Front matter (continued 5)

Boniface died on September 29, 1404, and Cossa was not present at the Conclave. He had constantly to lead his troops against external as well as internal enemies. The new Pope, Innocent VII., spent two futile years in dreams of peace, and in November, 1406, the See again fell vacant. Christendom now clamoured for an end of the scandalous schism, and, when Gregory XII., an ascetic and worn old cardinal, assumed the tiara, he was greeted as "an angel of light." He thanked God, with tears in his eyes, that he was chosen to end the schism; if he could not get mules or galleys, he would go on foot to meet Benedict XIII. (who had succeeded Clement at Avignon) and resign together with him. And within a few months Christendom witnessed the still more odious spectacle of the two Popes, both men of advanced years and great piety, straining every nerve to avoid each other and evade resignation. They were to meet at Savona, but, as Leonardo quaintly says, "whenever there was question of their meeting, one would, as if he were a land animal, not approach the coast, and the other, as if he were an aquatic animal, would not leave the sea." Benedict reached Savona; Gregory could not be driven beyond Lucca. The best that can be said for him is that he was ruled by greedy relatives. At last, on a pretext provided by his supporter Ladislaus of Naples, Gregory fled back to Rome and refused to listen to any further counsel of resignation.

Christendom, in disgust, now called for a General Council. France disowned Benedict and, when he excommunicated the King, tore his Bull in halves and ordered his arrest. He fled to Perpignan and Gregory to Venice, and the cardinals began to negotiate with the princes for the holding of the Council of Pisa. Cardinal Cossa, who had disdainfully taken down the arms of Gregory XII. at Bologna, and who was in league with Florence against Naples, took the lead in the new movement. When Gregory excommunicated him, he burned the Bull in the market-place. When Ladislaus of Naples advanced against Pisa, he united his troops to those of Florence and scattered the southerners. When Benedict's representatives asked for a safe-conduct through Italy, he said: "If you come to Bologna, with or without a safe-conduct, I'll burn you." So the Council met at Pisa, deposed Benedict and Gregory, and, in effect, set up a third Pope, Alexander V. The situation being without precedent, there was no canonical basis for such a Council, and no executive to enforce the Council's decisions. Benedict and Gregory—the one under the protection of Spain and the other with the support of Naples, Rimini, and part of Germany—continued to fulminate against each other, and a third discharge of anathemas only distracted Christendom the more.

Cardinal Cossa set out once more at the head of his troops, and, with the aid of Louis of Anjou and the Florentines, swept the Neapolitan troops southward and opened Rome for Alexander. But that feeble and aged Anti-Pope never reached the Lateran. He died at Bologna on May 4, 1410, and Louis of Anjou (representing the French influence) and the Florentines urged on the cardinals the election of Cossa himself. At midnight on May 17th, the expectant crowd at Bologna was informed that the cardinals had come to an agreement, and an hour later Baldassare Cossa, or John XXIII., stepped forth in the scarlet mitre and spotless robes of a Vicar of Christ. There are chroniclers who say that he had bribed the electors, and chroniclers who say that he had bullied them. The first charge is not unlikely, as bribery was now becoming common enough on the eve of or during a Conclave, but we cannot check these rumours. Dietrich von Nieheim admits that Cossa nominated another cardinal for the tiara, and the Council of Constance did not impeach the regularity of his election. He was chosen because of his vigour and military ability. Such was the condition of the Papacy that none seemed to care that he was "a complete failure and worthless in spiritual matters."

He must have been at that time about forty-three years old: a tall, spare, soldierly-looking man, with large nose and piercing dark grey eyes under bushy eyebrows. After devoting a few days to the customary festivities, he set about the work of enabling Louis of Anjou to displace Ladislaus on the throne of Naples and thus destroy Gregory's main support. It may have been in deference to the feeling of some of the cardinals that he first summoned Benedict and Gregory to resign and asked his bitter enemy Ladislaus—the man who had condemned his brothers—to pay the arrears of sixty thousand ducats which he owed to the Roman See. All three contemptuously refused to recognize him, and, as Ladislaus presently destroyed the fleet of Louis of Anjou and advanced against the Papal troops, the prospect was uncertain. John feverishly sought allies and funds. He conciliated England, where the call for a real Ecumenical Council to depose the three Popes was already heard, by suppressing an obnoxious Bull of Boniface IX. and by other graces, and he contrived—after the blunders of his legates had roused fierce opposition—to get a good deal of money from France. Spain still supported Benedict.

The uncertain element was Germany, where, at the time, the outstanding figure was Sigismund of Hungary. Sigismund had stood aloof from the Council of Pisa. For some years he had diverted all money from the Papal agents to his own pockets, because Boniface had recognized Ladislaus, and he detested the French, who had had much to do with the Council at Pisa. His support was of material importance to John, as owing to the death of Rupert the day after John's election, he became the chief candidate for the Empire. To John's delight, Sigismund now sent ambassadors to do homage, and an agreement was reached. The Pope was to validate the appropriation by Sigismund of church-moneys and influence the Electors in his favour, and Sigismund would support John against Ladislaus.[267] But there was still an element of danger and uncertainty. Sigismund had sworn to end the Papal schism, and he was known to be favourable to the summoning of another and more weighty council. Moreover, John, who was a poor diplomatist, made a serious blunder. The elected monarch became, by law of the Empire, King of the Romans without any Papal confirmation; the imperial crown and title alone were given by the Pope. Yet John, seeking to magnify his authority, persisted in addressing Sigismund until the anxious days of the Council of Constance, as "Elected to be King."

I may tell very briefly the sequence of events in Italy. After a year at Bologna, John proceeded to Rome and flung his troops upon the Neapolitans. They won the important battle of Rocca Secca, but, owing to the incompetence of the Papal legate who held supreme command, they failed to follow up the success and Ladislaus recovered. In the next few months John heard with increasing alarm that Louis of Anjou had returned in despair to France: that the ablest Papal commander, Sforza, had transferred his services to Naples: that Malatesta of Rimini, the only other supporter of Gregory, was winning success in the north: and that the Neapolitans were marching against Rome. He levied taxes on the churches and citizens of Rome until they became restless. He petulantly had an effigy of Sforza hanged on a gallows at Rome. He pressed the sale of indulgences so flagrantly, and by such repellent agents, that the reformers of Bohemia burned his Bull in the streets. He excommunicated Ladislaus and proclaimed a crusade against him; and not a prince in Europe stirred.

Now seriously concerned, John offered to recognize Ladislaus as King of Naples if he would abandon Gregory, and that monarch at once basely deserted his Pope. He ordered the stubborn old man to quit Gaeta, and it is said that the people of Gaeta, who had grown fond of him, had to pay his passage to his last refuge, the lands of the Lord of Rimini. Ladislaus was made Gonfaloniere of the Church, and the Pope promised him 120,000 ducats. But so onerous a peace could not endure. After some mutual charges in the spring of 1413 the Neapolitan troops approached Rome. The Romans assured John that they would eat their children rather than surrender, but, when they saw the Pope and cardinals secure their own position by crossing the river, they opened the gates and admitted the Neapolitans. Their warrior-Pope, surrounded by cardinals who wept for the treasures they had abandoned in Rome, fled to the north, and at length reached Florence. Even here the citizens were afraid to admit him. They assigned him the bishop's palace outside the walls, and from this lowly centre John continued his sale of benefices and indulgences.

One other event will complete the record of John's Pontificate, before we begin the story of his undoing. The abuses of the Roman Curia had excited, or encouraged, various hostile movements. There were Lollards in England, and followers of Hus and Jerome of Prague in Bohemia. These vague and unimportant movements—from the Papal point of view—were left to local prelates, but the growing Christian demand for another General Council was disquieting. The Council of Pisa had put itself above the Popes, and grave doctors at many universities argued that a council must effect that reform of the Church which Popes refused to effect. Probably John XXIII. did not appreciate the full significance of this Conciliar movement, but he did see that there was grave danger that a Council would depose him, as well as Benedict and Gregory, unless he controlled it. He, therefore, in 1412, announced that a General Council would be held at Rome, and he reminded prelates that the Council of Pisa had enjoined this. But only a few French and Italian prelates responded to his summons, and a strange accident increased his uneasiness. One day, when all were assembled in St. Peter's, a screech owl issued from a dark corner and perched opposite the Pope. John reddened and perspired, as he gazed into the uncanny eyes of the bird, and at last he left his seat and broke up the sitting. It was there again at the next sitting, and was killed only after a great commotion. A strange form for the Holy Ghost, the mockers said; a dreadful omen for the Pope, said others. Reforms were promised, and the works of Wyclif were condemned, but the Council was too small to have effect and it was prorogued until December 1, 1413.

Meantime John was driven to the north, and from Florence he appealed to Sigismund. Many eyes were turned to Sigismund from various parts of Europe, and that singular monarch took quite seriously the high function which was thrust upon him of saving and reforming Christendom. He was a man of considerable ability, though it was apt to take the form of cunning rather than statesmanship, but his narrow cupidity, his notorious license in morals, and his general indifference to principle made him an incongruous instrument for the reform of the Church. He at once informed John that the state of the Church was to be submitted to a General Council, and a struggle ensued between the two as to whether it should be held south or north of the Alps. We have the reliable assurance of Leonardo, John's secretary at the time, that the Pope proposed to send two cardinals with full powers to treat, which they were to show to Sigismund, and with secret instructions restricting them. John told this design, with great complacency, to his secretary,[268] though he did not carry it out. The Papal legates met Sigismund at Como in the autumn and were pleased to think that they made an impression on him, but John was dismayed to learn that, on October 30th, the King of the Romans issued a proclamation to the effect that a General Council would be held, under his presidency, at Constance, on All Saints' Day, 1414.

John is described as stricken with fear and grief at the prospect of a council outside Italy, but Sigismund was inflexible. They spent two months together at Piacenza and Lodi, and the Pope must have penetrated the King's design. He already leaned to the plan of deposing the three Popes and electing another. John was compelled, on December 9th, to issue a Bull convoking the Council, and he then went to Bologna to await the attack of the Neapolitans. There, about the middle of August, he received the welcome news that Ladislaus had been poisoned by the father of one of his mistresses. He proposed to break faith with Sigismund and disavow the Council, but the cardinals restrained him from taking this wild step, and on October 1st he set out for the north, sadly, with a troop of six hundred horse. He had for some time wavered between gloomy apprehensions of a mysterious fate which pursued him and buoyant confidence in his wealth and power.

The last words of his friends at Bologna must have recurred to him again and again as he passed up the autumnal valley of the Adige and entered the snows of the Tirol. He would not return a Pope, they said. In the Arlberg Pass his carriage was overturned, and he exclaimed, as he lay in the snow: "Here I lie, in the name of the devil, and I would have done much better to stop at Bologna." He remained for some days at Meran with Duke Friedrich, whom he made captain-general of the Papal troops, with a salary of six thousand ducats a year. It was well to make a friend of this powerful and discontented vassal of Sigismund. At last, on October 27th, his troops turned the crest of the last low hills before Constance, and he gazed down on the hollow between the guardian mountains. "A trap for foxes," he is said to have muttered. On the following day he rode into Constance, on his richly harnessed white horse, under a canopy of cloth of gold, and occupied the episcopal palace.

For three weeks the snowy roads down the mountain-sides from all directions discharged gay streams of princes and prelates, bishops and abbots, theologians and lawyers, thieves and prostitutes, bankers and acrobats, upon the sleepy old town, until it seemed to burst with a ravening multitude. Something between fifty and a hundred thousand visitors had to be housed and entertained, and it is reported by grave observers that more than a thousand prostitutes flocked to Constance in the days of the Council.[269] There were, in the course of time, twenty-nine cardinals, thirty-three archbishops, a hundred and fifty bishops, a hundred and thirty-four abbots, and a hundred doctors of law and divinity: among the latter a certain pale and thin man, Master John Hus, who did not suspect that he had come to be tried on a capital charge. But the Emperor was late—he was crowned at Aachen on November 8th—so the first sitting of the Council, on November 5th, was adjourned to the 16th, and then until the new year. Meantime the thousands of entertainers did their duty, and the city rang day and night with revelry, and a crowd speaking thirty different languages filled the streets and overflowed on to the roofs and into the sheds and even the empty tubs of Constance.

On Christmas morning, two hours after midnight, Emperor Sigismund made a stately entrance from the Lake and a vast crowd attended John's midnight mass. Then the struggle began. John's money circulated freely, yet the view that he must be deposed with the other two was gaining ground. He was gouty and his vigour was prematurely undermined, but he fought for his tiara. Envoys came to represent Benedict and Gregory, and he objected to their being received with honour; he was overruled. He held that none less in rank than a bishop or abbot should vote, and that the voting should be by heads, not nations; and again he was overruled, and his Italian prelates would be outvoted. Then some anonymous Italian put into circulation a memoir on his crimes and vices, and he was greatly alarmed. To avoid scandal, however,—for John admitted some of the accusations,—it was suppressed, but it was decided that he must abdicate. After some evasive correspondence, he promised to abdicate "if and when Peter de Luna and Angelo Corario" did the same, and on March 7th he was compelled to embody the formula in a Bull. He became ill and desperate, and there were rumours that he was about to fly. Sigismund put guards at all the gates, but refused to imprison him as the English, headed by the fiery Bishop of Salisbury, demanded.

On March 20th, Duke Friedrich of Tirol drew all Constance to a grand tournament outside the city, and in the midst of it he was noticed to receive a message and leave the ground. Presently it was learned that the Pope, disguised as a groom, had slipped out of the gate on a poor horse, with two companions, and Friedrich had joined them at Schaffhausen. Sigismund sternly forbade the dissolution of the Council, laid a heavy punishment on his vassal, and sent some of the cardinals to see John. The Pope declared that he had left solely on account of his illness; he would abdicate and not interfere with the Council, but the cardinals must join him at once or be excommunicated. The Council, now led by the great Gerson and other strong French doctors, ignored the Pope, and declared that it had, direct from Christ, a power to which Popes must bow. As Sigismund's troops were after them, John and Friedrich fled farther, and at last John quarrelled with his supporter and fled in disguise across the Black Forest to Freiburg. He arrived within reach of Burgundy, whose Duke was friendly, and he demanded better terms. He would resign on condition that he was appointed Perpetual Legate for the whole of Italy, with a pension of 30,000 florins; the alternative in his mind seems to have been a court at Avignon under the protection of the Duke of Burgundy.

The end of his adventures is well known. The burghers of Freiburg refused to protect him and he fled to Breisar, where the envoys of the Council came to press for his resignation. He put on his rough disguise once more, and made off with a troop of Austrian cavalry, but Friedrich, to obtain a mitigation of his own sentence, betrayed him. For several days he miserably resisted the pressure of the envoys, weeping and wailing piteously, and on May 2d the Council summoned him to appear before it within nine days to answer charges of heresy, schism, simony, and immorality. On the seventh day a troop of horse came for him, but he was ill and irresolute. On May 14th the patience of the Council was exhausted; it suspended him from office and ordered the public trial of the charges which had already been examined and on which a mass of evidence had been taken. Two days later the great assembly of prelates and doctors drew up the appalling indictment, in seventy-two articles, of Baldassare Cossa. In the main the charges referred to those acts of simony, bribery, corruption, and tyranny which I have recounted, but it should be added that he was described as "addicted to the flesh, the dregs of vice, a mirror of infamy" (art. 6), and "guilty of poisoning, murder, and persistent addiction to vices of the flesh" (art 29). The worst charges of Dietrich were solemnly endorsed by the gravest lawyers and priests of Europe.

John lay, prostrate and in tears, in an inn at Rudolphzell. He wished to submit a defence, but a few friendly cardinals advised him to submit, and when, on May 26th, he heard that the Council had endorsed the indictment, he made no further resistance. He was deposed on the 29th and accepted the sentence with words of humility and repentance. A few days later the wretched man was consigned to the castle of Gottlieben, and then to a castle at Mannheim. There was, in the following year, a futile attempt to rescue him, and he was confined in the castle of Heidelberg, where he remained three years, with a cook and two chaplains of his once magnificent establishment, composing verses on the vanity of earthly things. The hollow words of his consecration-ceremony, Sic transit gloria mundi, had for him assumed a terrible reality.

How Gregory resigned, and Benedict retired with his tawdry court to a rocky fortress of his, and the Council burned John Hus and appointed a new Pope, may be read in history.[270] Martin left Cossa in Heidelberg, but in the spring of 1419 his keeper was heavily bribed and he was allowed to escape to Italy. It must have moved many when, as Martin officiated at the altar in Florence cathedral, the familiar figure of Baldassare Cossa broke from the throng and knelt humbly at his feet. He was restored to the rank of cardinal, and, apart from a foolish attempt, a few months later, to form a Lombard league against the Emperor, he lived peacefully in the house of Cosmo de' Medici until his death in December (1419). He was buried with pomp by the Republic, and the fine monument which Cosmo raised in the Baptistery shows that some appreciable qualities must have been united with his undisputed vices.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XII

ALEXANDER VI., THE BORGIA-POPE

Three grave issues had been laid before the Council of Constance: the repression of heresy, the ending of the Schism, and the reform of the Church "in head and members." In the third year of their labours the prelates and doctors put an end to the Schism and elected Martin V.; and the new Pope soon put an end to the Council before it could reform the Church. Martin was a Colonna of high ideals and considerable ability; but he was not well disposed to this democratic method of reform by Council, nor was he strong enough to sacrifice Papal revenue by suppressing the worst disorder, the Papal fiscal system. He returned to Rome, and the task of restoring the city and the Papal estates demanded such resources that he dare not abandon the corrupt practices of the Curia.

Two worthy and able Pontiffs followed Martin, and equally failed to bring about a reform. Eugenius IV., an austere, though harsh and autocratic, Venetian, found that his attempts to recover Papal territory and curb the Conciliar party would not permit him to reform the financial system. The reformers forced on him the Council of Basle in 1431, but its renewal of the Schism and creation of a last Anti-Pope, when he resisted its proposals, discredited the Conciliar movement. Reform must come from without: Popes and cardinals could not effect it, and in the prevailing creed there was no canonical basis for the action of a Council in defiance of them. Nicholas V., a quiet man of letters, crowned the financial and political work of his two predecessors with a great artistic restoration. He left politics to Æneas Sylvius and opened the gates of Rome to the fairer form of the Renaissance. Greek artists and scholars were now pouring into Italy—Constantinople fell to the Turks during this Pontificate (1453)—and fostering the growth of the Humanist movement. Rome began to assume its rich mantle of mediæval art, and the Papacy seemed to smile once more on a docile and prosperous Christendom.

But the restoration had been accomplished by an evasion of reform, and the new culture was sharpening the pens of critics. One of these inquisitive scholars, Lorenzo Valla, was actually declaring that the "Donation of Constantine" was a forgery. Many denounced, in fiery prose or with the cold cynicism of the epigram, the luxury and vice of the higher clergy. Heresy hardened in Bohemia, and, among the stricter ranks of the faithful, men like Nicholas of Cusa, John Capistrano, and Savonarola were raising ideals which, if they rebuked the laity, far more solemnly rebuked the clergy. And just at this critical period the Papacy entered upon a development which ended in the enthronement of Alexander VI., Julius II., and Leo X.; the Reformation inevitably followed.

At the death of Nicholas V., the Orsini and Colonna cardinals came to a deadlock in their struggle for the Papacy, and a neutral and innocuous alternative was sought in Alfonso Borgia (or, in Spanish style, Borja), a Spanish canonist of some scholarly distinction. Calixtus III., as he named himself, was a gouty valetudinarian who lay abed most of the day in pious conversation with friars. He very properly disdained the new art and culture, and saved the Papal funds to meet the advancing Turks. He had, however, one weakness, which was destined to prove very costly to the Papacy. There was a tradition of nepotism at Rome, and Calixtus had nephews. While he was Bishop of Valencia, his sister Isabella had come to him from Xativa, their native place, with her two sons, Pedro Luis and Rodrigo. When, in 1455, he became Pope, he sent Rodrigo to study at Bologna and enriched him with benefices. Pedro Luis was reserved for a lay career, and Juan Luis Mila, son of another sister, was sent with Rodrigo to Bologna.

At this time Rodrigo Borgia was in his twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year: an exceptionally handsome young Spaniard, with the most charming Spanish manners, and with rich sensuous lips and an eye for maidens which escaped his uncle's notice. He and his cousin were, within a year, made cardinals. In December (1456) he was appointed legate for the March of Ancona, and in the following May he was, in spite of the murmurs of the cardinals, promoted to the highest and most lucrative office at the Court, the Vice-Chancellorship. His elder brother became Duke of Spoleto, Gonfaloniere of the Papal army, and (in 1457) Prefect of Rome. Other needy Spaniards came over the sea in droves, and the disgusted Romans were soon ousted from the best positions. In 1458, however, Calixtus fell ill, and was reported to be dead; and the Romans chased the "Catalans" out of the city. Rodrigo at first retired with his more hated brother, but he courageously returned on August 6th, just in time to witness the actual death of his uncle.

Æneas Sylvius mounted the throne, under the name of Pius II., but the Humanists looked in vain for favour to that genial diplomatist, traveller, and littérateur. He had reached a gouty and repentant age, and his one pre-occupation was to stir a lethargic Christendom to a crusade against the Turks. Cardinal Rodrigo had been useful to him, reserving a vacant benefice for him now and again, so he kept his place and continued to win for himself wealthy bishoprics and abbeys. For a moment, in 1460, Rodrigo trembled. Pius had sent him to direct the building of a cathedral at Siena, and the Pope startled his Vice-Chancellor with a stern letter. Rodrigo and another cardinal, the Pope heard, had entertained a number of very frivolous young ladies for five hours in a private garden. They had excluded the parents of these girls, and there had been "dances of the most licentious character" and other things which "modesty forbids to recount." It was the talk of the town.[271] From the kind of dances and women which Alexander had in the Vatican long afterwards we can imagine the things which startled Siena. Rodrigo urged that there had been exaggeration, but the Pope, while admitting the possibility of this, again sternly bade him mind his behaviour.

The long discussion of the morals of Alexander VI. has, in fact, now ended in entire agreement that by the year 1460, at least, he was openly immoral. The Papal and other documents relating to his children—at least six in number—which have been found in the Vatican archives and in the private archives of the Duke of Ossuna show an extraordinary laxity at Rome. There is a Bull of Sixtus IV., dated November 5, 1481, legitimizing the birth of Pedro Luis Borgia, "son of a cardinal-deacon and an unmarried woman"; he is described as "a young man," and was probably born about 1460. There is the marriage contract of Girolama Borgia, dated 1482, which refers to the "paternal love" of the Vice-Chancellor; she must then have been at least thirteen years old. There is a document, dated October 1, 1480, dispensing from the bar of illegitimacy Cæsar Borgia, "son of a cardinal-bishop and a married woman"; and he is described as in his sixth year, or born about 1475. There is a deed of gift of Rodrigo to Juan Borgia, "his carnal son," whose birth must fall either in 1474 or 1476. There are documents referring to the celebrated Lucrezia, whose birth is generally put in 1478, and to Jofre Borgia, who was born about 1480; and there are documents from which we have—as we shall see later—the gravest reason to conclude that the Pope had a son in 1497 or 1498, when he approached his seventieth year. Except that a few hesitate, in face of the strongest evidence, to admit the last child, no serious historian of any school now questions these facts, and the evidence need not be examined in detail.[272]

At least four of these children were born of Vannozza (or Giovannozza) dei Catanei, a Roman lady who was the Cardinal's mistress from about 1460 to 1486. The story that she was an orphan entrusted to his care and seduced by him is not reliable. Nothing is confidently known about her early years, but her epitaph has been discovered, and it honours her, not only for her "signal probity and great piety," but because she was the mother of Cæsar, Juan, Jofre, and Lucrezia Borgia. Pedro Luis and Girolama may have been born of an earlier mistress, but it is not at all certain. Vannozza, who married three times, is constantly mentioned, by the ambassadors, as Borgia's mistress. She had a handsome mansion near the Cardinal's palace and the Vatican, and she entertained there and in her country house long after Borgia became Pope and replaced her by a younger mistress.

These monuments of parentage are almost the only evidences of the existence of Cardinal Borgia under Pius II. and Paul II. In 1471 a pious and learned Franciscan friar, Sixtus IV., assumed the tiara, and it is an indication of the strange temper of the times that under such a man the Papal Court became more corrupt than ever.[273] Sixtus vigorously restored the secular rule of the Papacy and encouraged the artistic and cultural development, but his nepotism was shameless and profoundly harmful. One of the nephews whom he drew from the obscurity of a Franciscan monastery and made a prince of the Church was Pietro Riario, who spent 260,000 ducats,[274] and within two years of his promotion wore out his life in the most flagrant dissipation. His immense palace, with its magnificent treasures, its five hundred servants in scarlet silk, and its prodigious banquets, was the home of every species of vice; and it is said that his chief mistress, Tiresia, flaunted eight hundred ducats' worth of pearls on her embroidered slippers. Another nephew was the sterner, though also immoral, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere—also brought from a monastery—whom we shall know as Julius II. Other cardinals promoted by the friar-Pope were equally notorious for their indulgence and for the unscrupulous quest of money to sustain it.

From the Bulls of Sixtus which I have quoted, it is clear that he was acquainted with the vices of Borgia, yet he sent him as legate to Spain, to excite interest in the crusade, in the spring of 1472. In spite of some compliments, it does not appear that Borgia did more than impress his countrymen with his display and gallantry, and he returned toward the close of 1473 and built one of the most stately palaces in the rich quarter which was now rising round the Vatican. When Sixtus died, in 1484, he made a resolute effort to get the tiara. The dispatches of the ambassadors who now represented the northern States at the Vatican afford us a valuable means of checking the chroniclers, and they put it beyond question that Borgia and Giuliano della Rovere entered upon a corrupt rivalry for the Papacy. Giuliano was now a tall, serious-looking man of forty: reserved in speech and brusque in manners, a good soldier and most ambitious courtier. Although he was known to have children, he kept a comparatively sober household and reserved his wealth for special occasions of display and for bribery. Borgia was his senior by thirteen years, but he had the buoyancy, gaiety, and sensuality of a young man. He, too, kept a moderate table and gambled little, but his amours were notorious and one could not please him better than by providing a ballet of handsome women. To these wealthy "up-starts" the haughty Orsini and Colonna were bitterly opposed, and the announcement of the death of Sixtus let loose a flood of passion. The splendid mansion of Count Riario, another nephew of the late Pope, was sacked, the Orsini entrenched themselves on Monte Giordano, and the other cardinals filled their halls with armed men.

In the Conclave it was soon apparent that neither Rodrigo nor Giuliano could command the necessary two thirds of the votes, and they agreed to adopt Cardinal Cibò, a Genoese noble who had outburned the passions of youth before he entered the service of the Church. During the night of August 28-29, when the supporters of Cardinal Barbo (who seemed to be sure of election) had confidently retired to their cells, Rodrigo and Giuliano, by intrigue and bribery, secured a majority for Cibò.[275] He became Innocent VIII. the next morning, and during the eight years of his amiable and futile Pontificate the College of Cardinals steadily sank. Innocent's natural son was drawn from his decent obscurity and made one of the richest and fastest nobles of Rome; and women were hardly safe even in their own homes when Franceschetto Cibò roamed the streets at night, with his cut-throats, in one of his wine-flushed moods. He took so ardently to the new cardinalitial pastime of gambling that in one night he lost 100,000 ducats to Cardinal Riario. Cardinal la Balue left at his death a fortune of 100,000 ducats. Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, brother of the ruler of Milan, was the leading sportsman of Roman society. Cardinal Lorenzo Cibò owed his red hat to the fortunate circumstance that he was an illegitimate son of the Pope's brother. Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who was one day to be Leo X., had received the tonsure in his eighth year and the title of cardinal in his fourteenth. Cardinals Savelli, Sclafenati, and Sanseverino were members of the fast and luxurious group. Each cardinal maintained a large palace, with hundreds of gay-liveried servants and ready swordsmen, and the wealthier seem to have studied with care the pages in which Macrobius describes the exquisite or colossal banquets of the older pagans. Each—apart from the minority of grave and virtuous cardinals—had his faction in the city, and, as carnival time approached, they were engrossed for weeks in the preparation of the superb cars and brilliant troops of horse by which each sought to prove his superior fitness for the chair of Gregory I. and Gregory VII. Innocent VIII. smiled; and the thunders gathered beyond the Alps.

The state of Rome was in accord with the state of the Sacred College. We may hesitate to believe Infessura when he tells us that, if criminals were by some chance arrested, they bought their liberty at the Vatican; but we have in Burchard's Diary a sombre, incidental indication of the condition of Rome. There is in modern literature some tendency to look with indulgent eye on the coloured gaiety of late mediæval Rome, but—to say nothing of the ideals which the cardinals professed—the insecurity of life and property and the widespread brutality show that this license was far removed from genuine Humanism. Some years later, when Rodrigo's son Juan was murdered, a boatman said, when they asked why he had not reported seeing a body cast into the river, that it was not customary to have any inquiry made into a nightly occurrence of that kind. Rodrigo Borgia, the Vice-Chancellor, paid no heed to this condition of the city. He added year by year to the long list of his bishoprics and emoluments, and prepared to renew the struggle for the tiara. He lost, or discarded, Vannozza when she married her third husband in 1486 and entered upon a more sordid and equally notorious liaison. His cousin, Adriana Orsini, had charge of a young orphan, Giulia Farnese, a very beautiful, golden-haired girl. She married Adriana's son, Orso Orsini, in 1489—her fifteenth year—and at the same time became the Cardinal's mistress. Adriana was rewarded with a considerable influence and the charge of the young Lucrezia Borgia.[276]

The death of Innocent on July 25, 1492, led to fierce intrigue and passionate encounters. There were more than two hundred murders in Rome during the fourteen days before the Conclave, for which twenty-two cardinals were, on August 6th, immured in the Sistine Chapel. Giuliano della Rovere had spoiled his prospect by too patent a use of his influence on Innocent VIII., and Borgia set himself to win the next most important rival, Ascanio Sforza. Historians sometimes smile at the statement of Infessura, that four mule-loads of silver passed from Borgia's palace to that of Sforza, but it is not improbable. For some centuries there had been a custom (abolished a few years later by Leo X.) of sacking the palace of the cardinal who was elected Pope, and it was not unusual to take precautions. Borgia may have sent the silver on this pretext, as Infessura suggests, and he would hardly expect it to be returned. It is, in fact, now certain that Sforza was bribed with gifts far more valuable than Borgia's table silver; Borgia offered, and afterwards gave him, his splendid palace, the Vice-Chancellorship, the bishopric of Erlan (worth 10,000 ducats a year), and other appointments. The sober Cardinal Colonna accepted the abbey of Subiaco (or 2000 ducats a year). Eleven cardinals seem to have sold their votes, and Borgia already had three supporters and his own vote. He secured his majority and hastily retired behind the altar, where Papal vestments of three sizes were laid out, and the genial Romans presently roared their greetings to Alexander VI.[277]

Rome and Italy then sustained their parts in the comedy. Alexander, although now sixty years old, was a vigorous and capable man, and some advantage would be expected from his Pontificate. But one's sense of humour is excited when one reads in Burchard's Diary, or in the letter (reproduced by Thuasne) written by the General of the Camaldolite monks, the description of the rejoicings at Rome. After the coronation at St. Peter's on August 27th, Alexander received, on the steps of the great church, the greetings of the orators who represented the northern cities. One wonders what was the countenance of the massed prelates and nobles when the Genoese orator read: "Thou art so adorned with the glory of virtue, the merit of discipline, the holiness of thy life ... that we must hesitate to say whether it is more proper to offer thee to the Pontificate or to offer that most sacred and glorious dignity to thee." And, as Alexander passed in stately procession to the Lateran, he read on the triumphal arches which adorned the route, such maxims as "Chastity and Charity," and "Great was Rome under Cæsar, now is she most great. Alexander the Sixth reigns: Cæsar was a man, this is a God."

I make no apology for inserting these apparently trivial details in so condensed a narrative. They, most of all, illumine the next momentous phase of the history of the Papacy. In that year, 1492, a little German boy, named Martin Luther, sat at his books in the remote town of Mansfeld.

Infessura records that Alexander opened his Pontificate with large promises and small instalments of reform. He was going to improve the condition of Rome and the Church, to pacify Italy, and to check the Turks; he would remove his children from Rome and reduce the number of sinecures at the Curia. He did, in fact, make a drastic beginning of the administration of justice, and even appointed certain hours during which he would himself hear grievances. Possibly he had a sincere mood of reform; though we are not disposed to be charitable when we recall the appalling levity with which, a few years later, after the murder of his son, he returned to vicious ways. Whatever his initial mood was, he soon entered upon courses which made his Pontificate one of the most degraded in the annals of the Papacy. Modern research has discredited some of the most romantic crimes attributed to him, but it leaves on his memory an indictment which no eager search for good qualities can materially lessen.

He sustained the scandal of his personal conduct until the end of his life, and I will dismiss it briefly. During the first four years of his Pontificate, the youthful Giulia Orsini was his chief favorita—others are occasionally mentioned with that title by the ambassadors—and she was known to the wits of Rome as "the Spouse of Christ." She and Adriana Orsini and Girolama (the Pope's elder daughter) are described as "the heart and eyes of Alexander," and suitors had to seek their favour. When Giulia's brother Alexander received the red hat (Sept. 20, 1493), Rome gave the future Pope—who was by no means without personal merit—the name of "The Petticoat Cardinal." When her daughter Laura was born in 1497, the Pope was generally believed to be the father; though that remains a mere rumour. Pucci, in one of his dispatches, gives us a quaint picture. Giulia lived in Lucrezia's palace, apart from her husband, and, when the ambassador called one day in 1493, she dressed her long golden hair in his presence, and insisted that he must see the baby; and he remarks that the baby was "so very like the Pope that one can readily believe he was the father." Giulia was an almost indispensable figure for some years at the domestic (and even greater than domestic) festivities in the Vatican, laughing with the cardinals at the prurient comedies and still more prurient dances which enlivened the sacred palace.[278]

The last child attributed to him, though not accepted by all the authorities, seems to have been born in 1496 (his sixty-sixth year). There is a document dated September 1, 1501, legitimizing a certain Juan Borgia, but there are two versions of this document.[279] The first version describes him as the child of Cæsar Borgia: the second says that he was born "not of the said Duke, but of us [Alexander] and the said married woman." Creighton made the singular suggestion that possibly Alexander was giving prestige to an illegitimate offspring of his son, but it is now agreed that the second version is the more authentic; it was to be kept in reserve for some grave dispute of his rights. The distinguished Venetian Senator Sanuto tells us[280] that, according to letters received from the Venetian ambassador at Rome and from private persons, the Pope had, about this time, a child by a married Roman lady, with the connivance of her father, and that the angry husband slew his father-in-law and stuck his head on a pole, with the inscription: "Head of my father-in-law, who prostituted his daughter to the Pope." These concurrent testimonies are grave. Most historians now rightly reject the charge that Alexander was intimate with his daughter Lucrezia, since it rests only on bitterly hostile Neapolitan gossip; but we cannot so easily set aside the persistent statements of the ambassadors that a new favorita appears at the Vatican from time to time. These were sometimes ladies of Lucrezia's suite.

Lucrezia, a merry, childish-looking, golden-haired girl, with her father's high spirits and constant smile, is not likely to have remained virtuous in such surroundings, but there is no serious evidence of incest. Before her father's election she was betrothed to a Spanish youth of moderate family, but her father cancelled the espousals and married her, at the Vatican, in 1493, to Giovanni Sforza. She was then, it is calculated, fifteen years old. Twelve cardinals and a hundred and fifty of the great ladies of Rome attended the wedding; and some of the prettier ladies remained to sup with the Pope and cardinals, and applaud the loose comedies he provided. Giulia and Lucrezia were present. When the Pope's policy estranged him from Milan, he forced Lucrezia's husband to swear that the marriage had not been consummated, and dissolved it. It seems probable that Giovanni, in revenge, then put into circulation the suggestion of incest. Lucrezia married Alfonso of Naples, who was murdered by her brother in 1500. She then married the son of the Duke of Ferrara: and there is perhaps no more terrible indictment of the Papal Court under Alexander than the fact that, when his daughter was removed from it to Ferrara, she earned, and kept until her death, a just repute for virtue and benevolence.

These marriages introduce us to Alexander's political activity, on which some recent historians have passed a somewhat lenient judgment. Apart, however, from the treachery and brutality with which his aims were often enforced, we shall find that at his death he left the Papacy almost landless and impoverished, and we must conclude that his chief objects were his personal security and the aggrandizement of his children.

At the time of Alexander's accession, the duchy of Milan was improperly held by Lodovico Sforza, brother of the Cardinal Ascanio, who sought to convert his temporary regency into a permanent sovereignty. In this ambition he had the support of France, while Ferrante of Naples endeavoured to enforce the claim of the rightful Duke, Giovanni Galeazzo. Alexander's indebtedness to Ascanio bound him at once to the Sforzas, and the imprudence of Ferrante in helping his commander, Virginio Orsini, to purchase from the nephew of the late Pope certain towns which Alexander regarded as Papal fiefs, gave him an occasion for animosity. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was implicated in this sale, and when the Pope angrily rebuked him, he fled to Ostia and fortified that commanding town. Alarmed at this cohesion of his enemies and the support of their designs by Florence, Alexander entered into a counter-league with Milan, Venice, Siena, Ferrara, and Mantua, and married his daughter to Giovanni Sforza. Ferrante, however, appealed to Spain, submitting (with the support of Cardinal della Rovere) that the corrupt election and profligate life of Alexander demanded the attention of a General Council, and the Pope sought a compromise. The matter of the towns in Romagna was adjusted, Alexander's son Jofre was betrothed to an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso of Calabria, and his younger son, Juan, Duke of Gandia, was wedded to a Spanish princess. Cæsar was destined for the Church and was made a cardinal on September 20, 1493. As Alexander had sworn before his election not to create new cardinals, and now calmly absolved himself from his promise and promoted several, the hostile cardinals again angrily deserted him.

Ferrante died on January 27, 1494, and the Pope had to confront a delicate problem. France, instigated by Milan, pressed a claim to the kingdom of Naples, and Alfonso II. demanded the investiture in succession to Ferrante. Charles of France refused to be consoled with the Golden Rose which Alexander sent him in refusing to recognize his claim to Naples, and he threatened a General Council or a separation of the French Church. When Alexander proceeded to take Ostia by force, driving Cardinal Giuliano to France, and sent Cæsar to crown Alfonso at Naples, the French monarch announced that he would lead his army into Italy in order to recover Naples, to reform the Church, and to conquer the Turks. The latter purpose furnished the Pope with a pretext for a disgraceful move. Djem, the brother of the Sultan Bajazet, had been enjoying the dissipations of Rome since 1489, and Bajazet paid the Papacy 40,000 ducats a year to keep his younger brother in this gilded captivity. Since Alexander's accession, Bajazet had refused to pay the fee, and the Pope now wrote to the Sultan to say that the King of France was coming to seize Djem and make him the pretext for a war on the Turks; Bajazet must at once send 40,000 ducats to enable him to resist the French. The Sultan sent the money, but his and the Pope's envoy were captured by Cardinal della Rovere's brother, and were relieved of the money and the Sultan's letter. When this letter was published, Christendom learned with horror that the Sultan had offered its Pope 300,000 ducats if he would have Djem assassinated.[281]

Of the war which followed little need be said. As the victorious French advanced, Alexander tremblingly vacillated. At one moment he imprisoned the pro-French cardinals, and then released them; and at another moment he packed his treasures for flight, and then decided to meet the French King. Alfonso bewailed that the Pope's arm was too weak or too cowardly to launch an anathema against the invader. In the end the Pope met and disarmed Charles. To the intense disgust of Giuliano della Rovere, who had come with the King in expectation of the tiara, he persuaded Charles that an Italian, even in the chair of Peter, could hardly be expected to lead a saintly life; and to the equal indignation of Alfonso he, while refusing to recognize Charles's claim to the throne of Naples, abandoned the Neapolitan alliance and gave his son Cæsar as a hostage of his good behaviour. With similar treachery to the Sultan he abandoned Djem to Charles, yet stipulated that the yearly 40,000 ducats should still go to the Papal treasury.[282]

Charles took Naples, and soon learned that the versatile Pope had, behind his back, entered into a league against him with Maximilian of Germany, Ferdinand of Spain, Venice, and Lodovico Sforza. Alexander prudently quitted Rome when the French King returned, and flung after him a feeble threat of anathema, as he was cutting his way through the allies. But by the aggrandizement of his family he made an evil use of the peace which followed. Cæsar was made legate for Naples and his nephew Juan legate for Perugia; and to his favourite son Juan, Duke of Gandia, he assigned the important Papal fief of the duchy of Benevento, to be held by him and his heirs for ever. Even loyal cardinals grumbled at the scandal, while the outspoken and more distant critics spread in every country the story of his private life. Alexander, delivered from the menace both of France and Naples, cast aside all restraint. But his gaiety was soon darkened by a grave tragedy, and it is, perhaps, the most precise and most damning characterization of the man to record that even this appalling catastrophe, occurring near the close of his seventh decade of life, did not disturb for more than a few months the licentious course of his conduct.

On June 14, 1497, Vannozza gave a banquet to her sons and a few friends in the suburbs. Cæsar and Juan returned to the city together, and were joined by a masked man who had for some weeks been seen in communication with the young Duke. Juan left his brother with a light hint that he had an assignation, and the same night he was murdered and his body thrown into the Tiber. We are as far as contemporaries were from identifying the murderer. That it was Cæsar Borgia few serious historians now believe. That suggestion did not arise until nine months after the murder, and the motives alleged are not convincing. It is more plausibly claimed that the Sforzas and the Orsini adopted this means of striking at the heart of the Pontiff, but it is equally possible that Juan incurred the penalty of some dangerous seduction. I am concerned only with Alexander. Appalled by this sudden clouding of his prosperity, the Pope summoned his cardinals and announced with tears that he would remove his children from Rome and abandon his corrupt ways. Six cardinals were at once appointed to draw up a scheme of Church-reform, and the draft of a Bull, which is still to be seen in the Vatican archives, shows with what devotion Cardinals Costa and Caraffa and their colleagues applied themselves to the long-desired task. But before the end of the year Alexander had returned to his vices and abandoned the idea of reform. He informed the cardinals that he wished to release Cæsar from membership of their College, in order that he might be free to contract an exalted marriage and pursue his ambition; and it was then (December, 1497) that he brought about the shameless divorce of Lucrezia from Giovanni Sforza. The Vatican chambers resumed their nightly gaiety.

The Orsini and the Colonna now buried their ancient and deadly feud and united with Naples, and the demand for a General Council was ominously echoed in Germany and Spain. Alexander sought at first a counterpoise in Naples, and wished to marry Cæsar and Lucrezia into the family of Alfonso. After some hesitation, and with marked reluctance, Alfonso II. gave his natural son Alfonso to Lucrezia, but he refused, in spite of the political advantage, to degrade his daughter Carlotta by a marriage with Cæsar. It is not immaterial to observe that Cæsar had, like four other cardinals of the Church, contracted the "French disease" which was then so fiercely punishing the vice of Italy. It happened that at that time Louis XII. sought a divorce, and, at first in the hope of bringing pressure on Naples, Cæsar, after resigning the cardinalate on August 17th, was sent to gratify and impress the French Court. Even Giuliano della Rovere, who lived quietly at Avignon, was induced to enter the intrigue. Carlotta and her father still disdained the connexion, but Louis offered Cæsar his young and beautiful niece, Charlotte d'Albret, and the counties of Valentinois and Diois. They were married on May 22d (1499), and the Papal policy entered upon a new phase.

The Papacy and Venice, preferring their selfish interests to the welfare of Italy, allied themselves with France, and for the hundredth time an invading army descended upon the plains of Lombardy. Spain and Portugal were now angrily threatening to have the Pope—who, with equal warmth, accused Isabella herself of unchastity—tried by a General Council for his scandalous actions, and he and Cæsar formed the design of establishing, with the aid of the French, a strong principality for Cæsar in central Italy. The Neapolitan alliance was discarded, and Bulls were issued to the effect that the Lords of Rimini, Pesaro, Imola, Faenza, Forli, Urbino, and Camerino had failed to discharge their feudal duties to the Papacy and had forfeited their fiefs. The victorious progress of Cæsar in these territories was checked for a time by a revolt at Milan, but that city was retaken by the French in 1500. The successful Jubilee of 1500, which at one time drew 100,000 pilgrims to Rome, filled the coffers and helped to exalt the spirit of the Pope. His character, indeed, seemed to become more buoyant and defiant as his age advanced. During that year he had a narrow escape from death, owing to the fall of the roof of the Sala de' Pape, and Lucrezia's husband was cut to pieces in his chamber by the soldiers, and at the command, of Cæsar. These events hardly dimmed the joy of the Pope. Cæsar received the Golden Rose and was made Gonfaloniere of the Church; and he was permitted to appropriate a large share of the Jubilee funds and to exact large sums from the cardinals whom the Pope promoted in 1500. Meantime, the ambassadors relate, Giulia Orsini retained her influence over the seventy-year old Pope, and other favorite made a transient appearance at the Vatican.

The next two years were employed in the establishment of Cæsar's power in Romagna and the reduction of the Pope's personal enemies. Louis of France and Ferdinand of Spain drew up their famous, or infamous, scheme for the partition of Naples, and Alexander conveniently discovered for them, and proclaimed in a Bull, that Federigo of Naples had, by an alliance with the Turks, become a traitor to Christendom. The fall of Naples involved the ruin of the Colonna, and they and the Savelli were condemned to lose their estates for rebellion against the Holy See. From part of these estates the Pope formed the duchy of Sermoneta for Lucrezia's two-year-old son, Rodrigo, and the duchy of Nepi was bestowed on his own infant son Juan. Alexander next turned his attention to Ferrara, and, when Venice and Florence forbade him to attack it, he arranged a marriage of the widowed Lucrezia with the Duke's son Alfonso: overcoming the abhorrence of the proud Este family by the influence of Louis XII. and by a grant to the Duke of all Church-dues in Ferrara for three years. From Ferrara, when it fell to his sister, Cæsar would have a comparatively easy march on Bologna, if not Florence.

So the year 1501 ended in such rejoicings as the fortune of the Borgia family inspired. At the date October 11, 1501, Burchard dispassionately notes in his diary that the Pope was unable to attend to his spiritual duties, but was not prevented from enjoying, in the Vatican, a "chestnut dance" and other performances of fifty nude courtesans whom Cæsar introduced.[283] Lucrezia, whose purity some recent writers are eager to vindicate, was present with her father and brother. On December 30th she was married. Alexander gave her the finest set of pearls in Europe and 100,000 ducats; and for a week Rome enjoyed such spectacles and bull-fights as had not been seen for years. Within the Vatican such comedies as the Menæchmi of Plautus were enacted before the Pope and his family and cardinals. Even tolerant Italy now broke into caustic criticisms, and Cæsar replied vigorously by the daggers of his followers. The Pope genially urged him to let men talk.

The last phase is, in its way, not less repulsive. By heartless treachery and brilliant fighting Cæsar spread his sway over central Italy and Alexander watched and spurred his progress. The Pope's attendants had to endure unaccustomed fits of anger and abuse when his son did not advance rapidly enough. He treacherously arrested Cardinal Orsini; and the Cardinal's aged mother, who was ejected from her palace, had to send to the Pope (by Orsini's mistress) a magnificent pearl which Alexander coveted before she was allowed to provide her son with decent food. Cardinal Orsini died, and his property was confiscated. Cardinal Michiel died, and his fortune of 150,000 ducats was appropriated. The College of Cardinals trembled and the famous legend of the Borgia poison spread over Italy.[284] Nine new cardinals, mostly of unworthy character, were created and are said to have paid 130,000 ducats for the dignity, and 64,000 ducats were raised by inventing new offices in the Curia. Alexander, although seventy-two years old, was in robust health, and looked forward to years of pleasure under the protection of his victorious son. And one night in the unhealthy heat of August (the 5th or 6th) he and Cæsar sat late at supper with Cardinal Adriano da Corneto. Romance has it that the poisoned wine they intended for their host was served to them: modern history is content with the known malaria of an autumn night.[285] On August 18th Alexander died, and both Cæsar and Cardinal Adriano were seriously ill.

Of other actions of Alexander his connexion with Savonarola alone demands some consideration, and it must be treated briefly. On July 25, 1495, Alexander, in friendly terms, summoned Savonarola to Rome to give an account of the prophetic gifts he claimed. Alexander was very tolerant of criticisms of his vices, except where they might provoke kings to summon a council, and it is probable that he wished to silence the politician rather than the preacher; Savonarola vigorously supported the idea of an alliance of Florence with France, which the Pope opposed. Savonarola evaded the summons to Rome, and the Pope suspended him from preaching and endeavoured to destroy his authority by joining the San Marco convent to the Lombard Congregation. Savonarola defeated the Pope on the latter point, and on February 11, 1496, he returned to his pulpit, in defiance of the Pope's order and at the command of the Signoria of Florence. In explanation of his act he urged that Alexander's Brief was based on false information and invalid, and he denounced Roman corruption more freely than ever. Alexander, in November, directed that a new congregation should be formed out of the Roman and Tuscan convents,[286] and when Savonarola and his monks again defeated the project, the Pope had recourse to secular measures.

A mind like that of the exalted and feverish preacher was not likely to escape error and exaggeration in such circumstances, and his opponents in Florence made progress. Alexander now offered the coveted possession of Pisa to the Signoria if they would desert Savonarola and the idea of a French alliance. The monk was forbidden by the authorities to preach, and his defiance of the Signoria as well as the Papacy led to disorders of which the Pope took advantage to publish a sentence of excommunication (June 18, 1497). Alexander had meantime again listened to entreaties of delay and inquiry, but when he heard that the monk defied his anathema he said that the sentence must take its course. Up to this point the Pope had, in view of the very strong support which Savonarola had at Florence, proceeded with moderation, though we may resent the insincerity of his attack; it was not the prophecies, but the policy and the puritanism, of Savonarola which interested him. He complained bitterly to the Florentine ambassadors of Savonarola's attacks on himself and the cardinals, and was, as always, alarmed by the monk's demand of a General Council. However, the monk, not realizing the progress made by his enemies, struck a louder note of defiance, and on the plea of the public disorders to which he gave rise, he was arrested and put on trial. Alexander willingly granted the authorities a tithe on the ecclesiastical property at Florence when they announced the arrest. The sensitive monk was, by torture, driven into some vague disavowal of his supernatural pretensions, and he and two other friars were, on May 23, 1498, hanged by the Florentine authorities as "heretics, schismatics, and contemners of the Holy See." The sentence, however corruptly obtained, was technically just, since in the legislation of the time contumacious defiance of the Papacy implied heresy; but the respective positions of Savonarola and Alexander VI. in the history of religious progress are a sufficient monument to the bravery and inflexibility of the great Florentine puritan.

There are few good deeds to be put in the scale against the crimes and vices of Alexander VI. He made a considerable, though futile, effort to rouse Christendom against the advancing Turks. He fortified Sant' Angelo, and engaged Pinturicchio to decorate the Vatican apartments. He pressed the propagation of the faith in the New World, ordered the examination and authorization of printed books, endeavoured to check heresy in Bohemia, and vigorously defended the rights of the Church in the Netherlands. These things cannot alter our estimate of his character. He was a selfish voluptuary of—in view of his position—the most ignoble type; he countenanced and employed fraud, treachery, and crime; and the condition in which we shall soon find the Papacy will show that his policy had not the redeeming merit of effecting the security of the institution over which he ignominiously presided.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIII

JULIUS II.: THE FIGHTING POPE

The single merit which sober historians award to Alexander VI. is that, in forming a powerful principality for his son in central Italy, he was re-establishing the States of the Church and ensuring the protection of the Papacy. The course of events after his death prevents us from acknowledging this claim, and Alexander himself must have been well aware that Cæsar Borgia would, if his State endured, protect the Papacy only on condition that he might continue to dominate it. He told Machiavelli that he had made ample preparation to secure his position at the death of his father, but his own illness wrecked his plans. This is untrue. He was quite able to direct his servants and at his father's death they began to enforce his blustering policy. Some forced their way, at the point of the dagger, to the Papal treasury, and carried off the money and plate left by the Pope: leaving his enormous debts to his successor. Others sought to intimidate the cardinals. But Cæsar's power in the North at once began to crumble, his enemies gathered in force from all sides, and he was defeated. The cardinals would not assemble until his troops, and those of France, Spain, and Venice, withdrew from Rome.

The chief contest in the Conclave, which began on September 16th, lay between the French Cardinal D'Amboise and Giuliano della Rovere, who returned from Avignon. Neither could secure the necessary majority, and Cardinal Piccolomini, nephew of Pius II., was chosen to occupy the throne until a stronger man could prevail. The more luxurious cardinals may have smiled at the rejoicing with which reformers greeted the aged and virtuous Pius III., for they knew that he suffered from an incurable malady. He died, in fact, ten days after his coronation, or on October 18th, and the struggle was renewed. Giuliano della Rovere now pushed his ambition with equal energy and unscrupulousness. He promised Cæsar Borgia, who controlled the extensive Spanish vote, that he would respect his possessions and make him Gonfaloniere of the Church[287]; he distributed money among the cardinal-voters; he agreed to the capitulation that whoever was elected should summon a council for the purpose of reform within two years, and should not make war on any Power without the consent of two thirds of the cardinals. He worked so well that the Conclave, which met on October 31st, was one of the shortest in the history of the Papacy. Within three hours the sealed window was broken open and the election of Julius II. was announced.

We have in the last chapter followed the romantic early career of Giuliano della Rovere. He was born on December 5, 1443, at Albizzola, near Savona, of a poor and obscure family. His uncle, being first a professor and then General of the Franciscan Order, sent him to be educated in one of the monasteries of that Order. Some historians strangely doubt whether he actually took the religious vows, but it was assuredly not the custom of the friars to keep young men in their monasteries to the age of twenty-eight unless they were members of the fraternity. At that age (in 1471) Fra Giuliano and his cousin Fra Pietro heard that their uncle had become Sixtus IV., and they were raised to the cardinalate.

Giuliano did not emulate the vices which carried off his younger cousin within two years. He "lived much as the other prelates of that day did," says Guicciardini, in a sober estimate of his character, and his three known daughters confirm the great historian of the time; but he kept a comparatively moderate palace and spent money on a refined patronage of art and culture. He displayed some military talent when he commanded the Papal troops in Umbria in 1474, and afterwards served as Legate in France (1476) and the Netherlands (1480). He, as we saw, maintained his position after his uncle's death by corruptly ensuring the election of Innocent VIII. and exercising a paramount influence over that Pontiff. His power inflamed the animosity of his rivals, and at the accession of Alexander VI. he was driven from Italy. From his quiet retreat in Avignon he instigated the French monarch to invade Italy and depose Alexander, and, when Alexander gracefully disarmed Charles, Giuliano returned in disgust to Avignon. It is true that in 1499 he rendered some service to Alexander, in connexion with Cæsar's marriage, but he felt it safer to remain in Avignon until the announcement of Alexander's death recalled his many enemies to Rome.[288]

In 1503, at the date of his election, Julius II. had long outlived his early irregularities, and had no personal vices beyond a fiery temper and a taste for wine which his enemies magnified into a scandal. The familiar portrait by Raphael brings him closer to us than any of the Pontiffs whom we have yet considered. He was then in his sixtieth year, with a scanty sprinkling of grey locks on his massive head, and with an aspect of energy and determination which must have been lessened by the long white beard he grew in later life. Though troubled—like most of the Popes of this period—with gout, he was still erect and dignified, and the cardinals, who had hardly seen him for ten years, can have had little suspicion of the volcanic fires which were concealed by his habitual silence and quiet enjoyment of culture. They soon learned that they had created a master, and they lamented that he united the manners of a peasant with the vigour of a soldier. He consulted none, and he lavished epithets on those who lingered in the execution of his commands. Yet this brusque and abusive soldier was destined, not merely to place the Papal States on a surer foundation than ever, but to do far more even than Leo X. for the artistic enhancement of Rome.

The supreme aim which Julius held in view from the beginning of his Pontificate was the restoration of the Papal possessions, but I may dismiss first the actions or events which have a more personal relation. He heard or said mass daily, and paid a strict regard to his ecclesiastical duties. He reorganized the administration of the city and the Campagna, suppressed disorder, purified the tribunals, reformed the coinage, and in many other respects corrected the vices of his predecessor, whom he had loathed. These marañas (half-converted Spanish Jews), as he called the Borgias, had fouled Italy with their presence. He improved the Papal table, which had been singularly poor under Alexander, but the vicious parasites whom Alexander had encouraged now shrank from the Vatican. At first he indulged the characteristic Papal weakness, nepotism. At his first Consistory (November 29, 1503) two of the four cardinals promoted were members of his family—his uncle and nephew—and two years later he married his natural daughter Felicia to one of the Orsini, his niece Lucrezia to one of the Colonna, and his nephew Niccolò della Rovere to Giulia Orsini's daughter Laura. One cannot say, as some historians do, that he was no nepotist; though one may admit that, in the words of Guicciardini, "he did not carry nepotism beyond due bounds." To the obligations he had contracted in bargaining for the Papacy he was quite unscrupulously blind, and, although he issued a drastic Bull against simony in 1505 (January 14th), his grand plans imposed on him such an expenditure that he even increased the sale of offices and indulgences until the annual income of the Papacy rose to 350,000 ducats.

Julius at once made it plain that he was not only determined to recover the Papal States, but would override any moral obligation or sentimental prejudice in the pursuit of his object. The treasury was empty, and he had contracted, at the price of several Spanish votes, to respect the person and possessions of Cæsar Borgia. But Venice had encouraged the petty lords of Romagna to recover the places which Cæsar had wrested from them, and itself had designs on some of the towns. Grasping the pretext that the whole of Romagna was thus in danger, Julius summoned Cæsar to surrender the remaining strongholds to the Church. When Cæsar refused, he found himself a prisoner of the Pope, instead of Gonfaloniere of his troops, and he seems to have been dazed by the sudden collapse of his brilliant fortune. Spain withdrew the Spanish mercenaries from Cæsar's service, Venice occupied Faenza and Rimini, and most of his towns cast off their enforced allegiance. After a futile struggle with the Pope the fallen prince surrendered to Julius his three remaining towns—Cesena, Forli, and Bertinoro—and was allowed to retire to Naples. There, at the treacherous instigation of the Pope,[289] he was arrested and sent to Spain. He escaped from Spain two years afterwards, and died in 1507, fighting in a petty war on a foreign soil.

Venice, now at the height of her power and flushed with wealth and conquest, paid little heed when, in the winter of 1503-4, Julius made repeated demands for the restoration of the places she had seized in Romagna. She had, she said, not taken them from the Church, and the Church would, if she restored them, hand them to some other "nephew." The Venetian ambassador at Rome seems to have miscalculated entirely the energy of the Pope, and Venice probably thought that her support of his candidature and his lack of troops and resources promised a profitable compromise; nor can we wonder if statesmen failed at times to see the justice of the Roman contention, that seizure by the sword was a legitimate title in princes who gave cities to the Church but wholly invalid in princes who took them from the Church. Venice offered to pay tribute for the towns which had been Papal fiefs. This Julius sharply refused, and he appealed to France, Spain, and the Emperor to assist him. Toward the close of the year (September 22, 1504) Louis and Maximilian concluded an agreement at Blois to join Julius against Venice, but a quarrel destroyed the compact, and Julius had again to deal with Venice. The Venetians surrendered all but Faenza and Rimini, and Julius, with a protest that the retention of these towns was unjustified, resumed amicable relations with them.

The Pope's next move has won the admiration of many historians, though it has prompted so liberal a judge as Creighton to exclaim that "his cynical consciousness of political wrong-doing" is "as revolting as the frank unscrupulousness of Alexander VI." During the period of disintegration of the Papal States the Baglioni had mastered Perugia and the Bentivogli had taken possession of Bologna. Julius had at his accession confirmed the position at Bologna, but in the spring of 1506 he resolved to recover both cities. France and Spain hesitated to lend their aid for this project, and on August 26th he impetuously ended the slow negotiations by sending a peremptory order to France to assist him and setting out at the head of his troops. With only five hundred horse—though he had sent on an envoy to engage Swiss mercenaries—Julius and nine of his cardinals set out on the long march to Perugia. At Orvieto his anxiety found some relief. Giampaolo Baglione, realizing the force which the Pope would eventually command, came to surrender Perugia, and at the beginning of September Julius sang a solemn mass in the Franciscan convent at Perugia which had once been his home. His energy was now fully aroused, in spite of the discouragement of the word sent by Louis XII. It is said that he already talked of leading his valiant troops against the Turks when he had settled the affairs of Italy. He crossed the hills, in bleak early-winter weather, in spite of gout, at the head of his 2500 men, and boldly sent on to Bentivoglio a sentence of excommunication and interdict. Bentivoglio—more deeply moved by the approach of 4000 French soldiers—fled, and, again without striking a blow, the Pope entered Bologna in triumph on November 11th.[290] After spending five months in the reorganization of government he returned to Rome on March 28th (1507) and enjoyed a magnificent ovation. It may give a juster idea of his mental power to add that he had already (on April 18, 1506) laid the first stone of the new St. Peter's designed on so vast a scale by Bramante.

Three months after his return to Rome Julius had fresh and grave reason for anxiety. France and Spain had composed their differences, and in June of that year Ferdinand was to sail from Naples to meet the French King at Savona. Julius moved down to Ostia to greet him, and must have been profoundly disturbed when the galley conveying Ferdinand and his young French wife passed the port without a word. He would hear that the two Kings held long and secret conferences at Savona, and that among the five cardinals with them was D'Amboise, Louis's chief minister, who still hungered for the tiara of which Julius had robbed him. There had for some time been bad news from France. Louis was reported as saying: "The Rovere are a peasant family; nothing but the stick on his back will keep the Pope in order." Julius sent Cardinal Pallavicino to Savona, but he was not admitted to the counsels of the monarchs. It was rumoured that they meditated the reform of the Church: which meant a council and an inquiry into the election of Julius II.

Papal diplomacy, which, when Papal interests were endangered, never considered "Italian independence," for a moment now dictated an alliance with the Emperor-elect, Maximilian, who had himself proposed to come to Rome for his coronation. There are vague indications that that dreamy monarch already entertained the idea of uniting the tiara with the imperial crown on his own head.[291] However that may be, Julius sent Cardinal Carvajal to dissuade him from coming to Rome, to bring about an alliance of the Christian Powers against the Turks (which would disarm Ferdinand and Louis as regards Julius), and to enter into a special alliance with France and Germany against Venice. The Papal envoy Aretini told the Venetian envoy that, when the danger to Italy from an alliance of Louis and Maximilian was pointed out, Julius exclaimed: "Perish the whole of Italy provided I get my way."[292] The proposal was, at all events, treacherous; for both Julius and Maximilian had treaties of peace with Venice. But the age of which Machiavelli has codified the guiding principles was insensible to considerations of political honesty. Maximilian attacked Venice and was defeated, because she had the support of France. Then France was poisoned against the prosperous Republic, and the League of Cambrai was formed on December 10, 1508: Maximilian, Louis, and Ferdinand entered into a secret alliance for the destruction of Venice, and the Pope, as well as the Kings of England and Hungary, were invited to join in the act of brigandage.

It is clear that Julius hesitated for some months to join the League; though his hesitation was probably due to some anxiety at the prospect of seeing the victorious armies of France and Germany in Italy once more. He tried to induce the Venetians to restore Faenza and Rimini to him and merit his protection. When they refused, he joined the League (March 23d) and put his spiritual censure on the Venetians. The campaign occupied only a few weeks, and the vast territory of the Republic was divided among the conquerors, the Pope receiving Ravenna and Cervia as well as Faenza and Rimini. But the ill fortune and anxiety of Venice promised him further gains if he would break faith with his allies and deal separately with the Republic. To preserve the remnants of their territory the Venetians approached the Pope. At first he exacted formidable sacrifices, and, when they refused and importuned him, he went to his palace at Civita Vecchia to enjoy the rest, if not the pleasures, which Roman gossip so darkly misrepresented.[293] He perceived, however, that the annihilation of Venice would endanger his own security, and in time he accepted the evacuation of Romagna and the abandonment of the Venetian exercise of authority over the clergy.

Louis XII. learned with great indignation in the summer of 1509 that Julius had not only withdrawn from the League of Cambrai, but was now endeavouring to form a league with Venice, Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Henry VIII. against himself. Henry and Maximilian refused to join, but Julius engaged fifteen thousand Swiss and added these to the Papal and Venetian troops. As the Duke of Ferrara was leagued with the French against Venice, and refused to follow the Pope's political example, Julius issued against him an anathema which a writer of the time describes as making his hair stand on end, and resolved to add Ferrara to the growing Papal States. In August he set out once more, dressed in simple rochet, with the troops, and made the tiring march to Bologna. There his great plans nearly came to a premature end. The Swiss failed him, and the French appeared in force before Bologna, where he lay seriously ill and greatly disedifying his attendants by the vehemence of his rage. No doubt his threats of suicide, which are recorded, were merely vague and rhetorical expressions of his despair. He saved himself, however, by a deceptive negotiation with the French commander until his reinforcements arrived, and, as his health recovered, his vigorous resolution became almost ferocious. The long white beard in Raphael's portrait of him reminds us how, at this time, he swore that he would not shave again until he had driven the French from Italy. Louis was now taking practical steps toward the summoning of a General Council, and the temper of the Pope was terrible to witness. In the depth of winter, not yet wholly recovered from his long fever, he rejoined the troops, sharing the hardships of camp-life and stormily scolding his generals for their slowness. He never led troops on the field, but he interfered in the placing of artillery and more than once exposed himself to fire. At the capitulation of Mirandola he shocked his cardinals by ordering that any foreign soldiers found in the town should be put to the sword.

He spent some months thus passing from town to town, infusing his fiery energy into the troops, but his successes and his personal conduct of the war inflamed the indignation of the French King. Louis not only sent reinforcements to his army, but he, with his adherent cardinals, arranged for the holding of a General Council on Italian soil. Perdam Babylonis Nomen ("I will erase the very name of Babylon") was the terrible motto he now placed on his medals. In quick succession the Pope learned that the Bentivogli had recovered Bologna and derisively broken into fragments the magnificent statue of Julius which Michael Angelo had erected: that his favourite Cardinal Alidosi had been assassinated by his (the Pope's) nephew and commander the Duke of Urbino; and that Louis and Maximilian, with the seceded cardinals, had announced a General Council of the Church at Pisa and summoned Julius II. to appear before it.

The attendants who marched by the Pope's closed litter, as he returned to Rome on June 26, 1511, concluded from his unrestrained sobs and groans that his power, if not his life, approached its end. His health was ruined and his troops were scattered. But there was an energy mightier than that of Hildebrand in his worn frame, and with some improvement in his condition he raised his head once more. He had in the spring created eight new cardinals, to replace the seceders, and he now announced that a real Ecumenical Council would assemble at the Lateran on April 19, 1512. That was his answer to Pisa, and to the Papal aspirations of the Cardinal of Rouen and the Emperor-elect. He again fell dangerously ill—so ill that his death was confidently expected. Election-intrigue filled the corridors of the Vatican, and a band of democrats held a meeting in the Capitol and decided, at his death, to restore the republican liberty of Rome. In a few weeks the terrible old man rose from his bed, thin and white but with unbroken energy, and scattered the intriguers. He anathematized the schismatical cardinals, and announced (October 4th) that he had formed a Holy League with Ferdinand of Spain and Venice for the defence of the Church; Maximilian was presently induced to join the League, and before the end of 1511 Henry VIII. was persuaded, by a promise of assistance in his designs on France, to give it his adhesion. Only three months before Julius had apparently lain at the point of death, his new possessions utterly ruined. Now he once more commanded the situation. The schismatical Council of Pisa, which opened on November 1st, turned out a puny French conciliabulum, with fourteen bishops and five abbots to represent the universal Church.

The campaign which began in January need not be followed in detail. After a series of varying engagements the French won a crushing victory at Ravenna, and there was panic at Rome. The cardinals demanded peace with France, but Giulio de' Medici, cousin of Cardinal Giovanni, who had been captured by the French, now came to describe the exhausted condition of the French army, and Julius resolved to prosecute the war. He opened his General Council at the Lateran on May 3rd, and had at least the satisfaction of seeing seventy Italian bishops respond to his summons. Then, covering his preparations by a pretence of considering the terms which Louis XII. offered him, he engaged further troops, fired his commanders, and induced Maximilian to withdraw the four thousand Tirolese mercenaries from the French ranks. In a few weeks the French were driven out of Italy, the schismatics were forced to transfer their discredited Council to French soil, and the Pope found himself master of Bologna, Ravenna, Rimini, Cesena, Parma, Piacenza, and Reggio. In appraising Julius as founder of the Papal States one must bear in mind the history of this remarkable period. In October, 1511, Julius was stricken and apparently ruined; by the summer of 1512 he was master of the richest provinces of Italy. But he had not left Rome, and his personal action at this juncture was slight in comparison with those tremendous earlier exertions which had ended in disastrous failure.

Julius was far from satisfied, and his conduct in the hour of victory was at the low political level of the time. He assisted the Medici to impose themselves again on Florence, and the Sforza to recover Milan. He then made a lamentable effort to secure Ferrara. The Duke came to Rome, under a safe-conduct of the Papal General Fabrizio Colonna, and of the Spanish ambassador, to plead that he had acted only in honourable discharge of his engagements to France, Julius had approved the safe-conduct, but when the Duke refused to surrender his territory to the Church, the Pope affected to discover that he had committed crimes not covered by the safe-conduct and detained him. The Colonna redeemed the credit of Italy by cutting their way through the Papal guards and restoring Alfonso, after romantic adventures, to his duchy. When the poet Ariosto was afterwards sent by Alfonso to make peace with the Pope, he had to fly for his life; Julius, in one of his now frequent outbursts of violence, threatened to have him thrown into the sea.

To the end Julius pursued his tortuous diplomacy. Neither Spain nor Germany wished to see any increase of his power, and he was forced to abandon his designs on Ferrara. He then disrupted his Holy League, and made a fresh alliance with Maximilian against Venice and to the disadvantage of Spain. Julius was concerned about the growing power of Spain in Italy; and we shall hardly be unjust if we suspect that, as Alexander VI. had done, he dreamed of adding Naples to the Papal dominion. But he never entirely recovered his health, and his great schemes were closed by death on February 20, 1513. He was neither a great soldier nor a great statesman. There is no indication that his interference in the military operations was useful, and, as I pointed out, the one permanently successful campaign was fought while he directed an ecclesiastical Council at Rome. In the sphere of politics and diplomacy he relied on cunning and deceit rather than statesmanship, and, if he had not represented a spiritual power to which the nations were bound to return in the end, he would have been mercilessly crushed. He had, also, little ability to organize such possessions as he obtained, and his career is marred by violent outbursts and acts of treachery and cruelty. It is sometimes said that he was the greatest Pope since Innocent III. One imagines the shade of that great spiritual ruler shuddering; and one is disposed to agree with Guicciardini that, if Julius was great, a new meaning must be put on the word. He had wonderful energy, and by good fortune his aim was finally attained.

In view of this strenuous campaign for the recovery of the Papal States, we can expect only a slender record of strictly Pontifical work. Julius attended to the propagation of the faith in the new lands beyond the seas, and he impelled the Inquisitors to check the spread of heresy. That he restrained the Spanish Inquisition, and supported its exclusion from Naples, was not due to humane feeling, but to its exorbitant claims of independent authority. He forbade duelling, and endowed a college of singing for the maintenance of the Papal Choir. His Lateran Council was, of course, a political expedient, but there is evidence that when death closed his career Julius was turning more seriously to plans of reform. In spite of his own Bull against simony, the Curia remained as corrupt as ever, and money was raised in all the evil ways known to it. It is, however, curious and creditable to have to place one great reform to the merit of Julius. He passed so drastic a decree against corruption at Papal elections that the rivals who gathered in Rome after his death did not dare to employ bribery.

Julius is probably most deserving of esteem for his artistic work. The literary parasites who swarmed about his successor have associated the glory of late mediæval Rome with the name of Leo X., but discriminating research is convincing historians that Leo did not even sustain the great work of his predecessor. The bold scheme which Julius adopted was due to his artists rather than to his own inspiration, yet he has the distinction—no mean distinction for one immersed, as he was, in an exacting policy—of reflecting at once the vast ideas which were put before him. The new St. Peter's which he was compelled to think of building was not intended at first to be of great dimensions, but he accepted Bramante's design of a church far larger even than the St. Peter's of today, and, in spite of his costly wars, he enabled the architect to employ 2500 workers. He accepted Bramante's designs for a new Vatican and for the Cortile di Damaso. He engaged Michael Angelo to carve a princely marble tomb for himself—his one great luxury—and, when his interest was transferred to the less selfish task of building St. Peter's, he set the artist to the execution of his immortal work on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. Michael Angelo made also, as I have noted, a great statue of Julius at Bologna, but this was destroyed at the return of the Bentivogli. There were many quarrels between the two men, but Michael Angelo found in Julius a manliness and a greatness of conception, if not a feeling for art, the lack of which he bitterly criticized in Leo X.

Cristoforo Romano, Sansovino, Perugino, Signorelli, Pinturicchio, and other great artists were enlisted in the work of making the ecclesiastical quarter of Rome the artistic centre of the world. Some of the finest of the old Greek sculptures which were then being sought in the rubbish of mediæval Italy were bought for the Belvidere, and painters of distinction were richly encouraged. New frescoes and new tombs were ordered in the churches of Rome; the walls and aqueducts were repaired; handsome new streets were laid out; and the cardinals and wealthier citizens were moved to co-operate with the Pontiff in his plans for the exaltation of Rome. We may deplore that the money for these plans was largely obtained by the sale of spiritual offices and indulgences, and we must resent the fact that money obtained by these means was diverted to the purposes of war. But the magnificence of the design and the generosity with which Julius prosecuted it as long as he lived seem to be a more solid and enduring merit than his good fortune—for in the decisive stage it was little more—in recovering a rich dominion which would but serve to enhance the frivolity of his successor.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIV

LEO X. AND THE DANCE OF DEATH

When Julius II. made his last survey of the world in which he had played so vigorous a part, he must have concluded that he had placed the Papacy on a foundation more solid than any that had yet supported it. The Conciliar movement, its most threatening enemy in the mind of the Popes, had been discredited by the failure of its latest effort and by the naked ambitions of those who supported it. The princes of the world had proved less stubborn than in the days of the early Emperors, and the Papacy had now a broad and strong base of secular power. The new culture had been, to a great extent, wooed and won by the Pope's princely patronage of art and embellishment of Rome; and the Inquisition, in one form or other, could silence the intractable. There was still, among the dour and distant northerners, much cavilling at the avarice and luxury of Rome, but, if the succeeding Popes used the Lateran Council to ensure some measure of reform, it would diminish; it had, in any case, not yet proved dangerous. Neither Julius nor any other had the least suspicion that the Papacy was within five years of the beginning of an appalling catastrophe.

We have, however, seen that the opinions which were to bring about that catastrophe had long been diffused in Europe, and a particular conjunction of circumstances might at any time convert them into rebellious action. For more than a century, there had been a critical scrutiny of the bases of Papal power, and to a large extent the Papacy had escaped the consequences by a greater liberality toward rulers and by sharing with them the wealth it extracted from the people. France maintained the Pragmatic Sanction, which Rome detested, and other countries gave rather the impression of federation than of abject submission to a spiritual autocracy. Moreover, while the pressure of the central power was eased, doctrinal rebellion seemed to make little progress. Lollardism was extinct, Hussitism confined to a sect, Savonarolism murdered. Yet the Reformation was coming, and we see now that Luther was but the instrument of its deliverance.