Cesare was informed immediately of his father’s death. Although he was giving his doctors some hope that he would recover, Cesare was still desperately ill and very weak, barely capable of making the decisions and issuing the orders that the crisis now demanded. Fortunately for him, his loyal lieutenant, Miguel de Corella, was already in the palace and able to act on his master’s behalf.
Keeping the news a closely guarded secret, Corella now took a party of men and locked all the doors leading into the papal apartments. He then marched into the pope’s bedchamber, where he found Cardinal Casanova and, holding a knife to his throat, threatened to cut it open and throw him out of the window if he did not hand over the keys to the cupboards and closets, where, Cesare had informed him, a large sum of money was stored. The terrified cardinal handed over the keys without protest, whereupon Corella and his men unlocked the chests and appropriated the money and silver they contained; according to Giustinian’s report to the Venetian Senate, they removed coins, silver, and jewels worth 500,000 ducats.
Corella now made the public announcement that Alexander VI was dead, and immediately the pope’s servants ran into the apartments to help themselves to the clothes they found in his wardrobe and other items. Nothing of value was left, so Burchard said, ‘except the papal chairs, some cushions and the tapestries nailed to the walls.’
Though, in fact, when the cardinals came to make an inventory of the pope’s possessions a few days later, they found a lot of ‘silver, jewels and precious objects,’ according to Burchard, items that Corella had overlooked or, perhaps, had been hidden by the pope even from his own son. ‘They found the tiara, two valuable mitres, all the rings which the Pope used at mass, and all the sacred vessels the Pope used when he officiated at mass, which filled eight large coffers.’ According to Burchard, they also found a ‘cypress chest covered with green tapestry, which too had escaped Corella and his men, inside of which they found precious stones and valuable rings worth 25,000 ducats.’
It was not until early evening that Burchard himself was informed of the pope’s death, and the loyal master of ceremonies hastened into the papal apartments. ‘After I had seen the Pope’s body,’ which had already been washed, ‘I clothed it in red brocade vestments, with silken amice and chasuble.’ He could not find the pope’s shoes but did find a pair of slippers properly embroidered with crosses ‘and two strings that I used for binding them to his feet,’ but he was unable to replace the pope’s missing ring, which had, no doubt, been ripped off his finger by Corella and his men. Burchard then had the corpse put on a bier in the antechamber before being taken into the Sala del Pappagallo, where it was placed on a table covered with a crimson cloth and ‘a piece of fine tapestry’; and four monks began to recite the Office of the Dead.
Messages were sent to all the cardinals, instructing them to assemble in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva the next morning, and to all the clergy in Rome, instructing them to gather for the funeral procession from the Sistine Chapel to the Basilica of St Peter’s the following day. With an escort of cardinals, monks, clerics, and the canons of St Peter’s, as well as members of Alexander VI’s household, many of whom carried the 140 tall wax tapers that accompanied the procession, the pope’s bier proceeded into St Peter’s. The bier itself was carried, as was the custom, by a number of paupers who were traditionally rewarded with a token sum for this service, a service that was performed on this occasion with more reverence than that displayed by the clerics, who, according to Burchard, ambled along beside the bier ‘in disorderly fashion.’
There was further unseemly behaviour inside the basilica, where, while the prayers were being chanted, the palace guards set upon the members of the procession in order to seize the tall wax tapers that they were carrying. The clergy fled to the sacristy, abandoning the pope’s body, while Burchard, ‘with the help of three others,’ so he recorded, ‘took hold of the bier and moved it into a position behind the high altar.’ Even here it did not seem safe; the bishop of Sessa ‘wondered if the angry people might not climb up to reach the body and someone who had been wronged by the Pope would get his revenge; so the bier was moved behind the iron grille of the chapel entrance and there the body remained throughout the day, with the iron grille firmly closed.’
There Burchard left it and upon his return he was appalled to see the dead pope’s face ‘had changed to the colour of the blackest cloth, and covered in blue-black spots; the nose was swollen, the mouth distended, the tongue bent back double, the lips seemed to fill everything and the appearance of the face was more horrifying than anything ever seen.’ Francesco Gonzaga confirmed this in a letter to his wife, Isabella d’Este; the corpse ‘had lost all human form,’ he wrote, adding that ‘everyone refused to touch it though eventually one of the porters dragged it to the grave by means of a rope attached to one of the feet.’
The six porters made gruesome jokes about its appearance as they struggled to get the swollen corpse into a coffin that was much too small. ‘The carpenters,’ according to Burchard, ‘had made the coffin too narrow and too short and so they had to remove the mitre from the Pope’s head and place it by his side, before rolling up his body in an old carpet, and pummelling and pushing it into the coffin with their fists.’ Burchard added, sadly, that ‘no wax tapers or candles were used and no priests nor any other persons attended the body.’
The next day gruesome stories were spread about the city: The dead pope had been heard in conversation with Satan; he had bought the papacy for the price of his soul; he had struck a bargain with the devil and had agreed to wear the papal crown for eleven years and had done so for that period of time plus seven days. At the end, so it was rumoured, water had boiled in his mouth, causing steam to fill the room in which he died, and that, in the words of a macabre jest, when rigor mortis set in, ‘in death as in life, he remained erect.’ It was at least certain that, in the terrible heat of that August, the skin of the corpse had turned black and the smell that emanated from it was intolerable.
Inevitably there were rumours that the death was not a natural one, that the wine he and Cesare had drunk so thirstily on their arrival at Cardinal Castellesi’s country house had been poisoned. Many claimed that Cesare and his father had planned to kill the cardinal for his great riches, but that the servant who had been bribed to poison the wine served at the meal had poured the deadly concoction into the wrong flagons. This report spread far and wide, irrespective of the fact that none of the guests, who had drunk the same wine, displayed any ill effects until a week later.
Lucrezia was at the villa of Medelana when Cardinal Ippolito rode over from Ferrara to bring her the sad news; and on hearing the dreaded words, she afterward said that her ‘only wish was to die herself.’ Few were so moved. Machiavelli recorded, in verse, how ‘the soul of Alexander was brought to rest, glorious among the blessed,’ and following in ‘the Pope’s saintly footsteps came his three servants and beloved handmaidens, extravagance, simony and cruelty.’
Duke Ercole also had few regrets. In a letter to his ambassador in Milan, which he was confident would be passed on by the French governor of the city to Louis XII, he wrote:
Knowing that many will ask you how we are affected by the Pope’s death, we wish to inform you that it was in no way displeasing to us… There never was a Pope from whom we received fewer favours… even after concluding an alliance with him. In fact, it was only with the greatest difficulty that we obtained from him what he had promised us, for which we hold the Duke of Romagna responsible. He was never frank with us, never telling us of his plans, though we always told him of ours.
He also hoped for better things from Alexander VI’s successor, piously observing that ‘for the sake of Christendom he had often desired that divine goodness and providence would provide a virtuous and exemplary shepherd and that all scandal would be removed from the Church.’
— CHAPTER 24 — Conclaves
‘HE COULD NOT HAVE FORESEEN THAT, AT THE TIME OF HIS FATHER’S DEATH, HE SHOULD HIMSELF HAVE BEEN SO SERIOUSLY ILL’
THE
