was not a place where horns and trumpets did not sound, nor a quarter of the city that was not alive with public joy. The older men said they had never seen such popular rejoicings in Rome before.
Piccolomini, prematurely old at fifty-three, had up until now led a more or less dissolute life. He was the father of several bastards and had distinguished himself as a diplomat, orator, and writer rather than as a churchman; he was the author of, among other works, a widely read novel,
He had received his cardinal’s hat at Christmas 1456 and just over eighteen months later had entered the conclave with quiet confidence that he would be elected; and while prepared to promote the interests of friends and family, and to indulge their whims, in the manner of so many of his predecessors, he was also determined to become a worthy occupant of his holy office. He undertook to bear always in mind the words he had spoken to a friend when he was ordained deacon and had accepted that the chastity he confessed to dread must now replace his former licentiousness. ‘I do not deny my past. I have been a great wanderer from what is right, but at least I know it and hope that the knowledge has not come too late.’
Like his predecessor, he had the same overriding ambition: ‘Of all the intentions he had at heart, there was none so dear as that of inciting Christians against the Turks and declaring war on them.’ He discussed at length the means of achieving the organization of a crusade that could resist the advance of the Turks into Europe with Rodrigo Borgia, whose position as vice-chancellor of the Church Pius II had confirmed within hours of his election, in grateful thanks for Rodrigo’s support in the conclave.
— CHAPTER 3 — A Man of Endless Virility
‘THE DANCES WERE IMMODEST AND THE SEDUCTION OF LOVE BEYOND BOUNDS’
THE MOST TALENTED of Calixtus III’s nephews, Rodrigo Borgia had been created a cardinal at the age of twenty-five. He had made a brief study of canon law at Bologna University, where he took his degree after less than a year’s residence, which, since the normal course of study was five years, led to a widespread supposition that money had exchanged hands, a not unusual occurrence.
Nor did Rodrigo Borgia’s appointment to the influential and lucrative position of vice-chancellor at the age of twenty-seven, after an equally brief military career, pass without angry complaint; nor had his appointment to his uncle’s valuable see of Valencia. Yet it had to be conceded that while nepotism had been largely responsible for these appointments, Rodrigo was a highly competent administrator, ‘an extraordinarily able man,’ as Pius II commented, and that if indeed he did take immoderate care to ensure that his tenure in the office of vice- chancellor was an extremely profitable one — thanks to the bribes he readily accepted for all manner of favours, from the arranging of divorces to the licensing of incestuous marriages by means of forged documents — it could not be denied that he performed the duties of the post conscientiously. He was enormously rich, with a taste for extravagance; as Jacopo Gherardi da Volterra commented:
Borgia’s various offices, his numerous abbeys in Italy and Spain, and his three bishoprics of Valencia, Porto and Cartagena yield him a vast fortune; and it is said that that the office of Vice-Chancellor alone brings him in 8,000 gold florins. His plate, his pearls, his clothes embroidered with silk and gold, and his books in every department of learning are very numerous, and all are magnificent. I need not mention the innumerable bed- hangings, the trappings of his horses… the gold embroideries, the richness of his beds, his tapestries in silver and silk, nor his magnificent clothes, nor the immense amount of gold he possesses.
‘Beautiful women are attracted to him in a most remarkable way, more powerfully than iron is drawn to the magnet,’ wrote one observer. He was also, in the guarded words of Johannes Burchard, who later became his master of ceremonies, a man of ‘endless virility.’ It was well known that his sexual appetite was consuming and that attractive women who came to him for advice or favours were more than likely to take part in such orgies as those that were brought to the notice of Pius II, who thus admonished his vice-chancellor in these terms:
We have learned that three days ago a large number of women of Siena, adorned with all worldly vanity, assembled in the gardens of… Giovanni di Bichio, and that your Eminence, in contempt of the dignity of your position, remained with them from one o’clock until six and that you were accompanied by another cardinal…We are told that the dances were immodest and the seduction of love beyond bounds and that you yourself behaved as though you were one of the most vulgar young men of the age… I should blush to record all that I have been told. The mere mention of such things is a dishonour to the office you hold. In order to have more freedom for your amusements you forbade entry to the husbands, fathers, brothers and other male relations who came with these young women… It seems at present nothing else is spoken of in Siena…We are more angry than we can say… Your behaviour gives a pretext to those who accuse us of using our wealth and our high office for orgies… The Vicar of Christ himself is an object of scorn because it is believed he closes his eyes to these excesses… You rule the pontifical chancellery; and what renders your behaviour more reprehensible is that you are close to us, the Sovereign Pontiff, as Vice-Chancellor of the Holy See. We leave it to your own judgement to say if it befits your high office to flaunt with women, to drink a mouthful of wine and then have the glass carried to the woman who pleases you most, to spend a whole day as a delighted spectator of all kinds of lewd games… Your faults reflect upon us, and upon Calixtus, your uncle of happy memory, who is accused of a grave fault of judgement for having laden you with undeserved honours. Let your Eminence then decide to put an end to these frivolities.
Rodrigo had no intention of putting an end to such ‘frivolities’; but he did take considerably more care in the future not to take part in them in places or in company from which reports were likely to reach the ears of the stern Pius II. Such entertainments as those enjoyed in the garden at Siena were now to be held within the walls of his luxurious palace, which the vice-chancellor’s new wealth, both legitimately and fraudulently acquired, enabled him to build in Rome.
During Easter week in 1462, a grand procession was held in Rome to escort the skull of St Andrew, brother of St Peter, which Pius II had acquired after the relic had been saved from the Turks invading Greece. ‘Such crowds had blocked the streets that the soldiers guarding the Pope, who were armed with truncheons, were hardly able to open a path for him.’ The whole city was adorned. Narrow streets were ‘covered with canopies and branches of greenery to shade them from the sun and all the houses were decked with hangings and tapestries in canopies,’ wrote Pius II. ‘Everyone vied with each other in doing honour to the Apostle.’ Of all the magnificently ornamented palaces along the route, none was more lavishly decorated than that of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia. As the pope wrote in his memoirs:
All the cardinals who lived along the route of the procession had decorated their houses splendidly… But all were eclipsed in cost and ingenuity by that of Rodrigo, the Vice-Chancellor. His huge towering house, built on the site of the ancient mint, was bedecked with marvellous and costly tapestries… He had decorated his neighbours’ houses as well as his own, so that the surrounding square was transformed into a sort of park, filled with music and song and his own palace seemed to be gleaming with gold, such as they say the Emperor Nero’s palace once did.
The interior of the Borgia palace was equally splendid. One visitor described the ever-increasing magnificence:
The walls of the entrance hall are hung with tapestries depicting various historical scenes. A small drawing- room, also decorated with fine tapestries, leads off it. The carpets on the floor harmonize with the furniture, which includes a sumptuous day-bed upholstered in red satin with a canopy over it, and a chest on which is displayed a large and beautiful collection of gold and silver plate. Beyond this drawing-room there are two more reception
