The Borgias

by G. J. Meyer

  After the failure of his candidacy in 1455, Barbo had remained sufficiently well thought of to again receive notable support in the conclave of 1458. The factor that made the difference in 1464 was his Venetian birth. Venice by this juncture was enmeshed in a costly and open-ended war with the Turks and therefore was eager for an alliance with Rome and almost desperately enthusiastic about the idea of a great pan-European crusade. Thus the Roman faction in the Sacred College had reason to regard Venice as a friend rather than as a nuisance unwilling to admit the gravity of the Ottoman menace. The cardinals could now expect a pope whose family was rooted in Venice to pursue the fight against the Turks with all possible vigor.

  One thing, however, could not possibly have been understood within the conclave or Barbo would never have been elected. The new pope carried within him an uncompromising belief in the papacy as supreme, in the pope as sovereign over cardinals, councils, emperors, and all other challengers. Like many and probably most of his fellow cardinals, he had signed the capitulations without any intention of honoring them if he became pope. This became clear almost immediately after his election, when three days passed without his publishing—as the capitulations themselves required—a bull confirming everything that had been pledged. The new Pope Paul II did, however, go to some lengths to soften his betrayal. (If betrayal it was; not only had capitulations been regularly ignored by Paul’s predecessors, but it was not difficult to find scholars who declared them to be so fundamentally invalid as to have no binding force.) It was Paul who introduced the practice of dressing cardinals in silken red robes and officially elevated them to the status of “princes of the Church,” the equals of dukes and lower than no one except popes (of course) and hereditary royalty. He ordered that cardinals when in public should always be surrounded by platoons of retainers and conferred generous stipends on those lacking independent means. An implicit bargain was being struck: the cardinals could be among the most exalted personages in all Europe, but only by acknowledging that the pope was their master. Appointment to the Sacred College would be a guarantee of wealth, influence, and a life of privilege, but only by providing access to the one man empowered to dispense such prizes. This proved an effective strategy. It became a prototype for the process by which, generations later, secular rulers such as Louis XIV of France would seduce once-dangerous nobles into submitting to central—meaning royal—authority.

  For Cardinal Rodrigo, Paul II’s reign became an advanced course in just how poisonous the papacy could be even for a well-intended pope, and how much bitterness and humiliation the fates could heap upon those who won the throne. Paul’s exalted view of his office embroiled him in conflicts of many kinds: with the baronial clans in and near Rome, with the warlords who ruled the more distant Papal States, with the leading Italian princes, and even with his fellow monarchs beyond the Italian peninsula. This is one reason why history has not dealt kindly with him, but there are other reasons as well. Biographers never fail to note that his motives in embarking on an ecclesiastical career had been unedifying if not really ignoble. He had been a youth of good family preparing for a life as a Venetian trader—in fact was about to leave home for a position overseas—when news reached Venice that Cardinal Gabriele Condulmer had been elected pope. Condulmer being his mother’s brother, young Pietro decided that his prospects would be brighter in the Church than in business and so took holy orders. He was not wrong in his calculations, becoming a cardinal when scarcely more than a boy, but the authenticity of his religious vocation was always open to question.

  As pope he alienated his former colleagues by not only ignoring the capitulations but flouting one of their key provisions, appointing three young nephews to the Sacred College. That the three in the course of long careers would prove themselves worthy of their high positions could of course not be known at the time of their appointment, and so it did nothing to ease the annoyance of the men who had elected their uncle. Paul also raised eyebrows with the eccentric lifestyle he adopted upon taking office, sleeping during the day and granting audiences in the middle of the night only. It seems possible, in light of his compassionate nature and the seriousness with which he embraced his new responsibilities, that his upside-down schedule was intended to reduce the number of supplicants coming to ask favors, thereby sparing him the pain of having to say no. Whatever the motive, his schedule was a headache for those with business that required his attention. It was also unhealthy for the pope himself, increasing his isolation and aggravating his inclination to be distrustful.

  Long after his death, historians would depict Paul II as an egomaniac, neurotically hungry to aggrandize himself, insistent on excessive display, and draping himself in flamboyant attire on ceremonial occasions. Such complaints are true enough as far as they go—Paul certainly went to extremes in demanding that his ceremonies be splendid—but it is also possible to see his behavior less as frivolous waste than as a political technique. In Renaissance Europe no less than in the Middle Ages, power had to be displayed to be credible. Even in distant England, a ruler as parsimonious as Henry VII would spend lavishly on grand palaces and grandiose courtly displays and would do so for baldly political reasons. Much the same can be said of the increasing elaboration of the Church’s ceremonies and celebrations in the same century: susceptible to being depicted as disgraceful, explainable as a cost of doing business.

  Even as a young man Pietro Barbo had struck people who did not know him as haughty, even cold. A story often told about him is that, upon being elected pope, he declared his intention to take the name Formosus, not in honor of a ninth-century predecessor of that name but because it meant “good-looking.” The cardinals, it is said, had to argue hard to dissuade him from this frivolous display of self-love. The truth is that Barbo was complicated in ways bound to produce misunderstanding, an introvert whose stony demeanor concealed a soft heart. All his life he had been openhanded with his wealth, funding hospitals for the needy and the distribution of free medicines. He continued these benefactions as pope, giving particular attention to widows, invalids, and displaced persons. He was repulsed by violence of whatever kind, war and lawful executions included, and throughout his papacy he would be an active supporter of monastic reform. He attacked official corruption by forbidding legates, governors, and judges to accept gifts and applied the prohibition to himself.

  In short, Paul made a serious and sustained effort to be everything he thought a good pope should be. Even his critics—who have always been legion and have rarely stopped short of hinting at an irregular sexual orientation—uniformly acknowledge that he maintained high standards in choosing his associates and distributing favors. They concede also that during his reign offices and benefices were awarded on the basis of merit rather than cronyism or bribery. It reveals a certain largeness of spirit that the cardinals who became his closest confidants and advisers were his former rivals for the papacy, Bessarion and Carvajal. The two were universally recognized as among the finest churchmen of the time, not only untouched by any hint of corruption but unwilling to keep silent about corruption when they encountered it. That they became and remained central figures in Paul’s administration is a point to be taken into account when judging the character of his reign. Similarly, his attitude toward the vice-chancellor is the best clue we have to what kind of life Cardinal Borgia was living as he approached age forty. Paul like Pius and Calixtus displayed high confidence in Rodrigo, significantly expanding his responsibilities and authority, increasing the number of Curial offices he was empowered to fill, and conferring upon him a number of benefices (all of them in Spain, to avoid angering the Italians). Everything we know about Paul II makes it difficult to believe that he could have shown so much favor to a subordinate whom he so much as suspected of inappropriate conduct.

  Neither high standards nor worthy companions, however, were sufficient to make Paul a successful or even a popular pope. The opposition he aroused in asserting his own supremacy was simply too substantial to be o
vercome. He began, logically enough, with the Papal States, it being his belief that he had not only the right but the duty to make himself their ruler in fact as much as in principle. And things went reasonably well in the early going. In the Romagna, after experiencing some early setbacks, he had had the good sense or good luck to employ the services of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, who quickly broke the power of the rebellious Malatesta of Rimini.

  Things went even better when Paul chose, as his next objective, a piece of papal territory less than a day’s journey north of Rome. This had for years been the domain of Eversus Anguillara, patriarch of a family of ruffians and bandits that had taken advantage of the weakness of the papacy to seize a number of towns and impose on them a brutishly harsh regime. Eversus having died, Paul again hired Montefeltro, along with Napoleone Orsini, lord of Bracciano, and dispatched them to drive out Anguillara’s sons. In short order thirteen castles were taken and the tyrants put to flight. The end result, however, was not what the pope had in mind: the Orsini took over many of the properties from which the Anguillara had been expelled, strengthening their position north of Rome and with it their own ability to make trouble. This was another step in the education of Rodrigo Borgia, looking on from Rome. It demonstrated anew both the need to deal with the warlord clans and the difficulties of doing so in ways that made a meaningful difference.

  The attack on the Anguillara was, in any case, the end of Paul’s good luck. When he turned his attention to a more ambitious target, the great papal fiefdom of Bologna, things quickly went wrong. Bologna, rich and powerful since the days of the Roman Empire, was in the grip of a tight little circle of dominant families. The pope regarded this flagrantly self-serving oligarchy as a disgrace to the papacy, which as overlord was supposed to be in charge. But when he demanded reforms, he met with more resistance than he had the means to overcome, and in the end he agreed to a settlement that served no purpose except to allow much of the power of the oligarchs to pass into the hands of a single family, the Bentivoglii. Once again, intervention had produced unintended and distinctly unwelcome consequences. As a result, Bologna would be an even more intractable problem for Paul’s successors than it had ever been for his predecessors.

  Mistake followed mistake, failure begot failure. Most humiliating of all was a crisis that erupted at home, within the Curia. Paul was unusual among Renaissance pontiffs in having no perceptible interest in humanistic studies. He disliked the classicists’ celebration of pagan antiquity and therefore resented the costs of maintaining the Vatican’s College of Abbreviators, a privileged clique of literary men, officially scribes or secretaries, whose membership had been increased to seventy by Pius II. Paul suspected the abbreviators, not without reason, of harboring heretical beliefs and dreams of making Rome a republic once again. When reports reached him that they were involved in a plot to imprison or kill him and take command of the city, Paul’s response was to declare the college abolished. Their jobs disappeared with it, and as many of them had paid hard cash for their positions, the ferocity of their resentment is not hard to understand.

  Though the rebellion that ensued was a tiny one with no possibility of accomplishing anything, it did leave Paul besieged in his palace for some three weeks. The outcome was inevitable—the rebels were subdued and taken prisoner, Paul liberated—but the whole thing had been a profound embarrassment. It showed the pope to be so weak that he could be put in peril by fewer than a hundred of his own scribbling scholars. The episode also assured that Paul would be known as a bad man and bad pope more or less forever. The leading troublemaker among the abbreviators, Bartolomeo Platina, somehow expected to be reemployed upon his release from confinement, and when this did not happen, he was freshly offended. He took his revenge years later by writing Lives of the Popes, which depicted Paul II as a monster of cruelty and sexual depravity. His description has long since been shown to bear little connection to the truth, but the damage to its subject’s reputation proved to be lasting.

  Still worse was to come. In 1469 word reached Rome that the tireless Sultan Mehmed II was assembling an army of eighty thousand men and an enormous fleet of galleys for a fresh offensive and that his target this time was to be the city of Negropont in the Aegean Sea. Negropont was a key Venetian stronghold, one of the serene republic’s essential colonial possessions, and its loss would be a disaster of the first order. Venice tried to rise to the challenge, extracting forced loans from its wealthier citizens and using the money to hurriedly expand its war fleet. By the time the Turkish attack came in 1470, the Venetians were ready. Negropont was under siege but holding out, its walls being slowly reduced to rubble by the Turks’ guns, when Venice’s fleet came racing over the horizon. The plan was to sever the Ottoman lines of supply, which would force the attackers to withdraw. Success seemed certain when suddenly the inexperienced Venetian commander lost his nerve and ordered his galleys to turn back. Negropont fell to the Turks just a day later, and its population was slaughtered. The city’s governor, who had surrendered on condition that he not lose his head, was cut in half at the waist instead. It was the greatest Turkish success since the conquest of Bosnia in 1463. Coming on the heels of the death of Skanderbeg of Albania, who had fallen victim to malaria, it awoke all Italy to just how great the danger now was. The peninsula’s leading powers and a number of the secondary ones came together once again in the new League of Lodi, a nonaggression pact akin to the one that had brought peace to Italy in the last days of Nicholas V. Peace was once again assured, at least for the time being, but it was a peace of a fearful and demoralized kind.

  One evening a year after the fall of Negropont, Pope Paul, still only fifty-four years old, became ill after a hard day that had included six hours spent in consistory. He canceled the audiences scheduled for that night and retired to his bedchamber. Hours later his attendants found him dead, the victim of “apoplexy” according to his baffled physicians, probably of a stroke. It was said that he died from overindulging in melons, which must be a medical first of some kind, and stories of how he had suffered a fatal seizure while being sodomized by a young favorite would years later make their way into print. There is no contemporary testimony to any such thing, and no reputable commentator believes it today.

  It makes more sense to suggest that Paul II had drunk too deeply from the supposedly great prize he had won seven years before and had become its latest victim.

  Background

  THE INEXTINGUISHABLE EVIL-HEADS

  THE STORY OF THE POPES AND THE ROMAGNA REGION OF northeastern Italy, from early times part of the Papal States, is a long, dismal chronicle of bloodshed, betrayal, and tragic outcomes. And it appears in perfect capsule form in the story of one family: the Malatesta of Rimini.

  Malatesta: the word translates as something like “evil-head.” It is not necessary to delve very deep into the family’s history to get some understanding of why this came to be its name. Generation after generation over a period of two centuries, the Malatesta repeatedly shocked even their violent age with the extravagance of their crimes. They came to embody much of what was worst, along with a little of what was best, in the Italy of their time.

  They first appear in history in the twelfth century as one of the first families to become noteworthy as soldiers-for-hire. Early in the thirteenth century they took a decisive step up, playing one side against the other as the popes in Rome fought the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II for supremacy in Italy, and establishing themselves as masters of several towns. Before the end of that century they were the lords of Rimini, which from that time forward would be the capital and main stronghold of the family’s senior branch.

  A rich lore would grow up around any princely family that stayed in power very long, but the tales told of the Malatesta were different: singularly horrific, and also generally true. The oldest and most famous of these tales—Dante included it in The Inferno, and it has been the subject of dozens of operas and plays—is that of Francesca da Rimini. She w
as the bride of a physically deformed Malatesta lord, fell in love and had an affair with her husband’s charming brother, and was butchered along with her lover when the husband found them out. History repeated itself more than a century later when the fourteen-year-old Parisina Malatesta was married to Niccolò d’Este lord of Ferrara, twenty years her senior. This Niccolò had an illegitimate son a year younger than his bride, and again an affair ensued. When the lovers were discovered and young Ugo d’Este was put to death, Parisina cried out, “Now I no longer want to live!” Her husband obliged her by cutting off her head.

  If these were the most romantic episodes in the history of the Malatesta, they were by no means the bloodiest. But ruthlessness and cruelty were useful in their world, and as the Malatesta went on with murdering their enemies and one another, they also gradually came into possession of a little mini-empire of cities and towns scattered across the Romagna and the March of Ancona. As they did so—here we touch on one of the paradoxes of Renaissance Italy—they also showed themselves to be improbably cultivated, lovers of literature and patrons of the arts. They built up a great library, which survives today, and early in the fifteenth century one of the lords of Rimini came to be known as “Malatesta of the sonnets.”