It is surprising that we should find in Guicciardini no mention of the four mule-loads of silver removed before the election from Cardinal Roderigo's palace on Banchi Vecchi to Cardinal Ascanio's palace in Trastevere. This is generally alleged to have been part of the price of Ascanio's services. Whether it was so, or whether, as has also been urged, it was merely removed to save it from the pillaging by the mob of the palace of the cardinal elected to the Pontificate, the fact is interesting as indicating in either case Cardinal Roderigo's assurance of his election.
M. Yriarte does not hesitate to say: "We know to-day, by the dispatches of Valori, the narrative of Girolamo Porzio, and the Diarium of Burchard, the Master of Ceremonies, each of the stipulations made with the electors whose votes were bought."
Now whilst we do know from Valori and Porzio what benefices Alexander actually conferred, we do not know, nor could they possibly have told us, what stipulations had been made which these benefices were insinuated to satisfy.
Burchard's Diarium might be of more authority on this subject, for Burchard was the Master of Ceremonies at the Vatican; but, unfortunately for the accuracy of M. Yriarte's statement, Burchard is silent on the subject, for the excellent reason that there is no diary for the period under consideration. Burchard's narrative is interrupted on the death of Innocent VIII, on July 12, and not resumed until December 2, when it is not retrospective.
There is, it is true, the Diarium of Infessura. But that is of no more authority on such a matter than the narrative of Porzio or the letters of Valori.
Lord Acton—in his essay upon this subject—has not been content to rest the imputation of simony upon such grounds as satisfied M. Yriarte. He has realized that the only testimony of any real value in such a case would be the actual evidence of such cardinals as might be willing to bear witness to the attempt to bribe them. And he takes it for granted—as who would not at this time of day, and in view of such positive statements as abound?—that such evidence has been duly collected; thus, he tells us confidently that the charge rests upon the evidence of those cardinals who refused Roderigo's bribes.
That it most certainly does not. If it did there would be an end to the matter, and so much ink would not have been spilled over it; but no single cardinal has left any such evidence as Lord Acton supposes and alleges. It suffices to consider that, according to the only evidences available—the Casanatense Codices(19) and the dispatches of that same Valori(20) whom M. Yriarte so confidently cites, Roderigo Borgia's election was unanimous. Who, then, were these cardinals who refused his bribes? Or are we to suppose that, notwithstanding that refusal—a refusal which we may justifiably suppose to have been a scandalized and righteously indignant one—they still afforded him their votes?
This charge of simony was levelled with the object of making Alexander VI appear singularly heinous. So much has that object engrossed and blinded those inspired by it, that, of itself, it betrays them. Had their horror been honest, had it sprung from true principles, had it been born of any but a desire to befoul and bespatter at all costs Roderigo Borgia, it is not against him that they would have hurled their denunciations, but against the whole College of Cardinals which took part in the sacrilege and which included three future Popes.(21)
Assuming not only that there was simony, but that it was on as wholesale a scale as was alleged, and that for gold—coined or in the form of benefices—Roderigo bought the cardinal's votes, what then? He bought them, true. But they—they sold him their sacred trust, their duty to their God, their priestly honour, their holy vows. For the gold he offered them they bartered these. So much admitted, then surely, in that transaction, those cardinals were the prostitutes! The man who bought so much of them, at least, was on no baser level than were they. Yet invective singles him out for its one object, and so betrays the aforethought malice of its inspiration.
Our quarrel is with that; with that, and with those writers who have taken Alexander's simony for granted— eagerly almost—for the purpose of heaping odium upon him by making him appear a scandalous exception to the prevailing rule.
If, nevertheless, we hold, as we have said, that simony probably did take place, we do so, not so much upon the inconclusive evidence of the fact, as upon the circumstance that it had become almost an established custom to purchase the tiara, and that Roderigo Borgia—since his ambition clearly urged him to the Pontificate—would have been an exception had he refrained.
It may seem that to have disputed so long to conclude by admitting so much is no better than a waste of labour. Not so, we hope. Our aim has been to correct the adjustment of the focus and properly to trim the light in which Roderigo Borgia is to be viewed, to the end that you may see him as he was—neither better nor worse—the creature of his times, of his environment, and of the system in which he was reared and trained. Thus shall you also get a clearer view of his son Cesare, when presently he takes the stage more prominently.
During the seventeen days of the interregnum between the death of Innocent and the election of Alexander the wild scenes usual to such seasons had been taking place in Rome; and, notwithstanding the Cardinal- Chamberlain's prompt action in seizing the gates and bridges, and the patrols' endeavours to maintain order, crime was unfettered to such an extent that some 220 murders are computed to have taken place—giving the terrible average of thirteen a day.
It was a very natural epilogue to the lax rule of the lethargic Innocent. One of the first acts of Alexander's reign was to deal summarily with this lawlessness. He put down violence with a hard hand that knew no mercy. He razed to the ground the house of a murderer caught red-handed, and hanged him above the ruins, and so dealt generally that such order came to prevail as had never before been known in Rome.
Infessura tells us how, in the very month of his election, he appointed inspectors of prisons and four commissioners to administer justice, and that he himself gave audience on Tuesdays and settled disputes, concluding, "et justitiam mirabili modo facere coepit."
He paid all salaries promptly—a striking departure, it would seem, from what had been usual under his predecessor—and the effect of his improved and strenuous legislation was shortly seen in the diminished prices of commodities.
He was crowned Pope on August 6, on the steps of the Basilica of St. Peter, by the Cardinal-Archdeacon Piccolomini. The ceremony was celebrated with a splendour worthy of the splendid figure that was its centre. Through the eyes of Michele Ferno—despite his admission that he is unable to convey a worthy notion of the spectacle—you may see the gorgeous procession to the Lateran in which Alexander VI showed himself to the applauding Romans; the multitude of richly adorned men, gay and festive; the seven hundred priests and prelates, with their familiars the splendid cavalcade of knights and nobles of Rome; the archers and Turkish horsemen, and the Palatine Guard, with its great halberds and flashing shields; the twelve white horses, with their golden bridles, led by footmen; and then Alexander himself on a snow-white horse, "serene of brow and of majestic dignity," his hand uplifted—the Fisherman's Ring upon its forefinger—to bless the kneeling populace. The chronicler flings into superlatives when he comes to praise the personal beauty of the man, his physical vigour and health, "which go to increase the veneration shown him."
Thus in the brilliant sunshine of that Italian August, amid the plaudits of assembled Rome, amid banners and flowers, music and incense, the flash of steel and the blaze of decorations with the Borgian arms everywhere displayed—or, a grazing steer gules—Alexander VI passes to the Vatican, the aim and summit of his vast ambition.
Friends and enemies alike have sung the splendours of that coronation, and the Bull device—as you can imagine—plays a considerable part in those verses, be they paeans or lampoons. The former allude to Borgia as "the Bull," from the majesty and might of the animal that was displayed upon their shield; the latter render it the subject of much scurrilous invective, to which it lends itself as readily. And thereafter, in almost all verse of their epoch, writers ever say "the Bull" when they mean the Borgia.
CHAPTER IV. BORGIA ALLIANCES
At the time of his father's election to the throne of St. Peter, Cesare Borgia—now in his eighteenth year— was still at the University of Pisa.
It is a little odd, considering the great affection for his children which was ever one of Roderigo's most conspicuous characteristics, that he should not have ordered Cesare to Rome at once, to share in the general rejoicings. It has been suggested that Alexander wished to avoid giving scandal by the presence of his children at
