Chapter VII: Book IV (5)

_Precipitevolissimevolmente_ (no other word describes the act) was issued a Bull, dated “At Rome by St. Peter’s, the year of our Lord’s Incarnation, 1493, the fourth day of the nones of May, and the first year of Our pontificate,” giving to Don Hernando and to Doña Isabella, and to their heirs and successors, all islands and continents, discovered or yet to be discovered, in the western ocean, west and south of a line to be drawn from the North Pole to the South Pole, one hundred leagues west of the Açores and Cape Verde Islands. The language of this Bull is exquisitely touching; strong, pregnant, earnest, and majestic, as the Authorised Version of the Epistles of St. Paul. The motive undoubtedly is the motive of an Apostle to convert a world to Christ. The grant is made to the Majesty of Spain, with commands to send honest God-fearing learned and expert men to teach the Christian Faith; and the penalty of excommunication _latae sententiae_ is imposed upon anyone, even royal or imperial, who shall interfere. This supremely beautiful Pontifical Act, the Bull _Inter caetera_ of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, is given verbatim in Raynaldus, sub anno 1493. So in return for the Borgia, which Spain gave to Italy, Italy and the Borgia gave Messer Cristoforo Colombi and the New World to Spain.

Don Hernando and Doña Isabella, the Catholic King and Queen, were Spaniards. And when that is said all is said; and all the hideous history of the New World under Spanish domination is explained. Those sovereigns bore no goodwill for the Lord Alexander P.P. VI although He was a Spaniard. They, like every other sovereign of Europe, were quite prepared to harass and to flout an unobliging Pope up to the verge of excommunications and interdicts; when they, of course, would cringe and cower like the villainous usurper John Plantagenet: but the quick granting of their petition in this matter of the New World, the immense distinction which the Bull _Inter caetera_ conferred on them and on Spain, turned them, from suitors prepared with impertinence, into the abjectly devoted adherents of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, at least for the time; and absolutely prevented King Don Ferrando’s application for an anti-pontifical alliance from meeting with success. This, no doubt, is that on which the Pope’s Holiness counted. Very seldom in life does a man so clearly see his duty with the certainty of reward for its prompt performance. And very rarely, in the pontificate of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, did He deign, so immediately and so unreservedly, to grant a favour. He must have perceived, with that marvellous instinct of His, which led Him inevitably to the very roots of matters, that for once the paths of duty and of pleasure coincided. Certainly He unhesitatingly walked therein.

* * * * *

On the twelfth of June the Lord Alexander P.P. VI married His bastard, Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, of the age of fifteen years, to the Tyrant of Pesaro, Don Giovanni Sforza, of the age of twenty-six years, with all the magnificence due to His secular rank as an Italian despot; and thereby set wagging the tongues of those who lamented the decay of ecclesiastical discipline, and who could not distinguish between the dual and contradictory offices which the Pope was expected to reconcile; as well as the pens of professional manufacturers of squibs and lampoons. The wedding-banquet took place at the Vatican, in the presence of the Pope, ten cardinals, and fifteen Roman patricians with their wives. The Holy Father presented to the ladies silver cups filled with sweetmeats, throwing them into their bosoms _ad honorem et laudem Omnipotentis Dei et Ecclesiae Romanae_, says the golden-mouthed, venomous, untrustworthy historian, Messer Stefano Infessura. In the evening there was dancing, with comedies of the conventional coarse but common type. This event is one of the bases from which disgusting charges have been levelled against the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. It summarily may be stated that those charges consist entirely of the unprintable gossip of enemies or inferiors, and that not one of them satisfactorily can be proved. That the Vicar of Christ should have condescended so far is impossible; that a temporal sovereign should have condescended so far is probable, and, perhaps, regrettable; but the status of the guests, the ten cardinals, and the fifteen Roman patricians with their wives, guarantees the utter respectability of the Despot’s little private party from a contemporary point of view.

* * * * *

In June, also, arrived in Rome Don Diego Lopez de Haro to offer to the Holiness of the Pope the homage and obedience of Spain. These having been accepted, the Orator proceeded to remonstrate with the Pope, in the name of the Catholic King and Queen, regarding the asylum extended to the Marañas who were fled from the Spanish Inquisition to Rome. Thousands of these unfortunates were encamped among the tombs on the Appian Way, and had brought the plague with them. Spain execrated the Papal tolerance, and wondered that the Holy Father, as the Head of Christianity, should protect those whom Spain had driven away as being enemies of the Christian Faith. Further, the Spanish Orator said that the Christian King Charles VIII of France was threatening to invade Italy and to take advantage of the quarrels of the Italian Powers; wherefore he urged the necessity of peace, and an agreement among the sovereigns of whom the Pope was chief. By way of showing that concessions would ensure the unanimity of Italy, he set forth a list of ecclesiastical grievances that needed remedies; grievances “which, since the days of the Council of Constance, had been standing complaints against the Papacy, to be urged in all negotiations for other purposes.” (_Creighton_ iv. 199.)

* * * * *

Publicly Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti harped upon the league between Venice, Milan, and the Papacy. Privately he entered into a secret treaty with the Christian King Charles VIII through Belgioso, Orator of Milan. Being an usurper he trusted not even his allies: preferring to have two strings to his bow, he believed that he could consolidate his position only by disturbing the peace of Italy.

Publicly, from his fortress of Ostia, that psychic epileptic, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, continued to shout for a General Council to depose his Rival. The abominable character of this cardinal well may be exposed by stating that he was endeavouring to rend the Church and Christendom with a Fortieth Schism, in order to satiate his personal revenge.

And, like Gallio, the Pope’s Holiness cared for none of these things—for Spain, for Milan, for the contemptible cardinal. He believed in Himself, and in His Own power to rule. At least, He officially had been saluted as Ruler of the World.

The intrigues and invectives of the King of Naples deservedly having failed, his Majesty made the experiment of a hostile demonstration. His second son, Prince Don Federigo of Altamura appeared with eleven galleys at Ostia on Tiber mouth; and rapturously was hailed by that traitor-cardinal-bishop, with the Colonna and Don Virginio Orsini.

The Lord Alexander P.P. VI was willing to negotiate. Borgian negotiations invariably meant that Borgia would give its opponents something, but not the something that they wanted, and always in such a way that it could not be refused. The Naples + Colonna + Orsini + Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere conspiracy had demanded Cervetri and Anguillara for Orsini (and Naples) and the disgrace of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti to satisfy the spleen of him of Ostia. On the twenty-fourth of July the cardinal, the Neapolitan prince, and Don Virginio Orsini came to Rome to hear the pontifical terms, which were:—

(α) That the Pope’s Holiness would confirm Cervetri and Anguillara to
Don Virginio for life; at his death they would revert to the
Holy See: but he must pay into the pontifical treasury their
price of forty thousand ducats, which he previously had paid to
Don Franciotto Cibo:

(β) That the Pope’s Holiness was willing to forgive and to show favour
to Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere: but He refused to disgrace
the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti:

(γ) That the Pope’s Holiness would consent to ally Himself with the
Royal House of Naples by the marriage of His bastard, Don
Gioffredo Borgia, to Madonna Sancia, bastard of Don Alonso de
Aragona, Duke of Calabria and heir of King Don Ferrando I. This
agreement was ratified by betrothal; and Don Gioffredo set out
for Naples to see the girl, and to receive her dowry with the
title Prince of Squillace. The marriage was postponed for the
present, because neither bride nor bridegroom had completed
their thirteenth year.

No sooner was the treaty of peace signed, than the Sieur Perron de Basche, Orator of the Christian King Charles VIII of France, arrived in Rome, armed with instructions to prevent an alliance between Papacy and Regno, and to obtain pontifical confirmation of the election, by the Rouen chapter, of Messire Georges d’Amboise as Archbishop. The Supreme Pontiff, by way of emphasising His independent attitude to France, refused to receive the Orator in audience, annulled the election of Messire Georges d’Amboise, and named one of His Own court to the Archbishopric of Rouen. This was what the twentieth century timidly calls an “unfriendly act”; and the Christian King forthwith began to sympathise with Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere’s recent clamour for a General Council to depose the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, and to meditate thereon day and night.[25]

* * * * *

To strengthen His influence in the Sacred College by adding creatures of His Own, at the Second Consistory of the twentieth of September 1493, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI named twelve new cardinals.

These were:—

(α) The Lord John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord High
Chancellor of England, whose virtues have been praised
by another English Chancellor, the Blessed Sir Thomas
More;—Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Anastasia;

(β) The Lord Giovantonio di Sangiorgio;—Cardinal-Presbyter of the
Title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo;

(γ) Frère Jean Villiers de la Grolaye, Lord Abbot of Saint Denys by
Paris;—Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina;

(δ) The Lord Bernardino Lopez de Caravajal, Apostolic Legate to Caesar
Friedrich IV, the eloquent preacher at the Conclave of
1492;—Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Marcellino e San
Pietro:

(ε) The Lord Raymond Perauld,[26] a Frenchman, Apostolic Nuncio in
Germany;—Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Giovanni e San
Paolo:

(ζ) The Lord Cesare (detto Borgia), reputed bastard of the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI, and of the age of eighteen
years;—Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _Nuova_:

(η) The Lord Ippolito d’Este, of the age of fifteen years, a great
athlete and fighter from boyhood to youth, and a prince of the
Royal House of Ferrara; “tall he was of frame, brawny of
sinew, mighty of limb, strengthening his robustitude with
exercises, archery, and hurling javelins; grace and charm
bloomed on the face of him; his bright eyes beamed with grave
tranquillity, worthy of all praise; most royal was his whole
aspect; he was an expert swimmer; and with whatsoever weapons
he adroitly strove he innured himself to heat and cold and
night-long vigils”;—Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Lucia _in Silice,
alias in Orfea_:

(θ) The Lord Fryderyk Kasimierz Jagelone di Polonia, son of King
Kasimierz of Poland, Bishop of Cracow;—Cardinal-Deacon of Santa
Lucia _in Septisolio, alias in Septizonio_:

(ι) The Lord Giuliano Cesarini (detto Giuniore), Apostolic
Prothonotary, Canon of the Vatican Basilica;—Cardinal-Deacon of
San Sergio e San Bacco:

(κ) The Lord Domenico Grimani, Apostolic Prothonotary;—Cardinal-Deacon
of San Niccolo _inter Imagines_:

(λ) The Lord Alessandro Farnese, Apostolic Prothonotary (nicknamed
“Cardinal Petticoat,” on account of the Pope’s partiality for
his sister, Madonna Giulia Orsini nata Farnese);—Cardinal-Deacon
of San Cosma e San Damiano:

(μ) The Lord Bernardino de’ Lunati, Apostolic Prothonotary, friend of
the Cardinal-Vicechancellor;—Cardinal-Deacon of San Ciriaco
_alle Terme Diocleziane_.[27]

The vigour of this deed struck Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere and his friend King Don Ferrando into frantic silence. By a mere act of His Sovereign Will the Holiness of the Pope immensely had increased His Own potentiality. Two of the new creatures were scions of reigning dynasties, whose loyalty thereby was secured. The virtue and eloquence of the English cardinal were as twin towers of strength. The two French creatures were as a sop to France. The minor diaconate conferred on Don Cesare (detto Borgia) gave him a standing, from which the splendour of his youth might do great things. And the other cardinals were proved adherents, who, by being made to owe their promotion to the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, became bound (in so far as human foresight went) to His interests by the bond of gratitude. It was a most paralysing and disheartening stroke for the enemies of the Sovereign Pontiff; and the year 1493 ended amid renewed demands for a General Council from Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and renewed invectives from the Majesty of Naples.

* * * * *

On the twenty-fifth of January 1494, King Don Ferrando I died, in the seventieth year of his age and the thirty-fifth of his reign. He was a cautious and experienced politician; and, since the Lord Pius P.P. II, Lorenzo de’ Medici, and the great Duke Francesco Sforza-Visconti, the greatest secular statesman of his century. His policy was directed to the preservation of Italy from French invasion, and to the destruction of the Papal States. He was not harsh in his dealings with his subjects: but to his barons and to his opponents he behaved with cruelty and treachery. He liked to have his enemies always near him, either alive in the dungeons of his palace, or dead, and embalmed, and clothed in their habits as they lived. Yet he died regretted; for his heir, the thick-haired, thin-lipped, narrow-eyed, fat-jowled, asymmetrically-featured Don Alonso de Aragona, Duke of Calabria, enjoyed a reputation for violence and brutality the bare idea of which created universal terror.

The game of politics entered on a new phase. The Christian King Charles VIII of France was burning for an opportunity of asserting himself; and had collected an army, ostensibly for a Crusade against the Great Turk, the Sultán Bajazet, really for purposes of French aggrandisement—purposes yet undefined. He was a self-conceited little abortion, this Christian King, of the loosest morals even for a king, of gross semitic type, with a fiery birth-flare round his left eye, and twelve toes on his feet hidden in splayed shoes, which set the fashion in foot-gear for the end of the fifteenth century in Italy; and, like all vain little men, he was anxious to cut a romantic and considerable figure. He announced a claim to the crown of Naples.

This made it necessary for the Lord Alexander P.P. VI to compare the advantages of France as an ally with the Regno; and, in the meantime, that He might lead the Christian King to declare himself with more particularity, the Pope’s Holiness addressed a Brief to him in which the subject of Naples was not named: but which assured him of pontifical favour, and gave him leave to pass through Rome with his army on the way to his contemplated Crusade. There was dissatisfaction in the Sacred College about the matter of the Archbishopric of Rouen; and some of the cardinals were beginning to think that the time was come for turning coats, especially as it was known that the Orator of France had made overtures of friendship on the part of his sovereign to Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere.

The Supreme Pontiff finally concluded that He would rather have an ally on His frontier, than an ally whose territories were separated from His by the domains of other princes. He decided to leave France out of the question; and to recognize the heir of the late King Don Ferrando I. Accordingly He conveyed this news to Don Alonso de Aragona Duke of Calabria, adding that He would envoy a Legate to Naples to concede investiture and to perform the ceremony of coronation. At the same time, the Pope’s Holiness sent the Golden Rose to the Christian King; and it is hard to know whether this gift symbolized consolation or contempt. If the former, then the gift should have been a sword; for the Sword is the pontifical gift to kings. If the latter, then it was bitterly appropriate, for the Golden Rose is the pontifical gift to queens. Yet only with difficulty one can conceive of the Pope as deliberately setting himself to provoke a reigning sovereign who heads a mobilized army; and the act may have been merely one of those slipshod performances which the greatest geniuses, from time to time, provide to remind mankind of the maxim _non semper arcum tendit Apollo_. But all the same the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was a very strong man, guilty of hiding none of His human weaknesses.

When the Pope issued His Bull on this matter of the Investiture in Public Consistory, storms ensued. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, again diplomatically deprived of his Neapolitan friends, flitted from Rome to Ostia with the pontifical condottieri at his heels. From Ostia, he shipped to Genoa, and made haste to present himself to the pink-eyed Majesty of France. The French Orators in Rome shrieked “We are betrayed” in the consecrated formula; and hurried to safe places. And the fortress of Ostia capitulated to the Pope.

In May, the Lord Giovanni Borgia, Archbishop of Monreale and Cardinal-Priest of the Title of Santa Susanna, received his Brief as Apostolic Ablegate, and went to Naples to crown the new king. The fourteen-year-old Don Gioffredo Borgia accompanied his Most Worshipful cousin; and was married on the coronation-day, the seventh of May.

Madonna Sancia, bastard of King Don Alonso II, who confirmed to him the title of Prince of Squillace with a revenue of forty thousand ducats. Also, as an earnest of his gratitude to the Pope, the King of Naples conferred the Principalities of Teano and Tricarico on Don Juan Francisco de Lançol y Borja, eldest surviving bastard of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI (who already had procured for him the Spanish duchy of Gandia;) and enriched Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia) with Neapolitan benefices. The Papacy and the Regno now were a Dual Alliance.

* * * * *

In Italy of the fifteenth century, men’s minds chiefly were occupied with the accumulation and disposition of matters connected with the intellect and the tastes. The Elect-Emperor Maximilian, who in 1493 succeeded the Pacific Caesar Friedrich IV on the throne of Central Europe (called the Holy Roman Empire) was adding outlying territories to the possessions of his dynasty, the Habsburg House of Austria. Spain was freeing herself, by means of steel and faggot, from her brain, _i.e._, the Moors and Jews; and in exploiting her New World. England was enjoying peace and a new dynasty, since the close of the War of the Roses in 1485. France had made peace, at a price, with King Henry VII Tudor in 1492; and with Spain, at the cost of her frontier provinces of Cerdogne and Rouissillion, in 1493. Lastly, the Christian King Charles VIII of France had pacified the rage of the Elect-Emperor Maximilian, whom he had robbed of his betrothed the Duchess Anne of Bretagne, by ceding to him the greater part of Burgundy. For the rest, nearly all the kingdoms, duchies, and fiefs of France had fallen into the hands of the vaunting Charles, by conquest, inheritance, lapse or marriage. Finding himself at the head of a great army experienced in the art of war, and with a domain smiling with prosperity, he looked for fresh fields to conquer. The chivalric glamour of the Crusade had by no means faded: it dazzled the pink eye of France: and, at one time, undoubtedly the Christian King intended to march on the Muslim Infidel, now settled in Europe and unmolested. But, with the death of King Don Ferrando I, the fickle Frenchman revived an old claim of the House of Anjou to the crown of Naples, intrigued with Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and brought his veteran army south to Lyons; where he spent his time in lubricity, until he should have felt the pulses of the Italian Powers with reference to his undertaking. French envoys reported to him that the Papacy was allied with Naples, and Naples with Don Piero de’ Medici of Tuscany; that Don Filiberto the Fair, (the boy-duke of Savoja, married to the Elect-Emperor’s daughter Anne,) with Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara, the Marquesses of Monserrat and Saluzzo, and the Republic of Venice, were neutral. The auguries were not propitious for France; but the Christian King, emboldened by the presence, and attentive to the rhodomontades of, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and stupidly believing it possible to reduce a Pope by fear, joined in the duet and cried for a General Council. Indeed, he placed more confidence in the virtue of this threat than in his army; for he definitely threatened the Lord Alexander P.P. VI with deposition and deprivation of the Apostolic dignity, not by force of arms, but by canonical proof of His simoniacal election—unless He would concede to France the crown of Naples. (Corio, Storie di Milano. III 525)

It is very difficult to understand these shouters for a General Council. They were so clever, so logical, in other matters, that it is perfectly impossible for them to have been unaware of the extreme futility of their cry. They could not have been ignorant: then they must have been malignant. Suppose that an assemblage calling itself a General Council had been convened by the Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia and the Majesty of France, and had proved to its own satisfaction that Cardinal Rodrigo de Lançol y Borja had bought, by bribery, the votes of his brother-cardinals, raising himself by these means to the throne of God’s Vicegerent; what end would have been served? There was a moral but no legal prohibition then, as already has been shewn, to prevent a cardinal from buying votes, if he could find cardinals criminal enough to sell. The money-changers were, as now, in possession of the Temple; and the whip of small cords still on the Knees of God.

Suppose that a self-called General Council had decreed the deposition of the Pope on the ground of simony; the decrees of a General Council are ineffective until they have been promulgated with the expressed sanction of the Roman Pontiff. Is it probable that the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, that the sanctimonious Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, that any human man, would sanction the promulgation of the decree that ordained his own deposition? If he did so declare himself to be no Pope, what would be the value of such a declaration? If he were Pope, he would not; if he were not Pope he could not, depose himself. Then what would have been the good, (if the Sokratic method be so far permitted,) of a self-called General Council which only could compile ineffectual decrees?

We are dealing with this matter in its human aspect only. Humanity was master of the mighty then, as now; Morality of the humble and meek. Suppose that a self-called General Council had decreed the deposition of the Pope: what would have happened? This—the Sacred College would have split into two or more factions; let us say two, to keep the argument in reasonable bounds. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI would have headed one faction; the envious Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere the other. Both would have gone into Conclave; the one in Rome, the other in France. The Roman Conclave would have affirmed the Lord Alexander P.P. VI to be the Pontiff-Regnant. The French conclave would have elected Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who incontinently would have blossomed forth as Pseudopontiff Julius II. Each would have created cardinals. Each would have administered as much of the Church and Christendom as he could have persuaded to submit to his administration. There would have been a Pontiff in Rome, a pseudopontiff in France. The sheep of Christ’s Flock would have been neglected, while the shepherds exchanged anathemas. It all had happened before—many times before. It would have been the Fortieth Schism. In course of time, death would claim the Pontiff or the pseudopontiff. His party would replace him. In course of time subdivision would take place, a schism in a schism. A section of cardinals would secede from Pontiff, or from pseudopontiff; call themselves the Sacred College in Conclave, and elect a second pseudopontiff. Christendom would have been torn asunder. The crime would have been capable of infinite development. All had been seen before, many times before—last, in this identical Fifteenth Century—the century of the Thirty-ninth Schism of the Holy Roman Church, the Thirty-ninth Rending of the Seamless Robe of Christ.

And that was the atrocious turpitude to which Revenge was leading Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, and Vanity was leading the Christian King Charles VIII, all light-heartedly.

* * * * *

Being now in amity with Colonna and Orsini through the Neapolitan alliance, as well as with Sforza and Cesarini, the Holiness of the Pope proceeded to the Regno for the purpose of concerting a plan of campaign with King Don Alonso II, whom He met at Vicovaro on the fourteenth of July. There it was arranged that the King should hold the Abruzzi provinces with part of the Neapolitan army, while his son, Don Ferrandino de Aragona, with another part should make a swift advance on Milan by way of the Romagna, sending out flying columns to sweep the country free from rebels; and, after expelling the usurping Regent, Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti, and restoring Duke Giangaleazzo to the throne of Milan, he should force the French to engage in Lombardy. Meanwhile, Don Virginio Orsini with the pontifical condottieri was to protect the Papal States; and Don Federigo de Aragona, brother to King Don Alonso II, was to take the Neapolitan fleet, capture Genoa, and command the northern coast.

No better plan could have been invented for a war of the chess-game species: but in two places it was weak. It would occupy too long in performance; for the French army was on Milan’s frontier which half the length of Italy separated from Naples. It caused the defection of some Sforza: it alienated the Supreme Pontiff from His vicechancellor, His closest friend, for the Neapolitan scheme involved the expulsion from Milan of the brother of Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti, who thereupon became neutral, Sforza holding by Sforza.

Before the Regno was ready, the French fleet reached Genoa, and the French army crossed the Alps to Milan. Admiral Don Federigo de Aragona, finding Genoa in his enemy’s hand, led the Neapolitan galleys to Porto Venere on the Gulf of Spezzia, only to sustain a repulse which caused him to retire to Livorno to repair his fleet. Seeing from which direction he might expect attack, the Christian King garrisoned Genoa with Swiss mercenaries under Duke Louis d’Orleans. On the eighth of September, the Admiral of Naples took Rapallo, a little city six leagues from Genoa, and landed troops. The French commander made an accipitrine swoop from Genoa, cut up the squadrons of Naples, and put Rapallo to sack and pillage for entertaining them. All Italy was amazed, paralyzed with horror, at war conducted on these bloodthirsty lines. The idea of being killed, except perhaps accidentally by being trampled underfoot in a rout, or in a simple personal quarrel, was terrible to people accustomed to battles which were processions, and sieges which were decorative occupations for gentlemen of leisure. Admiral Don Federigo led the remnant of his fleet to Naples without an hour’s delay.

Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti now became aggressive, and successfully detached from the Pope the Houses of Colonna and Savelli; (the last, until their dynasty became extinct, held the office of Hereditary Marshal of the Holy Roman Church.) Colonna and Savelli then collected their retainers and menaced the Eternal City. On the eighteenth of September Don Fabrizio Colonna recaptured Ostia, and held it in the name of its renegade Cardinal-Bishop. French galleys transporting troops anchored in the mouth of Tiber. Crippled Naples dared not to advance on Milan leaving Rome unprotected. Then Madonna Caterina Sforza-Riario, countess and witch, (daughter of the great Francesco, and widow of the infamous Count Girolamo Riario of the Pazzi Conspiracy,) declared for France in her citadel of Imola, and made things worse for Naples and the Papacy by showing them that an enemy was in their midst. In this strait, and having no sovereign friend in Europe save the Majesty of Naples, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI applied to the Great Turk, the Sultán Bajazet. That wily oriental agreed to help, on condition that his brother and rival, the Sultán Djim, long years held hostage by the Papacy, should be delivered to his tender mercies. This the Pope’s Holiness refused, not caring to connive at fratricide; and so completed the isolation of Himself and King Don Alonso II.

On the sixth of October, the Supreme Pontiff thundered from the Vatican a demand for the restitution of Ostia, (held by Don Pierfrancesco Colonna (?)) on pain of the Greater Excommunication. He “fills a great place in history because he so blended his spiritual and temporal authority as to apply the resources of the one to the purposes of the other.” (_North British Review._) At the same time, having intelligence of a Colonna plot to capture the Sultán Djim on behalf of France, He moved His mysterious ward from the Vatican by way of Lo Andare to the Mola of Hadrian on Tiber; and sent the Lord Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini, Cardinal of Siena, as Apostolic Envoy to the Majesty of France. But the Christian King would not receive him, saying that he was coming to Rome to see the Pope Himself.[28]

* * * * *

The Sultán Djim was a Mystery—the Fifteenth Century equivalent for the Man in the Iron Mask. The brother and rival of the Great Turk, the Sultán Bajazet, who reigned at Constantinople, he was given as a hostage to the Knights of Rhodes at a time when Bajazet wished to win the good graces of the Christian Powers, and to rid himself of a dangerous menace to his throne’s security. The Great Turk offered to pay forty thousand ducats every year, so long as the Sultán Djim was kept away from Byzantium; and he sent also the celebrated emerald, on which is carved an Image of our Divine Redeemer, to the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII. After a long detention, Frère Pierre d’Aubusson, Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes and Cardinal-Deacon of Sant’ Adriano, transferred this valuable hostage to the Pope for greater security. The Sultán Djim was accorded apartments in the Vatican Palace, and kept a court of his own there in oriental luxury. The crumpled roseleaf of his existence was his constant fear lest his brother should envenom him; and envoys from the Great Turk were only allowed to enter his presence when rigorous and ceremonial precautions had been taken;—for example, an envoy bringing a letter from Bajazet was compelled to lick it all over, outside and inside, under Djim’s own eyes, before the last would touch it. The Lord Innocent P.P. VIII, and His successor the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, regarded the Sultán Djim as a precious guarantee for the good conduct of the Great Turk. “As long as Djim is in Our hands, Bajazet continually will be uneasy, and neither raise armies, nor molest the Christians;” wrote the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII. Later, the Great Turk conceived an alarm lest his discontented mamelukes should depose him in favour of his brother; and he proposed to pay a hundred and twenty thousand ducats to the Pope for the restoration of the Sultán Djim: undoubtedly intending to put him out of the way according to the methods observed by oriental potentates in reference to their rivals. But the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII refused to have art or part in crime, though He would have been very glad of the money for His family; and the Sultan Djim continued to remain in Rome. The same policy was pursued by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, notwithstanding that the Great Turk had ceased to send the yearly forty thousand ducats, thus making his brother the pensioner, as well as the ward, of the Papacy. Then in October 1494, when the Eternal City was about to be the scene of war and tumult, the Pope’s Holiness placed His ward for safety in the Mola of Hadrian, the fortress tomb which also was His own refuge.

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On the same day when Admiral Don Federigo de Aragona fled with the Neapolitan fleet from Rapallo to Naples, the Christian King followed his army across the Alps. Being but a shallow-pated Frenchman, enervated with the most horrible of all diseases, he already was in a quandary: he had no money wherewith to pay his troops; his march for some weeks would lie through friendly territory, and, until he reached the pontifical states, he could find no cities to sack for the appeasing and encouragement of his mercenaries. To meet him, hurried Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti, also in a quandary: he was an usurping regent, with his legitimate sovereign under lock and key; and he was going to meet a legitimate sovereign-regnant. Whether Don Ludovico Maria would complete a little loan, was the question agitating the mind of the Christian King. Whether the Majesty of France would want to champion his Order, to release his brother sovereign and place him on his throne, and to behave severely and unpleasantly to an usurping regent, was the difficulty of Don Ludovico Maria. The two met at Asti. The Christian King at once broached his trouble; and Don Ludovico Maria, with his capacious Sforza brain-pan and his determined Sforza jaw, instantly perceived that he could recommend himself by being useful. He advised France rapidly to advance southward through the Romagna where rich spoils awaited him. And he found the means. Of the man who will lend money at the very moment when it is urgently required, none but the very best opinion can be formed. The Christian King was quite prepared to accept Don Ludovico Maria’s own estimation of himself, now. It was even safe to let him see the pathetic sovereign of Milan in his prison.

After being detained a few weeks by that which Italians call the French disease, because it was introduced into Italy by this Christian King, Charles VIII dawdled on to Pavia; and visited Duke Giangaleazzo Sforza-Visconti. The condition of that luckless prince was scandalous in the extreme. He was of the age of five and twenty years. He had been a prisoner during fifteen years. He was decrepid of body, helpless and dull of mind. His only joy in life was in his Duchess Isabella and in his four-year-old son, for whose protection he piteously entreated the Christian King. France put on a sympathetic aspect—it was perhaps the most gracious moment in the little creature’s life—; the nostrils of his ham-shaped nose wore an air of disgust at Duke Giangaleazzo’s suffering; the glare of his boiled eyes in their congenital flush, and the severe fat line of his mouth, horrified the usurping Regent. Had the money of Don Ludovico Maria been in the coffers of any one just then except the Christian King’s, undoubtedly right would have been done by the might of France. But, with promises to return, with excellent intentions to attend to the affairs of Milan when Naples should have been reduced with Milan’s money, the Christian King was persuaded to hasten on to Piacenza.

There, on the twenty-first of October, news came to him that the prince whom he had left in his prison, Duke Giangaleazzo Sforza-Visconti, was dead; and that Don Ludovico Maria had proclaimed himself, and had been accepted as, Duke of Milan. It was also said that the uncle had envenomed the nephew, having observed him to have gained the sympathy of France, and fearing lest that sympathy should restore him to his throne. It may have been so: but there is no evidence whatever on the subject beyond the mere assertion. But it equally might have been the effect of concentrated despair, at seeing deliverance come and pass away, acting on a body, naturally weak, worn by passion and imprisonment, which killed Duke Giangaleazzo Sforza-Visconti of Milan. The Fifteenth Century (and also the first decades of the Sixteenth) was so radically ignorant of the art and science, as well of venoms, as of their practical exhibition, that, unless direct in addition to circumstantial evidence be forthcoming, mere unproved charges based on “on dit,” “aiunt,” “fertur,” or “dicant,” may be disregarded and a natural cause of death assigned.

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Florence, capital city of Tuscany and ancient friend of France, was in a critical condition. Lorenzo de’ Medici was just dead. His son, Don Piero had succeeded him. Don Piero’s brother Messer Giovanni, raised to the purple at the age of thirteen years, red-hatted at seventeen, was a Cardinal of Rome. The genius of the great Lorenzo had made him disguise his power. He had married at his own mother’s bidding Madonna Clarice Orsini, a patrician of Rome. His sons, educated by Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano), had grown up intellectual, grand, and gay, with an overweening sense of their own consequence; and, when the sceptre fell into his young inexperienced hands, Don Piero forgot his father’s advice, “Remember that thou art but a citizen of Florence, even as am I;” and he behaved autocratically, despotically, independently, to the immense antipathy of the Lily-City.

When the Majesty of France began his interference with Italian politics, Don Piero de’ Medici and Florence, being contracted to the Regno, declined the offer of a French alliance. The Christian King retorted by banishing Florentine merchants from France. This gave occasion for the enemies, (which, in common with all great Houses, Medici had) to blaspheme, muttering of the evils of a tyranny, of the advantages of a republic: and Don Piero’s cousins, Don Giovanni and Don Lorenzino, fled to the Christian King at Piacenza; saying that not Florence, but Don Piero only, was the foe of France.

Fra Girolamo Savonarola, friar of the Religion of St. Dominic, became a prominent and responsible figure in this imbroglio. Ecclesiastically he was a subject of the Dominican Congregation of Lombardy, who was led to desire independence and a pied à terre in Florence. Don Piero de’ Medici, seeing naught amiss, supported his application to Rome for the separation of the Tuscan Dominicans from allegiance to the Lombard Congregation; for, it was urged, the erection of a separate Congregation for Lombardy would add to the dignity of Florence, and would be a slight to Milan. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI, when the case was laid before Him in 1493, was inclined to favour Milan on account of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal who was brother to the usurping Regent: but, on the advice of Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, who officially had examined the matter on its merits, and who reported in favour of Don Piero de’ Medici and the weird friar, the Pope’s Holiness issued the Bull of Separation on the twenty-second of May that same year. Fra Girolamo Savonarola then transferred himself to the new Tuscan Congregation, was elected Prior of San Marco and Vicar-General; and so became the absolute ruler of the Dominicans in Florence, and subject only to the General of the Religion of St. Dominic, and to the Pope, in Rome.

He was a truly pious man, of the hard ascetic type, and very masterful. He used his independence rigorously to reform his Convent of San Marco, with, for a wonder, the complete concurrence of his friars; and so he formed a centre of the exclusively religious life. He would make no compromise whatever. He would have God entirely served; and countenanced no paltering with Mammon. He utterly spat upon and defied the World. He burned every pretty worldly thing. Lewd lovely Florence executed a quick change, and followed him in sackcloth and ashes. The alluring melody of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Canti Carnaleschi was drowned in the chaunting of the _Miserere mei Deus_ and the Seven Penitential Psalms with Litanies; while disciplines and scourges in the public streets fell like flails on youth’s white flesh. Fra Girolamo preached penance in the Advent of 1493. In the Lent of 1494, he preached from the book of Genesis. When he arrived at Noe’s Ark, he dwelled upon it; his subject fascinated him; each plank, each nail, became a symbol: but the moral of his allegory was, “Enter the Ark of Salvation that ye may escape the wrath to come.”

Florence was disturbed by expectation of the French invasion; which, said Fra Girolamo, (mixing his metaphors in the only way that the vulgar really understand) was the Scourge of God for the Purification of the Church. In September, he preached again. Visions came to him; and he preached of them in parables. His success, his ever-growing power, produced in him an effect like inebriation. Not yet having lost his self-control, he was able to see his danger. He made an effort, and ceased to preach. His brain was in a ferment; sleeplessness gnawed the remnant of his physical strength. Again he mounted the pulpit of San Marco, and thundered like a prophet, like a seer, not his own words now, but “Thus saith The Lord.” He claimed εἰσπνοή—Divine Afflatus—Inspiration. Humanly speaking, he had gone out of his mind—was mad.

The excitement of Florence became a frenzy. “Behold,” Fra Girolamo Savonarola tremendously declaimed, “Behold I bring a flood of waters on the earth!” And the French army entered Italy.

Florence was half-dead with terror, terror of the French, terror of the Wrath to Come. She had exasperated the Christian King, was disunited in herself, and she had no troops. Yet—she might resist. On her frontier were the strong fortresses of Sarzanella and Pietrasanta. A few resolute patriots might hold the mountain-passes on the road through Lunigiana; and an initial check which ruined French prestige would restore self-confidence to Florence. This was the time of the trial of the stuff of Don Piero de’ Medici; who, being in three minds, failed to stand. First, he sent his brother-in-law, Don Paolo Orsini, to garrison Sarzanella. Secondly, he quavered, because the Florentines appeared sulkily to him. Thirdly, he dallied with the notion of submission to the Christian King. From the fortress of Pietrasanta he whined for a safe-conduct. Arrived in the French camp he collapsed: lying prostrate at the twelve-toed feet of the Majesty of France, he implored pardon for his impertinence in thinking to defend his fatherland; and he offered reparation. He assented to the French demand for the withdrawal of the Tuscan army from the Romagna; for the castles of Sarzana, Sarzanella, Pietrasanta, Pisa, and Livorno, to be held as pledges until Naples should capitulate; for a forced-loan of two hundred thousand ducats; the pledges immediately to be delivered and a treaty signed at Florence. The French had never dreamed that the road should open to them as though by miracle; and by simplest Induction they said that God was on their side.

Florence was dismayed. Don Piero de’ Medici stayed with the French: his brothers were in the vast Medici Palace (now Palazzo Riccardi) at the corner of Via Larga, which Michellozzo built for mighty Cosmo. “It is time to make an end of this government by children and to recover our liberty,” said the grave and sterling Don Piero Capponi; and the Signoria sent out an embassage to undo the mischief. There were five ambassadors, including Fra Girolamo Savonarola whom Florence loved, and Don Piero Capponi whom she admired. They left the city on the sixth of November with plenary powers to modify the disgraceful conditions of surrender. On the seventh, they found the Christian King at Lucca; and followed him to Pisa. He received them very coldly, saying that he would arrange no terms except in Florence. To diseased France the degenerate Fra Girolamo forthwith prophesied, “Know thyself for an instrument in the hands of the Lord, Who hath sent thee to heal the woes of Italy and to reform the prostrate Church. But if thou dost not shew thyself just and pitiful, if thou respectest not Florence and her people, if thou forgettest the work for which the Lord hath sent thee, then He will choose another in Thy place, and in His Wrath engulph thee. I speak in the name of the Lord.” (_Savonarola’s Compendium Revelationum._)

On the eighth of November, Don Piero de’ Medici reappeared in Florence. The City of Lilies knew that Don Paolo Orsini held the Porta di San Gallo for him, with troops disposed about the district; and suspected that he would summon her citizens and force himself upon them as Dictator. On the ninth, suspicion redoubled, because he went with an imposing retinue to the Palace of the Signoria where the magistrates were in conclave. The door was shut: a voice bade him enter by the postern, but alone. Don Piero de’ Medici turned away. A partisan of Medici in the Signoria followed him, and brought him back. In attempting the little gate, there was some scuffle, some dispute; and the gate was slammed upon him in a gathering crowd which cried “Away—away—and leave the Signoria in peace.” In a storm of hissing where stones were flying Don Piero de’ Medici flashed out his sword,—and—irresolutely—let it fall. His escort closed him in, and hurried him to old Cosmo’s palace, where all of the few Medici were arming. Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, not nineteen years of age, risked his sacred person—risked, because a Florentine mob had flung an archbishop in pontificals (Archbishop Salviati of Pisa) at a rope’s end from a window; and bleached with mortal terror the visage of a boy-cardinal (the Lord Rafaele Galeotto Sanzoni-Riario Cardinal-Deacon of San Giorgio _in Velum Aureum_, aet 16,) not sixteen years before,—his sacred person, because he who _suadente diabolo_ lifts hand against the person of one tonsured _ipso facto_ incurs the Greater Excommunication,—he risked his sacred person among a Florentine mob, endeavouring to rouse them as of old to follow Medici with the war-cry “Palle—Palle—Palle.”[29] All was in vain.

The well-worn cry had lost magnetic virtue; and none in Florence now dared to own himself a friend of Medici. Don Piero rushed to the Porta di San Gallo, where Medici had never cried in vain. None answered him. His courage left him there. He infected with fear Don Paolo Orsini and his bands; and all fled to Bologna. At night Cardinal Giovanni and his sixteen-year-old cousin, Messer Giuliano Knight of St John of Jerusalem of Malta, escaped in the frocks of Friars Minor; and from Bologna these three Medici journeyed on to Venice where Italian exiles always found a home: while Florence sacked the Medici Palace, plundered the priceless Medici Library of Manuscripts, and set a price upon the head of Lorenzo’s son Don Piero.

This revolt was the work of Fra Girolamo Savonarola. For sixty years Florence had enjoyed prosperity under Medici. She was the centre of learning, the mediating power of Italy with influence in every state; in fact, as the Lord Boniface P.P. VIII said on receiving the Orators of the Powers in Rome at the Jubilee of 1300, “_i fiorentini sono il quinto elemento_.” But the Dominican Friar had roused in Her those moral aspirations which Medici had lulled to atrophy; and the contemptible blunders of Don Piero had proved a final exasperation. The newly-formed republic set up Donatello’s statue of Judith with the Head of Holofernes on a pedestal before Palazzo Vecchio, with this inscription for the benefit of budding despots, EXEMPLUM SALUTIS PUBLICAE CIVES POSUERE MCCCCXCV. And on the day of the expulsion of the Medici, little Pisa revolted also, and threw off the yoke of Florence.

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The fortune of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI appeared to be in serious danger. The French unhindered were advancing, and sedition was sown in Rome. One more overture the Supreme Pontiff made, sending Cardinal Raymond Perrauld, a creature of His Own, to treat with the Christian King, who with no difficulty persuaded the French Cardinal to turn traitor to the Pope. A Brief, appealing to the Elect-Emperor Maximilian for help proved ineffectual. The forces of Colonna beleaguered the Eternal city. Within the walls, three disaffected cardinals, the Lords Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti, Friderico Sanseverini, and Bernardino de’ Lunati, were interned with the Pope in the Mola for the sake of safety. When the pontifical citadel of Civita Vecchia fell, the loyalists became yet more disheartened. Orsini turned its coats and joined the French. Cesarini alone of all the patricians of Rome continued to be staunch and true. Resistance was useless, things being as they were; and the Lord Alexander P.P. VI gave leave to the Christian King to enter Rome. He came. He humanly was master of the City and of the situation, face to face with the Holiness of the Pope, practically having His person in his power. The Majesty of France demanded the calling of a General Council; and God’s Vicegerent opposed him with a blunt and unconditional _Non Possumus_. Whenever the World has driven the Church against the wall, She has become inexorably invincible.

The year 1495 opened with Rome in panic and disorder, in the clutch of a foreign army bringing desolation and a new disease. The Christian King, who had come to accomplish the conquest of the Regno by means of the deposition of the Pope, found the way completely blocked. He had strutted on his twelve-toed feet to Rome, prepared to crow so very gallically. The decree of deposition actually was prepared, and only required confirmation by a competent authority. Inflated with gigantic megalomaniacal illusions, he had believed that an evil conscience would have made the Lord Alexander P.P. VI obedient to him. He thought by the threat of a General Council (which he intended to convoke at Ferrara,) to blackmail the Pope into conceding the investiture of Naples. He ineffectually had battered the defences of the Pope with cannon. And now his Frenchmen would fight no longer, as some say; but others, like Briçonnet and de Commines, assert that it was the king who blenched. At last, with his shallow mind congested with half-thought thoughts and uncompleted facts like these, he became aware that a General Council was not a General council unless it had the Pope’s authority, which last he was not likely to obtain; and that, without some means of bending the pontifical will, he could not hope to win the crown of Naples. Evidently, he could not depose the Pope. He might, however, conquer Naples by force of arms; and, perhaps, the question of investiture by the Ruler of the World, the Father of princes and of kings, the Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour, which he realized to be imperative, would wear a different aspect when he should ask for it as a conqueror with the Regno in his hand.

While the Christian King was stumbling to these conclusions, the invincible Lord Alexander P.P. VI remained with His little court in the Mola of Hadrian where He had His hostages secure, viz., the Sultán Djim, earnestly desired by France as a weapon against the Great Turk, and the renegade cardinals, friends of Colonna and the French. Here, He was practically impregnable. The Papal States might go to wrack and ruin: Rome Herself might be crushed by an alien heel, but from the Mola of Hadrian a Pope, surrounded by His faithful few, could, and often did, defy blockade as long as provisions held out; could, and often did, launch the lightnings of the Church, censures, excommunications, interdicts; and force acknowledgment, and reluctant obedience, from rebellious sovereigns who, after all, believed and admitted Him to be Ruler of the World, Father of princes and of kings, Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour, titles, in defence of which (so very glorious are they) Pontiffs of these clear ages did not hesitate to court the death, admitting of no compromise of no rebate. Our potency, said they, if worth having, is worth fighting for, is worth dying for. And, as invariably is the case, when a man shews that he wishes nothing better than to lose his life for a cause, he saves both cause, and life.

From the Mola of Hadrian then, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI deigned to make these terms with the Christian King:—The French army was to be withdrawn from Rome. The Pope’s Holiness would not interfere; and would lend to France as hostages for six months, the Sultán Djim with whom to menace the Great Turk Bajazet, and Cardinal Cesare (detto Borgia). The question of the investiture of Naples was not even named. Having secured Himself by this agreement, in which He had conceded neither of the two French claims, the Supreme Pontiff received in formal audience the Christian King, who shortly after marched his troops southward along the Appian Way by Albano, Ariccia, and Genzano, toward the Neapolitan frontier.

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At the Third Consistory of the sixteenth of January 1495, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI named one cardinal, who was the Lord Guillaume Briçonnet, Overseer of the Treasury to the Christian King Charles VIII, editor of a book of prayers dedicated to the said king (Encheiridion precum); Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Pudentiana.

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