in which frank hatred of Sin is displayed with affection for the sinners. Cardinal Rodrigo replied, correcting some mis-statements of fact: but, that the Pope’s Holiness was not satisfied, appears from a second letter of a firmer and more admonitory nature. Much has been made of this correspondence by some writers, whose pose is to think ungenerously of ecclesiastics. It should be noted, however, that the Lord Pius P.P. II took exception to certain long visits which those cardinals paid to ladies of their acquaintance, and to nothing more. Apparently there was nothing more of which to complain; and the fact that the Pope’s Holiness should deem these visits to be indiscretions on the part of ecclesiastics, goes to prove rather the extreme and strict solicitude of the Holy Father for the spiritual welfare of his flock, than any dissolute conduct of the two cardinals. But the defamers of Cardinal Rodrigo misrepresent the said visits in the worst possible light, as nocturnal orgies and debaucheries; and long night visits obviously would constitute a grave and serious scandal. The misrepresentation very likely is due to careless ignorance. The fact is, that the Italian method of computing time in the fifteenth century is deceptive to the superficial student. Something is known of the dials of Italy which count the hours up to 24 o’clock; and when it is said that Cardinal Rodrigo paid visits to ladies in their gardens “from the 17th to the 22nd hour,” instantly cynical carelessness predicates nocturnal orgies. But when it is understood that, in the fifteenth century, the first hour began at half an hour after sunset, and that the visits took place in time of summer, it will be realised that Cardinal Rodrigo simply went to the mid-day dinner, and left his friends an hour and a half before sunset: which may have been indiscreet, but certainly was not essentially criminal, as some would have us believe. But when the careless or wilful calumniator sets out to ruin a reputation, he finds it an easy thing to twist a fault into a crime.

The Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Archdeacon is recorded to have astonished Rome with the splendour of the arras adorning the outside of his palace on the Festival of Corpus Domini, 1461. The buildings at Pienza occupied him through 1462. Of 1463 there is no history with which he is connected.

In 1464 “an aged man, with head of snow and trembling limbs,” took the rose-red cross in the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome. This was no other than the Sovereign Pontiff, the Lord Pius P.P. II, unique in all history, Who, as an example to the apathetic potentates of Christendom, went, dying as He was, a crusader against the Muslim Infidel. Cardinal Rodrigo was in attendance upon His Holiness in that terrible journey in parching summer heat across Italy to the Adriatic; where, while waiting for the fleet, at Ancona, in August, the Lord Pius P.P. II died. Cardinal Rodrigo, stricken by fever there, unable to return to Rome for the Conclave, was obliged to forego his official privilege as Cardinal-Archdeacon, the crowning of the Lord Paul P.P. II on the sixteenth of September.

This Pontiff (lately the Lord Pietro Barbo, Cardinal of Venice) wished, on His election, to take the name Formosus, in allusion to His handsome person. It was a naïve age, when men hid neither their vices nor their virtues; and the story possibly may be true: but it is very likely to be one of the spiteful little distortions of motive, which ecclesiastics of all ages are wont to ascribe each to other. The Popes, after the first six centuries, have never shown much originality in choosing Their pontifical names, and generally fall back upon the name of one of Their immediate predecessors. At present the changes are rung upon Pius, Leo, and Gregory; the fifteenth century had a wider range: but many of the lovely old names, such as Anacletus, Fabian, Felix, Silvester, Hadrian, Victor, Evaristus, were buried in oblivion. It is far more kind to suppose that the Lord Cardinal of Venice had the idea of reviving the beautiful name of the Lord Formosus P.P., Who reigned from 891 to 896, and was the hundred and twelfth Pope from the Lord St. Peter P.P. Persuaded against this course by the cardinals, He spent two hundred thousand fiorini d’oro on a triregno set with sapphires; built St. Mark’s Palace (Palazzo Venezia) at the end of the Corso in Rome; and instituted carnival races of riderless horses (called Bárberi, as a pun upon his name), and of Jews heavily clothed in garments of thick wool and stuffed to the throat with cake. In 1467 was born Madonna Girolama de Borja, bastard of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Archdeacon, by an unknown mother. The child was openly acknowledged and honourably reared. During this reign Cardinal Rodrigo remained in favour; and, on account of his fine presence and habitude to curial manners, he was chosen to receive, at Viterbo, Caesar Friedrich IV, The Pacific, coming on a state-visit to the Pope in 1469.

At the death of the Lord Paul P.P. II, Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, Cardinal Guillaume d’ Estouteville, and Cardinal Ioannes Bessarione were the only foreigners in the Conclave of 1471. Once more the Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Archdeacon was clever enough to put a Pope under an obligation, by leading an accession to Cardinal Francesco della Rovere, who thereby was elected, and chose to be called the Lord Xystus P.P. IV. All the chroniclers save one allege that this Pope owed His election to the accession of Cardinals de Borja, Orsini, and Gonzaga of Mantua, who reaped rich rewards in the shape of benefices and preferments. The Pope’s Holiness gave to Cardinal Rodrigo the wealthy Abbey of Subjaco _in commendam_; who left a memorial of his abbatial tenure in the tower which he added to the castle of Subjaco, where the armorials of the House of Borgia still remain. The last official act of Cardinal Rodrigo, as Archdeacon of the Holy Roman Church, appears to have been the coronation of the Lord Xystus P.P. IV on the twenty-fifth of August 1471. After that he was ordained priest, and consecrated bishop, and elevated to the rank of Cardinal-Bishop of Albano, one of the seven sub-urban sees. He continued to hold the Vicechancellorship; and, in this capacity, he built for himself in Rome a palace on Banchi Vecchi, which, even in that sumptuous epoch, excited extravagant admiration. A little less than a third of it is now the huge Palazzo Sforza-Cesarini on Piazza Sforza-Cesarini, nearly opposite to the Oratory, called Chiesa Nuova. Since the unification of Italy in 1870, a new wide street (Corso Vittoremanuele) has been driven through the city, necessitating the demolition of more than two-thirds of Cardinal Rodrigo’s building, and the construction of an undistinguished modern façade on the modern street: but the remaining courts, whose frontage is still on Banchi Vecchi, are more or less _in statu quo_. The history of the passing of this palace into the hands of Sforza-Cesarini belongs to a later page.

On the twenty-third of December 1471 Cardinal Rodrigo was sent as Legate _a latere_ to Spain, to preach a new Crusade against the Muslim Infidel. It is a curious thing that while he was unpopular in Italy on account of his Spanish origin, he was unpopular also in Spain where they considered him an Italian; a most ridiculous confusion, for Don Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja was a pure Spaniard by birth, descent, aspect, character, tastes, and habit, and so continued until his life’s end, in no way influenced or modified by his long residence in Italy. During his absence, the Lord Xystus P.P. IV built the Xystine Chapel of the Vatican; and called to Rome, from the gardens at Florence of Lorenzo de’ Medici his patron, the vivacious and bizarre Messer Alessandro Filipepi (nicknamed Botticelli), wondrous pupil of Fra Lippo Lippi, of Masaccio, of Beato Giovangelico da Fiesole, to decorate its walls with frescoes _in tempera_, the colours of which are mixed with the yelks of country-laid eggs for the deeper tints, and of town-laid eggs for the paler tints, according to the rules of Messer Cennino Cennini who wrote in 1437. In 1471 the bronze antique, known as _Il Spinario_, was found on the Capitol.

About this time the Lord Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja, now Cardinal-Bishop of Porto, Vicechancellor of the Holy Roman Church, and of the age of three and forty years, maintained irregular relations with Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei, a Roman lady, born the thirteenth of July 1442, and of the age of thirty-two years, wife to one Don Giorgio della Croce. Whether her husband was used to trade in his wife’s favours (like the criminal who, as late as 1780, was marched through Rome wearing a pasteboard mitre labelled _cornuto voluntario contento_), is a matter for conjecture. But, in 1474, Madonna Giovanna gave birth to a son, Don Cesare, who is called Borgia; and it is claimed that Cardinal Rodrigo was his father. As far as historical research has gone, no evidence has been found to prove that Cardinal Rodrigo ever directly denied paternity; and, as he was undoubtedly deeply in love with Madonna Giovanna, and intimate with her during ten subsequent years, it is probable that his reticence was actuated by kindly feelings. But there is a very strong suspicion that another cardinal, in every way the notorious and life-long rival of Cardinal Rodrigo, was the father of this child; and many mysterious historical inconsistencies would be explained by the establishment of the truth of this suspicion. However, for the present, merely the birth in 1474 of Don Cesare (detto Borgia) is recorded, and the question of his paternity will be examined at a proper place.

In 1475 Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei bore, to Cardinal Rodrigo, Don Juan Francisco de Borja, to whom (after the death in 1481 of Don Pedro Luis de Borja) his father ever gave the honours and the affection which are due to an eldest son and heir. This is the most important circumstantial evidence against Don Cesare’s right to the name of Borgia.

In January of the same year, Cardinal Rodrigo was deputed, with a nephew of the Lord Xystus P.P. IV, one Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who, as a lad, had peddled onions in a boat between Arbisola and Genoa, to welcome King Don Ferrando I of Naples at Tarracina, on the occasion of his state-visit to the Holy See. Three days later, Cardinal Rodrigo said mass for his Majesty at San Paolo _extra muros_ when the king was leaving for Colonna’s fief at Marino, where English envoys from King Edward IV Plantagenet, who had just conferred the Most Noble Order of the Garter upon Duke Francesco Sforza-Visconti of Milan, were waiting with a similar attention for the King of Naples.

On the tenth of June 1476 the plague appeared in Rome, and the Lord Xystus P.P. IV, attended by Cardinal Rodrigo, removed His court to Viterbo, where cooler air lessened the danger of contagion.

In 1478 was the hideous Conspiracy of the Pazzi at Florence, which created no small stir in all Italy. Also in this year Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei bore, to Cardinal Rodrigo, Madonna Lucrezia Borgia.

On the first of October 1480, “Xystus, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God, to His beloved son Cesare (de Borja), a scholar of the age of six years,” sent “greeting and the Apostolic Benediction,” and dispensed him from the necessity of proving the legitimacy of his birth; a rule which must be observed (in the absence of a dispensation) by whoever shall wish to become eligible for ecclesiastical benefices.

In 1481 died Don Pedro Luis de Borja, the eldest bastard of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Rodrigo. He was of the age of twenty-one years, and betrothed to a mere child, the Princess Doña Maria de Aragona. Also, in 1481, Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei bore, to Cardinal Rodrigo, Don Gioffredo Borgia.

On the twenty-fourth of January 1482, Madonna Girolama Borgia, bastard of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal by an unknown mother, was married, at the age of fifteen years, to Don Giovandrea Cesarini, scion of a Roman baronial house of Imperial origin. The same year, on the sixteenth of August, the Lord Xystus P.P. IV named Cardinal Rodrigo administrator of all benefices that should be conferred upon Don Cesare (detto Borgia) until the latter reached the age of fourteen years. There is a second brief of this date, from “Xystus, Bishop, Servant of the servants of God, to His beloved son Master Cesare (de Borgia),” naming the child Canon of Valencia and “Our Notary”; little bits of preferment producing sufficient revenues for his education. These three briefs relating to Don Cesare, are found in the Secret Archives of the Dukes of Osuña and Infantado, whose line was extinguished in 1882 at the death of Don Mariano (v. suggested genealogical tree).

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In 1484 died the Lord Xystus P.P. IV, and the Genoese Cardinal Cibo ascended the papal throne under the title of the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII.

During the six and twenty years that had elapsed between the death of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III and the accession of the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII, the position of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Rodrigo considerably was changed. Then, he was a young man with only two friends; a junior Cardinal-Deacon surrounded by a host of enemies. Now he was in his ripe maturity, senior member of the Sacred College, Dean of the Cardinal-Bishops, Vicechancellor of the Church, powerful enough to be able to command as many friends as he might choose to have—and rich enough to buy; rich beyond the richest of that rich age, from the revenues of his numerous benefices; and in rank second only to the Pope Himself. To such a man, with the paramount ambition and magnificence of Cardinal Rodrigo, only one thing in all the world remained for him to do. He deliberately set himself to capture the triregno.

There is no chronicle of his history during the eight years’ reign of the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII. Evidently he withdrew himself from the public life of the curia, from the splendour of legations, to nurse his revenues, to ingratiate himself with those who, in the next Conclave, would have the crowning or the crushing of his hopes. With the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove he was to build his house: but, first, like the prudent man, he counted the cost. Cardinal Rodrigo was far too polished a diplomatist, far too keen a man of business, to neglect long and meticulous preparation. He perfectly knew his century—indeed, as an organiser, he would have been illustrious in any century—; and, with wisest generalship, he made ready his forces against the striking of the hour for action. The smoothness with which the machinery ran in the Conclave of 1492, makes it plain, to the least experienced student of human affairs, that a master-mind had designed the gear, to ensure a minimum of friction and an exact performance.

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In September 1484 the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII named Don Cesare (detto Borgia), who was now of the age of ten years, Treasurer of the Cathedral of Cartagena (Carthago Nova).

In 1485, the year of the supposed murder in England of King Edward V Plantagenet and of his brother Duke Richard of York, there died in Rome Don Giorgio della Croce, husband of Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei. On the seventh of June 1486 she married Don Carlo de Canale, a noble of Mantua, and from this time her irregular relations with Cardinal Rodrigo ceased. In an age when trade was not considered disgraceful, except for patricians, when even the greatest artists kept shops (not studios by way of compromise, but regular shops, _botteghe_, like the blacksmiths or the cobblers), it is not shocking to know that Madonna Giovanna owned an inn in the Region of Ponte. This does not mean that she performed the duties of a female boniface. She was a very great lady, bien-vue in Roman society, with a lovely villa near San Pietro _ad Vincula_; but she certainly drew a comfortable income from the Lion Inn (Albergo di Leone), opposite the Tordinona, in the Via del Orso, which was then a street of inns for foreigners. The Tordinona, from whose upper window dangled a permanent and generally tenanted noose for evildoers, has now disappeared: but the cavernous cellars of the Lion Inn, formerly filled with wine on which, by pontifical favour, no tax was levied, remain exactly as they were when the Spanish cardinal’s mistress was their owner.

Deprived of the society of Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei, Cardinal Rodrigo, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, amused himself with the high-born maiden, Madonna Giulia Farnese, nicknamed in Rome _La Bella_, who was betrothed and afterwards married to Don Orso Orsini, himself of Borgian descent (v. suggestion for a genealogical tree). A faded representment of her marvellously brilliant beauty may be seen in the mannered fresco by Messer Bernardo Betti (detto Pinturicchio) in the Borgia Tower of the Vatican, where she was painted as Madonna; or on the tomb of her brother Alessandro (afterwards the Lord Paul P.P. III) in the Basilica of St. Peter, where she was sculptured in marble by Messer Guglielmo della Porta as a naked Truth (clumsily draped, after an erotomaniac Spanish student of theology had taken the statue for Lucian’s goddess Kuthereia). The fruit of her early intrigue with Cardinal Rodrigo was Madonna Laura, detto Orsini, born in 1489, and adopted by Don Orso Orsini, the husband of Madonna Giulia.

The reign of the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII is notable for the extreme of lawlessness into which lax government had let Rome fall. The Sovereign Pontiff was a family man, Who openly acknowledged the paternity of seven bastards, and Whose chief concern appears to have been their settlement in life. A son, Don Franciotto Cibo, a silly avaricious weakling, He married to Madonna Maddalena, daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici; His daughter He married to Messer Gheraldo Usodimare, a rich merchant of Genoa; the wedding-feast took place at the Vatican, the Pope’s Holiness presiding; and so the world was made to lose sight of the high ideals of the Papacy, as exemplified by the Lord Pius P.P. II, and to regard the Supreme Pontiff in the light of a mere monarch, a mere man. Cardinal Piero Riario, in 1473, had bargained with Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza-Visconti of Milan to create him King of Lombardy, in return for money and troops, by the aid of which he himself might ascend the papal throne, his uncle, the Lord Xystus P.P. IV being willing to abdicate in his favour: and, but for the sudden death of Cardinal Piero, this abominable scheme would not have lacked completion.

Nicholas had been a scholar and a gentleman; Calixtus, a zealous strenuous champion of an impractical cause; Pius, a gentle saintly genius and skilful statesman; Paul, a noble figure-head; Xystus, a plebeian nepotist; and Innocent was a lethargic paterfamilias. Naturally the condition of a kingdom, under such a series of sovereigns (considering the Popes in their temporal, and not in their spiritual capacity), would go from bad to worse.

Yet Letters and the Arts were flourishing, as in the golden reign of the Lord Nicholas P.P. V. Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano) was showing, in his fine hymn _In Divam Virginem_, that it is possible to write Christian verse in Latin good as Golden; and in his ‘Ερωτικὸν Δωριστί and Ἐρωτικὸν περι του χρυσοκομου that a clergyman of the fifteenth century, whose Greek was not learned at school or college, could indite as dainty verses as Theokritos. Can the twentieth century visualise the fifteenth? Can the twentieth century realise how poor the fifteenth was in material which every board-school boy may have to-day for the asking? The title of the book “De Omnibus Rebus et Quibusdam Aliis,” provokes a guffaw now. Then it was used in sober earnest; for, then, it was possible for one man to know all that was known—so little was there known in the fifteenth century. Dante Alighieri knew all, at the beginning of the fourteenth. Lionardo da Vinci knew all at the beginning of the sixteenth—literally all. Go and look at his manuscript note-books, and see what divers things he knew, to what depth of knowledge he had delved, how ingenious an application he made of the wisdom that he had gained; his inventions of conical bullets, of boats with paddle-wheels, of flying machines, of a cork-apparatus for walking on water. Consider that he was machinist, engineer, architect, and mathematician, constructor of artillery, fortifications, canals, and drains; and that, incidentally, he painted pictures, the lost “Cenacolo” at Milan, which the whole world knows—lost, because Messer Lionardo made the experiment of painting fresco in oil. Mark, too, in the note-books, how artfully and easily he wrote from right to left, to keep his knowledge from vulgar superficial eyes that pried. Mark his fluent gesture, his decisive master-strokes, and the little illuminating diagrams with which he illustrated every page. Can the twentieth century understand that the Italian mind of the fifteenth, in the absence of material, was concentrated on workmanship? Hence the marvels of handicraft which we use for models now, carving, metalwork, and textile design. The workmanship was everything then, in Art and in Letters also. “So long as the form was elegant, according to their standard of taste, the latinity copious and sound, the subject-matter of a book raised no scruples. Students of eminent sobriety, like Guarino da Verona, thought it no harm to welcome Boccadelli’s _Hermaphroditus_ with admiration; while the excellent Nicholas V. spent nine days perusing the filthy satires of Filelfo.” (_Symonds’ Renascence_ II. 574.) The workmanship was everything. The civilisation of the fifteenth century was as high as that of the twentieth, in conception and production of the beautiful. But clearly let it be realised that “civilisation has nothing to do with morality or immorality”; that “great reformers generally destroy the beautiful”; that “high civilisation is generally immoral.” The age of the Renascence, which found nothing shameful in the profession of the ἑταίρα (if we may judge from the epitaph of one, _Imperia, Cortisana Romana, quae digna tanto nomine, rarae inter homines formae specimen dedit. Vixit a. XXVI. d. XII. Objit MDXL. die XV. Aug._), though free from the hypocrisy engendered by the German Reformation of a later date (which the maxim “Si non caste tamen caute” so admirably describes), was frankly and unblushingly unmoral, as far as a proportion of its leaders was concerned. Yet its unmorality was kept within certain bounds, and circumscribed by a force which, now, is no restraint. Printing was in its infancy. Written books were few, and very costly. In Milan, a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, there were only fifty copyists. Not till 1465, in the reign of the Lord Paul P.P. II, was there a printing-press in Italy, at Subjaco in the Sabine Hills; while Florence had no press till 1471. And, at first, printed books were regarded with disfavour by reason of their cheapness. One rich man said that he would be ashamed to have them in his library, as now a rich man would be ashamed to have Brummagem electro instead of hall-marked silver. Yet, by means of ambulant printers, who printed only one page at a time on a hand-press in a mule-cart (and who were the pioneers of that curse to real civilization, the printed book), before 1500 no fewer than 4987 works had been printed in Italy alone. Here again the fifteenth century passion for perfect workmanship came into play. Look at an Aldine Classic, and mark its exquisite form. Messer Aldo Manuzio of Venice set a great artist, Messer Francesco Raibolini (detto II Francia), who painted the dulcet Pietá in the National Gallery, to cut a fount of type after the lovely handwriting of the poet Petrarch. That is the Aldine, or original Italic type; the script of a fourteenth-century singer. Can the twentieth century, with its manifold appliances, its labour-saving machinery, better that handiwork, or approach that design; or would a Royal Academician condescend to cut types for a printer! Look at the portrait-medals and pictures of the day to see of what fashion were these elaborately simple men of the fifteenth century:—The English type, sturdy, recondite, and simple; the French type, simple and light and vain; the Italian, subtle and simple and strong—an English Hospitaller, a French cardinal, an Italian scholar called, The Phoenix of Genius; John Kendal, Grand Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in England; Cardinal-Archbishop Georges d’Amboise; and Messer Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; on their medals in the British, and Victoria and Albert, Museums. The painters of this era, after Giotto, had emancipated themselves from the domination of the Church. They refused any longer to be bound by that decree of the Council of Nicaea (a.d. 787), which calmly, inexorably, and altogether justifiably ordained:—_It is not the invention of the painter which creates the picture; but an inviolable law, a tradition of the Church. It is not the painter, but the holy fathers, who have to invent and dictate. To them, manifestly, belongs the composition; to the painter, only the execution._ The fifteenth century was the century of broken bonds—bonds of discipline, bonds of morality. Men tasted liberty, had discovered Man; and, like schoolboys breaking bounds, playing truant, dazed in some rich orchard, they revelled and rollicked among fruits hitherto forbidden, potentialities long-dormant now alive. Unaccustomed sight had yet but imperfect impressions. Men saw “men as trees walking”; but as far as they went the impressions were vivid, life-like, true. Study the mercilessly precise drawings of Cavaliere Andrea Mantegna, the Lombard, pupil of Squarcione, who painted for the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII that chapel on the Belvedere which was destroyed by the Lord Pius P.P. VI, and who won his knighthood by painting for the Marquess Don Francesco de Gonzaga of Mantua. Study the works of Messer Luca Signorelli, “the first and last painter except Michelangelo to use the body without sentiment, without voluptuousness, without any secondary intention whatsoever, as the supreme decorative principle” (_Symonds’ Renascence_); who, having had killed at Cortona his young and splendid son, stripped the body naked, and, with iron nerve, painted from it during a day and a night, “that he might be able, through the work of his own hand, to contemplate that which nature had given him, but which an adverse fortune had taken away.” (_Vasari._) Above all, study Messer Alessandro Filipepi (detto Botticelli), who, having finished the chapel of the Lord Xystus P. P. IV, was back again in Florence, painting for Lorenzo de’ Medici. How many of the Medici he put into his pictures we never shall know; but if ever a painter painted from the life Alessandro Filipepi was that painter; and, with a little sympathetic ingenuity, one can trace at least a single precious portrait through his pictures, and into the pictures of another and more conventional painter; and, in this way, learn what like was one very prominent personality of the Borgian Era, as παίς, μειράκιον, σιδεύνης, ἐφήβος, ανδρός· Study the angel-boys and San Giambattista in the round Madonna of the National Gallery and the round Coronation of Madonna at the Uffizi. Study the Hermes Ptenopedilos in the Primavera that Botticelli painted on the verses of Lucretius Carus (737–740) as a setting for a portrait of an unknown lady of the House of Medici. And study the limber San Sebastiano at Berlin. Then study murdered Giuliano’s bastard, the Lord Giulio de’ Medici, Archbishop of Florence, Knight of St. John of Jerusalem, and Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_, in the portrait of the myopic Lord Leo P.P. X by Messer Rafaele Sanzio da Urbino. So shall a lean, muscular, vivid, thoughtful, pious, unmoral, voluptuous yet hardy, typical, young Italian of the Borgian Era be clearly, intimately, seen and known. And the medals:—Note how that the medallists have not learned to flatter or idealise; that, what they saw in their model, that they chiselled in perennial bronze. Note the character, the distinguished individuality, here preserved; the Sforza medals, for example, with their clean, compelling, vigorous, venomous, Greek profiles, which that illustrious House got (and preserves to this day in Prince Guido Sforza and his sister Princess Carolina Corsini) from Countess Polissena Russa of Montalto, who married Duke Francesco. Observe, from their manner of clothing him, how these people worshipped Man. Not for them was the concealment of his grace in dented fractured cylinders. Every natural line must be preserved, every contour displayed, in that age of unconventional realism. The frescoes of Messer Bernardo Betti (detto Pinturicchio), in the cathedral library of Siena, are said to be the fashion-plates of the day and month (1503–1507), done by an eminent artist. And the fabrics of which they made their clothes were fine and simple; for the uses of shoddy were not known. Sumptuous brocades, fairest linen of flax, furs from the East, and delicate enduring leather, adorned those men and women who had not learned to change their garments as often as they changed their minds; and who went to bed at night simply as nature made them. That they were meticulously clean, is witnessed by the embossed basins and ewers for frequent washings, the hanging lavabo on the wall of every room (when washing was a ceremonial habit), the elaborate supplies of water, the baths of macerated sweet herbs, glasswort, white lily, marsh-mallow, and lupin-meal, alkaline, mucilaginous, emollient, demulcent, which were the substitute for soap. Care for the personal appearance was extreme. Little signs show this. For example, the twentieth century man, confection of his hosier and his tailor, plays with watch-chain, stick, or card-case; the writer, hesitating over the turning of a phrase or waiting for the just word, rolls a cigarette; the painter, considering an effect, dabbles in a tobacco-jar and lights a pipe. Man has a natural craving to employ his hands. In similar situations, Messer Lionardo da Vinci’s model and studio-boy, the curly-headed Salaino, would bring rosewater and towel to refresh his master’s fingers; Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano) would take out an ivory comb and comb his long straight hair; and a dandy anxiously would study his image in polished metal mirrors set like bosses on his dagger sheath, or chew comfits of coriander-seeds, steeped in marjoram vinegar and crusted with sugar, to bring a special commodity to the memory. In an age when personal and private functions were pursued after the methods of cats or dogs according to the temperament of the pursuer, when that which is now called sanitation was unknown, great and incessant efforts in the way of cleanliness were imperative; and he who insistently displayed, who publicly exhibited, his cleanly habits, naturally enjoyed the consideration and approval of his equally modish contemporaries. And they were practically pious too, these hardy ardent exquisites, who shed an enemy’s blood as remorselessly as though murder were a natural function. They would weep real tears of devotion over the drama of the Passion of our Divine Redeemer enacted in the ruined Colosseo of Rome; and, afterwards, zealously adjourn with knives to the houses of known Jews, or perfervidly hunt the dark lanes of the city for any of the accursed race who was so misguided as to show his yellowpatched jerkin on the street. The Venetians had a penchant for holy relics, and deemed no sacrifice too great for increasing their collection. In 1455, the republic made a bid of ten thousand ducats for the Seamless Coat, now at Treves, and ordained days of humiliation when the offer was refused. The Doge of Venice was obliged officially to assist at twelve public processions in each year. To please the piety and vanity of Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici personally applied to the city of Spoleto for the corpse of the painter Fra Lippo Lippi; but Spoleto answered that it had none too many ornaments as a city, especially in the shape of the cadavers of distinguished people, and begged to be excused. “The men of the Renascence were so constituted that, to turn, from vice and cruelty and crime, from the deliberate corruption and enslavement of a people by licentious pleasures, from the persecution of an enemy in secret, with a fervid and impassioned movement of the soul to God, was nowise impossible. Their temper admitted of this anomaly, as we may plainly see from Cellini’s autobiography.” (_Symonds’ Renascence._)

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