CHAPTER III
RODERIGO LENZUOLO was barn at Valencia, in Spain, in 1430 or 1431,
and on his mother's side was descended, as some writers declare, of a
family of royal blood, which had cast its eyes on the tiara only
after cherishing hopes of the crowns of Aragon and Valencia.
Roderigo from his infancy had shown signs of a marvellous quickness
of mind, and as he grew older he exhibited an intelligence extremely
apt far the study of sciences, especially law and jurisprudence: the
result was that his first distinctions were gained in the law, a
profession wherein he soon made a great reputation by his ability in
the discussion of the most thorny cases. All the same, he was not
slow to leave this career, and abandoned it quite suddenly for the
military profession, which his father had followed; but after various
actions which served to display his presence of mind and courage, he
was as much disgusted with this profession as with the other; and
since it happened that at the very time he began to feel this disgust
his father died, leaving a considerable fortune, he resolved to do no
more work, but to live according to his own fancies and caprices.
About this time he became the lover of a widow who had two daughters.
The widow dying, Roderigo took the girls under his protection, put
one into a convent, and as the other was one of the loveliest women
imaginable, made her his mistress. This was the notorious Rosa
Vanozza, by whom he had five children--Francesco, Caesar, Lucrezia,
and Goffredo; the name of the fifth is unknown.
Roderigo, retired from public affairs, was given up entirely to the
affections of a lover and a father, when he heard that his uncle, who
loved him like a son, had been elected pope under the name of
Calixtus III. But the young man was at this time so much a lover
that love imposed silence on ambition; and indeed he was almost
terrified at the exaltation of his uncle, which was no doubt destined
to force him once more into public life. Consequently, instead of
hurrying to Rome, as anyone else in his place would have done, he was
content to indite to His Holiness a letter in which he begged for the
continuation of his favours, and wished him a long and happy reign.
This reserve on the part of one of his relatives, contrasted with the
ambitious schemes which beset the new pope at every step, struck
Calixtus III in a singular way: he knew the stuff that was in young
Roderigo, and at a time when he was besieged on all sides by
mediocrities, this powerful nature holding modestly aside gained new
grandeur in his eyes so he replied instantly to Roderigo that on the
receipt of his letter he must quit Spain for Italy, Valencia for
Rome.
This letter uprooted Roderigo from the centre of happiness he had
created for himself, and where he might perhaps have slumbered on
like an ordinary man, if fortune had not thus interposed to drag him
forcibly away. Roderigo was happy, Roderigo was rich; the evil
passions which were natural to him had been, if not extinguished,--at
least lulled; he was frightened himself at the idea of changing the
quiet life he was leading for the ambitious, agitated career that was
promised him; and instead of obeying his uncle, he delayed the
preparations for departure, hoping that Calixtus would forget him.
It was not so: two months after he received the letter from the pope,
there arrived at Valencia a prelate from Rome, the bearer of
Roderigo's nomination to a benefice worth 20,000 ducats a year, and
also a positive order to the holder of the post to come and take
possession of his charge as soon as possible.
Holding back was no longer feasible: so Roderigo obeyed; but as he
did not wish to be separated from the source whence had sprung eight
years of happiness, Rosa Vanozza also left Spain, and while he was
going to Rome, she betook herself to Venice, accompanied by two
confidential servants, and under the protection of a Spanish
gentleman named Manuel Melchior.
Fortune kept the promises she had made to Roderigo: the pope received
him as a son, and made him successively Archbishop of Valencia,
Cardinal-Deacon, and Vice-Chancellor. To all these favours Calixtus
added a revenue of 20,000 ducats, so that at the age of scarcely
thirty-five Roderigo found himself the equal of a prince in riches
and power.
Roderigo had had some reluctance about accepting the cardinalship,
which kept him fast at Rome, and would have preferred to be General
of the Church, a position which would have allowed him more liberty
for seeing his mistress and his family; but his uncle Calixtus made
him reckon with the possibility of being his successor some day, and
from that moment the idea of being the supreme head of kings and
nations took such hold of Roderigo, that he no longer had any end in
view but that which his uncle had made him entertain.
From that day forward, there began to grow up in the young cardinal
that talent for hypocrisy which made of him the most perfect
incarnation of the devil that has perhaps ever existed; and Roderigo
was no longer the same man: with words of repentance and humility on
his lips, his head bowed as though he were bearing the weight of his
past sins, disparaging the riches which he had acquired and which,
according to him, were the wealth of the poor and ought to return to
the poor, he passed his life in churches, monasteries, and hospitals,
acquiring, his historian tells us, even in the eyes of his enemies,
the reputation of a Solomon for wisdom, of a Job for patience, and of
a very Moses for his promulgation of the word of God: Rosa Vanozza
was the only person in the world who could appreciate the value of
this pious cardinal's conversion.
It proved a lucky thing for Roderiga that he had assumed this pious
attitude, for his protector died after a reign of three years three
months and nineteen days, and he was now sustained by his own merit
alone against the numerous enemies he had made by his rapid rise to
fortune: so during the whole of the reign of Pius II he lived always
apart from public affairs, and only reappeared in the days of Sixtus
IV, who made him the gift of the abbacy of Subiaco, and sent him in
the capacity of ambassador to the kings of Aragon and Portugal. On
his return, which took place during the pontificate of Innocent VIII,
he decided to fetch his family at last to Rome: thither they came,
escorted by Don Manuel Melchior, who from that moment passed as the
husband of Rosa Vanozza, and took the name of Count Ferdinand of
Castile. The Cardinal Roderigo received the noble Spaniard as a
countryman and a friend; and he, who expected to lead a most retired
life, engaged a house in the street of the Lungara, near the church
of Regina Coeli, on the banks of the Tiber. There it was that, after
passing the day in prayers and pious works, Cardinal Roderigo used to
repair each evening and lay aside his mask. And it was said, though
nobody could prove it, that in this house infamous scenes passed:
Report said the dissipations were of so dissolute a character that
their equals had never been seen in Rome. With a view to checking
the rumours that began to spread abroad, Roderigo sent Caesar to
study at Pisa, and married Lucrezia to a young gentleman of Aragon;
thus there only remained at home Rosa Vanozza and her two sons: such
was the state of things when Innocent VIII died and Roderigo Borgia
was proclaimed pope.
We have seen by what means the nomination was effected; and so the
five cardinals who had taken no part in this simony--namely, the
Cardinals of Naples, Sierra, Portugal, Santa Maria-in-Porticu, and
St. Peter-in-Vinculis--protested loudly against this election, which
they treated as a piece of jobbery; but Roderigo had none the less,
however it was done, secured his majority; Roderigo was none the less
the two hundred and sixtieth successor of St. Peter.
Alexander VI, however, though he had arrived at his object, did not
dare throw off at first the mask which the Cardinal Bargia had worn
so long, although when he was apprised of his election he could not
dissimulate his joy; indeed, on hearing the favourable result of the
scrutiny, he lifted his hands to heaven and cried, in the accents of
satisfied ambition, "Am I then pope? Am I then Christ's vicar? Am I
then the keystone of the Christian world?"
"Yes, holy father," replied Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the same who had
sold to Roderigo the nine votes that were at his disposal at the
Conclave for four mules laden with silver; "and we hope by your
election to give glory to God, repose to the Church, and joy to
Christendom, seeing that you have been chosen by the Almighty Himself
as the most worthy among all your brethren."
But in the short interval occupied by this reply, the new pope had
already assumed the papal authority, and in a humble voice and with
hands crossed upon his breast, he spoke:
"We hope that God will grant us His powerful aid, in spite of our
weakness, and that He will do for us that which He did for the
apostle when aforetime He put into his hands the keys of heaven and
entrusted to him the government of the Church, a government which
without the aid of God would prove too heavy a burden for mortal man;
but God promised that His Spirit should direct him; God will do the
same, I trust, for us; and for your part we fear not lest any of you
fail in that holy obedience which is due unto the head of the Church,
even as the flock of Christ was bidden to follow the prince of the
apostles."
Having spoken these words, Alexander donned the pontifical robes, and
through the windows of the Vatican had strips of paper thrown out on
which his name was written in Latin. These, blown by the wind,
seemed to convey to the whole world the news of the great event which
was about to change the face of Italy. The same day couriers started
for all the courts of Europe.
Caesar Borgia learned the news of his father's election at the
University of Pisa, where he was a student. His ambition had
sometimes dreamed of such good fortune, yet his joy was little short
of madness. He was then a young man, about twenty-two or twenty-four
years of age, skilful in all bodily exercises, and especially in
fencing; he could ride barebacked the most fiery steeds, could cut
off the head of a bull at a single sword-stroke; moreover, he was
arrogant, jealous, and insincere. According to Tammasi, he was great
among the godless, as his brother Francesco was good among the great.
As to his face, even contemporary authors have left utterly different
descriptions; for same have painted him as a monster of ugliness,
while others, on the contrary, extol his beauty. This contradiction
is due to the fact that at certain times of the year, and especially
in the spring, his face was covered with an eruption which, so long
as it lasted, made him an object of horror and disgust, while all the
rest of the year he was the sombre, black-haired cavalier with pale
skin and tawny beard whom Raphael shows us in the fine portrait he
made of him. And historians, both chroniclers and painters, agree as
to his fixed and powerful gaze, behind which burned a ceaseless
flame, giving to his face something infernal and superhuman. Such
was the man whose fortune was to fulfil all his desires. He had
taken for his motto, 'Aut Caesar, aut nihil': Caesar or nothing.
Caesar posted to Rome with certain of his friends, and scarcely was
he recognised at the gates of the city when the deference shown to
him gave instant proof of the change in his fortunes: at the Vatican
the respect was twice as great; mighty men bowed down before him as
before one mightier than themselves. And so, in his impatience, he
stayed not to visit his mother or any other member of his family, but
went straight to the pope to kiss his feet; and as the pope had been
forewarned of his coming, he awaited him in the midst of a brilliant
and numerous assemblage of cardinals, with the three other brothers
standing behind him. His Holiness received Caesar with a gracious
countenance; still, he did not allow himself any demonstration of his
paternal love, but, bending towards him, kissed him on the forehead,
and inquired how he was and how he had fared on his journey. Caesar
replied that he was wonderfully well, and altogether at the service
of His Holiness: that, as to the journey, the trifling inconveniences
and short fatigue had been compensated, and far mare than
compensated, by the joy which he felt in being able to adore upon the
papal throne a pope who was so worthy. At these words, leaving
Caesar still on his knees, and reseating himself--for he had risen
from his seat to embrace him--the pope assumed a grave and composed
expression of face, and spoke as follows, loud enough to be heard by
all, and slowly enough far everyone present to be able to ponder and
retain in his memory even the least of his words:
"We are convinced, Caesar, that you are peculiarly rejoiced in
beholding us on this sublime height, so far above our deserts,
whereto it has pleased the Divine goodness to exalt us. This joy of
yours is first of all our due because of the love we have always
borne you and which we bear you still, and in the second place is
prompted by your own personal interest, since henceforth you may feel
sure of receiving from our pontifical hand those benefits which your
own good works shall deserve. But if your joy--and this we say to
you as we have even now said to your brothers--if your joy is founded
on ought else than this, you are very greatly mistaken, Caesar, and
you will find yourself sadly deceived. Perhaps we have been
ambitious--we confess this humbly before the face of all men--
passionately and immoderately ambitious to attain to the dignity of
sovereign pontiff, and to reach this end we have followed every path
that is open to human industry; but we have acted thus, vowing an
inward vow that when once we had reached our goal, we would follow no
other path but that which conduces best to the service of God and to
the advancement of the Holy See, so that the glorious memory of the
deeds that we shall do may efface the shameful recollection of the
deeds we have already done. Thus shall we, let us hope, leave to
those who follow us a track where upon if they find not the footsteps
of a saint, they may at least tread in the path of a true pontiff.
God, who has furthered the means, claims at our hands the fruits, and
we desire to discharge to the full this mighty debt that we have
incurred to Him; and accordingly we refuse to arouse by any deceit
the stern rigour of His judgments. One sole hindrance could have
power to shake our good intentions, and that might happen should we
feel too keen an interest in your fortunes. Therefore are we armed
beforehand against our love, and therefore have we prayed to God
beforehand that we stumble not because of you; for in the path of
favouritism a pope cannot slip without a fall, and cannot fall
without injury and dishonour to the Holy See. Even to the end of our
life we shall deplore the faults which have brought this experience
home to us; and may it please Gad that our uncle Calixtus of blessed
memory bear not this day in purgatory the burden of our sins, more
heavy, alas, than his own! Ah, he was rich in every virtue, he was
full of good intentions; but he loved too much his own people, and
among them he loved me chief. And so he suffered this love to lead
him blindly astray, all this love that he bore to his kindred, who to
him were too truly flesh of his flesh, so that he heaped upon the
heads of a few persons only, and those perhaps the least worthy,
benefits which would more fittingly have rewarded the deserts of
many. In truth, he bestowed upon our house treasures that should
never have been amassed at the expense of the poor, or else should
have been turned to a better purpose. He severed from the
ecclesiastical State, already weak and poor, the duchy of Spoleto and
other wealthy properties, that he might make them fiefs to us; he
confided to our weak hands the vice-chancellorship, the vice-
prefecture of Rome, the generalship of the Church, and all the other
most important offices, which, instead of being monopolised by us,
should have been conferred on those who were most meritorious.
Moreover, there were persons who were raised on our recommendation to
posts of great dignity, although they had no claims but such as our
undue partiality accorded them; others were left out with no reason
for their failure except the jealousy excited in us by their virtues.
To rob Ferdinand of Aragon of the kingdom of Naples, Calixtus kindled
a terrible war, which by a happy issue only served to increase our
fortune, and by an unfortunate issue must have brought shame and
disaster upon the Holy See. Lastly, by allowing himself to be
governed by men who sacrificed public good to their private
interests, he inflicted an injury, not only upon the pontifical
throne and his own reputation, but what is far worse, far more
deadly, upon his own conscience. And yet, O wise judgments of God!
hard and incessantly though he toiled to establish our fortunes,
scarcely had he left empty that supreme seat which we occupy to-day,
when we were cast down from the pinnacle whereon we had climbed,
abandoned to the fury of the rabble and the vindictive hatred of the
Roman barons, who chose to feel offended by our goodness to their
enemies. Thus, not only, we tell you, Caesar, not only did we plunge
headlong from the summit of our grandeur, losing the worldly goods
and dignities which our uncle had heaped at our feet, but for very
peril of our life we were condemned to a voluntary exile, we and our
friends, and in this way only did we contrive to escape the storm
which our too good fortune had stirred up against us. Now this is a
plain proof that God mocks at men's designs when they are bad ones.
How great an error is it for any pope to devote more care to the
welfare of a house, which cannot last more than a few years, than to
the glory of the Church, which will last for ever! What utter folly
for any public man whose position is not inherited and cannot be
bequeathed to his posterity, to support the edifice of his grandeur
on any other basis than the noblest virtue practised for the general
good, and to suppose that he can ensure the continuance of his own
fortune otherwise than by taking all precautions against sudden
whirlwinds which are want to arise in the midst of a calm, and to
blow up the storm-clouds I mean the host of enemies. Now any one of
these enemies who does his worst can cause injuries far more powerful
than any help that is at all likely to come from a hundred friends
and their lying promises. If you and your brothers walk in the path
of virtue which we shall now open for you, every wish of your heart
shall be instantly accomplished; but if you take the other path, if
you have ever hoped that our affection will wink at disorderly life,
then you will very soon find out that we are truly pope, Father of
the Church, not father of the family; that, vicar of Christ as we
are, we shall act as we deem best for Christendom, and not as you
deem best for your own private good. And now that we have come to a
thorough understanding, Caesar, receive our pontifical blessing."
And with these words, Alexander VI rose up, laid his hands upon his
son's head, for Caesar was still kneeling, and then retired into his
apartments, without inviting him to follow.
The young man remained awhile stupefied at this discourse, so utterly
unexpected, so utterly destructive at one fell blow to his most
cherished hopes. He rose giddy and staggering like a drunken man,
and at once leaving the Vatican, hurried to his mother, whom he had
forgotten before, but sought now in his despair. Rosa Vanozza
possessed all the vices and all the virtues of a Spanish courtesan;
her devotion to the Virgin amounted to superstition, her fondness for
her children to weakness, and her love for Roderigo to sensuality.
In the depth of her heart she relied on the influence she had been
able to exercise over him for nearly thirty years; and like a snake,
she knew haw to envelop him in her coils when the fascination of her
glance had lost its power. Rosa knew of old the profound hypocrisy
of her lover, and thus she was in no difficulty about reassuring
Caesar.
Lucrezia was with her mother when Caesar arrived; the two young
people exchanged a lover-like kiss beneath her very eyes: and before
he left Caesar had made an appointment for the same evening with
Lucrezia, who was now living apart from her husband, to whom Roderigo
paid a pension in her palace of the Via del Pelegrino, opposite the
Campo dei Fiori, and there enjoying perfect liberty.
In the evening, at the hour fixed, Caesar appeared at Lucrezia's; but
he found there his brother Francesco. The two young men had never
been friends. Still, as their tastes were very different, hatred
with Francesco was only the fear of the deer for the hunter; but with
Caesar it was the desire for vengeance and that lust for blood which
lurks perpetually in the heart of a tiger. The two brothers none the
less embraced, one from general kindly feeling, the other from
hypocrisy; but at first sight of one another the sentiment of a
double rivalry, first in their father's and then in their sister's
good graces, had sent the blood mantling to the cheek of Francesco,
and called a deadly pallor into Caesar's. So the two young men sat
on, each resolved not to be the first to leave, when all at once
there was a knock at the door, and a rival was announced before whom
both of them were bound to give way: it was their father.
Rosa Vanazza was quite right in comforting Caesar. Indeed, although
Alexander VI had repudiated the abuses of nepotism, he understood
very well the part that was to be played for his benefit by his sons
and his daughter; for he knew he could always count on Lucrezia and
Caesar, if not on Francesco and Goffredo. In these matters the
sister was quite worthy of her brother. Lucrezia was wanton in
imagination, godless by nature, ambitious and designing: she had a
craving for pleasure, admiration, honours, money, jewels, gorgeous
stuffs, and magnificent mansions. A true Spaniard beneath her golden
tresses, a courtesan beneath her frank looks, she carried the head of
a Raphael Madonna, and concealed the heart of a Messalina. She was
dear to Roderigo both as daughter and as mistress, and he saw himself
reflected in her as in a magic mirror, every passion and every vice.
Lucrezia and Caesar were accordingly the best beloved of his heart,
and the three composed that diabolical trio which for eleven years
occupied the pontifical throne, like a mocking parody of the heavenly
Trinity.
Nothing occurred at first to give the lie to Alexander's professions
of principle in the discourse he addressed to Caesar, and the first
year of his pontificate exceeded all the hopes of Rome at the time of
his election. He arranged for the provision of stores in the public
granaries with such liberality, that within the memory of man there
had never been such astonishing abundance; and with a view to
extending the general prosperity to the lowest class, he organised
numerous doles to be paid out of his private fortune, which made it
possible for the very poor to participate in the general banquet from
which they had been excluded for long enough. The safety of the city
was secured, from the very first days of his accession, by the
establishment of a strong and vigilant police force, and a tribunal
consisting of four magistrates of irreproachable character, empowered
to prosecute all nocturnal crimes, which during the last pontificate
had been so common that their very numbers made impunity certain:
these judges from the first showed a severity which neither the rank
nor the purse of the culprit could modify. This presented such a
great contrast to the corruption of the last reign,--in the course of
which the vice-chamberlain one day remarked in public, when certain
people were complaining of the venality of justice, "God wills not
that a sinner die, but that he live and pay,"--that the capital of
the Christian world felt for one brief moment restored to the happy
days of the papacy. So, at the end of a year, Alexander VI had
reconquered that spiritual credit, so to speak, which his
predecessors lost. His political credit was still to be established,
if he was to carry out the first part of his gigantic scheme. To
arrive at this, he must employ two agencies--alliances and conquests.
His plan was to begin with alliances. The gentleman of Aragon who
had married Lucrezia when she was only the daughter of Cardinal
Roderigo Borgia was not a man powerful enough, either by birth and
fortune or by intellect, to enter with any sort of effect into the
plots and plans of Alexander VI; the separation was therefore changed
into a divorce, and Lucrezia Borgia was now free to remarry.
Alexander opened up two negotiations at the same time: he needed an
ally to keep a watch on the policy of the neighbouring States. John
Sforza, grandson of Alexander Sforza, brother of the great Francis I,
Duke of Milan, was lord of Pesaro; the geographical situation of this
place, an the coast, on the way between Florence and Venice, was
wonderfully convenient for his purpose; so Alexander first cast an
eye upon him, and as the interest of both parties was evidently the
same, it came about that John Sforza was very soon Lucrezia's second
husband.
At the same time overtures had been made to Alfonso of Aragon, heir
presumptive to the crown of Naples, to arrange a marriage between
Dana Sancia, his illegitimate daughter, and Goffreda, the pope's
third son; but as the old Ferdinand wanted to make the best bargain
he could out of it; he dragged on the negotiations as long as
possible, urging that the two children were not of marriageable age,
and so, highly honoured as he felt in such a prospective alliance,
there was no hurry about the engagement. Matters stopped at this
point, to the great annoyance of Alexander VI, who saw through this
excuse, and understood that the postponement was nothing more or less
than a refusal. Accordingly Alexander and Ferdinand remained in
statu quo, equals in the political game, both on the watch till
events should declare for one or other. The turn of fortune was for
Alexander.
Italy, though tranquil, was instinctively conscious that her calm was
nothing but the lull which goes before a storm. She was too rich and
too happy to escape the envy of other nations. As yet the plains of
Pisa had not been reduced to marsh-lands by the combined negligence
and jealousy of the Florentine Republic, neither had the rich country
that lay around Rome been converted into a barren desert by the wars
of the Colonna and Orsini families; not yet had the Marquis of
Marignan razed to the ground a hundred and twenty villages in the
republic of Siena alone; and though the Maremma was unhealthy, it was
not yet a poisonous marsh: it is a fact that Flavio Blando, writing
in 1450, describes Ostia as being merely less flourishing than in the
days of the Romans, when she had numbered 50,000 inhabitants, whereas
now in our own day there are barely 30 in all.
The Italian peasants were perhaps the most blest on the face of the
earth: instead of living scattered about the country in solitary
fashion, they lived in villages that were enclosed by walls as a
protection for their harvests, animals, and farm implements; their
houses--at any rate those that yet stand--prove that they lived in
much more comfortable and beautiful surroundings than the ordinary
townsman of our day. Further, there was a community of interests,
and many people collected together in the fortified villages, with
the result that little by little they attained to an importance never
acquired by the boorish French peasants or the German serfs; they
bore arms, they had a common treasury, they elected their own
magistrates, and whenever they went out to fight, it was to save
their common country.
Also commerce was no less flourishing than agriculture; Italy at this
period was rich in industries--silk, wool, hemp, fur, alum, sulphur,
bitumen; those products which the Italian soil could not bring forth
were imported, from the Black Sea, from Egypt, from Spain, from
France, and often returned whence they came, their worth doubled by
labour and fine workmanship. The rich man brought his merchandise,
the poor his industry: the one was sure of finding workmen, the other
was sure of finding work.
Art also was by no means behindhand: Dante, Giotto, Brunelleschi,
and Donatello were dead, but Ariosto, Raphael, Bramante, and Michael
Angelo were now living. Rome, Florence, and Naples had inherited the
masterpieces of antiquity; and the manuscripts of AEschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides had come (thanks to the conquest of Mahomet
II) to rejoin the statue of Xanthippus and the works of Phidias and
Praxiteles. The principal sovereigns of Italy had come to
understand, when they let their eyes dwell upon the fat harvests, the
wealthy villages, the flourishing manufactories, and the marvellous
churches, and then compared with them the poor and rude nations of
fighting men who surrounded them on all sides, that some day or other
they were destined to become for other countries what America was for
Spain, a vast gold-mine for them to work. In consequence of this, a
league offensive and defensive had been signed, about 1480, by
Naples, Milan, Florence, and Ferrara, prepared to take a stand
against enemies within or without, in Italy or outside. Ludovico
Sforza, who was more than anyone else interested in maintaining this
league, because he was nearest to France, whence the storm seemed to
threaten, saw in the new pope's election means not only of
strengthening the league, but of making its power and unity
conspicuous in the sight of Europe.
