BOOK IX. 

FROM THE END OF THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE TO THE END OF THE FIFTH COUNCIL OF THE LATERAN, A.D. 1418-1517.

CHAPTER V.

ALEXANDER THE SIXTH. A.D. 1492-1503.

 

THE death of Innocent was followed by disturbances such as had become usual during a vacancy of the pope­dom. The whole country around Rome was in arms; within the city itself it is said that two hundred and twenty persons were slain. The cardinals met for the election of a successor in the Sixtine chapel on the 6th of August. The practice of intrigue had been common on such occasions; but the manner in which members of the college now put themselves forward as candidates was without example. Among these the most promi­nent were Roderick Borgia, whose seniority, wealth, and frequent employment in the most important business of the church, gave weight to his pretensions; Ascanius Sforza, son of the great condottiere who had founded a new dynasty in the dukedom of Milan; and Julian della Rovere, the nephew of Sixtus IV. Although experience had amply proved the inefficacy of capitulations, an attempt was once more made to bind the future pope by engagements of this kind; among other things, he was required to promise that he would not make any cardi­nals without the consent of the existing members of the body.

The conclave was of unusual duration. Much bribery was practised. Sforza, after having ascertained that his own chance of election was little or none, transferred his interest to Borgia; and it is said that all the cardinals, except della Rovere, Piccolomini, and three others, were bought by the promise of money or preferments. At length, on the fifth night, the deliberations of the cardinals resulted in the election of Borgia, who exclaimed “I am pope, pontiff, and vicar of Christ!” and hastily put on the papal mantle, as if to assure himself of the reality of his success. The name which he took was Alexander VI.

Within a few days, Sforza, according to compact, received the office of vice-chancellor, which Borgia had held, together with his palace, and some churches and castles; while the preferments accumulated on other mem­bers of the college attested the value of their support, and the means by which it had been secured. But the consciousness of having attained his dignity by arts which might have vitiated the election—the dread of any inquiry, by a general council or any other tribunal, into the circumstances of his elevation—hung as a weight on the pope all his days, and affected his course of conduct.

Roderick Borgia (whose change of surname has been already mentioned) was born in 1431 at Valencia, of a family belonging to the lower grade of nobles. He had studied at Bologna, and in early life had been an advocate and also a soldier. To his uncle Calixtus III he was indebted for rapid ecclesiastical promotion; he became cardinal, archbishop of his native city, vice-chancellor of the Roman church; and his support of Sixtus IV at his election had procured for him the abbacy of Subiaco. By these preferments, and by inheritance from Calixtus, he had become very wealthy; and a mission as legate to Spain, for the purpose of gathering money for the crusade, had considerably increased his riches, although it had not improved his reputation. He was more esteemed for eloquence than for learning, but was especially noted for the craft, the perseverance, and the fertility of resources which marked his character as a negotiator. Fond as he was of pleasure, he never allowed the pursuit of it to interfere with business, to which he often devoted a large part of the night. And, although he hesitated at no crime for the attainment of his objects, he is praised for the placa­bility of his disposition, and for the patience with which he overcame the enmity of opponents..

In the earlier years of his ecclesiastical life, Borgia made great professions of piety and charity, visiting churches and hospitals, and distinguishing himself by the largeness of his almsgiving. One of the first indications of the qualities for which he afterwards became infamous is found in a letter of severe reproof which Pius II, while sojourning at the baths of Petrioli after the council of Mantua, addressed to him on account of his having witnessed, if he did not even join in, some dancing which is described as indecent, in a garden at Siena. At a later time—probably about 1470 —he entered into a connexion with a woman named Vanozza de’ Catanei, whom he regarded as a sort of wife, while he provided her with two husbands in succession, and found places for these men in some of the government offices. By Vanozza he became the father of five children, of whom three sons and a daughter were alive at the time of his elevation to the papacy. Yet it would seem that thus far Borgia’s laxity of morals had not in any remarkable degree exceeded such licence as the age allowed. His palace had not, like those of some other cardinals, been notoriously defiled by scandalous revels; nor was it until he had been raised to the most sacred office in Christendom that his infamy became conspicuous and signal.

The report of Alexander’s election excited various feelings. By some of the Romans, who looked to his dignified presence, his wealth, his expensive tastes, and who expected a splendid pontificate, the tidings were received with joy, and he was extolled in verses to which his later life gives the character of the bitterest satire. But those who saw farther into his character—among them the sovereigns of his native Spain—regarded his promotion with alarm; and Ferdinand of Naples, who, notwithstanding his treachery, cruelty, and other vices, was regarded as the wisest statesman of the age, is said to have shown his knowledge of Alexander by bursting into tears.

The spirit of secular ambition, and the undisguised licentiousness, which had been more and more displayed during the late pontificates, were now carried to a mon­strous excess. For the first time the bastards of a pope were brought forward as his acknowledged children; and the violence of his affection for them carried him into crimes of many sorts, tempted him to disturb the peace of the world, to make Italy, which for many years had enjoyed a tranquil prosperity such as had never before been known, a scene of violence and bloodshed, and to invite the fatal interference of foreign nations in her affairs.

For his eldest son, Peter Lewis, who died before Alex­ander’s elevation to the papacy, he had obtained from the king of Spain the title of duke of Gandia, which passed to the next brother, John. The third son, Caesar, was designed for the ecclesiastical profession, and was a stu­dent at Pisa, when a courier announced to him his father’s elevation to the papacy. On receiving the news, Caesar at once set out for Rome, where the pope received him with affection, but is said to have addressed to him a formal speech, in which, after adverting to the discredit which the first Borgia pope had incurred by his nepotism, he warned him that he must expect no promotion except such as his merits should justify. The hypocrisy of such a declaration was forthwith shown by Alexander’s promoting, in his first consistory, a nephew to be archbishop of Monreale and cardinal; and three other Borgias, besides Caesar, were afterwards raised to the cardinalate, while other relations of the pope were thrust into all manner of offices and preferments. On Caesar himself his father at once bestowed the bishopric of Pampeluna (which Innocent had designed for him), and to this he added, on the day of his coronation, his own archbishopric of Valencia. In the following year, he made him a cardinal; and as illegitimacy would have been a bar to such a promotion, the pope suborned false witnesses to swear that Caesar was the lawful offspring of Vanozza by her first husband.

The pope’s daughter, the beautiful Lucretia, who was in her fifteenth year, had been some time betrothed to a son of the count of Aversa; but Alexander, whose ambition had risen with his fortunes, now bribed him to sue for a dissolution of the engagement, in order that Lucretia might marry a suitor of more powerful connexions—Alexander Sforza, illegitimate son of the lord of Pesaro, and great-nephew of the first duke Sforza of Milan. The marriage was celebrated in the Belvedere, which had been added to the Vatican by Innocent VIII; and it was followed by a banquet, at which cardinals and other high ecclesiastical dignitaries sat promiscuously with ladies, and by the performance of comedies and other amusements, which lasted far into the night. Among the party was Julia Farnese, known as “la Bella” a married woman, for whose sake Alexander made her brother a cardinal; and the chronicler who describes the scene speaks indignantly of the effect which the examples of Innocent and Alexander had produced on the morals of the clergy, and even of the monastic orders.

For his youngest son, Geoffrey, the pope planned a marriage with a daughter of Alfonso, duke of Calabria. The duke’s father, king Ferdinand, was willing to con­sent to this marriage, but Alfonso himself was strongly opposed to it; and by this disappointment the pope was thrown into other connexions, which were full of disaster for Italy.

Lewis Sforza, who from his swarthy complexion was styled the Moor, a man of deep ambition and perfidy, administered the government of Milan in the name of his nephew, John Galeazzo, whom it is said that, for the sake of retaining power in his own hands, he allowed to grow up without any such training as might have fitted him for the duties of his position. Lewis projected a national league of the Italian powers, for the purpose of preserving their country from foreign rule, and endeavoured to gain the pope’s co-operation but, finding that a special alliance had been concluded between Alexander, the king of Naples, and the Florentine republic, he was led by jealousy to invite Charles VIII of France into Italy, for the purpose of asserting a claim to the Neapolitan crown, which had been bequeathed by the last count of Provence to Lewis XI; and the conquest of Naples was represented as a step towards the recovery of Constantinople and Jerusalem from the infidels. The proposal was well fitted to attract the young king, who, although weak, sickly, and almost deformed in person, and yet more feeble in mind, had his imagination filled with visions of chivalrous and crusading exploits and renown. His wisest counsellors—such as his sister, the lady of Beaujeu, and Philip de Comines—endeavoured to dissuade him from undertaking an expedition into Italy, and urged him to accept the offers made by Ferdinand of Naples to hold the kingdom as tributary to the crown of France. But Charles listened to advisers of another kind—to Neapolitan exiles who were eager for vengeance on the Aragonese dynasty, and to his kinsman Lewis, duke of Orleans, who wished to use the king’s ambition for the furtherance of his own designs on Italy. He dismissed the Neapolitan ambassadors, and prepared for an expedition to Italy by making peace, on disadvan­tageous terms, with the kings of England and of Spain, and with Maximilian, who had lately succeeded his father Frederick as emperor.

The expectation of a French invasion brought about a connexion between the reigning dynasty of Naples and the pope. It was arranged that the youngest Borgia, Geoffrey, who was only twelve or thirteen years of age, should marry Sancha, an illegitimate daughter of the duke of Calabria; that he should receive the principality of Squillace, with other territory, and should be appointed lieutenant of the kingdom; that the duke of Gandia should be nominated to one of the chief offices, and that Caesar Borgia should receive high ecclesiastical preferment at Naples; while, on the other hand, the tribute payable by the Neapolitan crown to the papacy was to be reduced. Ferdinand died on the 25th of January, 1494, and it is believed that was hastened by the French king’s rejection of his offers. His successor, Alfonso, who was eminent as a general, but was even more treacherous and cruel than his father, was crowned by the cardinal-archbishop of Monreale, and the marriage of Geoffrey Borgia with Sancha was celebrated at the same time. In their alarm, Alfonso and the pope applied for assistance to the Turkish sultan, whom they endeavoured to move by representing that the French king avowedly looked on Naples as only a stepping-stone towards Constantinople; but they failed to obtain any effective assistance. To ambassadors who urged the claim of Charles to Naples, Alexander replied that the kingdom was a fief of the holy see, and could be disposed of only by the pope; that the Aragonese princes had been invested in it, and that he could not dispossess them unless another claim could be shown to be stronger than theirs. And he threatened to pronounce the censures of the church if Charles should cross the Alps.

Charles had advanced as far as Lyons, where he remained a considerable time, engaged in tournaments and in voluptuous enjoyments. It was still uncertain whether the expedition to Italy were to take place, when the king’s vacillating mind was determined by the arrival of cardinal Julian della Rovere, the impla­cable enemy Of Alexander. After the election of the pope, Julian had withdrawn to the fortress of Ostia, where he was besieged and at length driven out. Alexander had attempted to conciliate him; but Julian declared that he would never again trust a Catalan; and, from having been the most zealous partisan of Naples in the college of cardinals, he transferred himself to the French interest in consequence of the pope’s having entered into a connexion with Alfonso. Arriving at Lyons when the king’s plans were altogether uncertain, his strong and impetuous eloquence, and the freedom with which he represented the disgrace of abandoning the enterprise, determined Charles to proceed; and in the end of August the king crossed the Alps at the head of a gallant, although undisciplined army. The money which he had raised, including a large loan from his Milanese ally, had been spent on the gaieties of Lyons, and on a fleet which was not turned to any account; and already his difficulties were such that he borrowed jewels from the duchess of Savoy and the marchioness of Montferrat, in order that he might procure money by pledging them.

After a stay of some weeks at Asti, which belonged to the duke of Orleans, Charles moved onwards. At Milan he saw the young duke, John Galeazzo; but this unfortunate prince died almost immediately afterwards, and, although he left a son five years old, Louis the Moor, who was suspected of having caused his nephew’s death, assumed the ducal title. As Charles approached Florence, Peter de’ Medici, who had conceived the idea of imitating his father Lorenzo’s venturous and successful visit to Naples, appeared in the French camp, and, although others had been joined with him in the mission, he took it on himself to conclude a treaty by which four of the strongest places belonging to the republic were given up to France. Peter, who had been only twenty-one years old at the time of his father’s death, had already made himself obnoxious to the Florentines by his incapacity, his frivolity, his pride, his irregularities, and other faults; and the result of his negotiations with Charles exasperated them to such a degree that, on his return to the city, he and his brothers were driven into exile. The eloquence of Savonarola, who spoke of the “new Cyrus” as an instrument of Divine vengeance for the sins of the Italians, instead of rousing the citizens to resistance, tended to persuade them to submission. He reminded them that the sword which he had foretold had now actually come on them. After the expulsion of the Medici, the friar was sent at the head of an embassy which was received by Charles at Pisa. In the solemn tone of a prophet, he told the king that he must regard himself as an instrument in God’s hand; that if he should forget his calling—if he should neglect to labour for the reform of the church, and to respect the liberties and the honour of the Florentines—another would be chosen in his stead. Charles answered with courtesy, although in a way which showed that he did not apprehend the peculiarity of Savonarola’s character and position; but during his stay at Florence (where the citizens, who had agreed to admit him peaceably, were deeply offended by his entering with his lance on his thigh, as if assuming the character of a conqueror) the friar’s admonitions were repeatedly administered to him.

In the meantime Alexander was distracted by a variety of fears. In vain he entreated Maximilian to intervene as advocate of the church. He was alarmed by hearing that the Colonnas had openly declared for the French, and entertained designs of seizing him; that the Orsini, on whose support he had relied, had submitted to the invader; that the trading classes of his city were not dis­posed to stand by him; that the French were devastating everywhere, and that his concubine, Julia Farnese, had fallen into their hands. Cardinal Piccolomini and others whom he sent to Charles, returned without having been able to obtain an audience. He arrested the cardinals who were in favour of France, and even the French ambassadors; and almost immediately after he released them again. He spoke of leaving Rome, but was unable to carry out any resolution. He invited Ferdinand, duke of Calabria, to occupy the city with Neapolitan troops. But when Charles asked for leave to pass through Rome, in order to the crusade (for nothing was said of his designs on Naples), Alexander felt that he could make no effective opposition; and by his request the duke of Calabria withdrew, although with undisguised indignation, along the Appian way at the same time that the French made their entrance at the Flaminian gate. As at Florence, Charles affected to enter as a conqueror, by carrying his lance rested on his thigh. On his right and on his left rode the cardinals Julian della Rovere, Sforza, Colonna, and Savelli; and the multitude raised loud shouts in honour of France, Colonna, and the cardinal of St. Peter ad Vincula. It was night before the greater part of the troops could enter; and the gleam of torches and of lights from the windows heightened the impression made by their arms, their horses, and a train of artillery which far exceeded all that the Italians had yet beheld of its kind.

Alexander, a few days after the king’s arrival, withdrew into the castle of St. Angelo, from which he uneasily watched the lights and the sounds on the other side of the Tiber. He knew that importunities were addressed to Charles by eighteen cardinals for the assembling of a general council in order to his deposition; and he felt that neither the manner of his elections nor his personal character could endure the exami­nation of such an assembly. He was repeatedly urged by Charles to give up the fortress as a pledge; but he declared that he would rather place himself on the battlements, with the holy Eucharist and the heads of the two great apostles in his hands, and would abide the effect of an attack. The French, in their impatience at his obstinacy, twice pointed their cannon against St. Angelo; but a party among the king’s advisers, which had been drawn into the pope’s interest by the promise of ecclesi­astical dignities, was able to prevent any practical acts of hostility. During his stay at Rome, Charles daily visited some church, to hear mass and to inspect the sacred relics; and the Romans looked on with astonishment when he touched for the king’s evil in the church of St. Petronilla. But his soldiers, notwithstanding a solemn engagement to refrain from all violence, freely indulged their insolence and their love of spoil: even Vanozza’s house was plundered, to Alexander’s great anger and disgust.

A treaty was concluded, by which the pope was to put certain fortified towns into the hands of the French until the conquest of Naples should have been achieved. He was also to make over to them for six months the Turkish prince Djem, with a view to the proposed crusade; and he was to extend an amnesty to the cardinals and others who had offended him by taking part with France. After the conclusion of this agreement, Charles was more than once received at the Vatican, to which the pope had returned; and Briçonnet, bishop of St. Malo, one of his favourite counsellors, was promoted to the dignity of cardinal. The same honour was conferred on Peter of Luxemburg, bishop of Le Mans.

On the 28th of January the king left Rome, taking with him the Turkish prince, and accompanied by Caesar Borgia, who was decorated with the title of legate, but was really intended to serve as a hostage for the per­formance of his father’s promises. Caesar, however, on the second night of the march absconded from Velletri in the dress of a groom, so that the security which his presence had given was lost.

At Naples the approach of the French produced an outbreak against the reigning dynasty. Alfonso, knowing that, both for his father’s sake and for his own, he was execrated by his subjects, and that by his atrocious cruelties and his detestable vices he had well deserved their abhorrence, resigned the crown in favour of his son Ferdinand, and withdrew to a Sicilian monastery, where he engaged in penitential exercises, and soon after died. The new king, finding himself unable, with a disheartened and mutinous soldiery and a disaffected people, to make head against the invader, retired to the island of Ischia; and on the fol­lowing day Charles entered Naples unopposed, and was received with joyful demonstrations of welcome.

But the popular feeling in favour of the French was soon changed into detestation. The strangers abused their fortune. They treated the Neapolitans with contempt and outrage. All offices were bestowed on foreigners, and sometimes two or three were accumulated on one person; even private property was invaded to gratify the rapacity of Frenchmen; and Charles avowed an intention of reducing the barons of the king­dom from their comparative independence to a like state of subordination with the nobility of France. He neglected business; to his new subjects he was inaccessible; and those who had steadily adhered to the Angevine interest were disgusted at finding that their past fidelity and sufferings did not exempt them from being confounded with the partisans of the expelled dynasty. The young French nobles, after the king’s example, gave themselves up freely to pleasure; the mass of the army, in consequence of their indulgences, were enervated by a new and loathsome disease; the project of a crusade, which had been used to sanctify the invasion of Italy, was utterly forgotten. At Naples, Djem died on the 26th of February; and his death was attributed, not only by popular opinion, but by Charles himself, to a slow poison, administered (as was supposed) by the pope, who had corresponded with Bajazet as to the means of removing the unfortunate prince, and reaped the benefit of the imputed crime by receiving 300,000 ducats for his body.

While Charles was lingering in hurtful inaction at Naples, dangers were gathering behind him. Lewis Sforza, alarmed by finding that the duke of Orleans had asserted a claim to Milan, as being the sole legitimate descendant of the Visconti, and that in this he was countenanced by the French king, concluded at Venice a league with the pope, the emperor, the sovereigns of Spain, and the Venetian republic, which, although professedly intended for defence against the Turks, had evidently a further meaning. Charles, on receiving from his envoy at Venice, Philip de Comines, a report of this formidable combination, resolved to re­turn northwards. Before leaving Naples he wished to be formally inaugurated in his new sovereignty; but as the pope, notwithstanding an absolute promise which he had made during the king’s stay at Rome, refused to grant him investiture, even with a reservation of any rival claims, he resolved to act on his own authority. He therefore, on the 12th of May, proceeded in state to the church of St. Januarius, arrayed in the ensigns of eastern imperial dignity, and there solemnly bound himself by oath to maintain the rights and liberties of the Neapolitans. He then set out homewards, leaving a part of his force to maintain his authority in the south of Italy.

On his arrival at Rome, Charles found that Alexander had withdrawn two days before to Orvieto, and had taken with him all the cardinals, except Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, who was left to act as his vicar. At Poggibonsi the king was again visited by Savonarola, who rebuked him for having failed to perform fully the work to which he had been called, and intimated that a punishment was hanging over him, yet assured him of the Divine protection on his return. As Charles retreated northwards, the Italians, after having neglected earlier opportunities of attacking him, presented themselves in numbers far exceed­ing those of his army at Fornuovo on the Taro; and in this, the only battle of the whole campaign, the French gained the advantage, and the king had the satisfaction of distinguishing himself by personal valour. A peace was concluded with Sforza at Novara, and Charles, after an absence of about fourteen months, recrossed the Alps, and again found himself in France. In the meantime Ferdinand had returned to Naples; and, although he was at first driven out by Stuart of Aubigny, a skilful general of Scottish descent whom Charles had left in command of his troops, a second expedition put him into possession, of his kingdom, through the assistance of the “Great Captain” of Spain, Gonsalvo de Aguilar. Of the French who had been left at Naples, ill supplied with money and provisions, and exposed to the ravages of war and of disease, hardly any found their way home from the land of which their conquest had appeared so easy.

Gonsalvo also lent his aid to the pope for the reduction of Ostia, which had been left by Charles in the hands of Cardinal Julian, and, from its position at the mouth of the Tiber, was a place of importance for the Romans. For this service the great captain was rewarded by a triumphal reception at Rome. In the ceremonies of the holy week, he refused to receive the palm from the pope’s own hands, because the duke of Gandia had received it before him; but he condescended to accept the golden rose, which was regarded as a gift for sovereigns. But the freedom with which he expressed himself as to the disorders and scandals of the court, without sparing the pope himself, made Alexander glad to be speedily delivered from his presence.

The emperor Frederick III had been succeeded by his son Maximilian, who had already been chosen king of the Romans. In contrast to his father’s inertness, Maxi­milian displayed an excessive love of adventure, which continually led him to undertake great things without calculation as to the possibility of carrying out his designs. The need of money, which had reduced Frederick to inaction, and had brought on him the reproach of avarice, instead of restraining Maximilian from entering on arduous enterprises, compelled him to leave them unfinished; and the world, which had at first been dazzled by his brilliant and popular personal qualities, soon learnt to understand his “unstable and necessitous courses”, and to attach little value to his promises and engagements. His intervention in the affairs of Italy, in 1496, had little other effect than that of contributing greatly to the decline of his reputation.

Ferdinand II of Naples died at the age of twenty-seven, soon after the recovery of his dominions, which on his death fell to his uncle Frederick, an amiable and popular prince. The pope resolved to turn to advantage the restoration of the Aragonese dynasty; and he revived the schemes of Sixtus IV for the aggrandizement of his own family. An attempt to put down the Orsini, with a view to getting possession of their estates, was defeated by their vigorous resistance; and Alexander found it necessary to make the church bear the expense of the enrichment which he designed for his children. In a secret consistory on the 7th of June, 1597, the duke of Gandia, who had just been appointed standard-bearer of the church, was formally invested in the dukedom of Benevento, with Terracina and Pontecorvo; and it was supposed that the dukedom was intended as a step to a greater elevation in Naples. No one of the cardinals, except Piccolomini, ventured to object to this alienation of St. Peter’s property; for Julian della Rovere and cardinal Perauld, bishop of Gurk, who might probably have joined in the protest, had been driven into exile.

Two days later, Caesar Borgia was appointed to proceed to Naples as legate for the coronation of the new king; but before his departure a mysterious crime was per­petrated. On the evening of Wednesday, the 14th of June, the duke of Gandia and Caesar, with some others, had supped at the house of Vanozza, near the church of St. Peter ad Vincula. The brothers mounted their mules, and rode together towards the Vatican quarter, when, near the palace which the pope had bestowed on Ascanius Sforza, the duke took leave of the cardinal, saying that he wished for some further amusement before returning to the Vatican. He then took up behind him one of their companions at the supper—a masked person, who for some weeks before had been accustomed to visit him at the palace,—and he rode away attended by a groom. Next day the groom was found mortally wounded in the Piazza of the Jews, but could give no information, except that he had been left there, with orders to wait an hour, and, if his master did not re­appear within that time, to return to the palace. The duke’s prolonged absence excited his father’s alarm, and an inquiry was set on foot. A charcoal dealer gave evidence that, while watching on the Ripetta, about the fifth hour of the night, he had seen a body thrown into the Tiber by four men, acting under the orders of one on horseback, who had brought it hanging behind him as he rode; and on being asked why he had not informed the police, the witness made an answer which throws a dismal light on the state of Rome under Alexander’s government—that he had in his time seen a hundred corpses cast by night into the river, without having heard of any inquiry after them. When this evidence had been received, three hundred men were employed to drag the river; and the body of the duke was found, with the throat cut, and stabbed in eight other places. The hands were bound, and some money remained untouched in the pockets of the dress. The pope was for the time overwhelmed by his son’s dark and tragical end. As the body, after having been carried up the river in a boat, was landed at the castle of St. Angelo amidst the lamentations of the countrymen of the Borgias, one voice rose so loudly above the rest that persons standing on the neighbouring bridge could distinctly hear it; and it was believed to be the voice of the miserable father. For three days he neither ate, nor drank, nor slept; he remained shut up in his apart­ment, from which it is said that there were heard not only his lamentations, but cries that he knew the murderer. When, however, the matter was brought before the consistory, the pope declared that he suspected no one; but the inquiry was suddenly brought to an end, and it was believed that he knew the guilty secret only too well. Although men did not venture to utter their thoughts, no one doubted the guilt of Caesar Borgia. Finding himself cut off from the natural objects of his ambition by a profession for which he had neither fitness nor liking, while the circumstances of his birth excluded him from all hope of its highest dignity, it would seem that Caesar had been struck with envy of the position to which his more fortunate brother had been raised, and of the yet higher honours which the pope was scheming for the duke; and it is said that this motive, which of itself might have been sufficient for so depraved a nature, was exasperated by jealousy at find­ing his brother preferred by a mistress with whom both were intimate.

To the consistory of cardinals, to ambassadors and others who were admitted to his presence, Alexander professed himself so shattered by his loss that he could take no interest in worldly objects; he professed to feel remorse for his past life—to care for nothing but the reformation of the church, for which he appointed a commission of six cardinals; he even talked of resigning the papacy. But in no long time these dispositions passed away. A scheme of reform, which was drawn up by the commission, remained a dead letter; and Alexander plunged again into intrigue and vice and crime. For a time it was believed that the ghost of the murdered man was heard wailing by night about the Vatican; but the report died away, although the people continued to see proofs of demoniacal influence in some calamities which followed quickly on each other—storm and flood, and lightning, which caused an explosion of the powder-magazine in the castle of St. Angelo.

The path of ambition now lay clear before Caesar; and it would seem that already his plans were formed. His strength of will prevailed over the pope, who appears to have resigned himself to the loss of his elder son, and to have concentrated all his affections and his hopes on the supposed fratricide. Within a few weeks after his brother’s death, the cardinal proceeded on his mission to Naples, and placed the crown on the head of the king whom he was perhaps even then plotting to dethrone.

Under Alexander it has been truly said that the papacy changed from a theocracy to a tyranny. The Romans had lost all independence since the suppression of the Porcaro conspiracy. The college of cardinals, although it contained a few men of higher class, was chiefly filled with nominees of Alexander, who had bought their places, who too much resembled him in character, and in action were his slaves and tools.

The death of Charles of France, which took place on the 7th of April 1498, at the age of twenty-eight, opened new prospects for Alexander. The duke of Orleans,, who succeeded to the throne under the name of Lewis XII, needed the papal sanction in order that he might rid himself of his wife, who had been forced on him by her father, Lewis XI, and might marry his predecessor’s widow, Anne of Brittany, who by the death of Charles had again become the sole possessor of her hereditary duchy; while the pope saw in a French alliance the means of protecting himself against the threat of a general council. The question of the king’s marriage was investigated by a commission of bishops and doctors, who on false evidence and frivolous grounds pronounced it to be null, and reported this judgment to Rome.

Caesar Borgia had resolved to rid himself of the restraints of the clerical character. He appeared- before his brother cardinals, and de­clared that he had always been strongly inclined to the life of a layman; that he had entered into the ecclesiastical estate out of deference to the pope’s wishes alone; that he felt himself unfit for it, and desired a release from it; and that if this were granted, he would resign all his preferments. He entreated the cardinals to join with him in his petition; and they consented to do so. The pope willingly granted him the required dispensation, and the cardinal-archbishop was restored to the condition of a layman.

Caesar now prepared to go into France for the business of the king’s divorce and remarriage. The magnificence of his appointments was extraordinary; even the horses of his train were shod with silver. And, although the French privately indulged their wit in ridiculing him, he was received at Avignon and at Chinon with honours such as were usually reserved for sovereigns. He carried with him bulls for the divorce and remarriage of Lewis, and also one by which the dignity of cardinal was bestowed on the king’s favourite minister, George d’Amboise; but with the intention of exacting the highest possible terms from the king, he concealed the fact as to the matrimonial bull, and professed to have only that for the divorce. The secret was betrayed by the bishop of Cette to Lewis, who thereupon proceeded, without having seen the bull, to celebrate his marriage with Anne; and it is said that Caesar avenged himself for the bishop’s indiscretion by poison.

The pope, in his eagerness for the advancement of his family, had asked king Frederick of Naples to bestow on Caesar the hand of one of his daughters, with a consider able territory; but both Frederick and the princess had shown the strongest repugnance to such a connexion. In return for the favour which he had bestowed on the French king in the matter of the divorce, Alexander now engaged Lewis to support him in this project; but the feel­ings of the Neapolitan princess were not to be overcome. Lewis, however, had so far pledged his assistance that he felt himself bound to obtain for Caesar the hand of some lady whose birth might be suitable to the aspirations of the Borgias; and thus the ex-cardinal became the husband of Charlotte d’Albret, sister of the king of Navarre, and niece of Lewis. It was a condition of the marriage that one of her brothers should be created a cardinal; and on the other hand Lewis bestowed on Caesar the duchy of Valentinois, and promised to assist him in his schemes of Italian conquest.

Lewis had from the time of his accession declared his designs on Milan by assuming the title of duke, on the ground of descent through his grandmother, Valentina, from the first duke of the Visconti family. In the summer of 1499, a campaign of twenty days made him master of the duchy, while Lewis the Moor sought a refuge in the Tyrol, with the emperor Maximilian, who had married his niece and had borrowed large sums of him. The king entered Milan in triumph, on the 6th of October but a reaction speedily followed, and Sforza, within five months from the day when he had left Milan amid the curses of his subjects, was received back with extravagant joy. In the war which ensued, however, he was betrayed at Novara by his Swiss mercenaries, who entered into an agreement with their countrymen in the French service; and the last ten years of his life were spent in a narrow iron cage at Loches. His brother, the ambitious cardinal Ascanius, was also made a prisoner, and was closely imprisoned at Bourges.

But beyond Milan Lewis carried his views to Naples. Alexander had in 1497 invested Frederick in that kingdom; but he had since been deeply offended by the per­sistent refusal of his son’s alliance in marriage, while he had become bound to the French king by ties of mutual interests There was, however, reason to apprehend op­position from Frederick’s kinsman, Ferdinand of Spain, who asserted that he himself was the rightful heir of the Aragonese line of Naples, inasmuch as Alfonso I had not been entitled to bequeath the kingdom to his illegitimate offspring. But the crafty Ferdinand professed that, for the sake of peace, he was willing to admit the concurrent claim of Lewis, as heir of the line of Durazzo; and on this basis a flagitious scheme of joint conquest, to be followed by a partition of the Neapolitan territory between France and Spain, was agreed on at Granada on St. Martin’s day, 15oo. It was alleged against Frederick, not only that his title was defective, but that he had invited the Turks to attack a Christian power—a charge which might with equal truth have been made against the pope himself, with the addition that he had profited by his correspondence with the Turks, whereas Frederick had received no benefit from them. The ambassadors of France and Spain urged these considerations on the pope, and represented that their sovereigns (whose troops had already entered the States of the Church) desired the possession of Naples only with a view to the conquest of Constantinople. The pope, in addition to his wish to punish Frederick for his offence, saw that, if he were removed, the barons of the Campagna, whose subjugation Alexander meditated, would be deprived of all support from without. He therefore agreed to invest the French and Spanish sovereigns in their expected conquests, and pronounced Frederick to be deposed for his connexion with the infidels and for having fostered rebels against the church; but this sentence was to be kept secret until the result of the expedition should be known. Ferdinand’s general, the “great captain” Gonsalvo, who was already in Sicily for the purpose of assisting the Venetians against the Turks, crossed over to Naples at the invitation of the unsuspecting Frederick, and perfidiously turned against him. From the other side, Stuart of Aubigny, accompanied by Caesar Borgia as his lieutenant, advanced into the Neapolitan territory. Capua was taken by the help of treachery, and Caesar found an opportunity of signally displaying his cruelty, rapacity, and lust. It was clear that Frederick could have no hope of success against the combination of powerful enemies which had attacked him. In his extremity, he chose to surrender himself to the stranger rather than to the perfidious kinsman who had taken advantage of his unsuspecting faith to effect his ruin; and he received from Lewis the duchy of Anjou, with a pension of 30,000 ducats, on condition that he should not quit the soil of France.

With the countenance of the French king, and with some material aid from him, the duke of Valentinois entered on his campaigns in Italy in 1499. The design was to form for the Borgia family a large principality, and in the first instance to gain possession of some of the remoter territories belonging to the Roman church. These had formerly been committed to the care of papal vicars, whose descendants had gradually assumed the position of independent lords, paying their tribute to the Roman see irregularly, if at all, engaging themselves in the service of princes, without consideration of their obligations to the church, and acting in a general disre­gard of its superiority. Each of them had his palace and his court, at which, according to the fashion of the age, artists, poets, and men of letters were entertained. The expenses of these courts usually made it necessary to tax the subjects oppressively, even if worse means of raising money were not employed; the morals of the princes were commonly of the depraved type which in that age was characteristic of Italy; their courts and their territories were full of lawlessness and crimes; assassinations, poisonings, and other such atrocities were familiar matters of every day. By ejecting these petty tyrants, therefore, the pope intended not only to aggrandize his family, but to put into their place one who, instead of their rebellious defiance, would be guided by policy and interest to act in accordance with the papacy, and he had little reason to fear that they would be supported by any popular feeling among those who had suffered from their vices and their misgovernment. Their failure as to the payment of tribute afforded a pretext for confiscating their territories; and Caesar proceeded to carry out the papal sentence. At one place after another he was successful, the only considerable difficulty which he encountered was at Forli, where Catharine Sforza, the widow of Jerome Riario, vigorously defended herself for a time; but she was at last compelled to submit, and for a time was imprisoned in the castle of St. Angelo.

On his return to Rome, Caesar was honoured with a triumph, and with a public reception by the pope, who soon after bestowed on him the golden rose, and appointed him captain-general and standard-bearer of the church, in the room of his mur­dered brother. His success was celebrated with games and other festive spectacles; among which was a repre­sentation in the Piazza Navona of the victories of Julius Caesar. The alienation of the church’s patrimony to the Borgias was sanctioned by the college of cardinals; and Caesar joined to the title of Valentinois that of duke of Romagna. In order to counteract in some degree the impression which his crimes had made on the minds of men, he established throughout his dominions an ener­getic system of administration, which appeared in favourable contrast with the misrule of the ejected princes; but even as to this he delighted to employ that system of mysterious terror which was one of his chief instruments. Thus, when the province had been reduced to order by the stern rigour of a governor named Ramiro d’Orco, the people of Cesena were startled by discovering one morning in their market-place the body of the governor, with the head severed from it, and a block with a bloody knife between them,—a spectacle by which the duke intended to claim for himself the credit of his good government, to throw the blame of past severities on the officer who had thus been punished for them, and to strike a general awe by the manner of Ramiro’s end.

Having gained the greater part of the Romagna (al­though he found himself obliged to leave the Bentivoglio family in possession of Bologna), Caesar turned his attention towards Tuscany. But here he found that his ally the king of France, instead of assisting him, required him to give up his attempt; and he was obliged to content himself with receiving from the republic of Florence the office of condottiere, with a large income attached to it, and with the understanding that no services were to be required of him. The countenance shown by the French king to a man so generally execrated as Caesar induced many complaints, which were laid before the king at Asti, with entreaties that he would deliver the church both from Alexander and from his son. It would seem that Lewis thought of deposing the pope, and that to this time is to be referred a medal which he struck, with the inscription, “Perdam Babilonis nomen”. But Alexander, who had already gratified the king by appointing his minister d’Amboise legate a latere for France, drew the cardinal afresh into his interest by promising to create additional cardinals, with a view to promoting his election to the papacy; and Caesar, on hurrying to Lewis at Milan, was  received with cordiality and confidence. The alliance with the king was confirmed, and Lewis soon after returned to France.

By the partition of the Neapolitan kingdom, the barons of the Campagna were deprived of the support on which they had relied; and Caesar proceeded to reduce them to submission. But in the course of this war, the duke’s condottieri and captains, of whom many belonged to the same class with the enemies against whom they were engaged, began to perceive that they were lending themselves as instruments for their own ruin. Caesar was suddenly surprised by a mutiny, and was shut up in the town of Imola, until the besiegers were driven off by the approach of some French troops, who advanced to his assistance. Caesar, after having treated with the leaders of the mutiny singly, was able to bring them together, as if for a conference, at Sinigaglia, where he had collected as large a force as possible; and, after having by a show of kindness led them to throw off all suspicion, and to disarm their followers, he caused them to be surrounded by his soldiery, arrested them, and put some of the most important among them to death. Such was the morality of the age, that this atrocious treachery was regarded with general admiration. Lewis XII himself spoke of it (apparently without sarcasm or irony) as “a Roman deed”; and Machiavelli repeatedly eulogizes Caesar as the model of a prince and a statesman.

Among those arrested at Sinigaglia were some of the Orsini—a family which Alexander had determined to ruin. After having disregarded many warnings against intended treachery, cardinal Orsini allowed himself to be decoyed into an interview with the pope, who committed him to prison, seized his treasures, and gave up his palace to plunder. The cardinals in a body inter­ceded for their brother, but without effect. For a time Orsini was kept without suitable food, until his mother, by a large sum of money, and his mistress, by finding and giving up a very precious pearl which had belonged to him, obtained leave to send him supplies. But before this, the pope had caused one of his favourite powders to be administered, and the cardinal died in prison. As Caesar returned to Rome, marking his path by acts of cruelty in every town through which he passed, the Orsini made a desperate but ineffectual stand at the Ponte Lomentano. The Borgias had crushed all opposition;  but the pope himself stood in awe of his son, and professed to be shocked by the atrocity of Caesar’s measures.

For his daughter Lucretia, Alexander formed projects which became more and more ambitious. After a mar­riage of less than three years, her husband, Sforza of Pesaro, appears to have felt himself unsafe in Easter 1496—the connexion, and fled from Rome; where upon their union was dissolved under frivolous pretexts, and she was married to a youth of seventeen, Alfonso, prince of Bisceglia, an illegitimate son of Alfonso II, the late king of Naples. But this new husband appears in his turn to have suspected that mischief was intended against him, and secretly left Rome for Naples. The pope, however, persuaded him to return; and he had lived with his wife ten months longer, when, on the 15th of July, 1500, he was stabbed on the steps of St. Peter’s. The assassins were carried off in safety by a troop of horsemen. The authorship of the crime was inferred from the fact that no inquiry was allowed and, as the wounded man seemed likely to recover, he was strangled in his bed on the 18th of August. It is said that Caesar Borgia not only contrived but witnessed the murder, and that he justified it by charging the victim with designs against his life. A year later, Lucretia was again married, with great pomp, to a third or fourth husband—Alfonso, eldest son of the duke of Ferrara. By condescending to such a connexion (which was forwarded by the influence of the French king) the proud house of Este, which had been alarmed by Caesar Borgia’s progress, gained for itself the pope’s protection, security against the territorial ambition of the Borgias, a large payment of money, and the free possession of some ecclesiastical fiefs in the Ro­magna; while for the Borgias, in addition to the dignity of the alliance, there was the advantage that the new duchy of Romagna was covered on its weakest side by the territory of a friendly power. Lucretia, who had not only exercised the government of Spoleto, but during her father’s absence from Rome had actually been en­trusted with the administration of the papacy, removed to Ferrara, where she lived until 1519. In her later years she cultivated the reputation of religion, and earned the celebration of poets—among them, of Ariosto. But although we may hesitate or refuse to believe, at least in their full extent, the foulest of the charges which have assailed her, it is impossible to disconnect her from the treasons and murders, the brutal licentiousness, the gross and scandalous festivities, amid which her earlier life was spent, and in some of which it appears that she took a conspicuous part. Nor are either poets or divines superior to the temptation of overlooking the faults of persons in high station whose patronage they regard as a benefit and an honour.

The moral degradation into which the papacy sank under Alexander has no parallel either in its earlier or in its later history, even if we make large deductions from the statements of contemporary writers on the ground of malice or exaggeration. The pope himself and his children are accused of profligacy which hesitated at nothing for its gratification, which never scrupled to remove obstacles by murder, or to violate the laws of nature. The Vatican was polluted by revels and orgies of the most shameless and loathsome obscenity, of which the pope and his daughter are represented as pleased spectators. A letter of the time, which is said to have been read in Alexander’s own hearing, paints the morals of the court in the darkest colours, and speaks of him as a man stained with every vice, a second Mahomet, the predicted antichrist.

For the expenses of this disgusting and costly wickedness, for the wars and pompous displays of Caesar Borgia, for the establishment of his other children in the rank of princes, Alexander needed money continually; and he raised it by means more shameless than anything that had before been practised. An epigram of the time (for epigrams and pasquils were the only form in which the Romans then ventured to express their discontent) speaks of him as selling all that was holiest, and as entitled to sell, inasmuch as he had previously bought. The most disreputable of the expedients to which earlier popes had resorted—sale of offices and benefices, creation of new offices in order that they might be sold, traffic in indulgences, misappropriation of money raised under pretence of a crusade—these and such like abuses were carried to an excess before unknown. Cardinals were appointed in large numbers—at one time twelve, at another time eleven—with the avowed purpose of extorting money for their promotion. The jubilee of 1500 attracted a vast number of pilgrims to Rome: on Easter-day, 200,000 knelt in front of St. Peter’s to receive the pope’s bene­diction; and while these multitudes returned home, to scandalize all Christendom by their reports of the depravities of Rome, the papal treasury was enriched by their offerings, and by the commutations paid by those who were unable to make the pilgrimage in person. The “right of spoils” (jus exuviarum) received new develop­ments for the gratification of Alexander’s rapacity; he seized the property of deceased cardinals in disregard of their testamentary directions; in some cases he forbade cardinals to make wills; and it was believed that the deaths of those who had the reputation of wealth were sometimes hastened by poison. Property was largely taken from the great Roman families—often under false pretences—for the endowment of the pope’s children and kindred. Thus the Gaetani were charged with treason, because Alexander had fixed his desires on the duchy of Sermoneta. The duke was committed to the castle of St. Angelo, where he died, probably of poison. Others of the family were put to death, and the duchy was made over, by a pretended sale, to Lucretia, whose son by Alfonso of Bisceglia was decorated with the title attached to it. Another boy, the son of Alexander by a Roman mother (probably Julia Farnese), was made duke of Nepi, with a suitable endowment. The interests of the church were utterly disregarded, in order that the pope’s bastards might be enriched; thus Caesar, in addition to his fiefs in the Romagna, received the abbey of Subiaco with eighteen castles belonging to it; and nineteen cardinals signed the deed of alienation, while not one dared to object to it.

Rome was kept under a system of terror, so that no one dared to mutter his dissatisfaction. The dungeons of St. Angelo and of the Tor di Nona were crowded with prisoners, of whom many found an end by secret violence. Prelates whose wealth made them objects of sinister interest to the pope disappeared, and were not again heard of. Dead bodies were found in the streets, or were thrown into the Tiber. Hosts of spies and assassins lurked in secret, or audaciously swaggered about the city. The state of Rome can hardly have been made worse by an edict which allowed all persons who had been banished for murder, robbery, or other crimes, to return with impunity. The ruling spirit in this general terror was Caesar Borgia, with whom the pope remonstrated on his tyranny, while he extolled his own clemency by way of contrast.

The powers which had combined for the conquest of Naples soon quarrelled about the division of their prey. After a time, a treaty was arranged at Lyons, by which Naples was to become the endowment of a marriage between the French king’s daughter Claude, and Charles, the child of the emperor’s son Philip by Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isa­bella, and, until the parties should be of age to consummate the marriage, the partition of Granada was to be in force. But the Spanish general Gonsalvo, taking advan­tage of the weakness of the French in southern Italy, and professing that he had no official knowledge of the treaty, suddenly assumed the offensive, and made himself master of the whole Neapolitan territory, and Ferdinand, in order to gain the benefit of this treachery, disowned the treaty of Lyons, under the pretext that Philip, who had acted for him, had exceeded his instructions. The French king was preparing an expedition for the recovery of his Neapolitan territory, and for the chastise­ment of Caesar Borgia, who had been joined with Gonsalvo in the late campaign, when it was suddenly reported that the pope was dead.

At the age of seventy-two, Alexander still appeared full of vigour; the sonorous and musical voice with which he officiated in the mass at Easter 1503, excited the admiration of the Ferrarese ambassador. His schemes had all been thus far successful, and he was meditating yet further projects of ambition. On the 12th of August, Alexander supped at his vineyard, near the Vatican palace, with his son the duke of Valentinois and Adrian cardinal of St. Chrysogonus and bishop of Hereford. All three were seized with sudden illness; and it was commonly believed that the pope and his son had drunk, through a servant’s mistake, of poisoned wine, designed by Caesar for the cardinal, whose wealth had attracted the cupidity of the Borgias. Adrian, after a severe illness, during which it is said that the whole skin of his body was changed, recovered; Caesar, although with difficulty, was carried through by the immediate use of antidotes, aided by his youth and natural force of con­stitution; but the pope died within a week, after having received the last rites of the church. His illness appears to have been treated as a fever, and may perhaps have been no more than an ordinary disease of this kind. But it was reported that his body was black and swollen, as if from poison; and it was commonly believed at Rome that the devil, by whose aid he had attained the papacy, after having long attended on him in the form of an ape, had carried off his forfeit soul.

The circumstances of the time, after the expulsion of the Medici, had led the Florentines to look to Savonarola for guidance; and he found himself inevitably drawn to mingle deeply in political affairs. The parties at Florence were three : the whites, or popular party, who, although far from being penetrated by Savonarola’s religious principles, usually acted in accordance with him; the greys, or adherents of the Medici, who for the time found it necessary to disguise their opinions; and the oligarchical party, mostly composed of violent young men, from whom it got the names of arrabbiati (infuriated) and compagnacci. These were generally opposed at once to Savonarola’s political views and to his religious and moral strictness; and they derided his followers as piagnoni (weepers), fratteschi, and masticapaternostri. Agreeably to the principles of the book ‘On the Government of Princes’, commonly ascribed to Thomas of Aquino, Savonarola held that, while monarchy was in itself the best form of government, different polities were suitable for various states; that the intelligence, advanced culture, and courage of the Florentines rendered them fit for a purely republican government;  and to his influence the establishment of a popular, yet not democratic, consti­tution was chiefly due. But while his political allies wished to use his religious influence for their own pur­poses, the Dominican’s great object was to make political reform subservient to the reformation of morals and religion. He proclaimed the sovereignty of Christ, and did not hesitate to deduce from this the sacredness of the laws which he himself set forth. His visions increased, partly through the effect of his ascetic exercises. He expected supernatural guidance in determining the subjects of his preaching, and even believed in the visions of a monastic brother named Sylvester Maruffi, although these were evidently nothing more than the offspring of a nervous temperament combined with a weak and ignorant mind. He frequently expressed his expectation of a violent death, and he carried a small crucifix in his sleeve, by way of preparation for a sudden end.

In the meantime the effects of his preaching had begun to appear in the graver dress and more decorous manners both of men and of women; in church-going, fasting, almsgiving, in the celebration of marriages with seriousness, instead of the levity which had been usual, in habits of family devotion, which were almost monastic, in the restoration of wrongful or questionable gains, in the reading of religious books, in the substitution of hymns for the licentious and half-pagan carnival-songs of former times, some of which had been composed by Lorenzo himself. The grosser vices seemed to have disappeared; the spectacles and games in which the Florentines had delighted were neglected. At the carnival of 1496, the boys of the city, whose disorderly behaviour at that season had formerly defied the au­thority of the magistrates, were brought by the friar’s influence to enlist themselves in the service of religion; and, instead of extorting money to be spent in riotous festivity, they modestly collected alms which were em­ployed in works of mercy under the direction of a charitable brotherhood.

Within the convent of St. Mark, Savonarola, as prior, had introduced a thorough reformation. There was a return to the earlier simplicity of food and dress. All use of gold or silver in crucifixes and other ornaments was forbidden. Schools were established, not only for the study of Scripture in the original languages, but for painting, calligraphy, and illumination; and the practice of these arts contributed much to defray the expenses of the society. The number of brethren had increased from about fifty to two hundred and thirty-eight, of whom many were distinguished for their birth, learning, or accomplishments; and among the devoted adherents, of the prior were some of the most eminent artists of the age—such as Bartholomew or Baccio della Porta, who after Savonarola’s death entered the brotherhood of St. Mark’s, and is famous under the name of Fra Barto­lommeo; the architect Cronaca; the painters Botticelli and Credi; the family of Della Robbia, eminent in sculpture; the sculptor Baccio of Montelupo; and, above all, Michael Angelo Buonarroti, who even to old age used to read the sermons of Savonarola, and to recall with reverence and delight his tones and gestures.

But Savonarola’s course was watched with unfriendly eyes. The partisans of the Medici were hostile to him for in a sermon he had plainly recommended that anyone who should attempt to restore the tyranny of the banished family should lose his head. The arrabbiati were bitterly opposed to him, and they enlisted on their side the power of Lewis the Moor, and his influence with the pope. The clergy, and especially those of high position in the church, were indignant at his assaults on their manner of life; monks and friars—some of them even of his own order—were exasperated by his reproofs of their degeneracy. Frequent complaints were carried to Rome, where one Marianus of Genezzano, a Franciscan, who in Savonarola’s earlier days had been his rival for fame as a preacher, was busy in representing him as a dangerous man; and as early as July 1495, prior of St. Mark’s was invited by Alexander to a conference on the subject of his prophetic gifts. But July 21, although the invitation was very courteously expressed, and was accompanied by compliments as to his labours, he was warned by his friends that it was not to be trusted; he therefore excused himself on the ground that his health had suffered from over-exertion, and that, in the circumstances of the time, his presence was considered necessary at Florence. Further correspondence took place, in which the pope’s blandishments were soon exchanged for a threatening tone, and Savonarola was denounced by him as a “sower of false doctrine”; while Savonarola, although he main­tained the reality of his inspirations, endeavoured to explain his claims to the prophetical character in an inoffensive sense.

He was charged to refrain from preaching, and for a time obeyed, employing himself chiefly in the composition of books, while his place in the pulpit was supplied by one of his most zealous adherents, Dominic of Pescia. But the solicitations of his friends, and his own feeling as to the necessities of the time, induced him to resume his preaching, as he considered the inhibition to have been issued on false grounds, and therefore to be invalid. He now thundered against the vices of the Roman court, and denounced vengeance which was to come on them. He pointed to a general council as the remedy, and declared that it might depose unworthy prelates—even the pope himself, whose election, as it had been effected by notorious bribery, Savonarola regarded as null and void. He taught that property might lawfully be held by the church, for otherwise St. Sylvester would not have accepted it; but that the present corruptions of the church proved the expediency of resigning it. In the hope of silencing and gaining so formidable a man, Alexander employed an agent to sound him as to the acceptance of promotion to the cardinalate; but Savona­rola indignantly declared from the pulpit that he would have no other red hat than one dyed with the blood of martyrdom.

Among the charges against Savonarola was that of having surreptitiously procured a papal order by which the Tuscan Dominicans were separated from the Lombard congregation.. The matter was discussed until, feeling that on his independence depended the validity of his reforms, he avowed that, in case of extremity, he must resist the pope, as St. Paul withstood St. Peter to the face. Thus he was brought into direct conflict with the papacy : and he was ordered to refrain from preaching, either in public or within his convent, until he should have obeyed the papal summons to Rome.

At the approach of the carnival of 1497, Savonarola resolved to carry further the reform which he had attempted in the preceding year. For some days the boys who were under his influence went about the city, asking the inhabitants of each house to give up to them any articles which were regarded as vanities and cursed things; and these were built up into a vast pile, fifteen stories high—carnival masks and habits, rich dresses and ornaments of women, false hair, cards and dice, perfumes and cosmetics, books of sorcery, amatory poems and other works of a free character, musical instruments, paintings and sculptures—all surmounted by a monstrous figure representing the Carnival. A Venetian merchant offered the signory 20,000 crowns for the contents of the heap, but the money was refused, and he was obliged to contribute his own picture to the sacrifice. It is said that Baccio della Porta cast into the heap a number of his academic drawings from the nude figure, and that Lorenzo di Credi and other artists of Savonarola’s party imitated the act. On the morning of the last day of the carnival Savonarola celebrated mass. A long procession of children and others, dressed in white, then wound through the streets, after which the pyre was kindled, and its burning was accompanied by the singing of psalms and hymns, the sounds of bells, drums, and trumpets, and the shouts of an enthusiastic multitude, while the signory looked on from a balcony. The money collected by the boys and made over to the brotherhood of St. Martin exceeded the amount which that society usually received in a year. But although Savonarola was delighted with the success of his project, the errors of judgment which he had shown in investing children with the character of censors and inquisitors, in employing them to inform against their own relations, and otherwise introducing dissension into families, in confounding harm­less and indifferent things with things deeply vicious and sinful, in sanctioning the destruction of precious works of literature and art—such errors could not but tend to alienate the minds of men in general, while they furnished his enemies with weapons against him.

The opposition of these enemies was becoming more and more bitter, and showed itself in various forms— lampoons, charges of designs against the state, and attempts at personal violence. As he was preaching on Ascension-day, a violent attack was made on him; but he was saved by some of his friends, who closed around the pulpit, and were able to carry him off to his convent. In consequence of this he abstained from preaching for a time.

The pope’s anger against Savonarola became also more and more exasperated. On the 12th of May was issued a sentence of excommunication, grounded chiefly on the prior’s disobedience to the orders for the reunion of his convent with the Tuscan congregation; and on the 22nd of June this sentence was solemnly pronounced, with bells and lighted tapers, in the cathedral of Florence. Savonarola withdrew into his convent, while a conflict as to the merits of his case was kept up by preachers on either side. During this time he employed himself much in composition, and to it belongs his chief work, “The Triumph of the Cross”.

The death of the duke of Gandia soon after furnished him with an opportunity for addressing to the pope a letter of consolation and of admonition as to the reforms which Alexander, under the pressure of that calamity, professed a wish to undertake. But although the pope appeared to receive the letter favour­ably, it would seem that he afterwards regarded it as an offensive intrusion.

In the beginning of August a conspiracy in the interest of the Medici was discovered, and five of the principal citizens, among whom was Bernard del Nero, a man of seventy-five, who had held the highest offices in the state, were convicted and sentenced to death. An appeal to the great council was violently refused, because it was feared that in that body they might find interest sufficient to save them; and they were beheaded in the night which followed their condemnation. This was the work of Savonarola’s partisans, and both he and they suffered in general estimation by the refusal to the accused of the right of appeal, which had been allowed in the constitution established by Savonarola himself. But it would seem that, in his excommunicated and secluded state, he took no part in the affair beyond interceding—coldly, as he himself says—for one of the conspirators.

On Septuagesima Sunday, in the following year, he resumed preaching at the request of the signory. The archbishop’s vicar-general, a member of the Medici family, forbade attendance at his sermons, but was induced by a threat from the signory to withdraw his prohibition. But this body of magistrates was changed every second month; and, as its elements varied from time to time, Savonarola, after having often enjoyed its support, was at length to experience its fatal hostility. His preaching was now more vehement than ever; he launched out against the pope’s exaggerated claims, against the vices of the Roman court and its head, against the abuse of excommunication, as to which he even prayed in the most solemn manner that, if he should seek absolution from the unjust sentence pronounced against him, he might be made over to perdition. He urged strongly, as he had urged by letters to sovereign princes, the necessity of a general council as a remedy for the disorders of the church. It would appear from some of his expressions that he expected a miracle to be wrought in behalf of his doctrine. At the approach of Lent he repeated the “burning of vanities”; but, although the value of the things consumed was said to be greater than on the former occasion, the procession did not pass off so quietly, as the boy-censors, in the course of their movements about the city, were insulted and roughly handled by the compagnacci.

After the burning Savonarola’s followers returned in procession to St. Mark’s, where in front of the convent they planted a cross, around which they danced wildly in three circles, composed of friars, clergy, and laymen, young and old, chanting strange verses composed by one of the party. That Savonarola tolerated a repetition of these frantic scenes, by which his party had incurred just obloquy two years before, is a proof of the high state of enthusiasm to which he had been excited.

About this time one Francis of Apulia, a member of that division of the Franciscans which, from wearing wooden shoes, had the name of zoccolanti, challenged Savonarola to the ordeal of fire, as a test of the truth of his doctrine. For himself, he said that, being but a sinner, he must expect to be burnt, but that he would gladly give his life to expose Savonarola as a sower of scandals and errors.

The challenge was accepted by Dominic of Pescia, who had already been engaged in disputes with the Franciscan at Prato, and, in his devotion to Savonarola, believed him capable of performing miracles. Savonarola himself discouraged the ordeal, because he con­sidered that the truth of his teaching and prophecies, and the nullity of his excommunication, were sufficiently proved by other means; he declared that he had other and better work to do; yet he evidently expected that, if such a trial should take place, it would result in the triumph of his cause. Objections were raised, but were silenced by a reference to the famous case of Peter the Fiery, of which Florence itself had been the scene four centuries earlier.

Francis of Apulia refused to encounter any other champion than Savonarola himself, to whom alone his challenge had been addressed; while, on the other side, not only all the Dominicans of St. Mark’s and of Fiesole, but a multitude of men, women, and even children, entreated that they might be allowed to make the trial. At length it was settled that a Franciscan named Rondinelli should be opposed to Dominic of Pescia, and that the ordeal should take place on the 7th of April—the day before Palm Sunday. The propositions as to which the Divine judgment was thus to be invoked were these: —that the church was in need of renewal; that it would be chastised and renewed; that Florence also would pass through chastisement to renovation and prosperity; that the unbelievers would be converted to Christ; that all these things would take place during that generation; and, finally, that the excommunication of Savonarola was a nullity.

On the appointed day, the Place of the Signory, where precautions had been carefully taken for the prevention of any tumult, was filled by an immense multitude of spectators. Two heaps of combustible matter had been piled up for the purpose of the trial; they were forty yards long, two yards and a-half in height, and separated by a passage one yard wide. But the eagerness of the crowd was to be disappointed. For hours a discussion was carried on in consequence of objections raised by the Franciscans that Savonarola’s party and their champion might make use of magical charms. The wearisome dispute was still in progress, when a heavy shower fell; and at length the signory forbade the ordeal. The multitude, tired, hungry, drenched, vexed by the tedious wrangling, and at last finding themselves baulked of the expected spectacle, while they did not know on whom to lay the blame, broke out against Savonarola. It was with difficulty that some of his friends were able to conduct him, carrying the holy Eucharist in his hands, through a crowd which loaded him with insulting language, to his convent.

Everything seemed now to turn against him. The secular clergy, as well as the monks, had been alienated from him. Two days later St. Mark’s was besieged by a mob, and, on its surrender, the prior and Dominic of Pescia were committed to prison. Savonarola’s partisans were attacked and proscribed; some of them were tumultuously murdered; a commission of men hostile to him was appointed to investigate his case; and throughout a month he was frequently subjected to torture. His nervous system, naturally delicate, and rendered more sensitive by his ascetic exercises, was unable to bear the agonies which were inflicted on him; he confessed whatever was desired, and, when the torture was over for the time, retracted the avowals which had been wrung from him. “When I am under torture,” he said, “I lose myself, I am mad; that only is true which I say without torture”. Many questions related to his claims to the character of a prophet; and as to these he talked wildly and inconsistently—insisting at first on the reality of his visions, but afterwards, in his despair, appearing to give up his pretensions.

While the pope repeated the request which he had before urged, that Savonarola should be sent to Rome, the magistrates of Florence, from a regard to the dignity of the republic, desired that his punishment should take place on the scene where his offences had been com­mitted. To this the pope at length consented, and sent the general of the Dominicans and another as his commissioners, before whom the examination was resumed. It was impossible to convict the accused of unsoundness as to faith, and it appears that, in order to give a colour for charges of heterodoxy, the acts of the process were falsified.

But the judgment of the court had been predetermined. On the 22nd of May, Savonarola, with Dominic of Pescia and Sylvester Maruffi (who had been associated with them in prison), was sentenced to be hanged and burnt. Domniic, with his characteristic zeal, declared himself eager to be burnt alive; but Savonarola, on being informed of this, reproved him for wishing to exercise his choice in such a matter.

On the following day the sentence was carried out in the Place of the Signory, which was occupied by crowds as numerous as those which a few weeks before had gathered there for the expected ordeal. The duty of degrading the victims was imposed on Pagagnotti, bishop of Vaison, who had formerly been a friar of St. Mark’s. In his grief and agitation the bishop mistook the form, and said to Savonarola, “I separate thee from the church triumphant”. “From the militant”, said Savonarola, correcting him, “not from the triumphant, for that is not thine to do”.

After the execution of the sentence, such remains of the bodies as could be found were thrown into the Arno: yet relics of Savonarola were preserved with veneration among his adherents, who even believed them to work miracles, and eagerly traced in the events of the following years the fulfilment of their master’s prophecies.

 

 

CHAPTER VI.

FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER VI TO THE END OF THE FIFTH COUNCIL OF THE LATERAN. A.D. 1503-1517.