Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

reorganized the University of Rome, and opened to the public the

Capitoline Museum that Paul II had established; this was the first

public museum in Europe. During his pontificate, and largely under the

direction of Baccio Pontelli, the churches of Santa Maria della Pace

and Santa Maria del Popolo were erected, and many others were

repaired. In Santa Maria del Popolo Mino da Fiesole and Andrea

Bregno sculptured a noble tomb for Cardinal Cristoforo della Rovere

(c. 1477); and in Santa Maria in Aracoeli Pinturicchio pictured the

career of San Bernardino of Siena in some of the finest frescoes in

Rome (c. 1484).

The Sistine Chapel was designed by Giovannino de' Dolci, simply

and unpretentiously, for semiprivate worship by the popes and high

ecclesiastics. It was beautified with a marble sanctuary screen by

Mino da Fiesole, and by spacious frescoes recounting on the south wall

scenes from the life of Moses, and on the north wall corresponding

scenes from the life of Christ. For these paintings Sixtus called to

Rome the greatest masters of the time: Perugino, Signorelli,

Pinturicchio, Domenico and Benedetto Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Cosimo

Roselli, and Piero di Cosimo. Sixtus offered an additional reward

for the best picture of the fifteen painted there by these men.

Roselli, knowing his own inferiority in design, decided to stake all

on brilliant coloring; his fellow artists laughed at his lavish spread

of ultramarine and gold; but Sixtus gave him the prize.

The warrior pope brought other painters to Rome, and organized

them into a protective guild under the aegis of St. Luke. It was for

Sixtus that Melozzo da Forli did his best work. Coming to Rome about

1472 after studying with Piero della Francesca, he painted in the

church of Santi Apostoli a fresco of the Ascension which aroused the

enthusiasm of Vasari; all but a few fragments of it disappeared when

the church was rebuilt (1702f). Gracious and tender are the Angel

and the Virgin of the Annunciation in the Uffizi Gallery, but

finer still the Angeli musicanti - one with a viol, one with a

lute- in the Vatican. Melozzo's masterpiece was painted as a fresco in

the Vatican Library, and was later transferred to canvas. Against

the ornate pillars and ceiling of the Library six figures are

portrayed with veracity and power: Sixtus seated, massive and regal;

at his right the gay Pietro Riario; standing before him the tall

dark Giuliano della Rovere; kneeling before him the high-browed

Platina, receiving appointment as librarian; and behind him Giovanni

della Rovere and Count Girolamo Riario; it is a living picture of an

eventful pontificate.

In 1475 the Vatican Library contained 2527 volumes in Latin and

Greek; Sixtus added 1100 more, and for the first time threw the

collection open to the public. He restored the humanists to favor,

though he paid them with preoccupied irregularity. He called Filelfo

to Rome, and that warrior of the pen praised the Pope enthusiastically

until his annual salary of 600 florins ($15,000) fell into arrears.

Joannes Argyropoulos was invited from Florence to Rome, where his

lectures on the Greek language and literature were attended by

cardinals, bishops, and foreign students like Reuchlin. Sixtus also

brought to Rome the German scientist Johann Muller- Regiomontanus-

and commissioned him to correct the Julian calendar; but Muller died

a year later (1476), and calendar reform had to wait a century

more (1582).

It is remarkable that a Franciscan friar and professor of philosophy

and theology should have become the first secularizing pope of the

Renaissance- or, more precisely, the first Renaissance pope whose

chief interest was to establish the papacy as a strong political power

in Italy. Perhaps excepting the case of Ferrara, whose able rulers had

faithfully paid their feudal dues, Sixtus was perfectly justified in

seeking to make the Papal States papal, and to make Rome and its

environs safe for the popes. History might forgive, as it has forgiven

Julius II, his use of war for these ends; it might acknowledge that

his diplomacy merely followed the amoral principles of other states;

but it finds no pleasure in watching a pope conspire with assassins,

bless cannon, or wage war with a thoroughness that shocked his time;

the death of a thousand men at Campo Morto was a heavier loss of

life than any battle yet fought in Renaissance Italy. The morality

of the Roman court was further lowered by reckless nepotism and

unblushing simony, and the costly indecent revels of his kin; in these

and other ways Sixtus IV made straight the way for Alexander VI, and

contributed- as he responded- to the moral disintegration of Italy. It

was Sixtus who appointed Torquemada to head the Spanish Inquisition;

Sixtus who, provoked by the virulence and license of Roman satire,

gave the Inquisitors in Rome power to prohibit the printing of any

book they did not like. At his death he might have admitted many

failures- against Lorenzo, Naples, Ferrara, Venice- and even the

Colonna were not yet subdued. Three significant successes he had

achieved: he had made Rome a fairer and healthier city, he had given

it invigorating drafts of fresh art, and he had restored the papacy to

its place among the most powerful monarchies in Europe.

VII. INNOCENT VIII: 1484-92

-

The failure of Sixtus was confirmed by the chaos that ruled Rome

after his death. Mobs sacked the papal granaries, broke into the banks

of the Genoese, attacked the palace of Girolamo Riario. Vatican

attendants stripped the Vatican of its furniture. The noble factions

armed themselves; barricades were thrown up in the streets; Girolamo

was forced to quit his campaign against the Colonna and lead his

troops back to the city; the Colonna recaptured many of their

citadels. A conclave was hastily assembled in the Vatican, and an

exchange of promises and bribes `051549 between Cardinal Borgia and

Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere secured the election of Giovanni

Battista Cibo of Genoa, who took the name of Innocent VIII.

He was fifty-two; tall and handsome, kindly and peaceable to the

point of complaisant weakness; of moderate intelligence and

experience; a contemporary described him as "not wholly

ignorant." `051550 He had at least one son and one daughter,

probably more; `051551 he acknowledged them candidly, and after taking

priestly orders he led an apparently celibate life. Though the Roman

wits wrote epigrams about his children, few Romans held it against the

Pope that he had been so fertile in his youth. But they raised

eyebrows when he celebrated the marriages of his children and

grandchildren in the Vatican.

In truth Innocent was content to be a grandfather, to enjoy domestic

affection and ease. He gave Politian two hundred ducats for dedicating

to him a translation of Herodotus, but for the rest he hardly bothered

his head about the humanists. He continued leisurely, and quite by

proxy, the repair and adornment of Rome. He engaged Antonio Pollaiuolo

to build the Villa Belvedere in the Vatican gardens, and Andrea

Mantegna to paint frescoes in a chapel adjoining it; but for the

most part he left the patronage of letters and art to magnates and

cardinals. In a similar mood of genial laissez-faire he entrusted

foreign policy first to Cardinal della Rovere, then to Lorenzo de'

Medici. The powerful banker offered his richly dowered daughter

Maddalena as a bride for the Pope's son Franceschetto Cibo; Innocent

was agreeable, and signed an alliance with Florence (1487); thereafter

he allowed the experienced and pacific Florentine to guide the papal

policy. For five years Italy enjoyed peace.

The age of Innocent was amused by one of the strangest comedies in

history. After the death of Mohammed II (1481) his sons Bajazet II and

Djem fought a civil war for the Ottoman throne. Defeated at Brusa,

Djem sought to escape death by surrendering to the Knights of St. John

in Rhodes (1482). Their Grand Master, Pierre d'Aubusson, held him as a

threat over Bajazet. The Sultan agreed to pay the Knights 45,000

ducats yearly, ostensibly for Djem's maintenance, actually as an

inducement not to set up Djem as a pretender to the Turkish

sultanate and a useful ally in a Christian crusade. To better

safeguard so lucrative a prisoner, d'Aubusson sent him to Knightly

custody in France. The Sultan of Egypt, Ferdinand and Isabella of

Spain, Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, Ferrante of Naples, and

Innocent himself all offered large sums to d'Aubusson to transfer Djem

to their care. The Pope won because, in addition to ducats, he

promised the Grand Master a red hat, and helped Charles VIII of France

to secure the hand and province of Anne of Brittany. So, on March

13, 1489, the "Grand Turk," as Djem was now called, was escorted in

princely cavalcade through the streets of Rome to the Vatican, and

received courteous and luxurious imprisonment. Bajazet, to ensure

the honorable intentions of the Pope, sent him three years' salary for

the upkeep of Djem; and in 1492 he dispatched to Innocent what he

assured him was the head of the lancet that had pierced the side of

Christ. Some cardinals were skeptical, but the Pope arranged that

the relic should be brought from Ancona to Rome; when it reached the

Porta del Popolo he himself received it and bore it in solemn ceremony

to the Vatican. Cardinal Borgia held it aloft for the people's

reverence, and then returned to his mistress.

Despite the Sultan's contribution to the support of the Church,

Innocent found it troublesome to make ends meet. Like Sixtus IV and

most of the rulers of Europe, he replenished his coffers by charging

fees for appointment to office; and finding this lucrative, he created

new offices to sell. By raising the number of papal secretaries to

twenty-six, he realized 62,400 ducats; he increased to fifty-two the

plumbatores whose heavy task was to place a leaden seal on papal

decrees, and received 2500 ducats from each appointee. Such

practices might have been no worse than selling annuity insurance, had

it not been that the incumbents reimbursed themselves not merely by

their salaries but by candid venality in their functions. For example,

two papal secretaries confessed that in two years they had forged more

than fifty papal bulls granting dispensations; the angry Pope had

the men hanged and burned for stealing beyond their station

(1489). `051552 Everything in Rome seemed purchasable, from judicial

pardons to the papacy itself. `051553 The unreliable Infessura tells

of a man who committed incest with his two daughters, then murdered

them, and was let off by paying eight hundred ducats. `051554 When

Cardinal Borgia was asked why justice was not done, he is reputed to

have answered: "God desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that

he should pay and live." `051555 The Pope's son, Franceschetto Cibo,

was an unprincipled scoundrel; he forced his way into private homes

"for evil purposes"; he saw to it that of the fines levied in the

ecclesiastical courts of Rome a substantial portion should go to

himself, and he spent his spoils in gambling. One night he lost 14,000

ducats ($350,000) to Cardinal Raffaelle Riario; he complained to the

Pope that he had been cheated, and Innocent tried to recover the sum

for him; but the Cardinal professed to have already used up the sum on

the immense Palazzo della Cancelleria that he was building. `051556

The secularization of the papacy- its absorption in politics, war,

and finance- had filled the college of cardinals with appointees noted

for their administrative ability, their political influence, or

their capacity to pay for their hats. Despite his promise to keep

the College down to twenty-four members, Innocent added to it eight

men most of whom were eminently unsuited to such a dignity; so the

cardinalate was conferred upon the thirteen-year-old Giovanni de'

Medici as part of a bargain with Lorenzo. Many of the cardinals were

men of high education, benevolent patrons of literature, music, drama,

and art. A few of them were saintly. Several had taken only minor

orders, and were not yet priests. Many of them were frankly secular;

their political, diplomatic, and fiscal duties required them to be men

of the world, capable of meeting on a level of knowledge and

subtlety the similar officials of Italian or transalpine

governments. Some of them imitated the Roman nobles, fortified their

palaces and retained armed men to protect themselves from these

nobles, and the Roman mob, and other cardinals. `051557 *05037 Perhaps

the great Catholic historian Pastor is a bit too severe on them, in

view of their secular functions:

-

Lorenzo de' Medici's low estimate of the College of Cardinals in the

time of Innocent VIII was unfortunately only too well founded.... Of

the worldly cardinals Ascanio Sforza, Riario, Orsini, Sclafenatus,

Jean de la Balue, Giuliano delia Rovere, Savelli, and Rodrigo Borgia

were the most prominent. All of these were deeply infected with the

corruption that prevailed in Italy amongst the upper classes in the

age of the Renaissance. Surrounded in their splendid palaces with

all the most refined luxury of a highly developed civilization,

these cardinals lived the lives of secular princes, and seemed to

regard their ecclesiastical garb simply as one of the adornments of

their rank. They hunted, gambled, gave sumptuous banquets and

entertainments, joined in all the rollicking merriment of the

carnival-tide, and allowed themselves the utmost license in morals.

This was especially the case with Rodrigo Borgia. `051558

-

The disorder at the top reflected and enhanced the moral chaos of

Rome. Violence, thievery, rape, bribery, conspiracy, revenge were

the order of the day. Each dawn revealed, in the alleys, men who had

been killed during the night. Pilgrims and ambassadors were waylaid,

were sometimes stripped naked, as they approached the capital of

Christendom. `051559 Women were attacked in the streets or in their

homes. A piece of the True Cross, encased in silver, was stolen from

the sacristy of Santa Maria in Trastevere; later the wood, shorn of

its setting, was found in a vineyard. `051560 Such religious

skepticism was widespread. Over five hundred Roman families were

condemned for heresy, but were let off with fines; perhaps the

mercenary Curia of Rome was preferable to the mercenary and

murderous inquisitors who were now ravaging Spain. Even priests had

their doubts; one was accused of substituting, for the words of

transubstantiation in the Mass, his own formula: "O fatuous

Christians, who adore food and drink as God!" `051561 As the end of

Innocent's pontificate approached, prophets appeared who proclaimed

impending doom; and in Florence the voice of Savonarola was rising

to brand the age as that of Antichrist.

"On September 20," 1492, says a chronicler, "there was a great

tumult in the city of Rome, and the merchants closed their shops.

People who were in the fields and vineyards returned home in haste,

because it was announced that Pope Innocent VIII was dead." `051562

Strange stories were told of his dying hours: how the cardinals placed

Djem under special guards lest Franceschetto Cibo should appropriate

him; how Cardinals Borgia and della Rovere had almost come to blows

beside the deathbed; and the dubious Infessura is our oldest authority

for the report that three boys died from giving too much of their

blood in a transfusion designed to revive the failing Pope. `051563

Innocent bequeathed 48,000 ducats ($600,000?) to his relatives, and

passed away. He was buried in St. Peter's, and Antonio Pollaiuolo

covered his sins with a splendid tomb.

CHAPTER XVI: The Borgias: 1492-1503

I. CARDINAL BORGIA

-

THE most interesting of the Renaissance popes was born at Xativa,

Spain, on January 1, 1431. His parents were cousins, both of the

Borjas, a family of some slight nobility. Rodrigo received his

education at Xativa, Valencia, and Bologna. When his uncle became a

cardinal, and then Pope Calixtus III, a straight path was opened for

the young man's advancement in an ecclesiastical career. Moving to

Italy, he respelled his name Borgia, was made a cardinal at

twenty-five, and at twenty-six received the fruitful office of

vice-chancellor- head of the entire Curia. He performed his duties

competently, earned some repute as an administrator, lived

abstemiously, and made many friends in either sex. He was not yet-

would not be till his thirty-seventh year- a priest.

He was so handsome in his youth, so attractive in the grace of his

manners, his sensual ardor and cheerful temperament, his persuasive

eloquence and gay wit, that women found it hard to resist him. Brought

up in the easygoing morality of fifteenth-century Italy, and

perceiving that many a cleric, many a priest, allowed himself the

pleasure of women, this young Lothario in the purple decided to

enjoy all the gifts that God had given him and them. Pius II

reproved him for attending "an immodest and seductive dance" (1460),

but the Pope accepted Rodrigo's apology, and continued him as

vice-chancellor and trusted aide. `05161 In that year Rodrigo's

first son, Pedro Luis, was born or begotten, and perhaps also his

daughter Girolama, who was married in 1482; `05162 their mothers are

not known. Pedro lived in Spain till 1488, came to Rome in that

year, and died soon afterward. In 1464 Rodrigo accompanied Pius II

to Ancona, and there contracted some minor sexual disease "because,"

said his doctor, "he had not slept alone." `05163

About 1466 he formed a more permanent attachment with Vanozza de'

Catanei, then some twenty-four years old. Unfortunately, she was

married to Domenico d'Arignano, but Domenico left her in

1476. `05164 To Rodrigo (who had become a priest in 1468) Vanozza bore

four children: in 1474 Giovanni, in 1476 Cesare (whom we shall call

Caesar), in 1480 Lucrezia, in 1481 Giofre. These four were ascribed to

Vanozza on her tombstone, and were at one time or another acknowledged

by Rodrigo as his own. `05165 Such persistent parentage suggests an

almost monogamous union, and perhaps Cardinal Borgia, in comparison

with other ecclesiastics, may be credited with a certain domestic

fidelity and stability. *05038 He was a tender and benevolent

father; it was a pity that his efforts to advance his children did not

always bring glory to the Church. When Rodrigo set his eye on the

papacy he found a tolerant husband for Vanozza, and helped her to

prosperity. She was twice widowed, married again, lived in modest

retirement, rejoiced in the rise of her children to fame and wealth,

mourned her separation from them, earned a reputation for piety,

died at seventy-six (1518), and left all her substantial property to

the Church. Leo X sent his chamberlain to attend her ceremonious

funeral. `05167

We should betray a lack of historical sense were we to judge

Alexander VI from the moral standpoint of our age- or rather of our

youth. His contemporaries looked upon his prepapal sexual sins as only

canonically mortal, but, in the moral climate of his time, venial

and forgivable. `05168 Even in the generation between the reproof

given him by Pius II and Rodrigo's elevation to the papacy, public

opinion had become more lenient toward unobtrusive sexual

digressions from clerical celibacy. Pius II himself, besides

spawning some love children in his presacerdotal youth, had once

advocated the marriage of priests; Sixtus IV had had several children;

Innocent VIII had brought his into the Vatican. Some condemned the

morals of Rodrigo, but apparently no one mentioned them when the

conclave met to choose a successor to Innocent. Five popes,

including the reasonably virtuous Nicholas V, had granted him

lucrative benefices through all these years, had entrusted him with

difficult missions and responsible posts, and had apparently (Pius

II for a moment excepted) taken no notice of his philoprogenitive

exuberance. `05169 What men remarked in 1492 was that he had been

vice-chancellor for thirty-five years, had been appointed and

reappointed to that office by five successive popes, and had

administered the office with conspicuous industry and competence;

and that the external magnificence of his palace concealed a

remarkable simplicity of private life. Iacopo da Volterra, in 1486,

described him as "a man of an intellect capable of anything, and of

great sense; he is a ready speaker, is of an astute nature, and has

wonderful skill in conducting affairs." `051610 He was popular with

the Romans, having amused them with games; when news reached Rome that

Granada had fallen to the Christians, he regaled Rome with a bullfight

in Spanish style.

Perhaps the cardinals assembling in conclave on August 6, 1492, were

also interested in his wealth, for in five administrations he had

become the richest cardinal- excepting d'Estouteville- in the memory

of Rome. They relied upon him to make substantial presents to those

who should vote for him; and he did not fail them. To Cardinal

Sforza he promised the vice-chancellorship, several rich benefices,

and the Borgia palace in Rome; to Cardinal Orsini the see and

ecclesiastical revenues of Cartagena, the towns of Monticelli and

Soriano, and the governorship of the Marches; to Cardinal Savelli

Civita Castellana and the bishopric of Majorca; and so on; Infessura

described the process as Borgia's "evangelical distribution of his

goods to the poor." `051611 It was not an unusual procedure; every

candidate had used it for many conclaves past, as every candidate uses

it in politics today. Whether money bribes were also used is

uncertain. `051612 The decisive vote was cast by Cardinal Gherardo,

ninety-six years old, and "hardly in possession of his

faculties." `051613 Finally all the cardinals rushed to the winning

side, and made the election of Rodrigo Borgia unanimous (August 10,

1492). When asked by what name he wished to be called as pope, he

answered, "By the name of the invincible Alexander." It was a pagan

beginning for a pagan pontificate.

II. ALEXANDER VI

-

The choice of the conclave was also the choice of the people.

Never had any papal election brought so much rejoicing, `051614

never had a coronation been so magnificent. The populace delighted

in the panoramic cavalcade of white horses, allegorical figures,

tapestries and paintings, knights and grandees, troops of archers

and Turkish horsemen, seven hundred priests, cardinals colorfully

clad, and finally Alexander himself, sixty-one years old but

majestically straight and tall, overflowing with health and energy and

pride, "Serene of countenance and of surpassing dignity," said an

eyewitness, `051615 and looking like an emperor even while blessing

the multitude. Only a few sober minds, like Giuliano della Rovere

and Giovanni de' Medici, expressed some apprehension lest the new

Pope, known to be a fond father, would use his power to aggrandize his

family rather than to cleanse and strengthen the Church.

He began well. In the thirty-six days between the death of

Innocent and the coronation of Alexander there had been two hundred

and twenty known murders in Rome. The new Pope made an example of

the first captured assassin; the culprit was hanged, his brother was

hanged with him, and his house was pulled down. The city approved this

severity; crime hid its head; order was restored in Rome, and all

Italy was glad that a strong hand was at the helm of the

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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