The Borgias

by G. J. Meyer

  If Rodrigo did in fact give himself little chance of being elected, this was in part because, of the twenty-three cardinals able to attend the conclave, only he and Jorge da Costa of Portugal were not Italian. Among the Italians, in addition to the della Rovere-Riario circle, were a Medici, a Sforza, representatives of the Orsini, Colonna, and Savelli families, Paul II’s three nephews, nephews of Pius II and Innocent VIII, and several cardinals who, if not so bountifully endowed with family connections, were esteemed for their personal qualities. In terms of talent as well as clout, it was a formidable assortment of plausible candidates, almost all of them preferring to keep the papacy in Italian hands.

  In the summer of 1492 the usual intricacies of papal politics were complicated by growing antagonism between Naples and Milan, which threatened the stability of all Italy. The trouble originated this time not with a pope’s ambitions but with those of Ferrante of Naples, just a year short of his seventieth birthday, in his thirty-fourth year as king, but still probing restlessly for opportunities to extend his reach. Ferrante, whose political tool kit included everything from torture and cold-blooded murder to the subtlest diplomatic intrigues, had over the preceding three decades used arranged marriages to link his family to the Sforzas of Milan. In 1465 he had married his son and heir, Alfonso duke of Calabria, to Duke Francesco Sforza’s daughter. A generation later a daughter of this marriage, Isabella of Aragon, was wed to her nineteen-year-old first cousin Gian Galeazzo Sforza, who had inherited the ducal title at age seven following the assassination of his father. Aware that Gian Galeazzo was physically delicate and weak of will, Ferrante hoped to dominate Milan through Isabella. All such plans crumbled into dust, however, when Gian Galeazzo came of age and the self-appointed regent, his uncle Ludovico Sforza, refused to step aside.

  If as tough an old cynic as Ferrante is not likely to have been much moved by the tearful complaints of the Duchess Isabella—who in addition to being a stronger personality than her husband was a great beauty, believed by some historians to be Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa—he did care greatly about the thwarting of his own schemes. His reaction had come at the start of 1492, when he radically changed course, calling a halt to his aggressions in the Papal States and resuming the annual payments that he owed to Rome as the pope’s vassal, thereby making peace with Innocent VIII and positioning Naples in opposition to Milan. Thus did Italy’s balance of power begin to totter. Because Rome was suddenly no longer at odds with Naples, the Venetians with their fear of Ferrante ceased to regard the pope as a dependable ally. Florence, which had long managed to keep both Milan and Naples as allies, found it difficult to do so now that the two were on such unfriendly terms.

  Lorenzo de’ Medici’s death in April removed the one man who might have saved the situation. It left the leadership of Florence in the hands of his twenty-year-old son Piero. Lorenzo had been the same age when he succeeded his own father, and he had said with fatherly pride that Piero promised to be the greatest of the Medici. About that he was lamentably wrong. Florence’s new first citizen would come to be known as Piero the Unfortunate, an inappropriate label insofar as the worst of his misfortunes would be of his own making. His first great mistake was to turn his back on the Sforzas and ally Florence with Naples exclusively. The result, as predictable as it was laden with ill fortune for all of Italy, was a badly frightened Ludovico Sforza. Feeling himself isolated, with a hostile Venice to his east and Florence, Rome, and Naples all seemingly arrayed against him to the south, he could think of only one place to look for help. To the north. To France.

  This was how things stood in July, when Innocent VIII expired, and in August, when twenty-three cardinals gathered in the Sistine Chapel (still a good many years from being handed over to Michelangelo for decoration) to elect a new pope. What became most obvious at the start was the bitter opposition of two irreconcilable factions. One, essentially Milanese, was led by Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who in addition to being an able politician in his own right was a brother of the usurper Ludovico Sforza and therefore had all the resources of Milan at his disposal. Ascanio put himself forward as a candidate, and among his early supporters were Rodrigo Borgia and the cardinals then representing the Orsini and Conti clans. The group opposing him was led by the most relentlessly ambitious ecclesiastical politician then living, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who entered the conclave as the representative of a formidable assortment of interests. Among his supporters were Ferrante, whose aim was to achieve whatever result would be most damaging to Milan; young King Charles VIII of France, who had ambitions of his own where Italy was concerned and was reported to have made two hundred thousand ducats available for della Rovere’s use; and the city-state of Genoa, which contributed an additional hundred thousand out of fear of its neighbor Milan. Venice too leaned toward della Rovere for the simple reason that Milan opposed him, and the Colonna and Savelli cardinals were on his side because their rivals the Orsini and Conti supported Milan. In the Sistine Chapel as elsewhere, the enemy of your enemy was your friend.

  In the first balloting no favorite emerged. Ascanio Sforza showed no strength at all, a reflection of his age, thirty-seven, and the unwillingness of his colleagues to put the papacy in the hands of a brother of the tyrant of Milan. Through subsequent ballots the feared and disliked della Rovere found himself stuck at five votes—just one more than the total delivered by himself and his cousins. As it became clear that another deadlock was taking shape, Rodrigo Borgia emerged as the only cardinal whose tally was rising, though just barely. It increased to seven while he was still giving his own vote to Ascanio, and a day later it was up to eight. The leader with nine was Oliviero Carafa, who was in an awkward position despite his impeccable reputation and his long record of achievement in diplomacy. He was drawing support from friends of Milan and of his native city of Naples as well. It was obvious to all that, if elected, he could find himself impossibly conflicted.

  By the fifth day it was clear that no one closely associated with either Naples or Milan had a chance of being elected. The Sforzas, with Ascanio pulling every possible string, were prepared to go to any lengths to block della Rovere and his party. Della Rovere for his part would accept schism before a Milanese pope. As so often in the past, compromise was unavoidable. Once accepted as necessary, it was achieved quickly and with surprising ease. August 11 brought not only the election but ultimately the unanimous election of Rodrigo Borgia. And with it the start of rumors, immortalized in the reports of various ambassadors back to their home cities, of how the Spaniard had used his supposedly colossal wealth to buy the crown. According to one particularly colorful story, four stout mules had been needed to transfer a fortune in silver—or was it gold?—from Rodrigo’s palace to the residence of Ascanio Sforza.

  What actually happened was that Ascanio, knowing his own election to be impossible and fearful that a prolongation of the deadlock might end in a shift to della Rovere, decided to instruct the members of his faction to support Rodrigo. Records of the conclave, lost in the Vatican archives for centuries, show that from the first day Ascanio had himself been voting for Rodrigo, as had two cardinals generally acknowledged to be incorruptible, Carafa and Piccolomini. Getting votes from the other camp was less easy, Rodrigo’s relationship with the prickly della Rovere being no better than anyone else’s. But that too came to pass, della Rovere himself deciding to align himself with the inevitable and undoubtedly not foreseeing just how bitter the loss of this election was going to make him. No tales of simony—of paying for votes—are needed to explain the outcome. Rodrigo’s initial support for Ascanio did not change the fact that, having declined to choose sides in the quarrel between France and Milan on one side and Naples and Venice on the other, he had no bonds of obligation to any of the leading powers. Thus if none of these powers could count on him for special favors, neither did any of them have reason to fear him or regard him as the agent of their enemies. At a dangerous time for all Italy, with the Church in urgent need of compete
nt and responsible leadership, Rodrigo’s experience was unequaled. He was also respected and liked on all sides. And one searches in vain, even in the writings and recorded comments of his most intransigent political enemies, for contemporary evidence of immoral behavior. By any reasonable measure, taking into account the general state of affairs in Italy in 1492, he was quite simply the best man for the job.

  None of which constitutes proof that the best man did not get the job by buying it, of course. But consider: to whatever extent money may have been a factor in the election, the big money was in the hands of della Rovere and, to a lesser but still impressive extent, of Ascanio Sforza. We have already seen that Rodrigo’s wealth was probably never nearly as great as is commonly assumed; if the papacy had in fact been for sale in 1492, he would have found it a challenge to outbid the competition. Nor, if he had attempted to buy it, could he ever have bought the votes of those cardinals who were definitely not for sale. The ambassadors who wrote home complaining of simony had personal agendas of their own. Usually they were attempting to excuse their failure to predict the election’s outcome. It is said that when Ferrante of Naples learned of the election’s result, he burst into tears. It is even suggested that he did so because it grieved him to see the papacy fall into the hands of such a bad man. That so vicious an old reprobate would be capable of deploring any such thing is preposterous. If anything made Ferrante weep, it was not corruption (almost the least of his own crimes) but the emergence of a pontiff who was likely to be impossible to control. While the conclave was still in process, he had described Rodrigo as “this one who has energy, brains, and resources”—and who should, therefore, be stopped from taking the throne. France, Venice, and Florence were all uneasy for exactly the same reason. Ferdinand and Isabella, on the other hand, were delighted at the election of an old friend and another Spanish pope.

  Regardless of what or whether he shouted for joy, a man as well prepared and brimming with vitality as Rodrigo Borgia must have been thrilled to be elected. After a daylong coronation ceremony during which the people of Rome rejoiced at the crowning of a popular figure and the heavily robed object of their celebration fainted more than once in the summertime heat, Pope Alexander VI threw himself into his new role with his customary brio. Required as all new popes were to relinquish his benefices, he ended the month of August with a consistory at which the many bishoprics, abbeys, and other properties that he had accumulated over the decades were passed to other hands. Most of the cardinals benefited to a greater or lesser extent, providing inexhaustible ammunition to those writers who, over the centuries, have pointed to this first consistory of his reign as the mechanism through which Alexander redeemed the pledges that had bought him the throne.

  But what is proved, really, by the fact that Alexander made Ascanio Sforza his successor as vice-chancellor? That he saw in the young Sforza not only a political ally but someone to whom he was willing to entrust important responsibilities, obviously. But if that is evidence of corruption, so is the time-honored practice of new U.S. presidents giving top posts not only to members of their own party but to individuals who helped them get elected. As for the fact that Alexander also gave Ascanio the sprawling palace that he had cobbled together out of a collection of derelict buildings, we saw earlier that it had from the start been not only Cardinal Rodrigo’s residence but a headquarters for the chancery’s great bureaucracy. Ascanio had no property of his own suitable for such purposes. That it was and would remain less a personal residence than a place of business is suggested by its subsequent history. It would pass from Ascanio to the next vice-chancellor after him, and beyond that to three more incumbents before finally being taken over by the papal treasury. That it was ultimately torn down and built over, and that no one ever bothered to make a picture of it or describe it in detail, raises doubts about whether it ever merited comparison with the many grand palaces that were being constructed in Rome at this same time and that continue to draw visitors to the city to the present day.

  Alexander also attended to the interests of his family, but to an extent far too modest, in the beginning, to cause concern or even attract attention. At the same consistory at which he distributed his benefices, he appointed a single new cardinal, a Lanzol kinsman known in Rome as Giovanni Borgia. This was in no way shocking, not only because nepotism was taken for granted but because in this case the beneficiary was unquestionably well qualified. The new Cardinal Borgia, whom historians call Giovanni Borgia the Elder to distinguish him from a subsequent appointee of Alexander’s of the same name, had been brought to the papal court by his uncle Rodrigo many years before and had carved out an impressive career for himself there. He became a protonotary apostolic and then archbishop of Monreale in Sicily under Sixtus IV, served as governor of Rome under Innocent VIII, and had long been one of his uncle’s closest associates. Alexander’s transfer of his archbishopric of Valencia to a little-known adolescent named Cesare Borgia at this same time was, if less defensible, by no means a scandal. The see of Valencia had been in the Borgia family for more than sixty years at this point. If passing it along to a third generation was an act of nepotistic excess, it was nonetheless trivial when compared with some of the things that had come before, and the fact that Valencia was in Spain meant that it was a matter of little interest to the Italian cardinals. Beyond that, Alexander limited himself to bestowing the captaincy of the papal guard on a great-nephew and namesake from Spain, Rodrigo Lanzol y de Borja, and giving some minor administrative positions in the Papal States to a few other kinsmen so obscure that we don’t know how they were related to him.

  The initial distribution of offices completed, Alexander turned to the most pressing of the problems left to him by Innocent VIII. The weakness of the late pope, especially in his final half-year when failing health made him more passive than ever, had allowed Rome and the surrounding territories to fall into even worse disorder than they usually did in the absence of firm leadership. The College of Cardinals had attempted to maintain order, sending crossbowmen into the streets, but this had limited effect. The Orsini and Colonna and other baronial clans got up to their usual black mischief, and criminals of all sorts found themselves free to do their worst with little fear of consequences. From the point at which it became known that Innocent was dying, more than two hundred murders were known to have been committed inside the city walls.

  Alexander cracked down hard. On September 3 two notorious murderers, the del Rosso brothers, were publicly hanged and their house was pulled down. Those guilty of lesser crimes found themselves locked in the dungeons of the Castel Sant’Angelo. Not many weeks of this were needed to bring the city under control. A new force of watchmen and constables—twenty-one of them just for the Tiber bridges—made certain that it stayed that way.

  Alexander was equally quick to address the abuses of a municipal justice system that had become seriously corrupt. He created new judgeships, appointed doctors of law to fill them, and ordered them to give a hearing to all complaints. He saw to it that they and other officials were paid promptly and well enough not to be tempted by petty bribes at least. This was the start of a series of reforms that culminated in a decree prescribing stern penalties for any officer of justice in any of the Papal States who either solicited or accepted a gift from anyone connected with a criminal or civil case. All decisions issued by judges found to have accepted a gift, or even to have agreed to do so, were declared null and void.

  All this was remarkably advanced for its time, and Alexander went further still, initiating a practice without precedent in the history of the papacy. He reserved Tuesday as a day on which, every week, he would be personally available to any Roman, male or female, who came to see him with a complaint or petition. Those who came were allowed to speak for as long as they wished on any subject of their choosing. And he reformed the Vatican’s financial administration, imposing new checks on spending and significantly reducing the costs of the papal household. Even as intransigent a hater of p
opes in general and Borgias in particular as Stefano Infessura (in whose diary we find a weird story of a Jewish doctor bleeding three boys to death in a futile effort to save the life of Innocent VIII) conceded that Alexander’s reign “began most admirably.”

  At the start of the conclave that had ended in his election, like all the other cardinals present, Rodrigo had signed a capitulation pledging, if he became pope, to call a general council of the Church. Even if after his election he had remained free to choose, quite possibly Pope Alexander would have followed the example of his predecessors and ignored this promise. Possibly but not certainly—by 1492 most cardinals wanted a council, not as in the past to undercut the authority of the pope, but to develop a program for raising the standards of the clergy generally. Throughout his life Rodrigo Borgia was not only not opposed to reform but a champion of it, as he had shown in his missions to Spain and Naples. The question is academic in any case; Alexander was not long free to choose. In short order problems arose that made the convening of a council first inadvisable and ultimately impossible.

  The first of these problems emerged almost simultaneously with Alexander’s coronation. Count Franceschetto Cibo, Innocent VIII’s feckless son, had decided as his father’s death approached that he had no wish to try to hold on to the various properties of which he had been made lord. This was a sensible decision, Cibo being totally unsuited to the cutthroat struggle for advantage that dominated the lives of Italy’s petty tyrants. He was not only a worse weakling than his father but a compulsive and unsuccessful gambler, and in chronic need of cash. As Innocent’s reign ended, he prudently left Rome for his wife’s home in Florence. There, with the connivance of his brother-in-law Piero de’ Medici and the pope’s old rival Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, he set out to sell his property.