by G. J. Meyer
Enea said to him, “You young fool! Will you then put an enemy of your nation in the Apostle’s chair? And will you put faith in the note of a man who is faithless? You will have the note; Avignon [another French cardinal] will have the chancellorship. For what has been promised you has been promised him also and solemnly affirmed. Will faith be kept with him or with you? Will a Frenchman be more friendly to a Frenchman or to a Catalan? Will he be more concerned for a foreigner or for his own countryman? Take care, you inexperienced boy! Take care, you fool! And if you have no thought for the Church of Rome, if you have no regard for the Christian religion and despise God, for whom you are preparing such a vicar, at least take thought for yourself, for you will find yourself among the hindmost, if a Frenchman is pope.”
He notes that Rodrigo “listened patiently to these words of his friend.” He had certainly given the vice-chancellor much food for thought.
Filippo Calandrini, one of the two leaders in the previous day’s balloting, dropped out before the next vote was taken. A hardworking but undistinguished Curia official who owed his place in the Sacred College to his half-brother Pope Nicholas V, Calandrini threw his support to Piccolomini. The next surprise, when the results of the latest round of voting became known, was that Estouteville, far from winning election or being barely short of victory as he had been telling everyone, received only six votes. The leader was his indignant antagonist Piccolomini, whose nine votes left him three short of the needed total.
At this point the conclave voted to try to bring matters to a conclusion “by accession,” a traditional recourse when secret balloting failed to produce a winner. It involved sitting together in silence and waiting to see if any of the electors found themselves moved to change their minds. Estouteville needed to double his vote, making his prospects dim at best. Even Piccolomini, needing three, appeared to have limited prospects against so intimidating an opponent. The cardinals sat for what seemed a long time, the tension building, no one speaking or making a move. Then at last Rodrigo Borgia rose to his feet. “I accede,” he said, “to the cardinal of Siena.” To Piccolomini, that is, moving him to within two votes of election. At that point, in a desperate attempt to disrupt the proceedings, Cardinals Isidore of Greece and Torquemada of Spain (an enemy of Piccolomini’s since the two had clashed over questions of theology at the Council of Basel) bolted from their seats and flounced out of the room. When no one followed, they decided that they had better return. They did so in time to see Cardinal Tebaldi of Santa Anastasia, a longtime protégé of Calixtus III and brother of the late pope’s favorite physician, stand up and repeat Rodrigo’s words.
One vote more was still needed. When Cardinal Prospero Colonna started to rise, Estouteville on one side and Basilios Bessarion on the other seized him by the arms and literally tried to drag him away. He threw them off, shouting that he too acceded to the election of Cardinal Piccolomini. Until that moment Colonna had opposed Piccolomini, but when he saw an opportunity to deliver the decisive vote and so put the next pope in his debt, he was too good a politician not to seize it. It was Rodrigo, however, who had broken the deadlock, acting first, alone, and at greatest risk to himself. Piccolomini—now Pope Pius II—understood what a difference he had made. If he had stayed with Estouteville, the whole accession process might have led to a very different result.
One must make of this episode what one will. It can be interpreted as showing Rodrigo to be a self-serving cynic, initially lining up with Estouteville for no nobler reason than the expectation that by doing so he would bring himself the most good. It is likewise possible to see him as showing weakness of character, a willingness to vote for the Frenchman when he seemed unbeatable and then to abandon him as soon as his vulnerability became plain. It is nonetheless true that in the end he voted for the clearly better man, and that he did so when no one else would and his action could have carried a high cost. When one considers the effect of this election on Rodrigo’s own career—he came out of it a favorite protégé of the new pope—it can fairly be considered an early demonstration of his political skill. What is most striking in Piccolomini’s account of their early morning conversation is the candor with which Rodrigo acknowledged not only that he was supporting Estouteville but that he was doing so out of sheer self-interest. Such candor is disarming even in an adversary. It will be characteristic of Rodrigo over the next forty-five years, helping to explain his almost uncanny ability to win the affection of almost everyone who came within his reach.
Rodrigo and Piccolomini had first become friends during the reign of Calixtus, both of them having open and affectionate natures combined with a voracious appetite for work. What had happened in conclave propelled their relationship to a deeper level. It took on something of the character of a father-son connection. The new pope was not only the older of the two by a quarter of a century but had vastly more experience of the world. He had much to teach, and the physically big, unfailingly cheery Rodrigo was nothing if not an eager and able learner. The liking that the two had for each other, the respect that each had for the other’s character and ability, removed any possibility that Pius might prefer a different vice-chancellor.
The new pope was a remarkable man with an unusual background. Fifty-two years old at the time of his election, a cultivated lawyer with no personal wealth to speak of, he had not embarked upon a clerical career until he was well into his thirties (by which time he had, in Germany and Scotland, fathered illegitimate children who died in infancy). He had grown up the eldest of the eighteen children of a couple who, though of noble origins, were so poor that as a boy he had to labor in his father’s fields. After schooling by a local priest he began university at age eighteen, late for those times, and went on to spend most of the next decade studying first literature and then the law. A revealing episode occurred when he was twenty-five: he announced that he wanted to enter the monastic life, but was dissuaded by friends who dismissed the idea as absurd for someone with the young Piccolomini’s attraction to the pleasures of the flesh. Obviously he took the religious vocation seriously—so much so that he was unwilling to commit himself to it until he was satisfied that he could observe the required vows. While serving first as legal counsel to prominent figures at the Council of Basel, then as a diplomat handling assignments across Europe, he remained unmarried but a layman. In 1435 a winter voyage to Scotland, at the northernmost edge of the known world, proved so hair-raisingly hazardous that he vowed, if delivered safely ashore, to walk barefoot to the nearest shrine to the Virgin Mary. Keeping this pledge turned out to involve a ten-mile trek through ice and snow, causing so much tissue damage that he walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
Though at Basel he had served men hostile to Pope Eugenius IV and actively supported the antipope Felix V, ultimately joining the entourage of Felix’s patron the Hapsburg emperor Frederick III, when about forty he yielded to the old call to the religious life. A year after taking his first, conditional vows, he played a significant role in negotiations that settled long-standing disputes between Eugenius and the princes of Germany. By 1452, when he returned to Italy for Frederick III’s marriage and coronation, he was not only a priest but bishop of Siena. Thereafter he remained in Italy, representing the emperor at the papal court, and in 1456, at the urging of Frederick and the king of Hungary, he was appointed by Calixtus to the College of Cardinals. When elected pope just twenty months later, he was both a man of the world, accustomed to doing business with some of the most powerful people in Europe, and a devoted son of the Church, certain of its unique importance. There is significance in the fact that such a man showed no hesitation in making the young Cardinal Borgia not only one of his closest companions but virtually a junior partner. That Pius II embraced Rodrigo so unreservedly is the best indication we have of what kind of man the latter must have been, in terms not only of talent but of conduct, as he entered his thirties.
Pius and Rodrigo were a team from the day of the election and went into action q
uickly. Among the matters requiring immediate attention was the Pedro Luis problem. Pius dispatched Rodrigo to Civitavecchia to persuade his brother of the impossibility, in a climate of such intense resentment, of his holding on to the offices and properties that his uncle had conferred upon him. This accomplished, the brothers presumably agreed that Pedro Luis should return to Spain. Both surrendered their positions in the papal military, which went to a nephew of Pius’s. One of the Colonna succeeded Pedro Luis as prefect of Rome. Whether or not this was a gesture of thanks for Prospero Colonna’s climactic vote, Rodrigo must have been relieved that the job had not been returned to the Orsini. So soon after Calixtus’s death, a papacy allied with the Orsini would have made Rodrigo’s situation impossible.
Instead, his situation was enviable indeed. By remaining vice-chancellor, Rodrigo kept sole charge not only of one of the three largest branches of the Curia but of the only one whose functions were so essential that it could not be shut down for summer holidays. It included the office known as the Dataria, which received all requests and petitions and drafted letters and grants; the more than one hundred scriptori, expert in the preparation of various pontifical documents; and the notaries, lawyers responsible for preparing papal bulls and maintaining registries of all the correspondence and official documents arriving at and being sent out from the Vatican. The vice-chancellor’s oversight of the Rota, the supreme court, gave him control of judicial favors, platoons of lawyers and clerks, and considerable sums of money.
Anyone who used this great office skillfully could make himself one of the most important men in Europe. No one would ever use it more skillfully than Rodrigo Borgia, or do so for such a long time. And it was far from his only responsibility; he was repeatedly given other major assignments as well, evidence of the confidence he inspired. When on September 26 news reached Rome of the death of Pedro Luis, probably of malaria, Pius sent the suddenly twice-bereaved Rodrigo back to Civitavecchia to see to the interment of his brother’s remains, settle his affairs, and take possession of the fortress in the pope’s name. It has long been said that what the cardinal inherited from his uncle and his brother provided the foundation of his later colossal wealth. There is in fact no evidence that even together the two left enough to place Rodrigo among the wealthiest cardinals—or for that matter, that Rodrigo ever managed to hold on to much of his very impressive income. Great as his revenues would be from all the offices conferred on him during his years as vice-chancellor, he appears to have spent them—usually for official or at least political purposes—at least as fast as they came in and sometimes alarmingly faster.
Among the issues carried over from Calixtus’s reign, two were particularly vexing: the unsettled questions of who should succeed Alfonso V as king of Naples, and what should be done about the Turks. Perhaps because the second question was growing more urgent every year—in 1458 Athens fell to the Turks—Pius decided to put the first to rest. Having been persuaded by Francesco Sforza of Milan that life would be easier for both of them if the royal families of France and Spain were kept out of Naples, he put aside Calixtus’s objections and invested Ferrante with the crown. This did not spare Ferrante from being challenged on two fronts; France’s House of Anjou launched a fresh military campaign for the conquest of Naples, and Il Regno’s barons rose up in rebellion. But these were not the pope’s problems, at least not directly. He joined with Sforza in sending troops to aid Ferrante and trusted that that would suffice.
The problem of the Ottoman Turks, by contrast, would torment Pius to the end of his life. He addressed it first by preparing a letter to Sultan Mehmed, offering to recognize all the Turks’ conquests in return for their conversion to Christianity. The Vatican’s archives contain no indication that this offer was ever sent, or that if sent it received an answer. In all likelihood Pius set it aside upon realizing that it was futile to the point of absurdity and more likely to make him seem desperate and foolish than to produce a positive result. Next he wrote to all the nations of Europe, inviting them to send representatives to the city of Mantua in the summer of 1459. As conceived by Pius, this was to be the first meeting of the whole of Europe’s secular leadership ever called for a single purpose—that purpose being the planning of a three-year crusade. The crusade was to be financed by a special levy on every churchman and church in Europe, and by contributions from the various crowned heads. Pius chose Mantua because, being in the far north of Italy, it was convenient for the great figures he hoped to attract from beyond the Alps. Also, the enormous palaces of Mantua’s prince, Ludovico Gonzaga, could accommodate not only the papal court but all the dignitaries to whom Pius expected to be playing host.
When Pius set out for Mantua early in 1459, Rodrigo was among the five cardinals who went with him. The journey became a festive procession, with people lining the roadside to cheer the pontiff as he passed. It took them to his birthplace, the hamlet of Corsignano in the Tuscan hills. There he stopped for a long sentimental visit, in the course of which he took actions that would raise doubts about just how serious he was in demanding shared sacrifices for the sake of his crusade. He gave Corsignano the new name Pienza, a derivation of Pius, and promoted it from village to town. He declared it the seat of a diocese, meaning that henceforth it would have a bishop and require a cathedral. He pledged himself, or rather the pontifical treasury, to pay for building the cathedral and made it known that he expected all the cardinals to build summer retreats there. Rodrigo as vice-chancellor found himself committed to financing the construction of an episcopal palace. It was a strange episode, an early, autocratic, and ill-timed exercise in urban renewal, recognizable to anyone ever pressured to contribute to a boss’s pet cause.
When the papal party pushed on to Mantua, it found that not one of the invited rulers had arrived or even sent a representative. Pius and the cardinals had to wait all through the summer, and even when enough delegates had assembled for formal discussions to begin, their number remained low and few showed any real enthusiasm. The Venetians were opposed to a crusade, clinging to the hope of reaching an understanding with the Turks. The French were uncooperative because they were offended by Pius’s failure to support the Angevins in Naples, and when René count of Anjou showed up in person, he provoked indignation by trying to recruit allies for his war on Naples. Francesco Sforza, though his capital of Milan was less than a hundred miles from Mantua, was four months late in arriving. By the end of the year nothing had been accomplished, and there was clearly no hope that anything would be. In January 1460, just before departing, Pius issued two bulls. One was a proclamation—a somewhat forlorn one under the circumstances—that against all odds there was in fact going to be a crusade, and it would embark from the east coast of Italy in the summer of 1464.
The other bull, destined to be known by its opening word Execrabilis, dealt in bold terms with a matter that had been preying on Pius’s mind since the years when he was involved in the squabbles at the Council of Basel. It declared that anyone appealing over the head of the pope to a council of the Church was, simply by virtue of having done so, a heretic and a traitor. It was prompted—an example of the arcane quarrels that plagued the reign of every pope—by an old and exasperating dispute with France over what was called the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. In signing this irksome document, dating back to 1438, France’s king had endorsed the Council of Basel’s declaration that councils were superior to popes. He had also happily agreed with the council that the selection of bishops should rest with the crown, not with the Vatican, that a king’s decisions could only rarely be appealed to Rome, and that various revenues traditionally sent to Rome should go to the king instead. By Pius II’s time the Pragmatic Sanction had been a source of friction for a generation. When King Charles VII sent ambassadors to Mantua rather than attending himself, and when those ambassadors made a display of their disdain for Pius’s crusade, the pope vented his frustration by declaring the Sanction to be null. The aged Charles, at the end of his life now and disgru
ntled by the pope’s support of Ferrante in Naples, responded by threatening to summon a new council. Execrabilis was Pius’s answer. While not ending the dispute—the French received it with snorts of contempt—the bull would not be without effect. It drew a line under the generations of conflict between popes and councils. From now on the great battles would be between popes and kings, and sometimes between popes and cardinals.
Pius II was a restless spirit who had spent much of his life on diplomatic missions, and he loved to travel and had no affection for Rome. He also loved the land of his birth, Tuscany. Upon leaving Mantua, having no wish to return to a Vatican from which he had already been absent for some eight months, he now led his party to Siena. Like the previous year’s visit to his home village, this was a sentimental journey; Pius had spent happy if impoverished years as a student in Siena, and much later he had been the city’s bishop, albeit a usually absent one. He settled in for what he hoped would be a long and pleasant stay, seeking relief for his damaged feet at the nearby hot baths. He paid little attention to reports that Rome, as invariably happened in the absence of the pope and his court, was showing signs of disorder. Rodrigo cannot have shared his relaxed attitude; as vice-chancellor he had to keep abreast of developments back in Rome. The chancery’s affairs were too essential to the papacy itself, and raised too many questions of policy, to be left in the hands of functionaries. Couriers would have been galloping to and fro between Siena and Rome, carrying Rodrigo’s paperwork.
The disappointments of Mantua turned out to be almost trivial compared with the troubles that came down on Pius’s head during this second sojourn in Tuscany. His chances of mounting a crusade of sufficient magnitude to accomplish anything of importance were dealt a serious setback—though Pius refused to admit it, probably even to himself—when Duke Philip of Burgundy (then an autonomous and immensely wealthy state) sent word that he would not be able to join the other participants until a year after the projected launch. Actually this was a polite way for Philip to drop out without admitting that he was doing so; he was being pressed to withdraw by his kinsman the king of France. Everyone understood that his postponement was actually a thinly veiled cancellation.
